from litany to mantra

In the interest of regularity of publishing this blog, expect to find a new post here every other Sunday. Sorry that this one’s a little late, did not have internet access for the last half of last week. Enjoy, and keep reading.

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My best writing seems to come from true life, whether I treat it fictionally, embellish it, or just tell it like it is. I've been writing a lot about my family lately. Here’s a piece I wrote and recorded in a recent workshop on radio essays. Let me know what you think.
MrW

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“You’re not going to college.”
Those words, from my mother, had an enormous impact on 18 year old me. I still picture that moment, her standing in our living room by the big picture window, feeding our parakeet, Boozer. At the time I couldn’t believe I was hearing them, not from her.
Someone said something to the effect that if high school doesn’t scar you for life, your family will. I never imagined I’d be, if not permanently, then significantly injured by both of those institutions.
I was adopted by my mother’s father and his second wife. My mother left me and my half-brother at a friend’s one day, and never came back. I never asked why. It never mattered. What mattered was that my grandparents gave me my real family. They came all the way from Michigan to Wyoming on a train during a severe flood to take my half-brother and I into their home. They had already raised 18 children from their previous marriages. I did everything I could to thank them for that by being an obedient, hard-working son.
Our family was close when I was a child, always getting together somewhere for birthdays, holidays, and reunions. We were a large family, of course, with everyone’s currents and exes always welcome in everyone’s home. Everyone else was very practical and hands on, and unemotional. Dreams were whimsical things, things we said we’d do “one of these days.” Everyone in my family was always going to re build that classic car, expand their house, take that trip across the sea – “one of these days.” We didn’t discuss dreams seriously, and no one was expected to actually carry them out.
What was expected of me, and the other children in the family, was to graduate high school, get a good job, get married and have babies. That would make us, if not happy, at least content, satisfied. I knew that would never fulfill me, whose head was always in the clouds, feet barely touching the ground.
Their lack of empathy shouldn’t have surprised me, I guess. They were of a different generation, a generation when hard work and duty were one’s only salvation. I don’t know if either of them graduated high school. I do know that Pa had lived during both big wars, and worked for Grand Trunk Western Railroad for 30 years. Ma was Rosie the Riveter during WWII, putting airplanes together. Then she was a Gibson girl, building refrigerators. Then she became a housewife, a divorcee – all this before she became Pa’s wife, then my mother.
Perhaps it was my ethereal, never present nature that led them to believe I was not college material. But, please, I begged, I had always done well in classes academically. Socially was a different story, so perhaps they didn’t think I was grown up enough to handle college. That I survived high school was miraculous enough. Whatever their reasons, they refused to even cooperate with the college application process. The information required was nobody else’s business.
The actions to support the words, and my Pa’s complicity with my Ma, were traumatic to me. It meant that after 16 years my parents didn’t understand me at all, that they must not care about my needs and desires. It meant that they must not love me anymore, or perhaps never did.
“You’re not going to college.” Those words proved true very quickly. My parents fell fatally ill shortly after I finished high school. I was the only person able or willing to take care of them until they died. Despite my recent confusion regarding our relationship, abandoning the people who had given all that they had given to me was not an option. My life went on hold for a few years.
Still, those words haunted me long after my parents’ deaths. I tried to combat them, starting and failing to finish educational and career programs time and again. I justified my surrender in numerous ways: money, life, love, age. I have failed at every career I’ve pursued, just not caring about them enough to give the full effort. This behavior eventually landed me on the streets, empty in my heart, filled with nothingness.
To make a long part of this story short, I’ve recovered my life, and discovered my purpose. And to pursue my purpose, I need to further my education. So, I have enrolled in college again. I’m hoping to complete a two year certificate in my chosen field, the field I was put here on this planet to excel in. I’ve always been a writer, but never made any money at it, was never able to get good paying work doing it because of my lack of education. Now, I intend to.
And those words, “You’re not going to college,” have become a mantra rather than a litany.

© 2010 Mr. Write ( J. Phillip [John]
Wilkes). All rights reserved.