Labor Day

Today is Labor Day in the United States. It is a national holiday to honor the working class citizens. I love it since it is usually the last big swim, for the kids, of the summer. Since my oldest daughter lives close by and she has to work today, definite irony here, we celebrated Labor Day yesterday. It rained and sprinkled but the kids had a great swim, or splash. I was so happy because it has not been a great pool summer. I chopped tomatoes, onions, green peppers, parsley and basil and shaped hamburger patties in my new summer kitchen, with my beautiful daughter. We watched the children swim and splash and only had to moderate a couple of times. When the children weren’t swimming they were only too glad to be given a job to do. They love to help in the kitchen. They also designed their own t-shirts, a craft Chloe my youngest daughter provided for them. I watched as they became completely absorbed in their projects and each of them had a different outcome. So much creativity. If you give a child the tools, it seems they already know what to do. We had a birthday cake for Great-grandpa who turned 78 last week. The house was clean as well, well somewhat clean. One of the doors was closed. The playroom door. I asked the children to please not open that door. I probably don’t need to say anymore about that, but there may be someone reading this story who can’t imagine why. The children couldn’t imagine why the playroom door was closed. It’s not really a playroom and hasn’t been used as such for a long time. It is a spare bedroom/sewing room/ironing room/storage room/toy room. I call it my angel room and I long to reclaim it. I have a horrible habit of gathering piles up around myself. My youngest daughter has the same habit and so does my husband. We all love it when the decks are cleared and it is easy to move about. But somehow it all just comes back. I have some sewing jobs to do but can not get near to the sewing machine. Sometimes I read about minimalists and I look around my little house. How could we have so much stuff? It just keeps coming. So I put it in the room and close the door. I am then able to quickly dust and vacuum and the home is clean and inviting. I am sure that the stuff in that room is important stuff and absolutely necessary to our survival but what I just realized is that I already moved everything into that room and didn’t take it out yet to deal with it before I had to make another contribution to it. This means that none of it was important at all, really. Doesn’t it? Writing this is making me want to stop writing and get in there and box it all up and send it away. I love that room. It is a light azure or bleu de france. It has strong pink and deep yellow and dark wood tones. I hung Elijah’s name on the wall as it was his room when he lived here with his mother before she passed from our world. Angels hang around his name and stand on the sills and shelves. When the room is orderly and clean it is a beautiful room. Why does it have to be either that room or the rest of the house? I am searching for the answer but until then the house is clean and inviting and might I say functional. Perhaps it is a symbol of the disorder of my soul. The conflicts which have plagued my life and still lay hidden deep inside. The disorder which writing has begun to discover and uncover. Who am I? What do I want to be? What do I want to do? The pushing away of oneself in a survival technique not so rare. Someday I will uncover the truth for you but today it is still hidden. Still hidden also for me. Like the mess in the room with the door closed. The order is taking shape where others can see but the mess hidden in the room is still to be dealt with. The soul is becoming free but the chains are still falling. The voice is being heard quietly, timidly for only a few. But courage is taking hold, is beginning like the popping open of a tiny seed, swelling from the moisture, in the dark. Sending it’s tiny tendril up to test the light, to see if it’s good. To see if it will hurt. What it finds is good. What it finds is strengthening. Courage builds courage, and truth brings more truth. Joy grows joy and faith becomes more faith. Discovery leads to more discovery and adventure blossoms. I relaxed in the evening on the couch with the children and we laughed together. My oldest daughter and I laughed. I laughed so hard I cried. These children, all unruly and bouncing around with life and curiosity, this is what Heaven is made of. How surprised will all the proper, dignified people be when they get to heaven and it’s all children just like these and their is no decorum or logic to their theories. They just are. They crawl all over me and their mother. My youngest who is for the most part the only child is surrounded by her niece and nephews and she thinks she is in heaven as well. My grandson who is nine got up in church last week and announced that he will be a pastor. But he doesn’t want to wait until he’s grown up because that is a long time from now. He wants to be a pastor now. The whole congregation praised the Lord for him that Sunday. Now here he is causing me, his grandmother to laugh so hard I am one of the children.  

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,011 words.

