When I Awoke to the Notion of Being a Writer

Last week I unpacked a box that had my very first short story, written when I was in sixth grade. My mother had kept it. She didn't keep everything each of the four of us did; she kept the things that stood out.  "Rita" was the name of the story, and there was a picture of a dark-skinned girl with long dark braids and clothes that were too big for her. When I read it, a memory flooded back with such pain, that I had to stop.

Then I marveled at what I had done, and I remember that this was the year I thought I would be a writer. My first poem was there, too.

Loneliness
The old man walked out of his shack.
Surveying land and sky
He smiled.
A lone eagle circled into view,
Wheeling and soaring with joy.
It dove out of view.
The old man stood still for a moment.
Scanning the sky again,
He sighed.

And sighing again, he walked in.
(1964)


I remembered our teacher had assigned us to write as many different poems as we could in two weeks, and to include them in a booklet of poetry we liked. I thumbed through and found I had written seven more, but they were mostly an exercise in learning how to use a Thesaurus.  My teacher had written "Oh, my Jeannette. This is special" below that poem. And Mom had written "It is, honey" under that. She must have written that when she stored it away with my short story.

"Rita" was about two little girls in third grade. Our heroine, Annie, had befriended Rita when she entered school in November, wearing a thin skirt and blouse. She had no coat. Annie helped her when other kids laughed at her, worked with her on spelling and reading. Rita had trouble speaking English because she was from Mexico. Annie helped her all year, and gave her some of her own hand-me-down winter clothes because Rita's parents didn't have money. Rita moves away at the end of the story, and Annie says, "I always missed her after that. It was the one year where I wasn't lonely."

I had gotten an A+ for the story. No one ever asked me how I came up with such uncharacteristically somber stories, or questioned whether I was sad or anything.  But that story struck home, and to this day I remember vividly the true story... Susan Hoyt was the new girl. And it was, in fact third grade.

***
She stood in front of the whole class that November day, with Mrs. E telling us we all should feel sorry for Susan because she had foster parents whom she would talk to and set straight about sending her in with proper clothes.

"Now, Susan lift up your head and for Heaven's sake, get your hair out of your face." She got a barrette out of her desk and, not particularly gently,  fastened Susan's bangs out of her face. So now, Susan not only had on a very large puff sleeved blouse untucked, with a skirt that had slid to her hips, but she also had a wing of uneven hair sticking straight out of the left side of her head. The class giggled, but stopped with one look from Mrs. E.

I swear Mrs. E could have stopped a police car in the middle of a chase with that look.

"You know how it goes. I need a buddy to stay with Susan for lunch. Someone she can get along with. Jeannette, you seem a good match."  Mrs. E did not like me, and not many kids did, either. I didn't fit in anywhere, but mostly it was okay. Except when she had weighed me on a cattle scale with G.  We were so big, she said, it's what we should be weighed on. In front of the whole class.

That had backfired, though, because three girls thought that was so mean, they actually started hanging out with me again. They had in first and second grades, but in third grade, when I got kind of big, and mostly I didn't have clothes like them sometimes, they stayed away. But not now. Now they remembered I'd been their friend before, and they would play with me sometimes. The only girl who never deserted me was Paige and she and I played lots of times.

Still, sometimes at school--well, I knew what it was like a little bit for Susan. I didn't really mind being her buddy.  That was the beginning of a relationship that stayed with me the rest of my life. Susan was from Kentucky and her English was very odd. She hesitated when she spoke, and kind of hunkered down when she talked to adults, like dogs do when they are not used to people. I got assigned to work with her for spelling, for reading, and for arithmetic. I think it mostly got me out of Mrs. E's sight and she liked that.

I know she didn't like me because even though I got good grades she always wrote things like, "Jeannette just doesn't seem to play with the girls properly. She plays with the boys, playing kick ball instead of jump rope."  or "Jeannette must remember she cannot be the leader for everything. She must learn her place." Huh???

My mother didn't care for the comments and told me not to pay attention to them and just be myself. That was okay by me.

So Susan and I would work in the back of the room for the last hour or hour and a half of every day. It kind of made me mad sometimes because that was when we had art or music, so we missed it. After a few weeks, though, something changed and I decided that Susan and I were sisters at the soul.

My mom and Paige's mom had put together winter clothes for Susan and they FIT. Her foster parents, which my mom told me were parents that the government assigned for children who were alone, did not buy her anything it looked like. And along the way, five moms sent lunches in with their kids, for Susan, one for each day of school. Susan took to smiling sometimes and she was kind of pretty. I was jealous of her thinness, but one day she told me SHE wished she wasn't so thin. She never said more than a sentence at a time. It was too scary, I guess, but I wasn't sure why.

