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Telling stories, telling lies [1]

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Date: 2023-02-10  

Not me. Just someone who could pass as such.

What is an origin story?

It’s a story we tell ourselves. We humans study anthropology to understand evolution, which allows us then to understand where we began.

A couple of days ago, I began a story that decidedly did not read like a resume. In fact, I almost began the missive by saying that I was raised a poor Black child.

Which would have been true in one sense but a lie in another. Growing up, I never knew I was poor.

I’m not good at telling stories, not my own, not always. I’ve always been a better listener. In fact, as a person without a mind’s eye (i.e., a visual imagination), I have always depended on other senses to navigate the world.

One of those early senses was sensitivity. I used to be very empathic when I was young. Injustice mattered to me. My mom retells the story of when I was small; riding in the car on the way back from out of town, we passed by a smokestack. “Poll-ution,” I said. I must have been around three.

I learned a lot around that age. Not only was I regularly taking in Sesame Street, my favorite show (plus other gems, like The Electric Company), my parents had enrolled me in Head Start. Without these two influences in my life, my options would have been limited indeed. Head Start truly lived up to its name. By the time I made it to elementary school, I was ahead of the game in terms of reading and other areas. I read a lot.

(By the by, the Washington Post just ran a story about how Mississippi in 1970 banned the airing of Sesame Street, because it had the temerity to show black and white kids playing together. It was that same era.)

My school district was one that had been divided after Brown v. Board of Education, so when I began attending, I had to be bused nearly an hour just to make it there. My family was poor (though, again, I didn’t know it at the time) and we lived in a very rural area. Much of my formative years, we didn’t have a car. So the bus was the only way to make it to school. Missing the bus was not optional, as far as I was concerned: unless I was actually sick, I wept if I missed school. My dad would have to find transportation on the fly, as I couldn’t stand to miss a single day.

In third grade, we took what was called the California Achievement Test. It’s the first standardized test I ever remember taking. I am not skilled at bragging for various reasons, but I’ll say that I tested as an extreme outlier. I remember looks on some administrators’ faces.

Not soon thereafter, the school called my parents to arrange to consider moving me to the Gifted & Talented program. I attended one afterschool meeting (in the evening, actually), where my family met the other families. Not only was I the only nonwhite student there, I was probably the most indigent, too. Again, how would I know at that age? I just felt the physical distance that was observable between us. I ended up not joining, because my family would not have been able to attend those meetings on a regular basis.

The school offered to move me up two grade levels. But a shy, nearly silent child would not have fared well with fifth graders, who were more rough and tumble (as I learned during a trial run). My parents left the decision up to me, at that age. I chose to remain in my own grade level, with my classmates who’d by then become my friends.

As far as school went, I was always strong when it came to English. I won the spelling bee once, though they misspelled my name on the trophy. One of the great ironies of my life.

I joined sports (track and field) for a short stint, mainly again to be around friends. But mainly I was intent on doing something with writing. Tried out for a play and found it was not my medium. I didn’t let that hold me back from trying things in front of a microphone, though. Motivational speakers would travel to our school (perhaps a circuit?) and I would formally introduce them.

By high school, still not great at acting, I utilized voice instead. I could not read music, as I never had any tutors (in fact, I tutored other children, in English and math). When I was young, my father had brought home an organ, and it sat in the living room. I was working up the courage to play it, but it was loud and I knew my mistakes would be broadcast through the entire house. We unfortunately didn’t have it for long, as my dad had to pawn it. He had the best intentions, I know, but we couldn’t afford to keep it.

The bottom line is, I could only perform by ear. I did as well as one could, under the circumstances: not only could I conquer the stage by voice, winning a talent contest with an a capella rendition of Whitney Houston, I did it without ever really playing an instrument other than my own self.

I always knew I’d make it to college. In fact, that really was my only life goal. Most people do not understand this. I was one of only two people in my family to ever make it to college and see it through. Growing up, college was never a decision: it was the natural course of action. I never really worried about the money aspect, because I was told to just keep going and it would work out. Aced my PSAT and other tests (volunteered to take even more tests than was necessary); got accepted into all of the colleges to which I applied. National Merit Scholar; all that good stuff.

But college was my only goal. Once I finished, I really had to make a choice as to which direction I wanted to pursue, and I took too long. Holding patterns set in.

My college degree is the best part of my resume, but as a good friend chastised me some years ago, I keep buring the lede on that. I went to an excellent school, and it was the crucible of my life.

