I attended my sister’s college graduation this weekend. Traveling back to my own alma mater, drinking in the springtime air and clusters of brightly blooming flowers, the buzz of excitement and energy, was good for the soul.
But it also made me think about those times in life—like graduation—that are simply bittersweet. The good comes with the not-so-good. Reaching a new point means letting go of what’s come before.
And it made me ponder why writing about bittersweet moments is so good, so deliciously satisfying.
Photo by Werwin15
A Bittersweet Symphony
I looked up the definition of bittersweet: producing or expressing a mixture of pleasure and pain. Synonyms are harder to pinpoint; none of the words are quite complete or fully accurate: poignant, nostalgic, affecting, sentimental.
Yes, bittersweet moments have touches of poignancy and nostalgia and sentimentality, which is what makes them so interesting to write about—and read about. They are places and times that tug on our hearts in a strange, somewhat uncomfortable way, bringing back to the surface that mix of emotions we’ve experienced sometime in the past. Maybe one side—pleasure, or is it pain?—comes through stronger and sharper. We don’t know exactly how to feel.
The complexity is another reason why describing bittersweet moments in writing—putting that intricate feeling into words—is so captivating. It’s a challenge to convey the multiple layers and draw readers in, unsettling them with the conflicting emotions, while at the same time, fulfilling them with the familiarity of it all. But when we find success, it’s truly sweet.
How do you write about bittersweet moments?
PRACTICE
Write for fifteen minutes about a bittersweet moment in time.
When you’re finished, please share your practice in the comments section. And if you post, please respond to some of the other comments too!
Hi, Melissa. My business partner live in Northbrook. We are creating a website and blog named Curious Explorers Club, a lifelong adventure for young people. It grew out of a project headlined at the Indiana State Fair for over eight years. We would like you to review it soon and possibly contribute your wonderful talents to iit. Perhaps it would be asking kids to contribute their journals and scrapbooks to us for prizes…
We are enjoying The Write Practice.
Best, Joe
Mother is getting married again, after forty years of being a widow. Why, I wonder. She never seemed interested in men, just jewelry. And dresses and jacket suits and shoes and coats. She is pulling up stakes to marry a minister who has a house in the country, about twenty-five miles away. My friend and I visit her as she begins selling furniture and getting ready for a new life. I take my friend around the house, a small Montgomery Ward house from the 1930 catalog, and neb here and there to see the place for the last time.
My grandparents built the house. My dad and his brother moved there at eleven and twelve years old, approximately, and left nine years later, after taking over a gas station together, after the war. They inherited the house after their dad died, and I was raised there. It was our house, the homestead, the only home I knew.
So my friend and I go upstairs. I had moved out four years ago and away from town a year ago, taking my furniture and belongings with me. I open the door to my bedroom, and it is a curious empty square with two living room chairs arranged for conversation under the front double windows. What was in that room? Where did my daughter nap when she visited her grandma? There was furniture in that room. What happened to it?
The sight of my room, like a vacant lot, breaks my heart. I want to weep but know I can’t. Talking is next to impossible. I back out of the room, close the door, and leave. Forever.
Downstairs, Mom waits for the real estate man. We greet him at the sidewalk. He is carrying a For Sale sign. Mom says, “If you want it, it’s yours. We don’t have to do this.” I muster up the appropriate words, the logical words. “I live too far away to be a landlord.” Something like that. I can’t say what I want to say: “Yes! I can keep it forever as my house, my place to visit as a sanctuary when life gets too insane!”
Each year we go home, drive around the house, look at the improvements, wonder how the family is doing, if they like the place or just can’t afford to move. Sometimes I have dreams about the neighborhood, I can be wide awake and feel myself back there. I am usually in the street, looking past the house, or have glimpses of being in the living room and looking out at the neighbors’ houses while watching TV with my grandma. Honestly, I don’t want to be there, and I long for the time spent there. I would carve a functional family to live there with me, and you know, it just wouldn’t be the same.
This was a great topic, very moving. It’s a milestone in life that seems simple, effectively selling your childhood home, but I remember that it was just as bittersweet for me as you’ve portrayed it. The opening line is great, and I love the details your narrator notices, like the arrangement of the chairs. Nice job!
