Rebeccalou: This Writer’s Life

Every night at dinner, before the first bite goes into anyone’s mouth, each of us names something we’re thankful for. It’s our version of grace. We started the practice a few years ago. Unlike the idea that the one who drinks the last of the milk carries the empty carton to the milk box, this one stuck.

On a recent evening, Tess goes first.

“I’m thankful that ‘Spring Awakening’ is coming to Denver.” An 8th grade theatre major at Denver School of the Arts, Tess aspires to be a professional actress some day and if that doesn’t happen, a crime scene investigator, an orthodontist or a lawyer. In that order.

“I’m thankful for another hairdresser,” says Tony, “even though today was her first day and she won’t be back until the end of October.” With the addition of a very pregnant Erin, Tonto Salon is officially at capacity since Tony opened the business in July 2007. Hallelujah. One by one they come.

“I’m thankful I could go 25 miles an hour on my bike,” Pierce says, breaking into a grin. He and his dad rode home together after work, Pierce on the bike and Tony on the scooter. “I had no idea I could go that fast.” Son against father, side by side.

“I will be thankful when Wednesday is over,” Ali types.  She’s “nervous but mostly excited” about her arrangements for the Physically Handicapped Actors & Musical Artists League to do a performance at her alma mater next week. 

That leaves me. “I’m thankful for courage.”

From across the table, Tony cocks his head, waiting for more but the fifth and final voice signals the start of the meal. The kids know they are free to help themselves. Besides, we’re all starving.

I slice a chicken breast in half and cut the meat into bite-size cubes for Ali. “These could be the last of the summer,” I comment as the bowl of roasted green beans comes my way. No one nibbles on courage. 

We try a few topics before landing on Tess’s struggle with algebra and a first-year ex-bassoonist math teacher who’s passing out D’s and F’s like hall passes to the restroom. “We’re all failing,” says Tess. Tony and I listen to her explanation for why last week’s D has dropped to an F, trying to distill substance from the “likes” and “totally’s” in the lingo of a 13-year-old female in modern America.

What about courage?

It’s here, in the lives of the people who sit with me at the dinner table every night, who love my cooking, clean their plates and balk at nothing I put before them. 

Courage to admit her first failing grade, ever, to the people she most wants to please. Courage to deflect the sarcasm of a teacher she doesn’t like and protect her tender, strong-as-an-ox adolescent heart.

Courage to start a business and to work seven days a week for a year to get it on its feet. To create the space, hire the employees, find the hairdressers, keep his clients happy, do the paperwork, let some people go and welcome others. 

Courage to pedal as fast as he can, to hang in and not wimp out on the hill at Forest, heart pounding in his young man’s chest, showing his dad and proving to himself that he can power his muscles on the straightaway to go as fast as the motor in a 50 cc Kymco Sting.

Courage to talk with the principal of her former high school about a troop of actors with disabilities, some like hers. This talking happens on a sophisticated device with a digitized voice. Her brand of courage makes people sit up straight and abandon their excuses, forgive themselves their shortcomings and believe that so much more is possible.

And I who uttered the word? 

Writing takes courage. Sticking with it, creating the opening that allows the work to happen. Courage to get out of bed at 5:30 and sit with a cup of hot tea, notebook open, hand moving, ready to receive. And when nothing but dribble comes, courage to do it again the next day.

Courage: the quality of mind or spirit that enables a person to face difficulty, danger, pain, etc., without fear; bravery.

Pass the last of those roasted green beans, please.

I want to be good. At writing. This is a problem. Writing doesn’t come from wanting. Wanting is crazy making. Wanting is watching each demon strut across the computer screen, wag her cocky tail and pee in the corner.

In the mid ‘90s I took a writing workshop in Vancouver from a teacher I had worked with in New Mexico. I was between jobs at the time and thought a lot about trying to earn a living as a writer. The teacher and I went for dinner one night at a diner in the neighborhood. I wanted to pick Joan’s brain about writing. Mostly I wanted to hear her tell me it was a great idea, that I could do it. In my fantasy I had hatched a plan: I write for awhile, get a few things published, and wah-lah, I’m discovered. Isn’t that what happens? Ya, right. 

So Joan and I are talking and when she hears the part about writing for a living, she sets down her fork and carefully swallows what’s in her mouth. Thinking about it now, I’m grateful she didn’t spew her half-chewed food across the table. Joan is a calm person with a kind soul. She’s a poet, and a good listener. I remember she rested her elbows on the table, folded her hands and said, “Just don’t try to be good. You already are.”

