25 Important things My Mother Taught Me

Mother's are important, there is no doubt about it. They're there for our first cries, our first laughs, our first words, and our first heartbreaks. They are the ones to wipe away our tear streaked mascara and they always support us. A mother's love is unconditional and her words are wisdom.

My mother has taught me so many things over the years. She is someone I will always respect and look up to. I feel guilty when I hold something back from her. I have to tell her everything. I'm not capable of not telling her everything. Especially when she has this sixth sense of knowing when something's wrong. I love her for that. And for many more reasons.

Over the years, though, I've learned much from my mother. She's taught me everything from the basics to the complex. She's taught me how to talk and walk, and how to pray. She's a warrior.

There's a little trend in my family -well, among my siblings -where we like to give people we're close to superhero and Greek god names. We try to match people up to who they're most like. My brother's Green Arrow/Apollo and my youngest sister is Flash/Hermes. We each have a superhero and Greek god name, but giving our parents names have always been the hardest. It seems like there is no super hero or Greek god out there good enough for them to have the names of. However, we did eventually settle on a superhero name for our mother.

Our mother is...Wonder Woman. Why? Because she's a strong, confident woman who stands up for what she believes in and protects those around her. She's our hero.

This past weekend I had the opportunity to go to a retreat with my Mother, sister, and a good friend. While there we learned a lot and had a blast. And I got to see my mother at her peak. She out partied my sister and I. She out partied a 23 and 19 year old. Now, when I say party I don't mean drinking party. This was a Christian retreat with no alcohol. But, dang, my mother stayed up so late that my sister and I feel asleep waiting for her. She was a hyperactive social butterfly this weekend. The embodiment of everything she's ever taught my siblings and I...with the exception of when she went to find my hair tie and only 'Kind of looked for it,' When I was a kid, if we 'kind of looked' for anything we would get a lecture on how you actually move things when you're looking for something, not just glance at places. We gave her a bit of a hard time about this, but she took it well and joked along with us.

Like I said, she was the embodiment of everything she ever taught us this weekend and that got me to thinking. I laid awake last night thinking about all the things she had taught my siblings and I and I made a list of 25 of them. There soooooo many more things she's taught us, but these are among the most important.


1. Never lend someone something you expect to get back. If you give someone money to help out, it's a gift, not a loan.


2. Always take time to stop and pray with a person instead of just saying that you'll pray for them.


3. A lady always has tea in the house (whether she likes it or not).


4. It doesn't matter how busy you are, if someone calls or drops by to chat you make sure to talk to them.


5. A woman always supports her man.


6. When visiting someone you always offer to help clean up after the meal.


7. Cookies. If you don't have time for a complex dessert, cake mix cookies are always a favorite go to. It takes 15 minutes and guests will love them. 


8. If you do something, no mater what it is, alwasy give it your all. 


9. The french Braid. It's like a rite of passage.


10. A lady should know how to properly set a table. 


11. If your gut tells you something is wrong, then more than likely it is. 


12. There's no need to pay someone to clean your carpets. A capable woman will roll up her sleeves and do it herself to save a few bucks. 


13. It's okay to treat yourself every once in a while...


14...but family ALWAYS comes first. 


15. If a sister has fallen you don't kick her and run. You kneel and help her up, no matter how much you may dislike her. 


16. Please and thank you are critical words.


17. Make up is not important. Inner beauty matters more...


18...but a lady should know how to properly apply makeup. You're not a clown, dear. 


19. Be kind, but sassy. Don't let people walk over you.


20. Be well read.


21. Traditions are important.


22. Be a pioneer woman. Know how to sew, cook, garden, host, and pray. 


23. Love everyone. Even your enemies. 


24.The best accessory is a smile. 


25. Always be yourself. You're not a reflection, you're the original. 

A Moment of Mortality

I'm not going to sugar coat this. Life has been crappy lately. One good thing happens and then something equally bad occurs. It's been getting really tiring and it's caused my friends and I to partake in the age old habit of talking about it. We've discussed a lot lately. We've talked about mortality, life, growing up...about how all our teachers seem to keep saying, "It doesn't get any better," and how we just wish one person would tell us not that it would get better but that we're going to be alright. 

