Post #110 – Women’s Memoir Writing, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
“What cha wanna do?” Niki asked as she stooped to pick up a long, white razor clam shell. It was empty and washed clean by waves, sun and sand. She forced the two shells at the hinge to break them apart.
We continued to walk along the shoreline, and I watched as my little sister pretended to shave the soft hairs on her thin, sun-bronzed arms with the single blade. “Hmmm. I don’t know.”
“I know,” said Dobie, an impish grin flashed from ear to ear as he raised his eyebrows in our characteristic Bonnett way, “let’s take a long walk off a short pier.”
I shot him a look and laughed: “Ha, ha. You got that one from my friend Jackie.”
It was the middle of summer. School had been out for more than a month. We’d swum, waterskied, sailed, fished and lazed away the days; we were ready for something different to do. We wanted excitement.
“Quack.”
“Quack, Quack.” The duck calls and sounds of flapping wings were coming from behind a large black-and-white granite boulder studded with pink quartz crystals—a landmark on our beach that Daddy said had been dropped by the glacier that had retreated from the Connecticut coast more than 20,000 years ago.
We ran around behind the rock and saw a male and female Mallard pecking a tiny duckling and beating it with their wings. Just two days before the proud mama had paraded her little brood across our yard. But now there was just one. We’d been told that the bluefish often grabbed a baby or two. Apparently this mother had lost all but one and didn’t want to be bothered raising it.
“Get away!” Niki said as she ran at the drake and waved her arms. I chased the mother. Dobie, only eight, hung back a bit. Neither parent tried to defend the duckling, and without even a “quack” of protest they were gone.
“Now what do we do?”
I’d never picked up a duck before, but without hesitating I scooped up the brown and yellow ball of downy fluff. I cradled her in my left hand and covered her with my right so she couldn’t fall. Niki and Dobie moved in close to look.
“We’ll raise her. I guess we’re the parents now,” I said.
“Peep, peep, peep.”
“But what will Mommy say? She’s not going to like this.”
“This will be fun. She’s so soft. Touch her.” They reached between my hands to touch the duckling. “Use just one finger,” I warned. “She’s pretty delicate. I wonder what we can feed her?”
“Peep, peep, peep.”
“I bet she eats worms,” my brother said.
“Ocean ducks don’t eat worms. Where are they going to get worms in the salt water?”
“Peep, peep, peep.”
“Mommy is going to be mad. She won’t let us have a duck.” This time Niki’s words registered. The three of us sat down on the warm rocks to work on a plan to get the duck into the house.
“Maybe we can just hide her in your closet.”
“Yeah, and how are we going to feed her and keep the closet clean?”
“I don’t think we should have taken her.”
“You saw what was happening. They were trying to kill her.”
“Who would want to kill her? She’s so cute.”
“Peep.”
“Well even Daddy goes duck hunting.”
“We’ll keep you safe, Little Duck…”
“But first we need to convince Mommy.”
…continued below…
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…Little Duck story continues…
Well, convincing Mommy didn’t prove as hard as we thought. We found her in her usual place…the kitchen…command central in our house. She was cooking dinner and had her back to us.
“M-O-M-M-Y?” She turned around to face three pairs of eyes staring at her…emploring. I said nothing more, just slowly drew my hand from behind my back and held the little duck up for her to see. And then the floodgates opened:
“You should have seen it, Mommy.”
“They were mean. They tried to kill her.”
“I scared away the father duck.”
“It was awful.”
“We had to save her.”
We were talking all at once, but Moo (as we called her with affection) was able to make enough sense of our words to get a general idea of what had happened. She walked over to the sink, put the drain stopper in place and turned on the cold water. When there were about 4 inches of water in the large, stainless steel sink, she turned off the water and nodded to me.
I held my hands over the water, straightened my left hand, my support hand, to serve as a duckling diving board. I released her with my right. The little duck stood up and jumped off my hand.
Splash! She hit the water paddling. Round and round she swam in big circles. With care, Niki put her hand in the water and brought it up under the duck and lifted her just above the water surface. Again the duckling stood and then dove back into the water. We were all laughing.
“What are you going to call your duckling?”
“Well…” I looked at Niki and then at Dobie. No one offered a name.
