When I arrive at the building a few blocks from my downtown bus stop, I punch in the code that unlocks the door (unless it has changed: then I push the intercom button and wait for someone to greet me.) I hold onto the handrail as I walk up twelve dark and dusty stars that open onto a large space of cubicles. There must be forty or fifty staff in cubicles upstairs. These staff help the young adults find housing resources, jobs, and so forth. A therapist has the office with a closed door three doors down on the left.
We gather in a conference room if the noise from outdoor construction isn’t too loud, and the leader reminds the group of the writing group’s purpose (to speak from the heart) and guidelines (to keep all members emotionally and physically safe).
Members of this group have always been smart and thoughtful. They live on the streets for some trauma they’ve experienced, not because they’re stupid. (They’re survivors.) At the point that they come to writers’ group, many of them live in the shelter at the back of this room, a place where they have a little privacy and can leave their things during the day. (They can’t be in the shelter during the day. For the rest of the day, many of them are starting jobs or spend time with the therapist, other programs, and resting, texting, or socializing in the day center.) They always have a free breakfast, usually cold cereal but last week scrambled eggs, strawberries, and pancakes.
To respect their privacy and the group’s confidentiality, I won’t say more about them, but I will share a little of my own story with them.
After my brain tumors and then graduating with a Masters from the University of Washington’s School of Social Work, I have been seeking ways to use my skills and experiences within the parameters of respecting my own disabilities to help others who struggle. Two years ago, I went to a Pongo http://www.pongoteenwriting.org workshop where leaders shared a method of writing poetry with teenagers in the juvenile detention center. I loved Pongo’s approach and wished I had known about it when I was teaching. This spring, through Pongo, I learned about the need for a mentor with this writing group for young homeless adults.
This volunteer job allows me to connect with young adults who write and with the mentors, and I feel like a group member who benefits as well as helps to lead. One thing I love about writing is that I am often surprised by what comes out of me, and so I learn about a self often so far below the surface that I don’t know them (not a grammatical error, but a semantic gender choice for this self.)
For the first six weeks, I said little and never led, but now I sometimes share my writing and lead once a month. I get my ideas from themes for leading from the writers, though the group’s membership may change from week to week, as writers find housing and jobs.
One week, I led with Sandra Cisneros’s “My Name” from The House on Mango Street. We discussed the passage briefly and then I offered several prompts, for a 10-15 minute write. Here’s a prompt:
Possibilities for writing
1.
Following
Cisneros’s piece (here’s one possibility)
a.
My name means…
b.
It came from…
c.
A favorite story
about my name is…
d.
People say my
name…
e.
If I rename
myself, I will call myself…
As a participant, I wrote,
too. This is my writing from that day:
Grandmother
Mary Edwards, spoiled baby of 13. Grandmother Mary Matthews, who mothered her
father and her siblings before mothering her own five kids. Aunt Mary Ann, the
family storyteller. Aunt Myra (which is just Mary scrambled up a bit.) Mary,
Mother of Jesus, with all her worshippers, Mary Magdalene—the one who
listened. My name. Mary. Full of family
history. Connected to my grandmothers and to God. Listener. Storyteller.
Sometimes scrambled.
At church,
there are so many Marys that we have numbered off. I am #3. Mary L is #11. Mary
D won’t play. Mary F says she’s number one, but I say Mary the mother of Jesus
is #1 and Mary F is # 7658. Mary Ellen has two names, making it easier, and her
last name starts with an M, so she’s MEM and doesn’t need a number. She’s her
own number.
Probably because I’m so
focused on our puppy Dosey, the second reading that day was Mary
Oliver’s poem “The Sweetness of Dogs.”
Prompts 1) If you were an animal, what animal would you be? (x3
if you want to) 2) Write about a specific animal that you love(d) or hate(d).
As usual, my writing about
something else, in this case animals, says more about me than about the
something else:
Abraham [not
the real name of one of the group’s writers] used to hate bees. I still do.
Intellectually, I know that they are good for the ecosystem, so intellectually
I like them and want to protect them. When one flies around me, however, I
cringe at its buzz and the unpredictableness of its flight. I know that there’s
a difference between bees and wasps and yellow jackets, but they all get my
hackles up.
I remember
when, as I child, I covered my Coca-Cola bottle so that no yellow jackets flew
in and then stung me as I swallowed them. I also remember when I was a kid
visiting Spring Hope relatives, and the biting fly landed on my head in the
swimming pool taking a bite out of my scalp: me screaming in a surprised pain
as the fly continued chewing while my third cousins yelled, “Go under!” I also remember
the fourth grade teacher I adored scolding me when I ran out of the room and
screamed. She said I was overreacting. I
still believe I was responding appropriately.
Another day, we read “TheMoment” by Margaret Atwood.
The poem aroused thoughts about my brain tumor, what I and my doctors thought
and felt at first and what I think and feel now:
The moment
when, after many years
of hard
work and many paths,
some
winding some straight and narrow,
my doctor
called to say,
“It’s over
now. Your life will be different and new,
but not
shiny.”
