Strange Magic

He was the first adult male I had a crush on. The forbidden, unattainable, unrequited love of my life.

Gorgeous. Rustic. If that's possible.

"Welcome to Natural Science, I'm your instructor, Terry Strange."

 I sat on the edge of the first seat in the front row. I batted my eyelashes, which were fixed on Terry Strange. His expensive, saggy jeans, his wire eyeglasses. Scuffed, heavy (but soft-looking) work boots. Terry Strange was a Lumberjack with champagne taste. Just the way I like 'em.

He rattled a list of expectations, rules, and the semester's agenda. He scribbled his office phone number on the board and I copied it into my notebook, covering the tiny hearts I drew all around it.

Sigh...


I noticed he was not wearing a wedding ring, but then I assumed that even if he was married,  a man like Terry Strange wouldn't wear jewelry except for the compass watch he sported on his left wrist.
He held most of our classes outside, and I loved that. When we went outside, Terry wore a felt hat that cast a beautiful shadow on top of his natural 5 o'clock shadow. So mysterious...

He referred to our notebooks as 'field books' and carried his own pocket sized field book tied with a leather string. He wrote in it with a wooden lacquer pen, the kind that twists open.

Oh Terry, you slay me with your avaunt guard  fashion sense.

Terry drove the white school van to the sight of our first field trip, the Nimbus Fish Hatchery.

The place smelled awful.

Fish eggs, fish packed in row after row of shallow tanks, fish food, fish waste, fish babies. Fish compost.

Somehow, Terry Strange made even the Nimbus Fish Hatchery fascinating and I hardly noticed that I had overexerted my gag reflex. I wondered how Terry would be spending the rest of the day after class. Would he go back to school and grade papers? Go out to lunch? Go home and make a hearty sandwich on seeded bread with dijon and pastrami? I bet he lives in a small mining community, in a big house with a dog. A Bloodhound, or a Lab. No, a Retriever for sure. The one that brought back the Pheasant he has hanging over his fireplace, the one he hunted. I bet Terry has brown leather furniture with brass carpenter tacks and whip stitching.

A petite woman was introduced as our tour guide. She was wearing a tan Fish Hatchery uniform and had her long, straight, brown hair pulled tightly back in a ponytail. Pale and bland, her big eyes were the only remarkable feature of her plain appearance.

She knew more about fish than anyone ought to, especially a woman. I noticed that Terry was smiling as he listened intently to the tour guide. The fish smell was again obvious, awful.

I tuned out the tour guide and the smell of fish and instead hummed our song, Strange Magic in my head.

"I'm 18, I can date anyone I want. I could drop out of Terry's class so he wouldn't have to worry about anyone chastising our love."
I love it when a plan comes together...I looked at Terry, who was standing at the back of our group. His hands were plunged deep into the front pockets of his fleece vest.

The tour ended and Terry instructed the class to return to the van. Everyone went except me. I lagged behind to see if I could finagle some one-on-one time with Terry. Maybe I had a question about the gestation period of Rainbow Trout eggs? Maybe I had a question about the spawning period of Grunion?

Minnows leaped about in my stomach with anticipation until I saw them. 


Terry was hugging the tour guide in front of the Evolution of Fish poster. She rubbed his arm while he talked with his hands, pointed at his compass watch.

They kissed goodbye and as he walked towards the van they agreed, "See you at home."

Making a Scene

I'm writing my Memoir.
Ugh.
It's awful. That is, it's awful to write. It's awful to remember. It's awful to Memoir.
For a long time, I didn't think I should write it. I didn't think I had a story to tell. And, if I did have a story, it is surely a horror story, and, who cares. Everybody has a rough life. Right?
Surely, no one can take away anything from my story, it won't teach anyone anything. It wont evoke feelings, or entice anyone to read it. Who cares, I'm nobody.
I'm nobody, with nothing to say. Nothing extraordinary I have overcome. I'm not a hero. I didn't turn any tragedies into anything amazing. I just came out of it, quietly with no fanfare.

But, as I began to share parts of my story with 'normal' people on the 'outside', once I traveled beyond the comfort zone of commiserating with my brother and sister; I learned that people were actually intrigued by my story.
They wanted to know more.
They wanted to know how I turned out so nicely, in spite of all that trauma.


So, my story began to morph from a tragic reality into a story. I've hired a coach to guide me through the logistics of compiling my story. She is there to help me put it all together; build it. Make sense of it all.
Oh, if anyone could just make sense of it all.
I have pages of material. Pages of things that really happened. I didn't have to create them, I didn't dream them or fictionalize them. This week I sent about forty pages to my coach. I waited anxiously for her feedback, her direction. I waited for her to make sense of it all.

While I plugged away at still more pages, I was overcome with a flood of emotion. I suppose that's going to happen when you dig through the emotional shards of your past. Sooner or later, it will start to sting. Again.
I called my mom.
I don't know why.
I didn't want to upset her. I didn't want to tell her where I had just gone, in my head. I didn't want to tell her what I had just written. She doesn't need to know. She already knows. But, I needed her voice. Thirty years later, I needed her.

"What are you doing today?" she asked.
"I'm just writing. That's all I have on my agenda today. Just writing. And I worked out at the Studio-but now, I'm writing."
I thought I might tell her that the writing is hard for me at times. Sometimes, it breaks my heart to look back at what I just wrote, and not choke down tears. Not have a panic attack. I think she already knew that. She knows that I'm scared when I write these things...

We talked about my sister, my brother and  my kids. We talked about the wildfires, marriage.
 How fitting.
The next day, my coach sent back the responses to my documents. Forty pages of my darkest secrets and most nagging insecurities and fears, critiqued in the margin by a stranger.
"Wow! Very powerful scene." "This is horrible, I am really getting a sense of the narrator's conflict and struggle." "I'm overcome, you have done a great job bringing me in to the narrator's place, I can feel and hear everything, this is great work."

This is a powerful scene. This is great work. This is horrible. I can feel everything...

A powerful scene? I think that's all wonderful feedback. Great critique.
But, there was some shock to seeing someone critique, "My God..." about my story. In a way that expressed; 'I can't believe it. I want to look away. How could anyone go through this?' And it's about my real life.

And then it occurred to me. It is real. It was real. To me. It happened, in my real life. I didn't make this, this isn't work that I creatively fabricated to make an impression, or to move someone to unimaginable emotion. This happened. All I have done by writing it down, is simply document what happened.
Is there talent in that? Is there anything commendable in that? Is documenting the worst things that ever happened to you, praise worthy or vulnerable to a good critique? Is it possible to have a 'voice' about something that once took your voice away?

Seems odd.

Maybe all this emotion is part of the growing pains of writing a memoir about tragedy. About abuse. About growing.

Maybe this is all part of the next scene.