Oh. My. God. Grandma Was Right.

...men are sorry sons of bitches...

...it's what she said time and time again...and it was a mantra i refused to believe because, while some grandmothers might have said it with a heavy sigh, with tears in their eyes from a broken heart that evoked sympathy and conjured images of lost love, mine screeched it out while she puffed a cigarette and recalled her string of bad marriages...

...she had reason to believe men were sorry, i'll give her that...her fifth and final husband cheated on her...her earliest marriage happened before her 15th birthday to a man nearly twice her age (no telling when went on there)...she stood by helpless while my father's crimes ruined my mother's life...if anyone had a right to stereotype, it was grandma...

Grandma, in curlers, watches as her two daughters
attempt to kill each other

...still, i just couldn't believe her completely...my experience with men was limited to school teachers--who were kind and patient and accommodating...then as i got older my experiences with men were limited to those sensitive types that frequent coffee houses...eventually, i landed as my husband one of the most not-sorry men in the world...i'm 35 years old and had nearly forgotten grandma's warning...

...but over the last few weeks i've watched as several men i know have fallen victim to the "i'm divorced from my wife so i don't need to see or support my children" syndrome that seems not just to be sweeping the nation, but has also become accepted, a social norm...i guess when a nation is piloted by a man who was raised by a single mother it's time for us all to realize, if we haven't already, that the "traditional" family is a thing of history (if it ever really existed at all)...but that shouldn't give men the right nor the morality to broadcast seed like a scott's fertilizer tiller and then abandon their children when they find a new lawn...

...specifically, i'm thinking of one man i've known for over a decade who has three children...when faced with the prospect of paying his soon-to-be ex-wife the state mandated child support amount, he balked, telling her he wouldn't have enough money to survive...this guy brings in just over $3000 a month and the state said he owes his kids $1000...i'm to believe that a single guy, living in an apartment, who has given up parental rights to his children save for seeing them every other weekend can't manage to live on $2000 a month? my growing family (3 soon to be 5) manages it...i'm perplexed...i was further perplexed when their mother accepted a $300 cut in support in exchange for him taking the children every weekend...weekends he then shuffles them onto his sister or, get this, girlfriend who has two kids of her own...

...blah...the type of woman who would 1. date a man who isn't even divorced 2. date a man who won't financially care for his children 3. get involved in the lives of children who may or may not understand what is going on between their parents is a whole other ball of wax...

...meanwhile, the mother of these children, who has been a stay at home mom for over a decade, had to find a part-time job...she works less than 20 hours a week, must pay for an apartment big enough for her and three children, feed, clothe, and otherwise care for these kids on her own 5 days a week...on the few days she's gotten more hours at work that conflict with being home with her kids, she's asked their father to come over and watch them, to which he's replied "i have better things to do"...one of those things is taking off from work to spend time with his girlfriend and her two children...

...i'm disgusted...not just by his behavior (which as i talk to more people i'm realizing is run-of-the-mill) but by a culture that allows this to become normal...and i'm not sure there's a solution...

...i grew up with absentee parents...my father was in prison and my mother left me at grandma's house where i was raised until just before my 18th birthday...grandma didn't work and we lived on credit cards, $300 my mother gave her for my care, and a small alimony check grandma got from her cheating ex husband...there were nights i went to bed with a piece of toast and a glass of milk in my belly and that was it...i was loved, well cared for, and clean...but my life was very empty and lonely...i grew to believe that i was worthless, that no one except grandma loved me...in part i felt this way because when my mother came around i got the impression she was there out of duty, as if her feet were being held to a fire she couldn't wait to escape...

...i also grew up hearing stories about men--fathers of classmates, neighbors, and, years later, boyfriends of classmates--who worked under the table so they wouldn't have a tax trail, thus their wages couldn't be garnished and they wouldn't have to pay child support...one man even opened a business in his new wife's name so his ex, to whom he'd never paid money for his child, couldn't sue him for back child support...what type of people do these things?...okay, you hate the stupid bitch who you divorced...fine, great, more power to you...but then you go out of your way to hurt your children...

...i just don't get it...where are the emotional ties, the thoughts centered around what the kids are doing at that moment, the sense that when you look a child in the face you see yourself looking back?...how can men be so callous?

