Writing Madeline Part 2

"Madeline, I'm here. Tell me about that day." At the appointment I set with myself to meet Madeline and begin to hear what she has to say, this is the way I begin. I have always been drawn to this picture of all those in my collection. My great grandmother, Florence in the foreground. Madeline posing, as if she is the one the camera is focused on, against this great tree. 

I think on this day something happened. Madeline, and maybe others too, entered into what Christina calls the "Spiral of Experience". A happening that eventually took her deep into her own story. A shift that shook her out of a dream.

 

I asked her who she was on that day. And with a bit of self-consciousness at first, "is this her voice, or mine", "this is silly, what am I doing", Madeline appeared. I dutifully put her to page. When I thought I was done, she was finished enough for now, Florence, Flossie once, asked to be heard. A mother watching her child become a woman, and worrying as mothers do. How she held her, this pretty one, the next one she would lose.