Memories. They go back, if we’re lucky, to our early childhood. I remember waking up in the summer to hear my dad mowing the grass, or heading out to play golf. I remember playing with Barbies – I had this really cool miniature floor lamp that plugged in to a battery. I’d set up a living room in the 18″x18″x18″ cupboard in my parents’ coffee table for my dolls and turn on the light and close the door. Now that was exciting for about 30 seconds.
One of my earliest memories of television though, apart from the show “Laugh-In,” is a trailer for a movie, called What Do You Say To A Naked Lady? Thanks to Youtube, I can revisit that disturbing memory.
Allow me to share it with you:
What’s your earliest memory, disturbing or otherwise?
Life is all about focus. Some of us focus mostly on how we feel within ourselves. If we are unwell, it’s the only thing on our minds, unless there is something more important going on outside our illness. When we are well, some of us focus on what is closest in our lives – our family and friends, our homes – and some of us set our focus to our jobs, the weather, and even what is happening in the world. We’re all different that way.
We focus on what makes us happy, and depending on our circumstances, what makes us sad.
In other words, we tend to focus on things that stir our feelings. But what if we could focus on contentment? Balance: that which makes us feel nothing at all. That fine line in which everything is perfect. Nothing is particularly wrong, or right. Everything just… is. The middle ground.
In true “Jot It” style, I’m jotting this down on Monday to be posted on Tuesday. With any luck I won’t be feeling it by the time this goes live, but after a little over two months of not pounding away at any major work of fiction, I’m getting squiggly to get writing.
What does getting squiggly mean, you ask? It means that the pads of my fingers are starting to tingle for the keyboard, I have the shadows of psychologically unsound characters swimming around in my head, and I have voices gurgling in unknown languages, reverberating in my ear drums.
It’s pretty crazy in here.
Before you run away and never revisit this crazy lady’s blog, tell me what kind of symptoms you experience when you want to write something but lack the opportunity. Come on! Join the crazy!
I’m at a crossroads, of sorts, in regards to my son, Alex, and his behaviour. Keeping in mind that it’s 5:46am and I’ve had two hours of sleep all night, I’m writing this here as both a way to get it in black and white so I can see the problem from a different perspective, and to put the conundrum out there in hopes that someone else has gone through something similar. My hopes aren’t too high.
First, the history: To say that Alex has a hard time making decisions is a gross understatement. When trying to choose, for instance, between staying home to play a game or come with me to the grocery store, he’ll change his mind at least a dozen times. He’ll get dressed and then completely undressed; he’ll whine, cry, scratch his head a lot – it’s utter torture. I have, however, reduced it from a half hour ordeal to, “I’m leaving, if you want to come with me, be ready before I walk out the door.” As a result the process now only takes five minutes.
He also suffers with the occasional insomnia, and for the past week he’s been combining the lack of decision-making skills with lack of sleep. The fact that there are two single beds in his room has never been a problem before. When my mother comes to visit on the weekends, she sleeps in his room and he’s quite happy with that deal. Only for a week now he can’t decide which bed he wants to sleep in. At approximately 2:30 every morning since before New Year’s Eve, he’s been doing the whining, crying, head-scratching routine. It’s torture for both of us, and it goes on for a couple of hours each night. I tried hanging a calendar in his room and striking up a deal with him that he sleeps one month in one bed and the next in the other. That worked for one night – coincidentally it was the same night he didn’t have a choice because Nanny was in the other bed.
So. I’m faced with a dilemma. Do I go to all the trouble of taking the extra bed out of his room?
On the surface it seems to be the logical thing to do.
Except: there is still the communication barrier thing going on. Not being completely fluent in my own son’s language – American Sign Language – I never really completely know if he understands the consequences of his actions before they happen. It’s always that one word I’m missing: “If you don’t get ready now, I’m leaving without you.” I will temporarily lose from my addled brain the sign for ‘without.’ Or, “If you don’t stay in one bed all night, I’m going to move the other bed out.” Is he getting that I’m going to move the bed? Or does he think I’m going to let him sleep in another room? Even if I turn the sentence around and keep it positive, I have the same problem. Aside from sleeping in his room, which is exactly what he wants me to do and will ensure that I’ll never sleep in my own bed again, I can’t keep him in bed at night. In the past I’ve been able to demonstrate what I mean. Like during the period when he decided to turn the television on in his room at 2am. I tried to explain to him that if he didn’t leave it off I’d take it out of the room, and when that didn’t work, I took it out of the room. He got it after that. Moving a bed, box spring and mattress down four flights of stairs is a rather more difficult undertaking.
