To write is to breathe. To write your life is to listen to your inner soul and translate thoughts and feelings to paper or computerized characters. Such a quiet, unassuming activity to those watching from afar. All encompassing if done right, the writer is transported to another plane to heal, while giving memories life. I am a writer. I knew this early on.
I wouldn’t ever agree that my childhood existed on a REAL farm. A REAL farm would have at least three animals in excess of 1500 lbs., along with the smells and noises that go along with that. A REAL farm would have a barn with a loft full of hay. We had neither. We lived on a vineyard of 40 acres. Roughly 16,000 Thompson Seedless grape vines, most planted in the early 1950’s of a variety that is almost entirely extinct today.
There were animals on our farm. Hundreds at times. But, to me, they counted not. They didn’t whiny, neigh, or moo. They didn’t give milk. You couldn’t ride them on grand adventures. The only thing they did is provide meat. For a family of seven, that was everything. They were a great source of food, but little other value to a writer that needed visual confirmation of truths. My truth was, we lived in the country, not on a farm. We needed a horse.
One day at school, my wise teacher announced that she had read about a contest just right for me. It was a writing contest. My beloved teachers knew that I was a special writer even in grade school. Knowing my longings and my heart, in her most beautiful, calm way, she whispered, “Joy, the prize is a Morgan colt.” She had my full attention.
The Morgan Horse. Equus caballus, all traced back to a stallion named Figure born in 1789, suitable for beginners. Totally American. Everything about the Morgan horse became first hand knowledge to me by the time I returned home that afternoon. Racing into the house, I told my mother at once that I would be winning my own Morgan horse soon. That we needed to ready a corral of the correct proportions and build a big red barn, because it needed respite from the hot summers and our wet, dreary winter fog. We would need to go shopping for brushes, buckets, halters, leads, and everything a horsewoman would need. Because. I. Was. Winning. The. Horse. Period.
My mother was in her own world at the kitchen sink and didn’t lift her head to say Hello, or even hear me enter the house.
Education was key as I was growing up. There was always plenty of lined paper, pencils, erasers, and a dictionary too heavy to lift that we were required to use when we ran across a unknown word. I quickly grabbed everything I needed and got to work. Two hours later, my finished piece in hand, I ran to her for the first proofreading and suggestions. Her words killed my dreams.
“A what? What assignment is this? For what class? Where is your homework for tonight? Look at the time. Child, we have no room for a horse, nor are we getting a horse, nor will this writing win anything but a trip to the trash. What is that woman teaching you these days?”
In astonishment, I looked at her with wide, broken eyes, as my manuscript dropped flatly to the trash, unread. Dreams of my favorite scent, horse sweat, vanished. Someone else would win that colt to love and cherish until it died. I had already decided that colt was my real family, and would be until I was at least 40, becoming the oldest child in my dreams. Secretly retrieving it, I mailed off that very entry with a stolen envelope and stamp, uncorrected and genuine. I waited at the mailbox for weeks, often sitting at the drive for signs that a beautiful horse trailer would drive right around the corner with my horse inside. This added up to a lot of waiting in the wind for nothing.
My writing spirit didn’t die that day. It was born. In my darkest days, it was writing that has helped me survive life. Through the death of my boyfriend to cardiac arrest at just age 16, adventures in the Swiss Alps, college, a solitary life in Moldova, marriage, children, divorce, and life, key parts were memorialized with writing. Joni Mitchell, who is perhaps one of life’s all time BEST writers through lyrics, once wrote, “Laughing and Crying, it’s the same release”. I would concur. However, I would add writing to the laughing and crying.
VST was not patient or understanding of my literary needs. He was going, doing, and noisily planning projects years down the road. Being left handed, handwriting was a tedious, laborious task that he tried to avoid. Writing memorialized too many clues about personal feelings for others to find in years to come. It revealed too much of his very private heart. He was always silently curious about the fascination and love I had for writing. I always felt he was annoyed that the pencil was not something he could fully win against. He only mentioned one time in 32 years that he would love to know what I was writing in a personal journal, and I declined to share. The judgement would have taken me back to the sink and my mother so many years before. VST never fully appreciated that I am a writer. And a good one.
Now, open the floodgates and let the words roll. There is no one here to discount them as they fly out of my fingers onto the screen. No one to change a story that, in my memory, is correct and factual. No one to say, “You Can’t Write THAT!!!!” “You Shouldn’t Write THAT!!!!!” “A Nice Girl would never say THAT!!!!!” Or worst of all, “That is Terrible. You will NEVER publish anything”. No one except myself, and that voice is weakening every day.
I wrote a few days ago that I am a woman to be reckoned with. I embrace those words. Although the Morgan horse was never mine, I live among the mustangs now. We are free agents here on the high desert. Fat and sassy. On the move. Choosing our next steps with wise eyes and full hearts. We are Nevada. I wonder what stories they would write if they could. If I listen and watch carefully enough, I bet they will tell me.
Buy a journal. Write YOU!!!!!!