Kate's Writing Challenge #1 (continued) :The Old Neighborhood

As part of Kate DiCamillo's writing challenge during this quarantine season, she encouraged writing one page a day.

This is a practice I started back when I went through Eva Shaw's Writeriffic course online and as I worked my way through The Artist's Way in that class. 

As with all good habits, it can be easy to let daily writing fall by the wayside, but this season has found creative types spurring each other on in continued creativity. I had already purposed to use this season for "getting back on the writing wagon" but the videos and encouragement of fellow creatives have helped me maintain that intent through the doldrums of days that bleed into one another for lack of enough structure. 

So- I probably won't share every day I write down, who wants to decipher my sloppy handwriting? Definitely not me. But I will transcribe at least the first day where I finally made good on my promise to myself to 'get back to it' - editing all the way. 

One Page of Writing: 

The Old Neighborhood 

It's a nice old neighborhood, lined with trees older than any of the people living there.  Every once in awhile, one of those tall, tall trees may lose its footing and tumble into one of the homes of the humans below, causing families to relocate for a season or forever-  while men with chainsaws dismembered the old saint for cremation. 

Tumbling trees can't help it of course. They mean no harm at all. Becoming wobbly is a part of the aging process;  the elderly growing especially tipsy when the wind blows through with a summer squall. 

Still, it's a nice old neighborhood, lined with tall old trees that barely fall. 

It's a nice old neighborhood, lined with little cottage homes. Every once in a while, one of those small cottage homes burst into flames. The fire department can be there in four minutes flat. They poke and prod and sift through ash, proclaiming the wires  as old as the trees, and twice as shaky. 

The incontinence of stretched-thin wires is no fault of their own, just another part of accumulating years. So insurance repairs the charred out parts - but only the charred parts- leaving the wiring of other wings to bide their combustible time.

Still, it's a nice old neighborhood, lined with friendly cottage homes, hardly ever on fire. 

It's a nice old neighborhood, quiet without much noise at all. The tall trees buffering the little cottage homes, muffling sounds from the busy roads adjacent.  Station 12's  race with Station 4 to be the first to respond or the occasional peal from a too- sensitive and wind-tickled warehouse alarm, alerting that a mischievous breeze has been spotted. The pizza joint's dumpster is changed out twice monthly, the clanging metal and beeping trucks always before the sun but never - hardly ever - before five.



Spring and Summer bring mowers and blowers, but most lawns allow complete dandelion takeover, the symphony of their fluff scattering orchestration made complete by wind through the pine curtain and birds belting out complex tunes.



Grandfathered-in yard fowl, predating the city's expanding limits, have crowned a lone crooner the neighborhood watch. He crows his alarm when daylight sneaks in, repeating his broadcast at dusk.

It's a nice old neighborhood with no crime to speak of, unless you count herbal use without prescription. Neighbors who've in the past brushed up against the law now mulch their gardens with wild oat remains, smiling and waving as they walk their Maggie dog, a good girl who only looks ferocious.



Every once in a while, a neighbor may lose their footing and stumble against hard times through no fault of their own, or very much their own fault. It doesn't matter either way.  Neighbors rebuild neighbors and bide their time together.

Misboxed mail will be returned and treats are baked to share. Basketball goals are communal and front porch lights fend off the night for kids on bikes; someone is always home.



Still, it is a nice old neighborhood, filled with neighbors that never make the six o'clock news, repeated again at eleven; where the door is always open, the coffee always on. Of course you can borrow this or that, what's mine is yours to have.

It is a nice old neighborhood, and now my own. Prodigal lot, wild oats full grown. I mulch my garden and sweep the steps, there is a welcome mat at both doors.  A roof, three bedrooms and running water, I have shelter in this transitional storm.



Cousins, siblings, uncles and aunts, many have rested their wings here before me. I knew these walls I now call home before as just a guest. My Granny bought this family nest with accumulated savings, knowing many of us would eventually need saving.



From the same big window, we've all watched for trees that may drop in for a visit, and wondered if the flickering lights were warning us of danger. We share a familial sneezing, pollen showers unrelenting. Year after year, we've battled genealogical poison ivy vines and the encroaching encampments of dragon ants, tiny bites of fire. We've fought the drains and fixed the screens, the porch, the tub and pipes, we've all been startled from our sleep by homeless cats in choirs. Someday the trees will reclaim it all, their roots winning ground as their limbs canvas the air.



It's a nice old neighborhood, quiet and lined with tall pine trees and small friendly cottages. The cul-de-sac overflows with captured memories and the highway's on-ramp nearby invites us to spread our wings and fly. I live here now, I may not always. But for this time and this family home, I am deeply grateful. 

* This entry was post-dated

Kate's Writing Challenge #1

I had purposed to use some of this quarantine time to do that which I love to do: write & create.

