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After I realized I had a story, I played it over and over in my head; and as I did memories started to come back that added much depth to it and explained a lot of who I was. I can remember very early on in my life when I first started creating what became my story and I started seeing the formulation of what became my personality traits. It was not too long ago that I realized I was the witty, giving, always working harder then anyone else girl.
One of the earliest memories I have was when I was six years old and I created a hand turkey, the kind where you trace your hand on a piece of paper and decorate the fingers to look like the feather of the turkey. I remember creating one every year in school around Thanksgiving time and I distinctly remember drawing the veins of the feathers and putting the little dashes off the long lines I drew down each finger, alternating colors out of my crayon box as I went. My crayons always had to be sharpened and if I went out of the lines I had to start over. A lot went into those hand turkeys. The one when I was six years old is so vivid. I remember that it was for a contest and so I worked very hard on making it perfect. Each feather was in succession of the colors of the rainbow, starting with red then orange then yellow and so on. I can still see that turkey in all its glory on the piece of white construction paper; bright and colorful, standing in the tufts of colored green grass with big fluffy blue clouds in the sky under a big yellow sun with alternating yellow and orange rays. My mother liked to freshen up our projects and bring them to the next level and this one was no different.
This is where my story begins. As a six year old, life was perfect and I thought I was the grandest artist that ever lived. My mother new better. She was experienced and new what I was up against. There are a lot of creative six year old children and she wanted the best for me. She wanted me to win. She wanted me to feel the excitement and accomplishment of being the winner. So, with a lot of glitter, that was my mother's secret weapon, glitter always made everything look better, she freshened up my turkey. She also added some adult flair and color and made that turkey look like a star. And, of course, I won first place.
I still have that turkey. It sits in a bin in the basement at my father's house in a file folder my mother separated by grade with all my other childhood winning projects. It is faded with age, but the first place ribbon is still attached. It was at that moment I realized I was not good enough on my own. That was my story. It is not right or wrong, but it was mine and over the next 25 years I made it my own. I lived it. I became very good at it. I would spend hours as a child rewriting assignments so they looked perfect, no wonder why I was always complemented on my penmanship, I had a lot of practice. I would go through an entire coloring book in an evening, flipping to the next page every time I made a mistake or colored outside the lines. That is where my story began.
One of the earliest memories I have was when I was six years old and I created a hand turkey, the kind where you trace your hand on a piece of paper and decorate the fingers to look like the feather of the turkey. I remember creating one every year in school around Thanksgiving time and I distinctly remember drawing the veins of the feathers and putting the little dashes off the long lines I drew down each finger, alternating colors out of my crayon box as I went. My crayons always had to be sharpened and if I went out of the lines I had to start over. A lot went into those hand turkeys. The one when I was six years old is so vivid. I remember that it was for a contest and so I worked very hard on making it perfect. Each feather was in succession of the colors of the rainbow, starting with red then orange then yellow and so on. I can still see that turkey in all its glory on the piece of white construction paper; bright and colorful, standing in the tufts of colored green grass with big fluffy blue clouds in the sky under a big yellow sun with alternating yellow and orange rays. My mother liked to freshen up our projects and bring them to the next level and this one was no different.
This is where my story begins. As a six year old, life was perfect and I thought I was the grandest artist that ever lived. My mother new better. She was experienced and new what I was up against. There are a lot of creative six year old children and she wanted the best for me. She wanted me to win. She wanted me to feel the excitement and accomplishment of being the winner. So, with a lot of glitter, that was my mother's secret weapon, glitter always made everything look better, she freshened up my turkey. She also added some adult flair and color and made that turkey look like a star. And, of course, I won first place.
I still have that turkey. It sits in a bin in the basement at my father's house in a file folder my mother separated by grade with all my other childhood winning projects. It is faded with age, but the first place ribbon is still attached. It was at that moment I realized I was not good enough on my own. That was my story. It is not right or wrong, but it was mine and over the next 25 years I made it my own. I lived it. I became very good at it. I would spend hours as a child rewriting assignments so they looked perfect, no wonder why I was always complemented on my penmanship, I had a lot of practice. I would go through an entire coloring book in an evening, flipping to the next page every time I made a mistake or colored outside the lines. That is where my story began.
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