Writing Wednesday: Where I'm From - December 12, 2007

Finally, I’m getting back into the swing of things!

Writing Wednesday was on hiatus last week; I was in the midst of moving this blog from free hosting at Wordpress.com to paid hosting on GoDaddy running the WordPress blogging platform.

Many apologies if you came looking for an easy little way to keep writing only to find an inactive or half-finished blog!

Today’s Writing Wednesday is a great memory maker that I discovered on fellow blogger Susan’s blog, A Slice of Life. It pays to read those Bloglines feeds everyday; sometimes you discover posts that might otherwise have slipped past your radar.

This writing prompt is called Where I’m From, based on the original poem of the same title by George Ella Lyons. The template here guides you in how to create your own version of where you’re from. This is used by many creative writing teachers as a prompt; you may have already seen it elsewhere on the www.

This is a great prompt to work on your skills in the shorter form of poetry, where imagery and symbolism come into play just as your word count goes down, down, down. Make every word count!

Thanks again, Susan, for posting this. I enjoyed reading yours.

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Here’s mine:

I am from the cream-sided house tucked behind a hedge of dense green eunanymous bushes, a hedge that buzzed and shimmied with hungry bees from the first hint of spring bulbs until the last tattered brown leaf of fall.

I am from the blackberry bushes in the vacant lot, the azaleas that burned bright scarlet, the snapping, angry claws of Blue Crabs caught by little girls with chicken necks, twine, and nets, and the baby sassafras trees whose sweet roots I chewed, the delicate creamy blooms of dogwoods in April and the red clay in the backyard dirtpile.

I am from library trips every Saturday morning with my dad and sharp Irish wits and tempers, from Caffreys and Dalys, from Rivers and McCaughreys.

I am from reading into the wee hours of the night because the book is so good it must be devoured whole, and from the rise early, work hard, and give someone a hand up in the world because it’s the right thing to do.

From the stories about constellations told to my brother and I by our father on late summer nights as we laid on the warm driveway, tracing patterns in the sand, and from my mother singing You are My Sunshine to me as she dressed me on the changing table in front of the oval mirror in my bedroom in Colorado.

I am from cradle Catholics, baptized just after birth. From Mass every Sunday and Holy Day, CCD on Sunday mornings, confession at Easter and Christmas, grace before dinner and prayers before bed. I am from devout believers and sincere questioners.

I’m from the town on the Chesapeake Bay, and from the deep green, heartbreakingly beautiful and dreadfully poor Ireland of the mid-1800’s, from corned beef and cabbage as a family dinner, not just on St. Patrick’s Day.

From the tales told by my father of his hitchhiking days, the quietly-kept memeories of my grandfather’s service in WWII in the Pacific,and the bulldog statues on every table and shelf in my great-aunt Nell’s house.

I am from the photo albums and boxes of Kodak slides of Germany in the bottom shelf of the shraunk, ones my mother never minded me looking through again and again on rainy days. From the scrapbook where my parents proudly taped my first typed poems when I was five and to the boxes of photos under my bed awaiting the curious eyes of my own children on bored summer afternoons.

WM