Angela Amman

stories of choices and consequences

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clarity {fiction}

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I found this site, which offered this prompt: Start with this, “It’s all perfectly clear now.”

“It’s all perfectly clear now,” Lauren said.

The phone call ended shortly after she agreed to the clarity of the explanation. New Jersey would be closing shop for the day soon, and her questions sounded redundant even in her own ears. She closed her eyes and rubbed the bridge of her nose, because nothing seemed any more clear than it had when she picked up the phone to call her father’s attorneys. The details of the educational trust tangled together, backtracking on themselves and becoming more weighted with every question Lauren asked about applying it to her daughter’s potential boarding school.

Not that she wanted June to go away to school yet, anyway, Lauren reminded herself. She opened her eyes and stared at the notes she’d started to write, crossing out certain words and circling others. Her father’s pre-mortem wishes, like most else about his post-mortem legacy, seemed overly complicated, a puzzle to solve instead of a gift to her sixteen year old. Whether or not the money could be used for pre-college study seemed to be straightforward enough, but he’d added preferences about which areas of the country were permitted. The geographical stipulations possibly ended with high school graduation and possibly didn’t, depending on grades and what June’s post-high school plans might be.

It didn’t help that Lauren hadn’t truly slept in days, in not weeks. Her father’s death hadn’t shocked her in the least; she’d known for years he lived on borrowed time after a life spent cultivating every bad habit one could find between Atlantic City and Las Vegas and back again. What shocked her were the breadcrumbs he’d left for her to follow, emails, phone calls, and even a hand-delivered letter from his lawyer’s office, all containing new twists and addendums to a will she had been surprised he’d even created in the first place. Her grief teased at her, leaving her to wonder whether he was engaging her in one final puzzle or flipping her a seriously severe proverbial bird.

Scowling at her notes one more time, a copy of the trust agreement in pages across her desk, Lauren swept it all onto the floor. She’d be the one to pick up the pages, but she was used to doing that. Tears threatened but she squeezed her eyes shut before they could consider falling onto her cheeks. She didn’t need the money to send her daughter to school anyway. Lauren let herself admit, for just a second, that she wanted June to feel closer to her grandfather, even if only when tuition was due. If anything at all was crystal clear, it was that her relationship with her own father never had been, and apparently never would be.

crows & ravens

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This morning I saw a murder of crows perched on our neighbor’s roof. I’m not sure when they landed, but I noticed them as I rinsed out my coffee cup, torn between emptying the dishwasher myself and waiting until Dylan came home since it’s technically his job. (I waited.) The first crow lifted into the air, then the second, black against the white-gray sky. The third, no longer part of a murder, strutted across the peak before coasting down to the ground. He pecked lazily at the ground before leaving.

He looked larger on the ground than the roof, black and gleaming, even in the gloomy light of a morning that would bring rain. I’m always surprised by the size of the crows in our yard. Accustomed to sparrows and cardinals, the occasional blue jay, and some woodpeckers I hear but rarely see, the crows seem out of place.

A few summers ago, we went to a tiny zoo and saw ravens. I saw the plaque for them before I saw the birds, and I questioned the inclusion of them along the path we were taking to get to the bat tower. Then I saw the ravens, and I realized I’d never seen one, at least not up close. I marveled at their size, the way they made the backyard crows look delicate. Their talons gripped the ground prehistorically, and I shuddered to think of the way they would feel if the raven perched upon my shoulder.

Their eyes saw more than I expected, promising intelligence I didn’t expect. It could have been an illusion, but it stuck with me darkly and slightly uncomfortably.

Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven” grew more ominous after seeing those birds.

I thought of them this morning as the final crow alit into the sky. I was reminded of the importance of perspective, and the cruciality of experiencing certain things in reality and not just in imagination. Odd, how something as simple as a black bird can conjure thoughts of mortality and knowing. Odder, how I can still feel the gooseflesh that arose on my arms when I saw their eyes.

prompt annoyance

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Today was going to be my first prompt writing day, and instead I’m writing about annoyance. (I feel like that’s par for the course right now, though why I’m using a golf saying when I don’t golf, I’ll never know.) I’m annoyed, because I did something I warn my kids against doing.

I downloaded a free app without looking into the fine print.

I wanted to get prompts in a simple way, so I quickly scanned apps and chose one. I noticed there were in-app purchases offered, but I feel like most apps have that disclaimer, so I ignored it. I went through a few steps of choosing what kind of prompts I would enjoy getting (different genres of writing, visual or written), and then I realized I would only be able to use the app for a week before I needed to pay for a subscription (monthly or annually).

I deleted the app immediately, because there’s no way I’d remember to cancel before the end of the trial, even with email and phone reminders. We’re getting into serious back-to-school mode, and I know myself well enough to know I’d miss it by about five minutes and be on the hook for a year. Since it’s creeping toward the end of the day, I decided not to find another source for prompts and just write about why I’m not using a prompt.

