Birth of a Writer

I can pinpoint, almost to the minute, the birth of my writing career. It was 1956, mid-fall, getting dark earlier, and crisp out. However, there had not been a snowfall yet. We were living in a red brick house somewhere in North Kansas City. I was ten years old and in the fifth grade at still one more school whose name goes unremembered, (there were so many schools as we moved about!).

I was sitting in the one remaining swing of an old, dilapidated swing set that prior tenets had left in the rocky back yard. My feet kept me barely moving back and forth. My mom was inside cooking dinner and my stepfather had not gotten home from work yet.

My Mom (Then Aldine Bush) were in the midst of still another round of domesticity; trying one more time to “make it work.” George Bush, had once more promised to stop drinking. Even at the tender age of ten, I knew it would not last long, it never did, and I was waiting for the blow up as you wait for the storm clouds to finally drown you.

I had finished reading the comic book Mom had bought home for me when she came home from work, but I did not want to go in until I was called. Gently swinging back and forth in that old swing, I pulled my jacket tighter around me, trying to stay warm against the evening wind. I again thumbed through the comic, and there, in the exact center of the magazine, was a two page short story; no cartoons, just words, and the only thing left unread. Glancing at the rapidly darkening sky, I tried to judge how long I would have enough light to read or how long until my mom called me to come inside for dinner.

Bored, I read the ‘story’. I was enthralled with the story as soon as I started reading it. It was like nothing I had ever read before; not at school, not at home, not at the library; it was my first young adult story, and my first short-short story.

When I had finished reading it, I rolled the comic book up into a tube and held it in my right hand. Pushing on the ground with my feet and straightening my legs I came to a semi-standing position. The sky was now totally dark and stars were winking overhead. I could see through the kitchen window where Mom was still bustling around the kitchen. But outside, in the deepening dark, around me, the night was quiet and cold.

Suddenly, and with breathtaking clarity, as surely, as if lightening had struck, I knew I was to be a writer. As if the muse, whose existence I did not even know about, had reached out a hand from heaven, touched me with an electrified finger, and marked me in some indefinable way.
I remained where I was for a long while, catching my breath, and dealing with the awe at what had just happened to me.

Excited, I went inside. Mom was frying fish in a big iron skillet, turning the pieces with a long handled fork (which I still have in my own kitchen drawer).

I sat down at the table and told her what had happened to me. I was afraid that she would make fun of me or would not believe what happened. Instead, she listened while dredging still more pieces of fish in a corn meal mixture and layering them in the skillet. Mom almost always listened to me.

Then she talked, as she put the fried fish on a platter, about how much she liked to read (especially spicy Romance Magazines!), and how she wished she had the talent to write. Mom told me I could be anything I wanted, even a writer.

I could not fall asleep for a long time that night though warm and cozy under a lot of blankets, my reading light clipped onto my headboard on, and my bedside radio turned on, the volume low; I could not even concentrate on the book I was reading (Nancy Drew?), thinking about what had happened to me.

That was the beginning of my pursuit of ‘art’ instead of homes, vacations, or husbands!