tedwords

“The key to good eavesdropping is not getting caught.” ― Lemony Snicket

Aunt Bev arrives. She has a new haircut. Points in her conversation with Mom:

They have a new cat. David is very excited. Cindy has a smoking problem and is up to two packs a day. Mom says she thinks Laurie was deliberately being mean when Nana was there yesterday. She says she fought terribly and acted blase. Bob and Carol are getting along better, although Bob did try to run his sock up Mom's leg at dinner. Lou's wife took almost everything he had. He lives in a little beach house with HIS DAUGHTER and the wife wanted alimony. But Lou wouldn't do it and the judge agreed. Mom is looking for another job, but with shorter hours.

Kerrie returns home without her friends and an angry face. Kerrie says she isn't mad at them, but came home to eat (but why the angry face?)

I think this is the worst part of my journal back then. I was an intensely curious kid, and I had an innate interest, intrepid reporter that I was, to listen in on other people's lives, since there wasn't very much going on in mine. That means that I clearly spent the entire afternoon this day eavesdropping on my mother's conversation with her sister, and then writing down in my journal everything they talked about. What a little shit I was!

And then, I gloss over the most interesting part of the exchange. Uncle Bob (not really my uncle) was trying to run his socked foot up and down Mom's leg during a dinner? With dad right next to her? I mean, what a creep he really was! I remember that man well--he was a gym coach, with one of those 70s moustaches that porn stars wore, with black hair thinning at the top. Thin and angular, as he was a runner. And a big old whorebag, I would always be overhearing stories my mom told about him. He eventually did divorce his wife later in life--one of those gray divorces you hear tell about, don't you know? It was not pretty. He ended up not speaking to my parents.

And then! The way I end the whole entry, with my sister entering the room, and me trying to create drama out of nothing whatsoever. I am just manufacturing drama everywhere I go, child.

Sometimes a face is just a face is just a face.

“There are only ten minutes in the life of a pear when it is perfect to eat.” ― Ralph Waldo Emerson

Kerrie informs Deanne and Michelle that Laurie won't "be there." Deanne doesn't like pears, so Kerrie and Michelle exclude her from them. Nana and Mom enter. Mom had to pick Nana up from work.

40 Years Later: Upon reflection, haven't we all felt excluded from eating pears, every now and then? Especially if we don't like eating them.

But there again, is it that Deanne truly didn't like eating them, or she just didn't think she'd like eating them? Perhaps had she tried them with an open mind, Deanne would have found she actually enjoyed the experience, and would have joined Kerrie and Michelle and felt more a part of the group. Although we shall never truly know, perhaps Deanne in hindsight regrets she was unable to bond with her friends over this delicious snack.

Laurie called 2 minutes before Mom arrived home from band with Ted. Laurie is going to a play with Nana and Ed.

I tell you, these entries are so darn cryptic. So much to unpack in these little haikus. First off, how was my first day at band? No idea! This entry doesn't give me any hint at all. It truly is as if I am writing about someone else entirely.

I think given the context, this first meeting may have been held at night, which is kind what is hanging out in the corners of my mind. It would make sense if I wrote my very first journal entry during the day, then mom picked up Nana in the afternoon (five) and then had to go pick me up later on. I am thinking she would have picked both me and Nana up had they been at the same time, even if I had band in North Eldredge and Nana worked in a mill in Pawtucket...and also, I am the freaking person writing this down, so I clearly would have been witness to the great pear incident.

But how did I feel, who did I meet? Since I didn't mention anything, I bet I didn't say much and just kind of kept to myself and listened and observed. Kept a low profile. Tried to blend in. kind of remember our band director, Dillard Collins (no I am not making that name up. We called him Dilly behind his back, or if I was annoyed with him I would call him Dullard) introducing himself--he was a first-year teacher there--and introducing his staff, then setting expectations.

I am sure I have more in the...wait for it...200 page novel that I just remembered I turned my first year of high school into. Man, was I a weird kid.

Also, can we just make note of how continuously tortured poor Laurie is in this narrative? Forced to go down to Cape Cod AND go to a play with Nana and Ed. Life is hard, dude.

Moral of the story: Sometimes the unexplored fruit is worth the time and effort.

“The beginning is the most important part of the work.” — Plato

No shit, Plato. Without the beginning, we can't go anywhere, can we?

It reminds me of a production of The Miracle Worker I was in years ago. I had the first line in the play, as the curtain rises and the doctor is discovering examining baby Helen Keller after a serious health incident and reporting back to Ma and Pa Keller. I think it was the only line I had, but oh, so important: "She'll live."

Had the curtain gone up and I had said, "She's dead," the play really couldn't go on, could it?

Anyway, this is my beginning. The beginning of my journals, that is, which might as well be the beginning of my story. I began keeping a journal at the age of 13, on August 16, 1979, writing with a thin magic marker in a blue composition book issued by New England School Supply (A Milton Bradley Company, 40 pages). I wrote on the front cover in big blue letters "The Mitchell Saga, volume 1: The True Story," and referred to everyone (even myself) in the third person. I think I had some thoughts of being a writer, even then.

I have no idea why I started writing. I didn't receive a diary or anything with a lock and key. I just saw this blue composition book, probably swiped from my father, an elementary school principal, and felt the urge to start writing. Kind of like Doc Whatsisname, someone handed me a blue journal and said, "he'll live." And I started writing.

Here are the deathless words of prose that open up my journal:

"A day of changes. Laurie is going to Nana Hall's because Mom and Dad don't want her around. Dad is planning to go to Block Island today, and Ted begins band."

Ah. New beginnings. There it is right there. My sister was being sent off to Cape Cod to stay with our grandmother for a few weeks (what torture that must have been)...but, kind of sad that I had to qualify the sentence with "my parents don't want her around." I wonder if I felt bad for her, by writing that. That certainly doesn't sound like me. Laurie and I really did not get along at that time. Maybe I was editorializing. Take that, impartial reporter.

And the next sentence: dad was taking off for Block Island. Mom always hated those trips: dad with the boys, carousing, leaving mom to schlep three kids around during the summer (excluding Laurie, who she apparently didn't want). And then, the big thing: I was starting band.

Aha! Well, there's the cause for me starting a journal, I am sure.

I kind of remember that summer, even all these years later, and the anxiousness I felt about starting something like band. My junior high years were probably the most miserable of my life, short of the Trump presidency--I was a pimply, pasty-faced kid who was perpetually picked on and kind of kept to myself and didn't have friends to speak of at all (Laurie, a year younger, was the popular one).

I think I saw going to high school as a fresh beginning, a way to erase those past two years, a way to be someone else. I think I saw band as a chance to actually make some friends. Because girlfriend, I tell you, that journal I started writing in was most likely the only thing I had to confide in at that point in time.

And my nervousness about starting a new adventure like that, much as I wanted it, was the reason I started writing things down, even I did choose to write in the third person. Those last three lines, I assure you, was the entire reason I started writing anything at all in 'The Mitchell Saga.' (and by the way, how pompous is that title? This is NOT the Odyssey; of that I can assure you!)

Still. I was taking a chance, and taking chances was not something I liked doing at all. I was entirely happy to live my life in a tiny little bubble. Well, maybe not happy. But resigned. And secretly looking, I think, for a pin to make that bubble go pop.

A day of changes, indeed. "Tell all the truth, but tell it slant," Emily Dickson once wrote. Starting a journal was my way of getting at my truth, whatever that was. And I guess, it only took me 40 or so years to get there.

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