...i asked my husband (who is among an elite class of men i call the "awesome, amazing, most incredible men on the planet")...how he would parent if we suddenly got divorced...he couldn't even imagine not seeing our daughter every day...not seeing me he was fine with(!), but life without his little girl he just couldn't even get his head around...

...why aren't men like my husband the new trend in fatherhood?...where are they all?...why aren't they out there proving grandma wrong?

Writer's Bloq

...for those writer friends of mine--or those who just want to read some good work being done by writers all over the globe--i highly suggest Writer's Bloq...it's a free online writing community focusing on giving feedback, editing, and publishing...you can read most works-in-progress as long as the writer has a public profile...and you can even create your own little "bloq" of friends with whom you can exchange work...

...i've been a member for about nine months and already i've really enjoyed the camaraderie...i don't have a formal writing group in my area, so for me Writer's Bloq works as my little guinea pig stage where i can test out new material before sending it out into the world for possible rejection publication...

...i welcome visits to my profile and my public folio...most people who read my stuff send me email responses to my work, rather than messages through the Bloq, but either one is fine with me...

...i hope to see some of you join and begin to post work...

A Little Thoreau and a Few Resolutions

...in his August 19, 1851 journal, H. D. Thoreau wrote, "How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live!"

...i've been meditating on these words for quite a while...i'd first heard them roughly translated by my writing instructors as "write what you know" and "you can't write if you haven't lived"...i used to wonder about what sort of "living" my mentors had in mind, exactly...did they expect all young writers to join the circus, drive ambulances in wars, ride with mexican renegades and send covert reports from the front...i wasn't sure...but by the time i was twenty, i'd felt as if i'd lived a few different lives and i could try to write about at least one of them...

...fifteen years later, i think i can finally do justice to my first life...

...still, i think about those fifteen years: have i "stood up"?

...Thoreau's journal entry continues, "The writing which consists with habitual sitting is mechanical wooden dull to read" and he insists writers need movement of the limbs to get the blood flowing, emphasizing the necessity for a walk to trigger the mind...

...for quite some time, i've been habitually sitting, putting words on paper again and again, and seemingly watching the world move on...i worry i've become pretty sedentary, that i won't be able to write about the years i've lived while trying to write about my first life...and while i'd like to take his words literally--and easily let myself off the hook by getting up from my desk and making a loop around the block--i have to look at them metaphorically too...a writer cannot sit in one place, in one time, continually occupying one identity, without running the risk of flat, boring work...we cannot allow ourselves to perpetually live with the mind of the person we used to be...hell, we can't even be the person we were last year (sorry, Gatsby)...we have to live, to grow, to see the world...if not by actually being there, then by at least allowing our actions to be shaped by what is going on around us...in short, Thoreau's reminding us that before we're writers, we're human beings...

...we're sentient..and without empathy we're working in vain...

...in an attempt to keep my writing relevant, my prose organic, and my thoughts new, i've composed the following resolutions...

2013 Resolutions
1. Give thanks for each sunrise, each sunset
2. Continue to feel empathy for those whose lives I've never known
3. Write a sentence everyday, no matter how small the thought
4. Never sit down in vain

Kill the Babies: Why Everyone Should Participate in a Writers' Workshop

...my husband, an english professor, walked by a colleague's classroom yesterday morning and heard her shouting at the 30 students in her literature class, "You've got to learn to work together in groups!  Getting along with people is part of living in the real world!"

...i contemplated the passion, and then the sanity, of this woman...if it was her intention that her students all get along to do their work, i'd have to tell her she's wasting her good screaming voice...grown ups don't have to get along, or even be friends, to work together...i learned that lesson in the fourth grade when i was paired with a semi-conscious classmate on a "Spaniards of the California Coast" diorama project...she smelled of brie, did none of the writing or reading, but she owned clay and made kick-ass fleets and conquistadors...i never hung out with her at lunch, never traded allegiances on the playground...we didn't get along, never spoke of my little ponies or barbies, we just mapped out stolen gold and catholic missions...i avoided the smelly girl--who flashed her privates to boys at the bus stop and lived in the swankiest house in town--in part because she frightened me, and in part because she was just smelly...i don't even remember the mouth-breather's name...but i remember that project, the fact that for two weeks she and i had to spend an hour after school working together to finish our diorama...we both knew our report cards were at stake, and we got the job done...the project earned an A...

