Draft #2 Ideas

I want to create my draft around the idea of family and the ever changing flow and consistency to it as time moves forward. There are things that always remain and stay forever in a family, for example I feel being the youngest I am viewed a certain way no matter how respected by my siblings I am or how old I  become. On the other hand there is this change that inevitably occurs in a family as life progresses. I would like to try to capture this through several "scenes" or memories that I hold dear.

At first I thought I just wanted to write a piece about how the importance and closeness of family has impacted who I am; how my mom's attempts over the years to keep us all connected has played a role in my life. However, as I thought more about the reality of my family and the changes that have happened since my mom has passed away, I know there is so much more to this piece than that. There are layers of love, connection, and disfunction. And they have always been there.

Thinking back to the last two readings that we engaged with, The Patch and Silent Dancing, and after my conference with Dr. Chandler, I began thinking about not only structuring/organizational techniques for my writing piece, but also more metaphorical or symbolical techniques that can come to play in my writing. Both of last weeks authors did a beautiful job.  McPhee's use of the water's surface as a metaphor for life and the depth of relationships and how well we know a person truly showed his struggles with his dad in a clever way. He chose something that was dear to their relationship; fishing. Cofer's piece used the silent home movie to capture the rawness and truth behind her family. The movie captured truth and allowed her to question her family and culture. It allowed her to see the people in her family for what they truly were and made her wonder more about them.

In my piece I am toying with the thought of using a "pulse" as a metaphor for life and the "beat" of the memories to which I will share. The pulse is strong when the family is together and functioning in tact, but we see it weaken as certain changes occur: a son grows and becomes distant, a mother's death, etc... But it strengthens at other moments. The moments for my family that I will share also seem to occur outside, mainly summer time; when there is a "pulse" to nature that coincides with the family.

I'm still kind of hashing this out and might change things up. I do feel like I have to be careful about being literal in my writing techniques and be sure to describe well, so that my message comes through without being cliche'.