Thursday, May 16, 2019

The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: GUN


For 2019 I'm running a year-long series on my blog in which I share my responses to the writing assignment prompts found in THE BUTTERLY HOURS by Patty Dann.

I welcome you to join me, if you like! I've divided the prompts by month, and the plan is to respond to 3 (or so) a week. For some of these I may write poems, for others prose. The important thing is to mine my memory. Who knows where this exploration will lead?
In January I wrote about: apron, bar, basketball, bed, bicycle, birthday, boat, broom, button, cake, car.

In February: chair, chlorine, church, concert, cookbook, couch, dancing, desk, dessert, dining room table, diploma.
March: divorce, door, dream, emergency room, envelope, eyebrows, first apartment, first job, food, game, garden.

April: I took a break to focus on ARTSPEAK: Happy!

Here are the prompts for May: gloves, great-grandparent, guidebook, gun, gym class, hair, hands, hat, high heels, honeymoon, hood.

GUN

My father was a collector, and for a while he turned this sensibility toward guns. His collection was displayed in a glass-fronted solid-oak gun cabinet that sat in the foyer of our home. While he didn't do a lot of shooting or hunting -- I do have some stories he wrote about some big hunting adventures with business associates during our Louisiana years -- he believed wholeheartedly in the 2nd Amendment and for as long as I can remember was a proud member of the NRA. 

Because our household included five children, Papa took it upon himself to educate us about guns. I remember our “gun classes” where he taught even reluctant-to-even-look-at-a-gun me about how to hold a gun, how to shoot, how to clean, store, etc. He said, “gun safety is about education,” and these classes were mandatory. I remember the weight of a pistol in my hand, and how different it felt from a rifle. I enjoyed the challenge of aiming – how each gun required something different: a slight shift to the left or right, or, with this model, you've got to aim it dead-on. My heart pounded so hard it hurt when it was my time to shoot – and when the shot was fired, I remember before any other feeling the relief of it being over. 

I'm grateful my father took the time to do this with us, even though at the time I didn't want to. He showed me what it was like to be a responsible gun owner, and a responsible parent.

*I just realized that a gun (or guns) show up in both my middle grade novels, and in the one I am currently revising (coming 2021). Clearly this is a subject my writer-heart is still exploring.


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