Few Words Lead Me Home

“I cannot sever myself from what I’ve been taught. Pencil fades over time, so I always use a pen to write on the backs of photographs. The secret to good penmanship is going slowly. There’s a place for everything, and everything in its place.”

Finding Home is a short memoir written for a writing challenge in response to my grandmother’s stroke. I live far away from her, though I spoke on the phone with her every week. When I got the call about her stroke, I traveled across the country to sit by her hospital bed. I stayed for one week--just long enough for her to cross over into “she’s gonna live” territory. Then I returned to the place I live, logged onto Vocal, and saw a hometown writing challenge, the perfect receptacle for the grief.

The first draft was too long for the challenge parameters. It was also too many words to adequately express what I was feeling. A part of me felt that it had to be poetry, but in paragraph form. Poetry allows for feeling without explanation. The first draft of this 4 sentence paragraph began here:

“Many things were taught to me, but it was my grandmother’s lessons that I have no chance--and no desire--of severing. It is the only brainwashing I am not resentful of. We would look at pictures together at her house. The box was pulled out of the closet, and packet by packet, we’d look at pictures. Her childhood, my mother’s childhood, and mine, all neatly cataloged into short cardboard boxes. She wasn’t able to name every single person in the older photos, and she expressed regret over this. She would say, ‘Pencil fades over time, so always use a pen to write on the backs of photographs.’ I do this every time I have prints made. My grandmother’s handwriting was cursive perfection. I commented on it once when I was in middle school, and she said, ‘I’ve learned that the secret to good penmanship is to go very slowly.’ I’ve been remembering that for most of my life, but I still lack the patience for nice handwriting. She was neat in most every way. Her house wasn’t like my parents’ house--she was never searching for some missing item. She always said, ‘There’s a place for everything and everything in its place.’”

Sometimes words really do just get in the way. This first draft went through many changes before coming to the final four sentences. My elimination of 154 words brought me down to the root of my grief, which was perfect for me in a therapeutic sense. But when I envisioned the reader listening in, I doubted my choice. I thought to just move the lines around and turn it into poetry. I wasn’t sure the emotion would come across as it is. Or even worse, the part of my mind that judges myself asks, what if it comes across too emotional? In truth, I still tend to judge the entire piece as overly sentimental. Perhaps I could have fleshed it out a bit more--made the entire piece about my grandmother, leaving out the other details of the town I grew up in. At the time, I wanted every childhood memory that came with a strong sense to make it in. When I wrote about the saw mill, I could hear it as though I were lying in the lazy morning light through my high school bedroom window. When I wrote about my grandmother’s hands, I remembered the way the cement front steps felt under my bare feet as she pushed back my cuticles on my bitten fingernails. I chose fewer words, relying on my grief to bring the senses to the surface, and I had to have faith it would translate to the reader.

I did not earn a placement in that particular writing challenge; however, when I go back and read that piece now, I feel a keen sting and a sense of nostalgia. The presence of these feelings makes me feel confident in the risk I took in simplifying the piece, and grateful to see a small handful of my grandmother's lessons written as neatly as they were imparted to me.

I cannot sever myself from what I’ve been taught. Pencil fades over time, so I always use a pen to write on the backs of photographs. The secret to good penmanship is going slowly. There’s a place for everything, and everything in its place.