PROMPT: Make a list of your top tem most important memories, good or bad.

When I was in third or fourth grade, while living in Arlington or Fort Worth, Texas, I missed the bus and decided to walk to school alone.

After I left my husband, I stopped in a town almost 6 hours away. Foolishly, I called him, gave him the phone number of where I was staying, and spent the night in tearful conversation till I had agreed to come home. On the drive back to his house, I looked in the mirror and no longer saw myself looking back. I turned around and headed east.

It was time for graduation from high school and I wanted my then husband to be there for it. However, he decided that because he had a test the next morning, he couldn't attend.

I sat in my first sweat lodge, uncertain of what to expect, how I would react, and shared a message that was heavy on my heart. Later that weekend, a man who was in the same sweat pulled me aside, handed me an owl wing and explain the symbolism of the owl. He said the wing would help me face my fears without fears.

One afternoon a t a small family function, my father started a conversation with the people in the living room. This was a totally unexpected act that knocked me and my sisters off our feet. Here, my dad was beginning to step out of his antisocial, reserved self.

I was working at Wendy's when I was called and told my dad had been in an accident. I finished my shift there, and when I got home, was filled in o the details and driven to the hospital. There I spent the night with my stepsisters and step mom crying, drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes.

I hadn't slept in over 24 hours, I'd been driving for what seemed like forever, in hopes of making it the final stretch I'd confused tons of caffeine and sudaffed. I ended up coming upon the unbuilt city with tired eyes and body twitching with forced energy. There lay skeleton of a city that took my breath away.

Everytime I went to Seminole, Oklahoma, my grandpa would be so happy to see me, calling me his "world traveler".

Alex and I were having a bad day, when I told her something along the lines of not wanting her around me, meaning at that moment. I got back a letter telling me that she wanted to run away since I didn't want her here anymore. I cried so hard, she crawled in my lap and we cried together, as I told her how much that wasn't true.

There was a room, with a hole in the closet, the only way I could get away to to escape and run through the closet as fast as I could. I rarely ever got away. -----------------------------------
Prompt from The Writer's Idea Workshop

July 14, 2004

written on July 14, 2004; modified on July 15, 2004.