Tag: father

Journaling and Italy and My Father

I’m not into journaling. I know a lot of writers are, and if I never get another journal as a gift, I’ll be a happy girl. I just don’t care for it. Part of me wishes I did. I think about these famous authors who left behind a legacy of hundreds of journals filled with their thoughts and bits of writing, starting from their teen years through their old age. Then I think, “Oh, well. I should’ve started as a teen, and now it’s too late. Besides, you know, I still don’t like journaling.”

It’s not that I haven’t tried. As a teen, I tried to keep a diary, but I ended up writing lame, stilted entries that sounded like I was explaining my life to somebody’s awkward cousin. Happily, those journals have long ago disappeared into a trash bin.

I would happily never journal again, except that my school asks us to every summer when I go off to my summer residency. They like us to record our experiences and then we read an entry to each other our last night together. It’s actually very fun to hear the readings, to hear how others were inspired by what we experienced. I generally write exactly one entry during the residency – the one I read out loud. (Sh. Don’t tell my school.)

This summer in Italy, I planned to do a better job, but I kept putting it off so I could do homework or cool off in the pool at Spannochia. Then, in the last days of the trip, my father passed away. When I sat down to write my one journal entry, all I wanted to was curl up and cry. So the journal entry I read our last night was not a happy one. I broke down reading it, and my amazing friends cried with me. And I was reminded how cathartic writing could be, and how it connects us with people, even when we feel disconnected from everything.

I didn’t plan on posting this, but because a few people requested that I do, here it is. I promise to post a much more cheerful piece of writing next week.

I will not journal. I will not sit and pause over what this trip has meant to me. I will not ponder the grieving pietas or the blood-stained Colosseum or the churches with their body parts. I will not write about the Roman roads that often never led home or the wars that showed the darker side of men. I will not think about the Inferno, or the Purgatorio, or a paradise that some men may not reach. I will not journal about an email from home or how Italy has left her mark on me.

Because everything here reminds me of death and grief and him. It’s in the ground and in the air and in all the words we breathe. Age makes me think of wasting, waning time and everywhere I look I see bricks older than a great-great-great me. We’re dying every minute, blowing back to dust. Which brings me back to an email and to him. Which makes me cry. So I will not journal.

When Good Things Happen

On July 3 I flew off to Italy for my MFA residency and a much needed vacation. One of the lectures I attended while there was by my MFA mentor, Mary Yukari Waters. She spoke about “The Deceptively Simple Question” and challenged us as writers to steer from the obvious to keep our writing fresh and unexpected. The writers who give the readers what they expect are not the ones who will stand out.

I thought about that lecture a lot over the weekend. If one writer were to write about my experience in Italy, they might list the obvious facts. My car broke down on my house sitter while I was away. A centuries-old villa set off my asthma so I was on Prednisone a lot of the trip. I dropped a glass on my foot. I was stung by a bee – twice. I fell on the cobblestones in Rome, bruising my left knee. I tripped on a curb in Florence, deeply bruising my right knee, which caused me to limp the rest of my trip (and still hurts). And a couple days before we left, I got news that my father had passed away.

When you see the facts laid out that way, a reader would conclude that nothing good came of that trip. Even though it was difficult, I’ve forced myself to look beyond the simple answer, to be the writer and the PERSON, who digs deeper. Here’s what I found.

A hundred comforting hugs from new friends who found out what I was going through so far away from home. Two friends who held me in a foreign kitchen when I received news my father had signed a DNR. A roommate and new dear friend who stayed with me when I received news he’d passed before I could say goodbye. A travel agent who did everything in her power to get me to the funeral. Dear, dear classmates who made it their mission to make me laugh when all I wanted to do was cry. A sister who centered me and gave me strength. A brother who walked through some difficult days with me and held my hand at the funeral. Siblings and cousins and an aunt I’d scarcely met who made me laugh and told me stories about my dad. Stepsisters and a stepmother who invited me to share in their grief and be part of their family. Coworkers and colleagues who made sure I could be away without worry. And so many messages of love from friends everywhere, including some very personal messages from those who have lost their own fathers.

By my admittedly bad math, I received a thousand blessings when I look beyond the obvious.

Now I have a favor to ask. I would love it if you would all share something good someone has done for you during a difficult time in your life.  It can be anonymous. I just want to read something good for the soul. Think of it as a way to give back to the person who gave to you in your time of need. Has something good come of a bad time in your life? Do you just want to thank someone who was there for you? Do it. Seriously. Life is too short to leave things unsaid.

