Lesson One: Keep it Simple

So, let's start with something easy. A warm up exercise.

Many websites suggest sitting for five or ten minutes and writing everything and anything that comes to mind.

It doesn't matter if it doesn't makes sense, or it's complete rubbish.

This is not an exercise in writing something amazing, it's a cleanse, to get things moving.

So, I will set the oven timer for 10 minutes, and we'll see what comes out.

I dreamt it against last night, that I had a child. Actually it was two children.

A little blond one laughs in her high chair. It's like an audition. She isn't mine yet. She looks like she could be my own flesh and blood, resembling the children in my family.

She is surrounded by people, though I know she doesn't have parents. She needs me. Her little face makes me feel strange, maternal, this deep longing to hold her is taking over. But I never do hold her.

I have a black child as well, she has two braids. I don't know where she comes from, she is just there.

Each one holds my hand, their tiny fingers wrapped in mine. One on each side. They are about two or three.

The first place we go is the mall. I navigate us through the streams of people. They have to go to the bathroom, though they don't say this out loud. They don't speak at all. I just know.

I begin searching for a stall for them, while other women do the same.

Then I notice they look panicked. So I look around and see the floor is covered in three inches of water. The toilets are overflowing. All of them. I look at my feet and see I'm in flip flops. Blue ones with sparkles.

The children are in dresses and little white shoes. They don't seem to be getting wet. No longer holding my hands, they just stand there, staring at me. I don't pick them up. I am so disgusted by this predicament and my bare feet that I can't think of anything else. There are things floating around me. I don't look closely, because I don't want to know what they are, though I have a suspicion it's not good. I look back at the girls. They are motionless, emotionless, staring at me.

I look at each stall, and see they're all plugged with toilet paper and shrimp like creatures floating. I think I'm going to throw up. The search is fruitless, yet I continue.

Other mothers are more frantic. I seem to be good at hiding my outrage. The children don't cry or react to this disgusting mess we're in.

Ten minutes is up already. Wow, that goes really fast.

It feels good to write, even if it's just a stupid dream I had. I highly recommend trying this.

It's like warming up the car before you drive her on a freezing cold morning, when she's been there all night.

You wouldn't just get in and turn the ignition and drive.....you turn on the heat, let her warm up, scrape off the windshield.