To: Mom
From: Rara
Subject: Finally!
Message: It took me a few years, but I caught the morning on camera.
15 years ago…
(Lying in bed, with a pillow covering my eyes, I groan.)
I hate the morning. It’s too yellow. It’s too foggy. Everything feels like I’m walking underwater– slow, confusing, and visually shocking.
“But you like the night, don’t you?” she reasons.
Yes. I love the night. The night is not yellow. It makes me smile.
(The morning makes my mom smile. Hence, I am unfairly sanctioned and offered no pity.)
“Then I guess if you want to enjoy the night, you better survive. It’s time to wake up and learn to breathe underwater.”
I can’t. When I look through the water, I see the morning. It’s a shark!
“Then I guess you better learn to be friends with the shark.”
It’ll bite me.
“If it bites you, bite it back.”
That seems mean. It’s just a shark.
“Yes, and it’s just a morning. “
(She wins. I roll out of bed, and survive the attack of the morning.)
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The Weekly Photo Challenge was “Good morning!” Something about the chipperness of that expression reminds me of yellow underwater sharks, too. http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/10/04/photo-challenge-morning/
It’s an understatement to say that I’m not really a morning person, and I’ve written about my dislike of mornings before. Actually, multiple times. An expression you’ll hear me use often is that “I survive the morning”, and it sources all the way back to this conversation many years ago.
Can you trace back any of your quips or expressions to conversations or stories of your past?
My mom and I mostly communicate via figurative language– onomatopoeia, metaphors, similes, idioms, analogies, etc. You can blame her for the preponderance of such tools in my writing.
Do you use a lot of figurative language in writing or speech?