Stop. Step Back. Start Over.

Hey Girl Heeeeeeey,

You must be LOVING all these letters this week.  I mean, I’m sure you’ve gotten a ton of birthday cards, but tell me they mean as much to me as my letters do.  Tell me!  You can’t, can you?  I know.  I know…

So I was going to talk to you today about that teacher from my past who I thought might have… well… passed.  Thanks to the expert sleuthing skills one Mr. Cam Saino (name change alert!), it has been confirmed that she did not pass away, and it was just a woman with the exact same name and approximate age from the same region who departed us earlier this month.  RIP Aunt Gay Gay.

Initially, I wanted to write to you about this teacher because it spurred something in me that I hadn’t felt in a while.  A true loss of someone who, while not a big part of my life this moment, did much to shape who I am.  However, the more I thought about it, I realized it may be in poor taste to eulogize a woman who is still with us.  Ok fine Helen, you got me – it’s not the “more I thought about it” it’s the more I talk to people with a meatier moral fiber than myself.   It’s the consensus of these friends that I use this new information as an impetus to respond to this former teacher’s Facebook message from months ago and not mention that I thought she was dead.  Fair enough.

I will, however, take this opportunity to enjoy the feeling that came over me when I found out she was ok.  The weight of 50 textbooks had been on my shoulders since I heard (what I thought was) the bad news and now that everything is in it’s rightful order again, I can move on with a better sense of appreciation for her and maybe life in general.  So let’s travel back to that morning (henceforth called “The Bad News Morning”) where I have a conversation with a friend over breakfast about the ability to teach writing.   I tell him that I believe that while the basic technique of writing can be taught to an extent, the creativity which inspires it, cannot.  My friend is of the mindset that it’s all teachable – from the conception of the idea to the presentation through words.  This is ridiculous to me.  If you could be taught how to write – like actually write – like the kind of writing that swallows you whole when you read it – then the people who do it well would mean a lot less.  The town in which I live would be filled with less depressed 20-somethings who have traveled too far from home to give up, and I wouldn’t cry when I finished a good book because I was worried there might not be another like it.   He disagrees.  Fine.  His smile is charming enough.  I’m disarmed.  I walk home from the restaurant and call my parents and we have the conversation that has lead me to today’s letter.  The conversation that ends with them telling me that my teacher had passed away.  It hits my heart.  Hard.  Why?  Because I know this teacher taught me to write.  From idea seed to stylized grammar.  She red-lined my short stories as if I were an actual writer and encouraged my poetry by staying after school to read with me.  She told me that some day I’d be published.   If it turns out to be true or not, her belief in me made me want to write more.  Thinking about her like this is a wake up call and I want to run back to the table I had breakfast that morning at and start all over again.  I want to agree with my friend and tell him he’s right, that you can be taught to write.  And more importantly, you can be taught to write well.

So that’s that.  I need to start writing more.  New leaf.  Starting over. Starting… tomorrow.

xoxo

Lisa

July 27, 2011. Uncategorized.