After a writing retreat with NatalieGoldberg in 2010 in Taos, New Mexico, I was moved to create a writing practice
group. We meet on Tuesday evenings twice
a month, sip on tea, laugh a lot, and write in ten-minute blocks in response to
prompts we create. When the timer goes
off, we stop writing and read out loud to each other. I wrote the piece below during a session with
my group in response to the prompt “pockets.”
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Pockets are resting places—for our
hands, for our keys, for the ticket stub not to be parted with just yet.
Pockets are openings that hold. Sometimes they can hold us.
Pockets of time. Is that even an expression? I wish to inhabit a pocket of time.
It would be soft and worn, a pocket in
an old apron. The fabric would be a
faded calico, the apron worn by a woman like me, only taller, bigger, older—my solid,
calm alter ego. She would be stirring a
large pot of spaghetti sauce on the stove, her grey hair pulled back out of the
way, some of it curling around her face in the steam from the pot.
Her pocket would be a resting place, a
place to be invisible and quiet. A place
to pause. I need to create such a pocket
of quiet contemplation and rest.
Somehow, doing laundry last weekend was
a kind of rest: being able to wash a whole load of towels without checking
whether it was sunny out because we once again have the luxury of the dryer,
the steady, rotating thump and hum.
On Sunday evenings, when I shower and
get into my pajamas and then come downstairs to the aroma of dinner, then the
living room feels like a pocket, a cocoon away from it all.
These pockets of time allow me to be in
touch with the solid, no-nonsense part of me, the one that knows it is all
okay. That I’m doing my best, that in
this moment, I am always okay.
