childhood

Middle Grade Rewind: A Day in My Life at 9

As middle grade writers, we find joy in putting ourselves into the young characters we write about. One way I love to do this is re-visit pictures of myself as a kid.

I stare at them, sifting through specific memories connected to that photo. What was I excited about? What did I most want? What made me sad? What made me happy? What was my biggest worry?

Then I journal in that moment, bringing in all the details on the edge of that photo and just out of reach. Often the details outside the picture are the ones that tell the story of that photo. I did this recently with this photo.

Bethel Woods Campground, Holderness, New Hampshire, 1978

Bethel Woods Campground, 1978

Every day I dream about getting my first dog. I imagine she is so real that when I come home from school I run to meet her (her name will be Beauty after Black Beauty). But not yet…so while I wait, I keep busy roaming the campground we own.

It’s fun to wear my strap-on roller skates and hunt the woods for dead butterflies and shotgun shells. They make cool noise makers when you put them in old coffee cans.

I’m lucky because there are always kids here to play with and swim with at the pool (awesome for an only child like me!).

I especially love to hang out in the recreation hall and play pinball machines and records on the juke box. My favorite song is Escape by Rupert Holmes. I asked Dad what a Pina Colada is and he said it’s like a party in a glass for grownups.

Each morning as I pick rotten apples in the orchard to feed our fat hogs, I get to pretend I’m my favorite hero, Laura Ingalls from Little House in the Big Woods. Mom says we’ll even be butchering the hogs soon – just like Laura did!

Mom wants to make head cheese Like Mrs. Ingalls did (ewww!) but I want to blow up the pig’s bladder like a balloon and roast its tail over the fire, just like Laura did. Little House on the Prairie is my favorite show and sometimes I even pretend that Mr. Ingalls is my dad.

After hog feeding time, I get to gather the eggs in the chicken coop. Today I found a double yolk egg without a shell. It was see-through and wobbly just like a Weeble. Although, I think it would fall down if I wobbled it.

Tomorrow is dump day. I get to collect the trash with Dad from all the campsites (we even saw a bear last week!). It’s a totally smelly chore but the best part is that I get to stand up in the back of our 1965 Ford truck and hang onto the wood sides as we cruise to the dump. Wheeee! It’s almost as fun as snowmobiling on the camp trails in winter.

If I help Dad out good, he even promised to take me fishing on Squam Lake this weekend to use my new tackle box. I caught my first pike there last month. Dad almost crashed the boat up on the rocks just so I could reel it in!

Heading out fishing with Dad and friends, in his Boston Whaler

Oh, and there’s a big thunderstorm coming tonight so I plan to sleep on the screened-in porch and watch the lightning all night long (just don’t tell Mom, okay?). Well, time to go practice my after-dinner show for Mom and Dad. I’m singing and dancing to The Wonderful Thing About Tiggers and On The Good Ship Lollipop on my record player. I even made my own sailor and Tigger costumes (I’m a blue fuzzy Tigger in my one-piece footed pj’s, Dad’s striped tie for a tail, and Mom’s wig).

Being nine is the best. Getting a dog would make it even better.

Me and Beauty’s son, Windsor. I got to pick him out from her litter.

My First Letter To My Son 14 Years Ago

By Donna Galanti

My Dearest Joshua,

This is how I started each letter in my journal to you for over a decade.

2003. A time for a baby to grow into a youth. A time for a woman to grow gray, to lose loved ones, to know despair–and joy.

Here is my first letter to you as a newborn.

“My Dearest Joshua.

I’m sorry to say I didn’t like you much when you were inside me. In that waiting place I couldn’t attach to this being who stole my body. I had no idea you would give me back in love a thousand times what you took away.

But oh, how I knew! The moment you entered the world and were placed on my chest you were the sweetest love I’ve ever known. In that instant, the dark void you filled in me for nine months breathed a fiery life. I knew then why I detached from you as you grew inside me, because once I met you I would know a love so deep it would scare me in its intensity. And it has–with a ferocious grip.

