I can still remember the first place where I started writing at the age of seven. It was on my bunk bed. Being the youngest, I slept in the lower bunk, a bit dark, but not gloomy. I covered the walls with my drawings of rainbows casting it colors into far away planets. I was a space cadet even back then.
This part of my world I called, ‘my secret hideout’. It wasn’t really secretive, because my tiny room didn’t have a door and it was right next to our kitchen.
My mother spent most of her nights there, washing clothes and singing. I could hear her songs, many she made up to match the beat of our old washing machine. My pencils swayed with her melody, accompany with the erasers. I wrote on any kind of paper that was available. I couldn’t use ‘the good paper’ because the cost was too high and we needed it for school. Therefore, I used the backs of old school reports, but only the good reports. The bad reports were mysteriously unavailable. Then there were the books, which were piled by the foot of my bed, mostly for easy reach than lack of room. Dictionaries, fairy tales, and poems took the majority of the space instead of my feet. Except for my favorite book called ‘The Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary’. I thought it was made especially for me, being born a Capricorn. It was the beginning of my quest to be a ‘writer’ and where my adventures had taken flight.
Now as an adult, I am most comfortable writing on my bed. No, it’s not the bunk kind, but it can be just as small when all my kids jump in with me. My pillows all propped up for back support, something I need now, and I have a better lighting system. An antique table lamp, or at least that’s what the lady said at the garage sale, which sits on my nightstand. I have accustomed to use a laptop for several years, which is a good thing because my spellings have not improved, and I don’t have to scrounge around for paper. My iTunes, unfortunately, substituted my mother’s inspirational voice and my books were replaced by the Internet. All were traded except for one, my quest, my adventure, that one book, which I had kept, written just for me. The Capricorn Rhyming Dictionary.
