Roberta Writes: Let’s Go to the Museum! Writing Challenge-Number One and Pairs for Cee’s CFFC challenge #poetry #photography

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Nightcaps, a shadorma prose poem

This piece is written for Kay Castaneda’s Let’s go to the Museum challenge. You can join in here: https://bookplaces.blog/lets-go-to-the-museum-writing-challenge-number-one/

When I was a young girl, and my sister, Catherine, was a very small girl, I wanted to be Laura Ingalls Wilder. As Cath was my primary playmate, this meant that she got to be Carrie and play Little House on the Prairie everyday with me.

Mom made us both dresses with high waists and fairly long skirts. We both had a pair of ankle books. What we lacked were bonnets and nightcaps. I solved the bonnet problem by converting my mom’s pageboy evening caps into bonnets with ribbons to tie them on. The nightcaps were a bit beyond my ingenuity and the dress-up materials I had available.

And so I did a very naughty thing. I told Mom that I need two nightcaps for a school play. I procured some material (quite unsuitable as it comprised of four triangles and thus two pieces had to be joined with a seam down the middle to make a square) and prevailed upon my mother to make me the nightcaps. Mom did this although she complained about the poor quality and design of the material. I got my nightcaps but they filled me with guilt. I never derived any pleasure from those nightcaps and I hardly ever used them. It certainly taught me a life lesson.

Two nightcaps

Lovingly handsewn

By a mom

Who trusted

Me, naughty and devious

Paid a price in guilt

Pairs

You can join in Cee’s challenge here: https://ceenphotography.com/2024/03/05/cffc-pairs/

TC and I among the Cosmos last year
A pair of while rhino – mom and baby
A pair of cheetah cubs – one is yawning
A pair of white rhino males
A lion and a lioness mating.
A pair of elephants swimming

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Published by robertawrites235681907

I am a writer of young adult fiction and poetry

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102 thoughts on “Roberta Writes: Let’s Go to the Museum! Writing Challenge-Number One and Pairs for Cee’s CFFC challenge #poetry #photography”

  4. I think as kids we all did a few things we felt guilty about later. I told my mom years later and she said it was all right and that she had done a few things like that when she was a girl. Moms are so forgiving. Your animal photos are amazing.

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  7. Love the photos – including you making an appearance. The elephants pic catches my eye – but the lions don’t seem to be happy with your untimely presence. Amazing the lessons learned as kids that we carry with us in life. Although I never played Little House on the Prairie, I had a crush on Melissa Gilbert.

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    1. HI VJ, it was very naughty of me. I still feel twinges of guilt about this. I was very imaginative, and mom always helped. She made me a red devil outfit and a fairy outfit, a Native American princess outfit and even a horse out of a broom stick.

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    1. HI Martina, the mating was a rather unusual sighting and I got amazing shots. Yes, I learned a hard lesson and never did something like that again. Instead, I learned how to sew my own creations. My sisters still remember the dresses I made for us.

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    1. Hi Donna, I suppose telling lies to get what you want as a child is not unusual. Hopefully, the guilt is also common 😊. I tried to speak to my mom about it once, but she didn’t remember making the night caps so it was to no avail.

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  26. A hard but important lesson to learn. Deception is never worth it in the end.
    And wonderful photos! As Dan said, seeing animals in their natural environment is very different than seeing them in a zoo.

    Also, thanks for the link to the challenge. I used to do Visual Verse once a month, but since they closed, I’ve been looking for another art-inspired prompt. (K)

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  29. I know how much you adore Little House on the Prairie and Laura Ingalls Wilder. You are such a good person, Robbie, no wonder you felt guilty using those nightcaps your mother made. I love all your pairs!

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  30. Hi Robbie – your childhood guilt is so well-described. I think we can all relate to those experiences. My youngest son and I read all the Little House books together. It took a few years to get through them – we read all the offshoots as well as the originals. How fun that you and your sister pretended to be the Ingalls girls.

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    1. Hi Barbara, I was always pretending to be someone. I went through a stage where my friend and I were the wives of the two men from Battle Star Galactica. We event had a wedding ceremony. I made us walkie talkies out of fruit juice boxes and we used the straws as ariels.

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  31. what a sweet relaxed photo of you & what charming hair barrettes. you’ve captured perfectly that age we must all have in childhood when we learn to lie — & the price of lying. shudders but so valuable… & also the lesson of letting things slide at some point, that we’re all wonderfully & pitifully human

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  35. I loved LHOTP both the book and the movie. Mom and I watched every episode together, I think. Laura Ingalls Wilder visited Mom’s grade school once. She was enamoured, as we all were. This post sent me down a rabbit hole reading comments about LHOTP on Google and on your blog. No wonder I don’t get to very many blogs to read each day! LOL

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  37. There are so many lovely things in this post, Robbie — from the gorgeous painting (the play of light and shadow is breathtaking), to your memory (I always pretended scenarios for myself that were “back in the days of long dresses”), to the terrific photos (the one of you and your husband is wonderful) to your very apt poem. Big hugs.

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  38. i love your poem Robbie and your memory of not really naughtiness more over enthusiasm…. But you leaned a life lesson a valuable one.

    your photos of pairs are as always marvelous 💜💜💜💜

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