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At The Highest Level
In journalism school in Philadelphia, I was asked to write a column for the Bulletin after submitting a funny story to my teacher about my family. I said no thanks, my mother’s the writer, and I’m not funny, my dad is the funny one.
My mother was lonely in the chaos of a house filled with three children and our friends, pets and her aging mother and my father. In her loneliness, she often dragged me to knock on neighbors’ doors for conversation, neighbors who closed the curtains when they saw her walking up, my mother with a Pall Mall cigarette hanging out of her mouth in my father’s shorts, knocking on their door saying, Joan I know you’re in there!
She was eccentric, and often embarrassing, and when people asked me over the years are you going to be a writer like your mother, I cringed and turned away from my own passion for words and story. I didn’t realize for years I was hiding in her shadow.
Turns out I was hiding in my father’s shadow, too.
One of the most healing acts we can offer ourself and our parents, whether they are alive or not, is to reclaim our own story, while honoring their story and the gifts they gave us.
I stopped worrying about turning into my mother when I realized by writing my story I was turning my life into art…
