Recently, I was out to dinner with a friend of mine and her dad. Catching up on each other, her dad asked me what I was busy writing these days. Simple question, but I felt myself swallowing hard, pursing my lips and tonguing the roof of my mouth in search of an answer...See, a little more than 3 months ago, I lost my last remaining grandpa. Were my friend's dad to ask me about him, about his passing, I would've been able to answer immediately, "I'm taking it as well as I could...I'm in a good place these days--just going along with the flow, one day at a time...." But the writing question...
What have I been writing lately??? Well, for months I've been trying to write about Poppy and his funeral. For months! And yet I couldn't bring myself to answer the man's question? That's when I realized that I'm not okay. Not actually. Sure I'm capable of being fully-functional in my day-to-day life. I'm happy even. But ask me how writing about the details of my grandpa's funeral is going? Different story.
One of my professors at Naropa said that some stories need "ripening." Some need to be laid in a cardboard box and stored in a dark corner, forgotten about for a few seasons, until they're heavy and juicy with possibilities. Only then will we be able to look at them with new insights and have renewed energy and inspiration with which to write them. Simply, some stories require waiting.
And Poppy's story is one such story. Not just because I'm having difficulty putting my warm, raw, ultrasensitive memories onto cold, standard-cut sheets of blank paper, but because I, too, have to ripen! I'm not ready to write this story--it's too soon, too fresh, and the story's still working its way through me, let alone OUT of me. So it'll have to wait. WE will have to wait. And that's okay. Because when the story does come out, it will be stormy with waiting and so will open up and rain down its sadness on me. And by then, I'll be ready for it. The story that'll leak out of me and onto the paper will have been worth waiting for; experiencing Poppy again will have been worth waiting for...
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