I thought
once that I directed my life,
That I only
needed to find the right path,
And all
would be well. I would be well and happy.
The right
man would lead me to the right path,
a path with
children and Southern Baptist sermons,
and
Labrador retrievers in suburban back yards.
But as it
turned out, I walked side by side
With a
woman,
And my kids
were teenagers in schools where I taught,
And no dogs
were allowed.
And then
there were the brain tumors
To detour
me from my career path and
Lead me
into the woods,
Lost.
So here I
sit,
Not on a
path,
Not in the
sun,
But in a
place of shadows and breezes
Noticing
the textures and
Verdant
colors of leaves and bark
And flowers
sometimes,
And with
the trees,
I breathe.
And on a recent day, another
mentor invited us to write one long sentence. She said, “Write for five
minutes. Start with I just want to tell you…or I just thought you should know….”
The anger in what I wrote that day surprised me:
I just want
you to know that I’m disabled, but I’m not stupid, so don’t treat me like I
can’t figure things out, and I know that you think I’m overreacting but the
truth is that I’m not just reacting to you but I’m reacting to everyone who treats
me as a fool or a weakling, so you’re taking on the heat of all who have come
before you, but you won’t be the last because this world doesn’t get me,
doesn’t get that to be slow and unable to work is not the same as being a drag
on society and tax dollars and you who are in such a hurry and as I write this
I learn about anger that I didn’t even know was there, but the anger is not
really about you it’s about the ways my life has changed without my permission.
And as last week’s leader I
chose poems and prompts related to getting below the surface, something that a
previous group of writers had talked about. We read Dee Daffodil (H.W.)’s poem “Beneath the Ocean” (Sorry, but you have to get past an ad to read it on the web.)
One option I provided was to experiment
with a frame by Chris Zweigle and Hamda Yusuf, which I did. This is what I
wrote:
underneath
my passion for writing
is the sound of waves touching the shore, an endless waving
under the sound is longing
under that is belonging
under that: wonder.
underneath my fear of loneliness.
is the smell of metal, cold and bitter.
under the smell is pain.
under that is trembling
under that: weightlessness.
underneath my intensity
about writing
is the taste of lemon drops, sweet on the tongue and sour at
the core.
under the taste is satisfaction
under that is ease
under that: summer.
underneath my obsession with my puppy, Dosey,
is the touch of soft curly fur
under the touch of that fur
is a small, fast heartbeat.
under that is joy
under that: a deep sleep.
Additionally, last week we read
together Ross Gay’s poem, “A Small Needful Fact,” a poem about Eric Garner, the teenager killed
by a policeman’s choke hold, and the life that teenager might have been living.
The poem pushes the reader to think about the life taken, about the ways he
might have been giving to all of us, and the gift we all lost in his death.
It’s a lovely poem, but the reminder of Garner’s terrible death (“I can’t
breathe” x 7) may have been too much to bring into a room of people, mentors
and young adults alike, who have experienced their own traumas.
I invited writers to share what people
see of them and what they don’t see, what I intended to be an empowering
prompt. Indeed, the writers who shared went deep, but not everyone wants to go
deep. Maybe the invitation was helpful for some but re-traumatizing for others.
I hope not. But so much of their and our emotions stay below the surface, so I
don’t know.
In my writing, I thought of the man,
perhaps homeless, who noticed me with my cane at a downtown intersection. “Hurt
your leg?” he asked, looking at my foot.
“No, my head,” I responded.
“Oh,” he said, and his eyes traveled up
my body to my crossed eyes. Wide-eyed, then, he said, “Ohhhhh…” and as the
light changed he hurried across the intersection as if my disabilities were
contagious. Here’s the poem that grew out of that memory:
When people see
Me walking with my cane,
Lumbering to get down the sidewalk,
they think they see some one like them,
someone who hurt their leg
falling from a rock
while hiking
or sliding into home base
for the winning run.
They think they see
Someone who will get better,
Like them.
…
But what they don’t see is
That I won’t get better,
That my leg’s not hurt,
but my brain’s been cut.
What they don’t see is that
I’m like them, but not like them,
And it’s all different than they think.
The tumors have weakened me,
(My strength, my balance, my vision),
And they have emboldened me
To see a new world,
And to tell a new story,
A story without a clear ending,
But for sure a bold protagonist,
A spunky storyteller.
And
finally, this week one of the mentors introduced us to Amy Lowell’s poem“Leisure.” (Sorry, you have to get past the ad again.) And here’s my writing, which ends
in the most joyful moment I know:
When I have
leisure time, I write about time, the crunch of it, the compression. Olivia
just told me that dogs are good for people, that they reduce stress. I think
leisure time is like that, and maybe dogs take us into that space of breath and
joy. Of being 100% in the moment, not worried about duty or the next task, just
like a puppy wiggling in this moment.
Joyful
is the right way to end.
