Writing Life Stories

My hectic life has been made brighter by teaching a memoir class in June. I have five delightful students and one of them had a poem accepted for publication today. I am always happy when my students get something published.

I remember how long I dreamed about seeing my writing in print. The first thing I wrote and sent to our local newspaper, The Albany Herald, was a travel article. The editor called me and seemed excited to have my article. I was out of my mind with joy. I was in my late twenties at that time. But when the newspaper arrived at my house, I was upset. Because my article was a little too long for their space, the end of my piece was simply left out. So anyone reading it would wonder why I wrote an article that ended abruptly before it was finished. 

After I had some more experience with writing for newspapers, I learned to check for word length before I submitted anything. I found once I moved to NC and joined the NC Writers' Network West, there was much to learn about the craft before submitting to any publication. They all have guidelines or rules you must follow to be accepted and each one is different. 

Soon after moving to my mountain home, I began writing for the Clay County Progress, our local newspaper. I wrote about the artists in our area. I interviewed visual artists, painters, wood carvers, published writers, and met many interesting people. One lived on my street, a few houses down from mine. Another was an author of books for middle school kids, who spent her summers in our mountains but lived on the Georgia coast. She had lots of books published and many were popular in foreign countries and printed in their language.

While in our region she taught a writing class at the John C. Campbell Folk School and I registered for that weeklong class. I am still surprised that I got up the nerve to ask her for an interview, but she was gracious and later told a friend that my article about her was one of the best ever. I have written about her in another post.  

Rosemary Royston is teaching here in August. Check out her class.  You will love taking classes at JCCFS.   https://folkschool.configio.com/pd/2270/creative-writing-across-genres?source=search&returncom=productlist&st_t=2077&st_ti=2516&cid=2527

Oh, how I long to do that kind of work again. With my life filled with medical appointments almost every day, I seem to have little time to do the things I really enjoy. But I hope to continue to teach classes every month or so. I teach on Zoom and if you like to write true stories of interest about you, your family, and your hopes and dreams, join us when next I hold a course of three classes online. The fee for the classes is very nominal as I do this because I love to see writers emerge and find they can write entertaining and informative truths even when they thought they could not.

Thanks for coming by and I hope you will leave a comment. You are welcome to write anonymously but please leave your first name in your comment because I might know you.

I am grateful to you who read my words and especially to those of you who leave a comment.

Also, I had no computer access for a while as my old Dell finally had to be retired because it was too obsolete to handle some of the new programs. Seems that computer companies find a way to make you purchase a new one no matter how much you love your old one.

I am very fortunate to have a friend who spent forty years working with computers and in the digital world. With less than would cost me to buy a new one, he created two computers for me with all my documents intact and the programs I use. He synced my laptop with the two desktop units and now I have computers in both places where I spend my time and my laptop is updated as well. 

He would not like me to mention his name, but I am very grateful for his generosity of time as well as knowledge. I still had two monitors from computers I used to use in my studio. He adapted them and they work fine. 

So many of my friends are former students from over the years, going back to 2008. Rebecca Gallo was a young student of mine at that time. She lives in Europe now and writes a delightful blog about her exciting life. She and her husband work from home on their computers. She teaches math and he works with a computer company. They can live anywhere they can get the Internet. Recently they decided to move out of the city of Valencia Spain to a small town in Spain. They have the opportunity to experience various lifestyles in a variety of places.

When I compare my choices of a career when I was a young woman to the choices Rebecca has, I feel just a teeny bit envious. If I had it to do over again, and I was a fresh college graduate today, I would pursue a career in writing and using the computer to make a living. My family was practical and insisted I do something that would support me and be dependable for as long as I wanted to do it. I was a good teacher of children for fifteen years. I loved my students and enjoyed seeing them every day, but it was a stressful job and I, being an empath, carried their heartaches home with me each night. I had no authority to fix anything. All I could do was show them I cared.

My husband, Barry, died in 2009. We had hoped to grow old together and fully believed we would. But life is not guaranteed. I did not believe I would be left alone because he was always healthy and athletic. He took no prescription medicine until he had a heart attack in his fifties. But even after surgery, he was far healthier than I. I have had three complex surgeries. I have chronic pain in my back, my knee, and from fibromyalgia. I deal with respiratory problems, also. So I just knew he would be here long after I was gone. Tonight I learned that 80 percent of men die married. Eighty percent of women die as widows. Many of my friends have lost their husbands and faced the tough experience of living alone feeling like half of themselves is missing. 

