Tuesday, July 17, 2012

Vocabulary -- A Memoir by Definition Clarion West Write-a-Thon Edition

I sat at the dining room table. It had been cleared of dishes and wiped clean. The empty space was brightly lit from the overhead light and the sunny window. The sparkling porcelain bouquet centerpiece stood watch in the middle of the oval table. I watched my father as he bent his head over his project. He had placed in front of him a watch with the back off, a piece of cardboard, a toothpick, two tubes of epoxy glue, one with a blue cap, one with a red cap. He carefully removed the cap of one tube and squeezed a dab onto the cardboard. He replaced the cap and went through the same steps with the second tube, placing the second dab a few inches from the first. A sweet odor filled my nose and settled in the front of my brain. I felt a little further away while I watched. My father double checked the watch. He pulled the cardboard in front of him and picked up the toothpick. He held the toothpick over the dab of epoxy closest to him. The toothpick wavered in the air. The sweet smell got stronger. He scraped the first dab into the second dab and began to fold the dabs of goo into one another.
“Can I help?”
“Not this time. This job is too tedious.”
Tedious. I had not heard that word before. Tedious. Did he mean difficult? Perhaps he meant delicate? Certainly tedious did not mean too important for a girl of eleven to help with?
“Tedious? How do you spell that?”
Without looking up from his mixing my father said “T. E. D. I. O. U. S.”
I slid sideways out of the chair, careful not to bump the table. I found our family dictionary on the shelf and took it down onto the coffee table. I turned to the Ts to look up TEDIOUS. I found that it means “1. marked by tedium; long and tiresome: tedious tasks; a tedious journey. 2. causing fatigue or tedium; monotonous. 3. obsolete progressing very slowly.”
I closed the book and slid back into my seat next to his. I watched as he used the tip of the toothpick to insert some of the mixed epoxy into the crevice of a broken part of the watch. After applying enough epoxy, he put the toothpick on the cardboard and pushed the cardboard away from the center of the operation. He put the back of the watch on and pressed firmly until it clicked into place. Making sure to keep the watch level, he picked it up and put it on the credenza next to the table, out of the way of traffic.
He looked at me then, for the first time since we had sat down. “You can wind the watch tomorrow, after the epoxy has set.”
I smiled. I knew he meant that was the way I could help. But I was thinking I had something better than winding the watch. I had tedious.

Saturday, July 14, 2012

Failure to Launch - Clarion West Write-a-thon Edition

Sometimes I feel like I’m peddling so hard I’m about to lift off
like that boy in the movie about the fire hydrant
who lost his cell phone
and only wants to, you know,
phone home.
But then I don’t.
So I hold my feet out, my legs a wide V
so I coast.

Friday, July 13, 2012

Peristalsis - Clarion West Write-a-thon edition

Peristalsis, perestroika, perihelion, paradox, pair of ducks, pair of socks

Have left me
with a head-
full of half-
heard melodies.