long time ago and just today

words that go all the way across this page

I found two pages covered with writing on those long yellow legal pads. I have no memory of them, but it’s my handwriting. And it is about my life. Here is the first sentence: ”This is my first attempt at writing anything with words that go all the way across the page.” I look at a photograph my daughter Jennifer took. I asked her what year she took it and she told me. I have already forgotten what year, but I was likely 39, maybe 40. The legal pad pages were written then, because I fell in love on the bottom of page one, and I was 39 or 40 when we met. Funny, I love him still, he was a serious part of my life. He wrote me a song back then. About a month ago, out of a clear blue sky, he sent it to me, professionally recorded. Haven’t seen him since we broke up. Such a sweet surprise, the song. I don’t remember how he knew my address. We must have been in touch at some point. It’s a beautiful song, I love listening to him sing. I wrote him and told him I loved it.

Here is the way I had lived my life. Pretty much everything I did was on the spur of the moment. Sure, I bought groceries, cooked meals for my kids when they were around, listened to them, worried about them, but basically, I was driving blind. I had an interesting job in publishing, but it was entry level stuff, fun and no responsibility, not really. When I got promoted, I quit. I had no desire to be an assistant editor, or even a fully fledged editor. I didn’t want to be an anything. I wanted to write, but that was left pretty much up to chance. Maybe I would some day, I hoped so. The best part of that job was meeting my friend Chuck there. Our friendship lasted forty years, ending with his death. Closest friend I’ve ever had. He was my most trusted reader, If he liked it, I knew it was good. If not, I either worked harder, or trashed it. This was after I had begun writing words that went all the way across the page. But I’m getting ahead of myself now.

The spur of the moment often had consequences , especiallly when it involved a man, and I dealt with those kinds of things by writing poems. Poems weren’t scary, and they could be short. I found pleasure and satisfaction in writing. I couldn’t have explained it then. Not sure I can explain it even now. Poems probably saved my life, or at least the way I lived it, because I finally had a focus. I began in my twenties, in an unhappy marriage. Whatever popped into my head and hung around, I made it into a poem. It was very satisfying. I used to hide them from my husband underneath the cover on my ironing board.They were published here and there, and a little book was put out by a small press. But I would never have called myself a poet. I wasn’t a poet. I wrote poems, that’s all. I wasn’t a writer yet.

My friend Jerry Stern was a poet. He told me once that when he and his pal, I forget his name, went to Europe for the first time, they were maybe eighteen. Neither had written a single word yet, but on their passports, next to Occupation, they both wrote POET. It it made me laugh. Jerry’s pal? He wrote a terrific poem about Icarus. He wasn’t failing, just coming to the end of his success. Only it was a better word than success. Triumph? Probably not. Oh, what is your name? This is turning into things I’ve forgotten. I remember Icarus, though.

There are piles of things I’ve forgotten. I do however finally remember the name of the poet who write one of my favorite poems. His name is Steven Dobyns. The poem is called “How To Like It.” I remembered it by remembering Stephen King, two Stephens spelled differently.

Oh, good. I looked him up by using his Icarus poem. His name is Jack Gilbert. Christ. Now I need a thing ( I forget what it’s called) to help me remember his name. Jack jumped over the candlestick is little like flying. Maybe I can keep it in my head this time. And it was triumph. I love that poem too. If I remember Jack, maybe Gilbert will follow naturally.

Then I read today something I had read before—”love sleeps on rough ground.” It doesn’t seem to come from anywhere, but somehow became a line about a Shakespeare poem, not a line from one. Well, whoever said that ought to be writing her or his own poems. It’s my new favorite line again. I don’t remember where I read it the first time. This is definitely turning into things I’ve forgotten.

Once I forgot the name of one of my husbands. It took me fifteen seconds to think of it. I’ve had three of them, but that’s no excuse.

When I started to really write? Words that went all the way across the page? After an adventure I had with a young man I met when I was visiting a writer friend in New Hampshire. She was having work done on her deck. One morning I was walking on a path somewhere near her house and in front of me was a snapping turtle the size of a Thanksgiving turkey. On the other side of the turtle was this very good looking young man, one of the carpenters. He began to talk, I looked around to see who he was talking to. There was no one there. He was talking to me. No idea what we talked about, but after a little while he said, “I’m taking you four wheeling.” And I went. For one week I did not have four children or any grandchildren, I was no age in particular. I was just a blonde headed woman in the front seat of a red pickup truck, ad libbing with a much younger man, living entirely in the present. The rest of the time we were doing what you’d expect. When I got home there was a note on the bus kiosk near my apartment. Just Get Some Writing Done, it said. I signed up without thinking. On the spur of the moment. But it had something to do with the boy in New Hampshire. One week in the present tense. I’ve always wanted to thank him. But I only recall his first name, Brian. And it was a long time ago.

The teacher was Bill Roorbach, a brilliant writer and fantastic teacher. I was lucky. He began every class by quoting from Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, “In the beginner’s mind are many choices, in the expert’s mind are few.’ “Write with your beginner’s mind,” Bill said. I finally qualified. The first story I wrote got published and I was off and running. Three books of fiction later, I wrote a memoir, called Safekeeping. My friend Chuck championed that book. He had become a literary agent, and he represented me. He didn’t give up, even after every publisher but one had turned it down. Robin Desser at Knopf. I learned more about myself writing that book than I had with all the other books of fiction. I learned about writing for clarity and telling the truth, no matter how painful. Memoir might as well have been crack. It was non-fiction from then on. I’ve done four memoirs by now, because things kept happening that needed more clarity than I had at my disposal. Until I wrote.

I wanted to do many things in this essay, but all this forgetting reminds me of one of them. Sometimes in the things I write now, I find myself feeling something in there among or behind the words. Not like a haunt, not a ghost, nothing scary, it’s more a sensation. An absence. You can feel an absence. Something I have forgotten, or lost, right there, behind the words. It makes wish I could see it, that I could draw it. Then I could write words around the shape of absence.

Which makes it so easy. So ridiculously obvious. Chuck died almost four years ago. Maybe it’s you, my dear. Maybe it’s you.