Forgive me sweet boy for not loving you sooner. You are all things beautiful to me. Light shines out of you with luminescence. So bright you are, full of shimmer and glow.

In times past, I have been held by blazing sunsets slipping over misty fields. My heart has leapt under a starry night’s embrace. I’ve caught the last moments of summer as geese fly overhead on chilly evenings and the bullfrogs go quiet. I have seen these things that caught my heart in pure beauty.

If I never see any of this again I’ll be at peace. For I look at you and see all these things and more. And so in return, I give you my heart–the outpouring of my heart. Take it, for it is yours. To shape and mold and break a bit. But it will always be yours.

May you grow to be a self-confident man with a sense of adventure. May you know great love. May you always be kind to others. May you not be crippled by past events but become stronger in spirit. May you be a curious spirit that finds yourself on great paths.

If I do nothing else in life, I know I’ve experienced God’s pure love through you and that I loved you the best I ever could with every part of my soul. Every day I am moved by love.

Every breath I have to give, every heartbeat that moves me along–is yours.

Live in beauty and love, my sweet Joshua.”

From that first letter to now, over a decade later, I’ve written you dozens of times.

I’ve cried to you when you were two over the terrible losses for families who suffered horrible tragedy with Hurricane Katrina. Of people dying in the heat, violating one another, killing one another. I wondered about the dark place that resides in me. Would I kill someone to get water for my child? Would I let another child die so you could live? I don’t know. I hope I never have to.

At three I asked you why you must always ask “Why?” about everything. You said, “Because people have faces!” Funny, but true in a way. We all have a different face with a different story behind it that begs to be told. I wonder what your story will be.

I despaired in my letters to you when you were five when bad economic times hit our country and the American landscape changed–forever. Every sad story I read hung heavy on me as we struggled too–about families torn apart through poverty, bankruptcy, layoffs, and divorce. And I realized we were the lucky ones. All I had in the world was here. We still had warm beds to sleep in, food on the table, family, and friends–and above all, love.

I see the same face at 14 in all its animation

And when I spent a year watching my mother slowly fade away from cancer, you were the hope that kept me going. I cared for her as a child then I returned home to care for you–my child. You helped fill that terrible loss that changes a daughter forever. I struggled to define the person I was without my mother beside me, while I had to be a mother beside you.

I could never again share the wonders of you with my mom. You stared at a family photo of her when you were six and told me “Mom, it doesn’t feel like we’re a family anymore with Grammy gone. She was such a big part of our life and now there is only a little bit left.” And I found that a little bit left can grow again.

Trying to help you understand the world is complex as I don’t quite understand it myself. In the wake of the Newtown, Connecticut, shooting when you were nine, you turned off the news and escaped in a book to erase the thoughts in your head about it. You said “That man not only took away their dreams, but the dreams of their loved ones too.”

You are so curious about so much and eager to tell me not to squelch your curiosity. You once said you believed “Heaven was real until they invented planes, because now the planes poke through the clouds and disturb the angels.”

Someday my letters will pass to you, but not yet. I stopped filling my journal with them as you entered a new decade. It was time. You are still defining yourself and this means separating from me.

I don’t know yet who you are at 14, this person you are becoming.

I can’t wait to see.

Love, your Mom

Do you write a journal to your child? Or for yourself? Has it helped you understand and deal with events in your life?

#ThrowbackThursday: A Childhood Story + Fave Books

By Donna Galanti

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Bethel Woods Campground, NH, 1978

I took a spontaneous book research trip last fall to travel back in time to the New Hampshire campground my parents owned and operated nearly 40 years ago.

You can read about that here.

I resurrected an old manuscript rich with one of my childhood settings. It prompted me to go back in time to the campground my parents owned and operated in New Hampshire. When I drove up, I was zapped back to the 1970s.

Suddenly, I was nine-years-old again. I swam in the pool, fished with my dad, romped through the woods, collected dead butterflies and shotgun shells, whizzed about on strap-on roller skates, played pinball machines, and spun 45 records on the jukebox.

Returning was an emotional gut punch. I could be a child again in that place of innocence but just as it resurrected joyous moments from childhood, it also brought back painful ones and prompted this short piece from a harsh memory.

