Tag Archives: writing

Bless My Stupid Heart

A Woman Reading by Camille Corot courtesy Met OASC

A Woman Reading
by Camille Corot
courtesy Met OASC

Fifteen years ago, I kept a journal of sorts for a writing exercise. Each morning, I wrote three pages of stream of consciousness writing. This afternoon, I read it for the first time since then.

Oh, bless my stupid little heart.

I thought he was my best friend. I thought he loved me. I thought I couldn’t live without us.

I was writing those words while Fartbuster was sneaking around and cheating on our marriage. I was so clueless. So much of it was devoted to me trying to convince myself that it was all going to be OK. So much of it was explaining away how he treated me. So much of it was about how my insecurity was the REAL problem. So much of it was me trying to be the reason it was going wrong so that I could be the one to fix it.

One morning, I wrote about how the night before, someone had rung the doorbell at 7:45 p.m. I had found myself hoping that it was Fartbuster, surprising me with a big bouquet and a spontaneous laugh. No, it was a teenage boy selling the newspaper. And in my writing, I chastised myself for being “tough” on Fartbuster when he did finally get home at 8:30. Eight thirty on a Wednesday night and I beat myself up instead of him.

One morning, I wrote about how he was helping out around the house more. How I had returned home from a Saturday outing with a friend to find that he had washed the sheets. Now I wonder what he was washing away. My heart is tightening up in fury now, just thinking about that Saturday, fifteen years ago.

It hurt my heart to read that journal. I skimmed. I fumed. This woman I am now, this wiser woman wanted to judge my younger self for being so dumb. I gave my younger self some grace. Trusting someone you’re supposed to trust isn’t a bad choice. Being a lying asshole is a bad choice.

She wised up, eventually. That mess didn’t ruin her. I’ve come so far, but I’d still like to give her a hug and a good talking to.

Well, Shut My Mouth.

Mouth of Akhenaten or Nefertiti circa 1353 BCE Image courtesy Met OASC

Mouth of Akhenaten or Nefertiti
circa 1353 BCE
Image courtesy Met OASC

The emotional fatigue of these last few weeks has taken some part of my voice with it. There is so much to say that I can’t seem to say anything. There are 130 drafts in my blog folder, but I haven’t written anything in days.

Last week, I went to a funeral in my hometown–Gay, Georgia. I want to write about the family cemetery and the fact that my grandmother already has a place marked for me that I’ll never use. I also want to write about how I lived in that town for so long, it’s where My People have lived for 100 years, but I have no idea where the black cemetery is. It can’t be that far from the streets I know. I have so many things to say about race that I can’t even start.

The preacher at the funeral said some things about religion and world views that sat so wrong with me that I had to pull out a piece of paper during the service and take notes on all that I couldn’t say in that moment. But the paper is still there in my purse. He has his way and I have mine and never the twain shall meet.

I made the widow laugh that day, as we leaned against a mossy stone wall by the raw red clay of her husband’s grave. I wanted to write about how important that was to me. It’s good to laugh. It’s one thing only the living can do.

Even on a sad day, I was happy to be with my family. Watching my cousin’s girls do gymnastics after lunch, barefoot in their black dresses. Admiring pictures of fish they have caught. Telling stories with people who have known my people for generations. Catching up with my sister and making plans for our next adventure with Vivi. Laughing with Brett when the police cars hit the sirens to began the procession and she pretended to run from Johnny Law.

I ate food cooked by good-hearted Baptist women and I wanted to write about that. Pound cake made by Miss Ann. Miss Ruth’s macaroni and cheese. Miss Marcia, my Sunday School teacher, whose voice takes me back instantly to when I was in single digits. I haven’t written about any of that.

I went back to Wesleyan for fall convocation on Tuesday. I talked to the senior class about doing their best. How their best will change. I stood in front of an auditorium filled with hundreds of people and I told them that I’ve struggled my whole adult life with anxiety and never feeling good enough. I want to write about that, too. How important it is that we be honest with our younger sisters, that no one sits alone and thinks, “It must just be me.”

I want to write about how my son’s feet, when I go in to check on him and he’s deeply asleep, how his tiny little feet take my breath away with their perfection of form and their total innocence. How soft they are, and strong and how one day not long ago, I could hold them both in one hand. How one day he will go off to college.

Tomorrow is the 10 year anniversary of when Richard gave me Sadie’s ring and I want to write about that. I can’t yet.

Where I come from, when you are met with news that is so shocking your mouth just hangs open in wonder, sometimes the only thing to say is, “Well, shut my mouth.” You can say it when you’ve been corrected. Or when you’re gobsmacked. That’s kind of where I am this week.

