Five Minutes A Day – Days 6, 7 & 8

Prompts: send, mystery, street

For punishment, Mother used to send us to our rooms. I don’t know how this affected my siblings, but for me, this was no punishment at all. I enjoyed the solitude. There in my room, I no longer had to pretend to be the perfect daughter, sister or friend. I could just be myself, whoever that was. I was still figuring that bit out.

My room was my sanctuary. It was small and covered in red & gold wallpaper with golden eagles on it. Sometimes, I pretended it was an important office of some high official and I was the secretary. Other times, I would just sit and stare at all those eagles and wish we, they and me, could be free and outside soaring in the air. All that pretending afforded me a healthy imagination.

If my room was a sanctuary, then books were my saving grace within those four walls. I spent about two-thirds of my day reading something – at home and in school. I had a few favorite genres: biographies, gothic novels, and science fiction; however a good mystery could suck me in for hours. I love trying to figure out the who and why. Someone gave us a huge box filled with Nancy Drew and Agatha Christie mysteries. I devoured those eagerly. When I was around thirteen, I’d spent the entire summer reading books at my local library. By the following summer, I’d read everything in the junior children’s section, but I needed more. I finally convinced my mother to call the librarian and give her permission for me to read from the adult book sections. Although I was reading books for adults, I still had a few children’s favorites – The Secret Garden, Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good Very Bad Day and an adorable story titled The Street That Got Mislaid (also known as Green Bottle Street).

I was so enamored with the later, that I just knew there had to be a hidden street in everyone’s town. And so I embarked on a little sleuthing about my town until I came across a hidden alleyway behind an old doctor’s building and set off exploring. It took me nearly an hour to remove old vines that had twisted their way around the gate and by the time I’d freed that gate, it was nearing dinner and I had to head home without exploring further. When I was finally able to return the next day, I had butterflies in my stomach and had not slept the night before nor even eaten breakfast that morning.  All I could think about was that alley and what I might find. In the end, it wasn’t nearly as exciting as what the man in the Green Bottle Street story had found, but I did find some lovely rocks, a few old marbles, and a penny and dime, both from the 60s. Those little treasures made it all worth it.

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If you’d like to join me for this Five Minutes A Day, please feel free to do so. You can post it on your blog or use my comments below. All I ask is that if you do this on your own blog, that you link to my blog and be sure to give full credit to Kate Montaung (you can click her link to go to her page). Have a blessed day, me lovelies!

Five Minutes A Day – Day 5

Prompt: Table

Round and clad in flowery cloth with only four spaces. Deliberate? If you were late to dinner, you didn’t get a seat at the table. In those early childhood years, I needed one of those seats. I had family dynamics to work on. Thankfully, those first three years after the coma, baby brother had his high-chair and a seat was easily available. Not so once he grew into a booster-seat. Then it was a battle between me and Tamara. Dad was at the head of the table and Mother across from him. Baby brother always had his chair with the booster, so that left only one.

As I got to know my family, I often carried anxiety and weariness with me to the table. I wasn’t sure what food I was supposed to enjoy or how much I was allowed to eat, so I just followed Tamara’s lead. Often there would be astonished looks from Mother as I tried out different vegetables, or looks of disgust as I crinkled up my nose at other food.

“You never used to like that,” Mother would say. Or, “but that’s your favorite!”

I would just shrug my shoulders. What else could I do? Did my taste buds change too?

Once I had to battle for a seat, I would deliberately be late. I didn’t find any pleasure in competition and Tamara liked to gloat if she beat me to the table. I’d gather a plate of food and pad off through the house to the front porch (if it was warm) or gather around the wood stove (if it was cold) and eat by myself.

By this time, I was doing a lot of things by myself. Mom was often moody, Dad was distant, Tamara was smug and Baby Brother was fussy. I found myself alone in my room, playing with dolls or reading books. I still didn’t trust people and there was little else to do. Even at the age of nine, I knew I was different and a loner.

Changes were coming soon. Changes that would set me apart even more.

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If you’d like to join me for this Five Minutes A Day, please feel free to do so. You can post it on your blog or use my comments below. All I ask is that if you do this on your own blog, that you link to my blog and be sure to give full credit to Kate Montaung (you can click her link to go to her page). Have a blessed day, me lovelies!

Five Minutes A Day – Day 4

Day 4 Prompt: After

So this is what happens after all the observing and pretending – you lose all sense of self. You see, the story of Elle is the story of me. I’ve pretended for so long that I have no idea who I really am. Was I a true sister? Was I a true daughter? Was I ever genuine with anyone? Or have I always been a fraud?

