If you have read any of my former posts about my amazing uncovering of a book of poems that I wrote as a ~8 year old kid, you should understand the hilarity and…well, embarrassing element of me disclosing them. Former posts about Thanksgiving and Dew Drops and Butterflies show a side of my inner child that, quite honestly, is really fun to look back on.
On this holiday weekend, I wanted to share yet another, masterfully written poem. It is entitled, “The Fourth of July”. What makes this poem particularly fun for me to read now, is the contrast in mindset, child to adult, regarding guns.
Don’t get me wrong…I have been to shooting ranges and gun clubs. I have shot many a rifle, handgun and automatic in my 50 years. However, I am not a gun toter. At the fear of disclosing this and having us taken under attack, we are not “gun” people in my house. Note, that I can weild a knife with the best of them! However, apparently, at 8 years old, my schooling taught me well that our 2nd amendment was something to hold dear. Oh my! hahaha!!
If you read my initial post about my elementary school poem about Thanksgiving, you know now that I have always wanted to write and have always been, well, a bit of a mind-wanderer. How I landed in an engineering field is a bit of a mystery and a bit of a typical story where you can be good at what you do, but you may have fit somewhere else comfortably. I was a writer and a Nancy Drew fan as a kid. Lover of mystery and crime solving. I assumed going to college and becoming an attorney was a great path because, as attorney, I would be solving and putting to bed those involved in a crime. When my first semester ended and I had taken no classes of interest to me, other than economics, I began questioning my path. When I looked deeply into the legal classes and options, I realized, this may be expensive for a life and career I was not sure I wanted.
So, I became…DA, DA, DA…an Industrial Engineer. This career has afforded me the ability to travel all over the world! India, Australia, all over Europe and North Africa, as well as many spots in the US. I am about efficiency and optimization in my life, so extending this to work was not a stretch. I am thankful for all of it.
I find myself now, after 17 years, not employed and enjoying some time to come back to me. Write, cook, have coffee early with nowhere to be. And I have to say that it is liberating and exciting…as well as a bit scary. Getting back to reflecting on what I really liked before pressure set in somewhere in High School reveals a lot..
Anyhow, I wanted to drop a couple other poems that I found in my garage while purging all of our junk. They are apparently odes to spring from a roundabout 8 year old and remind me that positivity is inherently inside me. I live for the cool and beautiful things out there, even when things are a bit off kilter!
Enjoy this masterful poetry from an 8 year old K. Jones!
The Poems
Just a note that if a butterfly were to land on me, I would 100% lose my $hit and freak like a maniac. Butterflies are great, but any flying creature is preferred to not be close to my being. Not sure why I was feeling brave on this poem writing day! hahaha
If you have read the post regarding our first steps in getting our Brick Beauty renovated, you know that my husband and I spent a LOT of time trying to purge our house of the lingering bins and boxes of items that have been following me, house to house, over the past 20 years. Although the sifting and sorting was painful, there were some moments of joy and hilarity. I found items that I thought were long gone and some that I had forgotten had ever existed. The original post about the PURGE is here: https://watchusdostuff.com/the-renovation-first-steps-the-purge/
Do I have writing in my bones?
I have dilly-dallied around about starting a blog for ages, knowing that my love of cooking and presenting food, was not going away. However I was not sure of the writing bit of it. I am an Industrial Engineer by trade. Writing for me over the past 25 years has been process or support documentation, or most creatively, training and customer interaction docs. Not the most earth shattering writing, for sure. However, while digging through bins of “stuff”, I found so many written letters, postcards and cards from family and friends, as well as many letters that I had sent to John, well written and, admittedly, sappy as hell. I missed my soap opera writing calling, for sure! This is simple stuff, but it jerked alive memories of, indeed, writing for joy in my past. Writing for fun will be part of my life therapy going forward.
The pièce de résistance
One of the items we turned out while garage digging was a book of poems that I thought had been lost forever. A group of poems written in grade school that I took the time to bind into a folder for safe keeping. It is labeled on the front as “Poems and Stories”, in what seems to be #2 pencil, likely out of my school pencil box. Note that these were not poems written for class, but written for fun at home. Some of these poems, I remembered and have thought about through the years, as simple and ridiculous as they are. Others were funny to read at this point in my life, portraying a very different kid than the adult that I have become. Some are literally, laugh out loud. John and I have had a few returns to the pages, just to get a daily fill of giggles.
The picky eater knew there would be more food in the future
Well, I will stop short of saying that I am a clairvoyant or seer, but I will say, that for a kid that existed on cereal, cheese ravioli, Pastina and rice with butter and milk because of my fickle eating nature, I apparently knew, there would be more and bigger eating in my future. I am not sure if I was seeing this turkey dinner through my eyes or those of everyone else, because, other than the pie noted and the plain turkey, I am not sure I ate anything else until late in my teens. Note: my mom had a meal on the table every night of the week, with the exception of Friday when we typically got pizza or fried fish (I ate only the chips), so the limited diet was not due to lack of meals available, but my absurdly, picky nature.
Check out my Thanksgiving poem. An ode to the ability to get older and EAT MORE FOOD!
So, my venture into food and home blogging for fun, was somehow and weirdly boosted by the uncovering of a simple poem written by an 8 or so year old. It indicated to me that writing was always one of my things…and food was going to play pretty large in my future…what is my now. I am older and bigger now and have more room!
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