Who will care?

My new challenge is figuring out what is it that makes me special enough, interesting enough or enough of an authority on something to actually get paid to write about it. I recently read a decent autobiography of a junkie. A real one. I have had a couple of isolated dramatic circumstances but certainly not enough to fill the pages of a novel. I follow my friend's blog, he writes about his training as a soldier preparing to deploy to Afghanistan. I don't even have a passport. I have been reading a lot of information about parenting gifted children. I have no test scores to prove my son is gifted and I if I am researching then how am I qualified to advise? I became a fan of a woman who writes about her life as a mom. I am a mom but I don't feel qualified to train one! I think I just have to keep writing. Somewhere there is an idea, a piece of me will eventually surface as the topic, the direction, and I will keep writing until I find it. After all, I am a writer, right?

The first time I KNEW what was going to happen was when I was 10. My grandfather was in the Intensive Care Unit at Johnson County Community Hospital. The hospital where everyone in my life went, where I and my sister and all our friends were born. The nearest one. It was his third heart attack and things were different this time.

I don't exactly remember the other times, although there are stories like the copperhead one. It's a good one for another day. I just know he was diabetic, which meant he couldn't have sugar and had to give himself shots. I used to love to watch him give himself a shot in the thigh or hip, standing there in his boxers in the bathroom with the bright orange and yellow and brown seventies flowers on the wallpaper. I remember one was the shape of a bird, further accented by a nail hole from a picture no longer hanging, in exactly the spot an eye would be. I also liked sitting in his lap in his leather arm-chair with a Diet Pepsi in a glass bottle. We would watch Hee-Haw and the Grand Ole Opry. Once in a while we would watch a cop show like Hill Street Blues or Hawaii Five-O. This time was different because he was in the hospital a long time it seemed and everyone was whispering instead of talking. I was bored at the hospital and really mad I couldn't see him. They kept telling me I needed to be 12 and I could not see what the difference was. Did they think I was going to cause trouble or be loud? Did they think I would cry? Grammy came and got me and Jessica, not Grandpa Hall's wife but my mom's mom. We went to her house to spend the night and we would go to church with her in the morning. I never missed Sunday school back then, ever. My Sunday school teacher, also named Bette with an 'e', gave us candy for memorizing our scriptures and I was to recite the 10 Commandments the next morning.

I remember Lori was not there and it was scary in that room without her. There is this doll, at least it was still there last time I looked. It scared me and I remember Grammy having us go tinkle before tucking us into bed. I dreamt that night that Grandpa died and we stayed at Grandma Hall's house for a couple of weeks, I even dreamt details like my sister's birthday and a conversation I later had with Grandma. The next morning we got up and ate breakfast and got dressed for church, I was so excited to get my candy. Mint was my favorite. I could hear Grammy on the phone but even though I was only a few feet away in the bathroom I couldn't tell what she was saying. She and my mom both have this low, murmur of a voice mostly envied, only occaisionally irritatingly quiet. This normally would be one of those times but this sense of dread was coming over me and instead of being annoyed by not knowing what was going on I was sad because I knew what was going on. That's not when it changed, though, I went along with Grammy and pretended not to know. I went to Sunday school and it didn't really change until that moment on the stoop in front of the side doors of the church. Next to the new parking lot I received the news that my Grandpa had died and confirmation that I had dreamt an event before it happened.