“You know, I think Dobie already named her. Back there on the beach. Little Duck. It’s perfect. I mean, she’s little and she’s a duck.”
And Little Duck it was.
“Now you need to figure out what to use for her nest…her home. She can’t sleep in your beds, and you need to give her a secure place where she’ll be safe and comfortable.”
“We can keep her?” Niki asked. “Yippee!”
“Thank you, Moo.”
“Let’s find a nest.”
“We’ll find something downstairs.” I scooped Little Duck out of the sink and headed for the basement steps. And then it happened. “Ewe. Ick.” Little Duck just went in my hand. It’s a wonder I didn’t drop her but instead I put her back into the sink, into the water, while I washed my hands.
Yes, that's Little Duck's head sticking out of Niki's tee shirt, and Dobie is peeking in from behind the chair.
“Niki, get an old hand towel from the bottom drawer.” Niki picked out a worn but serviceable brown hand towel and handed it to me. I picked up Little Duck again and carefully wrapped the towel around her. From then on, Little Duck remained wrapped in a towel whenever we held her for any length of time. And actually we learned something interesting. Perhaps you’ve heard that animals typically don’t foul their own nest. Well it’s true. As long as she was wrapped in the towel, Little Duck never had an accident. It was a very clean solution.
For the rest of the summer and through the fall, Little Duck was our constant companion. She became part of our flock…or maybe it was the other way around. Everywhere we walked, she followed—peeping all the way. We spoon fed her Rice Krispies and baby bananas, but she preferred to steal a bite out of a Hershey bar. She had the run of the house by day and slept in a makeshift, wooden crate at night. We taught her to fly; more importantly for getting around our house, we taught her to walk up stairs. She bathed with us in our parents’ big sunken tub…until the soapy water had so thoroughly purged her feathers of their natural oils she could barely stay afloat. Knowing that she’d eventually have to return to the wild, we stopped putting her in the bath water and allowed her feathers to regain their oils.
Little Duck went everywhere with us. She even went along on our two-week vacation to Lake Placid. There is a book in our story together, and someday I will write it.
As summer turned into fall, Little Duck transformed from a soft, downy ball of brown and yellow fluff into a gangly “teen” with huge wings and a good molt going on. But as her pin feathers came in, we witnessed her transformation into an adult female in beautiful, mottled shades of brown and beige. By October she looked like any other adult hen duck.
It was now late fall, and we all began to wonder: Was Little Duck going to stay with us or want to return to the wild? She was always free to fly whenever we played outside. She circled above us, but never made any effort to leave. For a while it seemed that she might choose to stay forever. So much so that we bought her Christmas stocking and filled it with Hershey bars. Then two weeks before Christmas, she suddenly knew it was time to go.
We’d gotten home from school and took Little Duck for a walk across the yard and down to our beach. Right in front of our eyes, she took off and flew out to Whale Rock, a massive piece of granite about 200 feet off shore that when exposed at low tide looked exactly like a great Blue Whale…only covered in rockweed. We were stunned.
“Little Duck, come back, come back. Come back and eat your candy bars. Little Duck, please.” We called and called. We could have been rehearsing the final scene from the movie Shane. The three of us stood on the seawall crying and calling. But nature proved stronger than her love for us, which our parents reminded us was exactly as it should be. Her natural instincts, not our desires, should rule. And just like that Little Duck was gone.
Gradually we accepted our loss and her freedom. Winter was hard, though, as every blast from a duck hunter’s shotgun reminded us that Little Duck might be dead…or worse, dinner. In the end, however, we were rewarded for giving her freedom. She came back in the spring with her own flock of ducklings. And she kept coming back for at least six years more.
How did we know it was Little Duck? She walked up stairs…exactly as we had taught her.
Telling our life stories — writing our memoirs is so important. Matilda and I can help. We have a special page that will give you all the details about our ONLINE workshop. Just click on this link to learn more about The [Essential] Women’s Memoir Writing Workshop. No hard sell, just lots of good information. And you can hear what some of our students say about the program. And NO shipping, No handling, and NO media fees.
And through tomorrow–Friday–you get a very LOW, introductory price. Make 2011 the year you get serious about writing and finishing your memoir.
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