Day 3 of 30: Just Ten Images

Today’s prompt is from the writer Ash Parsons, who is not only an avid journaler but an avid Isolation Journaler. It’s one of our all-time favorites—so simple, yet so evocative. It’s also evergreen, in that you can return to it at any time, as many times as you like—and there’s always something new to see.

—Suleika

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Self portrait Vincent Van Gogh by Timur Zagirov

Day 3. Just Ten Images by Ash Parsons

I spent my early years in a rural village in Zaire, Africa, in the 1980s, and when our family moved back to the United States, I didn’t fit in. Fortunately, my parents gave me my first diary, complete with a little gold lock and key, as a “welcome home to the home that doesn’t feel like home” gift. Lonely and confused about this new version of a village, I poured everything into those pages. I never missed a day, and each year I started a new one. Understanding my life by writing it down became a practice I carried into adulthood, married life, and motherhood. 

Then we adopted our third son. Zion was born three months premature and weighed two pounds. The first time I saw him, wires and tubes came from his body like octopus legs and the beeping alarms of the NICU screamed at me. But the sight of him gave me the same feeling as when I gave birth to my other two sons: It was like coming home. I spent the next six weeks holding Zion inside my shirt, skin to skin, watching him grow. Life as a NICU mom was all-consuming and not conducive to writing. There’s only so much you can do when you’re holding a fragile, football-sized human in your arms. 

So I started to make mental notes of images: 

• The scrub room at the NICU entrance, where I’d lather my hands at the wide metal basins, using my foot to control the faucet. 

• The flashing red number that signaled his oxygen saturations were dropping as he lay in his incubator, and how they came back up to normal as soon as I held him. 

• The way he furrowed his brow like an old man when he was hungry, pursed and wrinkled his lips as he gave out a little squawk. 

I carried these images in my mind’s back pocket and wrote them down when I got home. Without even realizing it, I was finding a way to write my life—even when I had “no time or energy to write.” 

Zion is nine now and life hasn’t gotten any less complicated. Mothering a critically ill child with disabilities is the most wild gift. It’s a life of surprises, delights, and never ending interruptions, and that’s just before breakfast. But writing is how I translate my life to myself. It’s my sense-maker. 

So in the middle of it all, I have embraced a writing life of Ten Images. That’s it, just ten. They range from the mundane to the exceptional—it doesn't matter. The value doesn’t lie in the image, but my attention to it. 

Your prompt for today:

Recall the last twenty-four hours, and observe the moments, mental pictures, scenes, or objects that pop up. Choose ten, and write them down.

One of my favorite things is going back through my “Ten Images” pages from the last year and seeing what I saw. No matter what is going on in the world, within or without, I know I can find a home in these pages.