Wild Onions Online

A journal of creative writing, photography, and visual art created by members of the entire Penn State College of Medicine and Hershey Medical Center community

Consider the Paper Bag

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Judge’s Choice for Creative Writing in the Faculty and Healthcare Providers Category

© Kenna Chuplis, BSN, RN, CGRN, Endoscopy

My mother cut open the paper bag and presented it flat on the kitchen counter. Her tongue tipped from her lips in concentration as she measured and marked two inches from the top and bottom of the bag. Gold glittered nails creased two folds with surgical precision. She raised my physical science textbook and nestled it in the brown cocoon. All 6th grade textbooks must be covered by Friday. Deft thumbs, cracked at the corner near the nail, coaxed the covers into the new sleeves. She wrote the word “science” in neat bold letters across the cover. My mother took a deep breath, ran her hands, creased like crepe paper, across the coarse paper cover then tucked the gem into my book bag.
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The clerk told me, “I’m sorry we are out of plastic bags with the virus, we only have paper.” He could only see my eyes with my mask, but he could tell I wasn’t happy. I was tired and sure the bottom of this glorified lunch bag was going to give out. “Okay,” I told him. I paid and a pit rose in my stomach as I watched him bag. I envisioned walking to my car and the gallon busting through the bottom of the bag, smashing to the ground, and milk gurgling from the cracked plastic, lost to the blacktop. My oranges, zesty, bright as the sun rolled from reach, now bruised and smashed. Myself, a stone in my gut, deserted, everyone else 6 feet away. I heard a voice, “Miss, your change.” I made my way to the car holding my breath. The bags held. I tucked them in the trunk.
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When dressing, pearls are the last thing that you put on and the first thing that you take off. They are delicate and special, easily damaged and should be kept in their own jewelry pouch. I do not have a pearl pouch. I have a brown paper sandwich bag.
The bag is for our masks, it lets them breathe. In the morning I pluck my mask from said bag. The bag, once crisp with clean lines and right angles now resembles an iron-only dress shirt dredged from the bottom of a laundry bag. Soon, all you see are my eyes.
I ate an orange for lunch; the flesh was shriveled, resigned. I carry the stone in my gut constantly now; days have turned to weeks, to months. It’s like breathing underwater. We bump elbows, no hugs or handshakes. My last patient’s name is Alice. I meet her. Her hands are folded on her lap; her skin is crepe paper, like a party streamer for a celebration I haven’t been to in months. Before I can introduce myself she grabs my hands in hers. I hold my breath. Cups them like a prayer and says, “Some days are twos and some days are tens, honey this won’t last forever.” I can feel my face grow hot. My eyes well but my tears hold. The stone in my gut shifts. I exhale.
Stones are for sinking. Pearls are born of irritation and strife. This alchemy of pain is more than a stone. I breathe. I carefully print my name across the top of a fresh paper bag and nest my mask inside. I fold the top about two inches with surgical precision. I held. Today I tuck hope inside myself.

Judge’s Comment:

Using a humble, tactile object as a constant to link disparate experiences, this piece shows the surprising strength both of this material and the people who handle it. It captures perfectly the mundane and extraordinary aspects of life during this pandemic.

Pentimenti in an Empty House

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Judge’s Choice for Best Themed Creative Writing

© Judy Schaefer, RN
Member, The Doctors Kienle Center for Humanistic Medicine

House is clean, packed up, carried out.
All wrapped, taped, secured, fresh paint.
The truck, containing evidence of who we are,
accelerates with gusts of fume from our curb,
pointing north with two drivers for the night.

The sky turns ashen as we back out
on the heavily sealed driveway.
Our car lights strafe the windows
casting shadows on walls in vacant rooms,
releasing flames onto storm door glass.

Ahead of us, now four states out,
bridges to cross, unknown rivers.
Amazing tunnels. Mountains and rolling hills.
Quick stops. Checking maps. Fries. Burgers.
Knowing now, we could have turned back.

Judge’s Comments:
I relished reading this piece because the words invoked images with each line. These images brought up thoughts of change from that which once was. The word pentimenti as used in art is the representation of an underlying image in a painting, especially one that has become visible. Just like the rooms of this empty house, which will reveal new colors on the once sunbathed walls, and floors where furniture once sat, and paintings once hung. These protected spots will reveal a transparency of their original existence.

An Open Letter to My Wife

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Judge’s Choice for Best Creative Writing  in the Staff, Family,
and Community Category

© Anthony Sedun
Son of Yvonne Sedun, RN, Pain Clinic, Retired

The deer climb the steep hill in the forest and emerge daily
toward late afternoon and dusk, crossing almost casually
the field downhill from our house.

Zach and I assembled the kids’ playset months ago
in the cool dusk, as the stars burned brightly above and
the deer gathered in the field to forage and watch.
Powder-coated steel, hex bolts, foot caps, button
head screws, and swing bars. No more manuals;
just memory and drive to finish midst the dark.

You know these things, though—at least, you did.
But the days are like our kids, ever a-whir, with enough
kinetic commotion, crests and troughs, epiphanies and crises
to command the fullest attention of patron saints
and mothers all the same.

At a time when many question nearly everything,
I question not; I question less. At least, not like they do.
It takes an oak of will to keep scrutiny from souring
into cynicism, to stay the harvest of the black cherry tree.

More than questions these days, I hold hope close.
Rooted in faith for what has been and what yet will be,
my hope is like my father years ago, sitting in front
of the coal stove in the dark basement, tending the fire there
with the deft, gloved hand of a physician. Watching.
Watching. Acting.
Acting.
In small movements,
to sustain the life therein.

It is said that the earliest human burials occurred 100,000 years ago.
Red ochre-stained bones, a wild boar mandible held fast
to the arms of the dead, and seashells a-strewn in the caves of Qafzeh.

In the next millennium or more, what will be left of this?
The black cherry, alone among the oaks and Eastern hemlocks in the backyard,
will have fallen down the slope toward the run in a fraction
of the future years. How many generations of deer will walk
the same paths from the forest’s edge across the field by then?

Yet, our lives—Quixotic, at times, delightful, in turns—along
with the life of everything that lives and that breathes,
will have mattered, even in the quiet turns
of history’s hands—hands that serve the Mover of rocks,
the Maker of men, the Mystery of life held at times
so close that the newborn cannot see its mother’s face.

May you know now what you have always known:
the gift is all around us, emerging almost casually
from the forest’s edge, ambling toward a field
as the fiery coals of each day’s last light fall
through the grates with gravity and grace.

Judge’s Comments:
This tender, clear-eyed message takes us from a family backyard to the caves at Qafzeh and back again. In the process, it reminds us of the indispensable nature of remembrance and wonder.

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