I write in composition books all the time. My house hides them in many a nook and cranny. Today I picked up an old one. It's binding is coming loose. It's cracked and weathered on the edges. I look at it and I remember the entire week I spent with my writing group. We spent a whole week and talked only of writing. It was heaven...and hell...both...as most writing tends to be.
I wonder what will come of these old things. Bits of stories started and never finished; freewrites; little snippets of my life. Will my children throw out the boxes of composition books when I am dead? Will they read them? Am I okay with that? You could almost call them journals but the writings are in no linear order. They're fractured, disjointed, sometimes incoherent...perfect.
Many of the things are too raw to even share with my husband and so I share them with the lines on the 100% recyled paper. Here are just a few sharable, yet still personal bits that mean nothing really. They never went anywhere, but some of them are gems, at least to me.
"And when I held his newborn baby in my arms, I knew that we had done it. We had overcome what was impossible for most. And our lives now? They're whatever we will make them. Here's to the road ahead."
A thought on overcoming our childhood that I wrote down after the birth of my brother's oldest child.
"There's a picture in the tupperware bin. It's buried in the 1983 pile most probably turning into a strange yellow-orange color. It's a picture of an hours old baby, my brother, being smiled at by a brown haired little 42 month old little girl, me. That little girl smiles as if to say, "Welcome to the world...now I'm not alone."
Thoughts on the birth of my brother, Robert.
"I was ten years old when I realized he was never coming back. I had the calendar, the one where we'd sat down together and marked off its dates. One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six. Six weeks was no time at all. The calendar was old now. Two years old. Six weeks had come and gone sixty-seven times. He visited me that day. Every time he visited I hoped that maybe this time he'd stay, maybe this time I'd be enough. But I wasn't enough. I never would be. I watched him go. I ran to the window and waved, willing him to look up from the window of his Budget Rental Car, to see me. But he didn't. I was ten years old and I realized he was never coming back."
On my dad's departure.
"Your apron is hanging off your shoulder, your head through the arm hole. And you...the younger one? You are covered in flour and have crunchy milk remnants on your upper lip, your pigtails askew. You are both perfect. I love dancing in the kitchen with my daughters."
On a moment with my daughters about 2009
"Do you remember our canyon drives? Sliding through the canyon like a bobsled on its run, the sunroof open, we listened to Tom Petty. We were young, untouched, In love. Naivitee, what a beautiful gift."
Remembering drives in the Civic with Doug before we were married.
"Here I am, back from one of my trips down dreary lane. It's nice to be back."
A scribbled random thought
"Stop looking at the ways we differ and start looking at the ways we are the same."
A tidbit
Here's an epitaph I found on a very old gravestone while wandering through a Cemetary in Park City. I hoped to use it in my writing sometime. Maybe I still will.
"We cannot tell who next may fall beneath thy chastening rod. One must be first but let us all prepare to meet our God."
"Have you ever seen a strawberry field? Leafy vines interconnecting for miles. There's nothing like a strawberry patch in summer. It draws you into its web with a smell that calls your name. If you lie flat on your back, you can disappear in strawberry vines. Did you know that?"
A memory of visiting my step-mother's family farm in Cavan, Ontario, Canada.
"Baby skin. New. Fresh. Elephant skin. Babies have it, but only the newborns. It slips and slides and wrinkles before the mother's milk fills it out into fatty rolls. We come into this life wrinkled, skinny. We leave it the same way."
Observation on the circle of life.
Hailey and I wrote these two poems as we drove through Provo Canyon in 2009
A Poem by Hailey, Age 6.
I like these mountains
they're so beautiful
I love the deer creek
I love the hills
I love the bushes
and I looooooooove my family
A Funny Poem to make Doug laugh by Christie
A creek the color of dark blue eyes
reflecting the happiness of summer skies
They seem to speak from their lofty abode
As we travel down the road.
They say that God is telling me
something about who he wants me to be
but I don't know what he's saying
to figure it out, I ought to be praying
"Technically I didn't see you first, rather I felt you. And that can't count because I was in pain and afraid. "Touch her head," they said, and I did, my shaking hand echoing my fear. It wasn't what I had expected. It wasn't hard. It was squishy and wet and it felt like brains. It scared me more. And then, you were there. I reached down as was my plan, pulled you up and placed you on my chest. You didn't cry. You looked up and smiled, which I know is impossible, the first of many impossibilities you'd shatter I guess. It was the first time we met, at least the first that we met like this. On Earth. Mother, Daughter. I waited for that rush of love to come. The one that everyone talks about. It would come later, when we were alone. In this moment, all I felt was awe."
On meeting my daughter, Hailey.
"One girl. One backpack. One passport. One Summer. Each day I wake up with a vague idea of where I will go, but I allow my feet to take me and may not end up where I'd planned. I drink and eat and kiss exotic men with names like Armondo and Pierre. I walk topless on the beaches, my feet sinking in the warm sand. On the beach I have time to feel each grain of sand between my toes and the waves lapping at my ankles.
It's what I dream about while washing the dishes in the life I actually chose."
An ironic look at my life in an apparently disillusioned moment.