...in writing workshops, some fifteen years later, i finally realized the value of the smelly girl...i could actually work with someone--give praise and criticism--even if i didn't know them, didn't like them, or we didn't get along...we had something in common, and we were working together to get it...there were plenty of bozos in those classes--they let me in, after all--people who took themselves too seriously, or not seriously enough...people i envied whose work was excellent, complete, publishable...people i despised whose work was weak, half-assed and a waste of time...

...one semester in graduate school, as i was making notes on one man's story--a man who reminded me so much of the smelly girl, i could almost picture her brie face--i gave him some praise for a string of words i still remember...i couldn't stand this guy...he'd nearly sexually assaulted a friend of mine, was skating by on a fellowship, and spent his time composing long emails to the graduate class and drinking at local bars...i was working full time, busting my ass just to keep up...he was everything i despised about the world, yet there i was giving him a solid...i could've really let into him, how worthless i thought he was...but the story was a good one...i didn't want to be left in a room alone with the guy, but as far as the workshop went, i had constructive criticism to give...

...writing workshops should be made a core requirement of all high school and/or college curricula...nothing is more humbling than turning over your golden baby to a room full of meat-depraved hell hounds, and having that child ripped to shreds...workshop criticism is a daily reminder of a few key principles of adulthood, which if learned early enough, would keep college professors from becoming wild-eyed, screaming monsters...

• you are not the center of the universe--the world doesn't revolve around your time table
• no one can read your mind no matter how much you will it--if it's not on the page, it doesn't exist, thus the project fails
• everyone has somewhere better to be--if you're not compelling, people lose interest
• you are not your work, no matter the genre--at the end of the day you're a person, and your writing is your writing (see Barthes and Derrida, et. al.)

...on the first day of writing workshop, and then every so often during the course of our time together, i tell my students we're in workshop to improve our writing, not to make friends...it's not about groupies or who's more popular, it's about writing the right words, helping along someone who has a glimmer of talent but is too cocky, too lazy, or otherwise falling short of that talent...i encourage them to kill each others' babies...to do it often...to give praise where it's due..to grow a thick skin...

...that's what adulthood is about too...growing calluses so the mouth-breathers, the wild-eyed, the self-assured, just graze the surface...adults don't have to get along with the people around them to complete a task...most adults don't have time to like everyone they encounter...they're too busy hating the world...

...if all students had to complete a year or two of writing workshops they wouldn't be driving their frazzled literature professors insane with their inabilities to just get along...they'd be grown-ups...

"You Can't Write About This in an Essay"

"I remind him profanely of his family and tell him I will search them out and write about them badly." 
                              Barry Hannah, "Bats Out of Hell Division"

...a few years ago, i was friends with a woman a decade my senior who, every time she spoke, would preface or end her musings with the phrase, "You can't write about this in an essay."  soon, each time we spoke--about her cats, her affairs with subordinates at work, her pampered childhood--she became increasingly anxious and had to repeat the phrase "You can't write about this in an essay" a few times...

...eventually, i did mention her in an essay, in an attempt to point out how desperately different i was from most women in the southern united states, or at least how different i was from her...she was her parents' only little jelly bean, who hadn't worked a real job until she was forty, and still asked her father for advice on most matters...she loved the essay so much she even attended a conference with me and sat in the audience as i read it...i don't think she ever got the irony...

...as i get it now...

...i'm no longer friends with this woman...the constant nagging about not writing about her led me to continually think--and now i wish i'd said--you're not that interesting...nothing of any significance has ever happened to you...you're an upper-class, southern, white woman who votes for the republican party...i don't need to write an essay about you...flannery o'connor and william faulkner pretty much covered your demographic and you're proof positive not much has changed...when i told another friend about this continual nagging, she offered this insight, "She probably wants you to write about her and is upset that you aren't. She wants you to make her interesting." 

