~We went for a walk!~

~We went for a walk!~

Let me back up a little bit and rewind time and help put this story into the right perspective!

I can remember when I first discovered learning how to write letters using, crayons, markers and pencils! As soon I could start writing actual WHOLE WORDS I kinda went a little crazy! I mean there is normal growth and learning, curiousity and creativity, and I was always smart enough to be aware of the other children around me the same age who were going through those normal growing and learning stages! But then there was a thing called Jennifer's phase, that's where I recognized the difference between them and me, I could see and understand the line between their side and where I was in my mind and how I WAS FEELING about the experience of discovering the wonderful world of letters, writing, reading and books!

There was just this LIGHT inside of me, this WARM BURNING FEELING in my CHEST, a desire that would not quit, to want to LEARN about it all! To be able to use those skills I was taught RIGHT AWAY! So that's what I did! I would write my name on everything and anything I could find where I could get away with it! I'm utterly shocked that this didn't turn into graffiti art or tagging thing. But I digress, I was unfortunately NOT that kind of artist, nor was I a thug or the type to grow up with those kind of street thug types whom I could learn from! But I did nonetheless manage to write my name in a few places where I had a lasting affect, where I would always be remembered whether by person or name! 1 of those places was under my grandma's coffee table in red crayon when nobody was looking! I marked my territory, I marked my place in time & that SHE IS MY GRANDMA!

It was my Grandma and her dreams I was born to replace and I guess somewhere inside us both when I was writing letters and my name and little sentences and thoughts all over the place the 2 of us knew it! That I was sent to fulfill a purpose! You see my Grandma, LOVED TO WRITE, and she too had aspirations and dreams to be a successful writer in a younger life, in earlier times of youthful dreams! But 2 World Wars and a Marriage and 3 living children and a few miscarriages later and that girl and her world and that passion and interest and goals, had essentially been turned UPSIDE DOWN ON HER.

And there she was stuck FLIPPED, entirely the other way with her head FLAT against the ground like the perfect beginner hand stand! She had a few mental/emotional break-downs from the war rationed world she had to live through from the perspective of a proper English home! There was no choice for them, you either enlisted on your 18th birthday when they came knocking for you, or you would go to jail!

Now in spite of all the challenges around her and the dreams of furthering her education so that she could be the writer she wanted to be, she still managed to find time in some parts of her early life to try her hand at it! She collected her work in an old fashioned metal cabinet with multiple drawers where she stored what she wrote and KEPT throughout her Entire life! I discovered this cabinet as I was growing up during the times I spent around her, but not until I was 9 or so did I ever get the chance to be ALONE with that cabinet in the room where it sat long enough to OPEN the DRAWERS and SHUFFLE my way through the work that was in there! By that time I KNEW who I was and what I was going to do, my skill set, personality and talents had been fully formed within me, all that was left was learning how to hone my craft(s) and have the opportunity to accomplish what I discovered my Grandma did not get to do!

So it was through God, back when I was discovering that BURNING CHEST heated desire that I learned what my purpose was in his plans around the unspoken pain and disappointment in the life my Grandma as that young Woman, unmarried, before children, with a desire to travel and see the world and gain knowledge to keep her ability to write what she knows Alive, that I was sent to fix! God's way of saying SORRY for what happened to her life!

An unspoken relationship understood, as the devoted christian Woman she was who read her bible daily till the end of her life. God's way of telling her that he would take care of it, see to it that all of the writing she did produce in her life and file away in that cabinet would not be lost, or forgotten Forever, or not known about or ever read. And so through me he made sure someone KNEW who THAT OTHER SIDE OF HER WAS! And boy do I ever KNOW, because now that part of HER unidentified self by those around her who were not creative people LIVES ON, INSIDE OF ME!

Anyway when I got into to much trouble for writing on walls, floors and tables and the likes, I was directed and pursuaded to learning how to write inside of books made just for that sort of stuff! And 1 of those books was a Dr. Seuss interactive childrens book. And in that book there was a page where once I got that far into it I was able to FINALLY REWARD MYSELF with an opportunity to write a WHOLE BOX FULL of words, of my own, and for myself! Now at 5 that wasn't an entirely BIG BOX compared to the size of the BOX writing I do today!!! But at 5 it was BIG ENOUGH for me!

