Long before I knew I was a writer, before I learned how to even write full sentences, I thought everyone made up stories and characters in their minds. As a small child, when I was told to do something boring like make my bed, I’d stop in the middle of the task once I heard somebody call my name. Since it was never a voice I recognized, I knew it wasn’t anyone in my family calling for me.
Right after my name was called the daydream would begin to take shape. Then I’d lose chunks of time while watching a story unfold in my mind like movie scenes on TV. I gave that voice an unusual name: Kikose. Understandably, the strange name kind of creeped out my parents. They called Kikose my imaginary friend. My grandma said those wayward thoughts happened because my imagination was playing tricks on me. I come from a long line of creative types, so having a good imagination wasn’t unusual, but nobody was a writer so they had no idea that the voice talking to me was my muse. To their credit, they never made me feel like I was fibbing or telling tall tales. As long as chores got done, the adults rarely nagged about how long it took for me to complete them. One of the many benefits of being the baby in the family.
Once I did learn how to write sentences, my mother encouraged me to document what she called my visions. I think she probably got impatient listening to the longwinded versions and figured it might be faster to skip through to the good parts by reading them herself. I used to follow her around the house reciting my story pages while she cleaned or made meals. Mom and I shared a special bond over words. When I was two years old, she suffered a debilitating stroke that was caused by an aneurysm in her head. Fortunately she survived, but with temporary limb paralysis and the inability to speak clearly. I have no memory of it. I’ve been told that while I was learning to talk in full sentences, she was learning how to form understandable words again. She told me once that I was the only one who understood her then, and when she’d get frustrated I’d often speak on her behalf to the rest of the family. It became a habit that continued long after she got better.
Luckily, I was fortunate to know many wonderful people who encouraged me to write my stories. Early grade school teachers who asked me to read them to the class, and then a school librarian who would take the little storybooks I wrote and illustrated and laminate them so other kids could borrow them from the shelves right along with the published books. I used to write short stories for my childhood friends in exchange for candy. They became the star of their own adventures and it pleased me when they took on the persona of the main character I invented for them. In between the many growing pains of the early teen years, I’d slip a notebook page into friends’ school books with a happier ending written for a real incident that had caused them emotional pain and suffering. People around me eventually stopped making comments like “I wonder what he’s thinking” because I’d create an entire backstory and a running commentary on the person’s imagined thoughts. I was a born storyteller. It was as much a part of me as my unruly thick hair and green eyes. I didn’t know any different, so it never made me feel different. Sometimes it felt like a party trick I was capable of pulling off to entertain the people I loved.
In senior high school I had creative writing teachers who gave me permission to write whatever I wanted, fiction or non-fiction. One of them often battled the powers-that-be on my behalf over articles I wrote for the school newspaper that were considered inflammatory back then. Information about where to seek help about abuse, addiction and suicide helplines, peer bullying and animal cruelty prevention, just to name a few. I developed a first-name relationship with the school’s police officer liaison because I’d often get home from classes, drop my books on the kitchen table, grab a snack, and then call him up to double check legal facts before my articles went to print. Thankfully I never met with him in the counsellor’s office because that would’ve meant I’d gotten into some deep trouble. Most of the trouble I caused was with my typewriter.
The writing confidence I’d developed over the years took a spiralling nosedive when I was eighteen and started college. I discovered there were a lot of talented writers in my writing class and I lacked creative discipline. For the first time I didn’t have the freedom to write what I wanted. I had to stick to the program and join in critique groups in order to maintain a decent grade. Let me tell you, there is nothing more confidence-crushing then having your words inexpertly dissected by a large group like the poor mangled frog in a high school biology class. I’ve never found much creative growth in writing groups because in my experience there often seems to be underlying hints of jealousy disguised as constructive criticism. I’d much rather have someone close to me, whom I trust to have my best interest at heart, tell me what they think before I begin to edit and rewrite my work. There’s already no bigger critic of my writing than me.
The only positive was that the instructor of my first college writing class was an actual working published author of both poetry and prose, and she was brilliant. One day the instructor, we’ll call her Carole because she looked a little like singer-songwriter Carole King, told us we’d be skipping the regular critique session and, instead, she was going to guide us through meditation. Say, what? It sounded weird and I giggled nervously along with everyone else. Then Carole explained how it was going to work and I considered excusing myself from the class because it sounded a lot like an interactive hypnosis performance I’d seen once as a child. One that had scared me so badly I’d gone running in a panic from the school gymnasium during the finale. I had a vision of myself clucking like a chicken, flapping my elbows and pecking bwock bwock bwock up and down the aisles the way some fellow classmates had done and never lived down.
Fortunately this did not happen. Once Carole talked us through it in the kindest, most soothing voice imaginable, I found myself drifting off in a pleasant daydream that wasn’t all that different from the early days when Kikose would start things off by calling my name. We began the meditation with deep breaths and then Carole told us to imagine a door. For some reason the colour of my imagined door was red. I recognized it and the surroundings as the front door of my early childhood home, which had actually been a boring white. I wasn’t normally allowed to use the front door to prevent tracking in dirt. The basement door, also a boring white, was the point of entry for everyone except the important visitors who got to use the front door. Nevertheless I went along with it and slowly opened the red door inwards, exactly the way Carole instructed. This was where it got hazy and I lost a chunk of time. Later, once we were guided back to awareness, I found myself still at the desk, thankfully, with elbows on the table and my hands covering my face. A quick glance around the room told me most classmates looked self-conscious and sleepy, which was exactly how I felt. They were looking back at me with the same curiosity, although a fair bit more alarmed.
