I wrote a little something, just a start to get started, well, writing again.  Comment if you like:

It happened like this:

Jeanette had some gift certificates for book shops to spend, and opened her email to find that one of her favorite online shops was having a sale.  She thought she’d see if any of the bargain books were POSSIBLY any good, or contained classics, or perhaps one of those hidden treasure books that were not popular but awesome reading anyway.

She stumbled upon one about children with sensitivity issues, and 5 minutes later discovered a website that gave a name to her daughter’s  condition:  Sensitivity Processing Disorder.

She stared at the screen for several minutes.

It even had a goddammed acronym.

The rage boiling up in her bones was the only thing keeping the floor solid beneath her feet.  Sure, she was fine.  Sure, she’d learn to look on the bright side: that the website gave her tips, that people were starting to become aware, that doctors and psychoogists were studying the issue.

But for now, all she could feel was anger.  In fact, the rawness of it astounded her.

Was it not enough to have one precious child with Down syndrome?  Now she had to find out her other child had a “disorder”?

She breathed in.  She breathed out, S L O W L Y.  Why was she so angry?

And who could she possibly be angry at?  Or more appropriately, “Who”?

Her relationship with God had been coming along wonderfully.  They were two peas in a pod during the day, she alone with her computer and work while the kids were at daycare.  It was almost like having a friend in the room.

A friend who thought it great sport to give her burdensome crosses.

She felt guilt immediately rush in at that thought.  She could just as easily be angry at herself.  Children with conditions affecting the brain would strike at the very heart of her own hubris: her oversized intellect, the one she had wasted.  Had she really expected her children to pick up the slack for her inability to focus on a career, to find and follow her own dreams, despite high grades, high ambitions, and high ideals?

But still.  She didn’t need her daughters to be presidents, or solve the energy crisis, or cure cancer, or win nobel prizes for literature, but did she have to go down the road so far as to not even be sure if they could go to college or even high school?

She sighed and with it, her shoulders sagged and her head hung down until her chin touched her chest.  Now, after all this time, she realized why she’d never wanted children in her youth.  The pain of this was excruciating.  And the timing couldn’t be worse.

The daycare was terrified of taking on a Down syndrome child, even if it was a mild case, and every minor behavior issue was blamed on her daughter’s disability.  This would be life for Lia.  Every minute little incapacity would be chalked up to her “syndrome”.  She wasn’t even 5 years old yet and the prejudice had begun already.

She wasn’t even aware that she had slammed her hand down on top of her glass desk until she heard the crack.  On the right side of her desk, a spider web of a crack started to blossom in all directions, like ice cracking on a barely frozen lake.  she pulled her hand away and held her breath.  After a minute or two, she put her hand down on the glass and more tendrils of the crack appeared.

She put her head in her hand and rubbed her forehead.  How would she explain this to Pete?  The desk would need to be replaced and somehow carefully removed before the break attracted the children.  She rolled her chair away from her desk.  That was enough work for today.  Tomorrow would be here soon enough.

Well, there is a time and a season for all things, and this is my time NOT to write. There is just too much going on, and I can’t wrap my head around creativity.

In fact, last night I was pondering my own story - which is a long journey involving health (physical and mental) and spirituality - and while I realized this was a good basis for a fictional book, my own internal dictation involved no actual PLOT. So it needs work, and maybe this is a mull-it-over scenario for now.

BUT I have been reading, a lot. Last night, I reached a point in my current novel documented atrocities and I realized that most of the novels I’ve read in the past year have included this. Perhaps it’s because I prefer historical drama, and this sort of thing makes the best historical dramas, but here’s a list of what I’ve read, with a star beside the fictional books that included genocide, torture, or such events:

The Historian*
Bee Season: A Novel
The Witch of Cologne*
The Birth of Venus: A Novel*
Water for Elephants: A Novel
A Thread of Grace*
The Bastard of Istanbul*
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)

Feels like I read more, wonder what I’m forgetting? I got to thinking about this a lot, since I am NOT a person who can stomach or in any way see the logic in purposefully inflicting pain on others. In fact, my tolerance for pain is so low, and my imagination is high so reading this stuff is torture for me. Now, outside of thinking myself a masochist, I wondered why it so happens that half (or more?) of my reading list looks likes this.

I do like seeing characters put into impossible odds. And to be fair, I didn’t foresee such circumstances in each book (Bastard of Istanbul, for example). But, then again, perhaps it’s just the eternal, “what would I do?” that captivates all of us as fiction readers.