PS I never put it on here, but Literary Mama published my words and prompt this month.

Find it here, dears.

I wrote about how, in tenth grade, I felt like the coolest girl in school, in print and design class with all boys.

And it was cool, not like when my parents allowed/coached me to/ aided in my girl-power-humiliation by supporting

my being the only girl on the Coral Springs basketball team. (Those boys were mean and schmucky, only passing the ball when their conscience won-out and logic fell out of their brains like fifth grade Gatorade sweat).

In that tenth grade print shop, I pressed and carved, slid paint across screens and created stuff. I would have kept with it subsequent years, if not for moving to every high school in the tri-county area. Yep.

Years and laugh lines later, in Tokyo, as a mom and writer, scribbling on the train, I see that my writing is carving out time, carving out what I want to see in my life.

I think of the title, Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters and Seymour.

“Do you know what I was smiling at? You wrote down that you were a writer by profession. It sounded to me like the loveliest euphemism I had ever heard. When was writing ever your profession? It’s never been anything but your religion.”

I am so full of memories. I like that I can track all of them down on paper and skip tattoos. I get to call myself some kind of poet or writer, just cause I guess I am by this point. And because when people you adore see craft in you, well, that’s kinda it. You are. And I think my Grandfather was my biggest fan. Nothing left to do but keep doing it. Keep remembering details and points and jot it all down.

So thank you, Literary Mama, for publishing these recent words. May they inspire or spark something in another writer, in another mother bubbling majestically through her day.

With love and a parade of tears to the man who encouraged my pen,

M