Learned a new word from you, “neb”, to nose about as a bird with its beak, good word. But much more importantly you capture the bitter-sweetness for the reader vividly. “I would carve a functional family to live there with me, and you know, it just wouldn’t be the same.”
Wow. Just wow.
You capture that moment beautifully when you realise a house without the people who lived there for many years is an empty shell. What about how much smaller everything seems?
Beautiful story, Jamie. Must have been tough looking in that empty room; I could feel the pain along with you. Thanks for sharing
After five years of scheduling milk trucks I made the difficult decision to leave my good paying job working with people I truly enjoyed. I had been in charge of the Midwest and East regions; 850,000 gallons of raw milk on 175 tanker trucks every week. Cows don’t stop giving milk just because it’s December 25 and milk processing plants don’t stop bottling just because most people like to sleep during the dark hours. The job was 24/7, 365 days a year and I often wondered, which was more difficult, raising two kids by myself or being an organic milk truck dispatcher? Bottling plants break down, blizzards shut down interstates and milk gets rejected for quality issues; these are a few of the reasons I had gotten up at 2am to answer the phone or packed my laptop on every trip I had taken since starting the job.
When you work with a group of people who never really get a day off you become very close, as in misery-loves-company-close. I had chatted with these folks, some of whom I’d never met in person, thousands of miles away, at all hours of the day and night, during holidays, even from my bed in the intensive care unit one summer. Our whole lives consumed by the desire to get a jug of milk from the cow to the shelf.
My children had learned how to sleep through the night and had grown less dependent on me. Unfortunately, the milk world would never sleep through the night and would always need a warm body to answer the phone, take charge and make a decision. Many people leave jobs for more money elsewhere or because they dislike their managers or the people they work with but this was not my case, I was leaving because I needed to have a life .My psychic bandwidth was drowning in milk, I wanted to think about something else. Anything besides milk.
For three consecutive Springs I had tried to give notice, threatened to give notice to anyone who would listen. Cows calve in the Spring which leads to what is known as Spring Flush in the milk business, more milk than the trucks can pick up in a day, more milk than the processors can handle, more milk than the stores want to shelve. I still had to get to the milk picked up and to a plant that could receive it. To heck with “the mail must get through”, it was the “milk must get delivered”, letters can wait, milk goes sour. I was torn between the adrenaline rush of the chaos and being so stressed out I would get deathly ill each summer. When I finally gave notice no one believed I would leave, “The Girl Who Cried Wolf” was becoming my nickname. This year I solemnly replied, “Eventually the wolf shows up in that story”.
Once in awhile we have to turn our lives upside down, we have to move out of our comfort zone and head into uncharted territory without a map app or a gps or even one of those outdated impossible-to-refold paper maps. After telling milk trucks with no uncertainty where to go I was going to have to schedule a new life for myself. Sometimes we board the ship willingly, sometimes we go through the gangway against our will, but occasionally we will have to board the ship and we may look back on where we’ve lived with the bittersweet feelings of longing for the familiar and get me the hell out of here.
Scheduling milk trucks- that’s so unique! I love the narrator, Andrea, and how she solemnly replied, “Eventually the wolf shows up in that story.”
Andrea, this sentence is very compelling: “…people who never really get a day off you become very close, as in misery-loves-company-close,” I recognize it be true for so many people.
I also loved that misery-loves-company type of closeness in the workplace.. I lived in a small town where in the early hours of the morning we’d hear the bulk milk delivery trucks roaring through on their way to the city. Thanks for sharing your experience in this business.
She was the one, his sister and elder by fourteen years, to whom he preferred to go to be held, comforted, teased, when he was three and four and five. She was already well on the way to becoming who she is.
He grew up to be someone quite different.
The package came after a several month cessation of mail from her — and how she’d gotten his address could only be a credit to the digital age, he knew he’d not given it to her. He set the small box on the dining room table and tried to ignore it for two days, but its presence brought it all back — the disagreements, the pronouncements, the silent glares, big sister as moral authority, punctuated by heartfelt invitations (“we’d really love to see you”) to show up on Thanksgiving, Christmas, at the annual family reunion.
