10 minute free-write

Sylvia

Standard

Prompt – someone important in your life with whom you’ve lost touch with

 

Lost touch with seems to be an accidental or choice of losing touch, so I’ll stick to live people, although that doesn’t much narrow the list down. Faces assail my mind until one remains: Sylvia.

Oh, how I love Sylvia. Short and plump, coffee colored skin with a head of loose dark curls that she kept short-ish. She had a round face and a flat nose and the voice of angels. She had a way of moving as if she were floating on air or about to dance. Not just a skip in her step, but a hop and a pirouette too. Her voice soft and lilting, but more that brilliant combination of mother, sister, spiritual healer from New Orleans, Louisiana, a place that for me holds the mystical and mysteries and a longing place to try it just once.

Her husband was an NCO, a Staff Sargent, I think in the Marines. She had three kids who were about my age at the time or barely younger.

She used her softness to get her point across. We taught together for the US Navy’s child development program until she became the assistant director, one step down from where she truly belonged. She brought multi-cultural education to a place that should have had it all along considering the clientele. She taught me how to make the perfect sweet potato pie even though my own mother did not understand the concept of Dessert rather than side dish. As an aside, when I was recently in Virginia, McDonald’s had sweet potato pie instead of pumpkin. I’d consider moving south just for that.

Sylvia was encouraging and smart and strong and delicate. She was comfortable in her own skin with a bright smile. She wore loose, bright, colorful clothes and sandals with the most beautiful huge to my eye necklaces, bracelets and earrings. Her rings were simple to fit her small hands.

She inspired and awed me and the thought of her makes me smile.

In Hand

Standard

Write about something that feels comfortable in your hand

 

I have many of these things that I hold, touch, rub, play with, not as bad as a smoker fiddling with a cigarette, but relatively close. You’ve already met Bob and despite what looks like a bulky outside, he really does fit comfortably in the palm of my hand. I’ve held him on car rides through ice; I clutched him flying over the Atlantic, rubbed across the chips in his casing during an MRI and slept with him in my hand in a hotel room. I can always find him if I wake up in the middle of the night and he’s hopped away.

Until Bob, I hadn’t really thought about all of the other talismans that I’ve had over the years. In high school and college, I played Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) and would roll the dice around in my palm under the table while my other hand held a pen. Although roll around is a bit of an inaccuracy since most of the dice were an assortment of odd shapes.

During those games, I also held what was known at the time as a worry stone. It was a small oval polished rock like thing with an indentation for your thumb to rub over it, made to rest in your hand. The rubbing was supposed to be comforting during times of stress and I suppose it was. It was procured at Kmart on the other side of town, and is long since lost, but I have other stones with words of encouragement or comfort on them: Breathe, Balance, xoxo (although that one was more because of the color) and I thought I had one that said Thrive.

Also at college, when I had to do any kind of public speaking, I held my friend’s matchbox from RIT. That was the school he longed to go to, and as his good luck charm, it transferred to me. I still have one of those matchsticks somewhere in my boxes of memorabilia.

When I’m at my therapist, I almost always wear a scarf so I can play with the ends or the fringe.

I have a Welsh spoon key chain that I rub with my thumb when I’m driving sometimes and a smooth stone from a medieval Welsh castle that I hold occasionally.

Last Easter, at the church, they gave out a small metal cross for Lent. This year, it was a small ceramic heart. I often hold them in my hand and in the case of the cross, I found it very comforting during some very stressful times as my medication was being adjusted. Rosaries are still a bit foreign in my hand, but they are also more utilitarian, for prayer rather than comfortable for just being held.

I am definitely one for symbolism and assigning importance to objects. I believe that some of that is due to the material world we live in. I also know how much some people care for me, but I get anxious and worrisome and a bit paranoid, but re-reading a birthday card or a book inscription or even just holding something that they gave me for a moment or two reminds me of the love they have for me and I for them.

I do like to hold things and think of what they remind me of. Most of them are calming just by their presence, and some of them need a closed palm to keep the good feels inside and close. At church, after the Lord’s Prayer, if someone has held my hand, I keep my hand closed to keep the warmth of that touch with me a little longer, and in this last week, for that brief moment between receiving the Eucharist and placing it gently on my tongue, I close my palm around it.

My charm bracelet gives me this kind of feeling. The charms symbolize different feelings, wants and peoples and I move around the chain pressing my thumb and forefinger together as I stop at each charm like a mini-hug.

Those are a few of my favorite things that burst from my heart but still manage to fit in my hand.