Memories

They pulled up their chairs in a row behind me and listened eagerly to my stories. My stories were true accounts of experiences I had had. “Is it really true?” they asked. “Yes, it’s true.” I insisted. Their were five or six of them, maybe more, I don’t remember exactly. They were stair-step brothers starting at about age six. That means that they were born approximately one year apart give or take a few months. The details of that time are sketchy but I had never washed dishes before to such a delightful audience. It was wonderful. I barely noticed the huge pile of dirty pots and pans, utensils, cups and plates on the long counter beside me. The eager listeners were respectful and enthusiastic. “Tell us more!” they begged as each tale came to an end. I had had adventures in my nineteen years, but this was classic. I talked and talked. Talking is what I did best, and I told story after story. The dishes were getting washed and rinsed and piled on the other side of the sink. Their mother burst into the room, brandishing a long wooden spoon. “Get out!” she hollered, “Get out! Either pitch in and help or just get out!” They scrambled and I was left alone with the rest of the pile. My shoulders sank and my spirits dropped. I had lost my companions and was left alone to the lonely task of cleaning up the kitchen. I don’t suppose it did look right to the poor mother. All those big boys sitting in a row behind me, watching me do the dishes. She couldn’t know that I was perfectly happy and that if I needed any help at all they would have eagerly jumped in. She couldn’t know that keeping them together in chairs was much easier for me than to supervise the half grown boys in a cleaning effort. I hadn’t won their confidence yet. I hadn’t won their team spirit yet. I was doing what I really did do best. Telling stories. Worse than having to wash that mountain of dirty dishes was having to wash them alone. It was too much like my own lonely childhood, standing for hours in front of a sink of dirty dishes, beside a counter with the remains of a meal eaten by a family of ten to twelve or more people. It’s no wonder I eventually became the Queen of disposable dishes. Disposable dishes weren’t that common back in those days though and a woman who was faithfully bringing a new child into the world every year was really thankful to get some help in the dish washing department, I’m sure. I haven’t forgotten that day, that audience, those eager listeners and how wonderful it was to have the company in an otherwise lonely task. They are all grown up now and have families of their own. I doubt that they remember that day the way I do. I was the one who had to put the chairs back around the long table. I treasure that memory though. It is one of the ones which hasn’t left my consciousness. I lost a lot of memories over the years. At one point I lost so many memories I wasn’t sure of the way to the grocery store and I couldn’t remember my own phone number nor house address. I stumbled over the children’s names and ages. I piled the children into the car and backed out of the driveway. I drove down the main road and it all looked unfamiliar. I started to panic but didn’t want the children to know. We drove around, street after street. Finally the children helped me and I pretended that it was a game. One day we drove from dentist to dentist because I couldn’t remember which dentist I had made the appointment with. Each office looked just as unfamiliar as the last and I was sure it must be this one. We went in and announced our arrival to much confusion at the front desk and eventually annoyance at which point we decided it was best to leave. We never did have a dentist appointment that day. None of the dentists had us on their schedules or in their files. I felt like an alien for sure, that day. Or perhaps more like a time traveler. And to think that I was entrusted with four beautiful children. I didn’t have trouble figuring it out at home. There were always books. We could take a stack of books and place them on the coffee table and just start reading together. I loved books. We studied them, the pictures in them, the words in them, and the lives of those who wrote them. I’m not sure exactly when I started to pick up a pencil or pen but it was during that time of severe memory loss that I was encouraged to start writing. It was thought that writing would stimulate the memory and writing did that. It is still doing that. Writing is opening the closed doors. I read something remarkable yesterday about Laura Ingalls Wilder. Her daughter Rose encouraged her to write about her childhood. She was close to my age at the time, maybe a little older. She couldn’t remember many things, especially since she was only two when they lived in the ‘Big Woods’ so she said that when she went back in her memory as far as she could and left her mind there for awhile, it would go further back and bring things out of the dimness of the past that were beyond her ordinary remembrance. Paraphrased from "Inside Laura’s Little House” by Carolyn Strom Collins and Christina Wyss Eriksson. Page 95. What an interesting concept. One problem for me was that there was too much pain in my past and conjuring up memories opened up the wounds. But writing most certainly helped. It helped to unlock doors. There is still a lot of good memories locked in the archives and a lot of pain has already been diffused. Every once in awhile a new one comes back and it’s like opening a brand new book that is written about me. 