Anyway, I've taken these conversations we've had and used them to write up a little piece of creative nonfiction, which I've titled A Moment of Mortality. I was particularly alive today and decided I'd use my good mood to create this. Read and enjoy...or don't...I mean, whatever floats your boat. 


A Moment of Mortality 

“We should crossover.”

“But I’m not ready to yet.”

“There’s a car behind us! If we don’t cross now then we really will be crossing over.”

“Aw, but I want to die.”

“I want to die too, but that doesn’t mean I want to die now. I still have a lot I want to do first. A lot of places to see...”

“A lot of things I want to draw…”

“To write…”

“To do…”

“To try…”

“But death would be easy.”

“It really would be. Think about it. If we died now all our problems would be solved. No more Walmart trips, no more scrounging for loose change to buy a pop, no more pain, no more trying to find the right guy, no more heartache, no more tears, no more stress…no more student loans or trying to fight the unknown.”

“We’d be embracing the unknown.” 

“It’s not unknown. I know where I’ll end up…I’ve heard Heaven’s lovely this time of the year…but it’s not time. I’ve got my ticket, I’m just not ready to board the plane. You know?” 

“Yeah. I know what you mean. Can I tell you a secret though? Sometimes I play with my knife and think about how easy it’d be to slide it across my wrist. I bet the blood would look pretty. It’d make things easier….”

“Easier isn’t always better. You really ready to go now?”

“Hmmm, no…not unless I could haunt a few people. That might be worth cutting my time short. You think when we die we’ll get a chance to haunt someone?” 

“I don’t know. Don’t think I’d take it if we do.” 

“There’s a few people I’d like to haunt. A few that deserve it.”

“If I haunted someone it’d be someone I know really well. Someone I like to mess with.”

“You’d pull pranks on them.”

“Yep. It’d be the only reason to stay.”

“What about unfinished business?”

“What about it?”

“Wouldn’t you want to finish it?”

“Would you want to finish a term paper over summer vacation?”

“I guess you’re right…I bet Heaven’s lovely.”

“Mmmmhmmm.”

“A lot better than school. I’m getting really tiered of staring at brick walls.”

“Enjoy it. In a few years people are going to be asking you, ‘What’s next?’ and you won’t have an answer.”

“You really don’t know?”

“I didn’t become a Lit. Major for an easy life. I never really knew what I’d do with the degree but I always knew that writers never have it easy. The history of our career is full of violence, and blood, and alcohol. But we’re needed. We have a job to do, you know? The world needs us.”

“Yeah, I know. You haven’t resorted to alcohol yet, though.”

“I think about it every once in a while. I’ve had wine before, you know. It was actually pretty good.”

“Then why don’t you drink it regularly? Alcohol numbs. It’d make life easier.”

“I doubt that. Besides, there’s history between my family and wine. I’ve heard some horror stories.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“We can’t die…we can’t drink…we can’t sleep around…there’s really nothing we can do to escape, is there?”

“…that’s why I write…”

“To escape?”

“No, because it’s a better alternative. It’s a healthy coping mechanism…some writer once said that you have to stay drunk on writing so reality won’t destroy you. He really hit the nail on the head. There’s just so much bad in the world. So much stress. Someone has to write about it. To let future generations know that there’s still hope. You want to know what’s worse, though?”

“What?”

“We’ll never really know just how bad it can get. I can write about all the crap the world throws at me and I can hope that it’ll help give someone else hope, but while we’re sitting here in a Walmart parking lot, drinking cheap bottles of pop, complaining about how tough our lives are and how easy it’d be to die, there are millions of other people out there that have it so much worse than us. Our problems are kind of petty, in retrospect.” 

“Maybe we just like the idea of flirting with death.”

“Maybe we’re just highly aware of our mortality. I mean, yeah, death would be easy, but seriously…I’m fine with my life right now.”

“Really? Even after all the crap that’s happened this week? This month?”

“Yeah. Even after all that. You know why?”

“Why?” 

