First Workshop in NC.

This workshop was conducted by Frances Lefkowitz.  She is the author of several books, and has many awards under her belt. She was fantastic. I absolutely loved being in that workshop. Beautiful person, and full of knowledge which she graciously share with us. Her way of teaching was very simple and to the point. Very creative with her words and very supportive of our work.

She gave these prompts for us to write a micro memoir in fifteen minutes.

Blue, Mangle, Perfume, Altitude, Badger, Scarf and Wish.

Here’s what I wrote.

{The call came around 4:30 in the morning. “Dr. Ali, there is a homicide, and we need you for the autopsy in the morning.”  It was my birthday, and my first thought was ‘oh I wish I didn’t have to do this autopsy!’

I drove up to St. Mary’s Hospital, which was on a hill top with an altitude of about 3000 feet. Not a long distance, but it irked me nevertheless. that I had to do this on a Sunday- and, on my birthday.

What I saw, I cannot forget to this day. A little boy with blue eyes, bordered with blood, his little body badgered and bruised, arms mangled, and his eyes staring out, as if wishing for deliverance from parents that abused him

There was a scarf on a chair in the morgue, with some blood splattered on it. I was not sure where the paramedics had found it, but we did take pictures of it . And as I started the autopsy, I realized that for the first time in recent memory, I had left the house without wearing any perfume.}

Ta daah!

I was so thrilled, because every one clapped and really liked my writing. And Frances critiqued my memoir by praising it, sentence by sentence.  By the way this was not a fiction. This really happened in 1980.