Ah, now there’s the rub. I’ve been fearful my entire life. What if someone found out? That IF has prevented me from doing many of things I’ve wanted to do. Book editor? No. Published writer? No. Astrologist? No. Professional tarot reader? No. Herbalist? No. Reiki Master? No. Always no because someone somewhere would discover my secret – I’ve always been a pretender.

Yet none of that is true, or at least it shouldn’t be true. It’s merely the message I’ve repeated over and over again in my head. I had a wonderful education and even after decades of being out of college, I’ve never stopped learning.

The mind is a fickle mistress who can make you believe almost any lie. And only through years of therapy have I come to realize that my childhood illness and loss of memory was a cruel stroke of fate. I did what I had to do to survive.

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If you’d like to join me for this Five Minutes A Day, please feel free to do so. You can post it on your blog or use my comments below. All I ask is that if you do this on your own blog, that you link to my blog and be sure to give full credit to Kate Montaung (you can click her link to go to her page). Have a blessed day, me lovelies!

Five Minutes A Day – Day 3

Here I am, eleven days later. I didn’t really forget about writing here and I hate making excuses. I just felt anxious. Too anxious to sit down and do anything constructive or creative. It will probably happen again, and again. Consistency hasn’t been my forte of late. Thankfully, I am persistent. So shall we begin anew?

Day 3 Prompt: Plan

If you read the beginning of my little story, then this will continue forth. Because Elle had no memory and her mother didn’t believe her, Elle plotted out a plan. She knew she wouldn’t be able to go on unless she pretended to know people, but how could she without memory of them? And so Elle became an observer.

Her days were spent sitting silently listening, watching and mentally recording everything and everyone around her. This sitting wasn’t a problem. Elle wasn’t allow to participate in many activities, especially ones that might tire her out. She heard whispers of “We don’t want a relapse.” And any time she became too rambunctious, her mother would tell her to go sit down with her dad. Elle learned all about her dad pretty quickly. He wasn’t a complicated man. He enjoyed sports, westerns, and comedy on television. He liked to hunt and fish, alone. He worked hard and took his coffee light and sweet. He told funny stories and loved to laugh. And he didn’t like conflicts.

Mother was a bit harder for Elle to understand. Sometimes her mother was full of life, laughter and love. Other times, a melancholy came over her face and only sadness resided there. Her mother watched daytime soaps and game shows, with the occasional night time soap or old movie. She loved listening to country music and Elvis while she cooked or cleaned. She rarely left the house but to visit one of her sisters, but couldn’t stand to be alone either. She was constantly on the phone. Elle’s mother also told stories, but they weren’t funny like her dad’s. No, her mother’s stories were about her childhood and how badly Elle’s grandfather treated her mother, her aunts and Elle’s grandmother. Elle’s mother thrived on conflict.

Tamara made little to no sense to Elle. She wasn’t much older than Elle, but she had an air of authority about her. She could tell that Tamara wanted to be in her company, but she also wanted to run and play, something Elle just couldn’t do without the wrath of Mother coming down on her. So Elle watched as Tamara went off with cousins and friends. They rarely talked. For Elle, it was as though Tamara was a huge mystery and she didn’t have the understanding to figure her sister out.

While a distance swept between Elle and Tamara, Elle had a baby brother. He was too tiny to know her and since he was born while she was in a coma, Elle could be anyone around her brother and he wouldn’t know the difference. Elle’s imagination flourished around her brother. She played with him more than she spoke to her sister or Mother, but Elle still cherished the alone time she had with her Dad.

Her plan was working well, and yet, all her life she felt like a fraud. A feeling that would linger with her for her entire life.

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Well, there’s that. Hope you are enjoying my little story. Will be back soon (hopefully tomorrow!) for another part. 

If you’d like to join me for this Five Minutes A Day, please feel free to do so. You can post it on your blog or use my comments below. All I ask is that if you do this on your own blog, that you link to my blog and be sure to give full credit to Kate Montaung (you can click her link to go to her page). Have a blessed day, me lovelies!

Five Minutes A Day – Day 2

See, this is what happens when you aren’t accustomed to writing every day! I almost allowed the day to slip away without doing my small stones over at A Whispered Wind and today’s FMAD. I promise, I will get back into the flow of this!

Day 2 Prompt: Story

Let me tell you a little story and then, dear readers, you can decide if it is fact or fiction.

