Thousand Word Meme

Recently I ran across this site: A Thousand Word Meme. Each week we are prompted to write about a picture that is posted on the site. We have all week to work on the piece and post it on our sites. It seemed like another good challenge for me. I'm still in kind of a writing funk...

The premise is that if "a picture is worth a thousand words", then we should be able to write 1,000 words about the picture. Personally, I could add that "a picture speaks volumes." It is very hard to have a beginning and middle and an end in only 1,000 words. As a novelist and a sort of short story writer, this is a great way to learn, and getting a weekly prompt should be a lot of fun. Just like in art class, each week we got a new subject to draw or paint. Here, each week we get a new subject to write about.

So here's my first attempt at this meme: Childhood Dreams




When I was three my Grandmother said to me, "What are you doing, princess?"

"I'm writing," I said. "When I grow up I going to be a writer. I will practice every day until I'm ten and then I will write big books. I will draw my own pictures, too."

"That is going to be a lot of hard work," my grandmother said. "You will need lots of paper and lots of pencils to become a writer and you will need a big box of crayons to make your own pictures, too."

"That's okay, grandmother," I said in my broken baby tongue, "When I'm really good and really big, I will marry a rich man and he will give me all the paper and crayons I need so I can tell my stories."

When I was five I came to spend the summer with my grandmother and we spent the hot afternoons laying on a folded quilt, a pallet, in the shade of the pecan trees in the back yard. That summer my grandmother had surprised me with a large tablet of white, lined paper, bright yellow pencils, and a new box of 64 color crayons. While she talked of days gone by and sipped on iced tea, I wrote my words onto fresh sheets of paper. When I had finished my story, I took out my colors and drew lots of pictures on the pages next to the words.

"I see you are still planning on becoming a writer when you grow up."

"Yes, grandmother," I sighed, the interruption broke my concentration. "I've been writing every day and now I can print real words."

My language skills were much improved by five. Not only could I talk and write better but I could also draw better pictures.

"You are a very talented young lady. I think you will be quite famous and rich someday. Are you still planning to marry a rich man to support you while you write and draw?

"Of course, Grandmother," I said. "He will like my books and he will help me sell them so that there will be more books in the libraries for kid to take home and read."

When I turned ten I met the man of my dreams. Henry Keats was a tall, gentle man with bits of gray hairs above his ears and a soft, whispery voice. He worked in the reference section of the Public library. He often helped me find the right books with the facts I needed for my stories and drawings. I no longer scribbled imaginary words on yellowing paper, nor did I print like a kindergartener. At ten, I wrote in cursive—longhand, with a real ballpoint pen. I was no longer using color crayons to illustrate my stories, either, but real watercolors and colored pencils.

I went to the library every day after school, Monday through Friday, to do two things: write and be close to Mr. Keats. He often helped me with my punctuation. Mr. Keats was very intelligent, but the only drawback in my plan was that he was not rich, and even though he knew a great deal about books and writing, he could not afford to give me all the things I'd been dreaming about since I was three.

When I was twelve, Mr. Keats had died and I stopped going to the library. I stopped writing and drawing pictures. I was devastated. For two years I dreamed of marrying Henry Keats and traveling throughout Europe while he investigated the great libraries of the world and I wrote about our adventures. I had saved my babysitting money for two years to buy a really nice camera. I wanted to keep a picture record of the things we'd see on our journey through life as Mr. and Mrs. Henry Keats.

But my Henry was gone.

I was seventeen when I graduated high school. I would leave my home for college in the fall. In the meantime I spent the summer with my grandmother. As we lay upon the now faded and worn pallets we'd used when I was three, we talked about my future, college, my studies and what I wanted to be now that I was all grown up.

"Princess," she said rather subtlety during a break in our conversation, "You haven't' sent me one of your stories in a long time. Have you given up on becoming a writer and an illustrator?"

I blushed. I had never written my grandmother and told her about Mr. Keats. I never told her about why I suddenly stopped writing and drawing. I hadn't even told her about my nice camera that I had never used. Then tears filled my eyes as I told grandmother about the love of my life. My Mr. Henry Keats, whom I realized now, had been old enough when I was ten to be my father.

"He left me, grandmother," I sniffed and wiped at the hot tears with the palms of both hands, "he just up and died during the summer before I entered the sixth grade and I never wanted to write again. I never drew another picture…" and then I told her about my unused, unwrapped camera that took two years to save for.

Grandmothers are so wise and so cool about how they approach such tender subjects as first loves. After a few moments of being cuddle in her arms, as I often was when I was three, she pulled away and told me to begin life again, and that the rich, Mr. Right was still out there waiting for me to cross his path. She said I that I should trust her and go forward with new dreams. I was a woman now. I'd soon be on my own in college. I would meet lots of nice young men, maybe even another Mr. Keats. Then grandmother led me into the house and helped me open a box she'd been saving for the right moment. In the box was an old, dusty typewriter that had once belonged to my grandfather. "Take this to college with you, princess. Write, child. Draw. You were born to be a novelist and an illustrator just like your grandfather. He died in the war before you were born. He'd want you to carry on his legacy."

And so, that summer I began my career as a writer—a novelist—an illustrator, and I had even met the man of my dreams, my English Professor during my first semester in college—a writer and a novelist. We would become rich together.