The Butterfly Hours Memoir Project: PARTY

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 are notebook, October, office, pajamas, paper, party, pencil, perfume, phone book, photograph, pictures.

PARTY
Growing up in a large family meant that we were the party most of the time. But every now and then, we had parties that involved larger groups, like when I turned 6 years old. This was the year we were living in Lakeland, FL, and I've written previously about the doll I got that day. Balloons, homemade cake, presents, singing the birthday song, making a wish and blowing out the candles... these were all part of the festivities. 

The only other party specifically about me that I can remember is one I've written about in my forthcoming book with Charles Waters DICTIONARY FOR BETTER WORLD: Poems, Quotes and Anecdotes from A to Z, with illustrations by Mehrdohkt Amini. (Cover release coming September 20!) So I will save that one. :)

I do have memories of other parties, thought not many – as an introvert, I guess parties just haven't come up a lot in my life! But when I was in 8^th grade, I went to a pool part at the home of the boy I loved, and I remember sneaking with him inside the dark pool house, where we giggled and bumped into things and kissed... while outside our friends splashed and whooped, never knowing we were there. Or at least that's the way I imagine it! Maybe they DID know we were there... And isn't that the trouble with memoir writing? What is true for me may not be true for someone else...