Now

A Lori Tale

Note: Writers, from what I’ve read, some anyway, are visited by a ‘muse’ for literary inspiration. Such a tool is commonly used by me and comes in the form of Lori, a child roaming out there in my storytelling universe.

A nudge of my computer’s mouse brings up an empty word document. I look at it, hoping a forgotten idea will make the leap from my mind to the page. It doesn’t. Writing is so much fun when an idea floats by, waiting to be plucked out of the air and thrashed onto the blank whiteness via my keyboard, but writing, I’ve learned, is mostly about not having an idea and the blank whiteness becomes some absurd monster waiting to devour me.

“Mr. Harry, what’s wrong…help me with the gate, please.”

It’s Lori, poor child. I’ve been so absorbed in my own empty-headedness, I didn’t hear her calling. “Coming, Lori.”

A blank word document is either the start of an adventure or a self-assumed trip into purgatory with the blank whiteness screaming… ‘You can’t leave me…you cannot leave me like this!’

“Why didn’t you come, Mr. Harry? I was calling. You know I can’t manage the gate on my own, I was calling so hard.”

“I’m sorry, child. I don’t know what I was doing that I did not hear your call. Here, let me get this gate open. You’re bright and early this morning, the sun is hardly risen.”

Lori pushes as I pull. It is a beautiful morning, the sky is swept clean of cloud, blue down to the ocean.

“But you always hear me, Mr. Harry.”

As a young man, I turned my back on my children to do great things, at least that’s what I told myself, when of course the greatest thing would have been to love them, be their father first and hero second. I cannot turn the pages back; I cannot change what I really am. The truth will always clobber a man into the open at some time in his life. Even so, there comes a time when one must assume the mantle of responsibility.

“Will you forgive me, Lori? It won’t happen again.”

“I guess you were writing, Mr. Harry.”

Her eyes, sad, tell me her disappointment. That something in my life was more important than giving her the attention a child needs is a monument to my shame. Six weeks of writing words has produced nothing of literary substance. When such things happen, a writer is prone to lose confidence.

“Yes, I was writing, Lori. That’s no excuse, I hope you’ll find a way to forgive me. I’m going to make a nice cup of hot early morning tea. Would you like some orange juice?”

“Thank you, Mr. Harry. Do you have any toast?”

“Of course, child. Come on inside, we can talk in my study.”

Lori follows me. She sits in a chair by the window. “I like this view, Mr. Harry.”

Life moves, and it generally moves without a hint of interruption, like night changing into day, and we find a way to embrace each new challenge with love in our lives.

The merry-go-round of life goes on turning and every face seems just the same except the smiles on the faces of the children, each day a brand-new smile, created with love and joy and handed down without expectation. While I’ve been so busy thinking about writing, did I lose the ability to gift a smile?

I enter the kitchen to light a blue flame under the kettle, open the fridge and remove a carton of orange juice. I have committed myself to write. Writing is not a hardship. However, the story I’m going to write over the next weeks, maybe months, is not a work of fiction. It is not something I can ask anyone else to write.

When I return with tea, toast, and orange juice, Lori is staring at the blank whiteness on my computer screen.

“There’s no words, Mr. Harry.”

“They’ve been difficult to find, Lori. Here’s your orange juice. Would you like jam on your toast?”

“Thank you, Mr. Harry. Do you have Blackberry?”

“Indeed.”

“You lost your words, Mr. Harry?”

I smile and hand her a small plate, toast piled with blackberry jam.

To begin with, every page is blank until a smudge, a sentence, paragraph is set down upon it. Some pages stay blank after the most intricate, indelible story has been started. The starting of a new story is easy; it’s the ending that comes hard. Knowing when to draw conclusions, the point to let your characters stop leading you so that you can take command. But I always end up asking myself, when is the sum enough to provide a summing up?

“It’s not that I lost them, Lori. It’s more that I cannot find them.”

“That sounds very complicated, Mr. Harry,” she says, licking blackberry jam from the edge of her toast.

“I don’t mean it to sound that way, Lori.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “It must be hard to come up with a new idea every day.”

My deep concern is that an idea might never happen for me, and that is the most fearful thing I can imagine, for there is no one to fight, nothing to experience, nothing to me. I am the idea.

“But you can do it, Mr. Harry, because you’ve always done it. It’s just, well, I can see when you’re despairing and sad and I love you just the same and just as much as when your ideas come easily and you’re happy and fun. I don’t like it when you don’t hear me calling, Mr. Harry. It makes me sad.”

Last night, I had four thousand words down; hard bitten words that came not from inspiration, but from hard work, and some inner belief that I’m a writer, and just that the word alone implies professionalism. Being a writer does not afford me the luxury of sitting around waiting for inspiration to write words; it never had, it never will.

“I understand, Lori. I will not despair anymore. You’ve got some jam…” I point to the corner of my mouth.

“I best be going, Mr. Harry. You have a lot of work to do. Be happy, Mr. Harry. I miss you when you’re sad.”

Lori slips from the chair, her eyes wide and shining.

“Come by again soon, Lori. I love you. Thank you.”

The purpose for writing, if one should reveal itself, might only be to the benefit of those I love most. Before I can begin, I must write the first paragraph. Perhaps it is the paragraph that should end the book, but whatever, I must commit my heart to the page.

Now.

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