Maybe writing this has shaken something loose. Maybe.

A Moment in the Sun

My friend Jo said she wanted to hear a story about my grandmother, so I’m going to share a little jewel of a story from my childhood that is so precious, I wish I could remember it myself.  My dad tells it to me about once a year and I am glad that he never thinks I tire of hearing it.  I don’t.

I was the youngest child of the youngest child, so at Grandmama Eunice’s house, I was The Baby.  She lived right off the highway about halfway between Gay and Greenville in a rambling white house that burned in 1985.  We had already said goodbye to the house a few years earlier, when she had sold the farm and moved into an apartment near Daddy.  There’s nothing atop that hill now, but I still pull into what’s left of the driveway whenever I drive by.  It’s a strange emptiness for a place that held so many memories.  The emptiness of the now compared to the fullness of then.

If I start from the driveway and that patch of front yard where my parents left the car, I can walk my memory up the cement steps, painted barn red and faced in stone.  It’s probably only two steps across the flat expanse of the cement front porch to the screen door but it seemed like such a way to go back then.  In summer, the door would be flanked by begonias or ferns set on upended fruit crates.  Metal patio chairs in yellow or green waited for the cool hours after sundown when the grownups went out there for a breeze and some story telling.  If my tiny then self walks over to the left edge of the porch–no railing–and looks down, I see deep purple morning glories.  Purple was my Grandmama Eunice’s favorite color.

The flap and creak of the screen door then the rattle of the wide thin glass that took up the top half of her front door.  I step into the warmth of the living room with just one fan moving summer air near the green chenille sofa.  To my right would be a delicate plant stand with last Christmas’ cactus blooming in the light from the window.  A framed picture of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, his robe the same deep purple as the morning glories.

The hall tree with its beveled mirrors and thick laquer, turned black with years, covered in a pile of my aunts’ purses.  A spindly modern coffee table that held a giant book of Currier and Ives prints and two glass paper weights–one a photo of my father as a curly-headed toddler and one a quiet photo of his father in a Stetson hat, the grandfather none of us had the privilege of knowing.  A brown platform rocker, a basket of Guideposts  and Readers Digests, some bamboo furniture covered in hibiscus fabric left over from the days in Florida.

My memory goes around the room, touching each place, smelling the warm dust in the air. I can’t remember the specific color of the walls–maybe pale blue. But just by writing that, I am overwhelmed by the memory of the light fixture, something I haven’t thought of in years.  It hung on a brown cord from the high ceiling.  There was no switch.  Someone tall had to reach up and over the milky glass globe and pull the chain to turn the bulb on.  Then after they let it go, the light on its long cord would swing back and forth, casting shadows along the length of the room, until enough seconds passed and the pendulum came to rest.

That corner of the living room–the path from the front door to the dining room and kitchen beyond it–that was the high traffic spot in Grandmama Eunice’s house.  To and fro, back and forth, coming and going.  One summer afternoon, we were all at the house for Sunday dinner.  It was a crowd of folks, so maybe my Uncle Charles and Uncle Kenneth had brought their families up from Florida.  That seemed to happen most summers and I loved it.  They were glamorous people with tans and big sedans and they almost always arrived with giant lollipops from Stuckeys.

In the afternoon, the grownups headed for the porch with their bellies full of fried chicken, green beans, sliced tomatoes, sweet tea and started swapping stories as blue Marlboro smoke hung above their heads in the still air.  I remember the way my Aunt Betty’s sandal would tap tap tap against the concrete as she rocked in her chair.  While the other kids were off running and playing, I preferred to sit just inside the screen door, where I could listen to the adults talk.

And that’s the story that Daddy tells.  I was about four.  In the midst of that busy, loud afternoon, I was sitting there cross-legged on the dusky brown carpet, under the watchful eye of a Jesus with plenty on his mind already.  I had found the perfect spot:  a square of sunshine from the screen door, within earshot of the talkers but in front of the fan.

Grandmama walked past me once and said, “Baby?  Don’t you want to go play?”

I shook my head.  She went on her way.

A few minutes later, she came through heading the other direction.  “You OK?”

I nodded.

She came by again, probably with a pitcher of tea.  She stopped in front of me and asked, “Ashley?  What are you DOING?”

I looked up at her and said, “I’m just sitting here being happy.”

And she let me be.

