Montclair Write Group Sampler 2016

  When it came to the end of your life, though, Gerry was spot-on. He regularly checked in on you. He nudged Dave and me when we needed to get there. Once you had an anxiety attack due to a bad reaction to medication. He sat with you until I arrived. He helped us understand how you might be experiencing things in your last hours when the medications proved inadequate or produced your anxious reactions, so scary to watch.

  After you died, he relaxed a little, slipping back into “Gerry Time.” He agreed to take on the daunting task of being the first to speak at your service. Family, friends, neighbors and your colleagues filled the 50 rented chairs we set up in the living room facing towards the front entrance hall of your emptied home. Gerry’s current wife and his daughter from his previous marriage were there. It was time for the service to begin. The guests waited expectantly.

  “Where is Gerry?” I asked his wife.

  She shrugged. “He said he was on his way,” she said, remaining noncommittal. His daughter’s eyes widened.

  We were all used to it.

  This time, though, Steve outdid Gerry. My husband, Steve. You used to joke with him about your death before it became too close to be funny.

  You said, “Steve, I want you to build me a coffin when I die. Nothing fancy, a simple pine box will suffice.”

  Steve said, “No problem, Aaron. I will.”

  When Gerry breathlessly arrived at the memorial service, Steve was still in the shower. Steve had worked until the last minute preparing for the service: picking up refreshments, cleaning, setting up flowers in your wheeled cart outside the front door, stowing our noisy dogs in the master bedroom—your bedroom—at the back of the house.

  Philip, always prompt, insisted, “We need to begin! People are waiting.”

  Feeling pressured, I rushed down the hall to the master bathroom.

  Poking my head into the steamy room, I said, “Steve, can you shower faster?"

  “No,” he said.

  “Everyone is waiting.” I pleaded.

  “It’s OK,” Steve said. “It won’t hurt them to wait a little.”

  While Philip stressed, I blamed myself. I didn’t help you die peacefully. Now was I going to screw up your service? It seemed I couldn’t please anyone, even where death was concerned. The tension reached a crescendo.

  Then Steve emerged, transformed from his sweaty work clothes into his dress suit, and everything fell into place. Like a small misfit band that appeared out of nowhere and marched into a country field in a Fellini film, the service started. Philip introduced himself and thanked everyone for coming. Then he introduced Gerry.

  Gerry’s tender way of speaking about you cast a spell over the guests. Like a child hearing a favorite bedtime story, I relaxed and allowed myself to take in his words.

  There were several comic moments as befits any service you and I might be involved in. First Max, my 70-lb labradoodle, broke out of the master bedroom and tried to join the ceremony. As Gerry spoke, Max’s big mole-colored nose poked out from under the brown animal-print bed sheet that covered a table set up off to the side in the front entrance hall. There was a slight commotion as Steve discreetly, gently but firmly pulled Max backwards under the table, the mole nose disappearing beneath the sheet, and returned him to the bedroom. A few people up front witnessed this and laughed. The laughter was soothing. I imagined you laughing, too.

  Then, when Gerry got to the part in his speech about hanging out with Mom when she fed the raccoons that lived in the attic, I quickly called out, “Not in this house!”

  You see, Dad, the people who bought your house were neighbors. It had been their fairytale dream to someday live there with their four kids and aging parents. We negotiated the deal over the back fence. They generously let us delay the closing so we could have the service at your home. It was one of the last things we did there before the house was no longer yours and one of the few remaining links I had to you in town vanished.

  The buyers attended the service. Not for one minute did I want them to think raccoons had been living inside the walls of the house. That was in the house­ where you lived before, the one at the other end of town. Again there was laughter.

  Your business partner, Allan, spoke fondly of you: your astuteness as an attorney, your brilliance as a scholar; your sense of humor, modesty and kindness. He mentioned your stories about being stationed at Moody Field, Georgia, during World War II. I never heard those stories from you, Dad. Now I never will. I’m a little peeved about that. You see, I want to hold onto each kernel of information about you, not just the details, but the way you would have told it, in your elegantly subtle funny way, where the humor would sneak up on me.

  I found the Moody Field pictures, Dad. You labeled some on the back, like the one from the New Year’s Eve party on which you noted, “Where I discovered Cointreau.” You look young and trashed. And you’re smiling!

  Philip read a poem he wrote called “The Room.” It was about our dining room, the place where over the years so many folks, young and old, stopped by to visit, eat, smoke and drink bourbon or coffee and discuss politics or philosophy or watch television. I remember the gigantic conference table. It commanded the room. It was always covered with books and newspapers and tchotchkes. Placemats floated in between the piles of papers and there were coasters.

  Mom was adamant about coasters, although sometimes she used ice cream container lids. She was always so thrifty. If it was a dinner affair, the papers would be temporarily relegated to the sidelines and the placemats briefly took priority.

  And cats. Cats, cats, cats. Over the years a series of feline dynasties nestled on top of the papers or dashed across the table in the middle of a meal.

  We sold that conference table at auction.

