( continues...) organizer? I didn’t know.
I stood there, paralyzed by indecision and by the enormity of the new direction my life had taken. I couldn’t just walk out back the door and ignore it. So I took a deep breath, pushed the opener and let the light and air in. I surveyed what was laid out before me. And I started digging.
There’s still a lot in the garage. I suspect, like most families, there will always be something that needs organizing in there. But I’ve hauled away junk, cleared some space and started arranging things. My husband’s ex looked through the garage and took a few things with her. They’re hers, after all.
But there’s a potting bench where I work on growing beautiful plants. I’ve gone through some boxes and kept what’s useful. I bring items to my husband that are part of his history and say, “Look at this. Should we keep it, or should we get rid of it?” I’m resurrecting a wicker loveseat – painting it a sunny, optimistic yellow, transforming it from a dirty, mildewed brown into a piece that I can place on the deck and sit in, my husband at my side.
I’m having a garage sale. The contents of all the boxes will be sorted. What is useful will be kept and cleaned. And what is useless, what is dirty and outmoded and broken, will be thrown out. The money from the garage sale will go into our bank account.
I will park my car in our garage this winter. I will not despair over chipping away the ice. I will not curse the darkness and the cold. I will get in my car, go where I need, and return to my home, my husband and a garage free of baggage.
Oh, Erin, I really like this. You built the theme beautifully and executed it really well.
There are some repeats in there that you could weed out, though ("fears and doubts about my husband’s life
before me
lay in dusty, rotting heaps
in front of me"
).
I think, too, I would scale back some of the more formal descriptions. Your voice is coming through pretty clearly, but every once in a while the academically trained you comes through, the one who needs every sentence to be grammatically correct.
I think this kind of piece wants a really conversational tone -- more of "I was tentative – how intrusive was it to poke and pry into the remains of my husband’s previous marriage and start tossing, keeping, storing, sending back?" and a little less of "Preemptively Xanaxed, I grimly braved the doorway, broom in hand, ready to leap back at the slightest hint of a hairy leg. Luckily, the spiders were on vacation or all suffered from social anxiety; my new neighbors declined to greet me, for which I was profoundly grateful".
Just my take, of course, but I think the second half of the essay really reflects the emotion and conflict of the story, and the first half is a little too ... wordy.
Yeah, the sentence you mentioned was giving me fits, and ITA agree about the first section of the essay. I love the latter half -- that's where is gels, I think -- but the beginning is where I started noodling and ended up with my metaphor going where I wanted it.
Fabulous. I thought I needed to re-work the beginning. I'm gonna let it sit for a bit, and toy with it -- I have to learn how to write a query letter first, anyway! And my brane is ded today, anyway.
Thanks for the feedback!
Glad to help, babe! It's a great piece.
Woo! Let's hope someone gives me filthy lucre for it eventually. After revisions.
Brane still ded. Going to bed early tonight
This was definitely a surprise to see in my editor's tweets. Yikes!
Yay!! (And I want those earrings.)
Super yay! And yeah, that's a gorgeous photo.