_____________________________

That place is gone.  My Grandmama died twenty years ago and I still think of her every day.  But while writing this and walking through that ghost of a living room, I remembered that I actually received those paper weights from her coffee table after she died.  I’ve had them carefully wrapped up in paper for all these years, waiting to have just the right safe place to put them.  Now I have my writing room and I took them out tonight and gave them a shady place of honor by my reading chair.  My father as a boy with Carlos’ hair, and my grandfather’s quiet eyes, keeping watch over me when I sit in the brown platform rocker from that living room and think my thoughts.

We don’t get to take everyone or every thing from our past, but we get enough.  Enough to be happy, just sitting here.

Samuel Fuller Garrett and Milton Joseph Garrett

Samuel Fuller Garrett and Milton Joseph Garrett

 

I wish I could find a better picture of Grandmama Eunice, but she sure did like purple!

I wish I could find a more dignified picture of Grandmama Eunice, but she sure did like purple!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’d Like to Thank the Blogcademy…

new-years-eve-228714_640Y’all.

You guys.

Omigodomigodomigahd!

Y’all. Seriously. Y’all.

My little light?  It’s getting a big chance to SHINE!

 

 

 

Every year at the BlogHer conference, there’s an evening party called “Voices of the Year.”  Last year, Queen Latifah was the host!  It was one of the highlights of my first blogging conference–a joyful celebration of writing, because good blogging always comes down to good storytelling.  Last year’s VOTY stories ran the gamut from discovering one’s gayness at Jesus Camp, poisoning yourself in the effort to craft a perfect pine cone wreath, fighting to save a suicidal child when the medical establishment isn’t listening, chasing pin worms with a flashlight, being mistaken for your child’s nanny, living on the thin edge of poverty, and explaining race to your mixed race son.  I laughed.  I cried.  I was inspired.

Any blogger can submit a piece to Voices of the Year.  This year, over 2000 stories were submitted.  The selection process went through round after round after round.  From that pool, one hundred blog posts are selected.  Then from those 100, a dozen lucky bloggers get to go onstage in front of the whole conference and read a story.  

BH14_VOTY_Selected_150X15Y’all…I got selected as a Voice of the Year.

Squeeee!!!

And I got selected to read.

Hot Damn!!!

Or to quote Carlos’ favorite new phrase:  Seriously, dude.

I am thrilled.  Delighted.  Honored.  Scared-Shitless-But-Gonna-Do-It-Anyway.

And I’m proud.  Proud of myself.  Not for getting chosen by a panel of reviewers–I didn’t have any control over that–but for choosing myself. Back in February, when the submissions were opened, I chose myself.  It took me a couple of tries to get up the nerve.  I made a few visits to the website before I had the guts to hit Submit.  I overcame my doubts and said, “This is something I want to shoot for.  This is something I have the right to try.  This is something that would be really really really fun to do.”  I gave myself permission to want it.  I gave myself a voice.  It was heard!

I am tickled pink.

So today’s message is:  Put yourself out there. 

Oh, and here’s the funny part.  I’m at a bit of a loss.  If you go to the announcement page for 2014 Voices of the Year, there are links to these wonderfully entertaining posts.  But the ones that get read on stage?  They don’t have links–they’re a secret.  Y’know, gotta keep the suspense up.  So the link beside my name is just to Baddest Mother Ever, not the specific post that got selected.  

Wellllll…unfortunately, I can’t remember which story I submitted!  Duh.  So after a couple of days of playing it cool, I will have to email someone at BlogHer and say, “Thank you SO MUCH for giving me this opportunity to read….now, can you refresh my memory on what exactly I wrote?”  

So today’s message addendum:  Put yourself out there, but jot down where you put yourself.  

Don’t Pass It By

dandelion-167112_1280

After Edith Wharton (author of novels The Age of Innocence, The House of Mirth, Ethan Frome) began publishing her work in her middle years, she struck up a correspondence with the already respected author, Henry James.  She admired him greatly.  (Insert yawn here because Henry James has that effect on me.)  The two writers communicated by letter for three years before they ever met in person.  When they finally did meet, they became good friends. (Insert image of Daniel Day-Lewis in a frock coat having a fraught with meaning but sexually repressed and whispered conversation with Michelle Pfeiffer in a fussy bonnet.)  

My joking aside–here’s my point.  Like so many people who create, Edith Wharton went through a period when she struggled to find her voice.  She wandered uncommon paths for a woman of her position.  Wharton had been born into an old New York high society family, and was thus expected to marry well and live a presentable life.  Instead, she found herself stuck in a miserable marriage and yearning for her freedom.  (Ahem…Fartbuster, with a far superior dowry.)  She questioned whether anyone would care about the inner workings of the privileged world she knew. 

Henry James encouraged Edith Wharton to stick with writing about the New York City she knew so well–even though she disliked it. He said, “Don’t pass it by — the immediate, the real, the only, the yours.”

