I am eposting this for  Dare To Share at The Lightning and the Lightning Bug.

I originally wrote this post for the Origins Blogfest,  as a discovery of where my writing dreams originated……

My very first memory of playing with words is from when I was 2 or 3 years old.  I had been put into my crib for a daytime nap.   I woke, alone, in the upstairs bedroom I shared with my older brother and sister.  I was bored, and began to pace the length of my crib, trailing my fingers along the smooth plastic cover on the top of the rail.

There was a window at the head of the crib, and, as I walked in that direction, I could look out onto what seemed to be an impossible bright and faraway world, something maybe made more of dreams than waking life, although I don’t think, at the time, that I had words to put to that feeling.

I had made several trips when I noticed the chunky headed, painfully thin, battle-scarred old tom cat entering our yard from the pavement that connected it to the parking lot of the “old school”.  My father had gone there, and, years later, so did I –  although we lived outside the village, by then.  Now,  in its old age, the old school is a community center, with the old colonial house, tall and thin,  still squatting in a corner of its lot.  The children and I go there, sometimes, usually to play on the fenced-in playgrounds that weren’t there, then.  I can still look up at that window, high up near the roof, and remember when I was little more than a baby, looking out….

I thought immediately of the name my mother had given to this stray, who had started coming around every so often, (although I didn’t know it, it was when our plump tortoiseshell cat, Hudson  Falls, was in heat, or when he couldn’t hunt enough to fill his stomach).  ”Your name is Hunger,” my mother  told the cat one day.  And, even though I was very young, I understood, on that sunny afternoon when I watched him from the vantage point of my crib, that his association with us had everything to do with appetite.

I thought, as a child still small enough to be placed somewhere and expected to remain, that he had been aptly named.

Ever since, the word ‘hunger’ has evoked in me the image and feel of a big-headed, gaunt tom cat sauntering across our lawn- ceaseless appetite made undeniably real.

When I was seven, I wrote my first book.  As I recall, I didn’t intend to write a book.  It was just that I had emotions within me then that I could do nothing else with.   I couldn’t live with them trapped in my head, and it had been made clear, in that unspoken, dominance-based language adults use with children they believe they control, that I was not at liberty to discuss them- not with anyone, adult or child.

The feelings I had were real, and forbidden, and I couldn’t live and be happy while they were there in my soul, overshadowing everything else.   I had to do something to express those feelings, and, in a home where,  especially then,   my parents must know where I was every moment of the day, there were very limited options for doing that.

And so, I began by drawing images….a happy stick girl with a big smile.  Then the same girl, crying, held in the arms of a nondescript but much larger stick figure.  And, finally, that same stick girl, floating without clothes in a shallow, winding creek filled with large rocks, her eyes represented  by the letter X, and a frown on her face.

There was text, in speech bubbles and under the pictures, but I don’t remember what they said, only that I needed to write them in the same way I needed to draw the pictures.

The fact that no adult wanted to broach the subjects of kidnap, sexual violation, and the murder of a schoolmate with young children is not surprising.  Today, in such circumstances,  the school would certainly  see to it that a grief counselor was available, and the art that grieving children created would be sanctioned and likely discussed with them, to help them to process the enormity of that sudden, violent death.

Back in the 1970s, though, the prevailing philosophy seemed to be to sweep things under the rug, and that, once under, they would promptly disappear.  I’ve seen that attitude, since, in my parents.  My mother was shocked that I shared my stories of my late fiance, Tim, with my husband, that we went with baby Jeremiah to visit Tim’s grave.  To her, when Tim died, that was it – I was supposed to move on and let him remain a closed chapter, no matter how deep our love had been, or how very much I learned and gained from loving him.

Even when my parents and I were on speaking terms, I could not freely talk about Elijah with them.  Again, that chapter of my life was done, and dead babies are not, ever, an easy subject to talk about.

But Elijah was not and is not a closed chapter, for us.  We feel his presence in the very way we live our life, in our determination to find joy in our days rather than sorrow.

It would have been good to share my memories of him with the others who loved him, held him, and were shattered at how quickly and silently he left life.  Only seven people in our family ever saw him, touched him, really knew him – and the four of those people who do not live here don’t want to talk about him.  Again, it is as though forgetting that he lived for 12 days will erase the pain that  was the sum of his lifetime.

Nothing can erase that pain, for me.  It has eased, over the nearly nine years since, but it is a part of me.  The jaggedness has been smoothed and rounded by time and joy and living, but erasing the pain fully would mean erasing him – and I cannot even begin to imagine how I would do that, even if I wanted to.

Maybe I knew, even at seven, that hiding from and ignoring what I fear, what causes me pain, will never make it go away.  Maybe that was at the heart of my creating that book, drawing those pictures, and writing text to go with them.

I needed to process my emotions, rather than hide from them and pretend they didn’t exist.  It seems I knew that, when I tore a piece of paper into rough fourths, sitting on my bed, and used a pencil to pour out, as vividly as I knew how, the words and images that recorded my pain, my terror, my guilt, and my confusion.

Since then, it’s never left me.  If you go back to the beginning of my first blog, The Unfettered Life,  you will find me processing my grief at Elijah’s death.  If you go forward there, you will eventually find this letter to Tim, also published here at Letters to the Dead.

There are letters and blogposts and notebooks and Facebook statueses aplenty  filled with my smaller, less catastrophic musings.

Whatever it is that troubles me, delights me, fascinates me, I will eventually write about.   It’s not really a decision so  much as a compulsion.

It began as release, then evolved into therapy, and, now, as I continue to express deeper and deeper places within me,  has become the path to truly giving voice to myself.

It has become my strength and my journey to wisdom, peace, compassion, and self-knowledge.  It’s connected me to the universal, and shown me that what is unique to me has value beyond me.

And, as I have begun to share my words and musings, it has opened me up to others, and to myself.  In the responses others share when they have found personal meaning in my words, I often find new meanings, and deeper levels, myself.

That it started with a stray tom cat and a senseless act of violence against a little girl  only proves that inspiration can come from anywhere, anytime.

It’s a good thing to remember…

Related articles

• RCASA’s Art Therapy Thursday: Art Therapy with Populations who have Experienced Trauma (rcasa.wordpress.com)
• Dealing with the feeling (thehindu.com)