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,040 words.

Procrastination

It’s one of those days when everything begins off right. Don’t you love those days? It really shouldn’t have been easy to get up because I was dealing with a sneezy nose all night. I had to get up and deal with it at one point. Then I tried to be really quiet so that I don’t wake up Mark who really does have to be up at five. Trying to keep a sneezy nose quiet is not a relaxing activity. I find my muscles all tensed up and have to work on relaxing them. I found my tea tree oil and dropped a bunch onto a hankie. I was too stuffed up to smell it and that stuff packs a punch. But I could feel the cool on the back of my throat and I knew that the power of the tea tree oil was at work. I soon fell asleep but had to roll over at some point because it didn’t feel good to lay like that all night and then my really sensitive nose started to act up again. I’m wide awake, trying to be really quiet while I throw one tissue after another over the edge of the bed. Finally I must have slept again because the alarm was going off. I have a back up alarm set for myself, you can do that on the i-phone, it’s great, in case I end up asleep again. I woke up with my backup alarm and was awake at just the break of dawn, which is when all the chickens like to be getting up. So everything began as it should. I took my allergy medicine and sat at my computer and saw my emails had an email from: Web Editor ICL - Rx list from the Institute for Children’s Literature. The place where I did my writing course years ago. I love their emails. I always read them and sometimes print them out so that I can read them some more. I didn’t get very far down the email when I noticed that a website they had been referring to recently was up and running. 

http://kristiholl.net/writers-blog/

I couldn’t help it and clicked. Then I started reading her blog. I read and read and read. It was amazing. Motivation, willpower, bad habits, reasons, excuses, goals, mini habits and so much more. It was wonderful to read about what other writers deal with and how they overcome. We all struggle with the same things. Somehow I ended up on a website applying for a writing job with a Christian booklet company. I read a story about a lady who is inspiring Christian writers and her story brought me emotional tears. That was some great writing. I finally clicked over to my program, Scrivener. Opened a blank page and started writing. It isn’t early morning hours. It is light out. I’ve eaten breakfast. Chloe is at her desk and I just heard the washer end. So stuff has been happening and I’m writing. I’m still inspired and my fingers are still writing what ever they want to write. What I think is wonderful about it is that they still know how to type clearly even with all this going on. It’s about training my mind and fingers to work together. It isn’t dark in the room anymore and my mind is working just fine. You can laugh here if you want to. I did. I was going to sit here and write about procrastination. We’ve all heard how bad that is and we all know that horrible feeling you get when you are doing it and you know you are doing it and you can’t stop doing it to start doing what you are supposed to be doing. But there may be a silver lining in the procrastination. It may be that one is expected to be doing something that one doesn’t really want to do and there may be a really good reason for it. Maybe I just need to look at myself and say, ‘Hey, why are you putting this or that off?’ Maybe there is a logically good reason. Maybe I can learn more about what is right for me. It’s a good thing to get rid of guilty feelings. Doing everything promptly and timely and perfectly all the time. Is that who I am? Is that even who I want to be? Sounds like grounds for super self-righteousness. It’s not me. I’m glad it’s not me. I learned so much this morning while procrastinating. I’m so glad I did it. I even applied for a possible writing job, although I’m hardly spiritual enough to write for a Christian magazine or Christian children’s publications, but you just never know. They may have an assignment that works for me. So about procrastination. I’m not going to fight it any more. I’m not going to feel bad about it. I’m going to go with it. There just may be a beautiful reason why I procrastinated. There may be something God wanted me to see or know and I can be peaceful about knowing that I followed the lead.

I am learning something else new. I am discovering that once you open the doors of your passion, in this case writing, you will always find a way. You won’t be able to stop. You will be able to write in the early morning hours, in the mid morning with school girl questions and readings from her of her writings. In the middle of the day, quickly on the i-phone or Kindle, in the car even with those inefficient tools, (not if you drive, don’t write on your i-phone or kindle while you are driving, I don’t drive), in the boat, even in the evenings with paper and pencil. You will be driven to write once you have begun. You can even take short breaks and get back to it. I’ve been taking weekends off, but I couldn’t stand to take more time away than that. I wouldn’t want to go back to not being in the habit of writing.

