Our six year-old has never had “a sleepover.” Until last night, she and I had only been apart for three nights since her birth in 2009. Her first night away from family wasn’t spent on her best friend’s floor and it wasn’t part some Girl Scout event in a church hall.
Nope, we sent her to the woods.
Every once in a while, a woman with small children will have a chance to shower without anyone poking the curtain or worrying over the distant screams. She'll get to shave her legs and wash, rinse, repeat if she wants to. This is the chance to put on some of her own music so she doesn't find herself singing "Baby Beluga" (again!) as she scrubs her back.
Thanks to the endless spring twilight and a husband willing to take a shift searching for worms under all the backyard stones, I had twenty steamy minutes to myself. I practiced my ablutions (wow, how often do you get to say that in a sentence) and I listened - really listened - to the album that got me through that summer of crappy 60 hour workweeks.
Ani Difranco's Little Plastic Castle is just as wonderful. And the title track has a lot to teach us about a well-built story. See the lyrics and my annotations below.
In a coffee shop in a city Which is every coffee shop in every city On a day which is every day I picked up the magazine Which is every magazine Read a story, then I forgot it right away
The ordinary world. (So terribly, terribly ordinary.)
And they say, "Goldfish have no memory" I guess their lives are much like mine And the little plastic castle Is a surprise every time And it's hard to say, if they're happy But they don't seem much to mind
Just enough details about our heroine/narrator to be curious. Show, don't tell. Intriguing and allowing us to fill in the blanks and entertain our own goldfish memories.
From the shape of your shaved head I recognized your silhouette As you walked out of the sun and sat down And the sight of your sleepy smile Eclipsed all the other people As they paused to sneer at the two girls from out of town
Here's the rising action. This is where setting and character exposition becomes plot.
I said, look at you this morning You are, by far, the cutest But be careful getting coffee I think these people want to shoot us Or maybe there's some kind of local competition here To see who can be the rudest
Oh, the conflict!
And the turning point. This is where Ani takes us from story to commentary - much like a good blog post that begins with personal anecdote and brings the reader into the heart of the message. In this case, how does Ani really feel about being a feminist icon in an ordinary, hypocritical world that asks so much of women like her and yet offers nothing but forgettable magazines and rude coffee drinkers.
And people talk about my image Like I come in two dimensions Like lipstick is a sign of my declining mind Like what I happen to be wearing The day that someone takes a picture Is my new statement for all of womankind
And I wish they could see us now In leather bras and rubber shorts Like some ridiculous new team uniform For some ridiculous new sport Quick someone call the girl police And, and file a report
In a coffee shop in a city Which is every coffee shop in every city On a day which is every day
I believe I am strong.
Dawn Montefusco is a writer, speaker, poet and coach who escaped the Bronx in the 80's and now lives in Portland, Oregon.
“It doesn’t have to be easy. Isn’t it enough that it’s magic?”
In some forgotten magazine, I once read a lament about how little fiction is written about the world of work.
When historians look back upon this time they might think we live in an age of passionate romance, of hideous crimes, of sweeping wars, and occasional zombie plagues and vampire infestations. They won't be able to look to that cultural signifier we call the novel to understand how many bloody hours we devote to emails and preparing reports and fiddling with "easy" tools like the LeadPages system.