Workshop #5

Prompt: "Write a memory of water." Take two minutes to list memories of water.

· As a child, I lost a toy in a river that reappeared in a lake the next day

· Swimming in a lake with orange rocks

· Catching frogs in muddy puddles, my cousin walking over a log at a swamp

· Jumping through sprinklers

· Drinking from the hose

· Using the hose to make temporary pools in a sand pit

· Swimming in a river in Oregon and riding the current

· Taking photos underwater with a special camera

· Walking through a creek while camping

· Caught in a huge thunderous rainstorm while camping where I thought I was gonna get struck by lightning

· Setting up a little fountain with my grandpa

· Using the hand-cranked water fountain at a nature park

Next, choose one of the items from your list and expand it into a fictional story. Take about 20 minutes for this.

Challenge: change the gender of one (or more) of the characters and see how it changes the scene.

I wanted to walk across the log. It was slimy and coated in wet moss that dripped like wrinkled skin to dip into the water below. The swamp pond was coated in a thick film, clinging to my shoes and fingers. And I wanted to walk across the log, anyway.

“I got one! I got one!” my little sister Jane called, holding her hands high over the too-tall grasses that came to my shoulders. She disappeared in it, little more than a disembodied voice like a ghost and a pair of muddy hands.

“Don’t let go,” I replied, barely sparing her a glance. “We can bring it back if you keep hold of it.”

“I know that!” she said. “I’m not stupid!”

I rolled my eyes and slogged through mud toward that log. It was balanced precariously over the swamp water, sagging in center, and I knew if my dad was there, he would tell me that there was no way in hell (“don’t say that word”) that I was going anywhere near that, young lady. But we had wandered far enough from the house for me to know that I was beyond his jurisdiction and free to climb the log if I wanted to. Old people were always so worried about things like taxes and who the president was that they forgot how to have proper fun. Not me. I’d never be like that when I was a full grown up.

“Where are you, Lacy?” Jane was saying. I could still only see her hands raised high above a pigtailed skull. “Come see my frog.”

“It’ll look like every other frog,” I spat. “I’m busy.”

“But Lacy, I caught it…”

I ignored her in favor of hoisting a knee up onto the edge of the log. Unlike the upright trees around me, the bark was soggy, and my jeaned leg left a depression in the mushy wood. My instinct, when my palms sank into the moss, was to pull away in disgust, but instead, I used the leverage to pull my other leg up.

I crawled a short bit before Jane appeared behind me, feet slipping in the bank with a squelch that briefly silenced the croaking around us.

“What are you doing?” she asked, not in the accusatory way of a concerned adult, but the innocent inquiry of a kid who actually wanted to know.

“What does it look like? Climbing the log. I’m gonna walk across it.”

“But you’ll fall,” she said matter-of-factly. “And then you’ll be wet and gross, and I’ll have to drop my frog to help you.”

“Don’t drop the frog,” I told her. “Even if I fall in. Which I won’t.”

“Oh.” She brightened. “Okay.”

It didn’t feel nearly as cool to be on the log as I had hoped, peering down at the grimy surface that seemed much too close and not nearly reflective enough to be a liquid. I had an image in my head of Madeline from that show, with that opening sequence where she balances on bridges and rhinos. I was gonna be Swamp Madeline and it was gonna be great.

Newly determined, I crawled on my hands and knees a few more feet before deciding this simply wouldn’t do. Carefully, I got one sneakered foot under me, then the other, and wobblily came to stand.

I swiveled excitedly. “Jane, look! I’m sta-“

With predictable timing, one of my shoes lost its meager friction and slid through the log’s gathered muck, sending me sideways and horrifyingly downward. I hardly had a moment to close my eyes and plug my nose as I plunged into the cold water, Jane screaming my name as I did so.

The whole world was quiet. Suspended, light, I felt a hundred thousand specks across my flesh and worming between my skin and clothes. Even with my mouth closed, I could taste the brine like a slick rot, poisoning my tongue.

I knew then that I was going to die. And I hadn’t even gotten to see Jane’s frog.

In an explosion of the prickly, unduly thick water, I rose to the surface gasping, scraping liquid awkwardly from my eyes and parting my drenched hair with a cough. I gulped ravenously at the air, which smelled like feet, but survivors can’t be greedy about these things.

Jane was sobbing uncontrollably at the banks.

“I’m okay!” I called to her, kicking my heavy sneakers to meet her at the shore. I felt long tendrils of something caressing my legs and shuddered, more than pleased to drag myself to the relative dryness of the muddy land.

“I thought you were de-ah-ah-ead!” she wailed, barely managing the words as snot dripped over her teeth.

“I’m fine, I’m fine, stop crying,” I soothed grumpily, wringing water out of my shirt. Considering I was the one who’d just had the near-death experience, it seemed unfair to make me do the comforting.

After a few moments, she finally calmed down and, her tiny hand in mine, we sullenly began the walk of shame back to the house, where dad was likely to have a fit over the state of my clothes or whatever. I just wanted a shower. And food.

“Where’s your frog, Jane?” I asked.

She sniffed, still rubbing at her face. “Dropped it. Sorry, Lily.”

“It’s okay. We’ll catch one together next time.” After a moment, I added sheepishly, “Did I at least look cool on the log, before I fell?”

Jane offered me a weak smile. “You looked like Madeline on the rhino.”

I grinned. “Hell yeah.”