Writers Prompt

I am participating for the first time today in Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop.  As a teenager I loved to write, stories, poems, my thoughts and I guess that is why I love blogging so much.  But I have wanted to begin to write again more of what I feel, how I want things to be , stories of love and joy and pain and well you get it write, right!

So my first effort is below under the picture of my dad's house, he built it in stages himself when he and mum married.  He lived there until he came to Toowoomba for a few days back in 2004 and never went home again.  It's where I was born, where I grew until I was 15 and ran to the beach to live.  It is how I remember my mum and dad together, my sister before things changed, where dad was when he got that dreaded diagnosis.  It is over 40 years of his life and my mum's life and most all of my childhood.  It is gone now, a huge big brick box in it's place, I miss my house, my dad, my life there as a child.

The writing prompt was I am from....Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop

So here we go.

I am from Barbie dolls and Little Golden Books with shiny gold spines, from Coca Cola in green tinged glass bottles and Paddle Pop ice creams on small wooden sticks .

I am from the house my dad built with his own two hands, with a skillion roof and a ramp out the back.  A creek down the road where we fished for turtles and shiny guppies with all the kids in our street, from the scent of frangipani in summer and yellow wattle in winter.

I am from the creamy white frangipani, the sweet heady scent that fills the air in the summer evenings, the bright yellow centre and the wrinkly dark green leaves.

I am from early morning risers during the week and sleepy heads on the weekends and work hard, pay it off as fast as you can and don’t whine from Noel and Brenda and Ernest (he was a hard one).

I am from the stay busy, don’t complain and save, save, save family.

From always look a person in the eye when you speak to them and never lie.

I am from Sunday school that they asked me to leave, when I made fun of the teacher’s name. To finding my own way to church at 30 and leaving again at 50.

I’m from Brisbane, Australia and Leeds, England, roasted lamb ribs and Yorkshire Pudding.

From the mother who blew up the pressure cooker and left spaghetti dangling from the ceiling, the mother who had hair pieces and make up and always looked beautiful, and the father who built his own business and fished like a champion, who loved me so much and spanked me at the same time.

I am from very few albums a circumstance I have changed, drawers filled with bits of paper and old letters a mother who hoardes and a father who didn’t, but kept his favourite pants from the 70’s and treasured pigeon racing certificates.  I am from a dad who loved me and my sister no matter what, but who also was firm and set an example.  From a mum who laughed with us and showed us the way to be who we needed to be. I have taken the good and left the bad and hope my daughters will be happy to say who they come from.