Life in the Present Tense

Weekly Writing Prompt No. 79

Hello everyone and welcome to this week’s writing prompt.

For anyone new to The Writing Shed, this is currently the core of my activity here on Substack.

I may have mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I am returning to full-time education in October (yes, I know, at my advanced age!) I’ve spent the last week mulling over how to fit a full study and research schedule into a life already packed with the everyday. Therefore, this month will be the last in which I publish a weekly writing prompt. From October I plan to craft them monthly and you may also be grateful to receive fewer missives in your inbox too.

And, after asking whether there were sections you would miss, a resounding no-one said they wanted to keep the Weekly Soul Shine, Weekly Writing Competition and Missing in Action, so I have removed them.

Have fun and enjoy your week’s reading and writing.

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The Prompt

At our Writing Shed meeting last night, we discussed the events that might happen in someone’s life if they were a character in a soap opera like Eastenders or Coronation Street. The caveat though was to choose an event that reflected their archetypal character. Your mission, should you choose to accept it today, is to do the same. Pick an archetype and write a short piece about an event that could only happen to them.

If you feel like sharing your thoughts please leave a comment as I’m always curious to read what everyone creates.

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It was the cards I noticed first this morning.

Each one neatly placed on the window sill. Carefully butted up against the thin line of mastic that secured the glass into the frame; they were spaced almost exactly it seemed but without the benefit of a ruler I couldn’t be sure.

They ran in order starting Hearts, then Spades, then Diamonds and finally Clubs; each suit starting Aces low.

You were moving the cards slowly gathering them all up again into a neat stack and beginning the process of laying them out again and I watched you for a while before moving to the kitchen to make a welcome cup of tea.

The kettle boiled and I poured water into two mugs, splashing in milk to complete the exercise. A quick stir of the tea bags which were then fished out and onto the ‘save the teabag’ dish bought as a gift from Harrods on a long forgotten trip to London.

I took one mug into the sitting room for you and placed it to one side of the spread out playing cards, avoiding putting it in the way of your carefully orchestrated movements.

Card out, card placed, card adjusted for spacing.

Card out, card placed, card adjusted for spacing.

“There’s a cup of tea here for you Dad” I spoke the words quietly and without urgency. Any urgency would have upset your routine and you would become distressed and I didn’t want to cause you stress.

“Frish hand you” You smiled at me when you spoke the words back to me a gentle smile that touched every part of your face and illuminated your eyes.

I understood what you were saying even though the words didn’t make any sense and I smiled back, touching you on the arm as I did so before turning away to get my own tea and bring it into the sitting room.

Settling on the settee I kept my mug close by so that I could easily reach out for it. I watched you carefully and relaxed in the silence.

There was a time when I would have been frustrated by the silence and by the repetition of the actions that you took, but that time had long passed and we had accepted a comfortable routine, you and I.

I had once been a harbinger of stress, fretting and fussing if this or that hadn’t been done on time, believing that if I didn’t get things right the world would surely come to an end. Even now, I occasionally reflect on the changes that have been wrought over the last couple of years and am amazed at how much life seemed so less complicated than it had when we had first started this journey together.

The trick, it seemed, was to begin to live with you rather than against you. You had no concept of time, the past was long gone and irrelevant and your future was nowhere to be seen. You didn’t worry about what had been or what was going to come, you stayed in an endless cycle of now.

As I watched you in this way over the months it had become apparent that my way of living had been entirely unsatisfactory and in that time I too had learnt to become patient and to be present, living in the moment and working with what happened along the way rather than fretting about what might never be.

Life was reduced to a simple algorithm of caring, eating and sleeping and I realised that there was no need to worry any longer – the world carried on turning and your pension turned up in the bank every month whether I did anything or not. My role in forcing the world into activity was made negligible in the face of the mounting evidence that I did not control it.

