Frayed Feisty Threads - Book IV

What if...?

You know, I could get a little excited about this writing thing. In fact, I could get downright enthusiastic…. some might even say 'carried away', or 'foolish', if I were to tell them that grandiose visions of prose were dancing about in my head.

Solitude, oft desired, is certainly mine. The writer's food nourishing the creative processes is spread aplenty in my basement. Oh the setting is not exactly Epicurean, with the washer and dryer behind me, cat litter boxes across the room and the cold of the tiled floor seeping upward on my feet, but it is, after all, quiet.

Chasing dreams in my head again, and trying to channel the thoughts that lay dormant inside this mind for twenty years I know that I have awakened a dream. The word player within is pushing and cracking the bonds of constraint just as a newborn chick struggles to emerge from its shell.

It has been a long journey to come to this place, to consider crafting words as something other than a hobby. The first day my nine-year old self walked into a library and vowed to read every book there before I graduated high school and left home, I knew I was in love with books…and therefore, words. And the child read…. getting my first book only after the aging spinster librarian lost her argument to me. Lassie, Come Home I returned in two days, to the librarian's smug comment of "Too difficult….I thought so". I simply smiled and answered, "No, I finished it ".

The memory of the young boy's distress over the loss of his dog, the Scottish brogue and Lassie's journey home was a book I returned to again and again. I wandered every step of the moor with her and felt all of the child's pain. I remember vividly to this day the scene when Lassie is carried home and placed by the hearth. I cried those tears, willing her to get well.

Then I discovered Frank Baum and spent a summer in The Land of OZ.

And I wrote…to anyone who would listen, and respond. Pen pals in Europe and missionaries in far-off and then exotic places like Africa and Australia, cousins and aunts….all engaged in lively correspondence. I loved the funny-looking stamps and the special thin crinkly blue airmail envelopes! My world was complete with Internet connections, albeit a bit slower.

In the seventh grade, she arrived. This teacher with the name that no one could quite pronounce. With an incredible presence and expectation, she extracted from us literary beginnings. Reading to us, she expanded our meager small-town horizons with books,prose and poetry, and always, encouragement.

I excitedly became a wordsmith, delighting in trying combinations of words to describe my world in different and unique ways. I became proficient at completing writing tasks, often the first one finished. In eighth grade, I orchestrated a debate, arguing that books can take you anywhere you want to go. Finding solitude on the front porch swing, I read and I traveled….and thought I had the world at my feet. Pretty good for a small-town girl!

In high school, I had newfound popularity as poet, for I discovered iambic pentameter. I created poems for my friends, writing maudlin teenage prose that chronicled others' relationships, when they wanted some venue to express feelings. Creating always for others, I was yet to unearth the art of writing for myself.

Crafting words again will pierce the shell of this long-silenced dream. Floating within my mind are images of newfound life …..a baby, a plant pushing through soft brown earth, a puppy and a child tumbling in the grass … all dancing about in my muse, I can feel the dream pulsating, an intensely driven rhythm quickening in my head. I am standing on the precipice of ……………..

What if, for a moment I allowed myself to finish that thought? What if I bring the dream to life?

What if…?

tuc
©01/04/98