I recently moved to Colorado, which is a homecoming of sorts. No, I wasn’t born here. I’m an Army brat, meaning we bounced around from state to state, wherever my dad was stationed. But when we landed here in Colorado Springs, that was it for my dad. He loved it. It was so much better than where he grew up in northern Minnesota. It was better than California or Arkansas. He retired here. I spent most of my formative years growing up here (thus the back story line in Finding Cadence), and I’m the oldest, so Colorado is all my sibs know.
I gave up my NordicTrack incline trainer when we moved. No room for it in our downsized little house, plus I figured with all the sunny days here (243+ per year, compared with Detroit’s 180), I’d enjoy my walking/running outside. That’s where I’ve been, enjoying a morning walk in this beautiful Broadmoor neighborhood, trying to keep from getting any bigger as we eat out most nights because my kitchen remodel isn’t yet complete.
I think a lot when I’m walking. It’s funny when you come “home.” So many old feelings rush back, even decades later. When I write about such things (as I did for Cadence), it’s a surface scratch revealing just a part of the emotion. When you live it, the emotions are overwhelming.
I think how I couldn’t wait to leave this one-horse town when I turned 18; now I’m back where I started.
It was a few days before I could walk by this school in my neighborhood. For this is where it all began. And by “all” I mean where I learned to love to write.
My mother sent us to this small, private Catholic school for a few years. If there is one belief I shared with my mother, it’s that we both thought education is extremely important. We both wanted our kids to have the best. I attended grades five, six, and seven in this school. (Truth be told, I’d have rather gone to public school but what can you do? I didn’t have a say.)
It was a tough school back then, run by a stereotypical nun, a la Sister Mary Stigmata aka The Penguin of The Blues Brothers fame. The nuns used rulers as disciplinary devices and I’ve seen many a student being dragged around by the ear. The bus driver was mean too. (Are you kidding? We didn’t live in this highbrow neighborhood, we only went to school here. We had to take the bus.) He rarely let us off where he was supposed to, instead “forgetting” and stopping the bus a half mile away. There was a really mean red-headed girl in my class who hated my guts and wanted me to fight her, goading me every so often. I’m wasn’t one who was a glutton for punishment (I had younger sisters who could kick my ass) and somehow avoided getting punched at school. Despite all these challenges, I liked the place, but I liked going to school. Didn’t matter where it was or what it was, I liked to learn.
There were some lay teachers too, and in seventh grade I got one who liked me. (A lot of teachers liked me. I’d always been ‘teacher’s pet’ material.) I liked her too. She saw past the shy, the awkward, and the athletically unappealing. She encouraged my love of words, and for that I was grateful. I somehow made it to the Colorado state spelling bee that year; although I didn’t win, it was thrilling to go to Denver to compete.
I’m fairly certain a lot of the kids (besides the mean read-headed girl) hated my guts for being the pet. I’m only human. I wanted the cool kids to like me. So when a bunch of them approached me to write a story – about the teacher – I agreed. They wanted something titillating, something way, way out there. They wanted me to write the worst things I could think of, and I did. It was a horrible story, terribly executed, one full of lies and vulgar words, but one that the cool kids really liked.
(I have to insert here that no one twisted my arm. I did something awful, to someone I really admired and who seemed to take an interest in me.)
Well, I’m the type of person who can’t do something awful without getting caught, and that’s exactly what happened. Not long after the “story” was written and released to the general seventh grade public, I contracted the chicken pox and spent two weeks at home. During that time, my desk was raided and Sister Mary-whatshername got a hold of my epic tome about the seventh grade teacher.
She was not amused.
As soon as the contagion had passed, I was ordered into school with my mother (where was my dad? Viet Nam? I can’t remember), where I was confronted by my poisoned words. Then I was expelled. Then my siblings were told not to return.
I don’t know what happened to the story. I can’t remember any of it except for the swear words I’m sure I didn’t know the true meanings of until much, much later. (I was developmentally delayed in that department.)
It was the end of the school year, so no big deal. They passed me into eighth grade, but I didn’t have a school for the fall. I hoped against hope that I’d have to attend the local junior high a few blocks away. (That’s exactly where I went in August.)
My mother didn’t speak to me for three months. She was that pissed. She took away my pens and paper. Yes. She was that pissed.
Eventually I started writing again. (It’s kind of hard to keep paper and pen from a kid in school.) In fact, I wrote for the school newspaper in my new junior high, where the advisor/teacher liked me just as much as the seventh grade teacher had. (Mr. Elliott. What a dreamboat!)
I learned a lot from this experience. I learned you can push the envelope in your writing, but you have to do it with tact. With style is even better. You don’t need a sledgehammer with most readers. You don’t need crass.
Yes, this is where it all began. And this is where it continues.