P.S. I can’t seem to write through a hot flash. My fingers can’t remember where the keys are and the words get all jumbled up.

Elizabeth Williams - daily writing exercise, 1,050 words.

The Conduit

So now this one thousand words is being used as a diary? I really hope not. My plan is to come up with something fresh everyday. Even when I’m tired. Even when I’m late. Even when I’ve overslept and let the poor chickens wait half an hour to be let out. It’s at times like this that my day starts off with guilt and other bad feelings, like dejection. It’s not rejection, it’s dejection. Is that even a word? I just looked it up for me. Yes, it’s a word. It means: lowness of spirits. It’s not other people putting me down, rejection. It’s me putting me down, dejection. That’s sad. Just really sad. But it happens. It happens to me at a drop of the hat and I’m sure it happens to almost everybody sometime. It happened to me yesterday. I reread my new story before bedtime. I felt dejection. This isn’t very good. It isn’t very good at all. That’s how my thoughts went. How can I be putting this stuff out there like this? Went through my head. Like a wind which gently but firmly comes out of the sky directly above me in a spiral down-wards motion. It pushes me down until I am quite deeply stuck in the dirt. And I mean deep. This wind called dejection can push us so deep that we can’t see because we are like a little rock down in the ground, all covered up. It just keeps it’s pressure on me. Then it gives me a little extra push. I feel like I’m going to be mortally humiliated in front of my family. I feel sure that I will be laughed at and mocked. The wind of dejection thinks it’s got me now because shame is a huge tool it uses to silence me and it has worked in the past. It has gotten me to pack up all my journals and lock them in the trunk. It even got me to throw them all out once. It got me to throw away my writing course. It got me to eliminate writing tools. But it can’t stop me. Because I love to write and I have dug those journals out of the trash time after time and moved them around the house closer to my daily work spaces, farther away, closer again, back and forth. I fight back. I always fight back. Dejection is the enemy. It wants to silence me and take away my talent. But I’m angry at it. It’s just trying to shut me up and I won’t be beat down. God is my friend and strength and He gives me tools to fight back with. The more I write, the stronger I become and the more I read the stronger I become. I can’t help but be humble, because I’m truly just a beginner and my talent undeveloped. I know that there will always be those who are better, world’s better. It doesn’t matter what I do, there will always be those who do it better than me. But with writing it differs only in that no one can write what is inside of me. The skill with which I write will develop and grow with use. The confidence will come with practice. Dejection can kiss my ass because I’m still writing and I’m blogging it and putting it out there in spite. It may be late in the day. I may have messed up on my duties this morning and be really late for breakfast, but I’m writing. Dejection tries to ruin all the good parts of my life. It has tried for as long as I can remember. Keeping me from doing what I truly want and being what I truly am. Making me feel silly about being me. Making me feel like all the good stuff is for everybody else but not for me. If you really think about it, it makes no sense at all.

What I found out since I’ve been bravely writing and sharing with the world, is that I have the best sisters in the world. My oldest sister inspires me everyday. She works really hard all day, every day. I’ve never had to work as hard physically as my oldest sister works. She looks forward to coming home from work and relaxing in the evening to read what I have written that day. Makes me cry just thinking about it. Pushes me to write. Pushes me to write better. To give her something worth reading. I can’t quit now. No matter how dejected I’m tempted to feel. I have to fight. I have to win in the fight against dejection. I have to overcome. I have to do it for her and for all my sisters but mostly for me.

I have a picture in my mind from a creepy movie I watched a long time ago. A hand sticking out of the dirt and the body pulling itself out of the ground. That’s what I’m seeing. That’s me not staying down, not staying dejected. That’s me.

