What did your parent think about your plans to become a writer?
Flare for writing
A fashion magazine lay on our kitchen table. I reached for Flare, and something fell out.
"What's that?" Mom asked.
I kept my eyes on the magazine, on the dresses, and on other distractions. "I don't know."
"It's a career planner," Mom told me. "Occupations for the women of today, along with the education you require to obtain them."
What I was going to do after grade school weighed heavy in my seventeen-year-old brain. It crushed me.
"This is what you should do." She spread the pamphlet out in front of me.
"Writer? I can't be a writer."
"I would believe you if I didn't know that you write all the time."
"What publisher is going to want a writer who can't spell and doesn't know the rules about grammar or punctuation or—"
"Well, something in the publishing industry then."
"Yeah, I could be an editor and teach everyone how to spell the dyslexic way—backward and upside down."
Mom didn't laugh. She didn't even argue. She was stuck in my fantastical future.
But I knew better. I knew that some dreams, no matter how alluring, will never come true.
