Prompt for October 23

 Adult Children are often “black and white” thinkers. I cheat myself if I treat my childhood as all misery.  There were happy times, times when my parents could be totally present and delight in each other and in me. Writing about them helps balance our grief. I resist the slogan, “they did the best they could,” but I can view my childhood more gently if I accept that this may be true. I went through old photo albums and copied photographs that show happy times at the beach, or family picnics. I can see my parents delighting in me. I can revisit a time of happiness and wholeness. 

I’ve kept my mother’s wallet for forty years.  It’s stuffed with her credit cards, grocery coupons, old photos.  Every once in a while, I take it out and touch my feelings. 

 

What’s Inside 

 

my mother’s wallet, worn red leather. I’ve moved it 

from drawer  to drawer these forty years

 since she’s been dead, as if one day she’d show up at my door 

 

headed for the grocery, needing the coupons tucked inside, 

as if she’d need my brother’s photo 

in his goofy glasses, back when he had hair, 

 

as if she craved a whiff of leather smell, before plastic 

took its place. She’d gauge its bright red heft, back when 

twenty bucks could see one through a week.

 

 I’ve bought and tossed ten wallets in these forty years,

 photos of my kids replaced by licenses, credit cards,

 twenty bucks now grown to hundreds. 

 

Still, someday I may need what’s in this wallet,

 someday I may open it, shake it inside out,

 hoping for a coupon for a double bonus life. 

 

 Connection to Recovery:  Objects like my mother’s wallet can link me to the past and remind me of my connection with those I loved. By writing about day-to-day events, such as shopping, I can capture some of the peaceful moments of childhood and remind myself to avoid black-and-white thinking today.

Prompt:

1.Find an object that a loved one owned and write about it.

   Metaphorically “open up” the object and see what it reveals

 about that relationship. Write about what it meant then and 

what it means to you today (even if you don’t have it).   

2. Write about something concrete that you can use as a

 metaphor for someone you have lost, as I do with the coupons above. 

 

Prompt for October 9

 In the land of Victimhood

If I’d only had

a better dad

one more like Mr. Rogers with his neat brown cardigan, his tennis shoes, his calm measured voice, and the puppets living in an unreal neighborhood.

 a better car

 a Mercedes or a Cadillac--not our beat up woody station wagon that smelled like the calves we hauled back when they trotted off to the neighbors yard.

a pony

a better pony than the one I had--that snapped at you, knocked you off the saddle, and dragged you down the lane.

the ability to add

instead of having to rely on my fingers. Scrabble would have been a snap if I could have predicted the score before I laid down my tiles.

a bit of Proust 

so I could hold my own at dinner parties talking with erudition about Madelines, their triggers of the memories I long suppressed.

a dancing partner

 a man who would take me in his arms, gaze at me the way Barack looked at Michelle at his inauguration ball.

a steady eye

to hit the ball--the tennis ball, the softball, ping-pong, even the croquet ball, all those balls that slipped away when I clenched my eyes instead of honing in on their direction. 

But it seemed I had no choice--

I was destined to wear hand-me-downs

suck at sports

get a dad who broke the furniture, eyes wild as Hannibal Lecter’s.

I would never read enough to get ahead at dinner party conversations,

destined for a man who wouldn’t dance, play Scrabble, or watch the TV shows I love.

I wish I’d had a choice.

Connection to Recovery:

In the ACA program, one of our traits says: “We live life from the viewpoint of victims.” I always thought a victim was a complainer, someone who blamed everyone else for their problems.  Then I found the ACA definition: “a victim is someone who believes they have no choices.” Then I started thinking about all the decisions I had made believing I had no choice. Recognizing that I may not have had a choice over people, places and things in childhood, but I do have a choice today gives me freedom. I don’t have to live in the land of victimhood.

Prompt:

1.Write about all the people or situations who you had no choice over as a child. See if you have choices over some of those same things today.

2.Write about anything you feel you have no choice about today. Then list all of the choices that are available, even if they are far-fetched, fantastic, or seem unavailable.