Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments. Our grandson has always had a secret smile, playing behind his composed features and in his eyes. Irrepressible, even at five years old, no matter how much he intended to play a straight-faced joke on camera-toting Grandma who had just said, “Smile for me, sweetheart.”
I cherish moments. Moments in general and specific ones. I remember them and, when I want them to return, I illuminate them with the floodlight of my imagination and fill in the details. For example, I took a photograph of our grandson on a Saturday morning in the kitchen of our house on Vashon Island in Washington state.
The sun shone through the window, and Grandson was in full cartoon garb. SpongeBob SquarePants (the hat) and Thomas the Train (the pajamas) were Saturday morning pals for me also. As I passed through the living room, I’d catch glimpses of their antics from the corner TV table Grandpa Jonathan had built.
This photograph stands on a bookcase in our New York City living room today. Though our grandson of the secret smile passed age seventeen in April, this memento radiates very present delight every time I look at it
Plus, I can add more details to the scene. We’d painted the walls yellow to brighten the frequent shadows of Pacific Northwest rainy days. Fronting the couch, a ponderous low cabinet had a top that lifted for snacking and a drawer at the bottom where Grandson kept the curious items he’d collected from the local thrift shop’s trove of recycled treasures.
I picture the scene and urge the wattage to climb in my memory floodlight. I luxuriate in the warmth of that moment. The feelings surrounding it. The atmosphere of love and ease on those mornings, when no one had yet scurried out of night clothes into daywear.
Each of us has deposited such moments in our memory banks. Smiles that touch your heart. Flashes of beauty beneath the retina of your inner eye. You can revitalize them in an instant. No intense pondering is necessary. In fact, pondering is discouraged.
Instead, grasp the moment in midair. Cradle it in the palm of your hand. Allow it to ripple through your fingers, up your arm, into your heart. Add to your visual recollection the sound of birds chattering outside, the aroma of breakfast on the stove, the touch of sunlight from the window on your skin.
In other words, revel in sensual richness brought to life. Drop gently out of the present. Loosen its hold on your consciousness until you are fully embraced by that long-ago kitchen moment, or wherever the incandescence of your imagination has taken you.
Anticipate the thrill of preserving this scene on a page, but don’t go there yet. Linger. Savor. Enjoy. Recognize the rapture. Edge aside what is now for what was then. But, do so gently, in order not to disturb the still place where your psyche has allowed itself to rest.
When you’re ready, gradually return to your now. Before the details fade, write down the adventure of your visit to your recaptured moment. Afterward, favor yourself with these interludes often. All you have to do is turn on your imagination, direct its glow within, and there they are. Write Thru Crisis – Floodlight Moments.
Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.
Alice has spent most of her professional life in publishing, as book editor, literary agent, workshop leader, and author. She’s published 16 novels, 3 novellas, a memoir, and No More Rejections: 50 Secrets to Writing a Manuscript That Sells (revised version coming soon). Her current work in progress includes Hero in the Mirror: How to Write Your Best Story of You.
Experience Alice’s own Floodlight Moments in her memoir Lifted to the Light: A Story of Struggle and Kindness. Available HERE.
Look for all of Alice’s books HERE.
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