There's a pen in my head. Sometimes it scribbles in the shower and other times I may be simply lying in bed or actually dreaming when it's most active. The words, often just fragments, tend to evaporate quickly as if they've been inscribed on bubbles. When I'm motivated, there's time to transmit. Certain words are worth keeping, perhaps even sharable.
When I review my regrets, I acknowledge that I've let too many words go. How fine it would be to ponder written thoughts from the farm years, to greet my high school friends vicariously and laugh at my once inscribed notes . Events and people long erased from my memory would suddenly reappear on pages from my past. Regrettably, the pages are mostly blank.
Like most girls in the 1950's, I kept a diary. With a key. I don't know if anybody ever read it except for me. Only a few lines were provided for each day's entry. Perhaps the rationale was that young girls had little to say and needed scant space in which to record those nascent recollections. The diaries disappeared. My mother probably tossed them in a bag filled with food debris and off they went to our family archive....the bayou. So, I can't meet that girl through her words. I'm fairly certain she had nothing substantial to say. Of course there were boys to admire. Mostly boys who never noticed me while I sometimes shadowed them. The boyfriends who peopled my high school years were described effusively. When they left me, and all of them did just that, I was inconsolable and soon wrote teary tracts about my misery. Each time I was convinced that 'he' was the last guy who'd ever pay any attention to me. I was always wrong, obviously. Teen-age girls of my era were consistently fatalistic about their love lives.
As my junior year of high school drew to a close, a member of the faculty invited me to her classroom. To my immense surprise, Miss Chance informed me of my selection as editor of the school newspaper for the ensuing year.
I accepted immediately, totally thrilled by the honor. As a sporadic guest columnist for the paper, I was somewhat familiar with the details involved in its publication. Stored in a bookcase cabinet in our house is a stack of now almost ancient copies of the Natchez-Adams High School Echoes. The final issue with my name on the masthead contains a brief editorial. Choosing lines from a famous Robert Frost poem, I extolled my fellow graduates to consider "miles to go" and "promises to keep." Simple admonitions with profound consequences.
As years and then decades descended, I wrote less. Life intervened with first college obligations and then the career chase. One of my first professional positions included the responsibility for writing book reviews to be published in the local newspaper. During that period, I recall being interviewed for an article which appeared in the City staff newsletter. The reporter asked about my routine as I crafted each review. I responded that prior to writing a word, I'd wash my hair, set it in rollers and plop myself on the floor of my guest room. Perched on the couch behind my back was a Schick hairdryer, a familiar appliance in the 1960's. I found that by the time my hair was dry, the review was written.
(Mine was pale blue.)
Thus far, all those hairdryer era reviews have escaped the bayou fate. As I read words written more than forty years ago, I'm uncomfortable with my naivete, simple sentence structure and explicit earnestness about a topic or an author. At the time, I considered myself a capable writer. Older members of the staff complimented my then twenty-something self. One colleague was so terrified of the writing assignments that she would have willingly paid me to be her 'ghost.'
Beginning in 1980, I kept a journal for each of our family vacations. Part of the fun was simply selecting the journal itself. Pages are replete with descriptions of meals, sites, people observed, hotels and rental cars. Fleeting memories are permanently captured, complete with the accompanying angst and exhilaration. This tradition has been truncated in recent years as technology supersedes the necessity of hand-written recollections. Currently, I carry a small notebook with me for extended trips. Recording impressions on a regular basis, I'm able to reduce the amount of writing required as well as the pages involved. Once home again, I use these notes to craft blogs and sprinkle them with photos from each journey.
Having survived, just barely, the middle school years with a charming daughter, the looming high school cycle filled me with apprehension. How better to preserve/persevere this epoch in our lives? I'd keep a journal and pour into it my thoughts, concerns, periods of elation. A few months into her freshman year, my dear daughter 'discovered' the initial entries. Casually asking me what I was writing, I sensed that she was interested in my words. So began a ritual in which she'd stand at the door of the room, point to the book on the table and if I nodded, she'd take the book away and read for a while. If I shook my head, she'd say, "Mom, write." Usually I would. Through all of high school, I never wavered in recording my observations. Likewise, she never stinted in telling me that I had gotten it wrong. Well, of course my words did not match her reality. They were a reflection of mine only.
A few years ago, our now adult daughter inquired about the high school journals. She asked if she could borrow them. Immediately I told her that they were hers actually. So, on one of our trips to visit her, I packed the four books in my carry-on luggage to insure their safety. Someday portions of their contents may be referenced in an original work she creates. Unquestionably, they'll remain among her treasures.
Today it is almost quaint to select and send cards other than at Christmas (even that tradition is being usurped by Pdf. files) or for certain birthdays. Very few people compose and mail hand-written letters, thank you notes, and similar messages. Being rather "old school" in many ways, I retain a sufficient supply of cards for various occasions, separated by subject. I love dropping a card in the mailbox, bound for a special address. (I'm elated to receive them myself.) Letters, though increasingly intermittent, are composed using a variety of beautiful blank cards or pretty stationary. I am faithful in writing two maternal first cousins, sisters who are in their 80's and live in Georgia. Though we only saw each other once, and I was an infant at the time, we are close in blood and I maintain my mother's practice of regular correspondence with them. She was the sisters' favorite aunt and I honor that connection.
Social media affords so many people an instant opportunity to write. True, the words are sometimes abbreviated so severely that a 21st century dictionary of sorts may be required to decipher their meaning. E-mails allow writers to gather thoughts and share them immediately. Spell check and other devices assure correctness, most of the time. Linking one's life to another, or groups of people, is almost too easy. These various outlets may not spawn the most brilliant phrases, but writing is writing, isn't it?
I remain forever humbled by the astonishing brilliance of lyrics, struck by the sagacity of stories adroitly crafted by able authors, and rendered emotional by unending lines of poetry. I gracefully yield to those who are writers, now and forever.