Until one day.

We were working on a story about a big brother being mean to his little sister and how he had to learn to be nice. After the usual struggle to learn the words, I had Susan read it aloud one more time and she did it perfectly. At the end it said, "And Timmy gave the puppy, his very favorite puppy, to Mary and said, 'Here, I think you should have this one,' and was never a bully to her again."

Susan started to laugh a little. I looked up at her quickly. "He wouln' do thet." And she gave a short, bitter laugh. I said, under my breath, "no kidding." We looked at each other straight in the eyes for the first time, sort of wide-eyed, like deer, and we both laughed until Mrs. E told us to shush.

And I began to pay attention to her more. Things were easier between us and we would joke once in a while, even.  Kids stopped picking on her. They ignored her, but, as I told her, "That's way better than when they notice we're different, you know? First they get used to you, and don't worry, eventually most of them get nicer."

About two weeks after that first story, we were deep into arithmetic. I was trying to show her the fast way to understand how to know the answer to her 9 + table, when the door opened with that nearly silent motion of air that said someone was sneaking in. Susan and I both jumped and turned to the door at the same time. Susan dumped her book on the floor.

Our principle said, "Girls. It's just me, for  Heaven's sake. I didn't want to disturb the class, but I guess it didn't work."

Everyone laughed but us. That's when I knew it. Neither of us liked that sound, the barest click as the latch button went into its part of the door, and that minute when the air enters just before trouble. Susan looked down and she was shaking.

I wasn't shaking on the outside and I just said, "no, Susan, it's safe here." She looked up at me and smiled and I smiled back, but I was sad. Sadder than when she'd stood in front of the class. Sadder than when the kids had teased her on the playground and Paige and I had brought her over with us to play our imaginary dinosaurs game, far away from the crowd. Sadder than when I realized she never had lunch.

When I went home that day and up to my room, I saw that the pull lock I'd put there had been taken off again. I sighed and went to see how Mom was. She was in her chair, half asleep, the glass of golden liquid on her side table. Dinner would be inedible again. "Is Daddy coming home?" I asked.

"No. He's away on business again." Right. That accounted for her, although sometimes it seemed as if there was no accounting for Mom.

Jean Ellen was at college, so I had my room to myself. A couple of my friends would say how lucky I was because they had to share with their baby sisters. Lucky. I guess.

Jack was as sad as I was at dinner and we looked at each other, lost. Mom had burned dinner but we always had to eat it anyway because "food didn't grow on trees." I think that year it may have been starving kids in Biafra, but I am not sure. I managed to avoid going to bed for a whole half an hour past my bedtime, but bedtime came.

About an hour after I was in bed, eyes wide open, the tears filled my eyes and I wondered if Susan was thinking of me, too, as I heard the too-quiet sound of the door opening, and felt the air attack me just before Jim did.

***
Susan moved away that year. My mom told me that she had been put with other parents because she had been hurt in that house. She sputtered about how anyone could hurt a child, and I remember just getting up and walking away.

By summer of that year I had forgotten all about opening doors. My sister came home. And the following year, for some reason, I took to taking a steak knife to bed with me, but I had blocked out the why of it all. For a long time, that door did not open again unless I opened it.  Which was pretty much the case for my memories of that year at home. I remembered only what I chose.

And in sixth grade I poured out the harmless part of the memory, but kept the loneliness I felt that was visceral and always there. It truly was the time when I decided I simply had to write. I had to. And I never stopped.

What about you? 

Was there a pivotal moment you turned to your art to express something deep inside? Was it a sparklingly beautiful time? That would be wonderful to read about.  I do not assume one has to suffer to write or paint or sing or dance or ANYTHING. But it was my moment.

I don't jump at the too small sounds of life any more, though. For which I am grateful beyond all words.

The Next Reinvention

I was pouring coffee for one of my dearest friends the other morning. She stays over at my place sometimes to save herself a forty-five minute commute from her second shift job. Sometimes she stays over just because we're like a couple of teenage girls who want a sleepover so we can talk all night.


Regardless, I took the coffee to her and realized I had started to cry.  I had been thinking about the day ahead and it hit me; I don't have to do anything. My bills were paid; for the first time in years I was out of debt. There were no contractors to talk to, nothing to fix.  I had all the groceries I needed for another ten days.  The agony and terror of the week before was gone.  For ten days I had had trouble walking from my bedroom to the kitchen. I had shooting pains up my spine, down both the insides and outsides of my legs, as well as down my right arm; both feet were about 80% numb, so that I had to walk barefoot just to be able to feel them hit the floor--and with every hit to the floor there was pain.