Actually what I felt when I finished reading my story was emotional. I was moved to tears. I felt a connection with the lady. I don’t even know her name. I know the names of her children, but I don’t know her name. I don’t know what she looks like, nor the color of her hair, eyes or skin. I don’t know what style she likes, what kind of car she drives. I don’t know what country she lives in or what language she speaks. I don’t even know what her age is. But I’m bound to find out. Perhaps there is something in the lady’s story which we can all relate to in some way. I don’t know. The story is actually about a house. I just read something by ‘Carlos Cooper’. He said that “The story isn’t mine. I’m just the conduit”. He said God brings him the story.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,007 words

The House - 3

I arrived home exhausted and emotionally drained. I had only a few days to make all the necessary arrangements. The small apartment was in as much disarray as possible, it seemed. I chose my steps carefully in order to avoid stepping on something or tripping. There was a bad smell greeting me and I cringed. What was I going to have to face? The children both slept on the living-room floor, the television on. Their father dozing off on the couch. Bowls of food lay here and there and much of it spilled and old. I had been gone for one week. I picked up my daughter Greta, careful not to wake her and carried her to her bed. Next I picked up little Teddy and placed him in his bed. One week was a long time to be away from these little treasures and my heart broke for them. I decided not to do this again. Not to leave them behind. I didn’t feel the same way about their father. I wanted to shower from the long trip but one look at the bathroom and I changed my mind. Tomorrow will be a new day. I changed into something comfortable and lay down for the few remaining hours of night, too tired to think, too tired to cry, I fell asleep. The next few days I cleaned and washed laundry and packed. I packed only the things which belonged to the children and I. Our clothes, the children’s toys and our important things. Things we love. My journals and pen and pencil collections. The kids books. I couldn’t fit their lovely bikes in the car so I promised them that I would find new ones for them soon. I packed the pictures. My Grandfather had loved taking pictures of the places he had seen on his travels. Several of them he had enlarged and put into beautiful frames, and they hung on my walls. They were works of art. I took them. I also had a few paintings of my own which I was not going to leave behind. There were a few things in the kitchen which I wanted and needed. The children’s tableware. Eating can be so challenging for a child that I always felt using familiar tableware was as essential to good nutrition as the food itself. I was certain that they had been fed like animals for the last week since the little bowls and plates with the matching utensils were still clean and put away in their places when I came home. I had taken the bowls out that first morning and that’s when I realized that they had lived on a diet of popcorn and fast food. That’s where a whole lot of the mess came from, fast food. All the useful things which could be bought again I didn’t pack. Those days the children clung to me. Where I went, they went. From room to room they were my shadows on either side. The car filled up quickly and soon there was barely going to be room for us. Apparently they hadn’t liked the new lady much. She had come to spend the night when I was gone. But only one night. She wasn’t very fond of the children or my home. They had cried an awful lot. Their father had not meant for me to find out about the lady and was in a deep lot of shit on the phone with me. But I knew. I had known. How could I not. I had had a long talk with Aunt Melinda about it. The reality of it not really hitting me because for now I had too much to do.

I hadn’t seen him since that first night when I came home. He slept on the couch, but he was gone in the morning. I could tell that he came home at night when I was asleep with Greta in her bed. He didn’t stay long and I didn’t get up to talk to him. I had nothing to say. I just wanted this to be over. Like a bad dream. You wake up and try to change the tone of the dream for fear of it continuing on when you go back to sleep. You roll over or get up and drink some milk, eat something if it’s a really bad dream. But you fear that when you lay back down the dream will continue. I wouldn’t let him see my tears. He had no right to peer into the heart he had so mercilessly broken. I had no time for all this right now anyway, with Grandma so weak and frail. She needed me and I needed her. I wanted to sit beside her and look at her beautiful, wise and peaceful face. I wanted to drink her in as if to keep her with me forever. I wanted time, time which had been stolen from me. I wanted to share her with Greta and Teddy. I want them to remember her, even just a piece of who she is. I want them to know this great lady, to be able to tell their children that they sat beside her. That they remember her. I want to shield them from this horror that is divorce. That’s why I didn’t get up. That’s why there weren’t any words in the night. No yelling. No name calling. No hateful, evil wishes to take back. The car knows how I feel. The car knows all. The car has been my sanctuary, my church, my meeting place with Jesus. My place where I can unload all. My safe place. But today my car will be my angel and carry us, myself, Greta and Teddy safely North. North to Grandma and Aunt Melinda. North to a new life a new place and new memories. There will be papers, and details and bridges to cross. But time will give us grace and a chance to be who we were born to be and love who we were born to love. Time will make us strong.

