changing what I see

A couple nights ago on Facebook, I lamented how mushrooms seem to diminish after cooking them.  A few days before that, I posted a picture of zucchini shredded into spaghetti strands.  In between, I made some snarky remark about the Ben Affleck as Batman brou ha ha.  Those were my most popular posts in the last couple weeks.  Not that you need a play by play, but merely some context.  Because pretty much every other thing I’ve posted has been about race or civil rights.  Sometimes these things get a like… sometimes I think it is just lost in the vacuum of Facebook hullabaloo.  And maybe my opinions are hullabaloo to some people.

But that won’t stop me from speaking them.

I guess I am subject to the winds of pop culture right now.  Today we celebrate a 50 year anniversary of a speech.  An uplifting speech – one worth remembering.  One that some have declared a pinnacle of a great movement.  It’s also the easy thing to remember.  The easy thing to quote.  To like and share on Facebook.  Because it makes us feel good and hopeful.  Not sick.

Maybe that’s why less than a handful of people like these posts… because they don’t want to think about things that make them feel icky.  Like politics.  It’s just easier to not talk about it, avoid conflict, and pretend there isn’t a problem.  Or better yet, that the problem is solved because hurray!   we now live in a world where a child is not judged by the color of her skin but the content of her character.

Seriously, you think that?

Are you still with me?  Or have you turned away because this post isn’t about food or pretty landscapes or a scene from my latest novel… but okay, let’s go there.  Because I have reflected on why I feel the need to stand on a soapbox about this issue.  Not that I’m shy about soapboxes (especially in a blog or on Facebook).  But why this issue?  I’m not black or brown or anything that isn’t so pasty you can see my blue veins.  It isn’t my problem.  Am I justified to shout about it?  Because I wrote a book?  And… not even a book, really.  It’s a rough, rough, rough first draft.

That’s the thing about writing.   Especially this novel.  I have two characters who are women of color.  I was scared to write them.  Scared to do them justice, I told myself.  Scared I would use the cliché of white savior with my other narrator.  Scared I would buy into stereotypes and lack honesty.  But really… when I think about it, I think I was scared to see the world through their eyes.

These women are phantoms of my imagination… so really, how is seeing their world different from how I experience reality?  I can’t unsee my white, Catholic, small town upbringing.  But I have used that small town as a setting and put these characters there.  I imagine Bekah going into a coffee shop and getting an unsettled look of not belonging.  I imagine Agnes going to school and getting a dishonest grade on her test.  Would these things really happen?  Maybe not.  But looking at history of decades and days ago, I wouldn’t doubt the probability.  And imagining it, both the blow to one’s spirit and the necessary resilience to not react changed the way I see things now.

Does that mean I see things that aren’t there?  I think my friends might be annoyed with me sometimes.  Invoking the word racist about things that weren’t intended to be so.  Does that mean I am judging them?  But how different is that from judging someone who walks into a coffee shop and just doesn’t look like everyone else in town?  Is judging anyone the right thing to do?  No.  So, let’s talk about it.  Please.  

I speak through my writing.  And, I have no doubt this writing causes me to pay attention to things I normally wouldn’t before.   A year ago, I would probably link to the video of MLK Jr.’s famous speech and proclaim it the philosophy to which we must all strive today.  Instead I posted Langston Hughes’ words urging the reader to hold fast to dreams.

Because as much as it is a nice thought to think we can live in a colorblind society… I have to say I rather prefer that I see the color now.  In all its messy, sickening, hopeful, infuriating, surprising, promising, thought-provoking history and present day struggle.  It helps me to write better characters, to see them better, to feel for them.  Which I like to think, in turn, makes me a better, more empathetic human being.

procrastination and real life inspirations

I have a story.  Tonight I will flesh out a few more scenes after the which I can consider the first draft complete.  Of course, that’s when the work really begins.  But… I’ve realized that when writing a book, having a complete story – no matter how much is deleted or bulked up in later versions – is an important peak on which to declare victory.

Especially since it took me fifteen years to climb this mountain.

There were a few points over the last year when I wondered if it was worth writing something I started so long ago.  In a lot of ways, I have a different view of the world than I did at age 23.  I shook off a lot of naiveté, changed priorities, and… I’d like to think gained some humility even as I accomplished more.  

I mean… at age 23 I was obsessed with war movies.  I spent my days talking about weaponry to the public and bitching about museum drama in all the other hours.  I still wanted to be the star of every show.  I had dreams of fame and wealth.  I still believed success was going to be the number of zeroes in my pay stub or an engagement ring.  I was in love with Kenneth Branagh… okay, maybe not everything has changed.

But a lot has.

Except my love for this story. Some of it has changed with me.  The root of it stays the same… which is funny because I consider myself more jaded about love these days.  And yet, it really is kind of a sappy love story.  Plus.

I realize, of course, as I weave together the different chunks of manuscript from the years that I had to live to this point to make it a better story.  I better understand … and grieve… the degeneration that comes with old age.  I feel the sorrow of a major grief.  I also understand curiosity a lot more.

Even just a year ago, I questioned the cliché of my frame story.  A young-ish woman taking care of her dying grandmother.  How overtold is the story that in seeing one life take a curtain call one discovers the value of her own life?  And maybe because a year ago I hadn’t reflected much in that way, it did seem contrived… because that’s how I wrote it.

But then I started sifting through old pictures.  Some I was lucky enough to ask my grandmother about firsthand.  And then I found many more that ignited a mystery of the story behind them.

A dashing silhouette of a WWI soldier that had the message “Thinking of you,” scribbled on the back.

Two best friends caught in a spontaneous moment of joy.

A husband and wife igniting the life of a party.

 

I found myself writing these stories in my own mind.  For some I had details to come up with an idea.  And then… questions… like who was that best friend?  How long did they know one another?  Who lived longer?  Did they stay friends even after marriage?  

Or… who is the dog in so many of these pictures?

None of these questions informed my oldest narrator’s history.  Her story has remained essentially unchanged throughout the fifteen years of my writing… just some tweaking to the level of her romantic world view.  But it did make me realize that these questions are ones that may go through a woman’s mind as she looks death in the eye and contemplates the meaning, the heartache, the reward, the love of a life.  And so my present day character, Bekah, ended up getting a lot more muscle… and was much less a servant to the story of the past.

There are other serendipities that have fueled me this summer and last.  The fact I spend many nights in the house where I first conjured the idea.  Especially after summer evening walks with my dog around the neighbor’s lake.  The character in all three storylines of this book is a great old house – whose aesthetic has changed as my walks around Boston and Central Mass lead me to discover different architectures I like. But the grounds are entirely based on my neighbors’ properties, which include a lake, a once abandoned (although somewhere in the last decade it has been restored) tennis court, and two overgrown foundations in the middle of the woods.  

And lastly… maybe most importantly… or maybe incidentally… current events.  Race.  Gay marriage.  The redeeming quality of our society is that there have been baby steps and giant leaps of progress made… all while there have been retreats into a past during which the more historic scenes of this book take place.  The racial conflicts of this country have always fascinated me… at least since I was twelve and able to comprehend discrimination.  I think my father has something to do with that, as does my mother… as do the paths down which I have chosen to lead my life.  I’m less scared of the subject now.  Less intimidated to insert my imagination into a character who is a different skin color.  More willing to write the villainy that makes it real.

I don’t have a title for this book yet.  The one I had fifteen years ago is somewhat irrelevant now.  But I do have a skeleton.  And a love story.