The telephoned verbal dressing-down from her over his choice of female companionship — that breath-taking, casually crazy-making, thieving young flame named _______, “that girl in your room” the day big sister had shown up unexpectedly; accompanied later not by an apology but by a justification (“I was only trying to protect you”), all of these come back in the interval of the two days, as he’d really known it would, to over-rule the initial touching of his heart.
The woman in the Post Office looked at him wide-eyed. “So you want to refuse it.” “Yes”. She stared at a point in space over his left shoulder for a space of time, perhaps considering security issues, perhaps deliberating whether to say more. Finally her shoulders sagged. “Okay.”
He walked out of the Post Office both lighter and heavy with the past.
very sad! I can totally relate to this piece, maybe someday theyll work out their disagreements 🙂
Hope springs eternal, doesn’t it? Thanks! 🙂
Nice story, John. I could feel all those memories flooding back in
Thank you, Paul.
It was like a little country road I
walked down; it was their new street. I looked and looked at it,
through eyes that were 20 hours jetlagged, ravenous to remember the
details. Closing the car door behind me I wanted to run into the
house to sit on every sofa and find the nooks that the children hid
in. But I walked slowly behind them, hearing not so much what they
were saying but hearing them. That tone of her voice! I remember
it, it’s when she’s tender and can’t say anything about love, but it
oozes out of her words. And look! He still lifts his head to his
hands when he’s passionate or nervous or both.
I’m really here. With them.
She points to the kitchen cupboards.
‘We fixed up the place when we came. It was a mess. But we got a
good deal and painted it up and it looks pretty good now.’
‘Yeah,’ he nods. ‘A whole lot better
than before.’
I’ve just walked into my favourite
space in the whole world – their lounge. A red wall here and
there, deep sofas, soft lamplight. It smells like home, that autumn
warm scent of theirs that hit my nose every time I walked into their
house, and told me I was safe again. The smell makes me want to cry
but I smile at them instead. There is a collection of framed
photographs – showing the children grow out of childhood
beautifully. They are sitting next to each other under the Tybee
gazebo as summer blazes around them. I wonder how they woke up that
morning – if Frank ripped open the covers of his sleeping children,
declared a beach day and bundled them into the car in half an hour.
We stumble around each other in those
first awkward moments when we are still navigating the time and space
that has been between us. I’m not worried about that – I know by
tomorrow night we’ll be in a new normal again. We’ll sit around the
table with a bottle of red and break fresh crusty bread, trying to
forget that in three weeks time I’ll be sitting in a plane, heading
the other direction.
I pick up things in this more by implication than by direct description, and that *can* be a good thing. A sense that people who are now ghosts of the past are more present to the narrator than the persons now occupying. And his/her knowledge of intervening events highlights the poignancy. Great phrases: “eyes that were 20 hours jetlagged” and “That tone of her voice! . . . when she’s tender and can’t say anything about love, but it oozes out of her words.”
I am intensely curious as to what happened “that morning”. Subtle and engaging.
This is awesome, zo-zo. My favorite parts are the smell of the lounge and the bottle of red wine and fresh, crusty bread. I’d like to read more of this!
Dear Zo-Zo, I love this: “It smells like home, that autumn
warm scent of theirs that hit my nose every time I walked into their
house, and told me I was safe again.” Right on the heart.
The wind had been her best friend for as long as she could remember. Now it was her only friend.
She loved the feeling of the soft, cool breeze caressing her skin. The wind enveloped her in its chilly embrace, dried her tears and tickled her nose.
She whispered her darkest secrets in it, knowing they would never be revealed.
“It’s a beautiful day,” It said as it rustled the trees and grasses and stirred up the creek.
“It is,” She agreed. “Thank you for adding to it,”
It brought out the emotions she tried so hard to cover up. It would bring out the tears, but it always dried them. It would pull out the joy, buried so deep, and match her elation.
It could be quiet when she needed to think, still present, still tickling her, but silent as the dead.
When she needed to let out her pain, to cry out, it would take her cries away, helping her get her hurt out.
“Be happy,” It would whisper on a hot, sunny day as it cooled her off.
“I want to,” She held out her hand and it passed through her fingers.
