Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Write About the Most Interesting Person You’ve Ever Met

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

He was why I’d come. And now, he is here in a wheelchair before me.

I squat down to be eye level, taking his soft, outreached hand between my palms. His joyful eyes and his broad smile beam from behind his white beard, seeming to welcome, not only me, but everything. His entire countenance emits ‘yes’ to each particle in existence.

I mention having seen the movie about his life, “Fierce Grace,” and when I reference a deeply moving scene, I find myself starting to cry unexpectedly. Ram Dass tears right along with me, the water rolling from his eyes, a short sob catching in his chest. Yet, these movements seem inconsequential to him, as typical and natural as a breath or a heart beat.

courtesy of Zeitgeist Films
courtesy of Zeitgeist Films

After our short, yet deep, exchange, I feel a profound tranquility that I can only attribute to having been in the presence of a highly awakened human being. Steeping in that peacefulness, I find a place in the auditorium where Ram Dass will offer his talk.

Having suffered a stroke years before (an incident he refers to as having “been stroked”), Ram Dass’s speech is slow and deliberate. His face often moves, as though about to utter a word, but then stalls, as he breathes, pausing longer, just waiting. Never afraid, a roomful of hundreds of people hushed to hear his next utterance, and he waits. Sometimes there are minutes between words.

It’s as though his heart’s been cracked open, revealing to him some secret beauty. As if he now sees something so precious, it is nearly beyond words.

I want to know what he knows. See what he sees. I want to tell him about the dream I had of the two of us riding tandem on a bicycle, while he showed me all the signposts along the way.

So I find him after the talk, sitting in the passenger seat of a minivan. As I appear at his open car door, he looks at me without surprise or judgment. He knows what I have come for, even if I do not. Before I can speak, he’s pulling me close with his one moving arm, enveloping me in a full hug.

I feel the depth of his heart. Become acutely aware of my own. Am surprised when I hit a wall. Only able to let the Love in, so far.

courtesy of www.found-my-light.com
courtesy of http://www.found-my-light.com
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer

Write About a Time You Broke the Rules

~the following is part of “Prompted Prose,” a series of posts from the prompts I’m working with during my Spring 2016 online writing course

I can only guess what the EMT must be thinking as he tries to wheel the gurney through our flimsy screen room, the one we attached to our school bus, up on blocks, where we live. One scan of the scene and he sees the abandoned kiddy pool by the bed, the water puddles on the floor, the melted candles, barely flickering on the sills.

This looks like a complete fiasco. I am exposed in shame. Embarrassed, but cannot waste energy on explaining. I imagine how I must appear. Big, vulnerable, pregnant, and not doing it right. He has come to my rescue, in this home birth gone wrong.

The man in uniform is swift, yet calm, loading me on to the gurney. I want to say so much, but this labor has reduced me to a surrender deeper than any let-go I have ever fallen to. I am silent, my damp body bulging out from beneath the twisted sarong, with which I’ve tried to wrap myself.

My midwife had pulled her pants off hours ago, as she helped me through contractions, kneeling by the warm pool where I labored. When the sirens approached, she stepped into her jeans, gathered her things, and readied to face a hospital, bright lights, and questions. A rescue from an ambulance was not what she had wanted. I had failed her, just as I was failing my baby.

Humbled on the gurney, I wheel past the remains of a wrinkled, puddled room, the morning sun rising to reveal the night’s pained attempts, and my utter inability.

I’d read the pregnancy books, taken the expensive supplements. Gone to the pre-natal yoga and birthing classes. I’d envisioned the most loving welcome into the world for my son. Candlelight and a warm-water delivery, with a seasoned mid-wife, in the comfort of my own (albeit alternative) home. Organic cotton diapers were ready, and three months of maternity leave lined up. This debacle had started with a plan. Really.

At the time, in Hawaii, birthing at home was technically illegal. As for technicalities, living in a school bus probably was, too. I’d broken the rules, but this wasn’t a mere, fineable infraction. It was a potentially lethal mishap, shaming me with every contraction the ambulance driver asked me to ignore.

“Wait until we get to the hospital.”

2016-04-04_ambulance

 

FOOTNOTE:  I will say that my healthy son was born (no C-section), not long after my arrival to the hospital. Though I had hoped for soft candles, and only my partner and midwife, circumstances went differently. Jeb came into the world with plenty of fanfare. Bells and whistles, bright lights, and at least ten people looking on. He’s a thriving 12 year old now…

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 4 Comments

Write About a Place

Maybe it’s foolish (it is April 1st). But I’ll be foolhardy. Maybe it’s cheating. But I’m the one making the rules here, anyway.

After completing the first week of my online writing course, I’ve found myself both inspired and challenged with my daily assignments of 300 words in response to a prompt provided by our instructor. I’m not used to reigning in my topic, and I’ve grown accustomed to writing as many, or as little, words as I like.

What’s arisen from the framework of these assignments has been curious to me. Enough so, that I feel I might as well share the work, here on the Archives. If the premise of For the Archives is to chronicle the everyday, then these pieces are reflective of what I’ve been crafting these past days.

Below is prose in response to the prompt to write about a place.

I stepped off the ferry, with a fresh scar, one ovary, and a backpack. I was twenty-three years old, and seeking healing, in my lace up boots and floor-length, velvet skirt.

I arrived in winter to an island that was just a speck in a smattering of islands in British Columbia’s Georgia Strait. It was the sleepy season. Days were cold and misty in the quiet village, slowing to the simmer of borscht soup.

The Raven’s Nest coffee shop was warm with locals in knee-high gumboots, huddling in worn chairs, and swapping stories over steaming mugs. Next door, the post office was just large enough to fit a counter and a shelf of recycled magazines, while the postmistress listened to Blues in the back.

 Morningside road led away from the village, tracing the edge of an ocean that lapped lake-like, no waves. The sea, so clear and still, reflected bright purple starfish sucking to rocks on the bottom.

Further up the lane, black crows squawked atop thick tree branches in filtered sunlight. Shingled cottages with smoking chimneys leaned in to old growth Cedar trunks. In the air, was the warm scent of burning wood. In the earth, the rich loam of humus releasing beneath my boots. Smoke and salt air. Moss and mushrooms.

If a fairyland existed, this was it. And as if to prove the point, a waterfall poured forth from under Morningside road, spilling into the ocean in storybook perfection. White swans, gathered at the gush in graceful groups, floating in the blue-gray sea.

I spent a winter walking that curative path, gazing long into the water beside me. On a lucky day, I may have seen the shining obsidian of an Orca’s tail, slicing straight up through the surface. Maybe even hear the bellow of whale breath, exhaling a puff into the cold air. Ancient and humongous. Humbling.

courtesy of David Stanley
courtesy of David Stanley