I do realize that it is now well into March of 2011, however I have been thinking A LOT about this last year. At the beginning of December 2010, I found this website that asked you questions for each day of December-almost like a scripted journal. Here are a few of the questions and my answers...as I answer more of the questions, I'll post them on here...I am not a writer, nor am I trying to be one. I am just free-writing here, first thing that comes to mind...so, don't judge to harshly :)
Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you're choosing that word. Now, imagine it's one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011?
Revealing. 2010 was the year that who I was, my true character, was revealed to me. I saw that I am a strong woman, who can stand firm when life as she knows it, comes crashing down around her. I discovered that I can handle a lot more than I ever thought possible. I also discovered that I am extremely lazy, selfish, and demanding. I expect 110% out of others and only 10% out of myself. I learned that I would be completely and utterly lost without my husband. It was revealed to me that I am not as sound of mind, self-aware, or as smart as I thought I was
Knowledge-I want to study, learn, understand who I am, who God is. I want to learn about writing, families, parenting, life. I want to learn how to be the best mother and wife I can be. Knowledge gives way to understanding, which banishes hate, and leaves room for love.
What (or whom) did you let go of this year? Why?
My Family. I have always been so close with my family. This year-moving far away, becoming a mother-forced me into adulthood. I went through a lot of scary times that changed me, showed me what reality was like. During these times my family let me down. They had never treated me as an adult, but expected me to act like one. It showed me that though we still love eachother, we are different animals. My husband, son, and I are on a different wave length, different level of self-awareness. We are a family, the three of us. I am no longer just a daughter, but a wife and mother.
Pick any object in your house and write about it...
Grandpa's Pipe.
Old, smells like his brand of tobacco. Burned and scarred from years of use. Worn from all the times his fingers would absently run over it. Bite marks on the tip, marks from years, decades of nervously chewing it. It sits on this pedestal on my bookcase. A shrine to a man that had more bad qualities than good-but those good qualities were strong, they are what we will remember. Occasionally, when I pass his shrine, I take the pipe down-run my fingers over the dull details, smell the tobacco and I remember. I remember a time when life was simple-when there was just grandpa and his pipe-smoking it lazily after dinner in his leather chair, watching the news and grumbling about the state of the world. Yelling at Grandma to bring him a beer. And me, watching him with young, loving, bewildered eyes-thinking this is it, this what life is all about. Grandpa and his pipe.
Write about the oldest object in your home...
My Great-Grandma Della's glass rose..
I got this rose after my grandfather died. All of his kids and grandkids and great-grandkids gathered at his home. We were there to divide up his things and clean out the place-quite depressing really, that ones life long possessions are bartered for, scrapped over by offspring who are hoping to hold on too that last memory-or make a little money by selling your things.
Grandpa had saved a few of his mothers things, three of those things being three glass roses. The granddaughters all got to pick one as there was only three of us. I let my cousins go first. I therefore got stuck with the ugly rose. But irony is, the beautiful ones were cracked, a little imperfect and both broke apart shortly after my cousins took them home. My ugly rose is sturdy, durable, and has lasted through many moves and changes in my life. Reminds me of Grandma Della. She wasn't a beauty. She wasn't sweet. She wasn't even all that nice, really. But she was strong. She had faith that could move mountains. Woman survived being married at 15 to man twice her age, who was later gunned down by the police as he worked for the mob. She outlived 3 husbands, buried 3 of her 6 children-lived through both World Wars, the Great Depression, watched as one of her sons drank himself to death, and another completely turned his back on the God she loved so much-through all this she never lost her faith. She kept her family together, loved them in her own way-the best way she knew how. She was the tarnished rose.
So, really, I got the best rose of them all. The tarnished one, that was perfect and imperfect and beautiful in between.
I would encourage any of you reading this to answer these questions for yourself...maybe not the writing prompts, but the actual questions...
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