My
first memory is of writing.
Except
I couldn’t write yet. I am two or three
and sitting beneath the kitchen table while my parents eat dinner above me, conspicuously
ignoring me. I get the sense, thinking about this memory and also about my life
now as a mother, that I have just had a tantrum. And won. And now, instead of eating dinner, I am
sitting beneath the table, drawing.
But
I want to be writing.
***
The
cover for my first novel arrives any day now. I haven’t seen it yet. There is much about this process that is a
mystery to me, and nothing has happened the way I thought it would, the way it
was “supposed” to. I won a contest; SUPERVISION is going to be an e-book as
well as a paper and cardboard thing.
These
details make the magical process of making a book come to life even more
confusing, time-consuming, and alien. I feel even more out-of-the-loop. What is
happening?
***
I
am drawing under the kitchen table, making my parents’ portraits, I remember,
because I don’t know how to write their names. I want to tell their stories—to
tell many stories—but I don’t know how to make the words. And when, in fact, I
finally do learn to write and read, not too long after this dinner memory—my
mother teaches me—I write the only words I know over and over in different
combinations: hi you love Alison goodbye.
I
guess my first memory is wanting to
write.
***
My
child is learning to read. We pull into the parking lot and he spells out
S-T-A-R-B-U-C-K-S. When we throw away
our napkins, he reads “trash.” He wrote his name, his full name, for the first
time just a few days ago after only writing the first letter for a year. It
wasn’t traced. It wasn’t a lesson. He
just wrote it, signed his name once, then again. His preschool teachers were so
excited. They saved the papers, presented them to me solemnly, hugged me. One of them had tears in her eyes.
This
is the magic key, after all. This is the
ticket. Now you are never alone. Now you
are comforted. Now you know the world—and many, many others. Now you can make
your own world.
So
it’s taking a few days for the cover to get here. So I don’t know what it will be. So getting a
first novel published is a lot harder than I ever thought. Publishing my first
novel at the exact same time my son learns to read makes the magic so
extraordinary, so sharp.
It
is magic, I have to remind myself.
Writing, from the very beginning, is magic. I bought this old piano. I came to
a historic house. I felt my eyes snap open. I felt my fingers start to ache. I
felt an idea leap into my head from who knows where—and then another, and
another. And I felt if I did not write it down, I would die. And I could not
stop. And I could not stop. And I did not stop. And every time I re-read the end of SUPERVISION, I
have to tell you, I cry a little, because it did end for me; I’m no longer
writing/living/dreaming that world.
But
it’s about to begin for you, this particular magic, this dream world I dreamed.
See you under the table, while we wait for the key.