To Thine Own Self Be True

Write the next true sentence.

Hadley’s reading Hamlet while I make pumpkin scones. I made a pumpkin pie for Thanksgiving but I had so much pumpkin left over, and it doesn’t freeze all that well, so scones it is. I also made pumpkin donut holes.

I suggested Hadley watch the movie version before she read the play, but Hadley thinks this is cheating. I say it’s cheating herself from allowing the story to happen to her, but Hadley’s faith lies in the linear, the rational, the orderliness of things. If this, then this. You follow these steps and here is the outcome - reward or consequence. If her teacher says not to watch the story before reading it, then she will not.

We had a lamp years ago that both Hadley and Harper decided was the equivalent of the Holy Grail I guess and both needed to grab it when they began to walk. “No, no,” we’d tell Hadley. “It could fall and you will get hurt.” That was sufficient for her.

Harper, on the other hand, who was given these same exact information, would immediately start crying but continue to move toward the light we were warning her not to touch. “No, no, no! Don’t touch, don’t touch, don’t touch!” she’d sob as she proceeded to do just that. Talk about a discrepancy between the head and the heart.

Sarah McLuahglin’s “Winter’s Night” plays while Hadley reads and I bake. It’s the song Jesse and I played during our wedding reception. She tells us a lamp is burning low while snow is falling and I remember the lamp the girls stumbled toward and I think of the mountains of tulle I wore almost 26 years ago, the shiny new ring on my finger, the snow that’s now falling outside my window.

Sarah’s reading between the lines of letters from the one she loves. She’s trying to figure out more than what this person declares. Why can’t she just ask? Why can’t she just tell him how she is feeling? Why couldn’t Ophelia talk to Hamlet the way she needed to? Why didn’t he understand?

While the scones bake, I read through essay packets my Heart to Page writers sent me. One writer has the beginning of an important and good commentary on Hemingway - his writing and his lifestyle - and I think back to earlier this week to a Vanity Fair article I read about what a slime Cormac McCarthy turned out to be.

“Will I ever write one true sentence?” the writer asks. And it’s not just one true sentence, it’s one true sentence while the baby is napping or refusing to nap. It’s one true sentence after work and in between soccer or swim or band practice, and what’s for dinner anyway? It’s one true sentence after the call that brings us into the ER because she broke her elbow. One true sentence begun and then stopped because she needs help with college essays and if there was ever something I can help with, couldn’t it be this?

“Yes,” I write in the margins of this writer’s work. “You will write one true sentence. The problem is once you write one, you’ll want to write another one.”

If you give a woman a margin….

I made a little reading and writing booklet for my Heart to Page writers for the month of December. I made it so they could find a way to write the next sentence. There are thirty-one creative writing activities that they can use as prompts, revision techniques, or for reflection. Paid subscribers of Tell Me A Story That’s True can download it for free. Thank you for supporting me as I work to write my next true sentence.

If you would like to purchase one for your own writing practice, or if you know of a writer who wants to write another true sentence, and then the next one, you can find it here.

The snow is falling hard now, I love it so. Today I learned that one 29 oz. can of pumpkin makes a pumpkin pie, eight pumpkin scones, two dozen pumpkin donut holes, and one licky pad for Corby with about three tablespoons leftover. I mix what’s left with cinammon and sugar and spread it on the scones once they’ve cooled. Today, I’ve wasted nothing. At least, when it comes to the canned pumpkin.

“Mama, have you read Hamlet?” Hadley asks.

“Yes,” and immediately Ethan Hawke pops in my head. I have no Hamlet of my own.

“They all die,” Hadley says from the couch, all wrapped up in a yellow blanket with Corby lying next to her.

“Yes,” I say. “But I feel the worst for Ophelia.”

“Yes,” Hadley says closing the book and giving Corby a little pat on the head. “She didn’t do anything wrong.”