Friday, September 30, 2022

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. 



 


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