The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: HOTEL

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?

For links to the prompts I've written on so far this year, please click on The Butterfly Hours tab above. This month's prompts include: hospital, hotel, humming, ice-skating, illness, kitchen table, knife, laundry, library, lunch.

HOTEL

When our family first moved to Birmingham, I was entering the 9^th grade. Finding a suitable (large enough, affordable) house was always a challenge for our large (7 person) family, and while we did find a home, we weren't able to close the deal and move in before my father was to start his new job and the new school year was to begin. So we moved into a room at Motel Birmingham (or was it Birmingham Motel? It's been sold, remodeled, etc. several times, and it's got a different name now...), located in Irondale with 2 

Himalayan kittens

Himalayan cats and a litter of kittens. Two beds and one bathroom for seven people! I don't remember what we ate or who slept on the floor. (Probably the girls got the bed, and the boys got the floor.) I do remember how homesick I was for my old friends, my old school. I didn't know anyone except my siblings. My mom drove us to school in Trussville, dropped us off at the various buildings, and that was that. It was a tough week. We're a family of introverts who needed our space AND it was such a huge transition... the kittens helped.