10 Things I Am Thankful For

A Thanksgiving meme borrowed from my AWer buddy, Kate. The rules? List ten things you are grateful for, but every even numbered item must be about writing in some way.

1. My Four Fathers (not to be confused with forefathers). Without them, I would not be me. Nor would every work I write have a running rant about fathers. Or a girl who is afraid to love/has abandonment issues/is fiercely independent/needs therapy.
2. iTunes Genius. Seriously. An insta-playlist that creates an insta-mood for whatever scene I’m writing. The rubber on my second set of earbuds has disintegrated from overuse.
3. My Sister. Who else would listen to me whine? Who else would take me on a tour of every TJ Maxx and Marshalls between Redondo Beach and Palm Springs? Who else would tear the lace off my shorts without asking and then tell me to get over it already? Who else would love me and encourage me and threaten me when I need it? My friends, that’s who. But not one of them could make me laugh like my sister does. – Even though she’s older and stole my “baby of the family” thunder, or as I tell her, she “stole my sunshine.” And then I rub in that I have blue eyes and she has brown and she fumes with jealousy. Deal with it, Sis! – Who else has that kind of shared history with me? And who else would have four kids just cuz I love being an Auntie? (at least that’s what I tell her).
4. Querytracker.net. The insanity tamed by tables and charts.
5. My Million Nieces and Nephews. They keep me grounded in things like Spongebob and iCarly, and their dreams inspire me to have ones of my own. Damn right I can sing the entire Spongebob theme song.
6. AW Forums. My fellow writers keep me sane and the Bewares and Background Checks for Agents keep me smart. SNI stands for Shiny New Idea, and hell, no, I’m not paying an agent to read my manuscript! < — See what I learned.
7. My New Asthma Doctor. Funny how we take breathing for granted. Huzzah! My lungs work again! *tackles San Francisco hills* I can so take you now!
8. Dr. Irena Praitis. My grad advisor in my Master’s program. Second week of school in her poetry workshop, shy little me proceeded to announce how much I hated poetry. Two weeks later I wrote my first sonnet. A year later I had a scholarship to the West Chester Poetry Conference and received honors for a Master’s Project that included a sonnet redoublee. Don’t know what a sonnet redoublee is? Look it up, and be very afraid.
9. Starbucks. You bring me together with my friends. You are the starting point for outings with my sister. You are the maker of the bottled Frappacino that my mother buys for our camping outings, while shaking her head at our ridiculous need for you. You are the place I write and procrastinate and write. You are the keeper of the Caramel Brulee latte. I frickin’ HEART you.
10. Beta readers. Where, oh where, would I be without your taunts, LOLs, rusted-bloody-box-cutter criticisms, and encouragement? Probably huddling in a corner rocking. Or sticking my fingers in my ears and squeezing my eyes shut to avoid editing.

Tag! You’re it! Oh, wait! Kate tagged everyone already. Damn you, Kate!

Underpainting Yourself into Your Work

We can’t escape it. Somehow bits of ourselves worm and wheedle themselves into everything we write, even without our knowledge. Our opinions and views, our history, our emotional hang ups. The boy we pined for. (You know who you are, Zach.) The sibling who drove us crazy. (My brother loved to take my book and throw it across a room, thereby losing my page. Awesome.) That embarrassing moment in high school that we never quite got over. (Mind your own business.) All of who we are becomes fodder for our writing.

The most invasive example I have is revealed when I write about family dynamics. My father walked away when I was a child, and I went through a series of stepfathers in his wake. My mother – a hardworking waitress – worked long hours on her feet to keep the four of us kids with a roof over our head. My siblings and I have a kind of bond like soldiers who’ve been through war together – few can relate to a house like the one we grew up in. What is the impact of this on my writing?

Hardworking waitresses appear in my stories frequently. The bond I had with my siblings – we raised each other – appears in the siblings I write. As for fathers? At first, they were always absent with no redeeming qualities at all. Then, I wrote my Master’s Project about a dying father trying to connect with the daughter he abandoned. I dug up all those ugly emotions and put them to page. To rave reviews, I might add. (I received Honors on my project.)

My latest work features a father who abandoned his daughter, but is trying to repair the relationship. He becomes a good father, but it’s not an easy path for him or the daughter. What can I say? I’m evolving.

What parts of you make it into your writing with the highest frequency?