“Because I may not know where I’m going in life but I know I have the means to make it. I’ve got a full tank of gas, enough money to make a trip home this next weekend, and I know who I am.”

“I wish I could say that. I don’t know who I am anymore.”

“Girl, take it from me. I know I don’t have too many years on you, but in my experience one has to lose themselves before they can find them.”

“Endure the rain to get the sun.”

“Exactly.”

“Speaking of rain. Those clouds look pretty bad.”

“Yeah, we should get back before the storm rolls in.” 

“Procrastination party?”

“Can’t afford one. The time’s come to stop loitering in parking lots and to start writing about the impact the Fine Arts has on campus.”

“I hate having responsibilities.”

“It’s part of growing up.” 

“Growing up sucks.”

“Ha! Yes, it does. As much as I’m okay with my life, if I had known it’d be like this, I would have taken sometime to slow down and enjoy all those stupid sleepovers more…all those bike accidents…nights babysitting to buy that new Star Wars book…hey, listen to me, alright? This time, next year, you’re going to be here studying away and I’m going to be back in Nebraska doing God knows what –And that’s not cursing. He’s really the only one who knows what I’ll be doing right now –so listen up. I know you’re not that big of a people person, but take some time to pretend you’re a socialite. Take some time to slow down by hoping into the fast lane. Some of the greatest nights I’ve had here I didn’t say a word during, but sometimes words aren’t needed.”

“That’s real rich coming from a writer. Do you even hear what you’re saying?”

“Do you even hear what I’m saying? The moments I’ve felt the most alive have been the ones where I took time to go out for a good time with a group of people. I may not have said much, but when you’re driving through Kansas City at night and the lights of the Plaza light up the street like a runway, and there’s good music blaring from the stereo, and you’re surrounded by good people, it’s not the words that mater. It’s the almost overwhelming feeling of living. Death might be easy, but I’m pretty damn sure that life’s worth it.”

Sexuality in Literature: Why I've Decided to Write a Bisexual Character

                Diversity is something I have always been mindful of in my writings. I’ve taken time to layout lists of characters and their aspects for many of my stories. I’ve made sure to have racial diversity, religious diversity, language diversity, skill diversity, personality diversity, as well as moral diversity. I try not to write too many stories where all of the characters in them are from the majority or are Caucasian.

                I’ve had people ask me about diversity in my writing’s before. One of my primary readers once approached me about a book I was working on and asked, “Are all of the character’s white?” I politely reminded her of a few characters who, at the point in the story she was currently at, had only been mentioned a couple times. As that story progressed, my African American, Hispanic, and Korean characters became more prominent figures. Seeing as this particular story is meant for publication one day I will not be posting it on any of my social media sites so I therefore cannot provide you a link to it. To be honest, I spent a lot of time on diversity with that story. Racial and class diversity were a couple of the story’s elements that I paid the most attention to.

                In another one of my writings I wanted to make a point of having religious diversity, especially since the subject matter at hand was one that would cross into religion and theology. In this fantastical tale of myth, I have creatures from all sorts of mythology and those creatures each have their own belief systems. My main vampire character is Catholic, the main Siren character is Greek, and another vampire is Atheist (http://writingangel2010.deviantart.com/gallery/50286567/Everlasting-Lie-Trilogy). I also have stories that include Egyptian mythology and the difference between cultures (http://writingangel2010.deviantart.com/art/The-Pharaoh-s-Guard-Introduction-453055286). I like to keep my characters as diverse as possible.

                Lately though, I’ve crossed a new line. I posted on my Instagram a couple months ago about starting work on a story that would contain my first ever non-straight character. The response I got was predictable. Very few people liked the photo and comment. Most didn’t respond to it at all. This isn’t surprising to me. One person, one friend, did comment though and she was someone of the LGBT group. She liked the idea of me writing a character that she could possibly relate to on the level of sexuality.

