Angela Townsend 

Momentous

I traded momentum for a visit to my parents. It was the deal of the millennium.

For several months, by no mandate except the electrical storms in my brain, I have written six essays a weekend. What started as wildfire fun became loyal fun, at times smoldering into duty.

There have been hours where those embers could scarcely toast a marshmallow, but I have persevered. I have written dreck thicker than creamed spinach. I have donned literary scuba gear to survive my own sludge.

I have written six a weekend. I have written myself into a corner.

I have written a sensational story in which my creativity is tied like a damsel to the railroad tracks of grit. It’s a foolish fable, false and gaudy, but I read it like a Psalm: Write six essays, O my soul; all my inmost being, write or be the orphan of your own wounded words. The Writing is neither compassionate nor gracious, quick to cast you into the pit.

Slow down, play around, and you will lose your momentum. Lose your momentum, and you will never get it back.

It’s a perilous place to live, this promise of fragility. I tell myself I can make it cozy. I tell myself I can make myself write six essays a weekend for life.

And then I tell my mother I’m coming up for the weekend.

My mother and my venerable stepfather are my favorite humans who ever lived. They are my favorite part of being alive. They are my axis mundi. They are love on legs.

Beloveds are a higher priority than momentum.

I keep this truth in the same jewel box with all my valuables, for instance: God’s name is mercy. Cats are ciphers for grace. Weeds are flowers with a strong internal locus of control. Discount paper towels are always a bad idea. Many are the plans in the mind of a writer, but it is the purpose of the Lord that will stand.

Beloveds come from God. Writing comes from God. Neither God nor writing are going anywhere, which means I can go see my beloveds.

So I went, reckless and experimental, wondering how I’d feel on a Monday without six essays under my belt. Maybe all those essays were holding up my skirts. Maybe I would feel naked and gnawed without the soft padding of my own prose. Maybe there was only one way to find out.

The two-hour drive was kind, knit thick with yarns I’d never touch from my keyboard.

A man the size of Sasquatch, older than democracy and in command of a colossal white beard, swaggered down a country lane and looked me in the eye.

A farmstand boasted Jersey tomatoes (proof that the core of the world is molten miracle) and “Homemade Scrapple” (proof that the world is still dark and dangerous, and we must be wise as serpents).

A voice on the radio, runny as egg yolks, pleaded with me to turn my anger into songs.

A freeway exploded into Queen’s Anne’s Lace, whitecaps of manna doing The Wave on the edge of the suburbs. I nearly fled the path to gather these mischief-makers, piled  sweet  as  macaroons.  They were playing some sort of prank on the mundane. I was in on the joke.

I was in with the crowd of travelers far from keyboards, pilgrims with purposes that can’t stay the same from weekend to weekend. Six essays or six thousand white wildflowers?

The flowers thinned, the mountains rose, and I found myself in the place where all my pieces reconvene. My mother’s arms folded around me like a prayer, and Pappy proclaimed my middle-aged sneakers “super cool.” I was not thinking about writing at all.

All weekend we were written into each other, knitted into each other, weaving yarns over radishes as pink as Barbie and worries as wan as doubt.

My mother was astonished by the balloon I brought, wide as a tractor and plainly outrageous. Pappy proclaimed me Empress when I clipped his geriatric cat’s claws, a procedure from which Mom hid upstairs. “Is it done yet? I didn’t hear any screaming.”

We lost our place in time watching Neil Young concert footage, gorging ourselves on encores.

“I think he has very high emotional intelligence.” (Of course my mother would say this.)

“I think Martin van Buren inspired his sideburns for the entire 1990s.” (Pappy is also an astute observer.)

The evening ended with the cinematic masterpiece known as Deep Blue Sea, Pappy and I rooting for L.L. Cool J against the radioactive sharks who ate his bird. My early birds were getting tired, and after I sang a jaunty cover of “Mama Said Knock You Out,” it was time for bed.

But evenings don’t end, any more than stories or mercies. I woke four, five, eight times in the night, with either ideas or the geriatric cat poking my ears. Sleepily, I texted myself fragments, trusting they would land safely with the other meteorites.

I was not writing. I was writing.

Come morning, Pappy was off to work, and Mom and I baked layer cakes of meaning while meandering the supermarket and gathering around the primal fires of Facebook.

The young cat with the beach ball body prostrated herself at my feet. The coffee was happy-flavored. My Mom’s blue hoodie felt like angel wings. I smiled at my face in the mirror and meant it.

I was not writing. I was being rewritten. I was being reanimated by the momentous, freed from manic momentum.

The question around the neck of the weekend, of course, was quiet but ever present: would I write when I got home Sunday night, slobbering out three thousand lukewarm words?

Could I believe that, wordless but filled, I did not have to fear the empty well?

I am typing these words on Sunday night, a single essay who does not need five frantic friends to feel alive. There is Poconos pollen on my car and Queen’s Anne’s Lace decorating my cerebrum, fresh glue holding my bird bones together and fresh yarns for words unwritten.

I write because I love, and writing will never be my first love.

Angela Townsend is Development Director at Tabby’s Place. She has an M.Div. from Princeton Seminary and B.A. from Vassar. Her work appears in Amethyst Review, Braided Way, Dappled Things, and Fathom Magazine, among others. She received fifth place in the 2023 Writer’s Digest Awards (Spiritual Nonfiction). Angie loves life dearly.