She knew it was time to send them back. The caterpillars softly wiggled in her hand, spelling out "goodbye"

My heart was so full yesterday. My daughter, 11, is involved in a creative writing project at school called “The Mystery of Harris Burdick.” Without having to copy and paste the entire forward from Chris Van Allsburg’s book, (but do visit the link, it's a great story) briefly, Harris Burdick was a writer and illustrator that once visited the home of publisher Peter Wenders with fourteen drawings, and said he has stories that went with each one. Wenders loved the pictures and wanted to read the stories. Burdick promised to return with them the next day, but never did. Attempts to find him led nowhere. Since then though, the pictures have inspired many people, adults and children alike to create their own stories based on the images and the caption that accompanies each. Allsburg published the pictures in a book to inspire others to write and has started a website in honor of them, and there is currently a contest being held for children grades 2-8 to submit stories to be published on the website.

Now, my girlie girl is already quite the writer. A while back I thought it would be her brother to inherit all of his mother’s creative genes but apparently not so. Her school actually has a writing class that goes along with her English and language arts class, in 5th grade! Isn’t that awesome? (I think the schools in this hick town are the state’s best kept secret, and another reason I don’t wish to move.) I love reading her assignments, she blows me away with the stuff she comes up with. She is so excited about this contest. She asked me if I knew about Harris Burdick and when I said no, she told me the whole story, lol.

Now, I am asked to read her drafts, but I am not allowed to get all critical about her grammar! She just wanted to know “what I think about the story”. The problem she was having though, was the maximum word count was 250. She was well over that. I was allowed to give her suggestions on where to cut words. She worked on it until 10 o’clock at night, then in class the next day. She was so proud of her final copy, and I have to admit, she did a great job of editing and still keeping the story intact, as she wanted it. Her story was based on this picture, and she wrote about a little girl who lived alone in the woods with mean parents who were criminals. She woke one day to find these caterpillars that could spell words with their bodies, and they made friends. Until her mother found them and made her get rid of them. So the little girl ran away with the caterpillars. She left the ending dark and hanging. I know someone who would have loved that.

I remember so well writing challenges, and prompts, making careful word choices to move souls and capture feelings. I loved doing that so much. Maybe I should look at Harris Burdick’s drawings myself and have a go. I miss writing. But I still can’t seem to do it. I’m not on an even keel emotionally, and I don’t want to go down a road that requires drawing from within.

I’ve come to realize that what brings me the most pleasure in life is being able to create with my hands. I’m not sure how music ties into that though, especially if my instrument was always my voice. Though I did play guitar. I love baking, and playing with dough. I love chopping and cooking. I love working with yarn now. All of these things, even writing since I must use my hands to transcribe these thoughts bear a tangible result, something to touch, wear, smell, hear, eat. It’s funny how I ended up choosing a career in science.

I’m waiting to hear about a house. It’s so much bigger than our current one. I’m convinced he doesn’t want the deal to go through, even though he went through with the offer. But, I’m sick of his passive-aggressive shit. And he’s the one tired of waiting and tired of looking, so he has to suck it up and deal with what isn’t perfect. And if he tries to hold it over my head in years to come that he never wanted it and it was all me, I will personally put his bags on the lawn and say, “fine, go find a nice townhouse with a pool closer to Maine and the office. See ya.” Well, I probably wont, but I’ll want to. Who knows, maybe by then I’ll have the balls to.