Jason M. Jones

While I was working on Personal Time over the last three months, I mentioned to an acquaintance one night at dinner that I had intended the novel as a NaNoWriMo type project. A few days later he contacted me using Facebook and asked if I’d be interested in reading an excerpt at the Kellys Writer House for a show that would later be broadcast on WXPN. The show was devoted to the theme of NaNoWriMo, and they were looking for people who had taken the NaNoWriMo Challenge to participate in their reading. At first, I was hesitant. With working so quickly and getting so many words down on the page per day, I felt a great deal of it was rough, and I don’t like to share my stories or novels with an audience until I have time to revise and polish the work. I had also planned to write the full novel in three months, rather than one, so it kind of felt like cheating (though during October I did technically keep up the NaNoWriMo word count, so I technically did it, just in the wrong month). For those reasons, however, I had initially considered passing on the opportunity. But then, I considered something my wife often prods me about. “Why don’t you tell people that you’re a writer,” she says whenever we meet new people and they ask me what I do.

By and large, the reason I avoid mentioning this is the feeling of pretension in saying, “Oh, I’m a writer” when I haven’t published anything of note. I fear being met with the inevitable question, “Oh, have you written anything I might have read?” to which I have to ask, “Do you read university-published literary journals with limited print runs?” However, it seems inevitable these days that in order to be a writer and succeed, one has to become adept at promoting oneself. I’m not always comfortable with that idea. I’d prefer to let the work speak for itself. But I recognize that if the work doesn’t reach an audience, it’s not speaking to anyone. And so, I said yes, and the acquaintance—Justin Southern, who had also read at this event (and whom I should thank again here)—put me in touch with the show’s producer. After all, I had three weeks until the night we were due to read, and in that time, I planned to pick two excerpts, revise them, and run by my writing group to see which one they thought would work best.

During the week of Thanksgiving, I had a few days off, and I took an afternoon to set aside two portions of 1,200 words and set about revising them. I retyped each to a blank document, making small edits and alterations as I went. I cut some lines, added some new ones. Then, I recorded myself reading the excerpts onto Garage Band to listen for any spots where the prose sounded weak and to ensure each passage fit the time parameters I was provided by the show’s producer. Naturally, since it was being broadcast on the radio, I had to refrain from choosing excerpts with profanity or sexuality, which ruled out some of the more lively moments of my novel. But I settled on two passages about parenting that I had enjoyed composing during the process of drafting the novel, and I felt I could really do something with these during a rewrite.

My initial impression was that I  preferred the first of the two. But when I presented them to my writing group, their feedback pointed me in the direction of the second excerpt, the one I ultimately read. This excerpt was more visceral and jarring, they told me, which may have been the reason I had wanted to go with the alternate one. I worried it would seem morose, too much of a downer. But since I ended up siding with my group and read the excerpt about seeing a deer run down by a car while driving home from the grocery store, I figured I’d present the other one here.

Just a note on the voice: if I’m not writing in the third person, I generally write in the second person. I’m not sure why, but it feels more natural in the context of creating work culled from my own experience. When I use the word “I” in a text, I inevitably start seeing the character as me and have difficulty picking out which details are pertinent to the story. When I use “You,” it’s easier for me to distance myself from the experience and write as if I’m composing for a character, to weed out all experience that isn’t essential to the point I’m making. So without further ado, here’s the excerpt I didn’t use, which I’m calling “Sticking Fingers in Sockets”:

You think of Sadie then. You hope her fever passes quickly. You hate to see her sick, flushed cheeks, shoulders slumped, glassy eyes. Her spirit sinks into itself whenever she falls ill. This usually energetic child abandons her pursuits of blocks and stuffed animals, stops running around the house and ordering you to follow, and tucks herself into a corner of the couch and leans against you and rests her head on your chest. You hold her close at times like these. For what else does a sick child yearn for but the warmth of a parent, that comfort? It doesn’t matter how low-grade her fever is, how light the cough, whenever she gets like this you worry. And though your thoughts are free to ramble as you sit on the train, heading home to pick her up, your trajectory remains fixed on getting to her as quickly as possible.

The train arrives at three thirty, and she’s with your mother now. Your mom will have given her children’s Tylenol and the fever will break, but it’s likely you’ll bring her into the pediatrician’s office anyway. It might be overbearing. But a fever and cough could presage a chest infection, and you need to head that off before it gets any worse. Before she was born, you never would have considered yourself the type of father who runs to the pediatrician for every little sniffle, but you do favor taking precautions when it comes to your daughter’s health. These past two days, there’s been a wheezing in her breath, a rattle in her chest. And even though she’s not coughing too badly, you want to be sure. If it’s bronchitis, she’ll need antibiotics. Your youngest sister contracted walking pneumonia as a toddler, and your parents had thought it merely a cold, and you’d like to avoid this type of situation if possible.

