Don’t Mess With A Girl & Her Mop

 

Over the Thanksgiving holiday, my husband, son and I visited family in North Carolina. I’m from the country. The land of raising pigs for slaughter, picking and shelling peas from the garden, and canning everything you can get your hands on. Growing up, it was nothing to wake up to deer in the front yard and chickens on the front porch. We ran through the woods, waded through the creek and generally considered the outdoors our very own wild domain. Video games and even television weren’t high on our list of activities. We joked that in the country, you learned to entertain yourself for hours with just a stick. Needless to say, I always looked for ways to keep myself occupied.

 

This past week, we visited my grandmother. I couldn’t help but walk out to her old car porch and reminisce about all the good times I’d had out there with nothing more than a mop. What,  you might ask, would a young girl do with a mop for hours alone?

 

I told stories.

 

The mop was my long-haired heroine, and lemme tell you, that girl had some adventures. It wasn’t like an imaginary friend. I understood this was a mop. When I’m gone, Banny (what we call my grandmother!) will clean the floor with it, but while I’m here, this mop is answering a divine call to the arts.

 

I should probably mention that I was not five or six or even seven years old. I was, um, well *shuffles feet and flushes* …maybe eleven-ish. Kind of old for that kind of thing, I agree, but I had all these stories and characters in my head, and I literally acted them out.  Yes, with a mop.

 

Once we had a family gathering, and everyone else was inside. Playing cards. Eating collard greens, macaroni and cheese, fried chicken and every edible part of the pig. And believe me, that is EVERY part. They were doing all the things my kinfolk did to keep things jumpin’.

 

And then there’s me. On the car porch. Playing out my latest scene with my mop. Now I’m not sure if you, dear reader, were ever considered an odd child. In the country, there isn’t much tolerance for eccentricities. It gets labeled real fast. One of my aunts, God bless her, was particularly dismayed by my penchant for talking to mops out on the back porch. The screen door was closed, but her voice definitely carried.

 

“What is wrong with that girl?” she asked. “Always reading a book or talking to herself and playing with that mop. Ain’t she too old for that yet? Seems to me she got a lot of book sense and no common sense at all.”

 

At that age before I understood the benefits of pragmatism, I could only wonder what was so good about common sense? I mean, the shame was in the name. I wanted nothing to do with common anyway. (My Marie Antoinette phase was difficult for everyone.)

 

I’ll never forget my mother’s simple, but powerful words to her.

 

“Leave that child alone. She’s alright.”

 

Now that may not seem like much to you, but to me, it was exactly what I needed to hear. Leave that child alone. She’s not crazy. She’s not “touched” as we like to say in the country. Let her be!

 

That wasn’t the first or the last time my mother had to defend my habit of talking to myself; for telling stories out loud on my own. Over the years, in more ways than one, she encouraged me to be myself. To not only listen to those voices, but to write down everything in my head because one day I would be a writer. More than anything, she encouraged me to figure out who I was and just BE that! There is a strong cord of nearly unshakeable confidence that runs right down my middle because she fostered that in me.

 

When I went back to Banny’s this week, the mop was long gone, but I remembered. And I couldn’t help but think about my “process” even now. Washing dishes last week, home alone, I started acting out a scene that had been giving me fits. I do that a lot. Act out the scene before I write it. Before I sit down and try to tell the characters what they should say, I kind of put myself in their shoes out loud and let them tell me what they will say. Acting out the scene last week, before I knew it, tears ran down my face and I was gasping for breath. I felt the dialogue that deeply. I was that embroiled in the characters’ confrontation. When I sat down to write, those moments in the kitchen alone super charged my word count.

 

Oh, and it’s not just in the kitchen. On my way to pick up my son from school, or out running errands, I talk to myself and act out these scenes at the steering wheel. I do put in headphones so my fellow drivers won’t be too disconcerted. It’s good to know, though, that even if they knew, even if they heard, my mom would tell them the same thing now that she did then.

 

Leave that child alone. She’s alright.