Fear

WoW for this week  - Think back to when you were very young. Try to recall one of your first fears. A shadow on the wall, a ghost in the closet, a person, a scene from a movie or book. Write about that fear. Try to remember the feeling it gave you, what that fear would make you do and how you were comforted. Write a real life story or a piece of fiction. Wherever the prompt takes you. Keep your post on the short side: up to 500 words OR a 5 minute stream of consciousness exercise. Link your finished piece to the list and begin popping by the other links. Oh, and enjoy!

She sits in front of the flickering screen, thoughts elsewhere as screenbound Heidi flicks her platinum plaits and runs up snowcapped mountains. She loves the story of Heidi, but not today.

Her mind is firmly across the road at home.

Sprinklers on the roof, gutters full of water, down pipes clogged with ragbag clothes. Dad had swept leaves away, closed all the windows and doors before leaving her at the neighbours’ to play.

But play is not for her today, as smiles and chatter will not come easily. Her tummy feels tingly and slightly sick, her heart beats quickly in her chest. Her sticky hands screw her hanky into knots in her lap. The acrid smell of smoke is everywhere, the daylight weirdly orange as the temperature rises further. Her breath comes faster as a sob rises. She wants her Mum, her Dad, she wants them here and she wants everything to be all right. Now.

Describe place

This week's assignment is to write descriptively, with all the senses,  about place.

She slips from the house as the family dozes, the afternoon sweltering. Her playground is a washed out place of greens and dappled greys. Tall gums, she-oaks and a huge Christmas bush of deepest olive, no longer speckled red, compose her ceiling and her walls. Bark crunches under bare feet as she climbs sandy solid rocks to play, to jump, and to dream. Her mother’s voice, a memory, echoes, “where are your shoes?” Spinning around in the dappled light she spots the green-tinged cream of flannel flowers. She picks one and slips its velvet behind her ear. Rustles in the undergrowth as her passing shadow alarms the under dwellers. A loud whip and scrabble announces a cold-eyed goanna who scales an angled trunk and watches warily. Far off bell-chimes of crimson rosellas break through the pulsing quiet. A complexity of bush smells comforts as her imagination drifts.

“Lion Rock” she says, “ yes you are my Lion”. Soft feet seek toe grips and she climbs lithely to perch atop. She reaches her small arms around his scratchy lichened neck. Resting her cheek to his cool mane, the bush heat throbs around her.

No going back..

I've had the pleasure of doing a written interview for Sarah on her awesome blog in the past week. She talks about "that space in between..." all sorts of things, the space between being a woman with no children and then a mother, the space between lost and gone, and many other thoughtful concepts.
I joined her with my space, one that is on my mind a lot at the moment - the space between me as a mother of semi-dependent children (teens) and the space that will gape as I transition to an empty nester, whenever that ends up being. I wrote this with a gentle sense of melancholy...
Have a look at the post here.

Secrets

I'm trying to take Gill's good advice from Inkpaperpen and draw out some of my work into longer pieces by running stories together, so here goes - this follows from Sacrifice which you can read here

“They’ll always catch you up”, Ella's Grandma had said. Wiping her hands on her checked apron, she turned and shook her head at the 5 year old licking the mixing spoon – “they’ll always catch you up , secrets and lies”.

She gently smiled at the memory as she considered what to do, to keep it a secret or to tell? No-one really knew, they had their theories of course but no-one knew who the father was, not even him.  For the moment she could hold her knowledge close, it didn’t matter, it had no bearing on today or tomorrow or the next day.

Bring me a cup of sunshine...

Write On Wednesdays Exercise 19 - Sunshine in a cup. Write the words of Emily Dickinson: "Bring me sunshine in a cup" at the top of your page. Set a timer for 5 minutes. Write the first words that come into your head after the prompt. Don't take you pen off the page (or fingers off the keyboard). Stop only when the buzzer rings! Do this exercise over and over if you wish. Write beyond 5 minutes if you like, you can link it up as an extra post.

This is the first time I've really tried to stick to the time, to let the thoughts flow rather than concentrate on structure and grammar.

She runs on soft tippy toes through the grass.

‘Mummy, come and play with me!”

Bounding into her playhouse she giggles at a private internal joke.

“Come and play, come and play!”

I watch her sunstreaked hair, shiny, her cut still ruined by her last week’s effort with her scissors. Full of life, full of energy, full of ideas, they tumble out of her as rapidly as the speech from her mouth.

“Mummy come play, I’ll make you a picnic”

"What shall we eat my sweet?", I say

“Sandwiches of course, my mummy”

“What will we drink?”

She holds out pudgy hands and tips her buttercup face to me “for you, a cup of sunshine”

What we allow is what we approve*

In the quiet of a rainy Sunday morning before the troops arise, I’m enjoying time with my Mac trawling the net for nothing in particular (as you do).

But I’m stopped dead by a photo. Suri Cruise, running on the beach with Katie, in “her signature high heels”.  No, not Katie in heels, her daughter, Suri. How old is this child, 5? Maybe she just came from a special birthday party…but her mum’s in shorts and a T? What is this? I read further and find this part of her shoe collection worth “$150,000”.

So should I be surprised, they’re celebs, of course? And little girls have always wanted to wear heels (usually their mother’s) but on the beach? So then I threw the whole dilemma into Google, and guess what? This is not just a one off; she’s been doing it for years – Suri in golden high heels in 2009, aged 3 on slippery New York pavements etc etc. Yes I know the heels are ‘only” a few inches…..

So then to the debates on various sites. If we put aside the argument that this is a one-off, and in fact it is regular garb, lets see what the comments are. “Child abuse“ rant some, “get a life, what’s wrong with girls being princesses”, “if they like them, why shouldn’t they wear them” say others. The risk of injury and later orthopaedic problems is pointed out.

But the question I have, is - why are tiny shoes made with high-heels for everyday wear?  How come you can buy them? A bit like the infamous padded bras in (children’s) size 6 so little girls could have breasts like Mummy. HUH? Why can retailers manufacture and market these things?

So girls, why do we grown-ups wear high heels (though I confess I do not because they kill my feet and I fall over)?  In principle, I guess it’s to feel confident and sexy and to enhance height, leg shape and physical appeal to others (based on an ideal of….?). So why are we allowing this to be applied to little girls?  Surely this approach is at best foolish and at worst exploitative. Julie Gale, founder of Kids Free 2 B Kids clearly describes the problem here .

Collective Shout asks the question, “will we let children be children in Australia?” and cites a British six-month independent review into the commercialisation and sexualisation of childhood, commissioned by PM David Cameron. This review called for, amongst other things, retailers to offer age-appropriate clothes for children. The British Retail consortium has published good practice guidelines as a way forward for industry. 

Australia had a senate enquiry in 2008, which released recommendations to the media and marketing/retail industry, but a promised 18 month review has not happened. Do have a look at the above organisations and sign up to their good work if you agree. Novelactivist has a dissenting view, interesting to ponder, though there’s a few too many big words in there for me.

Little girls have so many expectations to conform to, let’s at least let them develop a rudimentary sense of their child-self (and I acknowledge that “dress-ups” in imaginative play is part of this) before they normalise adult sexual dress and behaviour. And before anyone says it, no, I'm not telling anyone what to do, just asking for a little thought.

* Dr Glen Cupit, Senior Lecturer in Child
Development, University of South Australia. Quoted here