I write all the time. I write weeding the garden. I write while washing dishes. I write while walking the dogs. Where I fail to write is here at my computer. I am not sure why, but no matter how I express my determination to sit down daily and write I cannot follow through. What is this failure of follow through about I wonder?
I am an artist. Years of work, of pursuing a fine arts degree, entitles me to call myself ARTIST. My determination to get my degree was legion; with two children, a husband, and a house to manage it was not an easy endeavor. Married to a career army officer I often found myself alone managing the household; despite the obstacles I enrolled in school, no minor feat, and begin furthering my education.
My first effort at becoming educated, after high school, was to enroll in a school of nursing. Not to be confused with a college education, a school of nursing is a three year program attached to a hospital whereby students are afforded many, many hours of on the job training. The education was restricted to the sciences and practical aspects of nursing. At seventeen I recognized the learning would be limited and impoverished compared to what I had come to expect from my high school curriculum, but the attraction of being done in three years, with a full scholarship, was very powerful. Particularly after my mother told me that there was no money to send me to college, and even if there were it would be reserved for my brothers. My two, just bordering on being juvenile delinquent, brothers. So it was nursing school for me; being twenty at graduation would allow plenty of time to pursue an art degree.
So, twenty I was when I graduated and, surprisingly, in love with the field of nursing. Joining the army, I married my first love who had just graduated from the military academy at West Point. Off we went on the great adventure, living in Germany after our respective basic courses. Fast forward five years and I was no longer in,the army, no longer working as a nurse, but a stay at home mother with my first child. Again, not so surprising this time, I was in love; being a mother was a world unto itself. Two years later when my second son was born I couldn't have been happier. And yet lingering in the shadows was a dream of something different, something more than being someone's wife and someone's mother.
During those intervening years my husband graduated from law school and passed the bar, while continuing his military career. He encouraged my desire to further my education and when I enrolled in my first college classes our children were two and four; the option for night classes seemed perfect. I thirsted after the education and imagined getting a degree in psychology to further my nursing in the future. As an incoming student my status left me with few choices and the only psychology class available at night was in art therapy. It was good; perhaps I will be an art therapist I reasoned. After sixteen weeks it wasn't the nurse or the budding psychologist who emerged from that first class but the long silent artist.
The next six years involved several career moves for my husband and concurrent school changes for me. My children had to be nurtured through those moves, and as I lost credits I also lost semesters until finally I emerged with a bachelor of fine arts from Augusta College, in my now home town. I was lauded and feted, winning several awards and engaged as an elementary art teacher. Having been an army brat, five years in one town was the most I had ever lived anywhere; I felt like I was home for the first time in my life. And then the army made its move, and giving up my teaching job we made ours.
Many things have happened in the intervening years since that relocation; perhaps the most significant has been my inability to pursue excellence in my field. Not true, I pursue excellence, endeavor to practice my work diligently, receiving numerous awards and recognition along the way, but the failure is in staying focused on one thing to the exclusion of all else. I am like the grasshopper surprisingly enough; nothing could shock me more as I write these words.
So today as I find myself divorced and remarried, grandmother to ten grandchildren the oldest of whom is six, homeowner of a marvelous mountain house, I am pulled in many directions. Daily. My art has changed from sculpture to painting to functional art to craft. My nursing has changed from obstetrical, to neonatal, to child psych services to none. My teaching has changed from elementary ed, to public service projects, to private instruction to none. All that has ever remained even a little constant is my writing; I have always written. But that does not explain why I write in my head and not on paper or keyboard. Fear of failure? More like fear of accomplishment.
My mother's words come back to me at times like this. "Who do you think you are?" she would ask.
"You are too big for your britches."
"You are not as smart as you think you are."
"You may get good grades but you are not as smart as your brother, you just work hard."
She has been dead now for over twenty years and yet those messages live on in my head; all those old 'tapes' that play and replay paralyzing one to to their worth.
My friend Jayne came to visit me in the mountains recently, where I now live part time, and she told me to write. "You have something the world needs to hear," she told me. "Even if it is a small audience, there is an audience out there who is waiting to hear what you have to say."
I don't know if that is true but I do know that writing in my head is making me a little crazy; all those loose words rolling around like so many marbles. So for now I write. Again. No promises; just promise beckoning from the shadows.
No comments:
Post a Comment