Dry Runs

A week or so ago, my husband was away for the night. When I went to bed, I had a moment. You've had them, too, right? Those moments when reason flies out the door? Those moments when imagination creeps in and all is lost?

Sure you have. I used to have them when the kids when were small. We lived rurally. I walked them to and from the bus stop. Some days as I walked up to meet their afternoon bus, I would "see" the accident I had just missed. The bus overturned, the offending truck spinning wheels, my child bleeding, me running to get to them….

Okay, so none of that happened. Nor did I ever arrive just in time to see my babies being driven off by a stranger. Nor did I get a call that my husband had been knifed. However, if any of those things had happened, I would have been ready. I'd been practicing.

So, the other night, as I turned off my lamp, alone except for a deaf dog with no rear-end motor strength, I "heard" someone in the house. I "felt" him creep up the stairs. My heart started beating faster, I wondered what I should do? Would the phone lines be cut? Was he standing out in the hall? Did he have a gun? I ran through the gamut of emotions, caught between fight and flight. And all the while this was happening, I was totally aware that it WASN'T happening. It was all in my head. The fear was tempered by this knowledge. It was like a rehearsal for a nightmare and I stopped to consider the emotions flitting through my head and the physical responses that occur in your body when fear (ever imaginary) sets in. It's so easy to stick a poor hapless character into this kind of situation and orchestrate her triumph or perhaps her demise, but another matter entirely if it were truly to happen to you. I began working on dialogue...

It made me wonder… not being a particularly scatty person, not one to live in fear or prone to craziness, is this a writer trait? Are these occasional dry runs part of the "what if " aspect a fiction writer has to develop?

Like everyone else, I have lived through true heartaches. The loss of a father, of a brother. The dementia of my mother. The infrequent anguish of my grown children or close friends. Illness, fear -- you can't get to my age without experiencing all of these things. In those instances, however, it's not usually the depth of emotions I recall, it's the physical details. The color of a blanket, the sound of opera playing in a hospital room, the smell of too many cut flowers going rancid. Apparently, I save the emotional response memories for fictional situations I create in my head.

But I tell you this. It was very hard to turn off the light that night and crawl into bed and I did check the phone -- just in case.

Does this ever happen to you?