Have you ever read a piece so sensory rich it called up a memory strong enough to transport you? Where did you go? Midnight around a popping campfire where a drunk friend told you their deepest secret. The time you fell off the ski lift. Maybe it was the day the neighbor’s Great Dane got loose and chased your two-timing ex down the driveway. (Pooder was my hero from that day on.)
From terrifying to hilarious, stories that evoke a memory, a message, or a bit of sage advice from a loved one are stories that stick. They are timeless.
I ran across a short piece I wrote in 2000 for Writer’s Digest Chronicle Online. Today we call it Flash. It was my first big contract. Online writing was just making its debut and $100 for online content was a big deal. Garden Sluts—A Writer’s Curse, is one of those pieces that transport me for a lot of reasons, but primarily because it reminds me of the friend and neighbor who inspired it.
If Mr. Miyagi had a female counterpart, it was Adeline Medina. What a force! She could be the soft, sweet grandma you needed her to be, but she could also kick your butt, and remind you life is what you make it.
I’d like to share the piece she inspired because, although she never wrote, Adeline’s advice on life and creativity are as baldly effective today as they were in 2000. I’m going to be brave and publish this, mistakes and all, because it was over twenty years ago, and writing styles change. But if you’re a writer worried about where the next story will come from, or whether you can make it in this industry, you need Adeline in your life.
Pop a beer, kick back in your happy place, and help me pay tribute to a wonderful and inspiring woman.
Garden Sluts: A Writer’s Curse
Outside in the garden, expletives flew faster than weeds. There was no concentrating today. I conducted a moment of silence for the article dying on the screen and went out to see about the commotion.
I found my neighbor, Adeline, furiously pulling at the ground under my fall mums. Occasionally she launched a fist-full of dirt into a cardboard box with murderous intent.
“What’s going on out here?” I asked, as much amused as alarmed. Seventy-five and no bigger than a child, Adeline had the spirit of ten kids with energy to match. She had been raised in Spain but immigrated to America to follow her dreams.
“Sorry, babe. Did I interrupt your writing?” Her accent was still thick.
“No.” It wasn’t a lie. Everything distracted me lately. The neighbors, the neighbor’s dog, the television…
“If you let these #!*^ things go, they’ll take over your garden, babe.”
“What things?”
“Garden sluts. They take up half my time.”
She brought up a glove full of dirt with a writhing hunk of gray gel. And then I understood. She was weeding slugs out of my garden. Adeline’s grasp of the English language was like a breath of fresh air.
“How’s the writing going, babe?”
I cringed. Since I’d quit my job to write full-time, she had become my garden guru slash writing conscience. There were days I hated to see her coming.
“It’s not. It’s all running around up there, dying to get on paper, but when it does, it just isn’t right,” I complained. “To tell you the truth, I was thinking about going back to work.”
“Ah, so you got ‘em, too,” she declared with a sympathetic nod.
“I’ve got what?”
“Garden sluts!”
“I don’t understand. What’s my writing got to do with garden sluts—slugs?”
“It’s the same thing. Sluts glide through the garden and eat away the beauty, but only if I let ‘em.” She hoisted another handful of dirt with a curse. “I just won’t let ‘em. Same thing with your writing. You let little stuff slide through your mind and destroy the beauty before it blooms. A lot of work. No flowers.”
You had to love her. She had a perspective Natalie Goldberg would envy, but that still didn’t solve the problem.
“How do you get rid of the sluts, Adeline?”
“Hard work, babe. It’s the same with everything. But I did hear we could put some beer in a pie tin and set it out. Sluts love beer, but it’ll kill ‘em in the end.”
I gave her a hug and went back inside with a brief stop in the kitchen. I set a pie tin and a can of beer on my desk—just in case.
(First published by Writer’s Digest Online Chronicle, December, 2000)