(I have stories from this time period! I really do. They necessarily transform the reader into a voyeur, though, because the stories are an exhibition. And some stories I’d considered never telling until certain people were out of earshot. [But that’s always an interesting way to live, with a zipper for a mouth.] Perhaps another time.)

So I went to college “for the experience,” as people say. In reality, I went there to learn. I went there to pursue knowledge.

I got caught up in interpersonal dynamics—fell in pretty tight with a geeky crowd, then became quite libertine as well. In fact, I was (and still identify as) a sexual libertarian. This really goes back to being the arbiter of one’s own body.

I brought this perspective to academia by pursuing social science, becoming a sex-positive feminist. I took uncommon positions based on my understanding of bodily integrity and self-determination, embracing the argument brought forth by Nadine Strossen in Defending Pornography. I chafed when reading Catharine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin, feminists who felt they had to declare porn illegal in order to protect women and thereby society. It’s a paternalistic move, even when it’s women engaging in this type of control through shame. I’m still carrying that point of view forward to today.

College was where rough stones tumble against others and emerge more polished. It’s an invaluable process that I would never trade, not for any amount of money or fame.

I tell these stories to remind myself where I come from, in order to rediscover who I am. You get older and in many ways your body becomes another country.

What is the best story? Is it the one where I recently realized that my best friend from early childhood almost certainly was a psychopath? You don’t hear about a lot of female psychopaths, but my friend, as I look back, had to have been one. One year she received an Easy-Bake oven for Christmas, and one day as I visited her, she told me of baking some of the brownie mix, but she had put Ex-lax in it, and she’d taken it to school (we attended different school systems) where she gave it to someone she described as a friend. She laughed as she told me this story.

That part of her story I can tell, because in her telling it became my story. There are other parts that I won’t tell, because the story is not mine.

We both had it rough, though (again, I didn’t know this at the time), as our families were beset by substance abuse. In fact, reconstructing the timeline, it’s clear that when my family piled in the car to visit my friend’s family, while we kids were off in the room playing, the adults were sharing works partying together. (This part of the story is mine to tell.)

I reacted as a teenager to this by joining anti-drug clubs and being a teetotaler, often telling my parents that they should stop smoking. (Even then, I resorted to euphemisms. Substance abuse is a delicate subject.)

Should I tell my sister’s story of being gifted in terms of theater, starting a family early, going through an uneven marriage and eventually hospitalized for a pathogen (one the hospital could never identify)? She’s had a rough life. I shouldn’t tell her story other than how it intersects mine, because I don’t have her permission. At this point, I don’t know if she could fully give informed consent. She has aftereffects from electrical medical procedures. (She’s also epileptic, and bipolar. Her climb is a tough one.)

I’d always hoped that she and I would be able to engage in sisterly talk as we got older, but that was not to be, for various reasons. I’d learned early on that I couldn’t tell my sister any secrets, because she blabbed. She was notorious for this. She’d be the only one to whom I’d tell a piece of information, and next thing I knew my mom or a cousin mentioned it. These were small details one child tells another. If she couldn’t keep those secrets, how could I trust her with larger ones?

It was just this year that I realized that there are secrets I’ll never be able to tell my sister. We’ll never have that fairytale relationship.

One thing my sister has shown me in her decline, though, is that there is a core there that remains. And I remember that about a dear aunt as well, who suffered acute Alzheimer’s at the very end of her life. She’d always been healthy, trim; did crosswords every day, completed word seeks, guessed along with quiz shows. She was proud of me, I could tell, when I tried out for Teen Jeopardy!, as that was a show that we watched together regularly. She was proud of me always.

I betrayed my aunt, though, in a writerly way. In a poem I’d written for a class—so, you know, shopped around in front of other people—I confessed in the piece that I wanted a different fate, one that included children. My aunt, while she had married, was widowed through all the time I knew her; and she never had children of her own. I believe the poem is lost now.

But let me tell you how much I loved her, and how close we were. She cared for me as though I were her child, when I was in her care. When my dad lost the house, our little nuclear family moved in with my aunt and her sister (also my aunt, also now late). Limited in living space, she and I shared a room and slept nearby. I could hear her sleep. I always knew when she would get up and get ready to head to work as a registered nurse (before her retirement). She gave me word games; she gave me her manual typewriter. She never doubted what I at that age might still achieve.

