Growing is Forever

Eyes Wide Open: First Memory

I am in preschool and my first boyfriend is Craig.  Later, I heard he became a druggie, but at three and a half, with a blonde floppy bowl cut, he is the dreamiest boy at Fair Oaks Parent Participation Co-Op Preschool.  

This is my first set of memories: We play house together.  Debbie and Paul, my best friend and her curly brown-haired boyfriend pretend they are the auntie and uncle and Craig and I are the mommy and daddy of the baby dolls we push in toy strollers and shopping cars along the cemented paths outside the house converted into a school.  We pass the weird kid who sang and cried and talked to himself as he sat alone in a wagon underneath the huge smiling rainbow painted on the side of the house.  He was one of the only boys who did not have a girlfriend, though he preferred to play with mostly girls. 

            One day Craig pushes me on the swings and tells me he likes my socks. They have turquoise cotton balls sewn on to the back of the ankle that peek out the top of the back of my shoes. I’m sure the rest of my outfit is perfectly pressed in turquoise and white knowing how my young mother loves to shop and dress me in only the best Izod preschool attire, charging up her credit cards to balances she and my dad will be paying well into my teen years.

Student Voices

I am always amazed by the quality of conversation when I give the floor to my students to take over.  Today in class, our discussion of Lucy Grealy's "Mirrorings" was incredible.  So many supported their thoughts by referring back to the text.  We questioned each other respectfully, we agreed, we disagreed, and we sought to understand.  I was most intrigued by the conversation about the "quest to be deep," and valued the openness and honesty that came out of the conversation. I want to thank Sarah for sharing something that was very difficult and the class for offering her a safety zone to say the things she was feeling.

Tonight, my friends, write write write your autobiography of YOUR face.

Autobiography of a Face

Today's reading was a challenge for some.  Some were challenged because I simply asked them to read during 4th period.  But for others the challenge came from the content.  I started with a piece that cut right through the fluff and hit a lot of what it means to be human.  We all fear.  We all hurt.  We all need to belong.  We all need to feel loved.  I look forward to hearing how each of you respond to this piece.  If you're interested in reading about Lucy Grealy through the eyes of her best friend, check out this.  If you still want more, I encourage you to get your hands on Autobiography of a Face, Grealy's memoir.  Follow it up with her best friend's memoir about their friendship, Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett.

On Gratitude

There are lots of reasons to be grateful everyday.  At this moment, I am grateful for the sun, my cute shoes, forgiveness, grace, and my students.  I'm pretty sure I'm the luckiest girl in the world today.

CNF: A Love Story

The Days of Miracle and Wonder

These are the days of miracle and wonder
This is the long distance call
The way the camera follows us in slo-mo
The way we look to us all
The way we look to a distant constellation that is dying in the corner of the sky
These are the days of miracle and wonder and
Don't cry baby, don't cry don't cry don't cry.

--From "Boy in the Bubble" by Paul Simon

Why I Write

There is a point at which every writer should ask herself, “Why do I write?” This point came when I first applied to Antioch University’s MFA program.  I sat down to write my admissions essay.  I took three stabs at it before I read what I had to my husband.  He said it was well written but that it was bullsh*t.

            “Where’s the honesty?” he said.  “Why should Antioch accept you based on this?  You’re basically begging for them to accept you.  You do that sometimes in conversation too.  You don’t have to be clever, you know.  What is your background as a writer? Just write what’s real.”

            Well, that sure shook me because I know he was right.  So I started for a fourth time.  I needed help.  I remember that day well:

***

 I call the only person I know who could help me flesh this out for myself. 

            “Mom?  Do you think I’m a big faker?  Like, maybe I’m not really a writer,” I say.

            “Honey.  You’ve always been a writer.  You never wanted to play with dolls like your sister.  You always wanted new pens and tablets from the time you could choose.”

            “But how much of that do you think that was me wanting to write, and not you or Nuna projecting your own hobbies onto me?”

            My mom calmly says, “‘[T]he lover creates the beloved.’  Anthony De Mello said that.  We loved writing and we loved you and you loved us and you loved writing.”

            I feel connected to her through the phone, like we are on opposite ends of a quilt, sewn by the women of our family, coming together with our sides to fold it up, nice and neat and manageable.  She goes into a long history of how my grandmother, my Nuna, the first born of an immigrant family was a naturally gifted child.  She had to translate for her parents the second she started school.  She was embarrassed and grew resentful.  She was hungry for what her parents could not provide, which, my mother explains, is very unhealthy for a child since children need to always feel secure.  She says that the English language was like gold to my Nuna and the San Francisco Public Library became her personal bank with unlimited reserves.  She says only a person who is starved can truly appreciate the flavor of food and my Nuna was starved for literacy.  She quickly became “the smart one” of her Maltese community—the go-to girl for all the neighborhood adults who fumbled their way through their first years in the country, irresponsibly though, with no other choice but to rely on a six year-old for American answers.  With words as her form of power and escape, she valued reading and writing immensely, passing that love down to us.

            My mom and I continue. She reminds me that I won a writing contest in the first grade because I used dialogue, which, in turn, got me recommended to the school district’s gifted program.  That’s where I learned to be a people pleaser—to say what I knew people wanted to hear.  I even had a job in public relations telling communities what they wanted to hear about their drinking water not being contaminated enough to the point of danger.  My mother gives me the advice my husband gave me yesterday, “Write what you’re afraid of saying.  Don’t think about what they’re going to want to hear.” And with that, I hang up.

***

            At that time I was afraid I’d be found out that I was not really a writer.  My mostly happy childhood, my mostly suburban lifestyle, my happy marriage, my great career, my loving family made me unlike all the writers I knew who seemed to be intriguing just by existing.  What could a mostly “normal” woman in her twenties feel she so desperately needs to write if she didn’t have abuse, addiction or some other equally traumatic experience to pull from? I turn for advice to Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones.  She tells me, like my mother, to not be afraid or listen to my doubt.  She says, “You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.”  I read that passage over and over and I determine why it is I write. 

I write because I believe in beauty and the remarkable world that others find ordinary.  I write because I love words: how they look on the page, in crazy fonts, waiting to be read or stuck together in unique unions by their users.  I write because I have stuff to say.  Most of it sucks.  But every now and then a line pops out of me that I love and I’m satisfied.  I write because I’m smart and most things come easily for me, but writing is hard and a challenge and keeps me interested and frustrated and excited.  When I’m at my best, I find my truth in writing as if I’m Adam in Michelangelo’s masterpiece and God is reaching down with his pointer finger, infusing energy into my life.

            And yet, sometimes there is a setting concrete fear that this desire still isn’t good enough. Sometimes I feel the need to tell people I’ve published in magazines and this might grant me forgiveness for my shortcomings.  I worry that if I admit that I have a self-imposed time frame to publish something big, whatever that means, before I conceive children because my biological clock is ticking against my career, I won’t be taken seriously as a writer.  But I am serious.  I dream of publishing a memoir so that others can read the beautiful family histories that have been orally passed down to me.  I want to teach at  because in teaching we learn and I can better cultivate my craft and help others do the same. 

I want capture all I can, to wrestle with the words floating in my head and stamp them on the page for posterity.  I want my children to know who they are is shaped by who they came from.

***

              I call my mom back. “I’m think I may be on to something,” I say.

            “Of course you are,” she says.  “You’ve always been a writer.”

            I smile, hang up and get back to work.