Writing Prompts and Secret Blogs

I had to resort to looking at writing prompts to come up with a topic today. That won’t be true come Saturday, having several fun things on my day planner to report on by then. But today I’m still in a dry spell. So what writing prompt did I pick from the list of 365? I went with the one listed for July 9^th…the day I’m actually writing this post which is: “Keep out! Who is the one person you hope isn’t reading your blog and why?” If you want to challenge the writer within---and I do---you can’t pick and choose the prompts that come easy for you.

I was, however, tempted to pick July 16^th which was: “Dream home. You win a contest to build your dream home. Draft the plans.” I drew my first set of house plans when I was 13 or 14 and I haven’t stopped designing houses in my head and often on paper ever since. Dead center of my first house was a three stories high, round foyer containing a spiral staircase with a glass dome overhead. Two wings went off the foyer---one the formal living room and a library, and the other for the kitchen and dining room. Upstairs were four bedrooms and a massive landing overlooking the foyer. Kids. What do they know about anything? When I ran across those plans as an adult, the house looked like a brick prison with its flat roof and with all the windows at the back. Over the years my house planning aspirations have changed. The last set of plans I drew up since becoming a widow was a one bedroom house the size of a two car garage. But both my first and last imagery houses were built on Lake Michigan.

“Who is the one person you hope isn’t reading your blog and why?” It wasn’t my husband when he was alive and I was blogging on a stroke support site. I was writing about my experiences as his caregiver and I'd often read what I wrote to him as a way of communicating. And I have Oprah’s back-then fad of writing a gratitude journal to thank for finding humor in my upside down world. After Don’s stroke I was under enormous stress. He had lost his ability to walk, the use of his right arm and his speech. It took six months of speech therapy just to learn to say ‘yes’ and ‘no’ and they weren’t reliable even at that, so having “conversations” literally took hours where I had to debate both sides of what we needed to do to move forward. He thought he was going to get his old life back and I knew that was impossible.

The other person in world who I really want to read my blog is oldest my niece and she often does. It keeps me striving to be fair, honest and without embellishments when I write about my family. I love her like a daughter and wouldn't most people want their daughters to understand where you’ve been and where you’re at in life? (Patience, I am getting to the list of those who I don’t want to read my blog.)

Only a few others have had a personal invitation to read my blog: 1) a friend I've had since I was five; 2) a friend I met through my husband 48 years ago; 3) one of my Red Hat Sisters and 4) one of my Gathering Girls pals. The two old friends are...well, everything you'd want in an old friend (except they both live out of state) and like my niece, the thought that they might see what I've written keeps me striving to be as accurate as possible when I share memories here. The Red Hatter is a writer of immense talent and she understands that you have to dive deep into your head to write memoir and journal-type stuff---spilling the good, bad and the ugly along the way. She's only read my blog a few times out of curiosity. My Gathering Girls friend may be reading more frequently but she’s a genuinely nice person who’d never intentionally hurt anyone by repeating something negative I might have written. Trust. The bottom line is I trust all these ladies not to use what they read here as gossip fodder.

As you can see, I don't make a habit out of inviting people in my offline life to read my blog although I make no secret of it. A link to my blog is even in my bio on Facebook but to the best of my knowledge only one person has actually found it buried in the fine print and have been here to read---Tim, the son-I-wish-I-had. Tim and I are extreme opposites in our politics and Pro-life/Pro-choice support. He’s very religious and I call myself an agnostic but we’ve had many respectful, in-depth conversations so I know he wasn’t and won’t be shocked or offended by anything he reads here. I can’t say that about most of the people I come in contact with in this very conservative county in West Michigan and I have not been willing to take that chance. Until the past few years, I’ve gone above and beyond to hide my opinions on controversial topics and core values. I'm still very careful. Why? Out of fear of being ostracized. If someone in the blog community doesn't like you based on your world views, they'll just move on and you’d never know about it. In person, it's more complicated.... ©

Easier said than done.

