No Words

When I first started writing, about six years ago, the words would not stop.  Now I feel like I am all worded out – like a literary mute.  It’s a good thing that I still attend the NJWRG (New Jersey Writers Resource Group) twice a month – religiously -- or there would be no hope for me at all.  It keeps my hand in it, anyway, with writing exercises and mini workshops.  But I wonder if I will ever finish any of my overly ambitious writing projects.  Writing has given me so much pleasure and satisfaction these past few years, why can’t I settle back into it?  There is still so much that I want to accomplish.

If I were still writing, I would have finished the story part of Summer Vacation, a sequel to Snow Day and already be deep into illustrations of Jenny and Josh at the beach or at Disney World or where ever autism can travel and rear its unpredictable head.  And I would be working every spare moment on that other, real book too – the serious one – the memoir.

If I were still writing, I would complain about current politics.  I would definitely rant about how disappointed I am in a good portion of the American public in their support of a certain presumptive presidential candidate.  And I wouldn’t be able to hold back my expression of extreme incredulity at how such an awful excuse for a human being got even this far! 

If I were still writing, I would pour out a deluge of words on how sad I felt on April 4th, the second anniversary of Dut’s death.  I still miss her as much as I did on the day she left us to entertain all of heaven with her wild sense of humor.  There are some lucky angels up there.

If I were still writing, I would post more regularly in this blog, just for practice and because I do remember how much fun it is to write.

If I were still writing, I would talk about being overcome with nostalgia one morning last week and googling my childhood house in the Bronx -- and finding a street view of it!  It all came back to me: the sturdy, pink stucco house that warmed a humble family for nearly a decade, from the years 1957 to 1966.  Looking at the photo, I so clearly envisioned as if it were yesterday, the happy and hard-working parents, the two girl children playing and singing in the yard, a grandmother in a gray floral housedress and the fun uncle who lived downstairs.  Gone, all of them, gone all but me.  I shared the picture of the house with my husband and he looked at it with interest.  But it was then that I realized that I am the only person alive in my family who still really cares about that house.  How many other families have come and gone after we moved out doesn’t matter now.  It is the people who lived there, in that house during that decade with whom I wanted to share my discovery.

Gone is the signature pink stucco, but...

A. The wishing well still remains.  There used to be a huge mulberry tree right next to it.  The birds would eat the mulberries and poop bright purple all over my mother's clean laundry hanging outside in the sun to dry.  Mom would grumble and have to rewash the soiled pieces.

B. Speaking of trees, there was a cherry tree here at circle B.  Tomboy Dut loved to climb it.

C. Someone in the photo is disassembling the once-covered patio where I used to spend hours drawing. The little stone fountain that never spouted any water is still there.  We used it as a wading pool in the summer even though it was smaller in size than a bathtub.

D.  This is the spot where my mother helped a stranger put out a car fire.  "Mrs., Mrs., help! My car is on fire!" Firefighter Edith to the rescue with a green garden hose!

E.  My bedroom window was at the front of the house, where I used to dream dreams of marrying Paul McCartney.

There is an alley to the right of the house where I ran away from home for an hour once.   Also on the right was a vegetable garden and a fig tree that my father carefully covered with tar paper each winter.  Behind the wishing well, my grandmother's giant blue hydrangeas bloomed every summer. The house next door was big, much bigger than our little two-family dwelling.  And only one family lived there -- two boys (one I had a crush on) and a little sister.  

Maybe I do have a few words left.