I think those ten days were the farewell pitch of the previous two and a half years. The last hurrah of chaos, failing health, financial instability, emotional turmoil.

In that short walk from kitchen to the couch where Martha was sitting, all those things went racing around in my brain and, like a beautiful sunrise, two words rose from somewhere inside of me, from that life-feeding force some call God, 'gratitude' and 'hope.'

Often, I've mentioned my back.  I wrote very badly of the last dance with romance I had a couple of years ago. And I talk about the struggle to find my way to balance, to learn how to dance around the pain, in spite of the pain, in spite of the inability to even move my legs at times. I try not to touch too much on the terror.  When I want to write in my blog, I want to be exploring the "what's next" aspects, or the parts of my life that saved me; that kept the torture, the abuse from killing me figuratively or literally. It's those things I was given that saved me, not some sort of super human strength.

My strength is real human and fails me often enough.

We do not do it alone. If we rise like phoenixes, usually I truly believe it's that somewhere along the line we were offered examples of the rising. So I write of my mother's and father's graces more than where they hurt me. I rarely write at all of the brother who was so sick. I do not yet know how to handle that, or even whether to handle that. If I want to write the book, he has to be there, but until I know how to write of him with grace, a blog is not the venue.

And I want to write the book; I have already begun the book for real.

I tend to write when I have mostly processed, so that I am comfortable with exposing my heart--long after the fear and anger have left. At least, that's when I write my best. But these last two years have leaped in here anyway sometimes. How could they not?  And reading other people's blogs, looking at your artwork, marveling at your wisdom has helped me believe that I could still write, and reminded me that I should still write.  And paint. And sing.  That if I kept even sporadically returning to the page, either online or in my journals, one way or another the latest hell would leave.

Thursday morning, in the little act of pouring coffee for my friend, I realized I'd made it home again. A new home, true, but home nonetheless.

And for the fifth time in my adult life, I am reinventing my life.

The difference is that, for once, I am aware of the whole process as it is happening, not in retrospect. I am alive. I can still walk! I am in my new home and do not ever again have to deal with contractors, leaking roofs, bad septic systems, sewer hook ups, co owners who do not share the responsibility, tenants to evict, mold in the basement, and neighbors who sabbotage my livelihood. I am here, in a lovely apartment, with room for my studio. I have a studio again!

On that long coffee walk, I realized that all is well at last. I felt flooded with something overwhelming, as I realized that finally I really do not have to worry about a thing for now. Who gets that in their lives? Perhaps lots of people; I don't know. I simply know that it was a novelty in my adult life. For now, for at least a couple of years, I truly have all I need, to allow me the time to create a body of work and build my health back as far as I can, without really thinking about much else. I have no one I must take care of and no home for which I am responsible, and I have the money to care for my needs for probably MORE than two years.

Who gets that? I don't think a whole lot of people have that these days. So that flood of gratitude was real. It was mixed in with a relief or release that I have never known. I've never been in this position!

And I admit, this weekend I may just revel in it a little. I am safe. I am free.

And that's the thing I had not even dared to think, let alone write or say. I am free. Even now, as I write, the tears are beginning. I have never felt this way in all my adulthood. I remember approaching this one February morning. My dad was out of intensive care and my older brother (this is pre-memory of all he did to me) was going to survive the car accident he'd had the night of my dad's surgery. Dad had had a complication and Jim was in a coma and Mom was drunk. So my sister gave money to my other brother to drive to New Hampshire to give to Jim's family while he was in a coma, and everyone decided I should be the one to tell Dad that he was not expected to live! Yes, well. Imagine the scene with my mother slumped over, drunk in a chair in the corner. Daddy asking me if Mom was okay from all the stress, because, after all, she couldn't keep her eyes open.

"No, Dad, she's drunk. THAT is why she's asleep. She couldn't cope."

"Well, don't say it like that. She is just under too much pressure."

"Yes, right. Whatever. But, Dad, I gotta tell you something."

So that February morning, I was going to go to the hospital to tell Dad that Jim was okay AND that I had been accepted into Boston University's graduate school, to get my degree in adult education! I could not believe how great life suddenly was, and was marveling how everything could change in a matter of hours, when my foot hit black ice and I fell down six concrete stairs on my back. That was 1980, and my life changed in thirty seconds, let alone a few hours.  My first of nine operations was six months later.

Thirty-one years later, my spine is far worse, but I am far healthier in a dozen ways. I have lived several lives since that morning.