Courage

I was listening to Chloe read. She was reading from her fourth grade reader. We sat across from each other in the dining room. I had the curriculum open to the lesson. I was knitting. Chloe is getting another pair of socks. She loves the first pair I knit for her so much I’m knitting them again in a different color and a different design. She reads strong and clear with expression above her age. I love listening to her read. I try to stay completely focused on her story. If I wander in my thoughts then I won’t be able to guide her through the discussion later. She was reading and it was a really nice story about a boy learning the meaning of responsibility. The story was full of choices and courage, set in the last century farming community. And I’m totally bawling my eyes out, listening. These teenage boys want to be mature and take on grown up duties. They love their school and take on extra challenges. They make hard choices to sacrifice a dream to work for the common good of the family. They remind me of my brothers. They are pushing themselves beyond their abilities and it seems that it will be too much for them. Then the community notices and tractors fill their fields and the job gets done and the boys are spoken to like men. I’m loosing it, emptying the tissue box, all over the table. Chloe keeps reading. It was a time when a man’s job was to be envied. Children wanted to grow up and become men and women. It takes courage and discipline to become men and women. It doesn’t take anything at all to just grow up, but to really become mature takes courage. It takes denial. It takes sacrifice for the common good of the family, church, community. It takes love.

I had no idea I would be so sensitive. Perhaps it’s my age, perhaps it is that I’m really tired. I’ve been pushing myself to reach beyond, to stretch the boundaries of my capabilities physically. I’ve been saying to myself that it won’t do to sit down and wait for death. Get up and get at it and stay alive, be alive. Accomplish something. Treasure the days. I got rid of my lazy-boy chair. I didn’t buy it or even want it. I never had it in my mind that I needed a lazy-boy chair. It was given to me years ago and when it got old I was given another one. So this spring when I was talking to myself about my habits I decided to give that lazy chair away. I would put myself into that chair and it wasn’t really comfortable unless it was reclined. Then I would nearly fall asleep. It was such a lot of effort to get out of it that I generally just stayed in it for the duration. Anyway, I bought myself a small upright wing-back chair. For the short-time I’m in the living room it is so easy to sit down and stand up. No levers or moving parts. Small so that their is more space in the room now. I don’t miss that lazy chair at all. I stay busy all day with usual duties and when we are done with the day we relax on the couch for a few minutes and then go to bed. In the mornings after I do my early chores I don’t go into the living room to sit and drink my coffee any more. I take my coffee right here to my computer and start typing. It has changed my whole life around. Starting with the decision to get rid of the lazy chair.

Anytime anyone wants to change a habit and develop a new one it takes courage. Growing up takes courage. Being grateful takes courage. All the good stuff takes courage and growing. Their was a reason why I began to form old habits, the ones I’m breaking from now. I sat down. Their was a reason for this. Changing that habit means taking a good look at why I sat down and dealing with it. When I quit smoking it was the same thing. I had to change my habit but I also had to address the very deep intimate reason why I had begun to smoke in the first place. Beginning to quit an old habit isn’t as hard as seeing it all the way through to a new habit. It causes an upheaval in the structure of ones psyche. It takes courage to take a good look at ones self and make the hard choices. Usually it’s about something completely different. The boys in Chloe’s story hadn’t developed any bad habits yet. They were developing character through courage because of the strength of the relationship in their family. Courage may be about finding strength to endure a situation and handle it in an honorable way. Debbie found the courage to honor God with her cancer and her brother and sisters found the courage to surround her with their love when it wasn’t easy or pleasant. Courage in an adult is a noble thing. But to see courage in a child is one of the most beautiful things in this life. It should be named with the seven wonders. Very often courage is about sacrifice for the good of others, family, community, etc. This kind of courage is the most honorable and sometimes gets the title of hero. I think it is wonderful to point out the courage in children when you see it. Give the child a hero badge. Let them know you saw them make that sacrifice. Let them know that courage is a beautiful thing and that we all need it and learn from each other. Courage doesn’t mean that you aren’t afraid, it means that you were afraid and did it anyway. It’s also ok to have tears when you read about courage.

Elizabeth Williams - daily writing exercise - 1,007 words

The World Within My Mind

It's probably a little risky, letting you all have a glimpse into my mind.  This is from my daily writing exercise.  1,015 words.