And so there it happened on that day, I wrote MY FIRST STORY from the very top left hand corner as tight as I could be, I began writing words from 1 side to the other of that box line upon line! Until I had reached that last corner of that last line on the right side of the box! Where I literally had to shrink down my letter sizes towards those last sentences just to make sure I could finish saying everything that I wanted to!

I had an early understanding that when you are given instructions and a design for something you are being taught and told right about doing, that one SHOULD DO IT JUST LIKE THAT, and in the case of writing, Dr. Seuss was teaching word count, and spacing, and length of time, around one's writing and skills! So I understood it was important on that day back when I was 5 to NOT write OUTSIDE of that box in order to get it right!

And thanks to that early experience in teaching discipline and so on, today I am a fully capable writer who finishes the work she starts, and meets deadlines, and able to commit to discipline of requested work with word counts and time spent on learning about or researching whatever I'm needing to write about! Essentially I have never stopped living up to or holding onto that great early habit and wonderful experience I got from my childhood Dr. Seuss interactive book of NEVER WRITING OUTSIDE OF THE BOX, even if it means having to write smaller just to be sure that last line or 2 of thought fits into its place!

Today the size of my boxes are what has changed! In my lined paper books, I set a limit, like saying I won't go past 2 pages writing what I want on those pages but never going past the last line, and what I'm challenging myself to write about! And through this I am able to not get lost or distracted or stuck with a ton of unfinished work. Rather most of the time I will only need to clean up the endings in order to have a perfect finish. This makes editing and refining and revising work so much easier then for people who spend years working on draft after draft after draft on something!

Fitzgerald was famously known for his terribly bad habit of doing to many drafts and ultimately losing his focus and story and what led him often to depression, discouragement and wanting to quit all together! However at least we all know that HE DID MANAGE to earn his place of fame in the world of writers with the monumentally successful Great Gatsby, whether we've read the novel or seen the movie!

When I discovered my Grandma's cabinet of work I discovered this weakness she shared with Fitzgerald, where she would have multiple drafts of the beginning of her stories saved, rather than concentrating on continuing chapters or scenes in order to get the FULL STORY out of her head and onto the pages of the paper that were in front of her on the typewriter time and time again! So I learned early by observation and listening to Dr. Seuss and aka MY GOD in heaven and what other great teachers through my growing years and what it is they were telling me so that I would succeed in avoiding bad habits and ultimately achieving the dream of becoming a prolific Master Class writer in word and publication where the likes of my Grandma and many others have failed and still struggle with in the world of writing today!

It is my dream to fulfill my grandma's dream I wished to share and acknowledge and find a way to have the world know who that side of her was, the way God knew and understood her and the way he came to teach me to know and understand that side of her too! It is my plan to CO-WRITE and FINISH some of her stories, that today I am lucky enough to have (no matter where she is on the other side watching over me R.I.P. Grandma) so she will be realized and known as a professional writer and published author right along side of me!

But to do that I have to that I must have enough success and income earned from what I do as a writer to be able to spend the time I need to have in order to focus on her work and get this vision accomplished! Which of course means entering a lot of contests and applying for bursaries and grants whether here on Vocal or other places that do help me in realizing my own success, that in turn allows me to fulfill this dream for her 1 day too!

In closing I will say that I don't remember that first story I wrote at 5 in that interactive Dr. Suess writer's book, (I was in french immersion then so I was fully bilingual I had 2 languages in my head, so I can't remember if that experience was in French or English? Which is probably why I do not remember the story, just the pride in writing it) but boy do I still ever remember that day and how it felt to be that little girl!

I can remember the room, and the time of day and the lighting, I can remember the couch and THAT BOOK and that PAGE in that book and of course THAT FIRST BOX where I wrote those first words from first to last, squeezing them all in there. And I have the understanding memory for WHY that day was set like cement within me, what the purpose was for needing to remember that day and that experience! So that years letter when I was older and more experienced and better at communicating thoughts and messages when I would be ready to write poems and stories, that I would be able to connect that first MEMORIZED piece of work back to my Grandma and to that day and time when I was only 5 yrs old!

