By Barbara Neal Varma //
Every morning I drag myself out of bed, stretch to make sure everything still works, and say a little prayer. Let this be a good writing day, amen.
By that I mean a day without conflict or strife. No distracting dramas sneaking in while I’m making tea. (I see you, 2020!)
Optimistic, perhaps, especially during current times, but Heaven is known for its magic and miracles, and I truly believe is on our side.
Indeed, some mornings, wish granted, woot! Peace prevails throughout the land, or at least my little corner of it, and I get my groovy writing goals done.
Others, not so much. Calm is replaced with disturbances in the force that show up uninvited, like gray hairs on a Sunday morning or cold oatmeal.
Take yesterday—please. Our air conditioning had sprung a leak again, ugh, and while in the middle of sopping up that wet mess, hubby and I hear the sound that strikes fear in every cat owner’s heart: the dreaded hairball rasp. I rush over just in time to see one of our two kitties miss the easy-clean tile in favor of our new carpeting, installed only last year when the A/C had leaked the first time, so, full circle.
Now, I do realize and appreciate these are little things when compared to the big-picture crises caused by a pandemic; but still, they can set me off track. By high noon I was nuking leftover spaghetti and abandoning the page for the couch and Netflix, selecting Saving Mr. Banks because 1) I needed a Disney fix while the park is still dark, and 2) Tom Hanks makes me happy.
Three quarters of the way in, my prayers were answered.
The scene: Walt Disney, played by my guy Tom, is trying to win over P.L. Travers, author of the Mary Poppins books. After courting her for more than twenty years, he finally realizes why she’s been so stubbornly reluctant to sign over the movie rights.
“It’s about him, isn’t it?” Walt/Tom asks, referring to her beloved father gone too soon when she was still a child.
When she looks away, Disney gently presses on, delivering a compelling speech that (spoiler alert) ends with: “George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.”
My popcorn-laden hand froze in midair. We—storytellers—restore order with imagination.
That’s when it hit me. I realized with a clarity born of comfort carbs that some of my best stories have been about my worst days. What happened, what I learned, how I found the strength to rise above; to laugh, even, in the face of some pretty awful times. Writing it down helped me to make sense of it all, and hopefully helped others, too, facing similar cold-oatmeal moments.
Another silent prayer, this time not waiting until morning. Thank you, God! Thank you Tom Hanks as Walt Disney!
Thank you for helping me to see that all those times when I prayed for a good writing day and all heck broke loose, that’s exactly what I got.
It’s a storied world, after all.
BARBARA NEAL VARMA is a contributing writer to Orange Coast Magazine and has appeared in other notable publications, including The Atlantic. Her easy-humor personal essays have proven popular with readers, one gaining numerous hits on Orange Coast Magazine‘s website. (Hello: Desperately Seeking Donny.) You can learn more at BarbaraNealVarma.com.