True response to prompt from Writer’s Island: Unexpected

My family at a restaurant: a rarity. A waiter bribed me with a lollipop. My response was unexpected: I cried for a red one.

(Again, a story in 140 characters, including spaces)

Every recess, my best friend and I ran to The Tree at the back of the playground. We circled it three times and entered our world. Sometimes we escaped a spider’s web. Other times we traveled a tight rope in a circus. We went somewhere together, as long as we walked around that tree.

In the summer, we met in the middle of our street with our bicycles: her bike was red and mine was blue. As soon as we got on them, though, we were no longer school girls but “cops and robbers” or “Gold Medal winners.” As long as we stayed on our bicycles, we went somewhere.

When my friend wasn’t available, my brother and I opened our basement door and walked down. When we reached the third step, we entered Ijona (“ee-john-a”), a world beyond the solar system where my brother was King (I think) and “table” meant “chair.” Sometimes, by the third step, waves would splash our toes. Other times, we searched for the exit in a three-story castle, facing all sorts of challenges on our way. We went somewhere, as long as we reached the third step.

Somehow, though, my worlds—our worlds—disappeared. I learned to drive. I went to college. I got married. I moved 16,000 miles (literally—I moved from Chicago to Australia).

I was going places in life.

And yet, as an adult, I no longer go anywhere. Three steps into the basement only take me three steps down.

I didn’t realize I was missing it.

Last week, my eight-month-old found his reflection in a three-inch metal fixture on his bathtub. One moment he was splashing by himself: the next minute another bald baby was laughing with him.

He was fascinated by the baby. I watched as he leaned forward and tried to push his yellow sailboat through to that other world: the other baby tried to share his yellow sailboat at the same time, and they were unable to share. No matter: my son was happy to giggle together.

Now, every time I put him in the bathtub, I think about his reflection-friend. Will he remember? Will he seek out that magical world that is just waiting to delight him? He’s just now entering a world of infinite creativity.

My days of going places may be past, but now I get to experience a world of creativity through my child. I’m so excited to watch him go places I can now only imagine.

To my son, my daily delight

(True response to June Write-Away Contest “Going Places” at Scribbit.)

I was the only girl dressed as a knight.

You can blame it on the fact that I had two older brothers. They’d also participated in the sixth grade medieval banquet: my mother had already made a knight’s costume. Of course that’s what I wore.

The costume was made of felt: two bright orange and two bright red squares. On the orange squares were red lions. On my head I wore a red felt helmet. I had an aluminum foil-covered cardboard sword and shield. Nevermind that if someone actually attacked me the felt wouldn’t protect me at all.

I didn’t care that I was a knight until I saw that I was the only girl dressed as one: every other girl in sixth grade showed up to the medieval banquet as a princess.

The medieval banquet was the end of our lengthy unit on chivalry and medieval times, the culmination of six weeks of learning. Fifteen years later, I can only recall two things about the medieval unit:

1. The banquet at which I was the only girl with a cardboard sword

2. The motto I created for my carefully designed family coat of arms

I don’t recall to what purpose we designed a coat of arms. I suppose illustrating a coat of arms has something to do with medieval times. I remember that mine had four small illustrations and a motto. I don’t remember what I drew; all I remember is the motto.

Never Quit.

I had asked my mother to help me with my coat of arms. She was the one that encouraged me to write “Never Quit” at the top of it as the motto.

“Isn’t that what we do in our family?” she asked me. “We hang in there?”

I nodded and wrote it down. Now, in retrospect, I realize that “never quit” is a perfect motto for me. Having insane discipline to persevere has been my life curse and blessing.

Some of the Curses

• When I got a term paper assignment on the first day of a term, I began research. This means I spent four months agonizing about it, instead of two weeks or two days like everyone else.
• When I had two weeks to read every page of Moby-Dick, I did it, not even skipping the whale blubber passages. I didn’t lie on the test, either, when I checked the box that said “Yes, I read the entire book.”
• When I had a chance to go to the Philippines for a weekend with my husband for free, I declined because I had told my church group I’d be there to help the children prepare their musical presentation. I couldn’t let them down.

Some of the Blessings

• When I was on the summer swim team, I swam a very slow butterfly. In the 50 meter race at one Saturday meet, I was definitely the last one to finish in my heat. But I did it correctly. When the five other girls in the heat were disqualified for incorrect strokes, I ended up with the first place ribbon.
• When I don’t like my cooking, I try again. Sometimes it tastes better, sometimes not. But I can tell that I’m improving. My husband says I’m the best cook he knows (although he may be biased).
• When I faced horrible depression in college, I got up each morning and went on with my day, smiling as best I could. I took one step in front of the other to get where I needed to be. Ultimately, I made it through. One day I found I got up without having to tell myself to get up.
• When I thought I would die from pain and discomfort during labor, I didn’t give up and instead I gave birth to my son.