Holderness, NH, 1978, Winter

Thwonk!

A flash of pain wacked my chest. Ice balls hurt!
“Go somewhere else, fat and ugly,” Tommy said, snickering with his older brother, Brian.
“No, it’s my bus stop too,” I said as another ice ball slammed into my arm.
And another. They double teamed me.
Hurry up bus! But no yellow flashed around the corner, only the endless white spread everywhere.
They’d tied me up yesterday. It’d been for fun (I thought). It must be cool to have brothers to play with, so I let them. The rope had scratched and then bit into me as Tommy pulled tighter.
“Double knot it,” Brian said.
Tommy nodded with a laugh and jerked it harder against my wrists to the chair.
“Ow!” I yelled, kicking the edge of my chair. It wobbled but didn’t break.
“Just sit still.” Brian gave me a dirty look so I did.
Musty bits of dust fluttered up from around old chains and tires and shovels, making me sneeze out a big cloud of frosty air.
“Okay,” Tommy said. He and Brian smiled at each other. “We’ll be right back.”
I nodded. And waited. My fingers grew numb. The cold seeped through my red mittens. The light slanted across the one smeared window in the shed.
A snowplow swooshed by at the bottom of the hill.
“Hey,” I called, not wanting to sound scared. But I was.
I wiggled my wrists. The rope sawed against them. The light grew dim. I wiggled more. When were they coming back? It was a game. That’s all. But there was no stopping the tears that burst forth. No way would I let them catch me crying.
I yanked my wrists as hard as I could. Cramped my fingers to untie the knot. The last light slipped away. Shadows reached for me. I ripped the rope away and ran home. Aha! Wait until they come back. They meant to come back, right?
I told my mother what happened as she turned my bleeding, raw wrists around. No big deal. But the fire in her eyes told me otherwise as she ran next door.
Now here I was today, facing my enemy.
Thwonk!
“Fat and ugly!”
Their laughter shot loud through the crisp air. I scooped up ice and snow, packed it down, and winged it right in Tommy’s face.
“Hey!” He yelled with surprise.
Red streaks cut across his cheek.
Thwonk! Thwonk! They pelted me. I turned and ran.
“Come back!”
But I didn’t. I ran to my special place as fast my chubby legs let me in my snow pants.
Swish swish.
I was the only sound in the forest. I spread out in the snow under a pine tree and let the silence fill me up. How long could I stay here? All day? If I did would I disappear?
From down the hill the school bus braked and shuddered then pulled away.
Snow fell soft like butterflies, melting on my nose.
I made a snow angel and looked up at the sky from my wings.
My body soon betrayed me.
Shivering, I tromped home.
I hoped the fire in my mother’s eyes would be the good kind.

Squam Lake, Holderness, NH where I caught my first fish

What did this trip back in time deliver?
*The vivid feelings of childhood – the good and the bad – to enrich my writing.
*A chance to revisit my creative foundations that gifted me with the yearning to write again.
*The inspiration of a majestic setting to fill my soul.
*The connection from childhood to adulthood – and how the paths we travel drive who we are.
*As a parent now, an appreciation for my parents and their challenges of running a business and raising a child.
*That I write to understand and feel so not alone.
*Through writing I can find meaning in my past and face the future with peace.
*Remembered what I am in my heart: a storyteller.

This visit filled me with a jumble of emotions all tied up with a childhood bow, reflecting splintered sunshine through broken panes.

In writing this piece I realized that I am also drawn to books that revolve around kids experiencing challenging times. Here are some of my favorites books that involve kid heroes:
Anne Frank: the Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank
Holes by Louis Sachar
Rules of the Road by Joan Bauer
Surviving Bear Island by Paul Greci (my review – love this book soooo much!)
My Side of the Mountain by Jean Craighead George
The Sky is Everywhere by Jandi Nelson
Wonder by R.J. Palacio
Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell
Sparrow Road by Sheila O’Connor
The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
Read my reviews of these and more books on Goodreads

Have you ever taken a trip into the past to follow creative inspiration? What did you find?