And so it goes, that as I grew I always tried to have typewriters around me, or access to learning how to play with and use Grandma's different typewriters. But everything I ever wrote during that typewriter exploration period never went anywhere, it never led to anything, it was simply just a lot of practice, which (of course admittedly) all young future writers as they grow certainly do need! I would of course be no exception to that rule! But then it FINALLY HAPPENED... that 1 DAY when from beginning to end, first word to last as ripe as fruit from a blooming tree in perfect season when it's time to enjoy and revel in the glory and pleasure of the fruit made to eat!

The words fell upon me and that first poem at 12 yrs of age has been with me, from the day they came out of me in thought and voice right till now as I write this story and share it here with you! I have never forgotten 1 silly humorous word of it, BUT there is 1 thing extremely unique and extraordinary about this piece of work that came to mind and the time it happened, and that is, it wasn't something I EVER WROTE DOWN... It wasn't written with a crayon, pencil, pen, paper or typewriter!

It all came down to a beautiful blue sky, sunny, summer day where my neighbor friend who lived in the same building, and literally next door to me and I had gotten together to discuss what to do about our young adulting lives with the growing struggles and stresses that come with growing up, (recognizing that adults don't see these parts of our real growing pains)? For this we turned to each other, like a support system to rely on one another and our understanding of things and where they were at in our growing pains' years of life!

And on this day it had been decided that we didn't want to worry or stress, over-talk or over think about life's worries and demands. That this day was being dedicated to our still being young, dedicated to childhood and that we still had one, that we had bedrooms of our own to sleep in, and grown-ups helping to care for us and paying our bills and providing us with the things we needed! So we decided it was THIS we wanted to celebrate for a change, JUST FOR THAT DAY!

Now we had only left to discuss the rules on how we'd go about doing that exactly? And taking a walk on that beautiful day came to mind, and that we AGREED we WOULD NOT TALK ABOUT ANYTHING ON THIS WALK! That we'd just be still, silent, breathe, take in the surrounding, the day, our youth and the good things about this time of life and our young teen years! So when we had settled on the rules, we set off on our adventure!

But not 6 minutes later as we were out there in the neighborhood walking up the street did these first beautiful humorous words come to mind as I had noticed we had failed our mission so quickly. As a 12 year old I was laughing about the task for 2 girls at those express ages and how it would be understood as PRACTICALLY IMPOSSIBLE TO KEEP! That having acknowledged this in our silly behaviours and expressions on our faces that we did indeed begin to talk (maybe not about worrisome things) but nonetheless talk about the kind of stuff that teenage girls talk about! And this is when my mind floated off into my creative writers world and my imagination took flight that day, in a way that would change the future of my life as a writer and the career that was ahead of me to live!

I literally shut her out in the sense that I didn't understand what she was saying, nor really could hear (as she was walking some what ahead of me), since I had been at least somewhat serious about trying to keep to the deal! And so it goes the following words ahead are what came to mind in me.

I am proud to share them in writing for the FIRST TIME with all of you around this memory of my Grandma and the walks that as I grew older I took with her too whether few in words or many and how important I came to understand that it would all be in discovering her stories (which I'm sure she knew about, being that I was a writer too) and the ones I chose to keep! May I do her proud when I finish them and have them published in honoring her work, her life and her legacy!

The Poem...

~We Went for a Walk!~

'We went for a walk

And said we wouldn't talk

While we walked!

But we walked and we talked

And talked while we walked,

When we said we wouldn't talk

While we walked!

The End!

Written by,

Jennifer Cooley!

P.S.

You See... Some things just NEVER change, whether your 5 or 55! I FINISHED the BOX, finishing this story within the maximum word count allowed!

Thanks for reading!

Double The End!

And Amen!

You can learn more about me by going back to my main profile page here on Vocal! https://vocal.media/authors/jennifer-cooley-48hfjk0yqk Or go to the following links below!

Thanks for your support!

www.futureproductionsonline.com

www.youtube.com/iamjustjen

E-mail: [email protected]