This is a post from a couple of years ago that I have heavily rewritten to serve as an example of a Literacy Narrative for my class this week.
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“Thanks.” I looked up from the papers I was quickly filing between classes.
“She’s a writer,” Teresa, Language Arts guru from the School District Office, explained as the door closed behind them, on their way to the airport.
She’s a writer. SHE’s a writer. She’s a WRITER! Those words echoed around me all afternoon.
Dee Jay DeRego was a guest speaker in my classroom a couple of years ago. He is a spoken word master from Juneau who has traveled the world sharing this art form. He writes and recites poetry, but it’s so much more than that. He bares his soul, causes the listener to reflect, and teaches students to do the same.
I was in the third grade the first time I was recognized, and recognized myself, as a writer. My teacher had sent a note home to my mother, sealed in an envelope and safety-pinned to my coat. I was a hardworking, quiet student, so it never occurred to me that I might be in trouble as I handed the envelope over to my mother that evening. She set it aside and continued stirring the spaghetti sauce.
After dinner, I heard her talking on the phone in the kitchen, leaning up against the wall and twirling the phone cord with her perfectly manicured fingers.
“Is this Mrs. Johnson?”
I stopped dead in my tracks, hand on the screen door to the back yard. I had walked through the kitchen quickly when I saw her on the phone, so as not to disturb her. My mother did NOT like to be disturbed on the phone. Mrs. Johnson was my teacher. My mother never called my teacher. I started shaking, standing there in the alcove that led to the back porch, wanting to hear but not wanting to hear.
“Hello. This is Mrs. Kysar… Yes, she did… Well… no… I can’t imagine a thing like that!... Wait-... Was that a story she was to write over last weekend?... She wrote that herself. I saw her sitting at the kitchen table writing… No, I’m telling you. She wrote that…Yes, I’m sure!... She is a very intelligent girl… Yes, I know she’s quiet… Well, thank you… Yes, I’ll continue to encourage her… No. No problem at all. Thank you, Mrs. Johnson… You, too.”
I closed the screen door quietly behind me, instead of letting it bang shut like I usually did, and walked toward the swingset, almost on tiptoe.
As my mother tucked me into bed that night, she explained to me that Mrs. Johnson thought I had copied my creative writing story that I turned in the day before. It was THAT good! I fell asleep with a smile still reaching from ear to ear.
The highlight of Dee Jay’s visit to my class was when he recited his own “I am from…” poem. A reflection back on growing up homeless, it was filled with metaphors and descriptive language. He then gave the class five minutes to begin writing where they were from. After walking around the room for the first minute getting all of the students settled in to the task at hand, I sat with my own notebook and favorite blue ink pen. I began to write.
I am from broken hearts and broken homes,
Shattered dreams and drowning tears,
All washed away in this fast moving river called Life.
I am from second chances
Rising out of the darkness like a late sunrise on a winter’s day.
Writing was always an escape for me, more so than reading. When reading, it’s like watching a movie, but when writing, I become the movie. I become someone else. I literally wear someone else’s shoes. I can feel them on my feet. I can hear them as I rock back and forth. I can see the tracks they leave in the dirt.
I won the Arbor Day Writing Contest in Junior High, wrote for the school newspaper in High School, and entertained my friends by creating stories about them and their secret crushes in Tarzan and Jane stories that circulated the school faster than a trashy novel.
I finished my first novel at 28, but it was turned down by more publishers than I can name. Meanwhile, I’ve been an advertising sales rep, recruiter, radio announcer, teacher, restaurant owner, professional baker, pheasant hunting lodge caretaker and guide, and on and on. The one constant in my life has always been writing. In 2018, Mother Earth News, Alaska Trapper, Trapper’s World, and Last Frontier Magazine have all accepted and printed my articles, all nonfiction. I’m also working on novel number two. Stephen King’s first novel, Carrie, received 30 rejections before finally being published. That gives me hope.
What sticks with me the most about the day when Dee Jay came to my classroom are those three words Teresa spoke as they walked out the door. I’ve always struggled with identifying myself as such, never taken it too seriously, always had a “day job.” However, that’s who I am. That’s who I’m becoming. It’s time to jump into the deep end of the pool and do this. I’m now looking forward to the first time I introduce myself, “Hello. I’m a writer.”
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