I love the feel of this Emma. Evocative and tender; you do well in characterising the wind as a person. I love how it brings and heals the emotions. I love ‘she held out her hand and it passed through her fingers’.
Thanks! It was my first time really using personification 🙂
Emma, this is so beautiful and sensitive.
so sensitive, so well written, so beautiful, and so fulfilling. I love the personification of the wind, and the first two sentences are very bittersweet. I love it, Emma. i’ll always remember the wind this way. 🙂
Thank you so much, Grace Blaze
Agree wholeheartedly with Grace and Zo-Zo. Just beautiful.
Thanks!
This is just so very sweet, I’ll never feel wind the same way again. Well done!
Thank you!
The day had finally come. Lacy watched her mother put on her lacy white dress. Aunt Patty helped Lacy put on her pearl earrings. Lacy felt her heart beat fast as they made their way with momma to the car.
When they arrived at the church, Grace, a family friend took pictures of everyone. Jim looked sort of nervous in his tailored suit. He didn’t smile much in the photos.
“You all are beaming!” Grace said.
Lacy thought everyone did look happy, even Monica, Jim’s daughter, was all smiles.
Then it was time to walk down the aisle. Momma had a maid of honor, Gertrude, and Jim had a best man, Sam. They walked arm in arm down the aisle. Cameras peeked over the pews and snapped photos.
Lacy tried to breathe as Monica walked out next. There were so many people. She heard them whisper about how beautiful Monica looked as she made her way toward the front pews.
Brad walked out next. Lacy knew he was nervous, too. His movements were stiff and he almost tripped when he had to take his seat next to Monica.
Lacy thought she wouldn’t be able to move when her turn finally arrived. She could feel the eyes of all the rows of people on her. Her mouth was a tight line and she watched her feet. The walk seemed like an eternity. Then finally she reached the front and sat next to her brother.
Her mind was elsewhere during the rest of the ceremony. She heard Jim and Momma say their vows and she heard the crowd cheer and laugh when they kissed. But she felt like she wasn’t really there.
Brad jabbed her in the side. “Get up, slow poke! We have to exit first.”
She made her way down the aisle again, but this time, knowing it was over she let a small sigh of relief escape.
She lay in the sterile white bed, her mouth smeared with the blood-orange disinfectant hospitals smeared any time something went into a living body. In this case, they were trying to disinfect the plastic breathing tube in her throat that was trying to keep the lungs functioning. Her breath came in and out quickly, short gasps. He was worried that no-one could survive on so little oxygen.The tiny emergency room physician had described Beth’s lungs were “like they were full of white out.”
Beth’s body was swollen with the fluids they had emptied into her in a vain attempt to flush out the contaminations or maybe it had something to do with easing the pressure on her fluid swamped lungs, he couldn’t remember. There were several sutures, some on her face, several on her arms from when the car rolled down the hill and into the river. They were tiny black lines with evenly placed short stitched to keep them closed.
Steve looked at her hands. The fingers were swollen, pudgy, like when she was a little girl. He took one and held it. The skin was taut, hard. No elasticity at all. The last time he had held her hand was a few weeks ago when they had gone on a college visit. As they were walking back to the car and she was animatedly talking about what she liked about this school, he reached over and picked up her hand. It was small, delicate and so soft. It was a young woman’s hand. He could feel it in his daughter’s still tiny but narrow fingers and the smoothness of her palm. He rubbed his thumb along the ridge of her knuckles, amazing that he could have had anything to do with such a beautiful creature.
“Dad, I’m too old to hold your hand in public.”
Yes, that might be true. But I am not.
Captures the intimacy of the father-daughter relationship. Well done. Like the way he looked so carefully at the stitches that seemed to hold hr together.
thank you
Bittersweet moments:
Remembering my first love at 13, I clinch in embarrassment of my budding
teenager body, in which new hormones raged incessantly every hour of the day. It was impossible of course. He was my martial arts trainer, a handsome black belt much older than I. Yet, I sat waiting and watching the junior class he was leading, in hope he would notice me. I had made myself pretty, I thought, but I was experiencing such shame of me doing this and at the same time the intimate feelings of my desires-come-true.
What would the outcome have been? I really had no idea, maybe just to be noticed. Obviously a 13 year at that time did not know much about what love entails compared to modern youths. But maybe it is the same.