I had succumbed to this life. I felt no urgent need to do anything except sit and share this time with you. We didn’t ‘do’ daytime TV; you wouldn’t have understood it anyway. I occasionally read a book or a magazine, thoughtfully passed on by a neighbour or friend. Even more occasionally, I checked my email; responding to requests for news from those who cared what we had become.

Watching you with the cards I couldn’t help but wonder at the lies we all bought into about how life ‘should be’, the constant striving to be bigger and better than another when the reality was that we would all end up as dust. My worldview had expanded and shrunk at the same time and it was with some annoyance that I listened to the platitudes of those who couldn’t understand that your illness wasn’t a problem, for either of us.

You, with your awareness diminished to the present tense only, were happy; I with my awareness changed to the fundamentally important things in life was also happy; happy in a way that I had never anticipated being when we were first given the diagnosis that had brought us to this point.

Smiling to myself I remembered how I had raged at the specialist, at the nurses, at our GP. Insisting that there be some intervention or treatment that could be offered which would stop the inevitable tide of change that, Canute-like, I wanted to hold back. My raging had extended even to you in the early days, accusing you of leaving me with ‘this mess’ to clear up; crying and shouting and screaming that it had to stop, that you had to stop this nonsense and that you needed to be as you were – looking after me and putting my needs first.

I noted at the time, with some shock, that the child had to become the parent; that our roles were reversing and that I wasn’t ready for the responsibility. Like all others of my generation, I was of the ‘me’ generation, brought to adulthood in the Thatcher years, succumbing to the hypocrisy surrounding the ‘selfish gene’ and believing that I could, in fact, have it all; even if I didn’t know what ‘it’ was back then.

I had been driven to make my mark on the world; to gather more than anyone else, to be better than my neighbours and friends and I didn’t so much keep up with the Jones’ I had, with your support, surpassed them in every sense.

All of this had been laid low by a simple, single conversation with you on the phone in between meetings.

“I’m going to see the Doctor next week, I keep forgetting things”.

Your words didn’t mean much at the time and I brushed you off with a promise to call that night to have a chat and carried on with my day. Forgetting almost immediately the fear I’d detected in your voice, in the way you enunciated the words so clearly and carefully.

As it turned out I had been due to be in the area for a couple of days when you had your appointment and I had offered to give you a lift. Two birds with one stone; I got to fulfil my daughterly duty and I picked up a nice commission into the bargain; result!

That was also the day I picked up a new client, one I hadn’t anticipated or been looking for; one which turned my life upside down and threatened all that I had built thus far. That client was you and as the months advanced and the time progressed, you became my sole responsibility.

My employer ‘let me go’. I wasn’t able to look after the business I had so carefully built; emails sent to me with enquiries went unanswered, meetings were missed or never booked and too many phone calls had been ignored as yet another crisis in your decline hit. I couldn’t blame them, it wasn’t their fault; they had shareholders’ needs to meet and other employees’ wages to pay. I was just another cog in a wheel that went round and round ready to be removed and replaced when I became faulty.

Eventually, I sold the flat I had worked so hard to buy and moved back home; to the place I had left so many years before and my new life began.

Your hands are moving fluidly, and I admire their beauty and your pianist’s fingers. Intent on their activity and without understanding the process they were involved in they carefully gathered the cards once more and the cycle began again.

Card out, card placed, card adjusted for spacing.

Card out, card placed, card adjusted for spacing.

My thoughts of the past settle into the moment and I become at one with the present, as fluid in my acceptance of our life as you are with the placement of the cards.

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Reflect

I include a reflection opportunity with every writing prompt because our writing always wells up from our inner landscape.

Which archetype do you identify with most? For me, I think it’s “student”.

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If you’re a writer who wants to manifest your writing hopes and dreams from the practical and pragmatic to the esoteric and spiritual, or who would like to clear any subconscious self-sabotage you may be experiencing, why not work with me? To find out more head over to my website by clicking the button below.

With love, light, and laughter
Linda
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(Image by Gerd Altmann from Pixabay)