Excerpt from my short story, "Dear God?"

This is a coming of age story about a girl named Faye. It takes place in the seventies, its about losing innocence, a child's spirit, and gaining a voice strong enough to speak for herself and her younger sister Maribel...

Glass beads the size and color of lucid peas were strung together by thin hemp string, bound by an over sized knot at each end, hung as long as I stood tall. Columns loose like chains descended from the makeshift plywood frame that was painted a stark white to match the ceiling it was secured to, at the top of the stairs. The stairs, swathed in burnt orange Berber carpet reminded one of autumn and things of the sort like leaves and pumpkins, or Thanksgiving and its spices of nutmeg and cinnamon. It tickled my bare feet when I ran up and down the stairs or even walked slowly. My slender fingers caressed the hanging beads, playing with them. They made a clicking and clacking sound, the slight folds of air barely brushed past the edges of your face, each strand moving and shaking until they were perfectly still again and in place as if they had never been touched. There was paneling on the walls, a hue of dark brown. It was the seventies - the time of my youth. I use to pretend to be a runway model, passing through the hanging beads and sashay down the stairs, a towel draped on my head, swinging it left and right as if I had a head full of long flowing hair. I was the oldest, although only eleven or twelve around that time. My younger sister always followed suit, imitating my awkward movements and voice, her feet drowning in MaMa's big shoes.

In that house there was an unforgettable smell, a pungent odor of aged liquor and old women's perfume. It was always warm, which caused the air inside to be cutting. Because of the heat we often went baring our flat bellies beneath the tube tops and above the mid rise cut-off shorts that were once Jordache jeans. It was around that time that I hadn't quite grown into the bras MaMa bought for me from Woolworth's, but I stuffed them with toilet paper anyway. I had worn the plastic white peace earrings that I managed to afford for fifty cents at swap meet with MaMa before my first year of middle school. My legs were thin like ostriches, unassuming and plain, supporting the frame of a young girl nearing thirteen. A body that puberty was taking its time with to flower it with the changes a girl would live to see only once...

Check it out!

I had told my younger sister about my blog and as a result of her viewing mine, she was inspired to start her own! Her new blog page is www.giftedinbloom.blogspot.com Please check it out. She inspires me as much as she says I inspire her. Yes, I'm giving her a shout out on my blog...but show her some love. She's just getting started. Thanks for your support.

Back in the day

This is my kindergarten picture of when I lived in Hawaii. My blog below mentions a little about this picture - my teacher with the very long hair, the water, etc. Can you guess which one is me? Of course I'm the only black girl in the picture (smile) - middle row to the right, smiling big and bright!

My walks on the beach

This is a picture of me around 1981/82. I lived in Hawaii. My mother use to walk me to school when I was in kindergarten, along the beach. She did this everyday until one day she was late coming to get me, so being that I had memorized my way home with my mom from our walks in the past, I took the walk home that day without her. I made it home safe and sound and my mother was surprised and proud. It told her that I was a big girl and could walk home on my own. From that day on, I walked home from school without her, along the beach - sometimes with sand in between my toes. She had realized that I didn't need her to walk with me.

My school was called Nanaikapono Elementary School and it was located very close to the beach. In one of my school pictures, you can see the water in the background and my teacher had very long hair - down past her waist. In this picture the water was a beautiful shade of blue, frothing at its edges. While warm sand sat beneath my feet and seaweed and stranded weeds lay straggling on the shore, I smiled bright, my signature smile.

I think of how this picture relates to my life and as I am blogging this, I am realizing that the walks that I had with my mother mean more to me now as an adult. My mother died when I was nine years old. Although she was taken from this world at a young age - 35 years old, her walks with me at least showed me the way so that I would know how to get home. She was there long enough to show me a path and eventually I would figure it out on my own, because unfortunately she wasn't able to be there to walk me the rest of the way. I miss the walks on the beach as much as I miss her now. It's amazing what memories a picture holds and how meaningful it can be.

When I Reminisce...

Yesterday I checked my facebook account and I had a friend request from someone that I went to high school with. I didn't immediately recognize her name or her picture. She was from the class before me, class of '94. As hard as I tried, I couldn't remember her. But as I tried figuring if I really knew her well enough way back then, I accepted her friend request and checked out her pictures she had on her profile to see if there were old high school pics. None of the pics helped me to remember.

But there was one picture that brought back memories. The caption for the pic said Song Fest, Class of '94. That may sound foreign to many people, but you see I went to school in Hawaii - Nanakuli High and Intermediate School. It went from 7th thru 12th grade. Every year each grade participated in a big singing competition called Song Fest. We would practice for weeks, perfecting our sound and uniformity. It was something to be proud of. The girls wore white Polynesian inspired dresses (similar to muumuus), the boys wore black slacks, white long sleeved dress shirts with Ti Leaf leis or Maile leis. When it was our time, class of '95 stood up together on the rows of bleachers in the gymnasium, nervous and excited. We belted out the words in unisom that we had memorized and harmonized for weeks. It was such an exciting time. After every grade had performed their song, the judges deliberated and announced the winners. The noise in the gym was blaring when they said that the class of '95 won first place. We jumped up and down, shouted and screamed with such pride and happiness. In fact, if I remember correctly, class of '95 won two years in a row.

I still have my white dress that I wore. I have so many memories of growing up in Hawaii. I like the idea of blogging about those memories. I miss Hawaii - a lot. This may be the start of some of my future blogs - how it was for me growing up in Hawaii; the many different things that I went through and how it felt to be a black girl among other brown, tan, white, and yellow faces. Many people might actually think that being black would be easy around other people of differing colors but it wasn't always easy. I had a somewhat unique upbringing. But that's an entirely different blog entry, stay tuned...

Just a poem I wrote (try reading it backwards after you read it the first time)

A poem I wrote last semester (Fall 2009). I struggled at poetry - I'm a fiction writer but I happened to like how this one turned out after revising it. Try reading it backwards; I reversed it for a different effect.

At First Light

Lovely. Awakened sleep from over glazed
lovers of eyes, silence the shattered - birds.

Beds warm in close huddled lovers of sleep
the permeating morning of precipice, the doorstep of each

arriving. Trees broad among dancing branches
between threading leaves lean, golden of multitude

around willows weeping of roots beneath crept morning by
kissed ground. Solid cold above crept silence - lovely.

Snow at the water's edge

Wintery Wonderland...

A time to spend indoors either reading or creating the perfect novel or as I should tell myself - a time to continue working on the one I already started weeks ago. Solitude and an excuse to be off from work is a great excuse to find a spot to sit with a cup of coffee and spill the words from my heart and mind onto paper that have been still for some time now. I know what I want to write, I just need to do it while I can and while i know what I want to say.

Also a time to spend outside (but not for long) as I did taking pictures down by the water. Beautiful.