The class came to the end, and here was my moment… He said hi, and walked right by me without further ado.
It hit me, both the release of running away home and getting out of the awkward situation, as I had put myself on the line. But also a sinking disappointment and confirmation that yes it is true: no-one really wants me! The conflict was as deep as the ocean.
On the way home, I was coaching myself about it, and decided to erase these feelings by the time I would arrive home. They were gone, except for today, when we were asked about bittersweet moments…, it stirred these conflicting emotions up like it happened an hour ago. My conclusion: I must be only 13 still!
“Who’s there?” Alyec’s feeble voice broke my heart. He was one of the strongest people I knew. It would take a lot to break him, and now he found his limits.
“Alyec?” I whispered, inching closer. “Are you okay?”
I could hear his breath catch in his throat. “Kay? Is that really you?”
By then I was at his feet, looking closely into his dark eyes. He looked good – in a sense that he looked perfectly healthy, like he was never close to death. “Yeah. How are you feeling?”
He shrugged. “Fine, I guess. I’m just tired of being here. I’ve been alone for a long time, no one but the doctors and nurses. And all they cared about was my health, never what I had to say. I’m glad you came. I’ve actually been wanting to talk to you.”
I smiled. “What about?”
He took a deep breath. “Well, I’m not the only one who hates being here, right?”
“Of course not. All of us are hating it here. Anthony’s even on the verge of running away.”
“And what did you think when he said he wanted to run?”
He finally looked up at me. I frowned, wishing I could read his mind. Did he agree with Anthony? Disagree? Or was there something more underneath his penetrating stare, something that I seemed to have missed this entire time?
When I spoke, my words hardly came out as more than a whisper. “I disagreed. I thought we should stay here, where we’ll be safe. Especially with Jevlin and his gang out there somewhere, looking for us. Why do you ask?”
“Well…” his voice was softer than mine. “I was thinking it would be better to leave.”
For a long while I acted as if I hadn’t heard. I wasn’t sure what to say to him. Should I agree with him and Anthony? I was sure Myra would, and Blake would take whatever decision Myra did.
And Sabrina had died last week, the day we had arrived here.
“Kay?” Alyec said, his face expressionless.
But I refused to answer. At least, not yet. I had to think. If the five of us chose to run, there were so many bad things that could happen. For one, if the doctors still wanted us here, that meant we weren’t fully recovered yet. We would be asking for death on the road. Not to mention we would be such an easy target to Jevlin Shatari. And how would we even know where to go? I had no idea where we were; I just woke up in this hospital a week ago, as did the others. It’s not like we could survive on our own for who knew how long without proper survival equipment, food, or water. We were taught to survive in the toughest of situations, but we still had not yet learned everything. We hadn’t reached graduation, we were only fourteen-fifteen. And Anthony was barely thirteen.
However, if we stayed at the hospital, who knew how long they would keep us here? Could they possibly be trapping us? But we did feel very safe, the locked doors and high security keeping out anyone wishing to kill us. We were being treated properly here, with food, water, and anything we needed right at our fingertips. How could any of us even think about leaving?
Nevertheless, I also hated being stuck here. My birthday was in two days, and if we weren’t let out by then, I might just have to run with my friends.
***Im not too sure about the bittersweet moments, and in case its not clear— Kay and Alyec are crazy happy to get to talk to each other after a while, but they’re incredibly catious and scared about what situation might come next or about what they should do. Not sure if this is a very strong example of bittersweet, though…***
I don’t know I find both sweet and bitter in Kay and Alyec’s relationship. Sweet in that they obviously love each other as close friends at the very least. Being trapped and in fear for their lives supplies the bitter. This reads like a piece of a good suspense story. Elements like, what is the extent of their injuries that none of them are completely recovered? and how difficult is it gonna be to escape a hospital with such tight security? and of course, what was the nature of the original conflict with the gang? — would perhaps need to be fleshed out. I hope you’ll keep writing!
thank you, this piece is actually part of a much larger novel im working on. that excerpt was somewhere in the middle of the overall outcome, so im sorry if i confused you. 🙂
Not at all, that’s good news!
“I wish I’d never kissed you.”
