Three Easy Pieces

QUORA is an internet website used by two hundred million people around the world to ask and answer questions in a wide range of categories. I discovered the world of Quora.com through my friend Jill who has been awarded Top Writer status for five years in a row.

Participants come from diverse backgrounds, ages, countries, interests, and beliefs. Some of my chosen topics are Aging, Retirement, Creative Writing, Friendship, Family, Relationships, Life Lessons, Attorneys, Caregiving, Loss, Grief and Healing, Travel, and Movies. Other topics include Politics, History, Literature, Medicine, Technology, Science Fiction, it’s endless.

I’ve answered about fifty questions so far this year—here are three examples. Questions posed can be annoying, even maddening, like this first one—but I was in the mood to attack it, gleefully:

WHY DO OLD PEOPLE ALWAYS SEEM LIKE THEY ARE DRIVING LINCOLNS?

I’m 73 and drive a Big Black Truck—a Tundra Off Road 4WD pickup with a V-8 engine that wants to go, go, go. I need it to bring home a yard of compost or mulch from the garden center, haul a cord of firewood,or take wood scraps and rusted metal to the junkyard. If my friends move, they ring me up to cart their stuff.

If you see a black Tundra pull up to the loading dock at Home Depot to pick up an appliance or sheets of plywood, don’t always expect a young contractor with tattoos and a T-shirt. If I buy a dishwasher or patio bricks, I don’t have to pay for delivery. I never get stuck in a snow bank. Other drivers let me in line—it must be my ominous Darth Vader look.

This baby is earning her keep. Don’t mess with me!

Just imagine this beautiful machine with a tough old chick climbing into the cab, slamming the door shut and taking off, leaving all those who think we “always seem like we are driving Lincolns” in a trail of dust. But I admit that Lincolns and Tundras do have one common feature—they guzzle gas ⛽ like no one’s business, and filling the 26 gallon tank breaks the credit card!

WHAT QUESTIONS SHOULD I ASK A FRIEND WHO IS A GARDENER ABOUT LESSONS IN LIFE?

During our marriage, my husband was in charge of the outside of the house — mowing, raking, plowing, planting. I managed my domain on the inside — cleaning, organizing, purchases, painting.

Paul was a serious gardener and landscaper. I dubbed him “demon of the wood, field, and stream.” After a morning outdoors, he came in for lunch with mud on his boots and didn’t always scrape it off before walking across the oatmeal-colored carpeting. He was eager to show me the stone wall he had built or the beans climbing up the wire fence, cucumber vines spreading along the ground, ears of corn forming on stalks (until the “critters” tore them up and ruined the ears on an overnight rampage).

When he quit for the day, he emptied a basket of colorful produce all over the countertop, his wondrous offering to our family.

Sadly, he died in December 2013. A harsh winter ensued, in every possible way.

I became a gardener involuntarily. I surveyed the yard in early spring, strewn with debris, broken branches, and mounds of wet, moldy leaves. I had become solely responsible for the care of the property. I opened the garden shed to the sight of various implements that Paul had accumulated over the years, hanging neatly from clamps lined up along the walls, ready for the next growing season—the one he would not see.

His tools are my most treasured inheritance.

I placed one foot in front of the other and started the yard cleanup. Soon after, I noticed the daffodils emerging, the forsythia and lilac starting to flower in the sun, the hostas unfurling their leaves in the shade. I raked the beds and pulled the weeds with a trowel, filling the wheelbarrow. I became more adventurous and changed the shape of different areas, kicking the spade into the ground and expanding the beds into more organic contours, my own gardening style.

I sensed Paul’s oversight and presence—and his enduring pride—in our garden. I worked for hours each day, just like he did, nourishing my broken heart with fresh air, sunlight, and memory, alternating with fatigue and tears. I began to feel my own connection, viscerally and in spirit, to the outdoors around me and the earth underneath that had been his domain.

Nevertheless, healing took a long time, through many seasons. 🌱 🍃  🍂  🌾  🌿 🍁

YOU’VE BEEN CHOSEN TO LIVE ONE DAY AS AN INANIMATE OBJECT. WHAT WOULD YOU WANT TO BE AND WHAT STORIES WOULD YOU TELL?

I’d choose to be a lined page in a writer’s notebook. I’d start out stacked and pressed and blank between many other pages. Then, this Writer Chick takes me to a writing group and opens me up flat on the conference table.

Someone prompts her to write on me for ten minutes by asking strange questions such as, ”If you could change your name, what would it be?” or“What is the one thing you would take out of a burning building?” or“Write a one page story in which you incorporate the five words that you pick out of the fishbowl in the middle of the table.”

Writer Chick takes out a pen and aims it at me, scratching out words on all the lines, and it feels great. I am fulfilling my purpose.

She’s so good to me, she writes that the first thing she’d take out of a burning building is not her iPhone, not her jewelry box, not her favorite leather jacket, but her writing notebook, full of handwritten stories, haiku, snippets and ideas she has jotted down all year.

Then, I stay open flat and she reads from me to the other writers in the room. But most of the time I am alone with Writer Chick and have her all to myself, tucked snugly in her tote bag just in case inspiration strikes. This happens when she’s drinking a cappuccino or zoning out in her yoga class.

She left me at the post office by mistake this morning and couldn’t find me for three hours. She won’t ever write on scraps of paper. It was a bad patch for both of us, full of stress, anxiety, fear and desperation. Now, I’m labeled with her contact information, and all is very well between my pages, and between us. 👩🏻   📓   ✒

READERS! DO YOU HAVE AN ANSWER TO ANY OF THESE QUORA QUESTIONS?