One Through Five: Whispers
Leafless branches gray-brown against a gray-white sky, the cold hue of winter over a gravel-topped roof, the light icy and harsh, yet insufficient - warm white string lights an antidote to the pallor. This classroom needs more greenery to hold us over to spring.
Sometimes, if you want to hear the whispers in your heart, to quiet the voices in your mind that criticize and correct, you have to get away from the usual things (dishes, laundry, dog walks, dog food, carpool line, bus pick up, etc.). Sometimes that’s when it’s quiet enough to hear your own mind.
How do I and do I even want to untangle “my” voice from my roles as mom and wife and teacher? Or is my voice where they all intersect?
If I am going to be a writer, then noticing is my job. So I look and collect what I see, and I listen and collect the whispers. Only, I forget to write them down, like, all the time. I want to take notes on my phone but the second it unlocks, I forget what I was doing. I want to write the words but I forget them when I begin.
A teacher friend gives each member of our team a small gift. Inside mine is a grow-your-own sunflowers kit. I think of the dwarf sunflowers I grew this summer, the ones that didn’t survive the heat when my pulled-in-too-many-directions mind forgot to water them for a few days. I think this spring I’ll try again.
This post is part of a blog hop with Exhale—an online community of women pursuing creativity alongside motherhood, led by the writing team behind Coffee + Crumbs. Click here to view the next post in the series "Whisper."
