Writing here requires more than words.
We need photos and finding pieces that fit the story, whatever the story is, takes time I don’t like using. It makes writing pieces that have any merit or that advance any serious discussion more difficult for me because whatever I write, in the back of my head, I know, I can’t publish until I’ve found two photos, underlined some of the stuff, and done all the other business that is necesary. I am not good at this, I’ve tried and discovered, I prefer the thousand words to the one photo.
Back in middle, high school and college, drawing was a constant outlet for me –not writing. My notebooks were illuminated manuscripts –so much so that one of my teachers kept my senior comp final exam because I’d forgotten we were taking exams and drew dragons on the side and back when I finished. In graduate school, the master teacher tapped me to teach art at two of the schools I worked with, and when volunteering at the local rec program, I also ran the arts and crafts program.
However, the second month of being married, I sat down on the balcony of our apartment in New York City. I began to sketch the skyline and something in me said, “No. You don’t have to finish.” and I didn’t. It was not the last piece I ever drew, but it was a clear recognition that the loneliness which used to fuel and feed my need to escape into the world of line and color and imagination, didn’t exist anymore.
As a stay at home mom, I struggled with lonliness again. This time, the release came through writing. It seemed to be a vocation. I wrote and people loved it, so I wrote more. People loved it more. In 2016, I started working part time, becoming a teacher in 2019. My most productive times of writing were between 2008 and 2020. However, it began to ebb as my responsibilities with teens, with older children, with work, began to dominate the landscape.
I missed it, tried to square the circle, to somehow carve out the time needed for both and, to write and to be a teacher and a mom, and a wife, and a cancer survivor. There seemed to be no end of things to write about, but also, no time when writing in and of itself, for itself, seemed appropriate. Now, whenever I sat to write, I could see the cost. Things needed to be graded, errands to be run, children to pick up, or to shop for, meals to make or clean up from, a dog to walk, you name it, there was always something that somehow seemed to be the priority. I also noticed, the market for my writing also dried up. I’d submit pieces and hear nothing, multiple ones a week, and still nothing. I’d call the editor to ask for pieces. I went to conferences trying to network. The silence grew bigger.
In prayer, I asked God, “Do you want me to stop writing?” I didn’t want the answer to be “Yes.”
The silence felt like being kicked off the team.
I also knew, I held tons of stories I could not write, because they weren’t finished. Also, because the people involved were no longer little kids, they were adolescents and teens and college age and beyond, wrestling with the world and with God, and whose stories were no longer mine to tell. I called my sister, because writing is a source of joy to me, and yes, probably a source of pride as well. It was my little extra and it was something that could not be done while multi-tasking. It was a singular pursuit. She suggested I consider other artistic outlets, that she remembered me playing the piano, dancing, and drawing.
I sat thinking about the need to release what mattered. Prayer and art have always been one for me. My prayer life likewise had struggled with a dryness.
There wasn’t much call for a fifty-seven year old out of shape dancer, and I tried sketching but again, the lines didn’t feel like something that needed to be done. Maybe I’d paint, I mused. I looked at the piano in our living room. It looked dusty.
Piano remained a long ago thing, a means I used for grief. When my uncle died of a heart attack and I couldn’t come home from college for the funeral, I played the piano for over an hour, every piece I knew. When my brother’s class suffered a tripple death from a horrible car accident and I knew the families, those kids from my own growing up and again, exams interfered with going home, the piano served as a grieving vessel. I pounded on those keys when my grandmother died, and played them again when a niece died after one day. The piano became a place to pour out grief.
My sister asked a question in passing, “Aren’t you in a grieving season right now?” and it hit hard.
Watching my children grow up, struggle with things I couldn’t fix, grief. Student debt we couldn’t wipe away, lurking fear. Jobs that didn’t pay enough; more grief, more fear. Jobs they couldn’t have but needed still more schooling to get, but which required more training to apply for schooling. The loss of opportunity and time hovered. Children who walked away from the faith, from prayer, from God, from so much –to the point where those who attended mass with me, no longer asked why I was crying. They knew. Every mass I attend, the tears threaten and I spend a boat load of time pulling them in, trying to slam the door.
Likewise, struggling with no longer being heard, or having that fun little hit of, “I got published today,” with surrendering that big of myself, that hurt too.
I didn’t want to admit to all the grieving.
Losing my breasts hurt. Losing my looks. Feeling like somehow I missed something and time frittered away decades in the process, hurt. The grieving season kept revealing itself in big and little ways –and I sat remembering when feeling felt too much. I’d slam the door. I’d lock it up because I worried, I’d never stop feeling that pain. I didn’t want to hurt.
The writing stopped being a want, but remained a need. I knew why I’d stopped drawing, one was out of joy, the other out of grief. The rule in writing is open a vein, but I was holding onto all of the blood and so no words dripped with feeling. They all felt recycled because I wasn’t letting any of what hurt out. “Aren’t you in a grieving season?” kept echoing until I answered, “Yes.”
Going to the piano, I fumbled through Bach’s Ave Maria. Normally, this is my perfect piece, the one I’ve never missed and always been able to infuse with everything. My fingers forgot where to go. I took out the sheet music, and forced myself to read it through. Chopin’s Prelude in E minor ran better.
I started but did not finish The Blue Danube, and pressed through the staccato “Happy Farmer.” Addittedly, I felt better and these words poured out the next day. The music became a form of prayer for all that hurt, and all I could not write, and also allowed all that could be said, to flow.
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