behindtheax

October

The dogs were very well behaved today on their walk. They even stopped and sat for me at every corner. I have two new ideas for short stories, so I am looking forward to finding some time to work on them. I recently finished a story – had some fun with it but couldn’t really make it into the story I thought I had in my head. I think I will set it aside and look at it again in a month. The melancholy is still hovering around me a little. I think it’s because I didn’t go through with the things I had planned for this fall. Like signing up for those courses, mainly the creative writing course. I only got as far as the campus, in early August, to pick up a course catalogue but I had one of my wonderful panic stricken moments, stuttered as I tried to speak to someone, got my sentences all twisted in a knot and left embarrassed. If I had a nickel…

However, Monica received her first writing assignment back and the comments the teacher wrote on it made me feel very proud of my daughter– great piece of writing, excellent point and you said it so well, super introduction. Other teachers have also commented in the past on her creative flare and although I realize the pitfalls of wishing your dream onto someone else, I secretly wish she continues to find writing fun enough to pursue it a little.
I use to wonder why mothers would dress their little girls up in grown up clothes and have them prance about on stages in children beauty pageants. I now figure it must be because these mothers once had dreams of being princesses themselves and now feel the need to push these dreams onto their children. I hope to encourage Monica with her writing but I would never, ever pressure her. She mentioned it to me that she wanted to be a writer. Well, she also wants to be a designer of wedding dresses, a graphic designer, a model, a dog breeder and a chef – at her age she has ample time to decide. I do love that she writes though. I love finding balled up paper on the floor beside her bed and unfolding all the creases to read her first attempts at a story about a wood fairy getting ready for a winter ball. And I am reading it and thinking. “Shite, this kid already writes me under the table and she’s eleven.

My mother wrote short stories, with a bic pen in a hilroy scribbler. On occasion we would come home from school and she would ask us to sit and listen to something she had just written. She would be at the kitchen table with a cup of tea in front of her and a menthol flavoured cigarette balanced in the corner groove of a green glass ashtray and her lipstick would be perfectly applied and I would watch her mouth as she read us her stories and how she paused every few minutes to drag on her cigarette, leaving traces of her dark red lips on it tip. I thought she was brilliant.

There are still many days that I thank her for passing this fervor for writing down to me and now seeing it emerge in her granddaughter makes me feel like a link of sorts. A stepping stone that might keep its going. I am happy it got this far.

posted by mary j. @ 2:25 PM