So, my next thought was, tip the bed on its side and leave it where it is. Only that would be an all new brand of hell for my little darling and his OCD.
I know I need to ask his school for help. At this point his teacher is already practically living my life for me in regards to making sure he does as he’s told at home. They, unlike me, know how to explain things to him in no uncertain terms. It’s easy to see how vacations from school become nightmares at home.
Before you ask, there is no support for hearing parents to learn sign language for their Deaf children in the area.
Oh, and I just found out there’s no school today because of flash freezing. Oh joy.
Any suggestions, hugs, or paid-in-full Caribbean vacations can be left in the comment box and will be gratefully received.
Our homes are like our little life-pods. We go out in public and we think we’re like everyone else but we’re not. Not quite. We all have our little lives, our little traditions, our family secrets – our way of brushing our teeth.
But then sometimes we find someone we’re like, more than most of the people we meet. There is a connection and all of a sudden it’s like a light switch has been turned on and we start to wonder if maybe we knew this other person in a different life. It’s an amazing feeling to find someone we connect with. REALLY connect. Someone who is so like us that it’s like we grew up with the same ideas.
Perhaps this has to do with the zodiac, or simply with the fact that we had similar backgrounds. But what is even more shocking is when we know neither of these things is the case. It’s just the luck of the draw.
Or maybe we were siblings in another life.
Have you ever met someone who just rubs you the wrong way, before they even open their mouth to speak to you?
Have you ever known someone for a very short while who, if you look in their eyes, you know without speaking that they are thinking the same thing as you are?
I’ve felt both of these things. The latter is the most wonderful feeling in the world.
I read once, when my kids were very young, that a baby who laughs when it is startled is a baby who trusts his or her mother. It’s something that I found followed through to their toddler years and beyond. I joked with my kids that I was going to do horrible things with them; cook them and eat them for dinner for instance. They’d laugh, knowing I would never do such a thing, because they trusted me.
There was one instance that I will never forget and I try not to regret for the simple reason that it taught me something.
I was leaving the pool where Alex was, at the time, doing physiotherapy. He wasn’t walking yet at the time, so he must have been less than five years old. I carried him out of the building, loaded with purse, swimming clothes and Alex all in my arms. I remember it was cold. I put him down on the curb in front of the car but to the side where I could see him, so I could wrestle my car keys out of my coat pocket. Had a car come, I was prepared to stand in front of it to prevent him being hurt. I proceeded open the doors and put the bags in. Then I waved goodbye to him and pretended to get into the car, expecting him to laugh. He knew I would never leave him there by myself. But instead of laughing, he smiled at me and waved back.
Whether he didn’t understand the joke or not, the vision of that tiny little boy sitting bundled against the cold, waving goodbye to me with a trusting smile on his beautiful, innocent face, still brings a tear to my eye.
Our children live in the world we construct for them. Whether they are healthy or sick, they can learn to be happy from us as parents because they trust what they see – the example we set. Alex spent the first eight months of his life in the hospital. All he has ever known, from birth, is pain. To this day he wakes up almost every morning with reflux, trying to vomit past an operation he had at six months of age called a fundoplication – basically, a knot was tied in his esophagus to prevent anything coming up. And yet he is the happiest child I’ve ever met. Other people observe this and ask me if he’s ever unhappy. It’s all he’s ever known. He sees me deal with his morning time retching with ease and he is reassured that it’s normal.
One day I know he will find out that it’s not. Will he stop trusting me at that point? I have no idea. It’s for sure that I’ll have the task of assuring him that even if it’s not something everyone experiences, it’s just the way he is, and that’s okay.
The point I’m trying to make I suppose, is that our children are our sponges. They take from us what we show them, and whatever that is, they trust it, because from the very beginning, we are all they know. I hope, for my own part, to preserve that for as long as their personal experiences away from me will allow. And that they will continue to laugh all their lives.
I’m an excellent person for keeping secrets. Unfortunately, I’m a horrible liar. Unless it comes to my mother, in which case I’ve been practicing since I was four and had it down to an art by the time I was a teenager, I blush, I look the other way, I avoid eye contact… I do everything in the book that will show anyone with an ounce of observational skills that I’m not telling the truth.
Is it a good idea to entrust a bad liar with a secret? If the person you’re confiding in knows your deepest darkests, and they also know, say, your spouse, do you hope that somehow they will suddenly find the ability to not blush, or simply avoid your loved ones lest they give you away?
I’m finding myself confronted with these issues, not in real life, but because of my writing. My plot is so thick with secrets at the moment, that not only am I having a hard time keeping track of who knows what, but I’m finding it difficult to not give things away to my reader.