Time to write. I’m a little late today. So many things going around in my head. So many unconquered stories. So many new ideas. Almost everything I see is a writing prompt. I feel that my mind is just like a large bottle of wine which has not been opened yet. There is so much to discover inside. So many roads to travel down. So many boxes to unpack. The more I look at the unopened the more I see inside it. The absolute possibilities. The treasures awaiting discovery. I’ve begun to close my eyes when I type like this because it is just like peering into something and I can’t see it clearly with all the distractions around me so I close my eyes. The details begin to appear and stand out better one from another. I don’t have to think about the white screen and the black type against it. I can look into the shadows and see shapes appearing and details emerging. I haven’t opened that bottle yet. I hope I do soon because I’m getting thirsty for a good taste of wine. Oh, it isn’t actually wine but it is wonderful. It is going to be so delightful. A world of discovery. I turned the lights down so that the bright lights don’t intrude so much as I look into my mind. Some day when I unleash it it is going to amaze me. I see sign posts pointing. This way and that. There is an old house standing on a hill. It may have been a writing prompt I latched onto about twenty years ago that I had forgotten about. It intrigues me. I turned off all the lights now so that I can see better. I have only the light of the computer screen and my eyes closed. There is a family of rocks. They came in with a meteor shower and somehow I heard about them that they are here. But I don’t remember seeing them I only read an account that I wrote down about them. I’m longing to find them and learn more about them and the planet they broke away from and the galaxy they once knew. There is a child in Germany who was left behind with Nuns when her family came to America before the second world war because she had tuberculosis. There are others too much more obscure that I can’t see clearly at all because I haven’t opened the door yet. I’m still looking through the window. It’s not like a room or building that I’m looking into. It’s like I’m in the room and my mind is on the outside and I’m looking through a dirty window at the world outside. I’m wondering what it all means and where it all ends up and will I ever get to discover any of it. Will I have the courage to open that door and begin that journey to all the lands? I sit here at my keyboard and I learn to type. I do know how to type, physically type. I type fairly quickly. Well, not as quickly as a lot of other people. But as quickly as I can speak. If I speak slowly, like to someone who is very hard of hearing. But much too quickly for my typewriter which is from a long time ago. The keys on it kept jamming because my fingers were going too quickly for it. Yes, I can type. But I’m learning to type from my heart. From the place where stories live, without it going through some sort of censor. I’m learning to let my fingers do the talking and I’m reading it at the same time as you. I’m not sure what the next sentence will be. It surprises me everyday. I’m on a road to discovery. I’m learning new things with every line. I didn’t know I felt that way. I didn’t know it looked like that. I couldn’t have guessed it would end up over there. I just have to let my fingers guide me and trust them as guides. It’s almost like I’m saying they are my feet. Like I’m walking on my fingers or something. But really I am. My feet have nothing to do with this. Except they do become useful when I need another cup of coffee. Then my feet are useful. And yes I will need the rest of my faculties at times. To do research of course. I have to do research sometimes. That’s just part of the discovery. I’m going to have to let a character show me what it is like somewhere else or take me to lands I’ve never been. I forgot about Patrick. He is in the box of ideas left unfinished. The stories begun and put away. I must have stepped through that door once upon a time. Maybe I was just looking through this window then too. There are others out there who I felt a familiarity with. Who’s stories I desperately wanted to record. So that they wouldn’t be lost forever. I love that they are all still there, waiting. Waiting for me to train my fingers to tell the story. Waiting for me to unlock that door. Uncork the bottle. Maybe they all fit together somehow. Maybe there lives twist around each other and connect. Maybe not. Time will tell. Time will show what is out there beyond that door. It isn’t dark out there really. It’s just the window isn’t letting me see clearly. Maybe it’s one of those old fashioned kind of windows that make the glass look wet. I had some of those in the house I live in now. We don’t have them anymore. I would have kept them but they let too much of the outside in. And I think they were missing the purpose of being there because you couldn’t really see very well through them anyway. So they were all replaced. I can’t wait now to go through the door and start discovering the world within my mind.

Elizabeth Williams 1,000 words a day.