  I spoke about how you and Mom met. But that’s another story. I got through it without breaking down. I think adrenaline carried me.

  And Jon spoke, Jon who lived with you for years when he was in college in the ‘70s after I’d left home. I think he even moved from your old house to your last house. He said you changed his life.

  He sang, too.

  He said, “First I’m going to sing ‘Urge For Going’ by Joni Mitchell.”

  Jon did that for me, Dad. I chose it for Mom.

  He added, “I want to apologize to Joni and Tom Rush in advance for my rendition of this song. It’s not my genre.” He also noted that he had customized the song for you and Mom.

  Then he sang a classical piece in his bursting baritone voice. You’d probably never admit it, but I think you might have liked it.

  Afterwards, Philip asked guests to speak. They did, telling stories about you and Mom, little time capsules that burst open and released the warm light of memories.

  But suddenly a croaking voice of despair rose up from the back of the room. Yes, Dad, it was Dave, your son, my brother. He could barely speak. Choking on his words, he said how much he missed you. We were all with him, struck by the utter loss. Stymied about where to go from there.

  And then, as if coming to our rescue, Harry Brown stood up. He was dressed in formal trappings, sporting a fine Western hat.

  “I’m Harry Brown, the trash man,” he began. “Me and Mr. Fine was friends. When I found stuff I knew he’d like I left it in the back alley in town. When anyone said, ‘Why you leaving that thing there?’ “I said, ‘Why that for Mr. Fine!’ ”

  Everyone laughed. Grief and humor came together in your honor.

  I wonder, Dad. Did Harry Brown score that almost life-sized Hannah Montana cardboard cutout for you? Steve urged me to toss it in a dumpster. But I knew better. I stationed Hannah at the front door during the yard sale we had at your house. I got $10 for Hannah.

  After the service, a tall man shook my hand. “I’m the mayor,” he said. “Your father was quite an original character. He will be missed.”

  I was touched that he came to the service, not as a politician, but as a man.

  A service that the trash man and the mayor
attended. That says it all, Dad!

  Manage Your Time Terribly and Get More Done

  By Brooke Allen

  (C) 2014 Originally published by QZ.com: https://qz.com/172718/if-you-manage-your-time-terribly-youll-get-more-done/

  I’m terrible at doing what people tell me I should do, but I still get things done. I’m not sure why this is, but here’s my best guess:

  I manage my desires more than my time.

  In high school, I never seemed to find time to do homework that I didn’t want to do. It got so bad that in 1969, my high school calculus teacher, Mr. Foster, told me that if I did a single homework assignment, he’d base my grade on my tests—meaning I’d get an A. But if I continued to do absolutely no homework, he’d base my grade on the homework and give me an F.

  I decided that if I was going to do only one homework assignment, I would make it suitable for hanging in a gallery. So I spent a big chunk of my savings to buy a mathematical font attachment for my parents’ IBM Selectric, and I typeset my answers. In my dad’s sculpture studio, I was able to use fixative to emboss my answer sheet and mount it on a wooden backing that I carved by hand. Mr. Foster was so thrilled that he wore my homework around his neck the entire day. When my other teachers saw it, each demanded one homework assignment from me, too. Damn!

  To this day, before doing something I don’t want to do, I try to transform it into something I’m eager to do. For more on this, I refer you to that great 20th century philosopher, Mary Poppins, who said, “In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and—SNAP—the job’s a game!”

  Don’t do hard, boring useless things.

  My friend Ken Caldeira runs a very productive lab at Stanford. He once told me that many academics get bogged down with really hard esoteric problems that nobody cares about, not even the researchers themselves. He told me he only wants projects that are fun and easy and have significant impact.

  If someone is paying you to do hard, boring useless things, you need to have a conversation with your boss—or find a new job. If you are a student going into debt to have people give you hard, boring useless assignments, perhaps you’d be better off dropping out.

  You don’t always need to finish what you start.

  Recently a successful businessman told me that he had been diagnosed with ADHD in mid-life. This helped explain why his personal and business life was such a mess. He was always starting things but he never finished them, and that would drive everyone around him nuts.

  He told me his therapy began with a year of Ritalin, then a year of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT), and finally his business itself became his therapy. He explained that the drug gave him a break from himself and CBT helped him reframe his circumstances. Finally he realized that most people are great at finishing what they start but have a hard time getting started. So now he starts all manner of things and then hands off the projects to other people to finish. They’re happy, he’s happy, and his business has really taken off.

  As his experience exemplifies, the biggest problem with ADHD isn’t necessarily that you have it, but that everyone around you hates that you have it. Just think how much better the world would be if schoolmarms would stop guilt-tripping rambunctious students and just let them run things as soon as they’re ready.

  Clear thinking saves time.

  I once asked Dennis Shasha of NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences how he accomplishes so much and still has time to help so many people. He said, “I focus on what I do best—usually thinking through a problem, writing something clearly, or programming in K.” I, too, try to think clearly, and for problems that can’t be expressed with words I use APL, a programming language that’s a forerunner to K.