I believe those of us whose souls soar on creativity all heard the same call. And so, by the time I saw that Kate was sharing her light with reader and writer friends online, I had already begun. But it is the sharing of encouragement and the motivation of creative friends all around me that have kept me keeping on.

• Week 1 for Kate's Quarantine Camp: Write one page a day (fellow ArtistWay alum? Could be.) 


• Write a letter to someone, real or imagined. 

My Letter To Mr. Rogers: 

Dear Mr. Rogers, 

Thank you for sitting with me when Momma had chores to do. Thank you for explaining things - even very basic things - instead of assuming I knew. You saved me from having to ask aloud, which was sometimes a hard thing to do.  Thank you for never pulling mean pranks or going for a low-hanging laugh. You were never a coarse friend, or bully. Thank you for not being too big to play and imagine, for granting me permission to do the same. Thank you for tiny little joyful things, like Trolley's bell and Daniel Strip-ed Tiger's teeny-tiny watch. Thank you for the stability of routine: feeding fish and changing shoes, for showing me there's no rush and things are worth doing well. Thank you for surprising things, like songs that don't always rhyme,  my poems do not either. Thank you for showing me how stuff works, and how a man gets turned into The Hulk. You live in a world of miniature houses, friendly neighbors and imagination come to life! Thank you for allowing myself to be me and for just your being you. 

With Abiding Admiration, 

~Kelly



I've been watching old episodes and I really loved this scene from the closing of one of his shows:

My one page entry will be posted on its own page. (HERE) 

*This entry was post-dated 

The Decade Challenge: February 2010 & A Brief Detour

Yesterday would have been 22 years of a marriage that, like most, had good days and bad.

In the years as the children got older, we began to refer to the date as our family's birthday and would often take a trip to celebrate the anniversary together. This picture is from one such trip, ten years ago this week.



As I have embarked on this decade challenge prompt, I have been accused of not being over the marriage, nor the man that I was married to. I've been told to take my memories down and stop writing about anything where he was involved. But to do that, I would have to erase my life til now and cease to exist myself.



And so- February's entry is simply a reminder that this was the time of year we decided to involve ourselves with one another, inseparably for the rest of our breathing lives. There was actually terminology to the same effect: 'two becoming one til death do us part'. And we stayed in that knot for the next two decades. Memories from our fracture point forward may never involve each other again, but the memories leading up to that point are not so easily subtracted. I can be a quiet, observing, stand-out-of-the-way type, but I generally resist any instruction to erase myself or to become invisible.



Every day I wake up is a day I am granted the same right of all living beings: to not apologize for existing.



Understand, dear reader, that my entire life - almost all of my twenty four hours, for the better part of two decades, was spent inhaling and exhaling this family, now dispersed. There were defined roles and job descriptions. There were births and shared losses, countless moves from here to yon. There were times of plenty and times without very much at all. I was in whatever circumstance we were calling home, all day, full time, all the way along. There were times I worked outside the home to help our ends have a better chance of meeting, but even then, my schedule was built around being out of the home when they were all least likely to need me.



... if you are here, curious about me and what I have to say...if you are trying to get to know me from afar...or maybe justifying choices you have made... if you are here to see how I remember the way things were when I was your mom... if you are comparing notes or taking them...here is a point worth considering: what does it look like when someone's twenty year old child dies? What seems healthy to you: a shopping spree or time spent mourning? Acknowledging the loss and properly grieving or adopting a new child right away?



You must judge according to your own standards, I suppose.



What must be grieved properly is not a person - or people-  who belonged to me. We are born with a destiny that allows only one's self to inhabit body, mind and grave. I possess governance of myself alone, and that is all I desire, (except when I am conducting a class... then, I want others to sit down, speak softly and do as I say.)



I grieved being sent away and maligned.



Yes, I packed the car and extended our stay beyond his reach.

The first and last, boundary I ever held fast to, and the locks were changed behind me.



I grieved that the choice had to be made.



What I am not :

Seeking resurrection

Keeping the ventilator on

Going to disappear



And so.



In February, we were in the Keys again. Enjoying sunsets and the rise and fall of mangrove roots looping through the sand.



We liked each other enough then.



That was then, a different time than now.

Our lives were enmeshed - for better, and eventually worse.

I can't rewrite history... I won't.

The sun sets, but also rises. 

“Surely there is the handful of nursery marchen that start, ‘Once in the middle of a forest lived an old witch’ or ‘The devil was out walking one day and met a child,’ " Said Oatsie, who was showing that she had some education as well as grit. "To the grim poor there need be no pour quoi tale about where evil arises; it always is. One never learns how the witch became wicked, or whether that was the right choice for her - is it ever the right choice? Does the devil ever struggle to be good again, or if so is he not the devil? It is at the very least a question of definitions.” ― Maguire, Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West