In the minds of ESL exam candidates, e ssay writing is one of the most daunting tasks they are required to complete, regardless of the level of the exam, the administering body or the ease with which they themselves use the language. The same applies to students who are asked to write an essay by their teachers at school. In the previous sample essays posted on the blog, the main point I stress is the need to become acquainted with this form of writing (as opposed to writing a letter, review or report, for instance), to get a feel of what authorial voice is and how to organize and progressively express the arguments you wish to make in a coherent manner. Unfortunately, the best way to prepare for exam writing or learn how to write good essays for school is to read as many essays from as many sources as possible, then write as
Reminder on your Birthday
It was September 15, around 19.30 when she got the call. His voice sounded muffled, like when you’ve been to the dentist’s and have a cotton swab plugging a recently extracted wisdom tooth. The 14th, the day before, celebrated the Holy Cross – Elevation of the Holy Cross in Eastern Orthodoxy to be more precise – a day she was told you should ponder the large burden or burdens you must bear that existentially challenge you. She couldn’t rightly say she had bore excessively backbreaking burdens because she always compared her difficulties to the worst kind faced by the disadvantaged, physically or mentally challenged, those whose childhoods had left indelible scars. No, her mind deleted most things, but here was a day when she sensed she’d have to carry a cross or two for a change.
“I’m in hospital, but I’m ok.” Road accident that could’ve cost him his life, but for now, fractured pelvis and a few cracked ribs to liven things up, scratches and bruises sprucing up the cocktail. Surgery avoided, yet total, don’t-move-or-it-won’t-heal bed rest instructed until date unknown. Images of caskets were laid to one side, no doubt, though what joys, still unbeknownst, lay ahead were being extrapolated in a frenzy of uncertainty.
The big giant of a dog felt glum that evening, and she thought it was because he hadn’t seen his alpha return. What she didn’t know was that for the next few weeks right alongside the bed pans, urinals, catheters, minor and major crises requiring the urgent need for a doctor who could explain why catheters jam up and how to flush them, daily anticoagulant shots, panic with her own work schedule, cooking, cleaning, pungent smell of chlorine and basic care of the other numerous feathered creatures he kept as pets, she would have to give her dog whatever comfort she could to see him off in his final days. They were both home, incapacitated and she'd have to pick up the pieces.
Waking up every four hours on good nights, every hour on bad nights, every half hour on the worst of nights, then dealing with daily chores the following morning, pushed her to reach limits she never imagined she could physically and mentally endure. Yet endure she did.
Not well when it came to the dog, though. He was on his way to recovery, lying in bed, waiting for bones to mend; the dog on the other hand, went from bad to worse, no matter how many chicken delicacies she prepared for him. Once, when she thought he was gone for good after he’d exerted himself to reach the front yard to pee, all flesh and bone after having lost a tremendous amount of weight, those fine, strong muscles she’d built together with him on cold winter mornings when she’d kick the ball up the inclined back yard, and he’d run on his scrawny teenage legs, close his teeth around it then after checking she was waiting at the lower end of the garden, let it loose, watch it roll down, land on her feet after which, for the umpteenth time, she’d deftly shoot it like a foul kick up at him, the waiting little black mass; once, when she thought he was in his final moments, slumped on the front porch, end October it was, his eyes closed, yellow mucus covering his eyelids, she sat stroking him for hours, not wanting him to feel alone in his ordeal. They had told her not to go close to him because at this stage, dogs subsist in a parallel-world state, aware only of the pain they feel, reacting only to a reality akin to Tolkien’s Wraith-world she imagined. “He’ll bite you,” they said. He never did, not even when his gaze seem transfixed in bleakness, passing through her as if she weren’t there. Not even when at three in the morning she’d put all her weight behind her boy to lift his haunches while his front legs struggled to hoist his body up so in his trance, he could go outside, relieve himself and drink some water, then mechanically return to continue aching home, an incessant agony of jaw-clenched lamentations. His plaintive cries ceased eventually, when the light went out of his eyes after the first shot was administered to him.
Twice before, together, they had witnessed this trauma of seeing their dog put down. This was the first time they were not there together to send their child off. She dealt with it outside, while he was lying alone, several meters away, inside, immobile, on doctor’s orders.
November turned to December. Slow but steady healing. That’s when her bleeding started and she thought it was her perimenopause kicking in again same time in twelve months.
End of December he was on his feet again. January came along. Then covid struck. He had a terrible fever, weakened by four months of medication. She, on the other hand, had a light fever for a few hours, a headache and a nagging small clump of phlegm she kept trying to get rid of with a soft “ghmm.” It was the bleeding that alarmed her. She was losing parts of her insides now, every half hour and had nowhere to go in total pandemic lockdown. Eventually, defiant of the televised medical compendium of facts, they both lived, and she booked an appointment to see a GYN.
March. D&C effectuated. Atypical hyperplasia diagnosed. She waited to see how things would go, though recommendations were for a hysterectomy. Follow-up appointment in May sent her packing to get an MRI. The MRI wasn’t good. Change of doctor and first surgery with possible second surgery required depending on a new biopsy. First surgery: womb, fallopian tubes, ovaries out in the end. Biology was a lesson she liked in high school. It had come in quite handy in understanding what was being removed. Subsequent biopsy not good. Lumps in ovaries weren’t just well-wisher heralds to her menopause. They were hatching a plot to take over her body, which necessitated further delving to see how far they’d gotten, how many other cells they’d managed to turn, collaborators in a new Vichy under Pétain. Second surgery dealt with omentum and 62 lymph glands. The video she was shown a few weeks later looked really cool. Her surgeon had done a great job. Her insides had become another Petralona Cave, while the ostentatious eight holes on her belly she laughed off as “gangster retaliation” to any who asked after her health. Subsequently she ascertained that compression socks during July heat waves alongside self-injecting herself at elevenish in the evening for thirty days was gangster retaliation enough for her. Recovery is still ongoing, intestines and lymphatic fluid permitting.
In the end, what did she take from all this you might ask? For one thing, eleven difficult months by all accounts. By her accounts, she took the laughter after all the tension, the apologies at jabbing the syringe then pushing the plunger in too quick, releasing the painful liquid; the question to the tall male nurse as he wheeled her into the lift, “What music do you think they’ll have playing in there as they operate on me?” She took the memories of a four-legged family member who’d taught her more about what human nature ought to be like than all the combined works and bibliographies of mankind. She beheld her man in his frailty. She took the less charming side of human existence and found it romantic.
What did they both take from these eleven months? He was not one to offer her candle-lit dinners or volumes filled with sonnets, outings to sophisticated social gatherings and cultural evenings where one might dispute the veracity of actor’s lines and insight of playwrights, no walks along the beach by moonlight, nor precious trinkets placed in velvet boxes that opened to women’s startled gasps. She wasn’t one to say cute little nothings either. Always too practical, often too uptight about duties, always in wary anticipation of things to come. They were both definitely not made to discuss things together, ruminate over them like grown-ups, but then there came the bed pans and the doctor’s appointments, flashlight apps to view catheter residue, enema stories, hours of waiting in hospital wards, puffy-faced and etherized disciple of T.S. Eliot brought back to the same bed by the window twice in three weeks. These were all actions done and words not spoken, more genuine than eternal vows. This was life rolled up into a ball and made to chase behind their chariot.
This was their story. One year of it, all tears and laughter till more tears came, good tears, tears that make you wet your panties because you’re laughing so much. Small cross to bear when the rewards are so many.