Things come from nowhere. The mind is empty, and then, inside a frame, a pear. Perfect, green, the stem atilt, a single leaf.  It sits in a white ironstone bowl, nestled among the limes, in the center of a weathered picnic table, on an old screen porch, at the edge of a pond, deep in the woods, beside a sea. Next to the bowl is a brass candlestick covered in drips of cold wax and the ingrained dust of a long winter left on an open shelf. Half-eaten plates of pasta, an unfolded linen napkin, dregs of claret in a wine bottle, a breadboard, homemade, rough-hewn, the bread torn not sliced. A mildewed book of poetry lies open on the table. “To a Skylark,”soaring in the blue–painful, thrilling–replays in my mind as I stare at the still life of last night’s dinner. “The world should listen as I am listening now.” He read it so beautifully. “For Anna.” And we all sat there, spellbound, remembering her. I could look at him and nothing else for an eternity and be happy. I could listen to him, my eyes closed, feel his breath and his words wash over me time and time and time again. It is all I want.

Beyond the edge of the table, the light dims as it passes through the screens before  brightening over the dappling trees, the pure blue of the pond, the  deep-black shadows of the tupelos at the water’s edge where the reach of the sun falters this early in the day.  I ponder a quarter-inch of thick, stale espresso in a dirty cup and consider drinking it. The air is raw.  I shiver under the faded lavender bathrobe–my mother’s–that I put on every summer when we return to camp. It smells of her, of dormancy tinged with mouse droppings. This is my favorite hour in the Back Woods. Early morning on the pond before everyone else is awake. The sunlight clear, flinty, the water bracing, the whipperwills finally silent.

This opening makes me feel as if I was waking up along with the character. The details pulling me in. The morning-after sense of things. The odd, but true-to-life details of a bathrobe that smells of dormancy tinged with mouse droppings. The mildewed book, the air raw, the water flinty. There’s a strong sense of place near water, isn’t there?  A place that is closed up during winter.

As is the writer’s deliberate telescoping viewpoint–starting with a pear then moving outward. In a few paragraphs she’ll take us into a momentous interaction from the previous night. The story then slips into backstory that happens when the narrator is a baby and a doctor works to save her life. “You were always a happy baby,” my father says. “Afterward,” my mother says, “you never stopped screaming.”

And that, my friends, is a hook.

Keep writing, keep dreaming, have heart