Elizabeth Williams, writing exercise, The House - chapter 3, 1,022 words

Previous chapters of The House:   The House 2 , The House 1

To read the next chapter:  The House 4 , The House 5 , The House 6, The House 7, The House 8

A Boy Named Richard

A long time ago, in a far away town, lived a little boy named Richard. Who is this little boy named Richard and why is he important enough to be writing about? What happened to him? What is it? What did he do? Why are we even talking about him? Stories used to start that way all the time. Curiosity was raised with the mention of a far away place and time and a boy or girl, man or woman no one knew. Some how it helped. Putting yourself into another world, another time. Imagining yourself in another life. We still do this. We still play pretend. Novels are all about pretend. We learned from the old tales. Sometimes they taught a moral understanding. Sometimes they taught about courage and other times how sheer luck or magic might intervene at anytime and end all this suffering. It’s a kind of hope. Stories today tend to go more towards finding your own inner strengths and answers to life’s troubles. Life’s troubles haven’t really changed that much we just dress them up differently. We have guns today instead of swords. We have drugs instead of magic potions, which is all really the same thing except today people poison themselves instead of their unsuspecting victims. Very often the really special stories aren’t that far away and times not as long ago like ‘Little House on the Prairie’. Some times the story is about a mouse or a rabbit and the adventures from their point of view. Some times magical things happening takes one far away, although the story is in the present time. Writers found a way to take the reality of a child’s experience and turn it into something fantastical and far away, yet keep that closeness to it. ‘Stuart Little’ is such a story. Regular, though eccentric, people adopting a little mouse and treating him like a member of the family. Sometimes my daughter sets a tiny place at the table for an imaginary Stuart. He even gets a special spot to relax and watch a movie with her. Usually it’s much too close to the screen. I don’t really have a story about a little boy named Richard, but I might some day. Now that I’ve written that much down, I’d like to find out more about him. I’d like to find out where he lives and what period of time. What were they doing back then. How did they live and what is so interesting about him that we should be writing about it. Other writers have brought to us stories about children long ago, who dealt with monsters, and giants and mean step-mothers and hard work. The same things children today deal with. Well they don’t all have mean step-mothers. Sometimes it’s a mean teacher or a mean neighbor, or kid. Someone is mean and we’ve all got to find a way to deal with this stuff. We do all have some kind of monster, imaginary or not. And giant is just another word for challenge. Anyway little Richard from long ago had all of them. He had so many giants and monsters and mean people to deal with, but he was also very creative. He had a wonderful way of interpreting life and dealing with it. He had important decisions to make, like would he give in to the pressures or stand up tall and proud. Would he be what someone wanted him to be or would he be himself and be really good at it. Would he know what he wanted? Would he know who he was? There are a lot of serious questions woven into the tales told to children. Children love to consider serious questions and come up with really smart solutions. But they aren’t anything like the kind of questions we think they may have. That’s why it’s so difficult to mix adult with child. Really the adult needs to become a child again in order to mix with the child. In order to write for a child one needs to be a child. For example, I love to have the floors and table tops in my home, cleared off and accessible. My youngest daughter is a maker of worlds and uses up every possible square inch with buildings and lego’s, homes made of plastic, homes made of cardboard, rock city etc. I come to find out there are people living in those places. Am I the ogre who demands them all removed? Am I the evil step-mother who demands the floors to be cleaned again? The rock city was fabulous, it was however in the doorway to another useful room in the house and I was the giant who crushed the city with it’s big feet. I’m also the witch who picks up whole homes and moves them to other countries. Or perhaps I’m the cyclone which picked up the house. There is so much to know about all this. The more I investigate it the more I remember about my own childhood. I was the third oldest child in a family with ten children. My usual job in the family was to play with the children. I wasn’t capable enough to have a job in meal preparation. I was too slow at most important jobs which really required some amount of speed in order for a home of this size to function well. The most useful place for me was to play with the children. Later I went on to have children of my own. I have spent many hours as a mother, playing with my children. Building, researching, going on adventures and reading. Housework and the business of mealtimes was also a type of play for me although I had no training in actual usefulness I was able to invent my own methods and draw from memories of what I had observed as a child. I did have other chores sometimes, but can you imagine having the job of playing with the children when you are yet a child? Priceless.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,013 words.