When she came down with Alzheimer’s, I didn’t realize the extent of her disease. And I didn’t know how to handle the awkward interactions. It became clear that at times she would talk to people who were not in the room but who existed in her memory. She could see them and she would bring them up in conversation as though they were right there. It was disconcerting, and I began to want to visit less and less. I didn’t know how to cope. My go-to my whole life had been procrastination and avoiding, when it came to unpleasant things. I reverted to type.

I didn’t realize I’d have my whole life to regret those choices. She didn’t have long left. By the end, she could not remember who I was. (She remembered my father until the end, though. Thank goodness, she still had a tie to the rest of us.)

My family had at first put her in a nice, comfortable nursing home, but some snafu happened financially (I’m not sure what the arrangements were; I wasn’t privy to those details). Was it that the facility no longer would take Medicare? I’m not sure.

What I do know is that the nursing home that we ended up locating for her (lower in quality, dim and somewhat dingy) could have kept a better eye on her. Alzheimer’s had removed some of her inhibitions, and she had started becoming feisty with other residents. She made advances toward one; and she advanced upon another (probably someone she perceived as a romantic rival for the attentions of the first).

So she was on a shit list with the staff, probably—her actions would need to be documented, recorded, etc. When she turned up with a broken hip from (what was determined to be) a falling out of bed, that seemed to be clear negligence to me. No one could prove retaliation, though; and my father was so full of grief that he did not pursue charges against the facility. I’ve never blamed him for that decision. It wouldn’t restore her to us; and it would probably have wounded him to the quick. Better to heal.

You want to talk about guilt? Ancestor worship might be a blessing in this situation, wouldn’t you agree? No, there’s no talking with the dead.

I had one saint in my life, which isn’t true, because all people have flaws. My grandmother just filled me with love, just bottomlessly. She too was widowed when I met her and remained that way all the time I knew her. (She did have a special friendship with a gentleman just down the road, though, a widower himself as I understood the story years later.) I can’t adequately tell you how I feel about her. All I can say is, her love still radiates through me. That’s the quality of the love she instilled.

She was a self-sufficient lady, all things told. She maintained a small farm and owned ten acres of land, living in the home built by her husband (who’d laid the foundation, set the beams, etc). She kept chickens as a vestige of this farm by the time I came around, and despite having just one arm she would slaughter those chickens herself. She would take the bird and casually flick it from shoulder to right in front of her, as though swatting a fly on an invisible table; and then she’d let the chicken run until its instincts stopped kicking in. She was unafraid to meet challenges and was resourceful.

(My other grandmother—longer-lived of the two—I knew only through stories, as she had suffered a tremendous traumatic brain injury when my mother was just a teen. [I’ve only heard bits and pieces of this story, but there was a dark night, a dirt road and a broad tree. I don’t know how fast the car was going.] I never truly connected with her. I wish that I had.)

These stories are all about the women in my life, though of course there have been others, far too many to describe. What these women taught me is that you have to be true to yourself and tell your own story. Or someone will tell it for you.

I’ve never been good at lying. Maybe that is why I merely middle at telling stories.

I had a realization over the holidays. Thinking about the kids in my life, my nieces and nephews, I felt I didn’t know how to relate to them. I could be “Aunt [nova],” but that’s a role; that’s not being a real person. I realized I was holding back, that the loss I’d felt at my grandmother’s passing was the same block that was keeping me from connecting with them. And I realized that that wasn’t fair to anyone. I had to take the chance to let them know me, for us to know each other.

So I’m trying to change my behavior as I’ve always known it, which historically has been to retreat and avoid. My last diary was an attempt (misguided, perhaps) to change that habitual turn. I’m not perfect, and if I stumbled in public, well…. 🤷 Still trying this writing thing out.

Was it too generous for society to have given me so many chances starting out? Public television, Head Start, achievement tests leading to being put on a college track, government grants and loans: was it worth it for all of that investment? It’s not just about paying things forward, though that is an awesome tenet to which to subscribe. It’s about being in the right place to help someone. I’m now in a place where I can help my nieces and nephews learn about language, and to encourage them to excel at school. I can do my best to instill a love of learning—of reading—in them, though they too face hurdles and have even fewer resources than I did.

And though I spent a lot of time wandering in the wilderness, I think much of that investment can be directly channeled into scholarship, which may be my one best chance at paying society back.

Still not polished, and still long-winded. I hope, however, it will serve as a belated introduction.

For those who still feel this was tl;dr? Well, nice to meet you, too. Maybe you can tell me a story.

[END]
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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/10/2152163/-Telling-stories-telling-truths

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