Every May, AWA workshop leaders across the globe bring writers together. Leaders help AWA raise funds by offering donation-based writing groups. Proceeds from each session support AWA and its mission. New writers experience the AWA method and celebrate the unique creativity in each other’s voices.
Write Around The World 2024 is nearly here! Check out this year’s event calendar and sign up for your chance to produce some great writing, engage with a supportive community and experience the magic of AWA. We’re offering groups nearly every day!
This writing was done in Sue Reynolds’ workshops “The Headway Project” and “Image Moment” during last year’s WAW.
Image Moment by Beth Girard
I went to the training full of confidence, yet afterwards I wasn’t so sure I was cut out for the job. Helping my young brother and and sister when they scraped their knees was easy compared to the stuff they were talking about. Things like triage, deciding which kid was more hurt, and then the speed they said we would have to move without getting flustered. At home I was there for my sister and brother like I said but only really when mom was busy in the kitchen making dinner or she was taking a quick nap after work. She was a nurse at another school other than the one we went to, so I felt like she had trained me alright in the small stuff. I knew I was to first get the hydrogen peroxide, pour it over the scraped knee, elbow or hand until it stopped bubbling. Next pat dry with a clean piece of gauze or clean paper towel. Then put on antibiotic ointment and then the tricky part – to find a bandage big enough to cover the scrape without getting the ointment on the sticky part of the bandage. This really was a walk in the park, and I got plenty of practice because we were active kids: skaters, climbers, crawlers, swimmers and every sport there was to be played. So, when the teacher asked us who thought they were smart enough and brave enough to “man”, (which means be in charge of) a bleeding station during a school shooting, I quickly raised my hand. Things started out ok in the beginning with the details of the materials needed: really big gauze packs to keep the wound clean, tourniquets to stop bleeding, and knowing pressure points – another way to stop a kid or teacher from bleeding too much, all seemed doable. It was in the description of being able to use these skills while hearing the noise of real gunfire, the cries and screams of pain around me, and the possible risk to my own life that I realized this wasn’t like anything I knew how to do or had ever done before! I felt like I was wearing my dad’s suit and swimming in his shoes.
The Last Drive by Susan Tromanhauser
The phone rang. It was the call they were expecting.
Susan gathered up the items she was instructed to pack, Dad’s toothbrush, his pajamas, family pictures. Scott somehow got Dad into the wheelchair they had stolen from the hospital the night before. The siblings embarked on their Dad’s last drive.
They struggled getting everything in the car. They were not used to folding up a wheelchair. They were not used to assisting a frail father. Their Dad fought so hard but in this last week, the disease was winning. Scott drove the car, while Susan sat in the rear, not taking her eyes off the back of her father’s head in the passenger seat. Dad’s favourite thing had been to drive around the city and point out places of interest. They passed the first apartment Mom and Dad lived in when they first married. They passed the park where he had hit a grand-slam in the church softball league. The office where Dad was a partner in the firm for forty years was a few blocks away. Missing from this drive was the wealth of trivia Dad shared with his quirky jokes. Usually Dad’s drives ended with a Butterscotch dipped cone from Dairy Queen. This drive was different. No commentary. No jokes. No ice cream. Just silence. What was Dad thinking as he drove past his favourite familiar scenes for the final time?
They pulled up to the front doors of the hospice and Dad realized where he was. He had spent time with there with his wife of 62 years just the year prior. The silence in the car was broken by Dad saying “who’s idea was this?” He still had fight left in his voice.
Scott and Susan just looked at each other. Outside the car window were big white puffy clouds hanging in a bright blue sky. The clouds seemed out of place in this somber moment. Susan’s eyes were full of tears while Scott’s were rolled up slightly to prevent any betrayal of his feelings. Dad sat still, staring ahead. His frayed shirt was now many sizes too big. Mom would be so disappointed to see him looking like this as she prided herself on always having her husband dressed well in crisply ironed shirts. The wedding ring Dad wore still shined, although it was clearly too big as well. What will happen to that ring? Will it languish in some forgotten box or will one of the grandsons wear it with fond memories of their Papa?”
Before Dad’s question could be answered, the front door of the car was yanked open. A woman dressed in nursing attire loudly greeted everyone breaking the silence within the car. She gently helped Dad out of the car and deftly adjusted the wheelchair so he could safely enter the building for the last time.
The nurse chatted happily describing the protocols of checking into hospice. Scott and Susan avoided eye contact as Susan was emotional and she knew Scott would not approve. Susan had been informed by him at their mother’s funeral “This family does not show emotion.”
Their father spent his last hours never truly giving up but ultimately giving in.
Scott and Susan drove back to their father’s home avoiding each other so neither would know the depths of their feelings of love and now loss. The drive back without him was as silent as Dad’s last drive. No commentary. No jokes. No ice cream.
Tiger by Lyrica Lawrence
I lay face down on the couch. I’ve been this way for hours already but I don’t mind, my soul is as light as stuffing and I am content to wait. I have done a lot of waiting in my long life. For years I sat upstairs in a dusty barely used room with nothing to do but watch the sunlight as it crawled across the wall. I could hear the life in the house below me and I could hear the occasional deep rumble of the voice of my boy, all grown up now. Joy would surge up inside me at the sound of that so familiar voice and I would listen hard to each word he said. Compersion warm in my core knowing he was grown and healthy.
Then it would be silent again and I would return to my memories, I let those fill my days. How could I feel lonely when I’d had such a full life, more than most like me ever get. Memories of me and my boy rowing across an ocean of grass in a dinghy, with nothing but a large bag of pretzels as our provisions. Me and my boy hiding in a cave at the center of the earth, so deep that no one could find us, at least until someone pulled the bed sheet aside. Me and my boy snuggled up in bed, his arm clinging so tight around my neck that had I required air, I would have perished. Those were the memories that sustained me and I thought would until the end of my days. Until one day I was grasped by fingers so small I thought for a brief moment it was my boy small once again but then a new face met mine. It was not my boy but a small girl with round face and cheeks, wispy fine hair and a big smile.
How could an old Tiger like me be so lucky to find love again? My fur once so soft, now resembles a striped towel, the fibers clumping together. My white fringe is matted to the sides of my face and now even calling it off-white would be generous. I only have three whiskers left and they are bent and crooked but this girl loved me anyways. She picked me up, pressing me to her chest, her heartbeat vibrating into my center giving me life again.
My days are once again filled with the pinch of tiny fingers picking me up by my ear, head, paw, or tail to drag me everywhere they go. I am once again so full of love it feels like my seams might burst. My girl hugging me tight when she’s sad, her tears dripping into my fur, brushing my hair with her small soft hairbrush, sharing her tea with me. I soak it all in and give her all my love back. I know how lucky I am. Us stuffies are born to be loved. From the moment we burst out of our packaging and our tags are cut, we hope to be lucky enough to have the love of a child. I’ve had two. So now I lay nose to the couch, but how could I complain? Instead I think about our morning, my girl pushing my face into her yogurt, she is so sweet to share with me, and the squeal of dismay from her mother. I just chuckled silently, gleeful with the goop of berry yogurt clinging to my whiskers. This is my paradise.