That lady's not crazy! That's my mom!
I've written a few pages of a story with the POV of a child living with a mom who is sick with depression; how the child feels about her mom, how the depression effects the family and how it effects her feelings for her mom. I'm trying to do it with humor. Maybe there is a market for this type of book for young people considering how many people are struggling with depression. I'm going to share a few pages with you with hopes I will receive some comments. Thank you!
My mother is so annoying I don't even know where to start!
When Ms. Lansing, Mz. Lovely Lansing as we call her, gave the assignment to write a short essay about something near and dear to us in our real life, I became very happy and relaxed. I even wished she had told us to write a long essay. Or if she had asked us to write a chapter book I wouldn't even care. Because I had a creative flash at that moment like I had never before experienced.
First I thought, what is near and dear to my heart? My sister Natalie, our pet Asproula, my stuffed bear, Mattan that I have slept with since the very day I was born.
Thinking about cuddling with Mattan for all my life made me chuckle, ‘cause then it made me think about my Mom. One year for her birthday she kept telling us she wanted a stuffed lion for a gift.
"Why, Mom? You're old!" We asked her over and over.
"Even old people need something soft and cuddly sometimes," she would laugh a little bit. "You were my soft and cuddly babies but now you are taller than I am!"
"Everyone in the world is taller than you are, Mom!" We liked to remind her of this fact periodically. It feels so deliciously satisfying.
"And I'm a Leo. Leos are lions of people. Strong and charismatic and brave. But sometimes it's hard for me to remember so if I have my very own lion it will remind me every day of some my best characteristics."
Well, Natalie and I agreed with each other, "That makes sense."
Our mom has been sick a lot because she has depression. Sometimes she forgets that she is a really good person, so it would be good to help her brain click into the right place with a little reminder.
Luckily we live in Chania, a city on the island of Crete, so we were excited to go shopping for mom's gift. Unluckily we found a zillion different choices of lions and we were exhausted when finally, finally we found the perfect lion for mom.
The lion doesn't have anything extra just two legs with nothing in between, so we figured out it's a girl lion even though she has a mane. She's very floppy and relaxed looking creature, Mom needs to remember to relax more, so we decide we have found the perfect lion for our dear crazy mom.
But what I wanted to tell you about the stuffed lion is that my mom named her, Bear. And my mom sleeps with her! She's a grown up that sleeps with a stuffed toy in her bed. She tells Dad that Bear makes a good pillow for her neck but we all know that she is like a kid sleeping with a stuffed toy. I bet this means I will probably be sleeping with Mattan for the rest of my life. I ended up being a lot like mom (except for her annoying characteristics which I carefully avoid).
Since the essay has to be short I decided to write about her Number 1 crushingly annoying habit that no family could endure except for us because we love her.
(to be cont.)
About Vicki
I grew up in a farm in Iowa. In the summer I would lay in the green grass looking at the sky and daydream about the people in the jets that passed overhead. I traveled about the U.S. in my old beat up car, managed to get a couple of degrees in science and...
Connections
Vicki is a fan of
this lady
You've created suspense for me in the first sentence, I want to know what annoys the speaker about her mom and why, and then draw it out with the story of the stuffed lion. You've created for me, intrigue about the storyteller, why is her mother so annoying, and I want to know more about the young girl. She is a contradiction, first sounding mature,
"....We liked to remind her of this fact periodically. It feels so deliciously satisfying."
and then child-like, with her confession about her own cuddly stuffed bear, and her choice for her mother,
"...The lion doesn't have anything extra just two legs with nothing in between, so we figured out it's a girl lion even though she has a mane."
and I sense an underlying fear both for and of her mother. Amazing how a character reveals so much about herself while telling us about another character.
I was a little confused whether the mother's stuffed toy was a bear or a lion. I liked the way you tied the mother's requested toy to her birth sign, then the daughter's description of the animal she and her sister chose from so many, that ...
"She's very floppy and relaxed looking creature"
-- again more about the storyteller than the mother -- the way she sees her mother (floppy), and the way she wants her mother to be (relaxed). Another subtle reinforcement of the storyteller's flip-flop between maturity and childishness as well as the fear factor -- her mother is floppy, and her mother is not relaxed. She describes the toy as a creature and I read this as how she sees her mother, which can be both a mature and a childish response.
Curious that the lion is named Bear, like her own stuffed toy and another intrigue about the storyteller. Does she see herself in her mother? All kinds of psychological meanings.
More suspense. What will this mean to the storyteller? Is she being honest with us? Is her mother just annoying, or is there something deeper going on here that she is not prepared to tell us yet?
"Even old people need something soft and cuddly sometimes," she would laugh a little bit. "You were my soft and cuddly babies but now you are taller than I am!" -- very poignant and telling of both mother and daughter.
-- best, wen