Six word Memoir

I forget it's okay to dream

Poem Inspired by "Caged Bird"

Dreams are often limited, limited to the future and not the past, the past brings unwanted memories so why dwell on those? Why not? As a child we all believed that we could do anything. Why not now? Creativity has no age limit, it is just buried in society. It longs to be found beneath the ruble. Creativity dreams. It dreams of being used again, like an old toy kept in the attic, hiding in the back of the mind, trying to escape but always constricted and put on hold. Why? Why are dreams often just dreams? Why don’t they sprout into reality? Are dreams and reality really so far distant that they never meet? Are we so closed minded that we don’t grab a shovel and start digging? Why does the past scare us? Is it knowing that we can’t go back? We all say to learn from your mistakes. Why? Why do we all say that when we don’t like to bring it up? I mean the past just makes you think of what could have been right? Wrong. If you look at the past the right way then you can think of what could be. The past holds hope for the future, It’s just a matter of looking for it.

Maya Angelou questions

Question #4 Answer- I have always heard that we dream about what was on our minds right before we fell asleep. I tend to dream about what I messed up on that day. What I said or did. What I didn’t say or didn’t do. Just anything that I did that upset me in a way because of the effect it had on someone else. That sounds weird and it probably didn’t make any since, but I feel like I can go back to where I messed up that day and replay it over and over again in a dream until I say or do the right thing. Then when I wake up I try and think of little plans to fix my mistakes and when one doesn’t work I sit in silence as my mind just stops functioning until it’s ready to fix whatever I did. So I guess what I am trying to say is that my dreams reveal that conflict is the thing I hate the most and I will do almost anything to dissolve any grudges that people have with me and vice versa. That makes me sound crazy but whatever. Question #5 Answer- I am fascinated with the fact that Maya was mute for nearly five years, and then became this outstanding writer and inspirational voice. I wonder what was going on in her head and how she kept all of her thoughts and responses inside. When I was younger I would talk to the point that I couldn’t breathe, but only while I was with my parents and my brother. I always made a few bucks on long car rides because they would all pay me by the hour to sleep or to stop talking. Then when our trip was to visit family I wouldn’t talk hardly at all the whole time I was there, so they always thought my parents were being sarcastic when they would say that they call me “Motor Mouth Meg”. To not talk for a few hours is one thing, but to not talk for almost five years with no family paying by the hour would be incredibly difficult to accomplish. Yet Maya Angelou did. These days I struggle to piece together what I want to say and it always sounds better in my head then it does when it comes out. I tend to rewrite texts and papers over and over and still end up unsatisfied with my wording. I also tend to not speak up when I should and speak up when I shouldn’t. When I am quiet it’s more than likely because I’m overthinking something, or because I don’t want to say the wrong thing. If I were to listen more and speak less then I think I would learn to not take things for granted. Then on the other hand if I were to speak more and listen less I think I would find that I don’t really have anything relevant to talk about. Question #6 Answer- I only speak English, and I tried Spanish then swore I would never try and speak anything other than English ever again. That changed a few months ago when a man came into my work and started ordering in sign language. I felt bad because I had no clue what he was trying to order and I had to have him write it out. It made me question if he had struggled with this his whole life and didn’t know any different. Or if it was something that he had to get used to. The inability to communicate to him reminded me of when my speech was so bad that my brother had to translate to my parents for me. The frustration of not being able to be understood by my own parents until I got speech therapy was unfair to me at the time. Now that I am older I am starting to see just how much it is that I take for granted in my everyday life. It is inspiring to me that people can overcome the inability to hear and or speak and still communicate with others around them. Actions speak louder than words. Its cliché but true. I would like to learn sign language so that I can have a better understanding for it, and so I can possibly give the deaf the hope that my brother gave me that someone could understand what I was trying to say. Even if I can’t give someone that kind of hope, at least I could make them smile. That would be enough for me. Question #7 Answer- Memories are one of those things that I have tried to filter. Many of my childhood memories are buried so deep within the debris of the thoughts cluttering my mind that they long to see daylight. The lucky ones find their way to the surface next to locations of car keys and TV remotes with the help of little things that trigger me to remember them. Like when my mom does the whole “Remember when…” stories. I used to wish that I could just forget everything about my past but now that I have I wonder why I wanted to so badly and how much of those surfaced memories are just what my parents have told me and how much of them are altered with my imagination. I think memories have the power to change the future, it’s just a matter of rather or not you can bottle them up until then without letting the air out. When you let the air out then the memory gets flat and you no longer have all of the details that make it good. Question #9 Answer- My “small mind” is impossible to please and it tends to act as if it’s a dog on a leash running around circles and tying up the rest of my mind. For me, everything is a distraction when I’m trying to get things done. To be honest most of my school work is late for every class except one, because excuses pour out of my mouth faster than my mind can sort out ideas and put them on paper. In a math class you don’t really have to word things and for the most part you are either right or wrong and you are able to check your work right away. Where in every other class there are countless ways to take on the assignment and even more ways to word them. If you chose the wrong way then you won’t even know until you get a grade back for it, because there isn’t a way to check your work. Finding the right words and the right order to put them in is an everyday struggle for me. This is why I envy people like Maya Angelou or Theodor Seuss Geisel. Two very different people who share being a writer in common. They were both so wise with their thoughts and ideas and could turn them into words that flow better than water.

Silly Old Bear

Disneyland is the most cliché dream there is, so my parents were certain that my brother and I would want to go. Mom, being the schedule Nazi she is, had mapped out and timed everything down to the minute with only a few to spare. A family meeting, accompanied by two large suitcases, and a couple of carry-ons, informed us that we needed to make a decision. Two choices, two stubborn kids, and two parents that thought they knew us. Build-A-Bear or Disneyland? It was a simple question with a simple answer. Build-A-Bear. Never had we gone to either place before. We wanted a bear. Not an autograph book filled with signatures of our favorite characters and our everyday heroes. Our parents were shocked, but that’s what they got for giving a six year old and a three year old the choice as to where our vacation was. After our parents regained movement and expression they started to try and convince us to be excited for the trip they had planned for us. Telling us how much fun our first plane ride will be and how it would be the first and last ride of many, but we wouldn’t let it go. We knew what we wanted and we figured out how to get. They gave us a choice. It wasn’t fair for them to not let us chose, so after hours of the great debate we won. For the first time, my mom made changes to the final schedule and tacked on a stop at Build-A-Bear. A family feud caused all for a silly old bear.