When I was six she gave me a blue velvet covered journal for my birthday. I sat in my pink polka dot nightgown turning the blank pages, one after another, in puzzlement.
“What’s it for?” I was curious
“You write down interesting things that happened during the day.”
“Why?”
“Well, something interesting might happen and you may want to remember it.”
“I wouldn’t know what to write.”
“You could write anything, for instance: This morning I saw a man with a clown nose crossing Arthur Avenue.”
I’ll never forget the way she said it: This morning I saw a man with a clown nose crossing Arthur Avenue. I carry that memory of her mouth arching around each word. Carry it around like the splinter of conch shell that you find in the pocket of an old windbreaker that you wore to the beach one long summer.
The fact is I hadn’t seen a man with a clown nose crossing Arthur Avenue. But, with her words my mother showed me that she was aware that children, with their love of all that is incongruous, might want to seize the unexpected and store it away like so many memories.
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I'm so happy to be reading you again! You are such a gifted writer - I loved all of your pieces. Impossible to choose, really. I went with this one mostly because of the sentiment behind it. Frankly, the writing in all the week's submissions was just terrific.
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