IWSG: Did it begin with a poem?

The first Wednesday of every month brings the Insecure Writer's Support Group (IWSG)'s writing challenge. Here is our opportunity -- as writers -- to share our thoughts, struggles, and dreams, perhaps to encourage ourselves as much as we wish to encourage others!

ISWG's question this month is a doozy and took me way back: Is there someone who supported or influenced you that perhaps isn't around anymore? Anyone you miss?

I thought instantly of my aunt. She changed my life. Irrevocably. And there's no easy way to write about it. 

My mother, a beautiful and charismatic woman, said, "We never talk about what happens at home." 

I didn't, and I still don't easily share. I grew up in a family of chaos and alcohol. When I was about 11, my stepfather beat my mother. My sister and I lay in bed, terrified and helpless. Sometime in the early morning, he brought her into our room and said, "Take care of your mother." We wiped the blood off her bruised face and did our best. Roughly nine months later, we had a baby sister. That didn't stop the drinking. But Seattle had a serious recession back in the 1950s, so Wayne joined the Air Force, and we were relieved. For a time. But the next year was chaotic, for mother loved to party. When Wayne returned from Okinawa, stationed in Arizona, mother asked us if we should move south. We looked at each other, not eager to spend any more time in a foster home. How could life get any worse? We said, "Yes!"

We drove down to Glendale, just outside Luke AFB, and settled into our new home. They still drank and fought. Then, Wayne moved out, and mother got a job as a bar girl. All was reasonably well until the night he broke down our front door with an axe. "Don't worry, girls," said mother. "Everything's fine." The next morning, he was still there and just before we left for school, he began arguing with mother. I cut between them, but again, mother intervened. "Just go to school, girls." We did, but I stopped and called the cops on the way.

My sister, one year younger, was pregnant and getting married. I didn't have a clue. I had dreams of college, but no hope. My high school counselor on that mandatory meeting before graduating, asked me, "You look like a very nice girl. When are you getting married?"

So what does this have to do with my aunt? She came to Glendale to visit with her new husband (a dentist), just before I graduated from high school. I wrote poetry and short stories and shared a poem with my aunt. The first verse:

There's no such thing as a future

whether good or bad;

There's only the past taunting you

with things you've never had.

A few weeks later, my aunt called and invited me to live with her in northern California to go to community college there. I left Arizona and never looked back. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if I had stayed -- but college opened up so much more. Libraries. People who cared about learning. Yes, it did take me about ten years working full-time and going to school part-time to finally earn my four-year degree, but without my aunt, someone who practiced art every day, I would never have gone to college. 

She died, nearly a decade ago, but her paintings hang in my home, and I remember her generosity and her nurturing. She is part of the reason I write nearly every day. 

I have no one lesson, really. Except my fiction tends to be about characters who struggle with seemingly unsurmountable odds -- and yet survive. I hope this bit of my history helps you reappreciate where you have come from, what you've accomplished, and re-vision those dreams you have for the future.

Now, consider joining in by writing your own monthly blog post for the Insecure Writer's Support Group? You could answer this month's question, go visit 10-12 other folks (see the links HERE), and celebrate your own writing progress! Why not visit and thank our co-hosts for this month: Joylene Nowell Butler, Jacqui Murray, Sandra Cox, and Lee Lowery!

As our Ninja leader, Alex J. Cavanaugh says:

 Let's rock the neurotic writing world!