The power of the writer – and the reader

I was going to write about a different topic this week, until about half an hour ago when I decided on a little light procrastination before settling down to the task in hand.  There are a few sites I go on every day to give myself a giggle – funny pictures, that sort of thing.  Nothing too taxing, but everyone likes a chuckle, amirite?

So I go onto Pinterest (because of course I do) and find a site called Factfully – a trivia site.  Whoop whoop!  Now I love me some facts.  I can tell you the most pointless, trivial, good-grief-Gabby-no-one-needs-to-know-that facts you’ll ever hear in your life.  Did you know that rats can’t vomit?  There, you can have that one for free.  Trivia is catnip to writers, so I clicked on the link and started to read.  I wasn’t expecting to cry.

Fact number one was this: 

One day your parents put you down and never picked you up again.

I paused for a second.  I hadn’t expected that.  It was true.  By definition it was a fact – a variable fact, a different truth for everyone but a truth nonetheless.  It certainly wasn’t your standard ‘there are more people alive today than in the whole history of the world’ type fact (which, by the way, isn’t true, although it is oft repeated.)  But I paused.  I thought about the Goblin, still asleep in his bed after yesterday’s busy evening of throwing peas at me.  The memory of the first time I held him sprang into my mind – tiny wee wrinkled thing.  Of all the times I carried him everywhere as a baby.  The way we’ve been encouraging him to walk more because he really can be quite lazy, and how he’ll stop and throw up his arms and ask for ‘big cuddles’.

I thought about the day that I would pick him up for the last time, and how neither of us would know it.

I thought about all the times I’ve asked him for a cuddle and he’s scooted off because he’s two and he’s busy doing everything and cuddles just slow him down.  I thought about the last time my mum or dad picked me up and realised that I had no idea when it was, other than it must have been a long long time ago.  I wondered if they missed me being a little girl.  Suddenly I wanted to feel them lift me up into the sky again.

And the tears welled up.  Thirteen words so carefully chosen that they tapped into my subconscious, exploiting a shared glitch in our emotions that we all can relate to, and they moved me profoundly.  A writer can do wonderful, terrifying things with just a handful of words but the reader can work miracles too.  They can take the slightest hint of description and from that populate an entire world.

Right now I want to pick up my little Goblin and tell him his mummy will love him forever.  I think I will.