Tuesday, June 07, 2011

Where I'm from

I poke around the interwebs looking for ideas to improve my writing and I found this idea. If you don't know where you're from, you'll have a hard time saying where you're going.  The writing template and more can be found at this site Where are you from?



I am from freeways and sunshine, from Evening in Paris Perfume and McDonalds over one million sold.
I am from post WWII look-a-like bungalows, stucco walls, green lawns smelling like mowed grass and dandelions.
I am from pink camellias, humming birds and English walnut, once flourishing in groves now languishing one per front yard.


I am from Anglo-Saxon stock, farmers come to California, not during the depression, but after the war. I come from Harry and Inez, Earl Dean and Norma Jean.
I am from the son who went to college on the GI Bill and the daughter of a neglectful mother and an alcoholic father; she never looked back, and became  a loving wife and mother.


I am from the fundamentalist roots of total immersion, communion every Sunday, no dancing, Christianity of my mother’s family, merged with Dads “I am not my brother’s keeper” and there IS something bigger that all of us... version of Christianity.
I am from “clean your plate there are hungry children in Korea” admonitions and the Duck and Cover Generation. Baby Boomer extraordinaire!
I am from, a returning marine and Oklahoma farm boy and a California native daughter. We sat down, together, to dinner of meat and potatoes and pie every night and to Grandma’s every Sunday fried chicken for lunch.


I am from... a fraction of Grandpa’s stubbornness and Grandma’s short and square. I am from a component of Dad’s love of reading and never quite being wrong. I am a fragment of Mom’s love of talking at the top of her voice.
I am from family; always important, always forgiving, never divided, always fun. I am from family, living parted, always together, always one.

5 comments :

  1. You certainly know where you're from! :)

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  2. Hi! saw you on Mama Kat's today. What a great poem, I was especially moved by the former groves now languishing in peoples' yards, that really paints a picture.
    BTW I used to be a banker chick too, teller at a credit union for many years.
    cheers!

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  3. I really like "... the daughter of a neglectful mother and an alcoholic father; she never looked back, and became a loving wife and mother."

    Really nice job with this writing prompt.

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