My Life has Been a Tapestry...

Twelve years before I was born, Carol King wrote and published the album Tapestry. My mom was fifteen at the time. Long before she met my dad, or went to college, or became the woman I knew as mom, she sat alone in her room, playing this record, and singing softly along. As a teenager, songs like, You've got a Friend, and Home Again, helped her to feel like she wasn't alone. Songs like Beautiful, and Natural Woman, helped her feel beautiful in a world designed to make her feel ugly.

I know this, because when I was a teenager, I found my mom's well used vinyl record, and played it on her record player that I had long before brought into my room. I felt that same connection, and I felt those same feelings. That record became mine, not because I had a connection to it, but because we both did, and my mom wanted to share it with me.  Also, because I stole it and wouldn't give it back.

 I used to stand alone in my room, and sing...less softly... along with Carol King's amazingly soulful voice. Her words and melodies wrote their way into my heart and made me who I am. This song, Beautiful, became my motto when I was fifteen.

You've got to get up every morning with a smile on your face

And show the world all the love in your heart

Then people gonna treat you better

You're gonna find, yes, you will

That you're beautiful as you feel.

Now, I think there's a lot I could talk about, about who I am, or what, and why, I write that comes directly from Carol King Tapestry. I could talk about how I want to write stories that write their way into young girl's hearts. I could talk about how beautiful lyrics like, "Sometimes I wonder if I'm ever gonna make it home again. It's so far and out of sight. I really need someone to talk to, and nobody else

Knows how to comfort me tonight ." or "Tonight with words unspoken, You say that I'm the only one. But will my heart be broken, When the night meets the morning sun." write themselves into my own writing.  

But instead, I just want to write about how much I love being the same as my mom. 

My mom gave me everything about me that defines who I am. My blue eyes, my curly hair, my unhealthy obsession with chocolate... Got it from my mom.

There's one more thing that I got from my mom. See, while she was fifteen, and rocking out to Tapestry, my mom was writing poems. When I was fifteen, rocking out to Tapestry, and daydreaming about growing up to become a famous actress, my mom was coming up with stories,  writing in journals, and dreaming of one day holding a book in her hands that had her name on it.

I'm a writer because of my mom. Here's the link to some of my mom's words. I hope I don't steal this dream from her, the way I stole her records, because if there's one person I want to see published more than myself, it's my mom.

My mom is the first person I call when I have good writer's news. When I get published, she'll be the first to know. She's the only person in my family who really gets it, who one hundred-percent understands how important this is to me. And it's fun, because I get to be the one she calls when she submits a story. We've talked about going to conferences together, and I hope one day, we do more than just talk. Writing is something we share.

It's one of the ways that we're the same.

I got Tapestry out this last week. As I stood in my basement, and sang softly to Way Over Yonder, my little girl came down and found me. She sang along, danced, and span in little fairy circles.

And I smiled.

~Sheena