Stuck in Limbo

Last year I happened to be home to watch one of Oprah’s final episodes where she had Debbie Reynolds and Carrie Fisher on the show.  When Carrie spoke about her particular form of mental depression I was struck by her illustration of hardening cement in her brain.  I am currently stuck in my story writing but I have to say that it is not cement so much as a mouse in the proverbial wheel that is giving me trouble!  I have woken up so many memories that I don’t know where to start and where to stop.  Then I have to find the next piece to make the story run smoothly.  It had all been going so well and now I am in that no-man’s land of jumble.

            Isn’t that the story of a person’s life though?  When we are children we just exist in the same way grass and trees are there.  We wake up in the morning, do what we are told, eat breakfast, brush our teeth, go to school, do our homework.  As we get a little older we have vague thoughts of “what we will be when we grow up”.  Then suddenly we are grown up and willy nilly we are thrown out into the world and somehow have to make sense of it.  Somehow we find our balance and start earning a living.  The next thing you know you become a “heellot”; you start owning things, a car, a house, appliances.  Now you have worries because you need to hold on to these things.  So you can’t lose your job; maybe you need to get a better job.  The cycle has begun.  Welcome to adulthood.

            If we are really lucky in life we may have a handle on our cycle by our mid to late forties.  The house is paid for, we have a good job, we can start to take vacations now and then.  Whoops, now we have the boomerang kids coming back into the house.  Oh dear, Mom and Pop need taking care of and so they move in.  Second mortgage?  Traps of life.

 Luckily most of us can handle what gets thrown at us but every once in a while don’t you just want to say “give me a break”.  I know I sometimes look back on my childhood and wonder why I was in such a hurry to grow up.  Today I see parents hurrying their kids along to maturity by handing them a cellphone when they are 3 years old (some people should be shot).  I remember being somewhat appalled when 3 year olds got a Barbie doll.  A Barbie doll, have you noticed, is a woman.  I’m not worried about the physical look of Barbie, I am concerned about the storylines a 3 year old would have to create to sustain the Barbie doll world.  Somehow that seems to be quite different from having a baby doll at 3 years old.  I suppose because I didn’t get a Barbie until I was 10 I was having a more evolved storyline for the character compared to playing “house” with baby dolls and play china.  In any event the idea of a 3 year old having a Barbie was disconcerting to me.  But I feel absolutely astonished that parents are giving their youngsters electronic equipment.  I must be getting old when I can’t wrap my brain around that kind of “play”.

            So my brain is turning on its little cogs and I wonder if anything I write is relevant?  I personally love nostalgia but one shouldn’t come across as maudlin either.  And lately I seem to be going into a maudlin state and that will never do.  Perhaps this nice storm we are having today will pull me out of the dumps and back into the nervous lizzies.