  Making time for people saves you time.

  The more you do for others, the more they will do for you. This saves you time. Kind of obvious, if you think about it.

  Don’t lie.

  Living in a fictional world is exhausting and a huge time sink. Don’t do it.

  Manage people.

  If you want your life to be about being of use to other people, only a very limited amount of time management makes sense. That’s because other people have needs and present opportunities on their own schedules, not yours. You need to get good at managing these people and the time will take care of itself.

  Learn how to say No. This will allow you to say Yes much more often. I once asked a friend to do a favor for me that would have taken him about six hours. In his e-mail turning me down, he said that while many people might say, “I don’t have time,” that would be false. He has the same amount of time as everyone else, he added, and although it would be possible for him to do what I asked, he chose to spend his time differently from the way I had hoped.

  You may not be used to such forthrightness, but if you treat people honestly you’ll find that it strengthens your relationships rather than hurting them.

  But don’t manage other people’s time.

  When I asked my friend to do something for me, I was trying to tell him what to do with his time. When he said No, he wasn’t telling me what to do with my time—only what he did not want to do with his.

  And if you’re a grownup, stop torturing little ones. My parents let me have a childhood in an age-appropriate way. They forced me to do certain chores, but they didn’t make me do much of anything just “for your own good.” Summer, for example, was for getting into trouble, getting out of trouble and not telling my parents about it. This was fine with them as long as the lawn got mowed.

  The American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM) was first released in 1952, the year I was born. The first edition was 130 pages and included 106 mental disorders. By 1994, when my sons were children, the manual had grown to 886 pages and itemized 297 disorders, some of which I see as fancy names for Mark Twain’s definition of a boy: “Noise with dirt on it.”

  A new DSM has just come out, and I suspect that Time-Obsessed Parenting Syndrome is not in it. And it won’t be until someone comes up with an expensive drug “cure.” There is a simple cure, though: Just stop.

  To-do lists are best if you forget where you put them.

  The great thing about writing something down is that your subconscious brain will stop obsessing about it, and you can then relax and go to sleep or the movies or whatever. The bad thing about a to-do list is that you might feel compelled to do everything on it. Luckily, I’m great at making lists and then losing them. Yes, a to-do list will help me get to sleep tonight; tomorrow, when I can’t find the list, I will only do what I remember to do, which will turn out to be the important things.

  Also, keep “did” lists. If you track everything you’ve already done, the little bit still left to do seems far less daunting.

  Practice structured procrastination.

  I am writing this story because I should be getting ready for a presentation. But I was sick of thinking about it, so I checked my inbox for something fun to do and found a request from an editor. That’s how my life works; nearly everything I’ve accomplished has been done because I was trying to avoid doing something else.

  John Perry, a professor emeritus at Stanford, calls this “structured procrastination,” and he has a website (www.structuredprocrastination.com) and a book about it. You should read it someday unless you’re behind on a deadline—in which case you should read it right now.

  What is time good for anyway?

  What are we talking about anyway? We are talking about your time on earth, so before you decide how to manage your time, you need to know what you want your life to be about. You can’t have it all and, therefore, if you concentrate on one thing, something else will have to give.

  For example, if your life is about checking off chores on a to-do list, you will probably have less time to explore unanticipated opportunities. If you’re more of an explorer, you’re likely to leave undone the things you were working
on when an opportunity for adventure arises.

  PATIENCE

  By Hank Quense

  © 2008

  Writing fiction is an activity that demands an extraordinary amount of patience. In fact, I'm convinced that the legendary "patience of a saint" is trivial compared to the patience required to be writer. Patience, unfortunately, is an attribute I am not naturally blessed with. As a consequence, my development as a fiction writer has been accompanied by a parallel development in the amount of patience I exhibit. This patience is required in three separate, but related, areas: in designing a story, in revising the story and in waiting for a reply from a market.

  Designing a story:

  This first area was the toughest to acquire patience in. When I first started writing, I worked the way many, if not most, inexperienced writers work; as soon as a story idea popped into my head, I started writing the first scene in the new story. Inevitably, the story thudded to a stop after two or three scenes. While I grappled to try to continue the story, I'd get another idea and go off on a different, but no less futile, attempt to write a story. This process led to an alarming inventory of half-written, underdeveloped stories. Over time, I realized that my process needed changing.

  In developing a new process, I came to the shocking realization that writing the first draft of a story is the last thing a writer does on the project and that this writing constitutes only a small part of the work involved, on the order of ten to fifteen percent. My new process involves a great deal of patience since it requires that I now first develop the characters, a story ending and a believable path from the story beginning to the end. Only then can I start the fun stuff: writing a first draft. In short, the new process requires that I have the patience to completely design a story prior to writing the first draft. By actual observation, this sometimes can take three years to go from the first idea (always about a character) until I get a satisfactory story design for that character to romp around in. During this time, I usually have a number of variations that are found wanting and end up discarded.

  Story revisions: