NanoWriMo - Day 1

I really did enjoy life on the farm.  The cows were smelly and dumb and working in the fields was exhausting, but it was rewarding, too.  People who've lived in the city all their lives may not realize just how stifling their lives are.  In the country, everything was open.  The sky was bold and blue and you could actually see the stars.  My mother's cooking was wonderful.  We had fresh eggs and milk and vegetables.  I grew up loving sweet corn and potatoes the most of all.  To hear me talk about it, even I'm surprised I ever decided to leave.  But farm freedom is only so much freedom.  A city is clearly stifling, but sometimes the farm could seem stifling, too.

I often felt like I was never good enough for my father.  He would nod his approval at me from time to time, but I never knew what he really thought of me.  And I was too afraid to ask.  I thought he loved me, but the desire to be sure wasn't worth the risk that I was wrong.  I never told him I loved him and he never told me he loved me.  That was just the way it was.

My mother on the other hand was always hugging and kissing me and calling me her precious little boy.  Well, at least until I was old enough to feel I had to put a stop to it.  She still told me she loved me and I'd say, "I love you, too, Ma," while my father sat in his recliner in front of the TV and scoffed.  I sometimes wondered what drew my parents together and then I realized it wasn't their love of one another, it was their love of the farm life that did it.  They might have loved it for different reasons, but they loved it so much that they stuck with it despite their personal differences.

I just didn't have that love enough to stick around.  There's a huge jump between contentment and passion.  I was content with farm life, for the most part, but I wasn't passionate about it.  The farm was big, but the world was bigger and I wanted to see more of, maybe even all of it if I could.  We had decent money, but certainly not enough to travel the world and, dad claimed, barely enough to send me to college.  So instead of depending on dear old dad, I worked hard on the farm and in school and managed to earn a scholarship at a decent out of state university.  Not prestigious enough to brag about, but certainly nothing to be ashamed of either.

My mother cried when I got my acceptance letter.  I still don't know if they were tears of joy or sadness.  I think they were probably both.  My father patted me on the back.  It was probably the most tender he'd ever been with me.  But he didn't smile.  He didn't say, "Well done."  But he didn't say, "I'm disappointed in your decision, son," as I had feared he might.  So I took it as a win.  My little sisters claimed they were sad to see me go, but then they immediately started fighting over my room, so I figured mom put them up to saying they would miss me.  Debbie did write to me the first several months, so I guess at least she might have been genuine in her kind words.

I didn't really know what I was in for, leaving farm life to go to college in a "big city".  Now "big" is relative for someone who lived in the country between a town of 200 and a town of 425, but it was certainly big enough for my first stepping stone towards seeing the rest of the world.

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I was never beautiful.  Pretty, maybe, but not beautiful.  Still, my mother encouraged me to enter pageants when she saw my friend Ruby entering.  "You're every bit as pretty as Ruby," my mother would say.  "And you're smarter, too."  My mother was very good at complimenting me in a way that you could just tell made her feel good.  She said nice things about me, but I was her daughter, so look what a good job she had done.

At least my mother was there for me, unlike my father who had run out on us when I was three.  Mom took years to tell me where he had gone and when she finally did tell me, it was pretty anticlimactic.  Turned out he had run off to exotic South Dakota and was working on some pig farm or something.  Mom said something like, "He belongs with the pigs."  And then looked at me with her sad little smile and said, "Don't listen to your, Mama, sweetie.  If daddy ever comes home, you can tell him you love him, that would be just fine."  I guess she didn't want to seem like she was turning me against him or something, but there was no turning to do.  I didn't know my father.  I wouldn't even be able to pick him out of a police line-up if it ever came to that.  Mom had burned all the pictures of him when he left, so I didn't even have those to go on.  How would I possibly ever tell him I loved him?  That would make no sense at all.

But anyway, back to the beauty pageants.  I think my mother had once been beautiful when she was young and that's why she was so intent on getting me to compete.  Now that she was old and had bags under her eyes, no one looked at her twice.  She was over the hill and her days as prom queen, which she reminisced often about being, were long done.  I still had a chance, though.  But not if I waited too much longer.  I was already 12.  Now was the time to get started!

