By Way of Beginning

               First and foremost before all else I have always thought of myself as a writer – a teller of stories.  From the earliest age I was already in love with words and the way that they wove themselves together to tell the most wonderful tales in the nursery rhymes and fairy tales that Mama read to me at nap time.  Mama said she had to teach me the alphabet because I kept wasting good paper pretending to write, often insisting that my scribbles be put into envelopes and placed in the mailbox.  Such pride in my chest when we’d go to fetch the mail and my letters were gone.  Someone was going to read what I wrote.

                And so she taught me my letters when I was 3.  I still remember Mama at the ironing board, handing me her homemade flash cards one letter at a time.

                “That’s an A.  That’s the big letter A.  No need to worry about the little letters till you learn these,” she explained as she handed me the first piece of brown cardboard.  “Now you take that pencil and try to copy it and let me get some ironing done.”

                Every day it became our ritual.  Me sat in the big living room chair, a leaf from the dining room table laid across its brown tweedy arms for my makeshift desk.  Mama doing her kitchen chores while I learned.  I was around 4 when I figured out that to actually make the words the letters had to be threaded together just right or else they were just letters.

                Daddy used to say that’s when I really began pestering everybody and driving them all crazy with my constant questions.  “Does N-G-L-A spell anything?”

                “Nope.”

                “Does D-C-A-F spell anything?

                “Nope.”

                But one day, a day that I can still recall clear as a bell, I received a different answer.  Daddy and I had been to the dump together and I was dressed in my little overalls that were just like his.    We were riding in the old Ford and I was standing up in the middle of the front seat, my hand resting on his shoulder engaged in my usual questioning.

                “Does B-T-J-Z spell anything?”

                “Nope.” 

                “Does P-O-L-E spell anything?”

                Suddenly he broke into a big surprised smile and he said, “Yesiree Bob!  It spells pole!  Just like that telephone pole over there,” and he pointed at the big poles dotting the roadside.  “Yes sir!  You spelled pole!”  I remember so well that thrill of accomplishment and elation.

                With this collection I hope to begin to share my writing with you and open a dialogue from our many collective points of view.  In some of my stories and essays one may take umbrage with certain words that I may use to relate some of my personal history.  Words that some who prefer to be politically correct would have me edit, change or just leave unsaid. 

                Because I am a woman of a certain age I have lived through a period of time that has been one of the most rapid and extreme cultural transitions in our history.  Adding to that is the fact that I also came up through rural poverty and generations of very old school traditions and expectations.  I have worked hard to understand and grow beyond such circumstances, while no longer denying my roots.  In other words I won’t be doing revisionist history when I share certain stories from my past, no matter how it pains me that it happened or that such beliefs were held.  I believe we must acknowledge the “sins of our past” before we can move forward into greater compassion, understanding and enlightenment.

                For example, I had the good fortune to play the role of Mary Todd Lincoln with a terrific NYC theater company in a weekly Underground Soap Opera.  Our story line was written by Todd Alcott, an excellent writer who had done intensive research on the Lincolns, their era and the Civil War.  In fact he even pulled direct quotes from speeches and writings of the time to lend even more historical accuracy.

                Early on in the series, one of the first scenes I did was when Stephen Douglas had asked for Mary Todd’s hand in marriage from her brother-in-law who agreed to the union without consulting Mary.  Upon being informed of the agreement, rather than the expected joy, my line as Mary was, “You expect me to simply agree to an arranged marriage? Why Mr. Douglas, I may as well be a slave if that’s what you think of me.”

                A member of the theater board had been watching the dress and tech rehearsal and came backstage immediately to ask that Mary’s line be cut because it sounded too racist.  Our playwright protested that in actual fact the scene depicted exactly what had been said as it had been well documented.

                Again she protested, “But it’s just such a racist thing to say.”

                To which I, no longer capable of biting my tongue since it was now only hanging by a thread anyway, interjected with, “Do you know much about the Civil War?  Because that whole thing was pretty darn racist.”

                Simply put, no matter how much we wish we could change certain events of the past, be they historical or autobiographical, I believe we must first own the past in order to truly move forward and do better.  Because everything that has happened has led to this point in time, to this day and minute, to the person you are right now, to the conversation we can begin now that will lead to greater growth.

                The more I know and understand the more I want to know and understand.  Because of that need over the years I have taken tons of classes, studied with masters, gone to a myriad of workshops, consulted psychics and tarot cards, read hundreds of books, gone through first therapy then Jungian analysis, filled journal after journal in the hope of becoming what God has intended for me to be.  I don’t wish to shirk the task that the “Home Office” has in mind for me and I certainly don’t wish to waste all of the challenges and experiences that I have gathered this lifetime.  It is my hope that in sharing what life has taught me perhaps even just a small beam of light might shine into what has been a dark place.  Maybe a short story will make you laugh.  Perhaps an essay will make you look at an idea from a different angle or make you so mad that you feel compelled to write your own opinion.   Because in the best case scenario you might decide to share your life stories too.  I’m looking forward to that, so let the dialogue begin.