Consider last night…

I was almost asleep, in that lovely no-mind zone where I would soon slip into that ethereal world; where streams run uphill and horses have wings. Suddenly, my eyes snapped open and a thought I had no idea I had been thinking, came complete and unbidden.

It flashed across my brain like a lit-up sign in Times Square. “That’s not how you spell strait jacket!”

And then, followed closely behind, came, “He wasn’t my uncle, he was my cousin…or something.”

I moaned inwardly. Once again, I was rewriting what I had already written.

Today, I went back to yesterday’s post and struck out the word ‘straight’, replacing it with ‘strait’.  I didn’t change the uncle part.

My father was one of nine boys and I think (?) there were six sisters. I never met any of my aunts, so they made no impression on me. The story goes that his older sister came home pregnant, and her son was then raised as one of the younger boys around that huge table where everyone was vying for a scrap of food and attention.

I don’t know what happened in his life, but I assume it wasn’t that great for him. Apparently my grandfather wasn’t entirely pleasant.

All I know is, that the one and only time I met him, he was in a strait jacket in a Winnipeg hospital. His suicide attempt had failed but the drugs had sufficiently messed up his mind and ability to speak. His mouth moved and squiggled around but he was incoherent. It was like Mumbles in a Dick Tracy comic strip.

However. He is the uncle I referred to yesterday. Is he actually a cousin? I guess so but considering he was the tenth boy, maybe he should be an uncle. It doesn’t matter. He’s gone now. To (I hope) a happier existence.

He is one more cautionary tale on why we need to take care of ourselves and each other and how I know writing is so woven into my life.

This is how this whole writing thing goes now. I find myself polishing sentences unconsciously. I’m not focused on writing a particular article, but then I’ll find myself with full sentences showing up in my brain…sentences for a story that I had no idea I was working on until that exact moment.

It’s kind of like having a constantly running rock tumbler on my brain’s back shelf. It’s just humming along, doing its job. It doesn’t need me in the way.

Do you remember those things? I would have died if I had ever received a genuine rock tumbler for Christmas. Polished rocks were the coolest.