Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri
Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary
Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net
Recent Posts
- Try
- Becoming Brenda Starr
- Off Beat
- Scattered
- That’s It
- So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
- The Spoon
- Sciatica
- Sweetheart
- A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
- However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
- After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
- As with everything in life, balance is key.
- Slow down, you move too fast…
- Yeah, I know. I have issues.
Syndicate
E me at katy @ ngenius.com
Story Time
“Most people want to wake up in the morning with a general at the foot of their bed saying ‘Go do this.’ The problem is there’s somebody at the foot of their bed saying, ‘Once upon a time. . .’”
“Mama, I want addle dooce!”
I bolted upright in bed—even if it was pitch black outside and the clock said 5 a.m.—every time a little general named Kevin stood at the footboard bellowing his rise-and-shine command. The way I saw it, if a kid can’t pronounce “juice,” you sure don’t let him pour it.
For years on end, my days—like those of parents everywhere—started like this. I still can’t even say for positive whether I enlisted in the mommy service or got drafted for active duty—only that once it started, the kids called the shots.
After fifteen-hour days of diapers and drama, bananas and baths, tantrums and tears, I told bedtime stories to an army of little generals—three of them, to be exact. Unfortunately, by the time the sun went down on my toddlers, I didn’t have an ounce of creativity left in me.
I wasn’t like the inimitable Peter Falk in The Princess Bride, who regaled his ailing grandson with illustrious personal interpretations of his nocturnal storybook-of-choice. I may have begun well with a mysterious-sounding “Once Upon a Time,” and may have occasionally ended with an overly-enthusiastic “And They Lived Happily Ever After,” but in between?
In between, I struggled to focus my sleepy eyes on the words, to form my tired lips around the syllables, to keep from yawning my way through entire one-sentence picture pages.
Sometimes, I cheated.
I’d skip a phrase that seemed unimportant to the sketchy plotline, maybe a description of the king’s fur-trimmed robe or a few of his horse’s longwinded snorts. The little generals, upon whose commands my entire life revolved, caught me every time.
“That’s not the way it goes, Mom,” Scott would say. The kid couldn’t read, but he sure could memorize. “Start the page over.”
“Mommy, do the voices!” Carrie insisted. And so from somewhere deep inside my exhausted self, I brought forth the theatrical voices of “Burp” and Ernie and Kermit the Frog once more.
When little generals move on to their next command post in life—as they always do—it’s hard to take orders from only yourself. The transition from having your days filled with demands to having more time to “once upon” is startling and stark.
“What time is it?” I groan, as the alarm raises its scratchy morning voice. If I roll toward the windows, I’m blinded by the dawn’s light just long enough to imagine a little general standing at the footboard.
“You don’t have to get up yet,” Doug says. “Rest a minute.”
I always panic a little then, because the generals are grown and gone. The life of automatically responding to demands and commands has softened around the edges, and in the center, too.
And once upon a time—so familiar in the seconds before sleep—is a scary way to start the day. I’m nearly paralyzed with the fullness of its possibilities, almost breathless with its fresh potential. It’s a comfort to me, then, that the other, more-familiar words follow on once-upon-a-time’s heels: “Go do this.”
So I sigh and stretch, pour a cup of coffee, and begin again, once upon a time, to go write the rest of my story.
- and a random reaching out inspired by your mention of Peter Falk's reading of the Princess Bride and the creative process, lead here by a Diaryland banner that lead to a place where you left a comment about Alphasmart (as those around me seek my attention, no less, and I squeeze through the distractions to divide my attention to continue reaching out when inspired to, even still, but that's besides the point)... if only to say thank you for the Alphasmart idea, whatever it is (I'll go there next to find out, I think), and perhaps more, and to send you hope for more smiles than frowns along your way :)
-----Posted by candoor on 12/09/04 at 01:03 AM - i confess, i've cheated also. but...*sigh* - they never let me get away with it. memorizers. i don't think of yours as little ones, katy..it's fun to get that glimpse.
justadjust.blogspot.comPosted by lisa on 12/09/04 at 01:45 AM - Oh, Katy...with every word you (and Doug) write (so well, so well) I see the scene of past mornings and present ones, and feel my stomach clench a bit as I think of future mornings which will certainly change in their own wonderful, poignant, yet terrifyingly unknown ways.? Once upon a time indeed.? If only I knew what was going to happen next.? But maybe it's for the best I don't.? I'd just mess it up anyway...?
?Posted by Nancy Moser on 01/01/05 at 03:30 PM
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