i love to write

So I got an old typewriter for Mother’s Day.  Dan posted it on twitter and everyone thought one of two things:

1-“Aww… that’s the sweetest gift I’ve ever even heard of!”  

or…

2-“I don’t get it.”

Just wanted to clarify – it wasn’t a joke, so there’s nothing to not get!  (Yay! Whew!)  It was indeed the sweetest gift.  I have wanted an old typewriter FOREVER… I just love love LOVE them.  Here’s a feeble attempt at explaining why. 

[By the way, this is NOT a poem.  This is a therapy session between me, God, and my computer, which I am letting you sit in on.  So… if you try to explicate it, you should know, you and I can no longer be friends.  The end.]

I Love To Write

P.S. Why I Was SO Stinkin’ Excited to Receive an Old Typewriter on Mother’s Day

I love the look of a straight-line cursor blinking on a screen’s blank page.

For some, it means certain stress.

But for me, it means expectant, hopeful, look-what’s-coming-next release.

Writing has always been a joy to me.

Something I did quite naturally.

Never an assignment.

[Well, okay, sometimes an assignment… I mean, there was the eighth grade. 

And Intro to Art summaries in college.  Bleh.]

Crisp white paper locked down under moving black ribbon

pounded by miniscule symbols on the heads of typebars…

Cathode ray tubes deflecting electrons from behind

through my 1997 desktop monitor’s florescent screen…

Still my favorite,

pale blue lines on white shaved trees,

college-ruled, please…

want to be filled

with words.  Beautiful words

shaped from letters, just squiggles of ink,

really.  Squiggles of thought, heart, humanity, divinity, meaning.

And I love it. 

Screen or page. 

Pretty journal, plain looseleaf, or everyday fill-out-a form.

Quill and parchment, old Royal, CRT, LCD, Mac or PC.

(Well, I’d prefer not a PC.)

God filling in the blanks of me.

My 11 year-old daughter gets the Art Award every year

and I wonder at the feeling of the brush in her hand, and the paint waiting to be redeemed. 

Nothing to something.

Intro to Art is the reason no summa graces my undergrad resume

But

God gave her this gift

This specific participation of Himself

And mother and daughter worship Writer and Artist.

She’s not interested in lessons. 

I understand. 

I pray God paints the canvas of her life in strokes of grace.

I also pray that someday

no matter what she does for a “living”

her husband gives her a white canvas, paint tubes, and good brush for Mother’s Day.