...Lee Gutkind (the "Godfather" of creative nonfiction) says the first rule of writing cnf is "Don't make stuff up"...in his essay What is Creative Nonfiction? he writes, "The word 'creative' refers simply to the use of literary craft in presenting nonfiction—that is, factually accurate prose about real people and events—in a compelling, vivid manner. To put it another way, creative nonfiction writers do not make things up; they make ideas and information that already exists more interesting and, often, more accessible" ...if it's true that my former debutante friend wanted me to make her more interesting, i'd have to lie, breaking rule #1...afterward, to maintain the lie, i'd have to stray from the very formula Gutkind describes...i couldn't maintain a friendship with someone who expected me to compromise my craft...i couldn't perform the literary miracle of making her interesting...thus, our relationship deteriorated...

...the few times i subsequently interacted with her, she acted odd, out of sorts, flighty, and downright insane--it was clear to me and those around her she was having a mental breakdown...ironically, she became more interesting the less we had anything to do with one another...with a year or two to reflect on our relationship, i mentioned her a few times in my writing...and she accused me of being a liar...for five years she'd preempted every conversation we'd had by saying "You can't write about this in an essay" because she assumed i'd be revealing some interesting truth about her boring life...but when i finally do tell the truth about her interesting life, i'd become a liar, someone who had to fabricate, to make stuff up, just to fill empty pages...i could understand her anger if i'd written about her badly, if the sentences weren't eloquent, if the diction left her wanting...but my phrases were so spot on, several people told me how much they'd enjoyed them...no, what upset her was the truth-telling...the fact that there are truths we tell ourselves, and then there are truths everyone sees...

...i've been meditating on the "ethics" of cnf, what lines i'm willing and unwilling to cross...most people think my life is an open book, that i have no filter, that i write about anything and everything that happens to me, the people around me...not true...i leave out plenty...there are currently seven familial dramas unfolding in my life and i've purposely avoided writing about them...even in the memoir i'm working on i've left out details i recognize to be painful to the people involved...

...Lynn Z. Bloom, in her incredible essay Living to Tell the Tale: The Complicated Ethics of Creative Nonfiction, says, "Children who know the family secrets also understand the family taboos" ...as a child i lived a tangle of secrets, deceptions, and half-truths...it's become ingrained in me to understand what makes for inappropriate, insignificant, or downright wrong subject matter...there are forbidden dances, dark corners to avoid...some things we just don't discuss...

...Bloom goes on to say, "I write for the usual reasons writers write about anything important: to get at the truth; to make sense of things that don't make sense; to set the record straight; to tell a good story"...it's a mantra passed down from Didion, from Capote, from Tom Wolfe...at the crux of it, though, is the idea of importance...if something is worthy of being written about, it will be...

...i see my writer's brain as a pressure cooker...lots of things go in...they mix with other things--memories, events, facts--and eventually the cooker starts to whistle, the steam rises and forms some piece of writing...it takes time, more than anything...making those connections, realizing the implications, forming the sentence, the paragraph, the page, into a truth-revealing story...avoiding judgement and attaining objectivity takes self-control and a certain amount of distance...

...the reflection necessary for a quality piece of cnf is at the heart of what i do...which is why i hardly ever write about the heavy dramas immediately unfolding in my life...i have to be able to look back on them with something i've learned...i have to wait for wounds to scar, for dark corners to be illuminated...then, as delicately as i can, i begin...

The Closest Thing to a Soul I'll Ever Have

...i'm heading to the Southern Women Writers Conference at Berry College at the end of the week...i'll be on a panel with other creative writers, reading from my memoir-in-progress, specifically the essay that started it all...on sunday, i'll be part of a workshop with a small group of other non-fiction writers and they'll have comments and feedback for the introduction to the entire book...i'm looking forward to this conference because it'll be the first time that i'll sit down with another group of non-fiction writers and discuss our writing, projects, and aspirations...

...i know it's easy to become dependent on the workshop environment, to constantly need or seek feedback, but there's a part of me--the part that's been without that environment for several years--that is elated to participate and eager to talk shop...

...i suppose it's the part of me that doesn't see writing as a hobby, something to fill my nights or to work on between jobs...it's the same part of me that sees writing as, in the end, difficult, challenging, painful and liberating...it's the closest thing to a soul i'll ever have...it'll be refreshing to be surrounded by a like-minded group of women who see writing as more than fun, a trite endeavor to please a circle of friends...

