Written in 10 minutes: “I will wear white . . .”

This is an unedited piece, written in 10 minutes by Patty Graves in our Saturday Prompt of the Week Salon. The richness of imagery and emotion in this piece, written by someone who didn’t previously think of herself as a writer, demonstrates how, with the right prompt, we can all access the gifts of our imagination.

I will wear white to my mother’s funeral. It is my perspective her life should be celebrated for all it contained: the sublime, the ridiculous and the long blue line of the in between. There was no innocence in my childhood, peppered with both love and volatility. Our Catholic family was large and my childhood lonesome. My spirit was long ago deserted and orphaned. I am the ghostly reminder to them all of my enchanted dreams to run naked and free while they worked so hard to teach me this was not Disneyland. Their world was cold and dry but I wanted to explore it anyway, run my Self through its fibers to the end. They wanted my safety through my conformity. I would not be molded. 

I will wear white, impossibly white, to my mother’s funeral, still searching for a sense of belonging in a place I was never meant to be. As if my birth was an accident and I was mistakenly dropped into the family where there was no size for everyone, only one-size-fit-all. I will wear my white proudly amidst the lonesome, stained by supper time and tears because I am here and cannot be erased.

The image, which was our prompt the week Patty wrote this, is a photograph by Helga Stentzel from her series "Washing Line Animals." You can see more of her work at helgastentzel.com.