You know the most important thing to do if you want to be a writer? Practice. And yet, you get home from a long day at work and you know the last thing you want to do is sit down and write. Me too. Until I signed up for Writing 101 – WordPress will sent a prompt every weekday for the month of April.
Day Nine: “A man and a woman walk through the park together, holding hands. They pass an old woman sitting on a bench. The old woman is knitting a small, red sweater. The man begins to cry. Write this scene.”
It wasn’t so much the coarse, red wool that the woman was methodically moving between her fingers and the long, wooden knitting needles that got to him, but her fingers themselves.
He and his wife were walking through the park, when the nostalgia over took him. The memory of his grandmother’s gnarled fingers wrapped around a wooden spoon with the smells of garlic, onion and tomato surround her. Her fingers pulling the covers up to his chin as she tucked him into bed as a child. Her fingers operating the knitting needles into the click-clicking sound as she created him a bright blue scarf.
Her fingers plucking at his sleeve as he sat on the edge of her hospital bed. The pair of them, sitting in silence watching the liquid-chemical concoction running down from the IV stand in its sterilized rubber tubing; the chemotherapy, which was supposed to cure her.
It’s didn’t work. She fought for eight months, but in the end the cancer won. And those finger would never again grasp his hand with pride as she looked at her grandson’s accomplishments.
The man stopped in front of the old woman on the bench. His wife placed her other hand over his and gently tugged him along.
He followed her across the park towards the memorial garden in the distance to say a final goodbye.
beautiful