“Motherhood” in six short words

By
Heather
 – May 6, 2013Posted in: Knit Together

A few months ago, I was lucky enough to spend three blissful days reading, writing, walking, jogging, eating, and mostly gabbing for hours with four amazing women. (Before this weekend, I had never met these women in real life-only virtually–which kinda makes it one of the weirdest things I’ve ever done. But I digress . . .)

In between all the chocolate-eating and gabbing, we did a few structured activities. My activity was to guide us in writing six-word memoirs about various prompts. If you’re not familiar with six-word memoirs, you should be! I recently read the book Not Quite What I Was Planning: Six-Word Memoirs by Writers Famous and Obscure. Loved it. Couldn’t put it down.

Short recap: In 2006, Smith magazine put out a call for people to submit six-word memoirs. Before they knew it, six-word memoirs were coming in from all four corners of the country-from moms, dads, widows, teenagers, young adults, rich, poor, you name it. The editors were surprised by how much emotion could be packed into six tiny words. They were also surprised, as was I, by how hard it was to guess the demographics of the authors. For instance, the memoir “Cursed with cancer. Blessed with friends” was written not by a sage retiree, but by a 9-year-old cancer survivor. “I still make coffee for two” was written not by an elderly widower, but by a 27-year-old man who had been recently dumped by his girlfriend.

Here are some of the ones that stood out the most to me:

  • Not pretty enough so now unemployed. –Stacey Smith
  • Followed rules, not dreams. Never again. –Margaret Hellerstein
  • I lost god. I found myself. –Joe Kimmel
  • Girlfriend is pregnant, my husband said. –Shonna MacDonald
  • Mormon feminist loves husband, hates patriarchy. –Caroline Kline
  • Wasn’t born a redhead; fixed that. -Andie Grace

So these newly-found girlfriends and I sat out on the dock by a beautiful lake for a couple hours and wrote six-word memoirs one afternoon about the following: kids, marriage, body, food, sex, etc. Our first prompt was “motherhood.” Here are some of the six-word memoirs we wrote about motherhood:

  • Three kids, so hard, no more.
  • I hope I don’t wreck her.
  • I love my big kids more.
  • Did I ever not have kids?
  • I know you can prevent that.
  • I see myself in his meltdowns.
  • Happiness is scrambling 7 eggs together.
  • Wanted 3. Got 2. 1 more?

What kind of six-word memoir would you write about “motherhood” (okay, okay, or “fatherhood”)?   Only six words.

Tags: , , ,