Breakfast With Kelly

Our adult daughter Kelly moved into her own house last April. Since then she and I have meet nearly every Sunday morning at a Dunkin Donuts shop about halfway between our homes for breakfast. It's nice to have some quiet Mom/Daughter time with her. We both have such busy lives. We have breakfast, talk about this and that, and then go our separate ways to run errands, return to our own homes, and later she usually joins her father and me for dinner in the evening. It keeps us connected as a family.

This morning talk turned from finding the source of the problem with one of the cars at the trolley museum where she volunteers in the Maintenance and Repair of the fleet department to writing. She has been busy editing her NaNo novel which I am anxious to read. She's found a place where she wants to add a little more to the story, but overall she's satisfied with what she's written.

I have a new novel in the development stage. It's all been cerebral up to this point, where I'll wake up in the morning and spend a few minutes thinking about what I want to write, potential character names and settings, the story plot... I flew the basic idea by her this morning and she liked it, so I jotted down some notes this morning when I got home and started coming up with additional character names.

Also at breakfast we discussed a never-ending adventure story I'd begun writing for her when she was in first grade. At that age she was prone to frequent bouts of bronchitis and was often home sick. We had a twin bed in the den and she would nap while I typed on an electric typewriter borrowed from my mother. When she woke up I'd read her the new section or sections of the story. We got to the point of the main character's first quest during that year. Kelly outgrew the bouts of bronchitis and the story got set aside. New stories were written to entertain her, but the never-ending story that was never finished still disappoints us. She even went so far as to type the typewriter pages into Word on the computer when she was in middle and high school. Still, Mom has failed to continue the story, however, the main character did appear in a partial magical fantasy story which connects to the original story in the future. So, at breakfast this morning we were talking about working on this story at some point in the near future.

We also have a story we were working on together around four or five years ago while on vacation. Once we got home and back to work life got busy and the story fell by the wayside. We need to continue that as well and get that joint project done.

Lots to accomplish this year!