Having Readers

painting by Kier Cline

This post is not about travel—unless you find metaphorical meaning in things—as I do—and overdo. It is about demonstrating bravery to children. For me, that bravery is writing and having readers.

Most days I go for a walk on the beach after dropping kids off at school and before going to work. I do things in my head like rally myself for another day of project management when I thought my job was to be an editor; convince my children’s father to stop drinking and start paying child support; share meaningful nuggets of wisdom with my children that they will remember when I’m dead (though those always come out in this cowboy voice that makes me not want to say them out loud); remind myself that I am worthy; try to imagine what one of my children was thinking when he or she said this or that and what I can do to best take care of them; and mostly reflect on the good, the bad, and the ugly (see—cowboy voice…).

Today I was walking and thinking about a choice. The water near me was dark with crashing waves. The water far out in the distance was sparkling in a sliver of sunlight. It looked calm from where I was on the turbulent shore. I made up a poem:

Crashing waves spread viciously ashore

Covering my seeking footsteps

Dark and turbulent and near to me

Sliver of sun way way out there

On waters calm that maybe I should wait for

And I thought yes—that is a sign. Deciding one way would be rushing and reaching out in desperation like the crashing waves; deciding the other way would be waiting patiently for the calm, sunny water in the distance to come to me.

As I dissected the metaphorical meaning of my lame little poem, I thought about my readers. Even saying “my readers” sounds pompous and embarrassing. I imagine you out there rolling your eyes as I would probably do at that phrase. And even now I feel I should apologize for the poem and for explaining its metaphorical meaning to you as if you couldn’t get it yourselves. And then I should apologize for apologizing. Why don’t I delete delete delete? Because wouldn’t it be worse if I shared a poem with you, explained it to you, apologized, and then deleted so you never even knew all this was going on behind your back??

Clearly I still struggle with the idea of having readers. Here’s why. When I was like 9 or 10 (about the age of my son), I LOVED writing. I wrote for the pure joy and escapism of it. I had a couple ongoing stories about girls named Sunny and Trish (Trish and her friend Patty had boyfriends—oy). Here’s one excerpt verbatim:

Trish ran down stairs and tore open the letter and it went like this:

Dear little Trish

I’ve been thinking you haven’t visited me in two years how about comeing to my farm you can bring a few friends to keep you company and we have a few new horses. And enclosed is four plane tickets. See you soon!

Love uncle Henry

XXOOXXOOXO

“Wow!” screamed Trish. She didn’t know what to do so she just jumped for joy! Then she called Patty and told her to come over and to bring Mark. Then she called Greg and they were there in fifteen minutes. Then she let them read the letter. They all were very happy! Then Greg said, “couldn’t you have told us over the phone?” “Well he sent some extra money and I thought we could go horse back rideing.” So they all called and asked and they all could. So they all started walking there when they got there hardly anyone was there couse it was 8:00 so they got good horses.

Sorry to put you through that. But aside from the teacher and me, no one has read those stories. And as I look through the journals, I’m guessing my teacher didn’t actually read them. She just gave me checkmarks over and over. Not one comment—not even when Trish, Patty, Mark, and Greg go on an overnight plane to Texas where Uncle Henry lives. And they close the curtains and make out.

There are parts of the journal where I step out of the story and evaluate my week—clearly it was the assignment because those parts have no details. They read like this:

Mon—fair

Tue—nice too cold!

Wed—awful

Thur—great

Fri—“   “

And at one point I ask my teacher if I can use a fish bowl that I saw in the classroom. She doesn’t answer so on the next page, I write “PLEASE READ MY PAGE BETTER I ASKED YOU A QUESTION BUT NO ANSWER.” Right there I see the glory that used to live in my writing. I was not afraid of my reader. I was confident.

I stayed that way as a writer until about senior year of high school. Then I made some bad choices. I won’t go into detail as they involve family, friends, and old boyfriends who are now my main readers so I don’t dare disturb them. Anyway they pretty much know about these choices and if I told them my thoughts, they would only feel sad to know that I felt so lost. But they also know that now I am found so it’s OK. Amazing grace. Again the cowboy voice.

For years after high school my writing consisted of filling journals with toxic waste, page after page of ugly thoughts that I would quickly scrawl and slap closed, never to be revisited. And absolutely never to have readers!

Eventually things changed, I grew up, I went to therapy. I put the bad choices, the fears, and the lack of confidence on the table. I strapped on my metaphorical headlamp and dug through them, held them up to the light, and saw them for what they were. I even managed to peek into some of those old journal pages.

And then the joy of writing starting coming back. And I started toying with the idea of  sharing and having readers. Hopefully not like my teacher who missed the opportunity to connect with a kid. She didn’t even have to be a careful, mindful reader—she just should have actually read.

The first blog post I did was not too scary. I figured no one would ever find it unless I announced it. But the night I sent an announcement out to everyone on my contact list, I lost sleep. What did I write? Did I offend anyone? Did I embarrass myself? Was I too raw? Boring? Did I filter at all? Too much? I guess this fear was one that stayed hidden from my metaphorical headlamp. But then again—here it is now. On the big bright white screen. The more I write and share, the more courageous I feel, like Peter Beard writing from the mouth of a crocodile.

Peter Beard "I'll Write Whenever I Can," Koobi Fora, Kenya 1965

So next comes passing that bravery on to my children. And dangit that cowboy voice tells me I can’t just plain tell them. Can't just sit down and say—now here’s what I learned the hard way; I’ll just tell you and spare you the years of figuring it out. Nah, they do have to learn it for themselves through experience. But I can model it for them. They see me writing, sharing my writing, getting excited about connecting with my readers, and feeling more confident every day. And that’s got to rub off, right? Surely they will have lessons of bravery in other ways. But maybe self-reflection will be more intuitive to them since they see me doing it bravely? Of course, I know it’s a maturity thing too and I don’t expect to see my 6-year-old contemplating life like Descartes…but maybe she will contemplate her choices a little more quickly than I did? Maybe she will be a little braver than I was about facing her fears? Maybe she’ll let that cowboy voice talk loud and proud to her readers.