Silver Memories, Ch 1 1st few pages

Celia

Long ago I read a woman will cut her hair as she cuts stranded emotions out of her life. Who said this, and why? Celia thought as she ran her fingers through her new haircut and yawned. She sat thinking in the quiet of a morning.

Nowhere was her hair longer than two inches—a far cry from the years of it being down to her mid back. She tapped her new red pen with black ink over the page of her journal.

Recently, Celia bought this pen. She wanted it to represent her goal—of getting to know herself better. And red and black were the colors she associated with this. She wanted her blood bright red with life somehow, and thought she could write her way to her answers if she used black ink—dark ink like an octopus uses to escape. Funny, somewhere in the thought around escaping was the finding of her answers.

She figured if she wrote her thoughts or feelings down, she’d force light on what felt darkened to her, so she bought the red pen with black ink. But it wasn’t so easy. To find answers to questions, she needed to know first what she really was questioning.

The tap-tap-tapping caught her attention more than the number forty she mindlessly scrolled. Forty years old. Her fifth decade in life started several months ago.

Am I really going anywhere? What have I done in my life?

Celia’s normal good and successful answers arose—Being married to Tony since she was eighteen, and although they married because she was pregnant, he had been her first and only love. And Celia thought of their daughter Shelby.

Celia paused and wondered if she would ever get used to not having Shelby in the house. Had it really been over four years since she left for college? And now, Shelby didn’t seem like she wanted to bring even her suitcase home.

The child has wanderlust—more than I ever had…how did she get to be the adventurous one?

 She answered her thought. “Tony is adventurous. He does what he wants, when he wants to.”

Celia thought of her third main hook in life—her job as a teacher. Was it her calling, or had she played it safe? Whichever one it was, even if it had become full of paperwork and tedious on most every day, she loved it. And teaching had become comfortable…and nice. Nice is good, she had always thought. And the rewards that came when students’ minds lit up, were unmatched.

By teaching second to third grades, she could also watch the children’s natures blossom. Celia had always been touched by their sense of curiosity. Privately she wished she could be as open to living while not even seeing change coming,.....