Today, at 3:12 am, my first fictional character was brought to life. She was born yesterday, during The Fire Within writers workshop I am attending this weekend. Since you are my very first “readers”, it is only fitting that you should be the first to meet her.
Meet Lucinda
Lee burst through the kitchen door yelling, “Lulu! Lulu!,” at the top of his lungs.
“Close the door,” said Lauren, as her six year old golden boy raced past her. “Running, always running,” she thought as she reached over pulling the screen door shut. “And yelling, always yelling,” she quietly said to her mixing bowl as she picked up her spoon and resumed her cookie-baking ordeal, as she’d come to call it. Halloween was only two days away and she still had Lee’s spiderman costume to finish. The house wasn’t exactly in order either, as she felt the basket of clean laundry sitting on the kitchen chair, begging to be taken upstairs. As Lauren began plopping huge yellow balls of cookie dough onto the cookie sheet, she realized she forgot to preheat the oven – again. That’s when she felt it. “Oh no, not now,” she said to herself, as she rummaged through the medicine cabinet for just the right pill to get her through this day.
Upstairs Lee races to his sister’s room and pushes through her half open door. “Hey Lucinda,” he poises himself to yell, but he stops short before he could get the words out. He stands there for a second and watches his 12 year old sibling as she squeezes blood from her finger, making designs with it on a tissue she had spread flat on her desk. Her “needle collection”, as she calls it, lies strewn around her desktop. Different size needles for different size drops of blood. She’s so intent on her design, she doesn’t even know Lee is there. He slowly turns and slinks back down the stairs. He stands against the kitchen doorway, tears streaming down his face, as he watches his mom pop the tray of cookies into the oven. His mom. His mom who loves him so very much she’d do anything for him. Even try once more to bake perfectly round, soft, chocolate chip cookies for his class party. Lee knew from past experience they’d be anything but round and no where near soft, but his mom would never let him show up at school with store bought cookies. He loved her for that. His love for her was tempered with feeling sorry for her. It seemed as if she was always trying, but it never worked.
Lauren turned and noticed Lee holding up the doorway with his shoulder, then she saw the tears on his face. “Hey sunshine boy, what’s with the tears?”, she said as she came to kneel in front of him.
Lee wiped his nose with his arm, looked into his mother’s eyes and said quietly, “She’s doing it again.”
Lauren hugged the tiny body of her perfect little golden boy to her and slumped to floor depositing her own tears on the top of his sweet-smelling head. As she held her son, she thought back to the day Lucinda was born.
Lauren recalls the minute Lucinda opened her eyes for the first time. She looked into her baby daughter’s eyes and fear shot through her heart. She wasn’t a mere 15 minutes old and this tiny being shook her to her very core. Laurie remembers thinking to herself, ” Fear? This is my CHILD, only minutes old.” She immediately dismissed the feeling, attributing it to “new mother jitters”…….
I haven’t a clue where this story is going, or if it’s even going any further. I just wanted to share some of the fun I had exploring my writer’s voice at the workshop.
From start to finish, it was the best writing event I have ever attended. The other writers in the class were both fun and inspirational. Anne LeClaire was an amazing teacher/author. Please check out her fiction books and her memoir, “Listening Beneath the Noise” and thanks again for all your encouragement and support.
And so, as another day goes by, I was both touched and inspired by this experience, and…I have written and written and written….
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