And now, at 59 years old, I am starting yet another. I haven't any idea where this new one will lead, or whether the goals and dreams I have now for it will come to fruition or change along the way. I know only that Thursday morning something inside awakened the phoenix yet again. The last two years have been two of the most difficult I have ever known, but they have also been two of the richest as well.

I know I am loved; when I do not believe in myself, there are all these women who do it for me, giving me the chance to heal, to rest, to revive.  I know that I am safe; I know I have all I need. I am lucky beyond belief in such a time of uncertainty for so many, to know that I will be okay for at least a few years now.

The rest is up to me, isn't it. No one can reinvent my life for me, and I don't want someone to. I did not spill the coffee, even. I sat on the other couch, looked at Martha and said, "I'm free. I really am free."

She just smiled and said, "Welcome home."

The slayer of Monsters Under My Bed

It was the fifties and early sixties, and, well, let's face it: most dads were not hyper-involved in the child-rearing. "Wait 'til I tell your father" or "Wait 'til your father gets home" were really the main references to dads by my friends' mothers.  On the other hand, my friends' dads took them on family picnics and family outings on the Mohawk Trail or to the Big E (Springfield Mass's agricultural regional fair--a HUGE deal for people who lived within an hour and a half of the place). My dad?

"Gawd, I hate togetherness."

Yeah, but he also taught us to play tennis and never seemed to lose his temper. He built us little cars in the sand. Launched us from his shoulders into the Lake. He did more than his share of one-on-one things. Plus, I could sit in his lap when I was little, nestling into his chest and feel the gentlest hands in the world stroke my neck and shoulders. That was the thing. His voice scared me, it was so deep and rumbly, sometimes. But my daddy never harmed a hair on my head. If anything he touched me more as if I were some little miracle that might break.

He also was the one who came for every nightmare, telling us to chase those monsters away. "Tell 'em, 'BOO, Go away!' and it works every time. Under-the-bed monsters are well-known to be cowards. Otherwise, why would they wait until dark and only scare children?"

It worked!

And if the fear was nameless, he simply took me in his arms and stroked my hair and said, so very softly, "I'm here, Jetty. It's okay. You are home. I'm here."

And when he did bother to be home, he was very much there. It was just that he was away "on business" too much for a man who worked for the State. Somewhere far too young, I registered what sort of business he was away on. But, naturally, we did not speak of it with Mom, just among ourselves.


The thing is, though, my dad slayed the daymare monsters, too. For me, that monster was the "poor house." On several mornings, because I got up so early and would catch them enjoying breakfast alone, I heard them fighting about money before they knew I was there. One time it was really bad, and Mom said, "Jim, you can't drive us to the poor house! We can't live like this! I'm TIRED OF THIS, living from month to month, one disaster away from ruined! I can't." She was crying.

I walked in and simply looked at them, not knowing what to do. I was about six and had gotten up before my sister, even, who was in high school. (I loved how quiet it was first thing in the morning. I had Mommy and Daddy all to myself. Of course, I didn't think then that they would be anything other than thrilled to have me crash their only alone time!)

To make my long story longer, Daddy spoke first. "Well, snigglefritz, it's not as bad as it sounds." He sort of smiled, but his eyes didn't. And Mommy was standing at the sink.

"Where are you driving us Daddy? What's a poor house? I like my house!" I was worried.

"Your mother was using a figure of speech. You know what that is, right?"

"Words that don't mean what they sound like."

Dad shrugged and went on. "It was a grown up discussion, honey, and sometimes we just lose our tempers a little. You do that, too."

I wasn't convinced and a particular tendency I had when I felt someone was lying to me popped up. I tilted my head and looked angry at my father. "What is a poor house, Daddy, and why is Mommy crying?"

He smiled for real, which made me mad. He always did that when I was mad at him. "Daddy, it's NOT FUNNY!" I wanted to cry. The kitchen felt like the air pieces were bashing into each other.

"Honey, it's okay. Really. Tell you what. You know how I stay in the den every Saturday morning for a couple of hours with my yellow paper?"

I nodded because a couple of times I'd crept in, just to sit in his chair and be quiet. He'd let me, but I could see him writing numbers with a pencil, long columns of numbers, with words next to them. I could not read the words because he did not print. All of us could read before school because, well, I don't know. We just sort of knew how to, the way you learn how to walk or something. I had been in trouble at school in Miss Clafflin's class because I found Dick, Jane and Sally boring and said so. My friends did, too, but they knew enough to shut up.

Anyway, my dad told me he would show me what the numbers were for, so I wouldn't have to worry. Daddy always kept his word.

