Week 2 Creative Writing with WEA

Q In 400 words or less describe or imaging your first memory, remember to develop your writer’s voice.

My First Memory

My hand was in hers as she led me along, all the while her summer dress white with little pink rose blooms fluttered behind and in my face. She was excited, I could tell by the way my feet hardly touched the ground as she lead me outside “Look what daddy has brought Sarah” Moms high tingling voice would always make me laugh. Then that sudden feeling I had of weightlessness. His rough strong hands lifting me high up, he placed me into something brightly coloured, this something I had never seen in our garden before.

The air on this day was warm and dry. They had sat me in the something which was full of warm soft dirt, the same colour as mom’s straw hat. Normally dad wouldn’t let me play in his dirt; he kept telling me something about the beans not being able to grow if I kept taking them out and if I wanted to stay out of the pram I needed to stay clean.  This was nice dirt I grabbed handfuls of it and wiggled my toes in. Mom handed me something equally as bright blue as the large something I was contained in. Mom held my hand around it under her own then made a motion to move the dirt from one place to another. She was so happy when I tried to do this on my own, “Gordon she got it already, she’ll soon be helping you out” dad was kneeling at the edge watching. I thought I’d better offer him some of the dirt as he always seemed to know what to do with it, but the summer breeze blew grit into my face, this dirt did not taste as good as dad’s and my eyes wouldn’t stop blinking, they were so itchy. I must have begun to cry because in the following moment, I found I was once more safely in my daddy’s arms.

Week 1 Creative Writing with WEA

Q; In 600 words or less tell me about a special occasion in your life.

A Special Occasion.

My most treasured occasion was the birth of my first child. Paige had been a surprise instalment to my plans for the future, for a start I had never planned on having any children at all. The closer the event came the more I began to realise Paige was going to be special. With only two months left we found ourselves in hospital under close monitoring and confined to the hospital bed.  Now a day I’d enjoy the rest and read a book, but at that time I was seventeen. I had never liked hospitals – the echo sounds down each bland corridor, that unmistakeable “I’m very clean” smell that even made our school changing rooms seem inviting in comparison. To me the worst thing was how lonely the hospitals make you feel. Rookwood hospital had those long wards like in the old black and white movies my dad watched, it was like looking down  two train carriages, the tall windows gave that broken light effect you get on the moving train only it was as still and silent as a photograph, I could barely see the nurses’ station at the end it. They insisted on me staying in the bed and I insisted on at least getting dressed and lying on top of the bed. They saw an annoying teenager and I saw condescending adults. It’s the tone in our voice not the words we ever said to each other that made our stand very clear – this was going to be the longest six weeks on record.

Nurse Arkhem was to be my arch-nemesis; she was as stern as she looked in her dark blue well pressed dress with classic flat white shoe. When she passed by your blood turn cold, her eyes did that scanning thing you imagine cyborgs do in sci-fi movies, and she moved as silently as a ghost. Our first battle was the make-up “you don’t need that on in here, go and wash it off” she said as I put the final touches to a perfectly mascaraed set of lashes. “The trick is not to blink, not to move at all” I responded as if she had actually asked the question I wanted her to ask me. As I regarded my left eye in my little bed side mirror a heavy smell of flowers suddenly assaulted my nose and I looked up to see that Nurse Arkhem had moved without actually moving at all, all the way from the end of my bed right up to my bedside table. “In an emergency the doctor will only wish to perform one procedure to remove something not two.”  Still stunned by the magic trick my response was slower than its normal teenage wit generally reserved for answering my dad. “well, when you feel like a hippo with a bad case of indigestion what are you to do but try to cheer yourself up with TLC” I shrugged and gave her my most honest looking face, “you will have years of Halloween face painting ahead of you I’m sure, now, please go and wash it off” she handed me my soap and face cloth out of the top draw as if she had been the one who had put them in there. Spooky!

My Lie

There comes a time

When you have to forget

When nothing is left

When things buried

Have been brought to light

Burned away

And the ashes scattered

To the winds

There comes a time

When nothing is left

When all sounds

Have faded away

Even that

Of goodbye

I would love to say

Part of me still cherishes you

But it would be

A lie.