Tuesday 15 November 2016

A Postcard from Chotto-Ma

We have a ritual. Whenever we travel, we bring back a postcard on which the little girl writes a few words to go with the picture on the other side. Yesterday, I found the postcard we'd bought in Paris, and gave it to her. I asked her to go downstairs and write something while I finished some chores. It could be anything I said - a poem, a thought, a fact - but it had to fit into her postcard.

When I came back downstairs, she was standing there hiding the postcard behind her. She'd written a poem, she said, but that it wasn't any good. She stood there with all the doubts of anyone who'd ever written anything, and shut her eyes tight when I coaxed the postcard out of her fingers and began to read.

I'm sorry, but I'll have to make you read it too, and drag you through my proud-Ma moment. Because her words surprised me, and made me smile for the rest of the day, and made me squish her many times. Thinking that she'd written something lovely and yet stood there so unsure. That she'd chosen every word and every comma with such care. That there were marks where she'd rubbed out a sentence and replaced it with another. (Three times, she later told me.) And that she'd thought all this with her little 8-year-old head.



 ...
PS: November 20, 2016
This was accepted for publication by SmokeLong Quarterly, so we now have a little published writer in the house (!) http://www.smokelong.com/fridge-flash-a-fox-in-paris/

6 comments:

  1. Replies
    1. Thanks, Denise. Sending you mist and echoes xx

      Delete
  2. Awww. This left me aching for places and things I have never even known. Give that little girl a hug - beautiful writing from a beautiful 8- year old.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. The little girl and I send you a big hug back for such kind words!

      Delete
  3. Love it love it love it! What a lucky fox, what a lucky Mama, what a beautiful imagination!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much, Melissa. It was a horrible week, but suddenly this made it all better :)

      Delete

Your comments make this blog worth writing. Thank you.