A Long Tough Day

Writers read.

Monday I finished reading IT, a 1,000+ page novel by Stephen King.

A writing handbook I’m studying suggested that the aspiring writer study and analyze a book by an admired writer, and Stephen King is the writer I chose because I consider him to be the greatest craftsman alive.

I think I’ve read every Stephen King book, fiction and nonfiction, available. My favorite is Desperation. But I chose IT to analyze because of King’s large cast of characters and how he portrays them in the different ages of their lives.

My trouble with trying to study and examine a Stephen King book is that flow of his storytelling captures me so that I forget to analyze and just enjoy the story.

What a pleasure King is to read!

Over lunch at Dave’s Dinner, my friend Barbara White and I discussed King’s Dead Zone and marveled at his skill in foreshadowing events.

Barbara is retired religion editor of the local newspaper. Recently she spends a great deal of time ferrying her grown daughter, Mary, back and forth for chemotherapy treatments. I think Mary is on her fifth course of such treatments now and her doctor says she has lasted beyond the normal protocols for such treatments for small-cell lung cancer. He said she is on the outer fringes of treatment now.

Caring for her daughter exhausts Barbara.

I used my analogy of taking a loved one to a bus station or airport. And Barbara found it helpful.

You know, after you’ve packed everything, kissed and said your goodbye’s, and driven to the station, and unloaded baggage on the platform, and read the bulletin board, and talked over last minute instructions… And still the bus does not come for another 45 minutes!

Those last dragging minutes debilitate anyone.

You love ‘em, but you’re ready for them to leave.

There is no lack of love in your impatience, only the weariness of hanging around the bus station.

Or the doctor’s office.

Or the hospital room.

The guys at Dave’s teased the restaurant owner about just turning 40 this passt weekend. Chris, the head waiter, said, “You know you’re getting old when this month’s centerfold was born the year you graduated from highschool”!

Barbara came over and sat in our back garden talking as we looked for the hummingbirds to show up.

Perverse birds never did.

We talked about Jesus’ feeding of the five thousand and the nature of miracles in general.

I kept thinking of the grand miracle—Jesus’ resurrection from the dead.

We tend to forget that the biblical word translated miracle can also be translated sign. The things Jesus did were signs to point out who He is.

Yes, it is humanly impossible to return from death three days after crucifixion.

That’s the whole point!

Humanly impossible.

Yet St. Paul declares that Jesus is declared to be the Son of God by His resurrection from the dead.

He is never presented as a local boy who made good as far as death is concerned, but Jesus is proclaimed to be God come in the flesh, Emmanuel, God with us.

What He did is the sign of who He is.

Monday evening Ginny and I attended a neighborhood watch meeting where she reported on our CERTs training.

Our guest speaker was Lisa who gave us some fine gardening tips then led the group on a tour of her lovely garden, a garden which puts mine to shame. We only toured half before dark fell, so I invited her to speak again and continue the tour at a future meeting.

As the glorious president, grand phewbah, and exalted leader of the group, I got to end the meeting with one of my wonderful jokes:

Ernie was a very wealthy man.

He could buy anything he wanted.

But, alas, he forgot his wife’s birthday.

She was furious. Irate! She dragged him to the living room window and pointed to the driveway. “Tomorrow morning I want to see my birthday present sitting right there in the drive,” she screamed. “It had better be something that’ll go from zero to 200 in less than fifteen seconds, or you’re going to be sorry!”

Well, next morning she looks out the window and sees a package in the driveway. It’s wrapped in beautiful paper with a gold bow on top.

She rushes out, rips off the paper and finds a brand new bathroom scale.

You might want to pray for Ernie.