The first pageant I entered, I thought very little about.  It just seemed like some lame thing to do to satisfy my mom.  I would say I was decidedly indifferent about the whole thing.  That was, at least, until I got fifth place and my "friend" Ruby got third.  My mother howled the whole way home about how unfair the judges had been and how one of them must have had an in with Ruby's mother or something.  At first I just rolled my eyes, but the more my mother went on and on about how clearly superior to Ruby I was, I actually started to believe it.  By the time we got home, I'm not even sure I considered Ruby to be my friend anymore!

Well that was that.  I was determined to win the next pageant I was in.  Determined.  So determined that I managed to get second place.  My mother was thrilled, especially because it was Ruby who finished fifth that time, and beamed about me to everyone she saw.  But all I could envision was the perfect smile of the pre-teen brat who took home first place.  I don't even remember her name now, but my mother, Ruby, and her combined to push my fragile young ego to the limit and to prompt me to continue competing in pageant after pageant until I could take home the victor's crown.

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I married young.  Some said I was too young, my parents among them, but I loved my wife and she loved me.  We were deliriously happy together.  I suppose I spoiled the story of our courtship a bit by already revealing that we got married, but I'm sure you realize that marriage isn't the end of a story, it's the beginning.  If you're really interested in how we first met, though, I suppose I can tell you that story, too.

It was a crisp autumn day, wind whispering through the crunchy yellow and orange leaves.  It would knock them off the trees to the path before me and I would crunch them underfoot, but it was a happy crunch.  It made me smile.  As a photographer, fall was my favorite season.  Some people might prefer the shimmer of winter or the bright colors of spring or maybe even the vibrant sunshine of summer, but for me, those crisp autumn days are where it's all at.  And if I can capture the breeze in my lens, that's the most amazing shot of all.

I had come to the park that day intending to photograph nature.  I had been taking photos of the leaves already:  on the trees, along the path, blowing through that wonderful breeze, but I wanted to get some wild life as well.  I loved the idea of all the little animals that managed to make their home in the middle of a park in the big city.  I spotted a sparrow flitting through the trees and followed it with my camera, taking shots as it went.  I didn't entirely know where it was going, but I followed it along until it landed on a park bench.

I took a shot of it on the bench.  It hopped along.  I took another shot of it.  It hopped along.  I took another shot.  And this time, when it hopped along, it landed on the shoulder of a startled young woman who had been sitting on the park bench pouring over pages of writing deep in thought.  I managed to snap a photo right as she looked up in surprise at the touch of the birds gentle talons on her shoulder.  It was a great photo, and I love it with all my heart, but at the time, I was terrible embarrassed to have taken it.

She noticed me standing there, at a distance, just after I had snapped the photo.  She looked even more alarmed and a somewhat angry kind of alarmed.  I rushed over to assure her that I had been photographing the bird, who of course flew right off as soon as I made a move.  She felt the bird leave her shoulder, turned towards it and then looked back at me with a smile.  "You scared your friend away," she said as I approached.

"I'm so sorry," I said, rather flustered.

She just continued to smile.  "Don't apologize," she said.  "He was your little friend, not mine."

I decided to smile back.  "Certainly seemed like he liked you more," he said.

She gave a coy little smirk and shrugged.  "What's not to like?" she asked.

That completely took me aback.  What do you say in response to a woman who has enough confidence to say that about herself to a total stranger.  Fortunately, she filled the silence with, "Can I see it?"

My mind went straight to the gutter as I responded, "Excuse me?"

She laughed.  "The photo.  The one you just took?  Invading my privacy and all."

I looked around.  "Not much privacy in a park," I said.

She shrugged.  "I suppose not, but still, can I see it."

"Of course," I said, not even thinking as I sat down beside her on the bench.  As I pulled it up, I was quick to add, "I'll erase it if you like."

She laughed.  "Not a chance," she said, looking at the photo.  "Why don't you make a copy for me?  I'll be back here tomorrow at this same time if you want to drop it off."

"I need some time to touch it up," I said instinctively.

She glared at me playfully.  "What's not to like?" she repeated.  Then she smiled and said, "You're a really good photographer."

And that was the beginning.  When I came back the next day with the untouched up photo and saw her still pouring over her papers, I got up the nerve to ask her what she was working on.  Turned out she was a writer.  A writer and a photographer.  It was a match made in book publishing heaven.