WEEKLY WRITER'S PATH #13
WHEN I WAS THIRTEEN I wrote an illustrated book for little kids called “What Could Candy Paint?” A smiling girl with a white smock daubed with paint, a French beret and an empty canvas, finally decides to paint the thing she loves most—her mother! I came across that book recently, drawn in colored pencil on the slick white cardboard that came tucked into my dad’s pressed shirts from the cleaners, 3-hole punched and bound with brass rings. My mom showed it to everyone in the hospital admitting office where she worked. She was so proud of it.
It was mom’s birthday Thursday, March 24. She’s been dead fifteen years. I have a package of Coffeemate coffee creamer clipped upright in my paper holder to honor her continued influence in my writing life.
In eighth grade I won my elementary school writing contest with a mythical story called, “How the Toucan Got Its Colors.” I remember it had to do with a flood, a heroic bird and the rainbow. The award was partly based on merit, and partly on favoritism (as awards mostly seem to be). By the time I started high school, when I would meet mom’s office mates, her hairdresser, Cheryl, or her family in Kentucky, they pegged me as “the writer.” When you’re one out of six kids and not the youngest, you have to have a handle for the aunts, uncles and cousins. I think it’s because of that early ease with words nurtured by my mom that I don’t have a problem considering myself a writer today.
In high school I put my mom into stories and described her habits and idiosyncrasies. She loved every word I wrote. My friends couldn’t believe she was OK with me talking about her dancing with the vacuum cleaner or wearing pink hot pants for my dad or keeping 24 cats. And she didn’t critique my work either. She just accepted it and loved it because I did it.
She came to my graduation from St. John’s College where I shared the Henry Austin Prize for Poetry with another student. The poem I received the prize for was called “Zafu,” from a book of poetry I had written during the summer I spent at Green Gulch—a Zen Buddhist lettuce farm in Marin, CA.
I actually received a $50 check in an envelope as the prize. I’ll never forget what she said: “Fifty dollars for one poem—that’s pretty good, Missy.”
She was right.
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I have uploaded the “LaGrange” chapter of DIZZY SUSHI on my website here, if you want to read about the time I came home from Japan to tell mom I was pregnant. Includes a description of “Mom’s Purse,” and my family’s part of history in the Coca Cola bottling company of Paducah, KY.
