Feb 2023 - Session with Cathy.

 Postcard Piece - take a recent, fresh memory and write it on a postcard. Micro-fiction.

This morning, driving Aoife to work, we creep along the traffic packed roads. We turn a corner into a quiet, narrow street and both exclaim "Oh!" at the sight of frothy blossoms bubbling pink and white on either side. We're a Dublin version of the Japanese blossom admirers who sit on picnic blankets under laden trees and collectively sigh "Aaaah!" with each petal flurry. We non-Geisha girls smile and comment on the loveliness, the delicate colour splash that surprises us as we go round the bend, but in a good way.

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Time piece. Taking an hour in the day and write.

6 pm late autumn sun gold glow, leaf crunching the way home.

6 pm winter dark lit by fire flame, hearty book, hunkering down.

6 pm spring hint of evening stretch, bird concerto, daffodil nodding to good days ahead.

6 pm summer sitting au dehors, sun warm skin, chilled wine, sea call.

Same time, different time.

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Prompt : Confessions. [ From a zoom session during Covid lockdown.]

When I was young,

With my grubby index finger and thumb,

I swiped icing off the side of the cake

intended for visitors

and greedily sucked them clean

and swore the cat 

had done the damage.

I have pretended not to hear a doorbell ring

so that I could stay in my book world.

Having given a long lecture on not doing this

I squished an insect under my sturdy shoe.

I have reached into an open cereal box

with my bare hand

and smuggled out

a fistful of crunching satisfaction.

I pretended not to be me

when someone I didn't want to speak to

unexpectedly answered my phone call.

I've used a disposable face mask twice.

I've used a reusable face mask twice before washing it.

I have pretended to be hard at work

on research

and emails

when I'm playing Solitaire.

I made myself laugh

each time

at the right time

when hearing my dad retelling

the same anecdote

countless times.

And I wish I could do that again.

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Prompt : What lies beneath? [Quickwrite - 5 mins 10 sec.]

When I was a child we went to Mayo for our holidays where my bed companion was my granny. During the day I was her assistant as she baked bread, fed the hens, collected eggs, fetched the milk, washed the plates. Sometimes I was allowed behind the counter of the post office in the porch and could use the worn wooden postal stamp with the ink pad, its surface an uneven mountain range from years of pounding, to leave my mark on a postage stamp. I was also one of the respondents to the rosary she gave out each evening as we knelt around the range, except for my uncle who knelt at the chair by the door ready for a quick getaway.

And then bedtime. I had to get in first, next to the wall, and face it, while my granny undressed. A soundscape of sighs, grunts, clicks, clacks, unhooking, unbuttoning, popping, rustling, crinkling, heavy breaths, unclipping filled the room until, at last, the mattress waved with her presence and we had ANOTHER rosary, she and I, while, on the chair next to the bed, all I could see was her dress laid over a soft mound of mystery. What lies beneath?

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Prompt : Sweets. [Quickwrite: 5 mins]

Sweets have been my downfall all through my life. As a child I lost my front top teeth and gained multiple metal fillings all on account of my sweet habit.

A moment on the tongue, a lifetime on the gum. And hips. And stomach.

Why is it that I can always manage to be in the mood for sweets but have to be in the mood for, say, broccoli?

In my childhood I loved fruit pastilles, the hard, sugary texture to crunch through to find the firm jelly that tasted of fruit. I do realise that it was probably more a chemically induced illusion rather than one of my five-a-day.

And wine gums, the hint of sophistication with the word wine, the rubbery, ridged surface, the jaw ache from chewing.

And as for parma violets - tiny, crunchy dies of aromatic joy.

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