It was meant to be that I was at my Reunion Day for The Central Utah Writing Project(CUWP) and the presenter had us write a list. So, the list of things Thrusday is a list of events that stick out in my head that I could write a story about:
1. Holding five kittens with my eyes swollen shut at the family farm at age 5.
2. Asking Mom where she was going(shuffling feet) while standing and talking in the kitchen.
3. Birth of each of my kids.
4. Meeting Reuben.
5. Discussing marriage apprehensions with the Good Brother(Randy), the seminary teacher.
6. Technical Foul in high school basketball.
7. The track coach asking me about throwing the shot put while I walked to the field. "But I play softball..."
8. Driving mom's car in the ditch.
9. Freshman taking me to my Senior Prom.
10. Combat Boots to Prom while a best friend went with an ex-boyfriend.
11. Friend's retainer in the trash at Wendy's.
12. Rocking chair with E when going through a miscarriage.
We always write a "Scribble" to start the day off. Basically, one of the participants has a prompt for us, and then we write for ten minutes. I couldn't, for the life of me, remember much of the prompt except that I turned it into some mumbo jumbo about being true to your true yourself and the word "pigeonholed" came up and that is what I ran with:
I've never even seen a pigeonhole. I've been assuming all my life that pigeons nest like all normal birds, but who am I to pigeonhole a pigeon. If they would rather burrow into the cold abyss of the underground, fine by me.
The older I get the less I care about what other people think, say, or do. Live your life to your truth...and let me have a nap. I'm exhausted by the loud, annoying voices found on social media and in the news. I dream of acreage in the middle of nowhere but within driving distance from an airport. See...I want to bury my head in the sand like a flamingo...why do we always use birds for our analogies?! I could ignore the world but come out to go to a concert or a baseball game on occasion. I want what my dad and his siblings had growing up in rural Wisconsin. Ya know the quiet and produce-your-own food kind of place. The only going into town once a week for essentials kind of place.
The place that his sisters hated and desperately wanted out of...I want that. The 1950s of limited technology and less worry about the neighbor's politics or preferences...A. Simple. Life. Maybe retirement will bring this simplicity and a more solace-filled place.
But maybe I'd just be bored like my kids everyday when they don't have the structures of routine and the endless summer days are only endless and unbearable for their parents. (When will the fighting end?)
Maybe my pigeonhole is just my office when I run away to ignore the fighting and write about the back 40 and how the grass is always greener for the other pigeons.
