When I was a small child, my mother told me about a writing assignment she did while in high school. She said it was an idea for a children’s story called “The Nothing-To-Do-Day-Drawer.” How about that for a title? It was the only time she ever told me about anything she did in school and her share might have been precipitated by some early writing that I was doing for school . It might be important to note that she “stepped in” to be my mother when I was about three years old. And she was barely out of high school before she became a mother. She missed her senior trip because she was taking care of me that day.
I often wonder if her school experience were not cut short for life’s having stepped in to take over the lessons.
I find it odd now that she would share with such enthusiasm a writing project for which she had no artifact. For her, it was the very idea of the writing project if not the execution and the finished product. As I think of it now, it must be her early influence that leads me to sit with a stockpile of ideas with none brought to fruition at the moment.
For a great while, I have thought about taking the baton from her hand (mother is no longer with us having died very young of a massive heart attack a few years back) to write about this “drawer.” Sometimes, I wonder if writing about her idea wouldn’t be a type of plagiarism–this taking of her idea to give it some life and some legacy. Perhaps the idea was a sort of “seed” planted all of those years ago. After all, I’ve been carrying this title around in my own “nothing-to-do-day-drawer” for at least 35-40 years.
But, where to begin. All I have is the memory of how excited she was to share the idea back then. I have nothing but an idea. At best, have is a title.
Perhaps it is as poetry is it itself. The idea of enough. I have an idea. I have a title. Thanks, mom.
I just love children’s poetry for its simplicity, but I have admitted to other children’s poets that it is hard for me to get myself into that simple place, that truthful place, of children’s verse. Let’s play with the Cinquain format–just to get a “feeling around” of our drawer:
“The Nothing-To-Do-Day-Drawer”
The drawer
in my kitchen
waits to be pulled open,
on rainy days or any days,
by me.
Wooden,
with a white knob,
A drawer full of good stuff.
It’s a Nothing-To-Do-Day Drawer.
It’s mine.
Inside
my special drawer
are things that I can use:
markers, buttons, a roll of tape.
Treaures.
This is what I love about various poetic forms–they are like a little footpath through a forest of overwhelming, infinite choices. Cinquain are great for forcing that streamlining of ideas. This is lovely. I like knowing the drawer is wooden, with a white knob. I like the simple treasures inside. Your mom would be delighted that you have planted her sharing and grown a poem from it!
Paul – This is not plagarism of ideas…it is legacy and keeping your mom and her poemseed alive! I find myself wishing to turn the page to see what’s next. A marvelous idea for a collection with endless possibility. Thank you for letting us in.