She’ll be okay, you think. You have to. You can’t work yourself up anticipating problems until you have the facts and know if it’s bad or not. Lots of kids run low-grade fevers with coughs and come out fine. There’s no reason to think that Sadie’s in danger.  She’s with her grandma. She’s probably having a nice time, feeding her baby doll and pushing its stroller around. You’ve seen her play with a low-grade fever, and you’re likely making too much of it. But there’s always that fear of losing her that’s never too far from your mind. Plenty of children grow up safe. You often have to remind yourself of this when your thoughts take a darker turn. For it’s the possibility that something bad might happen to her that scares you most in this world. She’s small, slight, fragile. She doesn’t see the dangers right in front of her.

One time, when you’d come home from picking her up at daycare, you’d given her your keys to play with. She likes keys and usually just shakes them about, but this time, she walked across the room and pulled a cord from the outlet and tried to put them in the socket. You saw it happening. You were only ten feet away but couldn’t get there to stop it, so you roared. You roared fierce and loud, a sound amplified that reverberated across the room: “Sadie, no!” and she froze in a panic, startled.

For a moment, she didn’t make a sound. Then she dropped the keys and cried. She cried in a way you’d never heard before, because she’d never heard you shout that way. She was scared because you were scared. And you picked her up and wrapped her in your arms and soothed her. “It’s okay,” you said. But what if it hadn’t been? What if you’d been turned away? What if you hadn’t seen her doing it? Just heard a buzz and saw her fall to the ground? Would the force have thrown her? You don’t like to think of these things, but you do anyway. You picture the alternate versions where you weren’t there and didn’t scream. You sat down with adrenaline coursing through you and rubbed her back. “Daddy’s sorry,” you told her. “But you really could have hurt yourself.” You pointed to the socket. “Ouch, hurt you real bad.” But she had just stared. She was only eighteen months and didn’t comprehend. And you wonder if she’s old enough now. Whenever you’re cooking, you point to the stove and say, “Ouch, hot!” and she repeats, “Ouch, hot!” But you still never leave her untended in the kitchen.

Then, too, you think of how often she might be in danger and you’re not there and luck carries her through. There are staircases to fall down, and ledges to trip from, corners of coffee tables to run into. Part of being a parent involves ceding some of your power. The idea has never sat comfortably with you, but you can’t be there all the time, and if you worry constantly, you’ll never get anything done. You have to have some faith that she’ll be all right, that she’ll grow up and learn, that the dangers will cease.

You have trouble picturing what she’ll be like in ten years, twenty, thirty. But that doesn’t mean she won’t get there. Your wife tells you she thinks of this all the time: what she’ll be like when she’s in her teens. And you appreciate that Justine can picture this. You close your eyes and try. You assume she’ll be smart and sarcastic. She already has your attitude, your sense of humor. She likes to laugh at things, and she’s a trickster.

The other day, she’d grabbed her aunt Joy’s hand and said, “Come!” Joy had stood and said, “What do you want to show me?” And as soon as they’d taken a few steps, Sadie ran over and sat in the spot where Joy had been sitting. You’d all laughed—you and Justine and Joy and your mother and father. It wasn’t behavior you should encourage, but it showed foresight, planning, and you’d been impressed with just how intelligent it was. She’d wanted that seat and had found a way to get it, and she’d known it was funny too, for she’d laughed along with you.

Like most kids, she’ll hit a rebellious patch and find you uncool. You’re already lame, and you know it. You and Justine have done it for her, and that’s what you’ll say when she hits fifteen and hurls this accusation.

“I did this for you, you know? Before you were born your mom and I had a life. We had friends and lived in the city and went to parties. We drank and made fools of ourselves and stayed out all night like you’ll eventually do. The thing you don’t realize yet is that no one wants exciting parents. It seems cool in the movies, but if we weren’t here for you, leading this mundane existence, if you came home and couldn’t find us because we were out at a party somewhere, or we were here but we were listening to loud music and drinking, you’d hate us for it. So I’m lame. I do lame dad things, like sit and read. And I make lame dad jokes because no one wants to hear dad tell a dirty joke, even though I know quite a few. Instead, I let you go out, and you have the fun. But I make you tell me who you’re with and where you’re at and what you’re doing, ‘cause that’s what good parents do.”