Time had flown. The class was over and I started to gather my things when Carole approached and asked if I was able to stay behind to talk to her. Once we were alone, she sat on top of the desk next to mine and asked me how I was feeling. I told her fine, just tired. I was starting to think I’d done something wrong, like maybe fallen asleep and snored so loudly that I’d disrupted the exercise for everyone. Carole suggested I take a moment right then to write down the experiences of what I’d discovered on the other side of the door while they were still fresh in my mind. I told her I couldn’t remember anything about them. She encouraged me to try because I’d cried out during the meditation and she suspected it was an important memory I’d buried long ago and needed to work through. I was hesitant until she assured me this was not the sort of story she expected me to share with her or the class, but to personally explore for myself. Once she’d gone and I’d gotten past the mortification of realizing everyone had heard me cry out things I didn’t remember, I opened my notebook in the now vacant classroom and was surprised when the words began to flow fast and effortlessly.
After going in through the red door, I headed up a short flight of stairs to the main level of my childhood home. The kitchen doorway was straight ahead, the living room was to the left and a hallway to the bedrooms was on the right. Five of my six older siblings were scattered around the living room. My sisters were on the couch crying in each other’s arms, one brother was pacing furiously, and two brothers were sitting cross-legged on the floor hunched over like they had stomach aches. I could hear my grandma in the kitchen talking on the phone. Nobody even looked my way. Confused, I took a right and hurried down the hallway to my parents bedroom, just as my dad was coming out of their room. I saw my mom’s feet resting on their bed before he closed the door behind him and indicated we should go across the hall into the bedroom I shared with my sisters.
We sat down together on a bed and Dad held my little hands between his large ones when he told me one of my brothers had gone away, that he’d gotten very sick and died and now he wasn’t in pain anymore. I asked if he was in heaven with God and if he was allowed to come back to visit me sometimes. I also asked if heaven was like Disneyland. I hadn’t been there yet, but in my imagination it was the best place anyone could be if they couldn’t be home. It was the first time I’d seen my big, strong Dad cry and it startled me. He hugged me tightly and assured me that my brother would always be able to visit me in my memories.
It seemed like kind of an unfair deal to the observant college student I was while writing down those thoughts. I didn’t have many memories of my brother. How could I? I was only five years old when he died. No matter how hard I’d tried over the years following his death, I couldn’t remember much of anything about him. Somehow my child’s mind had interpreted that as it being my fault my brother couldn’t come back to visit me because I didn’t have the same memories as everyone else. They were their stories, not mine. No wonder he never came back! It all made perfect sense now. I’d buried the guilt of not remembering him like a time capsule that I was now finally able to dig up and crack open.
As it often goes, once the door of one memory is unlocked others soon wander inside. I listed in my notebook even the smallest details that had come to me during the meditation. His dark hair. His easy laugh. The many times he stayed home from school sick and sometimes let me read with him in his bottom bunk. How he built me the best blanket forts. How good he’d looked in his white baseball uniform. Somewhere a photo exists of teenaged him holding me as a baby while wearing his uniform, taken only seconds before, I was told, he raced off to a ball game at the park down the street.
How I’d race down our street to meet my brothers when they came home from high school. How it was always him who scooped me up to put me on his shoulders. How I’d giggle hysterically while he bounced me on his shoulders for the rest of the walk home, calling me the Queen of the Castle because our mother’s pet name for me was Queenie.
Then there was that Stones song from the sixties–a song about depression following the death of a loved one. I think subconsciously I associate the lyrics with the day he died because someone in the house must’ve played it on repeat in the days following, perhaps to work through the anger and heartbreak of losing him.
“I see a line of cars
And they’re all painted black
With flowers and my love
Both never to come back
I’ve seen people turn their heads
And quickly look away
Like a newborn baby
It just happens everyday
I look inside myself
And see my heart is black
I see my red door
I must have it painted black
Maybe then, I’ll fade away
And not have to face the facts
It’s not easy facing up
When your whole world is black.”
I remembered more. My parents had left me on the summer day he died in hospital with the neighbours who lived right across the street. They must have decided it was too much for a small child to handle and I don’t blame them for it. Clearly I would’ve been a distraction they didn’t need in the middle of so much pain. The sun was shining. I was sitting on the neighbours’ front steps in shorts and sneakers with my little friend and her mother. Together we watched as my family came home from somewhere, saw them park cars in our driveway and then go inside with their heads down one by one through the front door. Nobody glanced our way. Nobody came looking for me. Did they forget about me? Eventually my friend’s mother held my hand as she walked me across the street to our front door and then let me go inside on my own.
“I see a red door and I want it painted black.“
My brother was nineteen when he died. I was eighteen when I rediscovered him. I closed my notebook with the page of new and also old memories and left the classroom, once again grateful to be born a writer.
Paint It, Black – The Rolling Stones
A Roaring Good Yarn 