Literary Mama Writing Prompt: My Subject Chose Me

From Literary Mama's Literary Reflections Section:

In this month's essay, Lindsey Mead recalls the day she took her children to Walden Pond and the lingering effect it's had on her writing. She writes: "My children changed so fast I could hear time whistle as it flew past me, and I was desperate to remember the small details. In the process of writing them down, I realized that other, subconscious instincts had propelled me to the page: in the act of recording small memories, I unearthed the meaning of these small fragments of my life."

List three memories you and your family made last week and then five details about each that you don't want to forget.

One
This morning A and I sat at her little art table in her tiny vintage gold and red chairs painting together. It was grey and damp outside -- the kind of day that makes us both want to stay inside, curled up with videos and books and crafts. We have frightening synchronicity at times: our moods mirror each other so completely that the question of nature versus nurture seems to be constantly roiling beneath the surface.

She'd asked to "paint together" and had retrieved the yellow-orange tubes of paints from the dark closet and pulled up chairs and so I had no choice but to say, "yes." I squirted thick pools of color into the mini plastic muffin-tin-like tray and we took turns dipping our paintbrushes.

"What that?" she asked, pointing at my sheet of brown butcher paper.

"A butterfly." My strokes were filling the page uneasily.

"Oh!" she exclaimed, delighted. "This a bee." She pointed at her own thick orange brown rendering.

The paint ran out in each of the compartments of the tray, so we knew we were done.

"Look, Mama!" I looked. "It's beautiful."

She picked up my paper. She held it close to her face, carefully circling each detail with her eyes.

"Oh," she said. "That nice!" And she meant it.

Two

When we get to the L-M-N-O-P part of The Alphabet Song, Little A wiggles her hips.

She always wants to do things together: "run together!" "sing together!" "dance together!" "paint together!" I spend my days feeling included.

When a toy is missing, she wanders around the house, shouting its name. "Baby!" "Thomas!" "Monkey!" They do not answer and soon I am on my hands and knees.

She says "tarry" rather than "carry."

When I leave the house, she calls after me, "drive face!"

Three
Yesterday, she stood at the edge of the playground, begging one of the four year olds to play with her. The older girl didn't hear her "pleases" and didn't see her holding her hands, palms together, in front of her in a gesture of pleading and supplication. I couldn't help but laugh along with the other parents and hope that this was the last time she showed such sad desperation.

The Writing Prompt
I've been thinking about this writing prompt for a few days now, wondering how I would attack it. There are many things I'd like to remember but I'm reluctant to focus too much on trying to remember things for fear I won't enjoy these events as they happen. I started an email account for Little A a while ago. When we remember, my husband and I send photos and notes to the account. Neither of us go in for baby-books much and this solution to the problem of how to have something to give A to remember her childhood satisfied my husband's love of technology. The things I send to her are little notes about mannerisms (like Two above) or milestones or funny/thoughtful/quirky that she says. They are not fleshed out -- and they definitely don't include moments of sad desperation. It occurred to me how differently I write down things I want to remember and things I want to share.

AWP Redux

Little A and I had four glorious days in Chicago for the AWP conference. We went by train and felt oh-so-much-more civilized than traveling by plane. My mom met us in Chicago so that I could attend panels, meet friends, and drink and eat without having to worry about my three-foot companion getting plowed over in the riot of writers.

And a riot it was: ten thousand writers, editors, teachers, publishers, and their ilk descended on two hotels. I attended one panel on which my friend Kate Hopper and four other mama writers shared their thoughts on negotiating motherhood and the writing life. Take home message: jotting down little notes while waiting in the carpool line and at sporting events is key. Also: Hope Edelman eloquently conceded the ways in which writing can take away from mothering but thoughtfully dissected all the things that writing brings to motherhood.

I listened in on another one for first time memoirists, where I found that other writers struggle with the same issues of reportage versus personal story and finding the balance of the two.

But most importantly, I got to meet some new friends and see a few old friends from my Columbia MFA days. We sat down over drinks and food and talked about writing and reading and life and teaching. I realized how much I've missed the intensity of being surrounded by writers, of accessing a shared vocabulary to talk about craft and narrative and sentences and books. I realized I've been going along feeding the fire with tiny bits of kindling and scraps of wood and then this weekend came along and brought with it a barrel of kerosene and two cords of wood.

Now to keep the writing fires burning...

500 Words and Counting

Here is the plan.

Write five days a week.
At least 500 words a day.

I am not saying that you bear any sort of resemblance to a furry rodent but you, dear readers, are my guinea pigs. Nor are you a large, sparsely populated flat plot of land but you are my testing grounds. Nor are you "a structure placed above or behind a pulpit or other speaking platform which helps to project the sound of the speaker" but you are my sounding board.

Enough with the dissection of analogous language.

This is my goal. Sometimes this goal will be met. Other times it will not. Isn't there a saying, "Goals are made to be broken?" I am a very, very busy person so sometimes I will just not have time for 500 words. Sometimes, if I have to choose between running and writing, I might think, "Which one will make me feel focused and energized and accomplished, and earn me the accolades of my peers?" The answer is neither, but at least with running I don't have to think. In fact, with running, thinking is discouraged because if you turn on an internal monologue it will inevitably tell you how much pain you are in, how slow you are, how hot it is, and how much farther you have to run if you plan on making it back home alive. But when running, I can press a button and my Nike+ will play my "power song." There are no power songs in writing.

I am also a stay at home mom so sometimes I will have to choose between feeding my child or writing. Feeding my child will win out, but only just barely because even though nutrients are necessary to keep my child alive, it is very discouraging when she just poops whatever she ate back out. I promise to keep discussions of my kid's poops to a minimum. (For your sake more than for the sake of her teenage self because I cannot wait to embarrass my 14 year old.)

Sometimes I will have to choose between writing and cleaning the house or doing laundry or gardening or sweeping the floor. I will often choose the cleaning because the goal of this blog is to write 500 words a day, not to appear on Hoarders. But other times I will choose to write even though there is dog fur all over the air vents and an unidentified sticky substance on the kitchen cabinets and a funny smell coming from the basement because writing is more fun than dealing with any of those things. That funny smell could be anything. ANYTHING. And I just hope it's not a dead rodent. That's no way to start a relationship with my guinea pigs.

Are we at 500 words yet?

Just over 400?

Good enough.

Welcome to the blog.