laundry
by Rene Foran
She tended to worry a lot for a kid.
She'd lie awake at night afraid to listen to the sound of her own heart beating, worried that it might stop.
She'd once read the Time-Life Encyclopedia on The Universe and became obsessed with the woman from Alabama who was singled out, by a rock from a far place, in her sleep.
So, she'd lie awake in her own bed looking up at that place in the ceiling where her meteorite would surely fall through, and beg, " Oh crap, not tonight I have art class tomorrrow."
As she got older, every book, movie or newspaper article told the story of someone, roughly her own age, dying young.
Seemingly healthy young adults wiped out before the age of twenty by leukemia, brain tumours and third rails.
And so she became convinced that every stomach pain, headache or leg cramp was the onset of her own unhappy ending.
She avoided trains like the plague.
She hated that she worried so much, yet found herself drawn to the very things that caused her to worry.
Freak accidents, natural disasters, incurable illnessess…
chain letters…
She would often think as she read that slogan on the dry cleaning building off of Speedwell Avenue, “Deposit Your Worries Here”
Oh, if only there were such a place!
And how busy it would be!
She imagined overstuffed sacks of worries, pinned up with huge diaper pins, thrown into big canvas carts and wheeled off by conveyor belt to some dark, mysterious tunnel where they'd be cleaned, steamed, starched and pressed into strength and hope.
Such a place would be magnificent, she dreamed…
completely forgetting for a moment what it was that she was worried about.
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Ramshackle Review
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oh I so love this, Rene! Great use of structure and I like how you've woven the specifics in with the more generalized anxieties. Really like the use of the dry cleaning slogan to pull it all together. *
"She imagined overstuffed sacks of worries, pinned up with huge diaper pins."
Love the magic in this. If only there were such a place... *
Great, great! Definitely like the structure for this piece, and of course the mixture of real and imagined. I love too that you put chain letters in here, ha! I forgot about those things…
Dammit, Kim, that's the paragraph that I was going to quote - and I even had the word magic on my lips!
Well, what Julie and Kim and Kari said. There really is magic in this, woven through, even the unexpected (to me) end.
Wonderful.
Nice work, Rene. The form works well for this.
Magic. I'm not afraid of repeating what's already been said. In that vein, let me also say I loved and did not expect the ending.
striking piece, striking also for its psychological accuracy and pitch. i especially like the "woman from alabama".
Try worry time writing. Fear exposure. Great subject to write about.
Oh this is very beautiful. I was this kid.
I love this:
"She'd once read the Time-Life Encyclopedia on The Universe and became obsessed with the woman from Alabama who was singled out, by a rock from a far place, in her sleep.
So, she'd lie awake in her own bed looking up at that place in the ceiling where her meteorite would surely fall through, and beg,” Oh crap, not tonight I have art class tomorrrow.”
Okay, well that is half the story, but I love it all. Lovely, strange, moving stuff. Star.
Wow! Thank you all for so much love! I am really bowled over by all of this. And this piece was based on actual events. As a kid I really did "white knuckle" through life. I have learned to loosen up but food recalls still un-nerve me. I am extremely wary around ground beef :)
"She imagined overstuffed sacks of worries, pinned up with huge diaper pins, thrown into big canvas carts and wheeled off by conveyor belt to some dark, mysterious tunnel where they'd be cleaned, steamed, starched and pressed into strength and hope."
Great!
This piece is magical, a place one wants to return to again and again.