Responding To Thomas
Same assignment, different story.
Again for Nonfic III, we read Abigail Thomas' book Safekeeping and had to choose an element of craft to try to recreate. One of the driving forces Thomas’ book is the intertwining relationships between the narrator and her family. Thomas shows these relationships through a particularly distinct style, which includes the use of short titled sections, as well as a variety of points of view used within those sections. For my assignment to myself, I attempted to tell a story about my interactions with people, with relationships being the essay’s focus, while trying my hand at Thomas’ short sections and attempting to tell the story from different points of view within those sections.
***
Estimated Time of Arrival
We spent nearly forty-five minutes looking frantically searching the airport for your arrival gate. The monitors showed the estimated time of arrival for a wide range of cities: Chicago, Wichita, Cleveland, St. Louis. But your flight left from New York, right? You flew from London to New York, one of the biggest cities in the country. Not an easy city to miss on a glowing monitor in the middle of an airport terminal, but definitely not on the list. It should be tucked smugly between Newark and Omaha, but it’s not.
All we have is a flight number, an airline name, and an ETA on a scrap of paper. All we can do is stand in front of the arrival gate at the Delta terminal and hope for the best, even if the next flight due in is from Atlanta and it’s running late. You know how I hate to be anything but on time. When I’m early, everyone else is late. You’ve got be playing the waiting game. You’re worth the wait.
“What does she look like?” she asks, leaning against the wall beside me. She’s tired of waiting, too. “I want to know what I’m looking for.”
“Well, it’s been over a year since I’ve seen her. She has blonde hair, usually pulled back into a ponytail. A bit taller than me, a bit more trim than me, too.”
The Atlanta flight finally mosies up to the gate, opens the doors and the passengers disembark. The arrival tunnel starts to fill with people. A sea of heads, a few dozen blonde ponytails… so many in fact that I don’t notice you right away. You wore your hair down. You smile at me, I smile back. I cannot believe you are really standing in front of me. In person. It will be weeks before I fully start believing you are really there.
Reassurance
Three young twenty-something girls dressed to the nines pile into a tiny Ford Escort and wait for the church parking lot to clear out so they can get to the reception and the open bar. Two of them are bridesmaids, wearing bright red halter dresses with delicately embroidered bodices and a bit of taffeta underneath for a fuller skirt, which is particularly difficult to gather and stuff in through the driver’s side door. One is a wedding guest, feeling a bit awkward in a skirt, which is not her typical wardrobe. She wears new shoes and worries she is not dressed up enough for the wedding. The other two assure her she looks absolutely fantastic and that their good friend, the new bride, won’t give a shit.
For When I Can’t Be There
I am sitting in the Workhorse, a golf cart of sorts, affectionately called the Turkey, with my feet up on the dashboard and my hands behind my head. My backpack and an overnight bag with shower supplies are in the bed in the back. I’m waiting on my foreigners, the South African and the Brit, to gather some essentials for a weekend break from camp. Two backpacks sit on the steps of the wooden porch outside the platform tent. Inside, my foreign friends root around through their luggage, tracking down toothbrushes and clean underwear.
“Ooh! I forgot I had these!” squeals the South African, her head halfway inside her duffel bag. She is not one to squeal over trifles. “Jinxy, come up here… I have something for you.”
I groan, reluctant to leave my comfortable reclining position, but ultimately oblige, climb the steps and open the screen door. The Brit has stopped rummaging through her brimming blue-green backpack and joins me at the doorway with a knowing grin on her face. The South African stands up and walks toward me, holding one hand behind her back.
“I thought you could use this,” she said, bringing her hand in front of her now, revealing her secret. It was a rubber band bracelet, navy blue with a little Nike swoosh on one side, and a single word emblazoned on the other side: CONFIDENCE. I didn’t know what to say.
“Whenever you doubt yourself, I want you to look at that and imagine me kicking your ass for thinking too little of yourself,” she grinned. “I can’t always be around to keep you thinking straight, but you can think of me when you wear this.”
One Third of a Year
She sits on the couch in her living room quietly, trying not to look at the towering piles of luggage near the door. Her two companions are packing their lives away. The three have spent four months living together - that’s one third of a year. It sounds like such a long time. Have they been spoiled, seeing each other every day, laughing at the silliest things? They’re leaving. They have to - their visas expire soon. It seems such a shame that three people so alike have to hail from three different countries, three different continents, even.
Time is running out in every sense of the word. She hoped she’d be the one to drive them to the airport, but the timing is just not right. Instead she is dressed in her nice clothes. She has a meeting to go to that overlaps with their departure time. It almost feels as if she is leaving them instead of them leaving her.
How Well We Know Each Other
You hate goodbyes. You know I do too. Something about the word ‘goodbye’ feels so final that it makes your toes curl. You don’t want the end to come. You think it might never have to if only we say the right words and avoid the wrong ones. We stood at the doorway with a final embrace before you left. You refused to let go before I did. I did the same thing. We would probably still be hugging to this day if someone hadn’t stepped in. You refused to say goodbye. You acted like it was not even in your vocabulary.
