3.05.2008

The Journey

I was just thinking about what made me want to become a writer. My earliest short-story was written in second grade, for Mrs. Walker, as an extra credit assignment. It was right before Christmas, and I had decided to get my "My Little Pony" stamps out and illustrate a story about Jesus's birth, including some of my favorite pony characters, instead of the usual sheep and donkey. The pink and red ponies decorated the outer margins, surrounding a magical story about a baby's birth and how the ponies traveled back in time to witness it. I still have it packed away in a memory box somewhere.

Mrs. Walker was very impressed with my creativity, grammar and imaginiation (but not so much my spelling - I still struggle with that). Her praise and encouragement became a drug and it started a habit and joy of writing and sharing.

In Junior High I dabbled in poetry. Sappy prose about kissing boys and losing a best friend. Much of it was unoriginal, but it did all rhyme, even if the tempo was a little faulty at times. I could sit for hours composing them, filling my head with words and emotion and then putting it down on paper.

High School brought out my true voice through writing. I was both on our newspaper staff and in a Creative Writing class, as well as an Advanced-Placement Honors English. Every waking hour was about reading, researching, anaylzing and writing. And I kept a detailed journal of writing that wasn't school assigned as well.

This was all pre-computers, and we didn't own a typewriter, so my middle finger on my right hand still bears a rough callus from years of putting pen to paper, literally. Most of the time the tips of my fingers and the bottom of my hand was stained with ink or pencil shavings. I always had a notebook in hand... in order to interview someone for a story, or just to write a long love letter to my boyfriend. I wrote pages and pages everyday.
It wasn't until recently that I realized what inspired my love of story-telling.

While I was sitting down, trying to think of something to write about, dozens of interesting stories about my mother's life became flooding back to me. I am sure this is because my mom and I stayed up until 3 am on Saturday going through family history and geneaology on both sides. Names and stories I've heard hundreds of times sitting at the kitchen table with her came flooding back.

Of course I am a writer... a story teller... my mother had such a descriptive way of telling a story when we were children, it just came naturally to me. Someday I'd like to write her memoirs. She has led such a hard, but intersting life. I want to carry on her legacy and family history for generations to come.

Thanks mom for not only giving birth to me, but for sharing a part of yourself through your stories, so that I could find who I needed to be.