I wrote this essay almost five years ago, and the fiction project I reference in this piece died a slow and painful death by way of not being very good. But it did start me thinking I might want to try fiction again, the necessary prescription if you ever want to move from not good to slightly better. It was something I’d never attempted before and never thought I could, and now five years out, I have my first-ever novel drafted, edited, and being queried to agents! I’m proud of the accomplishment and excited to see what will happen next.
Just as the writing expands our hearts, the rejections can do the opposite if we aren’t careful. But I got the nicest rejection letter of my life the other day and have been dining out on it ever since, I’m just so tickled by its kindness, even if it did end with the “it’s not you, it’s me” of publishing. It is wonderful to have even a few people reading this little story of mine and thinking it worth a reply of any kind - I’m not sure I’ll ever get over that thrill. Anyway, I hope you enjoy this piece, either for the first time or revisiting, and please send your prayers/thoughts/hopes/caffeine my way as I continue to pursue representation/publication for my fiction.
My chatty four-year-old and I were leaving Whole Foods with a full shopping cart. I’m a bargain-hunter by nature, but now and then we venture into the sunlit uplands of $7 gourmet cereals for a few specific items.
Anyway, those few items had turned into a few more (Unique beer! Baby bok choy! Designer gelato!) and I had my hands full with bags of groceries and my pint-sized commentary machine (I saw a firetruck mama! Where was it going mama? It’s sunny today mama! What’s that guy doing mama? What’s that for mama? I saw a birdie mama!)
As Isaiah climbed into the car and I loaded up our purchases, I noticed a blond-haired woman about my age, sitting outside the store at a wooden picnic table, which was fitted with a Whole-Foods-green umbrella. She had a brown paper take-out container, and she sat before it with such desolation on her face that I looked again. She wasn’t crying, or holding her head in her hands, or doing any of the things that we associate with heartbreak, but heartbreak was present all the same. Whole Foods is close to the hospital - I imagined maybe she came from seeing a loved one, perhaps she’d just had a scary appointment - in a split-second I wondered if there was a way to help, or if perhaps she simply wanted to sit in the sunshine, in which case my presence would only interfere. All these things were running through my mind as I loaded my frivolous groceries in the car; in her presence I felt a little embarrassed by my $8 locally-grown clamshell of butter lettuce, self-conscious in my excesses.
Isaiah had buckled in when a man in a fleece and running shoes came by. “Have a nice day,” he said quickly, and as if embarrassed by his own gesture, he dropped a vibrant bunch of sunflowers on the table in front of her and hurried away.
The sunflowers glowed in the spring morning, glorious and exuberant. The woman’s face changed, it went from contained sadness to utter desolation, and she wept outright. I cried too, watching compassion unfold through the windshield with my little boy humming in the backseat, coloring in his superhero coloring book.
I’ve been working on a little fiction project, not because I think I can write fiction but because my real life has felt like one long DMV line lately and no one wants to hear about that, including myself.
But the act of writing fiction (which of course, has caused me to read more fiction, as I really don’t know how it works) has lead me to think about compassion. Because creativity, imagination - they are the ultimate act of compassion. They dare us to put ourselves in another’s shoes, to engage in the radical act of putting ourselves (and our opinions!) to the side.
Like the North-Face-wearing young man who saw a sad stranger as worthy of his attention and kindness, like the flight attendants who gave us a free lunch in the back of the plane when they realized we were flying home with a three-week-old adopted baby, like the elderly rancher who stopped on the side of the road when he saw my mom-bus pulled over in Eastern Oregon cow country: “You OK ma’am?”
Fiction is compassion. It is putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes. It is daring to believe that our way is not the only way. Through telling stories we broaden the breadth and scope of humanity, we imagine ourselves the shoes of someone older, younger, happier, sadder, less privileged or more intelligent, less able or more kind.
There are no small lives. There is no small sadness or small joy. Every human life has value and every story matters. Thank you, as always, for reading mine.
Comments
Nothing yet. Say the first thing.
Sign in to join the conversation.