...that isn't to say that writing isn't "fun"...sure it is...but i hate that adjective...i tell my writing students it's vapid, meaningless, and what i consider fun (pushing pseudo-artistic wanna-be's, who're nearly senior citizens but still rely on Daddy for opinions and perspective, down several flights of stairs) is probably not their idea of fun (an evening of apple TV)...there's always a better word or phrase...like "bleeding on the page"--that's fun for me, opening my veins for the world to see...or "telling the truth"--really fun, especially when it's about me and Adam...or my favorite "making the memories sing"--it's so much fun when i capture the exact phrase of a moment that i gift myself with an m&m...

...so i'll be off on a "fun" four-day jaunt, surrounded by writers who enjoy bleeding for their craft...who seek truth in their art...who'll be singing their verses and the verses of others...

...wish me luck...

70-80 Victims

...trying to remain virtuous today as i plug along in what is, to date, the hardest part of the memoir i'm writing: the crimes my father was charged with...i've had some great help researching my father's past from the attorney who prosecuted him, a man who has prosecuted hundreds of criminals and says he remembers very few of them--my father being at the top of the list...he helped me piece together much of what actually took place in those bedrooms...while i can't interview any victims--could only find one and she, understandably, doesn't want to relive it all--talking to the attorney has helped me fill in much of what i need for the book, my father also being tight-lipped...ultimately, though, what i want to achieve is not sensationalism, but dignity for the women, and perhaps even, a little for myself...

...still, research is research--removed, distant, almost foreign...talking with the attorney has uncovered secrets my father, nor the rest of my family, would never share...now i'm staring down the barrel of being not simply the daughter of a man convicted of 8 counts of rape and burglary, but the daughter of a man who probably--according to LAPD--committed somewhere between 70 and 80 rapes...

...not easy to stomach, really...

...but the writing goes on...i'm up to 312 pages and whether or not it will ever go into print is beginning to weigh heavily on my mind...

...i was at odds with myself about what picture to post today...i decided on this one because it is one of hope...to anyone unaware of my circumstance, this photo is just a father and daughter enjoying her first christmas...

...it's hard to believe that's me...even harder to believe that's him...

List Keeping

...i'm big on lists, use them for everything...over the last year, i've been using this list as a template of ideas/themes for the memoir...i've been astonished to find--in corresponding with my father--the similarities in our childhoods:

• we were both raised by people who really should't have been raising us--in his case, a mother and step-father, in mine my maternal grandmother--not that they were "bad parents"...they just didn't have the temperament for raising children
• both of us have huge blanks when it comes to who our fathers are...in my case, i suppose i can get as much information from him as i can, but i'll never really know who he is...such is the case with pathological criminals
• we are both quick tempered, suspicious of most people, with above average intelligence
• we were both lonely children--he took out his loneliness with aggression, while i tended to internalize it and hate myself for it
• neither one of us had a childhood to speak of...at age eight i was thrust into the adult world...likewise, my father began working at age eight and was expected to be a man

...so here's the big question: what made me so different from him? was it simply because my grandmother told me she loved me, but my grandfather never said those words to my father? should i believe all of thatpop-psychology?...was the difference that i was scared to become him--to lose my freedom, my dignity, my sanity? no one had a more omnipresent morality tale than i did growing up...did it shape me that much?

...when i was three, i fell and cracked my skull...i needed stitches and still remember the doctor in the emergency room stapling my head back together...pleasant...sometimes i wonder if that crack in my skull is the reason why my neurons don't seem to fire the same way as everyone else's seem to fire...why i'm prone to depression...

...when my father was seven, he was hit by a car and lost consciousness...this was 1961, so there were no MRIs or CAT scans...doctors didn't even see a danger in concussions...but i've done some pretty heavy research into frontal lobe damage caused by car accidents, and based on what i've found, it seems my father probably suffered a lesion that disrupted his frontal lobe for the rest of his life...

...is that the difference? technology and some modern medicine and my father may not have become the monster he is...

In The Blood

...so i've spent the better part of the week--my spring break--adding to, editing, and rewriting the memoir...my page count is 243...i think i've probably got another 100-175 pages to go for it to become a finished draft...so much of half the narrative depends on what my father writes, the interviews i'm able to have with my mother, the willingness of them both to tell me the truth...their ability to even remember...