I flew back to Denver on cloud nine, chasing the tail of a dream. I started a new routine. I’d get Ali off to kindergarten, bike to the Newsstand Cafe on Washington, buy my coffee, sit at the counter facing Sixth Avenue, and write. Hemingway said writing amounts to putting down one good word after another. Anyone who’s tried it knows how hard it can be to find a good word.

What I figured out as the weeks went by and the angst set in is that Joan was talking about the grip of wanting. Wanting to be a writer. Wanting to be published. Trying too hard. Trying, like wanting, is a function of the ego. Trying has nothing to do with producing a decent sentence. Writing is what happens when we get out of the way. Trying in the creative sense is like gunning the engine when you’re stuck in snow. The tires spin but you go nowhere.

I start a fresh page and three lines later, the crow is on my shoulder: OK, write something brilliant. This better be good. What do you have to say anyway, and who’s going to read it? This is shit. You and I both know it. You might as well put down the pen and save the trees.

I write four more lines, read them, and draw a large X over the paragraph. I remind myself there is no gun to my head. I have made this choice. I am the crazy one. And then I remember the first line of a poem by Mary Oliver: You do not have to be good. It’s a gem. Let’s end with her words instead of mine.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

For a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.

Meanwhile the world goes on.

Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain

are moving across the landscapes,

over the prairies and the deep trees,

the mountains and the rivers.

Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,

are heading home again.

Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,

the world offers itself to your imagination,

calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting-

over and over announcing your place

in the family of things.

                                      — Mary Oliver

Two friends and I have just started a writer’s group. We kicked it off this morning at Patricia’s house. Karla brought bagels, goat cheese, hard boiled eggs, avocado and fresh peaches. I brought a Tazo tea bag and a notebook. We’re reading Natalie Goldberg’s new book on memoir, Old Friends from Far Away, and Christina Baldwin’s Storycatcher. The group was Patricia’s idea. She came with a writing exercise.

Write 13 things about your mother. Go for 15 minutes.

1.  My mother was born on Christmas Eve. Her 3-year-old brother died less than 24 hours later, on Christmas Day, 1928. Hello and goodbye. In a flash.

2.  My mother was the daughter of a tall, lean, good-looking dairy farmer of German descent and a college-educated pianist born on the 4th of July, 1900. When my grandmother was born, her parents were concerned about offending the relatives so they gave their daughter 7 names, one for every aunt. “Tell me grandma’s names again,” I would beg my mom as a child. Today I can only remember four. Eva Marie Louise Lorraine… My mother’s middle name was Lorraine. I got Louise.

3.  My mother was 5 ft 11 inches tall when she stood up straight and wore size 11.5 shoes, with a AAAA heel. She had a terrible time buying shoes. “Why do they think long feet are also fat feet,” she’d say as we left another store empty handed. When she found a pair that fit, my mother would buy them in black, brown and tan. “I have no idea when I’ll find another pair that fits this well,” she’d say, lest I misinterpret a practical decision as extravagant.

4. My mother died of breast cancer that had metastasized to her bones and gone into the spinal fluid. The cells circulated throughout her brain, attaching to one function after another. On a Friday morning near the end, in a brief interval of lucidity just after the sun came up, she turned to me and said, “I feel like I’m going crazy.” Except for the three months before her death, she was the sanest person I knew.

5.  My mother couldn’t swim. When we kids went swimming in a lake, she would pace in the sand onshore, hollering for us not to go out so far. “You know I can’t get to you,” she’d say. She was always more afraid than we were.

6.  My mother hated feeling helpless. She hated losing control. She really hated it when my father lost control.

7.  My mother was the only girl in her family, and the oldest. I am the only girl in my family, and the oldest.

8.  My mother was known for her ability to calm fussy, crying babies. Before her double mastectomy, she had large, cushiony breasts that my father and all children loved.

9.  When I was a teenager I asked my mother why she loved to clean. “I like things in their place,” she said. “My mind is quieter when things are orderly.” I’m the same way.

10. My mother had asthma and respiratory allergies that acted up when she spent time outdoors, so she mostly stayed inside. My favorite things happen outside. In that way we are different.

11. I have my mother’s long legs, high cheekbones and warm hazel eyes, her stubborn cowlicks, quirky eyebrows and slightly crooked mouth.

12.  My mother didn’t ride a bike or play tennis or hike in the mountains but she was a brave cancer patient, braver than you can know.

13. My father had no desire to live without her.

This photo of my mother and me was taken by our friend, photographer Katy Tartakoff, in February, 2001, a few months after her last radiation treatment. Mom died on July 25, 2002.