"I do miss words." I shrugged despite knowing it wasn't a video call.
"So why aren't you writing now?"
I articulated a list of responsibilities neither of us believed, and we moved on with the conversation. But words looking for an audience kept whispering in my mind.
Words are always in my mind. Always. I can think of only one moment in my entire 33 years when my mind did not have words in it, and it was fleeting and monumental. Spiritual. Even eleven years later, I am still amazed at how simultaneously my mind can feel full and yet empty of words.
Weeks passed. I talked with two friends on different occasions about their blogs, talked about the importance of drafting and then brought drafting up again with a student lamenting about timed writing assignments. I listened to another friend sing his original songs, heard his own words tell us of his heart. I picked up journaling again, started a list of reasons to praise God, considered a second trip through #100happydays, searching for a way to record my words.
I wrote more poetry than usual, thinking people might be willing to read about my mundane experiences as long as they were in verse. And if they were paired with a picture -- it had to have a picture -- then people would read it. I typed up my travel journal, a vulnerable one for myself and an abridged version that I shared with the rest of my mission team. I wrote a sermon on my adventure, and I collaborated with my friend on the pre-writing stage of a different sermon we gave.
And then the words pushed to the front of the crowd, demanding an audience. I stood in my kitchen, fork in one hand and bowl of scrambled eggs in the other, holding two separate verbal thought processes simultaneously --
Every time I make Mom's noodles, I start off thinking I've forgotten how to do this. It'll come back as soon as my hands start moving.
This will have to be a longer poem than usual. I have to say the part about the muscle memory taking over -- kicking in -- no, taking over. This poem will make T. S. Elliot look concise.
Use my hands to mix the eggs and flour, add more flour to the sticky ball in the bowl, move this slightly less sticky and much larger ball to the rolling pad, and --
Now it smells like Grandma's house. That will have to be a line all its own. What if I just make this one prose? There's too much they need to know that would just be left out in a poem.
The flour is flying everywhere -- it's on my shirt just above my waist, just like Grandma's all those years ago...Mom was wise to insist on a shorter counter in her kitchen.
Some people read essays. I think they publish books of them. Blogs are probably taking the place of essays. But who would read this? It's just me making noodles. "So why aren't you writing now?"
I know why I left words for a while. Because when the words are painful, or confusing, or lonely, or frustrating, or even just unsure, I don't want to leave evidence of it. For heaven's sake, what if my grandkids find it some day? What an awful legacy...
...of truth. Of learning. Of growth. Of reflection. Of the journey.
My fist immediately found the pressure the noodle cutter needed, but I frowned at how the noodles stuck in it. I shook my head. I sprinkled in more flour and, like the women before me, blamed the humidity. I sifted the noodles between my fingers, breaking them apart, letting them fall back into the bowl where the ball of dough had started. Again I picked them up, sprinkled them into the boiling broth, mine from an aluminum can instead of the re-purposed plastic butter bowls from the deep freeze.
Maybe I just don't know the audience yet. Maybe it's not about finding the audience at all.
***
