I always dreamed of being a writer, but I thought you had to know something important and think deep thoughts and know what you were doing in order to write. I didn’t know anything deep or important. Even now, I don’t really know what thinking is all about until I have an actual thought, and then I get interested. Chances are I would never have become a writer had I gone to college. I was kicked out freshman year for being pregnant, married the boy from Haverford (who did not get kicked out), and never went back. Too much literary jargon, too many rules, too many critics would have taken up residence in my head. I saw great big NO TRESPASSING signs everywhere. My own dismissals were bad enough. I’d write half a page, look at it, and mutter who do you think you are? Crumpled it up and tossed it in the general direction of a wastebasket. I finally began writing when I was forty-eight. Since then I have written two collections of short stories, one tiny novel, four memoirs, a book about writing memoir, and three children’s books. I am hooked by now on memoir. I write for fun, and I write for clarity. Clarity is comfort. I have had to go to the dark place more than once, and write about parts of myself I’d rather not face, but clarity comes first, and honesty is the only way to get there. I have discovered that the more vulnerable you allow yourself to be, the stronger you become. I’m 82 now, four children, 12 grandchildren, two great-grandchildren, an awful lot of stuff, and after three marriages, I live with my dogs.
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