To Write: Speak to the Human Race
K. Wordbird Bate  The Writing Coach

     Christmas Eve. I put in my earrings on my way to the door, to go eat Chinese food with my neighbor. Her family is across the country, mine is out-of-country, and we find ourselves alone. There’s an unfamiliar knock. You know something about a person, by the way they knock. It is a neighbor. He has only once knocked at my door before. I know he works on his MBA, and he is open and polite to everyone. On occasion, I remind him and his pals not to carouse in the hallway at three a.m. He seems to be carefully building a particular and savvy vision of a future, step-by-step. It rouses my empathy, and curiosity.  However, as it often goes with neighbors, I don’t know him well.  

     He says he wonders if I’m alone, as I don’t have family here. If I am, would I like to come eat with his family? He is unsmiling, steady and quiet, offering this kindness.

     I am reminded of my childhood, where anyone and everyone came to our home. The mailman, the realtor, someone’s wayward teenage kid, all the foreign students from the university. Not that we had the “plenty” you might assume. All we had was an open door. Mom’s open heart filled my childhood with amazing people, stories and a grand sense of energized conversation. I’d lie in bed listening to muffled talk and laughter from all over the house. It is comforting, to a child. It says, “All is well.”

      It came to me, as I looked at the waiting face of this man, that those people were sincerely welcome; Christmas Eve is for sharing, and heck, I already had my earrings on. So I said, well, that I was headed to Emperor’s Wok, with a neighbor. I couldn’t leave her behind. “Bring her along. There’s more than enough food, believe me.” I wrote his cell number on a ratty scrap of paper.

      His family house is packed with the hoards of siblings, toddlers, cousins and relatives of cousins, great-uncles, grandparents and boyfriends of second wives that make a gathering amazing. The talk is of knee surgery, home made cookies, how the grown kids replaced the flooring, racism, the state of the economy, World War II rations. Talk nourishing to the soul. Warming. Uplifting. To be part of a social gathering feels, in a fundamental and primitive way, safe, and fulfilling.

     Writers are often alone. Yet we write about the heartbeat of society: What people talk about, care about, what they are doing. How things are changing, who did what to whom. What subtle, incredible event emerged from that particular fellow over there. We need to stay in touch with our inner humanity, as well as outer society. I felt humbled, grateful, nurtured, moved, and puzzled. I am renewed, refreshed, and warmed. I am reminded even of the visceral sense of closeness and appreciation that comes with simply being fed. It’s good. It is good to experience this from the other side. I never imagined what it might be like for a German or Italian to accept a near-stranger’s invitation. That they were at our house because their families and homelands were so far away. It’s sharply painful. It’s alien, to be so isolated. I remember a wonderful man from Israel saw mom was making pumpkin pie. “That is a WEED,” he exclaimed. “In Israel, we do not eat such a weed!” Say I went to a gathering, and they were baking thistles, to put into pie! Good heavens! Yet I would still feel deeply grateful. Now that I have been a guest among strangers, I have this new perspective. It is a lovely gift, to be invited. 

     A writer experiences, reflects, and then seeks to express on paper. To tell not “my” experience, as in a diary, but the human experience. We have all been lonely; all been homesick; all felt grateful and warmed by the kindness of another. To be able to make this leap, from “me,” to the experiences and feelings all humans share, is a reason it is vital to keep at your daily writing practice. The power of your words comes in much part from this leap. The leap comes from practice.

      Speaking of themes of humanity, let’s talk next time about writing a novel. Meanwhile, HAPPY NEW YEAR! Make it a plan, in 2009, to let your self bloom.

© Kimberly Bate

photo by Tracie Taylor