...this morning i revisited some material i wrote a few years ago...after elizabeth was born i thought maybe i'd done the wrong thing, having a child who would, perhaps, inherit something in the blood that would turn her into a copy of her grandfather...or worse, that i'd snap and become something like my father...

...i wrote some of this during that time...some of it i've tweaked...for the last two years it's been the introduction to the memoir...i hope it does it's job...i welcome/need comments...thanks, everyone...be brutal...

I am the daughter of a convicted rapist.

It’s taken nearly three decades for me to admit that to myself.

These words are a confession to the rest of the world.

The last time I saw my father I was seven years old, a month before my eighth birthday. I was trying hard to be both the son my father didn’t have and the young lady my mother wanted me to be. So far, my father was winning. I played baseball. My favorite toys were my He-Man action figures. I rode a black BMX bicycle. My best friend was a boy who lived three blocks away. I’m sure that the last time I saw my father I was wearing cut-off jean shorts and a white t-shirt, my long blonde hair tucked beneath my Mickey Mouse baseball cap to keep myself cool in the California desert. I was wearing Vans, blue canvas with white laces, and tube socks pulled to my knees. Though my mother dressed me each Sunday in a frilly dress, white lace socks, and patent leather shoes I’m sure I was convinced that I was my father’s son.

What I’m not sure about is what my father looked like. Was his hair blonde or light brown? Was he balding? How tall was he? What did he do for a living? Did he wear glasses? After his arrest in July of 1985 all pictures of him disappeared from our house, he possessions followed shortly after. His car was never returned from the Los Angeles County impound. It was as if he’d disappeared. Or like he’d never existed at all.

I’ve spent twenty seven years believing my father was a deceitful, evil, sick person who raped women and used his family as a cover for his crimes; that he had always been strange, a troubled person; that because of my short temper, pinched lips, and constant scowl I acted and looked exactly like him; that if I wasn’t careful, one day he’d come for me, or send one of his prison pals to come for me, and I’d suffer. Maybe not die, but suffer.

It took some conditioning to believe all of this, but it worked.

I’ve spent twenty seven years living as the child of someone who never existed.

I’ve spent twenty seven years living as the child of one of the most notorious criminals in California State history.

I thought I would die with it. That after I was gone the evil, the sickness, would go with me. It is the son who inherits the sins of the father, I’d been taught in Sunday school. I would take the burden off my sisters and keep it all for myself.

Then some things changed.

I had a child, a girl. And I told myself I would not raise her with the same fears that had ruled my childhood. And I told myself that when she was old enough I would tell her about my father. And then it occurred to me that I had nothing much to tell.

I was sure I could think of something. I’d been trying to write about my childhood—in secret, furtive moments, in fear of my family’s reaction—for a quarter century. But I didn’t want conjecture, rumor. I didn’t want my daughter’s grandfather to be simply a handful of newspaper articles over twenty-five-years-old.

I didn’t want it for myself.

I was tired of it all—the secret I’d kept for so long, the fear of the dark, of open windows, of strangers. I was thirty four years old and I’d not once slept with my bedroom window open. I’d never gotten into my car without checking beneath it for a predator waiting to slit my ankles and abduct me.

I was more afraid of passing along fear to my daughter than I was of passing on any mental illness that might live in my blood.

And something else—having a child raised the question of why my father had children of his own. If he was the sick, evil person I’d been taught to believe how had he managed to marry, hold a job, attend church, have three girls he never once touched sexually?

It occurred to me one afternoon, as I was watching my infant daughter play in the grass of my quiet, safe, suburban house 3500 miles from the California town that had been the ruin of my childhood, that I’d never asked anyone anything more about him.

I’d been too afraid.

If someone had said to me the day before, the hour before, the second before I’d had this thought, that fear was a powerful motivator, that it could damage a person faster than a bullet, I would’ve laughed. Something inside of me would have tugged. There would have been a mental snag. But I would’ve laughed.

I watched my infant daughter crawl along, pull blades of grass with her nimble fingers, squint against the sun that turned her blue eyes crystal clear, and thought to myself,If I don’t let go of this fear, I’ll never be her mother.

I’m trying to let it go.