What Now? What Next?

Welcome to my first Substack post on Write It Like It Is: Everyday Observations and Existential Musings in Five Micro-Memoirs.

Every Friday starting March 14, I’ll be posting five pieces of flash prose (meaning short), or micro-memoirs. Moments, snippets, snapshots, insights, maybe a rant or two, from my life as a single 71-year-old woman searching for hope, meaning, silliness, love, and connection in our, let’s just say, challenging world.

I love reading and writing flash nonfiction and can’t wait to see what happens here. I hope you’ll come along for the ride. Please see my website at www.deborahsosin.com for information about my publications, writing groups and classes, editorial services, presentations and webinars, and more.

And stay tuned for updates about my journey to publish This Is 70: A Life in Micro-Memoirs, a linked set of 70 mini essays of 70 words each written to mark my 70th birthday last year.

Meantime, here’s a sneak preview. Let me know what you think! Subscriptions are free for now.

What Now? What Next?

1. My Cascade detergent pod didn’t dissolve because, it turns out, my dishwasher wasn’t heating properly. My Trumpian landlord said he can’t afford to fix it and it’s a luxury anyway and I should be grateful I have hot water and electricity. Now that I’m forced to wash my dishes by hand, I figure I might as well do it mindfully rather than rushing through, thinking only about the next thing on my to-do list, and the thing after that, and the thing after that. Be here now, blahblah. I sing nonsense songs to my cat, Lini. I look through my neighbors’ window. One child circles aimlessly around the dining room wearing a blue-glowing virtual-reality helmet. I wonder what he sees. I wonder who invented the garbage disposal. I wonder when I bought this chipped blue-and-white ceramic bowl and whether I’ll ever buy new kitchen stuff again or whether what I have now will suffice until I die.

2. My landlord keeps talking about how he’s going to knock down this old two-family house and build a condo, like the other million-dollar condos going up in my crowded middle-class neighborhood. “One of these days, Debbie…,” he keeps saying when he’s angry about the latest stupid thing that breaks that he doesn’t want to fix. I’ve lived here 20 years. Where will I go?

3. I attended an informational Zoom session about a lottery for apartments at a beautiful senior housing community opening this fall in a nearby town. Out of 174 apartments, nine are designated “affordable,” six two-bedrooms and three one-bedrooms. Pets allowed! I’ll apply. But what are the chances? And besides, even if I get a low lottery number, living in a senior community? With bathtub rails and an emergency pull cord behind the toilet?

4. I never use most of the stuff in my kitchen. For that matter, I wear a tiny percentage of the clothes I own and rarely open two of my three closets. The file drawers and file cabinets? Filled, but with what? What would I take with me? Papers from grad school? Decades of greeting cards? Mom’s ancient diaries? Mine? What about my red patent-leather-and-velvet Mary Janes from my brother’s Bar Mitzvah in 1964? I loved those shoes. I only wore them that one time.

5. The one-bedroom senior apartment has two small closets and a tiny storage locker somewhere in the basement. I continue surveying my possessions: 200+ LPs and a wobbly turntable. Scores of books. Cartons of photos. Hundreds of videotapes and audiocassettes. That two-ton crate with every choral score I’ve ever sung. Art prints, framed and unframed. Furniture I don’t bother to dust. I see it now through a new lens. I will have to decide. It will have to happen. Can I sell any of it? Or will I need to rent a Dumpster? Who will help me when the time comes?