An evolving writer

Hey! You’re back!

What kind of writer am I?

Evolving!

My author’s voice has changed. Where once I used poetic diction in my poems and had strong tendencies toward iambs and tetrameter or ballad stanza, I’m now more comfortable in free verse and even blank verse. Occasionally, I even use rhyme.

Where once I was a closet poet, I now enter poems in contests and submit to poetry magazines. And I share with family and friends.

Once I loved adjectives and adverbs. Now I adore verbs -- and anything coming from a verb! Thus, my voice is less tentative and more robust. I don’t want beautiful words or prestigious words or intellectual words unless they are the exact words that will explode with meaning -- MY meaning -- in a reader’s mind.

Tomorrow we’ll see where this thread drifts off to.

How would describe yourself? What kind of writer (or reader) are you?

The following vignette describes a moment in 1952 with my sister.

Never Again!

I stood at my sister’s bedroom window, gazing out over the backyard now painted January gray. “Sit down on the bed with me, Andy,” Mary told me as she struggled to sit up. I glanced at her. She looked much better than she had six weeks ago when we knew she was going to die at any moment. But she was unbelievably changed from the robust teenager she’d been just four months earlier.

I sat down beside her. Mary laid her hand on my arm and asked, “What do they say about me, Andy? Do they say I’m going to die?” I straightened up like I’d been jabbed by a pin and stared at her. Here I was a sixteen-year-old boy trying to figure out how to live, sitting with his seventeen-year-old sister who was trying to figure out how to die.

“Everybody’s going to die,” I said, flopping on my back, my hands folded under my head. “That doesn’t mean anything!” Mary shot at me, fire in her eyes. “And you know it! We’ve always told each other everything; what do the doctors think will happen?”

I lifted my head to look her in the eye. “Leukemia has never been cured. There is no effective treatment. There frequently are short periods of remission, they call it, when the disease seems cured. That’s where you are now.”

“I know all that,” Mary replied. She grimaced as she forced herself into a cross-legged position. “That does not answer my question. What do doctors tell Mom and Dad to get ready for?”

“For you to die before summer gets here,” I told her. I saw the tears form in her eyes, so I got up to leave, knowing I was leaving when she really needed me. But I didn’t know what to do. Her lips were moving as I left the room, but I never heard a word she said.

Two weeks later, in early February, Mary was back in the hospital with a more acute leukemia. We prayed; we called everyone we knew to pray with us. And thank God, the crisis passed. Mary’s condition even seemed to improve. We were told, however, that a gradual deterioration could soon set in.

Every Saturday evening from then on, I went to the hospital to visit her. Usually it was just Mary and me talking about the usual things brothers and sisters talk about: going to school, her boyfriend, Jay, coming to visit her, getting married and having kids, Mom and Dad, the silly things her friends Penny and Marguerite did when they visited.

One Saturday evening near the end of June, Mary was lying flat on her back when I got to her room. “Will you help me roll over on my side and rub my back for me?” she asked. “OK. Your face isn’t swollen as much this week,” I told her, turning her on her side. I began to rub her back. “I won the 440 this week. Coach Batchelder says I am showing improvement.” I chatted away as I rubbed between her shoulder blades and up across her shoulders. Mary didn’t say much; she just listened to me and enjoyed the massage. “Well, it’s time to go, Sis. Here comes the nurse to run me out.” I walked over to the door. “Andy, I want you to know I love you,” Mary said in a labored voice. “Yeah,” I said, “I know. See ya next week.”

Next Saturday morning I woke to see Mom gathering laundry in my room. She heard me stir, saw my eyes open and came over to the bed. “Mary died at 3:00 this morning,” she told me, leaning over to hug, me. I grabbed my Mom’s neck and hung on and said, “Tonight I was going to tell her I loved her too.”

I’ll never miss that chance with anyone else! Never again!

I’ll continue with “What kind of Writer am I” tomorrow.