When Words Won’t Leave You Alone

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. ~Anaïs Nin

Mama is standing in front of me with that look on her face and I know what that look means. Means she doesn’t know what to do with me. She says it often enough. Child, what am I to do with you? I know why she has that look, too. Because I’m crying.

But she should know better. Because I have a notebook in my lap and because I was writing, and because we’ve had this conversation a million times, and I’m not even ten. But I know. It’s an unwritten rule of being a mama. If a child cries, you must ask why.

So I tell her. Mama, there’s nothing wrong. It’s just a story telling itself in my head, but she’s still standing there and I want to write, but don’t want to get in trouble for my sassy mouth so I say Mama I need to write this story before it gives up on me. She shakes her head, but kisses the top of my hair. Opens the screen door, goes in.

But I know my mama. She’s going to watch through the screen like there’s something about me needs worrying about. Sometimes I turn around, say, Mama, I’m fine. But today I don’t because I’m gone. chasing the little boy, see where he’s going. Because he’s the one crying, not me.

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Franz Kafka wrote a story about a man turning into a bug and called it fiction but in his head? Wasn’t fiction. Tumbled out his fingers from too many years of the way his daddy looked at him. Like some hideous crawling thing needed stomping on. Didn’t matter he became a lawyer to please his father. Nasty vermin. Is what he was.

Hid his writing away. His whole life. Lawyer by day, writer by night. Told his best friend when I die, burn it all. It’s no good anyway. Good for nothing, just like me, he said. Except his friend didn’t burn it. He published it.

It’s a beautiful summer day and teacher is talking Kafka. Never mind we’re a bunch of teenagers itching to graduate, grow up, dive into the whole wide world. Because he’s talking books and he’s on fire. Listening, I am a moth, drawn to that flame.

He says the best stories aren’t plucked out of thin air, they’re dug from inside. Fiction gets layered on top and woven through. Like an unloved boy looking at his daddy’s disapproving face, turn himself into a bug. Says go home, write a story like that.

I write the moon a thin white sliver in a sky black as my fear that night. Translucent fingernail clipped from the baby sleeping down the hall. About the door opening and the wolf with all the white teeth and the silent screaming that still pounds my heart.

Mama opens the door, sees me crying. Sees my notebook. Writing? she asks and I nod. She kisses my head, pulls the door almost closed. I see her peeking in the crack, say I love you, Mama, see her shake her head. Still doesn’t know what to do with me.

A few days later, teacher asks if I can stay after class. Sure, I say. Hop to sit on the desk facing his. He’s looking at me like I’m some kind of little magic thing. Tells me he hopes I become a writer. I say Mama says writers go hungry, so I have to take business or accounting.

He sits for a minute, like he’s thinking. Then he says maybe you can do both. I tell him I probably will. Because what do you do when words won’t leave you alone?

Last time I see him is on graduation day. Tell him I will miss him talking about books. He smiles. Asks me to promise him I’ll never stop writing. I want to cry, but I don’t.

There’s a saying goes like this. To the world you are just one person. But to one person you just might be the world. If you were to ask me the one teacher that most influenced my life? He would be it.

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I’m reading this book called “The Magic Strings of Frankie Presto,” by Mitch Albom. He says when babies open their eyes the first time, the muses appear as lights. Every baby reaches out, picks the muse that will love them forever. Frankie Presto chose music. But me? Wrapped tiny fingers around a pencil, can’t seem to let go.

One day I send Mama a plane ticket to come visit me more than halfway across the country. Take her to see Niagara Falls and the Hard Rock Café, walk through a real stone castle together, visit the butterfly gardens, see Blue Morpho butterflies.

We’re having lunch at the rainforest café, surrounded by tropical leaves and flowers that smell like heaven when she shakes her head, asks me. Child, how are you paying for all this? I look at her, say by writing, Mama and I don’t know what that look is, on her face. But I’ll take it.

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I’m sitting at my desk, supposed to be writing. One minute I’m typing, next minute an entire peony falls off the stem. Soft shushing as it hits my desk, pink petals fluttering everywhere in the breeze from the window and just like that, my hair is pulled by the stars and I’m gone.

Gone to the cemetery, walking up and down scattering pink peony petals on my daddy’s grave, Baba’s grave, aunts and uncles. Sun on my shoulders as a summer breeze picks them up, turns peony petals into fairies dancing in pink skirts.

Gone, remembering how dad loved peonies. Remember him bringing them from the nursery, arms full, dirt on his face, Mama planting them in the flowerbed by the step where I sat, writing about a little boy while Mama watched through the screen.

Gone, remembering how I went back. After Dad died, after Mama went to the senior’s home. Stood looking at the house that used to be home. The old step is still there, but they pulled out Dad’s peonies. Blink again, I’m scooping peony petals off my desk.

They say time flies but for a writer, it doesn’t fly as the crow does.

No, it flies the way a small child hurls themselves through the day, chasing curiosities until they fall asleep on the floor, exhausted.

One minute I’m six and Baba shares my room, next minute I’m fifty wondering where half a century went. One minute I have a mama wondering what to do with me and the next I’m crying because she left, took a piece of my heart with her.

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When Mama was alive, I used to visit her at the senior’s home. Walk through the big glass doors, see all the tables and sofas for visiting. Big six-foot table off in the corner, filled with puzzle pieces. Most days that table was surrounded by little old people talking, laughing, building a puzzle.

But one day, the table is empty save for one woman. Snow white hair and parchment skin. Maps of all her yesterdays on the back of her hands.

She’s sitting all alone, holding a puzzle piece up to the light. Staring at it so intently she doesn’t see me stop to watch her. Trying to puzzle out what she’s seeing.

Seems to me that’s the best description of writing I can think of. Pick up the pieces of a life. Hold them to the light. See what you can make of them.

“We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect.”
― Anais Nin