Writing Workshop: Remembering a Summer Past

Welcome back to our Do-It-Yourself Writing Workshop! If you remember we’ve done things slightly differently this week. Instead of prompts, I gave you a series of words and phrases to inspire your OWN prompts on a theme. I can’t wait to see what you’ve all come up with. And, don’t forget, the five prompts that I like best will form the basis of NEXT week’s workshop, (and you’ll win a prize too).

I chose the first word, summer, and used it to write the prompt “Remembering a Summer past”…

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The girl lay lay out on the warm green grass, her legs and feet bare, her hands splayed above, collecting daises in the gaps between her fingers.

Image Credit: stock.xchng

She stretched, feeling her spine lengthen, pushing down, down with her toes, the prickly turf scratching her skin, the earthy, dry smell filling her nose. And she breathed. In and out, in and out. The pulse of the nearby traffic a soft roar like the sound of a womb, or the sea, or the wind through trees. Deep tendrils of feeling inch their way down through the soil, rooting her, as hot, piercing, healing waves of sunshine pin her down, heavy on her eyelids and her chest, flowing through and down and round and out.

And she smiles. And then stops, the smile catching as she remembers this, this moment, in another time and place.

A summer past.

Her grassy bed is replaced with firm mattress, cold sheets. Sunshine knocks at glass but can’t get in, the breeze from the open window not reaching her. She tries to stretch, and the burning pain of knotted, tight muscles chokes a sob from her. Her body feels swollen, unresponsive; tar running through her veins.

Breathe girl, breathe.

She closes her eyes, trying to paint the missing pieces in her mind, but how ever hard she tries she can’t turn white sheets into grass, or the ceiling into a blue sky with vapour trail kisses. She can’t feel the earth, suspended so far above it as she is. It is not sun that pins her down, just fatigue, and a body that won’t do as it’s told.

She is just a girl, stuck in bed, in pain, trying not to cry.

I am both these girls. Simultaneously across time, two summers separated only by six or seven years. My yesterday self stretched on the grass in feline bliss as my old self lies trapped in bed.

I had forgotten this. I’m not sure how, but I did.

This post did the rounds again yesterday. Remember?

Somehow I had failed to. Funny how it came along to remind me. Thank you my lovely Tara Lara, and I really mean that.

Because like lenses overlapping to bring distant letters into focus, that extra layer of meaning laid over my thinking yesterday brought with it clarity.

It is no wonder I feel as I do.

It is no wonder that feeling, sensuality, freedom, adventure, seem so attractive to me right now. Why I want to grasp them with both hands and not let go. It was not just motherhood that robbed me of those things for a while. Long years before of illness and pain left me living a half-life.

I stand at a point in my life where actually, if I’m honest and shake off the layers of assumed pressure, there is nothing to strive for. I am well, whole, alive. I have a demanding child, yes, and the emotional conflict that has dogged me my whole life, that is much a part of my nature as that need to do, to succeed…

But actually, right now, for the first time, I have the freedom to just be.

It is no wonder I want to make the most of that. I should make the most of it. My twenties have been one long, gruelling climb fighting the forces trying to push me down. I fought tooth and nail for everything it took to get me here.

And right now I am giving myself permission to stop for a bit.

I am going to try to just to stop. Just be. Just be alive.

Enjoying the sun on my face and the feel of the grass.

Because, you know? I’ve bloody well earned it.

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Now it’s your turn. What word did you use to inspire you?

1. Summer

2. Lost

3. In the Garden

4. A Wedding

5. Escape

Leave your name and the URL to your post in the MckLinky below (the URL should be to your post not just to your blog) and leave me a comment to let me know you’ve taken part. If you have the time it would be great if you could try and read and comment on at least two other entries. And be kind! It’s supposed to be a bit of fun – we’re not looking for the next Booker Prize winner here.

If you haven’t had chance to respond yet, then you’ve still got till Sunday to enter your link! Or just wait till next week, when there’ll be five brand new prompts to get you thinking.

This Writing Workshop is brought to you in association with Mama Kat’s Losin’ It – who’s lovely author came up with the concept and runs her own workshop over in the U.S.

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