This life, the one we spend every day slogging through, is the straw we spin into gold.  We pass by so much in the search for something “important” or “meaningful.”  We climb over mountains of straw in the search for gold, not realizing that it’s lying all around us, waiting for us to work our magic!  

I hope you’ll take a look today at the immediate, the real.  What’s around you that’s beautiful or interesting?  What’s inside you that’s beautiful or interesting?  

White Quiet

SONY DSC

It’s 2:22 a.m. on Thursday morning.  I fell asleep at 9 p.m. and woke at midnight.  Since then, I’ve been reading “The Golem and the Jinni” and trying to fall back to sleep.  But there’s too much weirdness in the air–our routines are off because of the ice storm.  I think my brain has tried to do so much prepping and planning for a crisis that hasn’t happened that I can’t turn it off now.  So let’s roll with it.

If I’m up at 2:22 a.m., might as well see that phase of the day that I usually miss.  I tried to get Huck to go out in the front yard with me, but he knows he’s not supposed to be out there without a leash.  I stood in the shelter of the garage while he waited nervously by the kitchen door.  The city is a pink glow behind the pines at this hour.

We went to the deck and he hurtled down the stairs and into the bright night.  It’s strange to hear the crunch of his steps.  I’ll try to remember that.  Smoke drifts from my new neighbor’s chimney.  I haven’t been over to say hello yet, but I enjoy the smell of his wood fires.  Oops–there’s Vivi’s jacket that I hung out here to dry the other day–frozen solid.  I prop it against the wall for her to see in the morning.  The bird feeders need filling again.  I wonder where all those birds sleep.

It’s so quiet that I can hear the river.  It truly does whisper.

One snowflake drifts down onto my cheek and I’m sure it’s a hello.

Huck is watching me from his crate, a white dog on a white cushion in a white world.  Nose as black as a polar bear’s and a pair of sleepy eyes.  But he’ll stay up with me if I need him.

But maybe it’s time to sleep.  Maybe some writing was what I needed to turn off my brain.  To find rest.

Good night.  Good morning.  Good day.

Cherish

Here’s one thing I love about having a space for writing:  I am surrounded by my books, which are filled with ideas, and that comes in handy at times like RIGHT NOW when I really feel a desperate urge to write but cannot think of a damn thing I want to say. Every spine of every volume reminds me that all writers have a moment (or year) when they get stuck.  Misery loves company and these writers are good company because they made it through.

I reached over just now and picked up a slim gray book of poems by Raymond Carver called “A New Path to the Waterfall.”  I bought this copy for myself in the spring of 1990.  A professor of mine, on whom I had a huge crush, had loaned me his copy earlier in the year because he thought I might like it.  I did.  I loved it and I loved him and that’s OK to confess now because I’m 45 and it feels sweet, not embarrassing, to remember that time when he and I would talk about books and painting and the ways of the world.  I was 21 and really looking to have my heart broken a few times.  Just to check, I googled him and his smile still made my tired old heart go pitter pat.  

carver_gallagherOne thing that drew me to this book of poems when I was 21 was the tragic story of Carver’s life.  He died in 1988 from lung cancer at the age of 50.  But he was supposed to have died 10 years before that.  Carver tried his best to drink himself to death but managed to get clean at 40.  He called the rest of his life “gravy” (and there’s a poem by that name, too).  In that last best 10 years, he made a life with Tess Gallagher, a fellow writer.  When they learned that he was dying, they married so they could call each other husband and wife.

Well.  That rings a bell.  These poems that I loved when I was a heartsick 21 year old girl mean even more to me now that I also know what it is like to promise “til Death do us part” when Death is practically a guest at the wedding.

So here is a lovely poem, written by Ray in the days between his marriage and his death.  After he died, Tess gathered all these last poems and assembled “A New Path to the Waterfall.”  His gifts to her; her gift to him.  

Cherish

From the window I see her bend to the roses
holding close to the bloom so as not to
prick her fingers. With the other hand she clips, pauses and
clips, more alone in the world
than I had known. She won’t
look up, not now. She’s alone
with roses and with something else I can only think, not
say. I know the names of those bushes

given for our late wedding: Love, Honor, Cherish—
this last the rose she holds out to me suddenly, having
entered the house between glances. I press
my nose to it, draw the sweetness in, let it cling—scent
of promise, of treasure. My hand on her wrist to bring her close,
her eyes green as river-moss. Saying it then, against
what comes: wife, while I can, while my breath, each hurried petal
can still find her.

cherish12236_RT8