The Birth of a Notion

 The Birth of a Notion

As I was thinking of what to write, two thoughts for the title and the direction for the subject were battling in my mind. The first title I thought to name it was “The Birth of a Nation” and I planned to share stories surrounding the birth of my three children. The initial thought was spurred by my post of our visit to Niagara Falls and the trip home. My wife Cindy Morrison Beck became nauseated as we drove home. Later as she tried to sleep, the images of electric poles sped past her like a picket fence and the nausea persisted. This was our introduction into pregnancy with our first daughter Amanda Beck Yoder. After Cindy’s symptom, I developed a craving for greasy hamburgers then and at each of her following pregnancies. With the last craving of a hamburger for our third child, Cindy said, “No need for me to go to the doctor. I’m pregnant” and she was.

The second idea that fits the chosen title of this piece was to introduce how an idea, phrase, or incident can set off a spark of creativity which eventually becomes the birth of a story, book, or poem. Many times I copy down a single thought and it stays on the paper for quite awhile. It was something I wanted to keep, but the words needed to finish it weren’t there yet. It was only the germ of a plot, a partial line of a poem, or sometimes it would find its way into a waste basket, rejected because I’d already written something similar or it wasn’t as good as my initial thought.

In my computer room, there are reams of paper with finished and unfinished manuscripts, partially written stories, and finished poems or Haiku that haven’t yet been entered into the computer. The stacks pile up, partly because of laziness on my part. I see the task and because I never took typing classes, I avoid it. I am a two, and at best a three fingered typist.

I did start to clean some of the clutter surrounding me and I found a check as payment for a book I sold. It was tucked into a Christmas card. The postmark was from a year ago. My bank was kind enough to cash it. I do hope my cousin Barb won’t be too mad that I took so long to redeem it. As you can see, even checks that haven’t been cashed can be an interesting notion to write about.