Recently I voiced a line in my writers’ group that astonished me in its insightful clarity: “I colored between the lines for twelve years because my father was the principal of the school I attended.
(wait there’s more: I must embellish and amend this written account of the moment to give equal time to my mother) Before that I colored in the lines because my mother was my tutor and purchaser of my school supplies. https://www.pjcolando.com/64-color-crayola-box/
“As I soon as I was able to draw on my own resources, I colored outside the lines.”
My life as I desired, shared with my husband, family and friends. Suffered the consequences; reaped the rewards. Followed a path that I forged. I moved to California, where life has a different light, famously drawing artists to Laguna and surrounds. I thrive in a land of choices.
Just as my parents abandoned their families’ farms for towns, albeit small and peopled with wholesome slices of Midwestern well-bred human stock. My parents’ altered the path of their forefathers, who altered theirs before them. If not, we’d all be living in caves.
In the parallel universe of adult career, I learned to write lesson plans so fully outlined and detailed during my several semesters of clinical practicum that I never had to write a lesson plan again as I worked as a speech-language pathologist for 40 years. So honed was the ethic, tight to the task of bonding with another and leading them to speech correction, language learned.
School is out here in California, but I’d be talking out of school if I didn’t state that I write story in the same manner as I color: without a clear lesson plan, preferring to juggle and dance the tightrope line between plot, nuance, and character, pulling them from the abundant idea ether of my brain. I live with imagination, so that’s the way I write, work, and play.
But I admit to a solid ruberic for living, values outlined to my rock solid core. That I found a mate who shares them, life is a joy.
Because I learned the boundaries, the lines, my colorful life abounds. How do you view your life, Constant Reader?
“School’s out; school’s out; teacher let the fools out.” That sounds about right, doesn’t it?
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