A Draft...

I've been thinking about writing a book. I've mentioned my desires to write several times now in this blog. I've mentioned the book. I've mentioned that when I was in high school, in Brooklyn NY, I thought I wanted to be a writer when I grew up. Although I haven't heard it in a few weeks now, for a while, it seemed every few days someone said to me, you should write a book.

I wish I could tell you that the reason for my quietness on this blog has been that I have been busy with starting the book. I haven't started it. Nor do I have any idea of when I will write it. Then there is the book that my husband and I are supposed to write. Yes, I use the word "supposed" to because while I still may have doubts that any one is that interested in my life, I do know that "our" life is very interesting.

I've wrestled with thoughts of "who do you think you are that any one would want to read about YOU?" I've told myself, "you'll be seen as arrogant because you think people would be interested in YOU." That's never been the point. However, at points in my life I get tired of being second guessed and misunderstood. I've been that way a lot lately. Really tired of people assuming they know what is in my heart. Really tired of mislabeling and misjudging... in general, just really tired of a lot of things. Too many things... And yet, if I tell my story, tell you about my life you'll see that I have reason to be tired.

Another question I've asked myself, is does it matter to me that you know any of this? Does it matter that any one know any of this? I only suspect, that if this drive to write, if all the comments that I should write, actually mean anything at all, then there must be someone out there, who needs to hear my story. I use the word need because I suspect there might be someone who is like me. Someone who is on welfare and food stamps, has been abandoned by their spouse, someone who everyone assumes is nothing, who might hear my story and say, if she can do it, I can. Or more correctly, if God helped her, God can and will help me.

I've given a lot of thought to where I would start if I did write a book about my life. Do I start with once upon a time in the borough of Brooklyn on a chilly November evening a little girl was born in the Norwegian maternity hospital. I can hear you yawning right now. Do I start with the present? I am the mother of eight children who is about to start her doctoral program late in life. That sounds nice but I doubt that would keep your interest-that just sounds rather self-exalting to me.

I think I would start with the birth of my third child. I've shared a bit about her birth in previous blogs. I've shared how I looked out the window of my hospital room with sadness and despair as my peers in their caps and gowns graduated from the University of Missouri. I've shared that I wasn't sure my child would live, how I'd been deserted by her father, how I was a single mother with no future. I've shared that something inside me (God) rose up and gave me courage to become a graduate three and a half years later.

What I haven't shared was how I got there. Even most of my family has either never heard, nor truly listened to anything I've shared about the years before. Oh they know that there was a first husband named Alvin. They know he is the father of my three older children. They know he was not a nice guy. But they don't know. They don't really know.

My oldest son knows the most. He lived it. However, he lived it through the eyes of an abused abandoned child. He has his own memories. He recently shared with me what he also realizes at least in part, what it must have been like for me. As we talked about family issues, he said of his siblings, "Mom, they have no clue what you've been through. If they did, they'd behave much differently."

I don't know if that's true. I don't know if anything I share here, or in the book to come, will even be read, let alone understood. But I'm going to start. This blog is my practice sheet for a book. I'm going to share for a while how I got to be a welfare mom abandoned in a hospital giving birth to her third child.

Less people are reading my blog of late. Not sure exactly why. If you are reading, share with me your comments. If you like what you read, ask other people to read it. You never know where that one person is who might find courage and strength to move forward.