journal prompt // who would you write a story about?

jane

i knew she was extraordinary. i could feel it--a past as deep and mysterious as the ocean. she wasn't secretive about it, but she also didn't share her story with me until we had known each other for a few years.

she fell in love in high school, with the one. she knew he was the one, but life happened after graduation: he left on a two year mission for the lds church, and she stayed behind. another man swept her off her feet, and eventually she wrote off the one and married the other. it took only hours of being married that she saw the red flags--he was impulsive and impatient. but they kept on.

baby 1. baby 2. she was pregnant with baby 3 when he went into a rage about something and hit her. she left, 2 and 1/2 babies with her. they separated. they divorced.

meanwhile, the first man (the one) had returned from his mission, married and divorced as well. he heard about her recent divorce, so he called. they started spending time together and easily they fell back into step. telling only a necessary few, they stole away to the courthouse one afternoon. it's been years since the day they got married, and the miracle of their story--lost love found again--has always stuck with me.

that's who i'd write a story about.

harley
my brother was born three months early due to CMV-- a tricky little virus that everyone gets over the course of their lifetime, but if a woman gets it while pregnant it can harm or even kill the baby.

what's scary is that most people don't know that it exists. my mother certainly didn't.

i was six when my parents were finally allowed to bring him home from the hospital. he was so small. he had been in the NICU for months. he was deaf. we had no idea what that would mean until much later. how naive we all were. at one point my mom thought he wasn't going to make it. she dressed him up in her favorite outfit and stopped by walmart to get his pictures taken for what she thought would be the last time.

next month he turns 18.

i would write a story about him-- the little miracle baby that changed my family forever.