I read this with different tones of voice and emphasis and punctation-fun!
!!
This was really tough for me. Here’s what I could come up with in 15 minutes.
“I can’t tell you how much I’m
looking forward to having this place cleaned up. Thanks for helping,
Carl. Once I’ve got my stuff organized, you won’t believe how
efficient I’ll be.”
Sarah had been a dreamer ever since the
fifth grade. She was never organized, and she was rarely efficient.
Carl smiled good-naturedly.
“I’m happy to help, Sarah. I always
find it’s more fun to clean a friend’s house than your own. You get
all of the satisfaction of a job well done with none of the
self-recrimination for letting things get out of hand.”
“Hey!” She threw a shoe at him. “I
want you to know that there is a perfectly good reason for all of
this. There was the cat getting stuck in the dryer vent, my missing
shoe, the cheese volcano in the kitchen. . . All of those things take
time away from. . . Well, organizing.” She grinned.
He laughed and threw a book at her. A
piece of paper fluttered to the floor. It was folded four times and
yellow around the edges. It had a faint scent of dust. She picked it
up curiously.
It read:
When time danced like roses
When breathing was new
When moonbeams spanned spaces
I first thought of you.
“Oh, my God.” Sarah crumpled to the
floor and pulled her legs beneath her. She held the note to her
heart. She eyed it and cried. She turned to Carl, “I’m sorry. I. .
. It’s just a cheesy, bad love poem. I just didn’t know it was here.
It’s a piece of him that I didn’t know existed. I can’t believe he’s
dead. It’s been seven years, but it still. . . I’m sorry, Carl. You
know you’re my boyfriend now. Is it ok if I just cry a little? He
must have hidden that note years ago.”
“Oh, Sarah,” he held her close with
shaking hands.
I enjoyed the flow of it, Sweater – nice work. Wasn’t expecting the poem. I could feel Sarah’s pain as the memories came back. Thanks for sharing!
Hopefully the happiness came through, too. The tough part for me was coming up with a scene that was both happy and sad. She got a piece of him back but was also reminded of her loss. I was also trying to convey a bittersweet moment for Carl in that he got to be there for her, but it was also tearing him up that she was still hung up on her dead boyfriend. Thanks for your comment, Paul. 🙂
This is nice! I like the humor in the way they interact, with lots of heart at the end. I think the “cheesy, bad love poem” is lovely.
Greg didn’t quite know why he’d decided to make this stop on the way to his parents’ farm. The many times he’d passed through this little town he’d always just stolen a quick look at the redbrick building dreaming in the sun from where it overlooked the town.
It was the past week that the seed planted by these stolen glances had finally
germinated.
As he walked up the entrance driveway of his old school a strange feeling arose. He swallowed. The façade of the main building was as forbidding as it had always been.
Perhaps that’s why they’d preferred to use the side entrance, the one that
approached this place from the side, rather than brave this long lonely walk after the main gate.
He hesitated as he came closer. More memories flooded back. The traffic circle in front was where they assembled mornings, freezing cold in winter, uncomfortably hot in summer. Behind the principal the gimlet –eyed teachers would array themselves. With arms folded they stared right into your soul.
Behind them, immediately after the entrance, the principal’s office stood to one side..
He quickly snapped a photo, and moved to the sports fields. Instead of conjuring up memories of Saturday mornings when they filled the little stand and cheered their side on, the place felt deserted, and as empty as it looked.
He stopped somebody passing by, the only person he’d seen the whole morning. “Will they mind if I take some pictures?”
“No, not at all,” she said.
He pointed to beyond the hedge. “What are all those new buildings behind there?”
She shrugged. “ I’m not a teacher. I only work here.”
She turned on her heel and moved on quickly.
Her reply decided him. There was no one to share his memories. He replaced his camera and walked back slowly to his car.
The past couldn’t be brought back to life again. Recalled over a photo album
with friends perhaps, but not relived. School had been a mission, a time when you gritted your teeth and waited to graduate. When last two years finally dawned you counted down the seasons, the months, then the weeks till the fateful day.
Yet their was something else he missed.
Over the last thirty years sudden flashes of insight had shown him why he was who he was, why he did things a certain way, where his likes and dislikes had been formed.
