Everyday Canvas

Bookcases and Grocery Carts, and Those We Leave Behind

Prompt: If you could spend happy hours looking at a person's bookcase and their grocery cart, you would get a good idea of who they are. Do you agree? Write what you want about this.

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Not really. Some of the books might be given as gifts by people who don’t know or understand the reading habits and likes and dislikes of the person. As to the grocery cart, it depends. Mine has to do with who is visiting and which foods they might prefer; also, my husband and I have very different tastes and choices both in food and books, and I shop for both of us.

Going back to the books, I have books from years ago, some are the ones I read or have read, others I keep for reference, and still others that are rare or out of print. Add to these hubby’s books on totally different subjects, and you’ll see an eclectic and quite weird combination.

Prompt “It is so hard to leave—until you leave. And then it is the easiest goddamned thing in the world.” John Green, Paper Towns
What were some of the things or people that were difficult to leave for you, for someone you know, or for a character in your story, and what were the results of leaving those things?

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The most difficult leaving has to do with people for me. The people I have left behind a long time ago, the images of my family members--grandparents, mother, uncles, aunts, cousins, etc.--in airports, train stations, or while I took off in a car still haunt my memory. Some of them, when I returned, weren’t there, in this life, anymore. This includes a couple of pets, too.

In addition, I left some hobbies and things I liked to do because they didn’t fit in well with my life at that moment. Some of those, I still yearn for, but one lifetime is not enough for everything and everyone we love. I also changed two careers in their middle just when I was getting somewhere. I am annoyed with that. Then places, like states and countries where I lived in for a while and made friends were also very difficult to leave.

It wasn’t so bad leaving my childhood home, but I felt shaken up leaving the place where I raised my children and where I had close friends, after several decades of living there. That taught me one thing. I am trying not to get emotionally involved with the house I am living in now, in spite of the fact that we have been living here since 1993.

As to my characters, in one of my NaNo novels, the main character leaves the woman he loves, although the woman loved him, too, because his best friend also loves her and she was the friends’ fiancée to begin with. I felt for my main character when I wrote the last chapters of that novel. I imagine he felt a deep hole opening up right in the middle of his chest.

I don’t think leaving behind what or who one loves is “the easiest goddamned thing in the world” as John Green claims. This might be true only if the person leaving didn’t fit in or was abused in some way.