I used to write, a lot. Page after page, words would appear, put there sometimes by me, sometimes by the characters themselves. Nothing ever was done with those pages of words, often what started out with plans to be a novel would never be finished, but I wrote.
Then, I'm not sure what happened, the writing stopped. The creative part of me continued, though, especially when I learned how to crochet. Instead of words joining together to create a short story or an unfinished novel, stitches joined together to create an afghan, or doll clothes, or a toy. And then, the only writing I did was in the form of letters and numbers that to anyone who cannot follow patterns would make no sense at all.
But there still remains a small part of me that sometimes thinks fondly of those days plopped in front of a typewriter or with a pad of paper and a pen with a bottomless cup of coffee beside me while words, then sentences, then paragraphs emerged. And how great it felt.
Last night, I dreamed of a typewriter. I can't remember what the dream was about, something about ;was it my old typewriter??' but it got me thinking that today, I wanted to write. Maybe not fiction, maybe straight up stuff from the heart, so....
Today is a day of mixed feelings. More so today than the last few months, after Dad told me about an old friend from grade school. Well, not just a friend, but his grade 5 girl friend. He'd been thinking about her the last few years after meeting her at a funeral, and after my mother passed away, they got in touch and reconnected and began a long-distance relationship. She had come from a bad relationship, Dad had at last spoken aloud the words I'd known for years: "I loved your mother, I still do, but she made my life miserable". It seemed the two were destined for another chance at happiness. And I was and am so happy for my Dad, and hope this relationship works out.
But (of course there is one, I did say 'mixed' feelings!)...there is the ghost of my mother. Years ago, my sister had commented she would dance on the grave when mom died and I had replied with "No, you won't. You will mourn what once was and what could have and should have been." I had no idea then that it would be only a matter of a decade or so before my words would prove true.
So, even though I hadn't had much to do with a mother who thought nothing of calling her grandchildren "crybabies and tattletales" or in one niece's case, a streetwalker, when my mother passed away, I did mourn. We all did.
And while we sat with my dying mother, I worried about my father. My parents had been married 45 years, and had dated for a few years before that even. Mom was all dad knew.
But before I even left the hospital in the wee hours of the morning, a feeling washed over me that dad would be all right. And then a few days later came the hope that he would be able to enjoy life now; the words uttered aloud brought on a sense of guilt that my mother was somewhere watching, and could hear these words and actually after death finally realize just how badly she had treated her family and drove them away. And that she would finally feel remorse...but I didn't want that. Not in death. Perhaps in life when it could have made a difference, but not in death.
Which brings me to today and the mixed feelings of being happy for my dad, and a strange feeling of seeing dad with someone other than my mother. Today, I meet my father's girlfriend face to face for the first time.