The emptiness was in himself grasping at straws. Like his teachers and friends he’d changed, and moved on.
If he’d popped in on a Saturday he’d only have stuck out like a sore thumb..
And yet. However unpleasant school had been, would he have had it any other way? If so, would his life have turned out any different?
Great descriptioon of the school’s building’s and his memories of the place-very uncomfortable but also accepting..
Thanks guys. That’s what I wanted to say. It actually happened to me when I dropped in on my old school.
Good conveyance of the feeling of wanting it to be as it was but it’s just not. “Her reply decided him”, interesting sentence!
I don’t remember anything else about the game except it the sun was shining and I was at bat. The pitcher threw one that must have looked good to me, and I swung hard. Crack! The ball sailed far over the second baseman’s head and the outfielders had to turn and chase it.
I was standing at home plate, watching the baseball sail out of sight, when I heard my coach and teammates yelling.
“Run! Run!”
So I ran. And scored a home run. I don’t remember if we won the game or not, but who cares? I’d scored a home run.
What could possibly be wrong with this scene? Only that none of my family was there to see it. My dad was a lifelong baseball fan (and former player in college). He also got busy with things when he got home from work, so must have had something else to do that day. My mom and brother usually didn’t come to my games anyway.
When I think back about that day, I always remember two things. I scored the only home run of my little league career, and I had to ride my bike home to tell Dad about it.
The fact that your Dad wasn’t there is exactly why you hit the home run! My son had one of his best games during one of the very few occasions I couldn’t be there. I bet it was a great bike ride home, big grin plastered across your face?
Thanks for the note, Andrea. I was really proud of that hit! Never did anything like that again
A well told story. I like the absence of sentimentality, the fact that while you were probably disappointed that no one in your family (especially your dad) was there to see it, that didn’t stop you from enjoying the heck out of it!
Thank you, John!
I write short snippets of poetry about bittersweet moments with lots of imagery.
I softly sighed to myself. As hard as I was trying to to exhale the feelings away, it just wasn’t working. My heart was sinking to my stomach in a way that no amount of careful preparations and planning for this moment could do to stop it. I was frozen in time, stuck to my seat. My red gown was unable to cover my mask of uneasiness and uncertainty. I tried not to squirm in my chaai as I played with my hands and gawked at the hundreds of people on the bleachers. I’m going to miss this place, I realized. Everything we’ve been through, every laugh and every tear, every struggle and victory has linked me and everyone to this place. And the PTA expects us to sit through a ceremony, wish us off, hand us a piece of paper and we can just walk out fine? Who in their right mind would want to say goodbye to the golden era of recesses, innocence, and first loves? When people tell you about growing up, they’ll tell about going to school, getting married, settling down with a job. What they don’t tell you is the stuff in between. The oogy gooy cheesy memories and wonderful people that you can’t really understand, or explain, but somehow shape you as a person more than anything else possibly fathomable. Whenever I lost my friends, lost my health, or just lost my way, school has always been there to make me feel whole again. What would happen to me if it wasn’t? I wondered. I realize that there will be much bigger, better things that will happen to me besides my middle school graduation ceremony, but at this moment there really isn’t. High school is a new chapter, a new battle, a place where we’re skyrocketing topsy turvy to, unsure of where we’ll land. I realized we weren’t sitting here today in this moment to say goodbye, we were sitting here to celebrate our accomplishments. And weather i was ready or not, it was happening. I boldly look up from the monotonous voice that is my teacher’s. I open up my diploma one last time and read the name. Sarah- the girl who made it. I looked around the room. Class of 2013- the people I’d never forget.
I’m not going to pretend that my writing is anything special but if you want to take a look, this is what I came up with.
