Come Write With Me

I started this blog ten months ago. September 2010.   I'm an intermittent blogger. Sometimes I have a story to tell. Most times not. My life is not full of excitement.

When I first met bloggers on Twitter, I tried to read my little group daily. I did a good job.  I convinced myself I could do this, too. After all, I'd kept a journal for years.

So, I would sporadically throw a post out, I'd read posts from my first little group. My "network" began to grow a bit.

It got harder to keep up my reading. It got harder to find interesting things to write about.  But?  I like to write. When the mood (muse?) is with me.

So, silly me, I started a second blog in November.  A place to write poems. Create stories. I kept it hidden. Until February.  I took a deep breath, and tweeted the link to my other site, Elsetime & Otherwhen.  And in February, I wrote my first post for a prompt from The Red Dress Club, a blog site for people who want to write and get feedback from other writers.

I've written flash fiction, fantasy, a poem, many memories, and even a short horror story. Some of my stuff is badly done, but I think I've improved a bit.  I don't do all of the prompts, sometimes it's time issues. Sometimes I'm just blank. But I appreciate that it is there.

So, if I haven't posted here for a while, click the link on the right, the one with the glowy kitty eyes.  Chances are I've written something over there. It may or may not be of interest.

It may inspire some to join me in this adventure in writing. Anyone can join.  If you write somewhere else, let me know.  I'll find a day to fit you into my reading list.

The more the merrier.

Frozen in Time

This was written for The Red Dress Club ,the prompt was write a piece - 600 word limit - about finding a forgotten item of clothing in the back of a drawer or closet. Let us know how the item was found, what it is, and why it's so meaningful to you or your character.

In the back of the closet. Covered by a dry cleaner's bag. My father's Navy pea coat.

I found it as I was emptying the two rooms my husband and I were getting ready to paint and clean up. One room was mine as a teenager. The other had been my parent's room. After we all moved away, it was Daddy's room until his death in 2004.

Daddy was in the Navy in 1951.  He was discharged in 1952 at the request of his father. Daddy's mother passed away on February 20th, 1952.  She died of cancer.  I wasn't born until 1956. I never knew her. And now I live in the house she had moved to just three years before her death.

My grandparents moved a lot. Living in Ohio, Chicago, Buffalo, somewhere in California. And places between.  I had the feeling there were a lot of rented rooms during that time. My father was in high school when they bought this house.  She had her own home for three years.

Daddy's pea coat is still here. Because the death of his mother stopped time in this house. And even though Daddy brought his wife and infant daughter to live here in 1956, and had four more children, some things never changed. The steamer trunks full of his mother's clothes, letters and trinkets. The box grater and flour sifter in the kitchen. The pretty glass pieces in the built in china cabinet.

They are all still here. Like Daddy's pea coat.  Sixty years. Locked in time.

Waiting to be rediscovered. And released.