THE STORY INTENSIVE-LESSON 1-FREEWRITING

Hello there you beautiful people,

It has been a while since I've been here. I missed coming here and sharing my writing. I admit to being shy about the results yet, I am learning in THE STORY INTENSIVE that sharing is part of growing as a writer. So here I go. My first lesson is a I don't remember exercise in freewriting.

Thank you for stopping by, leave a word or two about your thoughts will you, I'd love to hear some input.

I don’t  remember…

                I don’t remember walking home from the school bus the day Samantha slapped me across the face for no apparent reason I knew of. I don’t remember if I cried or if any of my friends witnessed this unpleasant scene.

                I don’t remember my first day in first grade. There was no kinder garden then. They started having kinder garden classes the year after I started second grade and cried the whole first day.

                I don’t remember why I wrote a love note to Jackson in fourth grade when my heart was set on his best friend Isaac.

                I don’t remember if my father was with my mom, Nathan and I while we moved in our brand new home in 1967. I don’t remember seeing mom packing our special picnic lunch of potato salad, baloney sandwiches and a homemade Boston cream pie, she had prepared. So in the end we had one third each of a delicious enough apple pie our new neighbor dropped off to welcome us in the neighborhood. What a treat.

                I don’t remember preparing my lunch of baloney sandwiches every day. But I know for a fact my mother never did. She was always dead tired by the time she got home late from her work in the factory and would go to bed right after we watched the Flying nun at seven thirty.

                I don’t remember how they put Uncle John in the ambulance the night he got really sick and his kidneys failed. It took forever for him to come home from the hospital. I don’t remember my parents giving me a straight answer when I asked about his return. Can’t have been much of an answer or I’m sure I wouldn’t have kept on asking. I don’t remember where I hid the silver dollar I would have wrapped with my favorite wrapping paper I kept neatly in the bottom drawer of my dresser . I picked this happy one in my mind believing it would cheer him up and remind him I was waiting impatiently at home for him to come back and be all better.

                I don’t remember when Safka our fourth and last pet dog left for a new home. Mom didn’t either when I asked her. Dad hadn’t the faintest idea either. So maybe she just ran away.

Terrebonne, 3 September 2017

Peggy Elms, writer