Lucky Me

The sun is just beginning to rise. I will go and open the doors to the different coops out back. The back porch, which is a new room I am in love with, is full of ripe tomatoes. The first jars of summer canning have sealed and adorn the small table. Salsa. The sunrise glows orange on the horizon. It is raining. It is the second day of rain after a long dry spell. I’m happy about the rain even though it makes messy mud for me to walk through. The dog is wet and stays on the back porch which has a nice floor for getting mud and water on. I’m typing this story out and I get a nice surprise from my husband. He comes home for a second cup of coffee and even though I got up too late to kiss him goodbye this morning, I get to give him a kiss now. His work is only one mile down the road. I suppose I could be putting a load of laundry in the washer and setting up my work station for canning tomatoes but I’m not, I’m typing, I’m writing. When I’ve finished my typing and posted it to my blog, then I start my day, but not until then. After I am done with writing I feel like the most challenging part of my day is behind me and it’s all downhill from here. It is a wonderful feeling which is powerfully changing me. I am one of the lucky ones. I have the peace and freedom to choose my daily routine. The garden has been blessed this year, not with everything I wanted, but with plenty of what we need to get us through the year. What we aren’t able to grow we can purchase from a local farmer or grocery store. I wake in the mornings to only the hum of the fridge or the whir of the air conditioner. The roosters, we can’t forget to mention them, but I can’t really hear them inside the house. Everyday when I wake there is plenty for me to do.

Today there is thunder and rain. The thunder is harmless. I am not threatened by it. I am not experiencing any hurricane or tornado. There is no noise of rockets nor explosions of war. My drinking water is clean and pure, straight from my well, through a series of filters which we installed in our home. My children are well and healthy, except for Debbie, but she is healed and in paradise. Chloe is waking up and getting her gears going for a new day at home school. My husband loves me in his quiet unspoken sort of way. He stays busy from sunup to sundown. Not busy, busy, but continuously moving, working, helping, fixing, building. People come and go when he is here. They bring things to him and he fixes them and they come back and he shows them what he did and they are happy. We bow our heads together at mealtimes and take turns saying the blessing. On Sunday we drive to church, a little church with a steeple. Yes, we are the lucky ones.

I heard recently that oil was spilled into the Ohio River and is ruining it. I asked someone who faithfully watches the news about it. I had to ask because I haven’t watched television for a very long time but was wondering if this oil spill had been in the news, or was I the only one aware of it. It seems pretty big deal to me. At first my friend drew a blank. Then I mentioned that it didn’t happen today and she said that it was yesterday’s news. The way she said that alarmed me. It’s not important because it was yesterday. But it is our Ohio River. Seems to me that it is just as important today as the day they ruined it. But today there is new news. And I remember when I used to watch the news that it was one thing after another. A tragedy in one person’s life, a death, perhaps a murder, reported on and then moving right on to the next news. Maybe news about where a celebrity had their wedding or something silly like that. War in one country, complaining in another. At any point in every day, someone is hurting and children are crying from neglect and abuse, some are hungry and someone is killing someone and countries are at war and corporations are lying to get around the laws and people are unaware that what they are eating is poison and children are afraid in the schools and other people are planning disasters. Some places are experiencing fires and some floods. Some places there are tidal waves, tsunami’s and earthquakes. Really important things happening to real people all over the world. Christians are being persecuted. Even the environment is being a bit more destroyed each day. As I go into this day I am aware that there is suffering all around us in the world and that I am blessed and I am thankful. I am allowed to sing, and so I will. Not that it’s much to listen to, but with all that is going on, someone needs to sing, someone needs to dance. Someone needs to smile and say kind words. Someone should, and that someone is ever so lucky me. To be happy and thankful and kind and share the same. Is that what my job is? I think so. There must be place in this world for good. It isn’t bad everywhere. I’m not ignoring what is happening everywhere, I’m praying for the hurt and the suffering, the cancer patients and the hopeless. I have not been given the job of bearing the weight of the world, that’s Jesus job. I’ve been blessed to bring a ray of sunshine, a word of thankfulness, a flicker of hope, an encouraging word. I am one of the lucky ones.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,007 words.

