This week’s prompt is an archival photo from the 1930s of a baby cage. It was considered important for babies to have fresh air, so this was a solution for people who lived in apartments.
Each Imaginative Storm writer offered one line from the ten-minute pieces they wrote during our Saturday Morning Imaginative Storm Writing Group. It's always free; if you'd like to join, email nave@imaginativestorm.com for your invitation. The title “I Remember Traveling” comes from the first line spoken by Susie Shipman
I remember traveling like gypsies every fall
and spring before the horses came. Sometimes,
my curiosity and need to explore takes me
to terrible places. I burned the pages
of a memoir I wrote once when I was hopeful.
Little do my parents know the early education
I am receiving out here. My cage is a house
suspended over the sky. I may grouse, but
I have an insecure attachment to this idea
and, quite frankly, to your carpentry.
It's a long way down. This baby's got bounce
am I being stuck in the doghouse? It is a doghouse,
right? Well, it's only training me how to be a resilient
badass warrior. I've always wanted a window box
to bury my hurts and watch them blossom
into thornless roses. Five kids came after me;
they just kept coming. She seemed to possess
all the keys. I wept one tear; nobody had time
for me. Safe in mid-air, we floated there between
love and the hard place we called home.
Apartment-Playground, I told you.
I didn't want kids. Could it be fun? Imprisoned.
But what of that infant perched like a bird?
Will she become afraid of heights or become a pilot
at home in the heavens? I dropped the box on the floor,
and it screamed. Hang on, kids! That room with a view
may be no more than a doghouse, cold comfort in a cage.
When I went to the grocery store, I would put you in
a harness and clip a leash between us. You might say
we are gods multiplying, life-creating, life-consuming,
flesh-eating gods. "I'll never do that again" is a hubristic,
if naively optimistic, brag. It swirled in the clouds
and glided to the playground, where squeals
and screeches looped like an amusement park ride.
It's hard to imagine what kind of sick person would
do that. Yearning spreads far and wide, warm honey
on toast. I had no power except to crawl in the cage,
suspended over sky. Longing for the phoenix
to become an alchemist and *Kintsugi life back together
again. To the insecure attachment store and pick
the crazy parent that's right for you. Don't rattle me
now; you don't want to know what comes out
or where it might land. This is no baby bunting
fluttering in an AC's exhaust. This is only cold comfort
in this cage within a cage. Remember that first arrival
into new territory? She needs fresh air, and here,
on higher ground, she's not exposed to viruses
or colds from other kids.
* “Kintsugi (金継ぎ, "golden joinery"), also known as kintsukuroi (金繕い, "golden repair"), is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the areas of breakage with urushi lacquer dusted or mixed with powdered gold, silver, or platinum; the method is similar to the maki-e technique.” -Wikipedia
ORDER OF SPEAKERS
Susie Shipman, James Navé, Jane Goldberg, Dragon Rose, Krista Thronburg, Maru Ortega, Arlene Shapiro, Andrea de Lange, Andi Young, Elaine Heveron, Lou Faber, Linda Smith, Terry Varner, Katerina Tana, AR Burns, Diana Leszczyński, Regina Ress, Maria Wasson, Allegra Huston, Carin Channing, Sandi Dittmer, Lyn Rothman, Melissa Malm, Kathleen Wilson, Zebith Thalden, Bee Fortin, Geneva Hendry, Stewart Mintzer, Shirley Loeb