Handwritten Letters

My youngest son has been learning how to make his letters. He grips a fat purple crayon between stubby fingers. He bites his bottom lip in the labor of forming straight lines, and curls, and balls. Coming to terms with twenty-six wax bones of expression is hard work.

Yet he wants them, because even at four, he knows that there is a great secret locked up inside. Lines make letters. Letters make words. And with words, the magic happens. Words are a promise that when you call out of the darkness, your story will move through the canyons of the space between us, and it will land in the resonant softness of someone who understands.

So we plod through, “N,” down line. Slanted down line. Up line. And we believe that this will transform into the gift of “the day-blind stars waiting with their light.” We obtain for him swords, and ships, and hymnals.

- - -

Sometimes it takes me twice to hear what’s being said in the world. Early this morning, I noticed a large square of torn cardboard tossed onto a parking lot where rich people buy designer food. It was a placard, scrawled with a marker.

It was too far off to read. Had someone used it to ask for food or work? I was tempted to go pick it up, and read it, and keep it. It seemed so naked out there in the sun; this receipt of human dignity, blowing around where tires could run over it.

And I wanted to examine it with my hands. It was the first time I had seen the sign without the beggar. Divided in this way, I didn’t feel rushed to avert my eyes and pretend I didn’t see them both. I could hold it and find out how heavy it was.

Instead, I drove off.

Five hours later, I was heading home. There was a man holding a similar sign on a different corner. I saw eight large letters. “NEED WORK.” A smallish SUV swerved far enough to hand a bill over leather seats out the window.

As I turned left through the intersection, I noticed the carefully-drawn capitals written in two neat rows. I heard my own voice teaching my son. “'N.' Down line. Slanted down line, up line. 'E.' Down line. Across. Across. Across.”

I wondered where this man had learned them? Which desk did he sit in as a five-year-old? What promise made forty-years-ago lured him into the child-fist work of purple crayons and paper?

There must have been dreams. There must have been promises. No one teaches a child to read so that he can write a, “Need Work,” sign on a torn piece of cardboard. And no one learns to write so that he can stand in the sun all day, receiving arms’-lengths-worth of “In God We Trust” while most of humanity drives by, letting the sound of his voice bounce off of the canyon walls.

- - -

Today was my last day of graduate storytelling classes. The professor assigned us the job of weaving our personal story into the personal stories of two other classmates. The intent was something like jazz music. Interrupting. Harmonizing. Synergizing. Three different lives were woven into a mishmash of sound.

We tried it yesterday for the first time, and it was painfully hard for me. I'm in the program as a writer, and I have survived all necessary performances gritting my teeth and holding my breath. I memorize before I speak. I never improvise. This job ripped away every safety net I had.

Thankfully, the girls I was working with were professionals, and they were merciful. And since today was scary, they got me laughing so hard before the performance, I had to take three stabs at beginning before words would come instead of giggles. Then, all our energy settled into quiet, and the flow came.

One girl explained what it was like growing up female, wanting to dress like a guy. The other told about her experience at a forced summer weight loss camp. My story was about an outdoorsy girl coming to terms with an artistic God.

As the segments of our narratives intertwined, the voices of my two eloquent lesbian friends and a quake-kneed pastor's wife wound through decades'-worth of disappointments and wounds. We let one another speak, and we spoke, layering our lives on top of one another. And we laughed. And we empathized. And we tried to hear.

We were so very different. And still, we were so much alike.

During my story, the friend who attended the weight loss camp quoted this line from Whitman.

“I am large. I contain multitudes.”

And as our story closed, the whole class sat on an old stage floor that smelled like dirty feet, and we discussed what an infinite God might be able to contain. I had ideas on this. So did they. I think there is a lifetime of friendship left for such discussions.

But today we mostly gave one another our stories. And we let our chests pound with the horrible and the beautiful things that people do to people. We made our small stories like pleas on a cardboard square. And we held up our signs in the intersection of different journeys, and there was a comfort in being understood.

The Seaweed Monster: Mosie's First Story

Over dinner last night, Moses spontaneously began narrating the first story he's ever made up and told us. I almost missed it, because another conversation was going on among the big people. But I'm so glad I didn't.

Before you read it, you should know this. His cheeks really do have scars where he dug his fingernails into them when he was in the orphanage. I realized what they were the first time I saw him distraught here trying to replicate that behavior.

It is sort of haunting to me that the first story he told would be his own. For weeks he's suddenly been talking about China, being Chinese, talking about pictures of the orphanage, wanting to snuggle a lot, etc. I'm not sure how he came to know that all at once, but I'm glad he's starting to process it.

I was hesitant to post this at first, because the One who really sought him and found him, isn't in the narrative. The truth is, the four of us were scared, lost in the cold and dark, too.

Then I thought, this is how a child understands it for now. And he needs the freedom to tell his own story whereever he is.

The lion looked smaller the first time Lucy went to Narnia. And that's OK.

Anyway, here it goes. I tried to keep as much of the original language as possible.


- - - -


Mosie was lost in China, in the woods, all alone without Mommy, and Daddy, and Yo, and Sis.

Then the (whispered dramatic voice) seaweed monster, and the big snake, and the big huge "pider" web sneezed at him all at once!

Mosie got the big, big, big huge gun, and this gun, too, that shoots really loud, and he SHOT the seaweed monster dead with a loud noise. And then he used his sword to smash down the big, big 'pider web.

Then he used the big loud gun to shoot the snake too. But it was still dark outside. And Mosie is keert of the dark. And he was alone and fraid. And he was cold. Brrrr. (Stops story to come get a hug.)

Then Daddy, and Mommy, and Yo, and Sis found a flashlight. And they came outside to search for me. And they found me in the woods in the dark.

And Mosie had ouchie ‘pots on his cheeks. (Fingernails pressed into his cheeks.) But Mom, and Dad, and Yo, and Sis gave him a whole bunch of kisses. And he gave Mommy a whole bunch of kisses, too, on the cheek. (Stops story to give me a kiss.) And they put med-cine on the ouchy pots.

And they took Mosie home and fed him some popcicles and ice cream. (Big, huge grin.)

The Rest of Things

When like clay spun on a wheel too fast
the earth of me grows tired and cast
down, ears full of noise, heart lead-
laden with the old, thick, blood
of stories that turn pages
and take turns for the worst;
Hope, palm over palm,
relinquishes its ensign.

So I settle this dry bag of bones
toward the sun-lost West,
and wait with all those
grown too resigned to fight.

The silence is full,
like the rests between notes.
The mechanics of my breathing slow,
syncopate, align with the pulse
of tree frogs whose psalm began
when the footsteps of Divinity
impressed Eden’s virgin loam.

These thousand troubadours
recite what was and is to come.
They remember, and yearn,
and kiss my homesick fingertips,
with the unthinkable
and the forgotten.

Weary eyes close beneath
the pregnant crown of heaven,
where I meld, where I yield,
into the rest of things.