"From the corner of my eye, I see them. A mother holding her young daughter. Or at least I think the child is a girl by the way she is dressed and the Hannah Montana book bag strapped to her back. They are reading Charlotte’s Web. The original version, not the Julia Roberts mock-up. I love Charlotte’s Web.
The girl is bald, but not the cute and shiny version. Her head is cracked and appears sore. Her face bloated from the steroids and her mouth covered with a surgical mask. Her mom looks tired.
“If I were a spider, I would write “MOMMY” over your pen!”
The mother’s face came close the the child’s bald head and she breathed in her smell, as if she might find the scent of the healthy baby she gave birth to. Then she smiled and nestled in close.
“If I were a spider, sweetheart, I would write “lovely” over you.”
What word is written over you?"
This is from a blog I follow called Six Year Med. It's written by a women who is going through med school (quite a long process as it seems). I read this in her archives and it got me thinking. I tend to write words over people's "pen's" without getting to know who they really are. Words like negative, disrespectful, troublemaker, and druggy. But that's not the way Charlotte weaved and it's not the way this mama thought. She looked at her beautiful daughter and told her she was lovely no matter what she ever went through. Charlotte wrote terrific, radiant, and humble when she was talking about a PIG. Not gonna lie, although I have a friend who loves to raise her pigs, they're not that beautiful, yet Charlotte chose the word RADIANT. I want to be a Charlotte.
So, what about you? What are you writing over someone else's "pen?" Is that who they really are or just something you think you know about them?
