Hannah was off to Black Bear Coffee in Hendo to meet with her boyfriend and best girlfriend early this morning for the third day of her life as a driver. Guess why? To discuss the book they plan to write together! So this mother-daughter blog is apropos. Like mother-like daughter. Now, I need to get Hannah to write her first blog, but I think she's loving her new found independence right now, so I'll write again for her.
Hannah and I are both writers, but Hannah is one of the few people I know who writes for the joy of it. Me, I like to revise, but it's hard to force myself to sit down and do the initial writing. I can come up with ideas all day long-- but plotting and composing--that's another matter entirely.
Once I sit down though and get started, I can write steadily and even enjoy it. The real joy for me comes when I have the rough draft completed, and I get to go back and revise, manipulating my words and sentences, moving things around until I reach the semantic rhythm I'm seeking, the right feel for each sentence. It sounds crazy, but that's fun.
I remember when I first knew I wanted to be a writer. I was in the sixth grade; we were living outside of Chicago at the now closed army base, Ft. Sheridan (Mom said it was a golf course for the officers surrounded by military buildings). It was at the tail end of the Vietnam War and Dad, a major in army intelligence, was stationed at Ft. Sheridan upon completion of his tour of duty in Vietnam.
The post was too small for a school system, so we army brats were bused to the surrounding schools. I had several strikes against me--I was southern, short, wore glasses and was an army brat in a civilian school during a highly unpopular war. I remember one time how protesters threw eggs at our bus as it drove out of the gates one morning.
At school I was teased, not so much for being an army brat, more for being southern. I remember one kid came up and said, "Hey, do you eat Kentucky Fried Chicken every day?" (Yes, KFC does stand for Kentucky Fried Chicken--it used to be proud to be fried.) Another day, someone came up to me and asked, "Do you really hate black people?" Seeing that I never saw an African-American in our school except for my fellow army brats, I thought this a strange question.
I did have trouble fitting in, but only at first. My best friend Stella Begley lived on base, but I also remember my friend Patti, a tall girl of Italian heritage, her hair a mass of thick, dark curls. She invited me to her sleepover birthday party, and after that, I remember frequent invitations to spacious, beautiful homes in the Lake Forest area. For my birthday present, my parents gave me a series of horseback riding lessons at the beautiful and prestigious Onwentsia Stables (I think it's just a golf club now.). It was beautiful, had cobblestone aisles. I learned to jump there and had a crush on my riding instructor.
I also went into Chicago on several field trips, the most meaningful of which was to the Art Institute of Chicago. It was there that I truly started to understand art. I remember this black painting-I now know the artist is Ad Reinhardt. Here's a link to an article about the painting I saw: http://www.jstor.org/pss/4112980. When I first saw this painting, I thought, "Why is this black painting in a museum--it's just black. But as I got closer and closer to the painting, I could see the lines and ridges from the brush and found meaning--so simple to my mind then--you must get close to something to truly understand it--there is meaning, even in a dark life.
But the person who helped me the most those years in Chicago was my English teacher, Mrs. Riskind. She was young with straight, long brown hair, often held in place by a macrame head band or scarf. She wore trendy, hippie clothes and wore Birkenstock sandals. I thought she was beautiful, and best of all, she treated me just like she treated everyone else, with dignity and respect. I wasn't an army brat or a southerner to her; I was a student who was learning to love writing.
The big day was when she picked my paragraph to put up on the overhead. Only the best of the best every made its way to the overhead, so the day she asked me if she could put mine up, I trembled with excitement. I was happy, but I was also afraid. Even the best work can be improved, Mrs Riskind would say and thus open up the writing to criticism. But it wasn't that bad. My classmates liked my paragraph about the first time I fell off my little pony Buttermilk. They liked my description of my grandmother's farm in Alabama. They asked me questions about the day I described in my writing and seemed truly interested. They did find a few errors, but overall, they validated how I felt about my own writing--that it was good.
I had found out what I wanted to do with my life--I wanted to write and I wanted to teach.
Thank you, Mrs. Riskind.
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