Friends who Read Blogs and the Mom I Still Miss

I have a curious friend who knows I have a blog but she isn’t very computer literate which translates to she can’t find it and she’s tried. Several times when the topic has come up I’ve jokingly said, “If I told you how to find it, I’d have to kill you.” I debate in my head whether or not I should just give her the web address. I can count on the fingers of one hand the number of people in my off-line life who read my blog and I like it that way because it frees me to write without the temptation to white wash my words to square with the filtered person I frequently show to the world away from my keyboard. I trust these five people to still like me even after reading my deepest thoughts. And more importantly, I trust them not to tattle on me if I write about someone we both know.

The year that Don died, I did put the web address in my Christmas letter but to my knowledge only three out of all the people on my mailing list ever stopped by. I get that. I really do. Mostly, it’s other widows who are interested in how newbie widows are handling that first year. And by the time I turned into a seasoned widow who was no longer fluctuating between crying in my beer and being the brave little trooper I came to appreciate the advantages of keeping my online and offline lives separate. That probably explains why my petty inner child is not keen on inviting my curious friend to my blog. My inner child can be quite bullheaded, a word my mother used often to describe me when I was growing up. Bullheadedness in childhood can turn into a useful tool in adulthood. If Mom were here now I’d point out that being bullheaded/persistent, if channeled in the right direction, gets things done. Sticks and stones can hurt your bones but words can never hurt you---unless it’s your mom drilling them into your head.

I don’t write about my mother often. She was a complicated person and I’m afraid I won’t be able to do her justice. She could be a tough disciplinarian and if I lingered too long on that point you’d get the impression she was a hard woman. For example, if I didn’t do the dishes before rushing out to have fun I’d find them piled in my bed to do before I could go to sleep at night. But if I told you she was affectionate with her family and compassionate with others in bad situations, you’d rightly get the impression she had a warm and loving nature. Case in point: whenever my uncle drank too much and gambled away his paycheck my mom slipped her sister money to help feed their kids. At Mom’s funeral I heard similar stories of her quietly helping others. But if I told you my mother was always squirreling money away for rainy days you’d get the impression she was a miser. When she died we had to check the pockets in all her clothes before donating them.

To understand my mom it helps to know that her own mother died after giving birth to my mom’s sixth sibling. She was ten years old and after that all the kids got shuffled off to live with other families across several counties. Mom, being the second born and deemed old enough to work, was sent off to earn her keep at her grandmother’s boarding house. She would tell a story about how all the tablespoons in the house would disappear when meals were made because her grandmother would taste something on the stove, then drop the spoon into the pot. She’d repeat that over and over again and all the spoons would come clinking out when the food was plated. By her early teens Mom had dropped out of school and was working first as a live-in housekeeper, then as a waitress living on her own in a rented room. Her dad would stop by the restaurant regularly to ask her for money. He drank away his widower’s grief until he drank so much he turned into an alcoholic. 

Mom married my dad when she was twenty-six years old and she didn’t talk much about those years when she was out on her own. But I do know that all that time working as a waitress turned her militantly against the system of tipping in restaurants. She thought if we did away with tipping the restaurants would have to pay fair wages. A woman could work her fingers to the bones taking care of a lot of customers, she said, but it was the flirty waitresses with big breasts who made the most money. A couple of times I saw Mom sneak part of the tip money off the table that my dad would leave behind. Bad service? Flirty waitresses? Rainy day fund running low? Your guess is as good as mine.

Mothers and daughters have unique relationships and I leave it to others who knew us both to decide if I’m anything like my mom. One thing I know for sure is she did her best to see that my brother and I had the opportunity to pursue whatever after school activity that we showed an interest in. She was the leader of my Blue Birds, Camp Fire and Horizon Clubs, she volunteered to help on school field trips and was determined I would get a college education. My mom also knitted and crocheted beautifully and played records when she was home alone. The only “mother thing” she didn’t accomplish was to teach me how to cook and that we can chalk that up to me being too bullheaded to learn. She died on an Easter Day in the early ‘80s and while Easter changes dates every year I associate the holiday with losing and still missing her. And it should be noted here that my brother and I still argue over who Mom loved the best.  © 

Photo at the top: My Mom (age 30) and I (age 2 weeks old) on the day we were released from the hospital, and that's my brother.