Bittersweet is a word we often use to describe a transitional moment in our lives. The opposing elements of this adjective beg the question, how can something be bitter, yet
sweet, simultaneously? How can it drag you down to the morbid depths of sadness, and elevate you to a state of ecstasy? According to the Pauli Exclusion Principle, two things cannot occupy the same space at the same time. Therefore, it is impossible to be in two places at once. This line of reasoning would imply that the human psyche cannot be in
two different states. However, emotions throw logic and reasoning to the wind. Maybe it is unimportant to understand how we can experience a bittersweet moment; maybe embracing the moment and being fully cognizant of the emotion is what truly matters. A bittersweet occasion I would like to reflect on is the end of a school. Right now, on
the eve of my final day of this school year, I am sitting in front of my computer at a complete loss for understanding. I want two things that are in complete opposition to each other. I want school to end, just like every other college student. I want to be done with studying, finals, and deadlines. But at the same time, the prospect of school being over makes me sad. I think the reason why it makes me sad is because I will not know what to do after it ends. Not knowing what comes next in the story is scary. That’s what makes it interesting though. The desire to know is what keeps us on the edge of our seat. We cannot predict the future, and any day could be our last. Only God knows what tomorrow will bring. There’s a saying that goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell him about your plans.” This phrase epitomizes the unwritten rule that things will never turn
out the way you expected them to. Ever since I was a little kid, I had ideas about how my future would unravel. Nearly every one of those notions were wrong, some in positive ways and some in negative ways. All throughout elementary, middle, and high school, I was seen as “a good kid” for the most part. I came from a well-to-do Catholic
family with three siblings, and very strict parents. No one ever thought I was capable of doing anything remotely “bad.” Shortly after I turned 18 I broke the good boy stereotype.
I was arrested for 3 times in a period of 2 years. I never would have ever thought I would find myself in a pair of handcuffs, yet that’s exactly what happened. Going through those experiences made me reevaluate my whole life. The first thing I thought was, “I’m not a criminal.” Yet I was being treated like one by everybody. That scared me. My mother always told me that the two most important things you have are your health and your good name, and my good name was being run through with a spear, hoisted over a fire, and consumed by the flames. It was then that I began to consider what I truly wanted out of life, because I sure as hell wasn’t on the right track to getting it. Things had to change. It is still a struggle to decide what I want. By my reckoning, I probably only have 80 years or so left (but with advances in modern science, hopefully much longer…I would not be opposed to immortality). What do I want to accomplish before I turn to dust? We only live once, and there is not enough time in the world for all the things I want to see, have, and
do. I don’t want to look back on my life one day and say “shit, I didn’t do anything.” I haven’t come up with a solution to address this problem but the best course of action I can think of for now is to give 100% effort, 100% of the time. I want to give 100% in work, play, romance, and self-improvement. It might be exhausting to always give 100%,
but we can sleep when we’re dead. A proverb once said, “Time and tide wait for no man.”
I’ll be damned if I leave this world before I
have my cake and eat it too.
It had been years since I’ve returned to this city. It seemed foolish to hope that it would remain the same,yet despite this I still clung onto the memory of the city that I knew. This was what ‘home’ was meant to look like to me, I wanted to proudly still say that I knew this place ‘like the back of my hand’. As I walked around the streets, trying to find some familiarity in a once familiar place I felt incredibly lost. Until I found that one dessert parlor my friends and I had frequented, it was ‘Icy Ice’ and it still had the same friendly penguin on it’s sign, waving at me in that same friendly manner as though it was welcoming me back. I must’ve looked crazy, looking up and smiling at a cartoonish penguin. I could feel that nostalgia creeping up on me, as I peered into, or rather stared at the happy youths who laughed over a bowl of shared dessert.
If only I could describe how much I wished I could return to those times. Looking at them only made me want to smile with tears budding in the corners of my eyes. To laugh but cry at the same time as I replayed all of the adventures in my youth with people that was the world to me. I looked down quickly, slightly embarassed to be seen standing outside a dessert parlor staring creepily inside.
I left, unable to bear being there a moment longer. My search became more desperate, I went looking for bakeries I always visited. The bookstore which the most friendliest storeowner that always allowed you to drink and read her books for however long you wanted, the department store I bought cologne for my first boyfriend or even the alleyway my friends and I ran down on, chased by the patrolling officer who wanted to confiscate our skateboards. They were all gone.
Feeling defeated I turned down the alley to return the way I came, until something caught my eye– a small piece of graffitied wall that boldly stated. ‘Our city, 1992’. Where I gently traced our names that were carved deeply into the brick.
I continued walking down the street, ignoring the stares of a secretly smiling but teary eyed stranger wandering the streets of Perth.