Hello, again.
I’m back from my travels. As I wrote in the Comments section last week, I’m grateful to all who participated in my absence and kept this thing running. I tried to read your work and make comments while on the road, but very quickly I realized that when a person goes away, they really “go away.” That’s part of the reason we go away! Thank you for your understanding.
And now, here’s a new prompt for you:
I’m fairly certain…
…that many, if not most of you have read The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien’s war novel about a platoon of soldiers who fought in the Vietnam War. The book is made up of a collection of linked stories, with the first one (the title story), beginning like this:
First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rucksack.
In this first story, O’Brien tells us what the soldiers physically carried, but of course, we learn about the psychological and emotional wounds they carried as well.
Here’s O’Brien, interviewed on NPR, talking about himself:
"I carry the memories of the ghosts of a place called Vietnam — the people of Vietnam, my fellow soldiers. More importantly, I carry the weight of responsibility, and a sense of abiding guilt."
There’s a reason this book remains in print and is read and studied in high schools and universities. It’s a beautiful book, and also devastating.
This week, we’re writing about the things that are carried—by ourselves, by others, or by our fictional characters.
Weirdly, as I was putting together this post, my husband sent me a photo via text of the newest sign at the local dry cleaner’s. Year in and out, Milt and Edie put pithy sayings up on their little billboard —some are better than others. Well, this month’s says this:
“Sometimes the weight you need to lose is not on your body.”
Word, Milt and Edie.
We all carry some heavy loads—it’s nothing new for me to say that. Not many people grew up in perfect homes in safe neighborhoods, and with wonderful parents. We are all products of our environments and we carry the memories of the pains we survived in our cells.
But most of us also carry lighter things—happy memories, the people we’ve loved, the places we’ve been.
TODAY’S PROMPT
Write a story with a character who carries something. Anything.
The thing they carry should be something physical. Their wallet. A comb. A photo of a former lover. A safety pin. A spare granola bar. A certain necklace or ring.
Have something happen to the thing—it gets lost, or found, or put down, or stolen, etc. (Or not—everything’s up to you.)
Your story can be funny or sad!
Up to 400 words in the Comments section.
It was his cigarette smoke.
The recent winter ice stuck to the edges of the pond,
The ubiquitous rust of fallen leaves.
It was the way the branches of the oaks touch the sky in old New England,
Over a mill pond, the splashing water over the dam.
It was me at the oars of the rowboat he built.
It was after grandfather died and before I learned to smoke.
Really, it’s hard to imagine now, it was the log cabin,
It was just him and me, and a sack of trophies grandfather won in track.
Tarnished, inscribed with meters of this or that, some with glass bottoms
I could look through like a telescope, or was it a kaleidoscope.
It was smoke or mist or was it smoke or mist in the spring cool air.
I guess this is the best thing to do with these, he said.
I concurred, knowing nothing otherwise, in 1955.
It was just us, my dad and me on the dark pond in the oak woods,
Holding the silver over the water and letting go.
After a few weeks at a new school, my wife found our seven-year-old stuffing stones into his pockets.
"It's ok. I will have these friends to play with at playtime now, you don't have to worry," he told her.