Pattern recognition
04 September 2011 06:08 AM Categories: Writing prompts
They went away on Canadian vacations. I sometimes accompanied them for weekends at his trailer near the ocean (but actually on a manmade lake dug out of red clay, the water too still, where mosquitoes bred in the relentless summer sun and once I came back from with a shimmering jar of tadpoles). My mother brought me carved wooden animals, maple sugar candy, books of Canadian stories. One of the stories angered me. It was about a girl who spent time with her grandmother, baking cookies, mixing up the flour and sugar and butter, dropping the dough by tablespoonfuls on a baking sheet. Another girl came along, an orphan or someone else with a sob story, diverting the grandmother’s attention. The orphan needed her too, needed her more, and eventually the granddaughter understood this. I never did. Wasn’t there enough love and time for both? Did one need to be excluded to save the other?
I was always jealous, there was never enough for me, and I was melodramatic, too, with my heavy sighs and foot stomps, my silences heavy as lead. I’m not sure what she could have done differently. I was raised in an atmosphere of debate and art and anger (suppressed until it exploded) and last night I realized how many dinners and afternoons of soothing, of ignoring, she must have colluded in back then. It was all fine, it was important that it be fine, when clearly it wasn’t fine.
There is nothing to be done about it now, as I make my own mistakes and accept my feelings as real. I recognize the continuation of a pattern (with a different flavor). I name the emotions, I tell myself they are legitimate and that I am ok for having them, I promise that I will always acknowledge those of the boy, and that I will never, NEVER tell him that I know exactly what he is thinking, that I knew he would say that. I won’t take away his emotions or his autonomy. I will not rob him from himself.
From a photo prompt that has nothing to do with my text.
I'm posting every messy Round Robin prompt, a prompt a day until the RR ends. Unless I tell you otherwise, this is the original 12-minute prompt edited only for clarity and typos. It's probably a bit obtuse, this post, but I can tell you that it is based on a (calm) revelation and conversation I had with my mother last night, something that reminded me how far both of us have come and how separate I am feeling from the past (with a few exceptions). There are still some sore spots, of course. One thing at a time.
Image by godzillante|photochopper.
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