Friday Night Winnings

Last year I stumbled across an entry form for the Bethesda Literary Festival Essay Contest, and on a whim, entered the contest. The topic was "Home," which was a theme I felt well versed on and the topic of an essay I'd written in college, so I whittled the 10+ pages down to 500 words and entered. Happily, I won 3rd place and $150.

This year, I received the entry form in the mail with instructions that this year's topic was "Bethesda." I could write anything I wanted, but the essay or fictional piece had to include at least one place in downtown Bethesda. Hmmm. A little harder and definitely not something I'd written about before. But once I thought about, I came up with an idea and the essay flowed pretty easily. Last Friday, eight finalists were summoned to Barnes & Noble for a reading. The four Honorable Mentions were called up, and my name wasn't read. Then the four prize winners were called up, and I was among this group. (Pshew, I hadn't accidentally been called and was indeed a finalist.) Each place was announced, and the corresponding essay was read. I was definitely the youngest person in the adult category, with the oldest a self-declared 80 years old, and the rest primarily middle-aged. After 4th and 3rd prizes were announced, myself and the 80 year old were the only two left. And then they called her name (well, it wasn't my name and she responded, so presumably her name) for the 2nd place prize. Which meant that I had placed first. With this came $500 and a free class at the Writing Center...along with all the accolades I could handle. Actually one woman did ask if I had any books she could buy, but I think she was a little nutty.

Anyhow, for your reading pleasure, I'm including the essay below. It's a fictionalized personal essay, meaning the events are real, but they didn't necessarily unfold in the way they're portrayed, and the people are also real, but are more characters than real-life portrayals. (I'm including this disclaimer so as to avoid any James Frey incidents. Please no Oprah breakdowns, people.)

LIES OF OMISSION

As my husband and I pedal along the Capital Crescent trail, I keep a watch out for turtles, yelling out the number I glimpse sunbathing on logs or somersaulting into the canal, hoping that one of us will remember so that I can tell my grandma how many we saw. When I see her, which isn’t as often as I’d like, or when I talk to her, which isn’t as often as I should, I tell her about our bike rides. I talk about the leaves that catch on the breeze, pirouetting through sun and shadow before landing on the trail. I tell her about the kids pumping their legs so hard that the training wheels on their bikes lift off from the ground and they glide unknowingly on only two wheels. We laugh together about the freshman kayakers who can’t get their boats to go in a straight line, and she asks whether the little girls who were once selling sugary lemonade and gooey brownies were on the trail that day.

When there’s not a bike story to tell, I’ll recount my trips to the Bethesda Farmer’s Market, and together we’ll fawn over the earthy smell of ripe tomatoes and the way that smell always takes me back home to Kentucky summers and BLT sandwiches on the back porch. Sometimes I’ll mention the deer I spy out the window when I’m cleaning dinner dishes at twilight or tell her about the black squirrels so common here.

I keep track of details and file away images so that I always have a story to share with her. But there are so many details I leave out. I don’t tell her about sitting on the floor of Barnes & Noble, a teetering stack of books beside me, as I searched for the perfect guide to bike trails in the area. And I never make her laugh at stories about my attempts to conquer chopsticks during sushi dinners at Matuba. Art gallery hops and Barking Dog Friday night specials find no place in my stories.

It’s not that she wouldn’t be interested in those details, but that those details would complicate her world in a way that I wouldn’t know how to fix. She is at that age now where she spends most of her time looking backwards rather than forwards. She lives in memories—with brown hair, smooth skin, regal posture. She does not recognize the mirror’s reality—the grey hair, the lined face, the body being pulled towards the earth.

And so as not to shatter her fragile cobweb of memories, I don’t tell her that the town she remembers as Bethesda—a town of farmhouses and cornfields where my uncle lived when he once called Maryland home—is not, and was not, Bethesda. Instead, I filter my reality to fit her memory, pulling out the idyllic and removing the urban. Through lies of omission, I make my Bethesda hers.