I still was scared, though, when he called me into the den and he had a high stool next to his desk chair, and all those papers spread out. He talked to me about numbers first, telling me to look at the farthest left number and then count how many numbers there were up to the period. "Daddy, that's a decimal point. It's only a period with letters."

He started. "How did you know that?"

"Mommy taught me."

"Then you can tell which are the biggest numbers?"

I was insulted. "Of COURSE. I am NOT a baby." Right. After all, I was in first grade now. I had projects to do for school, like the others. I could add and subtract. I knew a LOT, I informed him.

"Pardon me, snigglefritz. My mistake." He went over what the numbers meant, so much for clothes, for food, for the lights, for something called a mortgage. All of it. And when he added them up, it said how much was spent in a whole month. Then we had other figures for his income. Just two though, and they were the same. That meant he had that much money to spend.

Well, he said it was a great thing when the two figures together were bigger than all those other numbers added together.

"But they aren't, Daddy. Not this month."

"Aha, but here's what we do, Jetty." And he showed me other months, when sometimes he had more money at the end of the month, because they didn't spend it. And he could add it on. And he talked about something called credit and interest and things I really didn't get. What I did get was that he wasn't worried. That the numbers always worked in the end, and he would never ever drive me anywhere away from home where I couldn't come back again. Ever.

"There isn't a poor house?"

"No, honey. And it would be nice if the figures could match up every month, but sometimes they just don't. But that's how lots of people have to do it. And plenty of times the numbers are just fine. You can ask to look at the numbers any time and I'll show you. That's the best way not to be scared. Just know as much as you can."

For the rest of that year I asked every couple of weeks, and he started showing me how he did his taxes and that all the numbers for a whole year went onto the white papers and he had to pay those things called taxes. By about third grade, I rarely asked, but still went over the taxes, just to be sure.

It calmed me down because this was a persistent daymare for our family. Mom and Dad frequently forgot I was around and fought about that poor house a good bit. No matter what, though, Dad fought off that dragon of poverty and he allowed me to understand the fight. I was insistent on seeing those taxes again  sixth grade, when my sister and brother were BOTH in school, and the fights were building weekly.  He was weary of the battle, and this time he was a little scared.

"Well, this year's harder, honey, but we'll be okay. The numbers are a little worse than you're used to, but I think I've got it covered, and your sister's got a job at school, so I think..." But his voice trailed off, and I saw the worry in his eyes.

... until I chased it away with a sudden, "Dad! LOOK! You added wrong. REALLY wrong, right here!" He didn't have an adding machine. We all did math the long way. I was right. "And it makes the numbers look WAY better!"


"Good Gawd, you're right."  He stood up suddenly, marched to his big chair, pulling me with him, and plopped me onto his lap, though I was a tad large for that. I didn't care. All he said was, with tears making his eyes shine, "Who's slaying the monster under the bed this time, snigglefritz? Thank you."

I breathed in the Old Spice of him and I was small again, and safe. I suddenly laughed and sat up and went, "Boo! Go away!'

And ran off to play football down by the church.

In Praise of Pluots and Other Sins--revisited

 This was published in September, 2009. I just had one for lunch and decided to republish it. They STILL drip down my chin and make me smile.
 ******

I just ate a pluot and I don't care if it's not green of me. I do not care if they are a cross breed conceived in the furthest point of Australia, flown by six jets and trucked by an eighteen-wheeler cross country to get to my highly air-conditioned energy guzzling super store.

I tell you I don't care. I just ate a pluot and the juice dripped down my chin and onto my forearms. I had to eat it over the sink and I savored every wonderful slurpy, sensual, sweet, magnificent bite. My arms are sticky and I do not care to wash off the scent. It isn't pretty, this product of someone's fertile mind. Whoever invented the pluot knows about eating ripe peaches. Whoever conceived that the best of a plum and an apricot would create this speckled gem knew something of the goopy, marvelous mess of unbridled sex.

I just ate a pluot and my day got sunny.

I did. I ate a crossbreed, a fake fruit. I don't know whether or not it's organic. I don't know now whether they grow on their own. Under the spreading pluot tree, the couple...

Never mind. They waited, forgetting their passion, praying the fruit would drop.

Pluots are like the juiciest red plum you ever let ripen on your window sill... with a kick.

Sometimes I really don't care what happened to whom in my past, or did what to me; and I really do not care whether tomorrow I get up and fall down. Sometimes I just have to savor the moment with abandon.

I just ate a pluot. Even the name's a kick. May your weekends hold moments like this.