August Prompt

 Prompt August 2022

If we had known better, we would have done better.  This is a profoundly relieving thought.  Thinking about my childhood, I realize I created survival tools that turned into my laundry list traits.  Using a format below helps me explore these experiences.

What I Knew. What I Didn’t Know.

I knew I shouldn’t do it –

carve my initials in the wooden

headboard of my bed.  SCB. 

That must be what I wrote.

I didn’t know I was marking

it as mine, a place that should feel safe.  

Why this claiming, naming?

I knew that after dinner

at my grandma’s house

we would play Scrabble,

a game of luck and wit, 

my brother taking so much time 

we’d end up shrieking:

“just make a word!”

I didn’t know words

would be my livelihood,

didn’t know the game

was practicing for life,

taking turns, rules,

waiting, the strive to win.

I knew my chocolate pudding

always burned. I knew to wait

for bubbles, lower heat, stir,

keep it moving slowly, stir,

but I could never wait, the

heat too high, my appetite

too great. The bottom always

stuck, crusted to the pan.

I didn’t know I’d outgrow

chocolate pudding, mature to

mousse, profiteroles or chocolate-

covered macaroons. 

I didn’t know

I’d not outgrow impatience, would

never let things take their time, 

or learn the value of small bursts

of steam, before I’d start to boil.

Connection to Recovery:

This poem reveals a number of my laundry list traits. The image of scratching my name in my bed connects to wanting safety. The Scrabble game connects to a fierce desire to win. And finally, the chocolate pudding connects to impatience and a sense of urgency that has propelled much of my life. I can see the seeds even in my childhood.

Prompt:

1. Play with the format of “what I knew/what I didn’t know.”  Make a list and see what themes unite the items on your list.

2. Or begin with a few laundry list traits and connect them to childhood experiences, even ones that may seem trivial, such as making chocolate pudding.

July Prompt

 7.2022

The following poem is written in my father’s voice about one of my mother’s projects to shame him into stopping drinking.

Future Entrepreneurs of America

She’s at it again – saving me from myself.

The army she’s enlisted are my kids.

She’s offered them a prize to prove a point.

A nickel for each bottle they can ferret out

and bring her, the best ones half full—

so she can have the fun of pouring

spirits down the kitchen drain.

They choose to think this doesn’t hurt,

that I’m beyond humiliation – or else

I’d surely stop.

I hope they never get to be

a nickle’s toss from hell.

1. Choose any painful memory from childhood and do a free-write from the point of view of another person in the story.  

2. Experiment with dialogue.  Turn your story into a poem where the two spouses each give their point of view.

3. Imagine that person had an emotional “bottom.” Write about the bottom with the compassion you would extend if that were your bottom. 

Connection to Recovery: By writing in my father’s voice, I allow him to voice his fears, which creates empathy. In the poem, he is aware that he can’t stop drinking.  This reminds me that his alcoholism was not a moral failing, as we believed at the time.  It reminds me that alcoholism is a disease.