My morning writings started some seven years ago, when a woman in San Francisco used to send out daily prompts that we were given fifteen minutes to write about. I was trying to find my way into a new life, and was diving into learning how to write. Over time I shared them with a couple of you, then a few more. And I did learn more about writing.
This is in gratitude to all of you who have persisted in reading, and commenting, and filling my life with a community that has helped me forge a path into this new life. Thank you more than I can say!
And here is what I wrote for one of the first prompts those years ago.
If I Won the SuperLotto
I won the super lotto so long ago
I can't possibly remember
the exact moment.
maybe it was
the day my mother went
to that wedding
where the best man charmed her
into marrying a "foreigner"
or when the seed was planted
and I became
the second child,
the girl
the fighter
angry from the day she arrived.
or when their world ended
and we fled the country they
both thought they loved
for a refugee camp,
stateless people in a stateless land.
or when the old man
in the next partition
fell in love with
the crying baby next door
and fed me pasta
and told me stories.
it could have been when
I became tough enough
to survive the schoolyard taunts
in that inner city school where
my white skin and my brains
branded me as different.
maybe it was when I learned
that math was like breathing
or when the scholarship
freed me of bonds
of obligation.
or when the old country
was at war
again
and I was safe and happy
and almost oblivious
of the hardships
those who stayed
still faced.
maybe it was when my
first boyfriend, then fiancé,
learned we weren't meant to be,
in time to cancel the wedding
that would have led to another life
than the one I am grateful for.
or when that
disappointment let me
dive into work,
take a job in France.
or the particular time
when there was something
other than teach
that a woman could do with math,
a time when computers
created a new world
that I could be part of.
maybe it was
the last fight my brother and I had
in the Piazza San Marco
in Venice
oblivious to the beauty,
pissed that he was that way again
when I thought we would be friends
more likely it was that
this was our last fight,
that it was long ago
and I have a wonderful brother
it took a long time to find.
the only time I know
I didn't win the lotto prize
was the moment Harold died.