                To be honest, I had wrestled with the idea of having a character that wasn’t heterosexual before, but I had chickened out and decided to make him metrosexual. In all honesty, I think that was a good move at the time. My writing skill has progressed from that point and there was no way I would have been able to portray that character as being homosexual without feeling guilty. Why? Because at the time I was but a child. I had no idea of how I felt about the LGBT group let alone how people would react to it. I feared that portraying such a character would lead to fractures in some of my friendships. Now though, I can honestly say that I feel no guilt or sense of ‘wrongness’ for writing such a character. 

                Scythe, son of Mortem and Vita, is a new character for me and stands out amongst the other characters I’ve created. He’s free spirited, lost, and struggling with the idea of destiny. And, as I mentioned, he’s bisexual.  I have no regret in his creation. I actually spent a lot of time in prayer and meditation about the impact he could have on my writing.

                I am a Christian. This is something I would proudly proclaim to the masses. I’ve been taught that homosexuality and bisexuality is a sin. I’ve been taught that it’s a choice. These are not matters that I wish to argue over and I respect everyone’s opinion on them. When it comes to this mater I am normally quite. I tend to keep my opinions that I think people will blow out of proportion to myself, but there is one thing I want to say about this mater. No mater your religion and no mater your beliefs on whether it’s a choice or not, it still exists. It’s existed for a long time. And what is literature, my friends, if not a mirror?

                Many symbols have been given to literature, but my favorite is the mirror. Think about it for a moment. Literature, in any form, shows society. It shows humanity. It shows the struggle of the Human Condition and the Human Experience. It shows us who we are.

                The purpose of literature is to teach, to inform, to document, and to let people know that they aren’t alone. If you think about it, every story ever written –every news article, every pamphlet, every book, and every poem –is about humanity. Yes, there are specific kinds of literature that target specific subjects, such as a pamphlet promoting an event or a new business, but literature in every form seeks to unite. It seeks to show humanity as a whole and to teach us that there is help out there, that we’re not alone, that the problems we face every day have been faced and beaten before by others who have gone before us.

                Since humanity is the subject of all literature, and humanity is diverse, why then should literature not be diverse? This, my fellow humans, is why I’ve decided to write a bisexual character. I wish to portray humanity as it is. And to do that I must be diverse in all things.

 However, there are two last things I would like to point out. The first being that I know that some of you who read this will not like my ideas and will be completely against me writing this character, but neither Scythe nor I care. What you must understand is that the characters of a story are the not author. Yes, the story is part of us. Yes, when you buy a book you are purchasing a piece of the author’s soul. But no, the Characters –the shadows on its pages –are not mirrors of the author’s personal life. I am not my characters, and they are not me. To use an analogy I do try to stay away from just as God created man in His own image and man does not always resemble their creator –does not always show or proclaim who their creator is –so characters do not always resemble their authors. In fact, the great play write, William Shakespeare, is a perfect example of this. Nowhere in his works is it possible to point at a character and say, “That’s Shakespeare. Right there. That’s him.”

The last thing I want to point out before I conclude this little article –I guess that’s what it could be called –is that I am a firm believer that every great library has a book in it to offend everyone. Like I said before, one of the main purposes of literature is to teach, and to do so some times is has to offend.

So am I sorry that I no longer have all straight characters? No. Do I feel guilt at having a bisexual character? Do I feel like I am sinning by writing him into existence? No, on both points. I write what I feel I must. I write the stories I feel that should be told. If I start to write something and get a sense of wrongness, I throw it out because A) it either is really wrong to write about it or B) I need to solidify what I personally feel about the subject matter before I embark on the journey of writing it.

Now, I am not going to tell you my personal feelings on this particular subject matter, for the only personal feelings that mater here is the feeling that Scythe belongs in his story. That his story is one that I feel compelled to write. It may not be my best story and it may never be seen on the shelves of a Barnes and Nobel, but it is one I will write. One that I will continue to post chapters of up on my DeviantART site. Because I believe in diversity and believe that as a mirror literature should be diverse. Just like there isn’t just one type of chocolate or one type of coffee there isn’t just one type of person, and literature should reflect that. 

(Scythe's story can be found at: http://writingangel2010.deviantart.com/ Under the titles of: A Weight of a Prophecy and The Callidus Chronicles)