I actually studied the body language of people who are lying, just so that I could write a more believable liar. In this, I’ve found the perfect way to tell when my kids aren’t telling the truth, and how I, myself, can become a better liar.
But back to telling secrets. Everyone has them, whether they’re big like infidelity or small like you think someone looks horrible in their favourite suit. Fibbing is a necessity when it comes to secrets. Secrets in fiction can be the backbone of a story.
Can a person who is a bad liar even have secrets? I sometimes feel as though I’m an open book, for all to see. Maybe that’s why secrets are prevalent in my fiction – practice for real life. I’m puzzling it out on paper.
Do you suffer with this dilemma, either in fiction or in real life with yourself or someone you confide in?
Tell me. Tell me your secrets. I won’t tell anyone, promise. 😉
Have you ever noticed that sometimes the horoscope in the paper is spot-on and sometimes it misses the mark by a mile? Well mine has me worried.
For about a week now, astrologer Eugenia Last has been telling me, and all other Aquarians, to watch our backs. The messages say we shouldn’t let ourselves be talked into anything we don’t want, to not allow anyone to manipulate us, and yesterday, not to trust anyone with our secrets.
A day of being told someone is out to get me is bad enough, but after my Incredible Adventure on my Paper Route the last week, and the comments that I just may be on my own version of the Truman Show, I’m starting to get a little paranoid.
Here’s a random picture, to throw off whoever’s out to get me
In recent weeks of perusing different WordPress sites, I have come across on a few occasions writers talking about character development and how they will sometimes watch people and make up stories for them. I do this often. I get endless enjoyment from watching people’s mannerisms and body language as they relate to others.
I remember one instance when a friend and I were sitting on a park bench at a local public rose garden. We had been resting in quiet companionship for some time, enjoying being outdoors near dusk listening to the birds sing and watching people stroll through the park. There was one family I vividly recall – at least I assumed they were a family – a mother, a father and a son who pulled up in a car across the street. They got out and entered the park gates. The boy, around eleven years old, ran ahead seeming happy to be there. The mother followed, her nose in the air enjoying the fresh fragrance of the roses in full bloom and the father lagged behind. Observing them, I leaned toward my friend and commented that the man didn’t look like he wanted to be there. Even though none of them spoke there was just something in the man’s gait, in the way he looked straight ahead and in the way he held his arms at his sides even though the pockets of his shorts gaped as if they were the natural resting place for his hands. As I watched him some more I leaned again to my friend and said, ‘I bet he’d rather be at home watching the baseball game on TV.’
I thought, what a character this man could make! Even if I were to tell his story from that moment on I could imagine that perhaps he was angry because he had a bet on the game and wanted to see his team win. Or that he loved watching baseball because it was the last thing he ever did with his own father before he died. Or that his own father would be disappointed in him, as he usually was as he grew up, because his father said he was a momma’s boy – just the same as his own son was growing up to be, having fun in a rose garden of all places! The boy should be watching the game with his dad, not asking to be driven all the way across town to look at roses with his mother!
If I were to make a character of this man whose world and thoughts I had surmised, I might not use any of these stories of his past in my tale. But knowing his past, and having a past already fitted to the reason for his present mannerisms I would know how he would react in any given situation. This, I find, is what gives a character dimension beyond the singular.
This recollection of mine has left me again to wonder just how private our thoughts and our world are. Yes, I might be (read: probably am) wrong in my imaginings of this man. But then again, in a perfect if sad conclusion to this episode, as my friend and I were walking home from the park, a car passed us with the very same family in it. The man was screaming at the top of his lungs at his family.
True story.
For Part 4 of Private Thoughts, Private World I decided to go off on a bit of a tangent due to a comment over in Ionia Martin’s blog a couple of days ago. The above is what I came up with.
Spotlights shine down like mother’s sun. Father’s love comes after in the form of drugs and liquor. Relive, rich man.
On stage, man raises his hand to the shrieking crowd, awed with humility at his fans’ adoration. Grasping the microphone, he thinks of father rolling in his grave.
He sips water from a bottle and shakes the rest over his head, a momentary reprieve from the lights’ insulating heat. Layers of clothing hide scars he openly speaks of yet never reveals. He laments mother’s death with his lyrics and thousands cry for his loss.
Father’s legacy follows him doggedly. Later, alone, man will consume that for which he distances himself from his own offspring. Let the child have his mother.
The boy within bows, singing of the love engraved in his heart. To go to the beginning of this series click here
Disclaimer: This series is an unauthorized, semi-fictional story, based in part on the author’s imagination.
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