Chloe's Style

I’m sitting here at my computer with not one clue as to what I should write about. I have been thinking all morning and hoping it would come to me as it does sometimes. Sometimes I look at the program icon and something begins to come to me and I can hardly get it open and a new page started fast enough. Today I waited. I deleted emails and checked fb which is a huge taboo. I also checked a website for little girl clothes to see what’s trending, and sure enough it’s that one kind of dress which Chloe hates. Chloe has a style she is drawn to and it has nothing to do with trending styles. It has nothing to do with what anyone else is wearing or advertising because she doesn’t get out much. Her style has everything to do with how a dress makes her feel on the inside and who it makes her feel like on the outside. How competent it makes her feel, how bossy, how creative, how studious, how adventurous. She does not want to play princess anymore. I think that was ages three to six. Sometimes she likes to play fancy lady. You know, when a lady gets dressed up for tea. It may involve kid gloves and a bustley dress, a scarf and some baubley necklaces. A tea lady is dressed properly in lady attire and is serving tea to her guests. She speaks with an English accent, in proper English. She brings out the best dishes and tableware. She seats all the stuffed animals around the coffee table. Then there is the pirate, and the adventurer, the farmer and cowgirl, the pioneer woman. All of these must be attired. The time for feeling special and worth saving has changed into the time for hard work, adventure and saving others. We have the archaeologist and the builder. The painter and designer. Her poor Grandmother. Quite a few times lately I’ve had to tell her that Chloe will not wear those kind of dresses and it’s kind of a waste to keep buying them for her. I’m careful to ask if there is a chance she could return them or give them to someone else and that I’m sure they weren’t cheap and I hate to see them wasted. Really I wish she would bring her catalog over here and just let Chloe pick them out. That hasn’t happened yet. I look at the pile of clothes set aside for Good Will and wonder which lucky girl is going to get those brand new, never worn before clothes. It’s not that Chloe is picky. Most of the clothes we have bought her are from Good Will. She falls in love with some of the most unlikely but really cool outfits put together from inexpensive sources. We have the studious, I’m ready for school look which happens a lot lately since we’ve started back to our home school. It’s what helps her to feel the business of school work and getting things done. She changes at 10:00am to go and do chores. Then she changes back to get back to school mode. When school is out for the day she changes again into whatever it is she will be until dinner time. Some days she gets all dressed up for dinner. A velvet dress or lacy with proper shoes. I’m not sure where today’s style for this age group is coming from because I am not in the know about these sort of things. You might say that I have been out of the loop for a few years. I have noticed that the styles for girls this age tend to be toward the suggestive side, as opposed to the imaginative side. Little girls suggesting that they are big girls. Not on purpose but because that is what is available to them. Portraying perhaps an icon in the entertainment industry. I don’t know what girls this age are watching on television. Chloe doesn’t watch television. She doesn’t have much influence from the entertainment industry because we want her to discover who she is without any of that. She has a couple of favorite shows on Netflix but her time on that is limited. We have a movie night which we look forward to each week and generally watch together as a family, with pizza and popcorn. It is also our ice cream night. Usually we are ready for bed so that if the movie ends late we can just brush our teeth and pop into bed. All this being said, Chloe is still quite concerned about style. Chloe’s style. It is a wonderful thing for me as her mother to escort this imaginative and completely free child out in public. I’m thinking ‘oh, dear’ and her father raises his eyebrows as we get into the car. Recently she was a pioneer woman and had to have a bustle. She pulled one skirt after another on under her long dress and tied the belt. She really needed that bustle feel. We looked at her in that way since she also wore a scarf on her head. She was ready to go. We didn’t say anything. She enjoyed herself so much. Often when we are out I see other people respond to her, she brings a warm smile to many a face, especially in the proper lady attire, which includes a large brimmed hat with flowers. Her distance from today’s trends is so great it’s refreshing. Mostly though she just wears a pair of shorts or jeans and a T-shirt, just like any other almost 9 year old. The way clothes make you feel is an important part of growing up and discovering who you are and what you will do. Don’t get me started on foot wear. We’ve got cowboy boots, fancy boots, winter boots, rubber boots, black school girl shoes, silver glittery shoes, running shoes and sneakers. There are all colors of flip-flops and the favorite of all, bare feet.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,010 words