The Call

As the sun is rising on this cool spring Saturday morning, I hear the carol bird calling. Whoop! Whoop! The notes cut through the air, insistent, demanding attention. My heart listens, and I find myself logging into my blog:

Where the Carol Birds Sing.

Where have I been?

My fingers want to write, so I do. I write about unschooling because it’s important. It’s helpful. Unschooling is what people want to read about. But sometimes I want to leave helpful behind. Fly like my bird. Go somewhere different. Just write and see where my words lead.

I sit on the sofa in the semi-dark while my family sleeps and the carol bird calls, and I think about stories. I open the draft copy of my third children’s novel. I wrote it quite a few years ago.

“How’s your new book going?” a few people ask.

”I’m working on it,” I say.

And I do work on it for a while. But then other things, more useful things, grab my attention, and I put my stories aside.

Recently, in odd moments, I’ve reacquainted myself with my Angel family, reentering their fictional world. Yet again, I’m editing my book.

I scroll through the chapters of my novel and smile when I see the words Meeting Picasso at the Art Gallery. Oh yes, I remember: the Angels take Auntie Jenny and Uncle Charlie on the train to the art gallery in the city, and they meet their neighbour, Picasso Bell, who, fortunately, wanted to grow into the name he was given at birth: he’s a portrait artist. Imagine if he’d wanted to be a doctor: Dr Picasso. That wouldn’t seem quite right, would it? Picasso and his wife Mia have twin daughters. Picasso wanted to name them Cassat and O’Keefe, but Mia protested, and so the girls are Lily and Violet.

I write a few notes: update the details about the train tickets.

Time passes. Things change. We no longer buy tickets to travel on the train. Now we each need an Opal card. And so will the Angels.

I think about the day ahead. What will I do?

Shower.

Take Gemma-Rose to work.

Buy a new notebook,

Buy a coffee and sit at a table in the shopping centre’s food court.

Read my next novel story.

Make notes with my magical Sharpie gel pen.

Let my imagination go wild.

The carol bird calls again: Whoop! Whoop!

Yes! Yes!” I cry.

I’m going to forget important. At least for a while. I’m going to write about The Spy at the Zoo.

Photo

I’ve never seen my carol bird, so I have no idea what it looks like. But I’m sure it doesn’t look like the birds in this photo. How could a bird that size hide in the tree outside my window? I chose the picture because it makes me smile.

Photo by Dattatreya Patra on Unsplash