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

Write About a Subculture You Belong To

~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 was the girl living in her Subaru, driving interstate with nomads named “Sunshine” and “Pony.” Eager to camp with friendly freaks, eat communal stew out of a coffee mug at the drum circle.

But fifteen years later, at the three-day music festival on a remote Maui coastline, I’m on the fringe of the fringe-dwellers, agitated in a sea of perma-grins.

Young women skip barefoot over grass, as if gliding on fairy dust, half-dressed and shining. They seem levitated in rapture, humming to themselves and picking flowers for their hair. I’m at my tent, slathering hand sanitizer past my forearms, trying to air out my molding sleeping bag.

Everything’s skewed, even my picturesque view of breaching Humpbacks. They’re blocked by the figures in front of me, a couple contorted in some sort of dual yoga pose, her legs wrapped around his neck, looking as if she’s on the verge of either transcendence or orgasm.

In the converted gymnasium, pods curl around communal pillows in cuddle puddles of family love. Home-brewed Kombucha tea is for sale next to racks of hip outfits, branded perfectly for next year’s Burning Man. A woman tries on a pair of yoga-pants-turned-naughty, sporting a transparent backside, while her friend in fairy wings nods in approval.

Conversations float on the smoke of burning sage and nag champa incense.

“…so the sound harmonics generated from the crystal bowls infuse into the water, changing its molecular structure, clearing negative energy…it’s like the water gets healed…and when you drink it…well, you’ll see. It’s amazing…”

I’m a misfit among misfits, but I’m stuck here (quite literally- they’ve blocked in my rental car with a dented Vanagon, essentially, kissing my bumper). Though I’ve worked to overcome my resistance, I’ve determined that these blissful love bunnies are simply not my people. Yet, they continually insist that they are. The weekend’s mantra is hauntingly chanted, “We are one,” and even though I can wrap my head around the ideal, does that really include the dreadlocked kitchen volunteer who stands scratching his scalp with one hand, while scrambling our breakfast tofu with the other?

2016-04-02_we are one

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