It all began back in 1971 on a trip to a fish hatchery in West Virginia. Two young girls joined their father on this trip and from all accounts, it was a glorious time. The youngest of the two, Elle, finished the the evening by drinking from a water fountain before she, her sister Tamara and her father returned home. The next day, while playing outside with Tamara, Elle felt ill and went inside. She had a fever, so her mother called to the doctor to find out what to do. As was the norm in those days, she’d been told to give Elle some baby aspirin and put her to bed. This turned out to be a disastrous decision. Some time later, Elle began to have seizures and her parents rushed her to the hospital. Elle was then airlifted to another hospital on the other side of the state. By this time, Elle had fallen into a coma.

Unknown to Elle at the time, she was in the children’s ward of the UVA hospital in Charlottesville, Virginia with four other children. Three of those children died while Elle was still in a coma. By the time she came to a week later, the other child had suffered brain damage from the high fevers and seizures. The doctors weren’t hopeful about Elle’s diagnosis after what had happened to the other four children, but were astonished to learn that Elle would be fine, just a bit of a “nervous” stomach.

However, Elle wasn’t fine. Elle had no memory. Not of why she was in the hospital, nor of her parents. Nothing was familiar. Elle was assured that, “yes, these are your parents and yes, you will be going home with them.” And so home she went. Once there, she didn’t recognize her sister Tamara and she had a new baby brother. Elle tried to tell her mother that she didn’t recognize anyone, but was told she was just being a silly child. Mother showed her pictures of herself and her family, but they meant nothing to little Elle. At the age of five, Elle would have to begin all over again, in a world she didn’t know and with people she wasn’t sure she could trust.

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There you have it, dear readers – my little story, but it doesn’t end there. Tomorrow I will continue the story and integrate the daily prompt into it. 

If you’d like to join me for this Five Minutes A Day, please feel free to do so. You can post it on your blog or use my comments below. All I ask is that if you do this on your own blog, that you link to my blog and be sure to give full credit to Kate Montaung (you can click her link to go to her page). Have a blessed day, me lovelies!

Five Minutes A Day – Day 1

While looking for something to write about this morning (after a t-storm bolted me out of bed!), I got an email from Joyce over at From This Side of the Pond. I used to enjoy doing her Wednesday Hodgepodge, but since I haven’t journalled in a very long time, I’d simply been filing her emails away in a folder (and yes, I feel guilty about that!). Today, I opened her email and read it and realized that she is doing a 10 Day, Five Minutes A Day  Writing Prompt Challenge hosted by Kate Motaung. So I decided I would join along too. I’m not going to even attempt to catch up, mainly because Kate’s challenge has already ended and Joyce is on day 8, so I am just going to begin at the beginning and work my through the ten days.

Day 1 prompt: Today

Today is another day of being in the now. Too often, I allow myself to get distracted by emails, YT videos, movies and documentaries, chores and what to cook for whichever part of the day it is. I don’t give myself enough time to just be present in this moment, in this day. I talk a good talk when people ask me for advice, but very rarely do I walk the walk of living in the moment.

Since the world, it seems, is on lock-down, I’ve been using what I have learned from Mindfulness training to elevate anxiety. It would be too easy for me to begin fretting about Covid-19, the stock market plunge, the arguments among my online friends (is this real or a hoax? Is it as serious as everyone claims? etc.), and my own panic of a horrid immunity system that has never fully recovered from chemotherapy eight years ago.

So instead of hitting the panic button, I sit quietly for the first 5-10 minutes upon awakening, close my eyes and breathe, say a silent prayer to the Father and just be present for those moments. I breathe in LOVE and breathe out FEAR, chasing it as far from my mind, body and soul as I can.

This has given me a new perspective on this whole virus pandemic. It has allowed me to focus on my intention of sending love to the entire planet, to surround myself with loving-kindness and feel compassion for fellow human beings. What seems on the surface to be a very personal, selfish moment of inner reflection, has brought me closer to the entire planet and everyone and everything on it. It also makes me ready to face today calmly.

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Wow, so that was harder than I thought it would be. Took me a while to gather my thoughts, but once I reflected on how I’ve been beginning each day this past week, the words flowed easier. If anyone would like to join me in this challenge (or write a comment about TODAY in my comment section), please feel free to do so. All I ask is if you do choose to write these on your own blog, for you to link back to my blog and give credit to Kate Montaung (you can click her link to go to her page). Have a beautiful day, me lovelies!