I’m becoming less rigid when it comes to discipline in some things. For example, I have no problem putting off cleaning the house! Also, after one class of graduate school, I quit, wholly and completely. I wasn’t going to like it, so I decided I wouldn’t continue it for $2,000 a class. I’ve determined the same thing attitude with books: if I don’t like it, I won’t finish it. It is so refreshing to quit something insignificant every now and then.

Ultimately, though, I’m glad I’m disciplined; I’m glad I hold myself to the standard “never quit” (albeit with some caveats). Even the curses listed above have blessings attached to them: I didn’t procrastinate some things, I could answer honestly and not sacrifice my integrity, I could be trusted to follow through on what I said I’d do.

While it was my sixth grade teachers that encouraged me to declare a motto, it was my mother that instilled it in me.

I look at my mother now, persevering to the end of one of her life goals: a PhD, earned one class at a time, one year at a time, first while being a full-time mom and then while being a full-time teacher. I am so proud of my mother, PhD. She practices what she taught me: Never quit.

That is why “never quit” has stayed with me all these years: my mother. I remember a felt knight’s costume, carefully made by my mother.

To my mother.

(True but loose response to Write Anything Bright Stuff #482: Discipline.)

It wasn’t fair! I was two years older, but I still had the same bed time as my little sister. I complained every night, stomping and whining.

Finally, my parents succumbed. My bedtime would be 8:31 p.m. Her bedtime would remain 8:30 p.m. I was appeased.

Someone would turn off the lights, and I would lie awake, listening to my dad playing the piano—a lullaby to go to sleep by, he always said. I would remain awake, waiting for the music to end so I could sleep in silence.

Sometimes, my sister would stir slightly in her bed on the other side of the room.

If I knew she was awake, I’d make noises with my spit.

“Stop it!” she would complain. “That’s disgusting!”

Sometimes she’d stomp out of the room. The piano would stop mid-phrase, and I’d hear her voice. I would smile into my pillow.

Some evenings, my parents would go out. I don’t know where our older brothers—our babysitters—would be. But my sister and I would go to our bedroom. She would stand by the window while I jumped from her bed to mine and back again, bouncing and laughing. Then I would stand by the window and she would bounce. When I saw the lights for our car in our court, I’d shout: “They’re coming!” She’d stop mid-bounce, and we’d quickly resume a more innocuous activity, like practicing our headstands on the bed, she against her wall, me against mine.

(One night, ten years later, my mother wondered out loud why those mattresses wore out so quickly. My sister and I glanced at each other and grinned.)

Other nights, we got mad at each other, sometimes for doing nothing worse than existing. While we were not usually physically violent with each other, one night we were. We threw things. I don’t know who threw the winning object, but it met its target. The glass lamp shade, dotted with little blue and pink flowers that matched the wallpaper, fell to the floor and broke. We stood over it in silence, staring at the sharp shards of white on the blue carpet.

Eventually, the “cat fights” got to be too much for my parents. The day my oldest brother left home for college, my parents moved my sister’s furniture, clothes, and knickknacks into his room.

At ages 10 and 12, respectively, my sister and I finally had our own rooms.

That night, I dragged my pillow and blanket into her new room, ready for our sleepover.

We had fun.

To my sister.

(True response to Sunday Scribblings #114: My Nights.)

I scrawled in five-year-old writing on the cover (The Three Little Pigs) and on the last page (THE END). For the other pages, my mother was my scribe. She wrote my words on ruler-straight lines underneath my crayon illustrations. Then, I took a stapler and bound my first book together. My first experiment with the written word—my written word—was thus published for all to see. Although I simply retold a story, for the first time I had expressed my own creativity through the written word.

Then, in first grade, my teacher gave me lined pages. I wrote my stories carefully on the lines. These stories were no longer simple retellings, but my own creations. The class published them at the elementary school publishing center: plastic comb bindings.

At home in the afternoons, my classmate, neighbor, and friend became my co-writer and illustrator. We sat, side-by-side, at a plastic blue Smurf table. Together, we wrote and illustrated stories set in all times and settings—from orphans in our day to dinosaurs that traveled through space and time. I wrote words. She drew pictures. She wrote words. I drew pictures. We stapled the pages together.

As I moved through school, our Smurf table publishing world came to an end, and the elementary school publishing center was no longer a monthly destination. But my interest in the written word remained at my core. Anytime anything even remotely interesting happened in my family, I produced another issue of the Family Tribune and delivered it to every member of my family and to my grandparents who were far way. I wrote a play and my friends and I acted in it. I wrote stories and half of a novel. Then, come high school and college, I wrote term paper after term paper.

Now I write for myself, I write for my family, and I share my words online. I suppose writing on a webpage is much like stapling my books: it’s not professional, and few will read my words. But the words are mine. As I improve my ability to write, I will better find my voice for expressing my own experiences—whether those experiences focus on travel adventures, nonfiction research, or the creative explorations of my imagination.

Someday, my words will be bound between covers.

Amateur that I am, I know that I am a writer: I have always been a writer.