We say that life is about choices, but sometimes I think life is more about chance than choice. This week's prompt is probably a lot closer to me than I'd like. I've run the gamut from wanting to write a piece from my grandmother's perspective (though she's dead,) to wanting to write from the perspective of someone who's all ready dead--like, say, my grandmother.
You see, a little before my dad passed away, I found out that he had been adopted. Unfortunately, his real mom passed away when she was forty from a heart attack (yay family medical history!) I only ever got to meet my grandmother's family at my dad's funeral, and it was strange the way they kept looking at me--as though seeing a ghost or something of the sort (though I wouldn't blame them seeing as how they'd probably never seen an albino before, either.)
My grandmother's name--I can't even remember what her cousin, Ruth, told me it was, now. I'd have to go looking through old letters, and who knows what kind of truths were buried with her death. I never did contact their family again or stay in touch with them like I probably should have....
Anyway, my grandmother had married a man named Sam Adevi. Her family seemed happy, though riddled with various tragedies--like most families. Looking at the pictures that Ruth sent to me, I always felt as though my grandmother was never quite happy having her picture taken or that there was something in her expression that said she wasn't quite happy. Was it a longing to know about what had happened to my dad? Did that linger with her? Did she ever talk about it with anyone besides Ruth?
There are a hundred things my real grandmother could have been, and the worst part is, I'll never know what those things were. My dad's adopted mom passed away a few years ago now from lung cancer. She and I were never very close--except...I remember nights when I'd get to crawl into bed with her, eating raisin bran and watching the Lawrence Welk show. She used to enjoy that show, I think. And every time we visited, there was always new clothes or something of the sort.
She knew I loved strawberries, and she always had a bowl out; she'd have sugared them, too. My grandad liked caramels, and ...we used to sing the Burger King song to one another--though I've no idea why. *laughs* I don't even know if he liked to eat there or not.
She knew I loved strawberries, and she always had a bowl out; she'd have sugared them, too. And in the mornings, if there were doughnuts, there was always a glazed twist; I loved those things. My grandad liked caramels, and ...we used to sing the Burger King song to one another--though I've no idea why. (Grandad: Who has the best darned burger in the whole wide world? Me: Burger King and I!) *laughs* I don't even know if he liked to eat there or not.
So I didn't want to have to delve into those dark places inside of me when writing today's prompt--even though I had a hundred ideas of things I could have written about. I mean, imagine finding a book that your mom or your grandmother wrote; now imagine how much more those words would mean if they were the only things you had left of them--not even memories to treasure.
BUT...rather than write something that I wasn't even sure I could do any real justice--just a silly wish-fulfillment of words from someone I never really knew--I decided that it might be interesting to consider a different kind of scenario--where it wasn't the mother's choice to give away her child, but society's laws that demanded it. I don't want to go so far as Brave New World, or even something as creepily fantastic as Never Let Me Go, but what happens when you're classified as clinically psychotic while you're pregnant?