I’m also half watching Criminal Minds with Ab and one quarter watching Max chase a puff ball around the room, which means I have only a sliver of my brain on the screen. That’s not how any of this is supposed to work, I know, but it’s been a long day. Hopefully tomorrow I can do something a little more meaningful — or at least interesting — with my writing time.

next steps

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I haven’t written every day so far in August, but I’m closer than I have been the last several times I’ve set a daily writing goal for myself. The next steps, now, involve what I’m actually writing. I journaled a little about this yesterday, and now I’m going to write about it here — which encapsulates why I need a “next step.”

When I set the goal to write daily, I was fine sitting in front of the keyboard and letting my stream of consciousness vomit onto my blog. We’re well past the days that I’m sharing these posts anywhere, and it’s likely no one is reading them at all. I needed the practice hitting the keys and not needing to feel perfect and basically remembering what it felt like to string words into sentences and sentences into paragraphs, albeit short paragraphs, usually lacking much focus.

Yesterday, when I switched gears to my journaling time, I realized I was basically doing the same thing there. My entries were either quick bullet points of gratitude (not a bad thing!), mantra writing, or stream of consciously vomit into my journal.

I need to change one of my writing outlets, at least a little bit.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to use a daily prompt to write here. I haven’t figured out where I’ll glean the prompts, and I’m not sure if it will be non-fiction, fiction, or a combination of both, but I’m looking for a focus for my posts. I know I could sit down with a planner and craft a blogging schedule, something I’ve done in the past, but I want to make it a little easier on myself for now.

In all honesty, I was planning to start the prompts today. However, after writing about day-of-the-week confusion, my body and mind finally got on the same page, and it feels like the most Sunday to ever Sunday. Abbey and I woke up early to drive to a local TV station for a segment featuring her dance company (she danced! on the news!), and I barely slept. Consequently, my whole day feels like I’m trying to keep my head above water.

Stay tuned to see if prompts help me find a little focus or if they sabotage the (small amount) of daily writing progress I’ve made!

da(y)zed & confused

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Dylan and I spent a couple of days up north this week, beautiful days with sunsets and floating on the water and poking around in little shops. However, we went from Monday to Wednesday, and now my body refuses to understand what day of the week it is. Summer always gets tricky when you work in a school, because days fade into each other, and I can do things during the week that normally get saved until weekends. This time, though, I can’t shake the feeling that my days just aren’t right.

Maybe it’s because my birthday (and birthday dinner) fell on a Thursday, and we ate late, so it felt more like a Friday. Now we are getting ready for a pool party with friends, but I can’t force my brain to understand that it truly is Saturday and not Sunday.

None of this is a huge deal, at least not until I have to start going back to work, except there are things that need to be done. I consult my calendar and planner more times than I should need to each day, and I’m triple checking alarm clock times before drifting off to bed. I wake up feeling like I missed something, even though I know I didn’t.

To be honest, it’s probably a bit of back-to-school/work anxiety creeping into my head. We’re tiptoeing into the BTS waters with trips to the mall, this year’s emergency contact updates, and glancing at school supply lists. Both kids get their class schedules for the year next week. Understanding the why doesn’t make it any less disconcerting. All I can do is keep double checking my lists and try to breathe myself back into the present.

It’s a reminder, I think, that all of the planning in the world doesn’t always help when things don’t feel right. All of the checklists and reminders can’t give me control of the things that are out of my control. I don’t like that feeling. I’m trying to sit with it, but my stomach still twists and turns and keeps me awake some nights. I hope as our schedules settle into place, so do my nerves.

birthday wishes

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I don’t love my birthday. It comes at a weird point in the summer for someone who goes back to work in the fall, a time when it’s too early to really feel ready to shift seasons but too late to feel like I’m still luxuriating in summer. It feels even stranger this year, because we’re creeping up on the anniversary of my mom’s diagnosis. Last year, the kids and I celebrated her birthday with her in Brighton, and that might have been the last real normal family celebration we had.

The kids made me cards (I will frame Abbey’s, filled with beautifully colored drawings) and Ryan found one that’s seriously perfect for us, even though he doesn’t love cards. He, Abbey, and I went to see Barbie while Dylan was in karate, which was probably the right choice for him. We had a fun dinner together, fake playing pub trivia and eating one of my favorite pizzas.

It still felt uncomfortable, and I feel unsettled and uncomfortable today. I ran this morning and did laundry and got most of my to-do list done. I shouldn’t feel like this, but I do. I’m not sure why contentment feels out of reach lately. I wanted to use this summer to re-set from a truly impossible year, with the knowledge that another, even more impossible year will come at some point. No matter how well Mom is doing right now, at some point, all of the chemo in the world won’t be enough to stop the cancer from spreading.

Maybe that’s why I’m having a hard time with my birthday wishes this year, even harder than normal. I’m not sure what to wish for anymore, since time only moves forward, and the past, when things were a little easier, can’t be tread upon again.

I wasn’t sure I wanted a cake this year, with wishes clogged behind fear and complete ridiculousness. We got one today instead, and I still have a couple of hours before finalizing my wishes for the upcoming year. If nothing else, I hope I feel a little more grounded when I wake up tomorrow morning, during the second day of my forty-sixth year.