|Places|

Cassidy Harris
Feb 3, 2021
4 min read

I have always found myself to be someone who hates change. The attachment I tend to grow with everything is almost indescribable. It is like the feeling you get when you leave your childhood home for the last time or when you get in your car to leave high school one last time in a cap and gown. The feeling leaves a pit in my stomach because of how much I instantly begin to miss the places I leave and the memories they hold. As Winnie the Pooh once wisely said, “How lucky am I to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.” That is how I feel about places I have had to say goodbye to, but how lucky I am to have the memories.

This week I have really been thinking about how blessed I must be to have places to miss. And love. I recently read Layla’s Happiness, written by Mariahadessa Ekere Tallie and illustrated by Ashleigh Corrin, which is about a seven year old girl describing what she believes defines her happiness. This book has really stuck with me because her thoughts of happiness are not concrete, but so extraordinarily complex. This seven year old girl made me reflect upon how I would define happiness, which, in my opinion, can sometimes get hard to come up with during a global pandemic. So I became intentional about being observant. In the book Mentor Texts by Lynne R. Dorfman and Rose Cappelli, they describe using mentor texts as a means to spark inspiration of what to write about. In one example, students read Sharon Dennis Wyeth’s Something Beautiful, and students were inspired to write about one of their “something beautifuls.” Layla’s happiness inspired me to write about places that make me happy and the memories within these places that bring me that happiness.

Here is a list of my places I wrote down that have played a part in my happiness:

I wrote this list, inspired by Dorfman and Cappelli’s writer’s café, in a place where I could really absorb my surroundings: my family home in Ohio. After finishing up my list of thoughts, I realized many of the places I thought of were from my past. It is difficult to come up with places of happiness as of late… I have felt pretty stuck for about a year now! But that is what memories are for, to remind us of the places that have brought us happiness.

I was tasked this week to write a “Where I’m From Poem.” If you have never heard of this structure, it is inspired by the poem, “Where I’m From,” composed by George Elle Lyon. This poem was one of the first I interacted with when diving into the world of creative writing. The warmth this poem brings is invaluable, truly a work of art. I wrote my own poem modeling this structure in the spring of 2019. It was one of the first pieces I felt proud of, but I feel like I have grown so much in these last few years that my thoughts and words have changed. I realized that Layla describes where she is from by the places, people, and activities she interacts with, and those things were her happiness. So, my question to myself was, what is your happiness, Cassidy?

I took my list of happy places and began to write my 2021 version of my “Where I’m From” poem. This is how it went:

Preface: I will type my writing to save you from the atrocious scribbles and eraser marks within my writers notebook.

Where I'm From, 2021

I am from the farm

From yellow brick trail rides

To Kiwi Saddle Soap

And Dean gazing into the sun falling pasture

I am from Blue and Gold

From the mall on Friday nights

To wheezing giggles in the passenger seat of mom’s car

And dreams to great to fathom

I am from guitar strings strummed by aging fingers

From Conn’s potato chips and Wendy’s Frosties

To puzzles

And The Price is Right

I am from the dining room table

Where Dado bought arts and crafts

To crying with Nana over seventh grade science

And memorizing every United States President for AP Government

I am from the sky

Where airplanes fly like Waterfowl in September

To New York City

And Charleston

I am from Home

Where Mom and I dance to Sugarland

To the smell of our wood burning fireplace throughout each room

And Caden’s head peeking around the corner

Where little footsteps break the cool silence of morning

To bedroom chats about life, happiness, and everything in between

And unconditionally loving each other

I am from laughter

Trials

Strength

Simplicity

Adventure

And being together.

At the end of my writing venture, I witnessed my true attachment to places and moments these places hold. Amy Krouse Rosenthal hinted in her book, Textbook Amy Krouse Rosenthal, about the idea of having ups and downs. However, these instances of ups and downs become our strongest memories. One of Amy’s downs was forgetting to give her friends pillows when they stayed at her and her husband's home, but the memory is still filled with laughter. This journey has reassured me that my happiness is closely related to places that hold my most beautiful memories.

I am so eager to see new places. Experience new places. Love new places.

In the Classroom:

The writing process is so complex and dependent upon the writer. However, I think using a text to frame a writing assignment is beneficial for students, especially those like me who sometimes struggle to figure out what to write about. Using a mentor text, like Layla’s Happiness, is a great way to spark ideas as to what to write about.

In this post, I discussed the process of writing in producing my “Where I’m From” poem. I also wrote a different piece that discussed what happiness was to me, which was also inspired by Layla’s Happiness. Both templates can be used in the classroom for students to explore themselves as people and writers.

We are all writers, and using texts to inspire our writing connects us to unknown people and places. It sparks curiosity, wonder, and excitement.