“See you later,” you said as we both let go at the same time.
Again for Nonfic III, we read Abigail Thomas' book Safekeeping and had to choose an element of craft to try to recreate. One of the driving forces Thomas’ book is the intertwining relationships between the narrator and her family. Thomas shows these relationships through a particularly distinct style, which includes the use of short titled sections, as well as a variety of points of view used within those sections. For my assignment to myself, I attempted to tell a story about my interactions with people, with relationships being the essay’s focus, while trying my hand at Thomas’ short sections and attempting to tell the story from different points of view within those sections.
***
Estimated Time of Arrival
We spent nearly forty-five minutes looking frantically searching the airport for your arrival gate. The monitors showed the estimated time of arrival for a wide range of cities: Chicago, Wichita, Cleveland, St. Louis. But your flight left from New York, right? You flew from London to New York, one of the biggest cities in the country. Not an easy city to miss on a glowing monitor in the middle of an airport terminal, but definitely not on the list. It should be tucked smugly between Newark and Omaha, but it’s not.
All we have is a flight number, an airline name, and an ETA on a scrap of paper. All we can do is stand in front of the arrival gate at the Delta terminal and hope for the best, even if the next flight due in is from Atlanta and it’s running late. You know how I hate to be anything but on time. When I’m early, everyone else is late. You’ve got be playing the waiting game. You’re worth the wait.
“What does she look like?” she asks, leaning against the wall beside me. She’s tired of waiting, too. “I want to know what I’m looking for.”
“Well, it’s been over a year since I’ve seen her. She has blonde hair, usually pulled back into a ponytail. A bit taller than me, a bit more trim than me, too.”
The Atlanta flight finally mosies up to the gate, opens the doors and the passengers disembark. The arrival tunnel starts to fill with people. A sea of heads, a few dozen blonde ponytails… so many in fact that I don’t notice you right away. You wore your hair down. You smile at me, I smile back. I cannot believe you are really standing in front of me. In person. It will be weeks before I fully start believing you are really there.
Reassurance
Three young twenty-something girls dressed to the nines pile into a tiny Ford Escort and wait for the church parking lot to clear out so they can get to the reception and the open bar. Two of them are bridesmaids, wearing bright red halter dresses with delicately embroidered bodices and a bit of taffeta underneath for a fuller skirt, which is particularly difficult to gather and stuff in through the driver’s side door. One is a wedding guest, feeling a bit awkward in a skirt, which is not her typical wardrobe. She wears new shoes and worries she is not dressed up enough for the wedding. The other two assure her she looks absolutely fantastic and that their good friend, the new bride, won’t give a shit.
For When I Can’t Be There
I am sitting in the Workhorse, a golf cart of sorts, affectionately called the Turkey, with my feet up on the dashboard and my hands behind my head. My backpack and an overnight bag with shower supplies are in the bed in the back. I’m waiting on my foreigners, the South African and the Brit, to gather some essentials for a weekend break from camp. Two backpacks sit on the steps of the wooden porch outside the platform tent. Inside, my foreign friends root around through their luggage, tracking down toothbrushes and clean underwear.
“Ooh! I forgot I had these!” squeals the South African, her head halfway inside her duffel bag. She is not one to squeal over trifles. “Jinxy, come up here… I have something for you.”
I groan, reluctant to leave my comfortable reclining position, but ultimately oblige, climb the steps and open the screen door. The Brit has stopped rummaging through her brimming blue-green backpack and joins me at the doorway with a knowing grin on her face. The South African stands up and walks toward me, holding one hand behind her back.
“I thought you could use this,” she said, bringing her hand in front of her now, revealing her secret. It was a rubber band bracelet, navy blue with a little Nike swoosh on one side, and a single word emblazoned on the other side: CONFIDENCE. I didn’t know what to say.
“Whenever you doubt yourself, I want you to look at that and imagine me kicking your ass for thinking too little of yourself,” she grinned. “I can’t always be around to keep you thinking straight, but you can think of me when you wear this.”
One Third of a Year
She sits on the couch in her living room quietly, trying not to look at the towering piles of luggage near the door. Her two companions are packing their lives away. The three have spent four months living together - that’s one third of a year. It sounds like such a long time. Have they been spoiled, seeing each other every day, laughing at the silliest things? They’re leaving. They have to - their visas expire soon. It seems such a shame that three people so alike have to hail from three different countries, three different continents, even.
Time is running out in every sense of the word. She hoped she’d be the one to drive them to the airport, but the timing is just not right. Instead she is dressed in her nice clothes. She has a meeting to go to that overlaps with their departure time. It almost feels as if she is leaving them instead of them leaving her.
How Well We Know Each Other
You hate goodbyes. You know I do too. Something about the word ‘goodbye’ feels so final that it makes your toes curl. You don’t want the end to come. You think it might never have to if only we say the right words and avoid the wrong ones. We stood at the doorway with a final embrace before you left. You refused to let go before I did. I did the same thing. We would probably still be hugging to this day if someone hadn’t stepped in. You refused to say goodbye. You acted like it was not even in your vocabulary.
“See you later,” you said as we both let go at the same time.