Writing in Scenes
Exercise: See if you can change a passage from exposition in which you tell readers something important into a scene in which you show readers more important details through visual description or dialogue.
Attractive women wearing neat slacks, skirts and jackets are draped over every piece of furniture in the suite living room of the San Francisco hotel room. Some sit on the floor leaning against furniture and against the legs of professional friends. It’s another meeting of the growing women’s caucus of the ITAA in the summer of 1979 or 80.
Each woman in turn introduces herself briefly sharing something important about her life and the sense of sisterhood and intimacy grows. We see each other beyond our professional goals we’re people discovering who we are, individually, beyond the wives and mothers we were raised to become. We’ve been meeting this way for about eight years since insisting to the male-dominated organization that we need to have space and time allotted in the program.
Many of us are in the neighborhood of 40 years old and age becomes a topic of conversation. In our world, 40 is old, almost over the hill. We look around at each other seeing what appears to be a bunch of very attractive youngish women and try to define what it really means to approach that life milestone. Some of us has have been in deeply personal psychotherapy training programs together and know each other well. Others are new, amazed at how safe it is to speak our truths, fears and doubts.
We are trying to make sense of who we are now as suddenly, middle-aged women. We see vibrant well-dressed, smooth skinned and young looking, mature woman! We aren’t wrinkled. Most of us are slender and active. We look around, 40 is us and we need to change our idea of who were supposed to be to match up with who we are now.
The women’s magazines we’ve been reading for years are no longer relevant. Natalie admits that she’s afraid to share her age, certain shall be excluded because she’s old. Reassured that she is welcome and appreciated, she admits to being 55 years old.
A few years later Natalie becomes a good friend and role model for enjoying living to the fullest as we get to know each other on a bus tour through Europe. She and my 14-year-old daughter play with each other as about 18 people ride a 60-passenger bus through France. Even later than that, with a new husband, she opens the Hawaiian home to a mixed group of partying professionals try to outdo each other telling jokes. But my 40-year-old self doesn’t know any of this now.
The women’s caucus meeting ends with tears, hugs and wonder as we discover the rich resources we are for each other and the power we are developing separately and together.
I’m at another women’s caucus, this time in a tiny cabin in central Mexico. Languages are both English and Spanish and the two women who translate need to trade off their work depending on whose tears are flowing the hardest. We spend our time trading stories as the English-speaking women learn about the ongoing struggles of our professional colleagues in Mexico and Central America.