I think as long as we have a life partner we are relevant in this world. We take care of each other. We are needed. But when we are left alone, it is often hard to feel relevant. People with children don't want to be a burden on them. The children don't need them and unless they can find something in which they can serve others and enjoy what they do, they might feel life is over for them.

Helping others, especially writers, is what makes me relevant today. So, I am champing at the bit to get these health issues taken care of and be back in a classroom, online or in person, with adults who want to learn to improve their writing, or who want to write about their unique lives. 

Things I am grateful for tonight:

The midterm elections are over! I feel so much better knowing that most of American citizens want what I want - people working together to do what is best for our democracy. 

I felt like I could breathe after the elections and look forward to lower prescription prices, seeing bridges and roads improved and made safer, better health care for more people, and other things that have been passed but will become reality in the coming years. 

I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving if you live in the USA, and if not, I hope you take the time to be thankful for your life.

This is a portrait of Pretty Thing done by my sister, Gay Moring

I taught elementary school, fourth grade, but I don't think  I made my history classes very interesting. Looking  back on the young 23 year-old I was then, I wish I could tell her what she could do to make those classes interesting.

My nephew, a history buff, teaches history and he knows how to interest all of his students. I have not attended his classes, but I  hear that he doesn't teach from a text book. He uses other methods to get the high school children so involved they love it. They love him.

Someone once said to me, "I'll bet you were a wonderful teacher."

Perhaps I was a good teacher because I took a personal interest in each child that sat in my classroom. I might  have become too close to  my kids because many of them had family problems they wanted to share with me. One little perfectionist, a  good student, had emotional problems because her father and mother separated. The little girl felt a need to take care of her mother who evidently shared her troubles and fears with her children. The child became almost hysterical when she made a mistake on a test. I let  her come into class early for days so she could talk to me about her concerns. She sat in my lap and cried as she told me how she and  her mom knelt by her bed every night and prayed for her father to come back. 

Another troubled student, a boy who was eleven years old, but big for his age, came into school after the school year began. He sat in back of the class with anger shooting from his eyes. His body language told me  he was trouble. He  never opened a book or picked up a pencil. His arms crossed over his  chest, he glared at me.

It was not difficult to see this boy needed counseling. Not knowing anything about his history   it was clear that he was on the verge of exploding, and I hoped it would not happen in my classroom. I wrote a letter to his parents and asked them to come in to see me. I also suggested he might benefit from therapy. 

Soon after his arrival, we were told we would have Parent's Day. Mothers and fathers could come and sit in the back of the classroom, observe the children, and  me. The idea  of having such a critical audience unnerved me, a green, inexperienced young teacher. 

I was never anxious when I stood before my 32 students each day, but having parents there to observe was a different thing. My timing of the  letter home for the troubled boy could  not have been worse. He arrived the morning of Parent's Day with a thunder cloud face and immediately told me he was not going to see a shrink. 

"You can't make me, either," he said in a voice that said  he was itching for a fight. I had hoped his  parents would not tell him I  suggested he have therapy, but  they must have told him I thought he needed a psychiatrist. 

My day with the  parents had begun on a very bad note. I went to my principal, Mrs. Gotko, a slight little woman who had suffered a  bad car accident the year before and had missed several months of school. 

"I'm afraid he will cause a  bad incident while the parents are here. If he rebels and won't mind me, I don't know what I will do, " I said.

"I'll come down and talk to him," Mrs Gotko said.

I went back to my classroom and soon the principal arrived and motioned for my angry student to come out in the hallway. He slammed a book down on his desk and ambled out the door. I felt such relief just knowing my competent principal was going to  handle my problem. I called the roll and had no sooner reached the Ds than one of my students cried out. "Miss Council, Mrs. Gotko is on the floor!" 

I rushed to  the door and found the older woman struggling to her feet. My student was no where to be seen.

"What happened?"

"He knocked me down. He didn't  hit me, but he pushed me." Breathless and upset, Mrs. Gotko said she was going to call his parents. "You can go back to your classroom now."

Several adults came into the room and took their seats in the back. I managed to get through my classes as though nothing had happened, but when lunch time came and the parents had gone I went straight to the office. 

"He won't be back here. You won't have to deal with him anymore." The principal said  she had called the police who were out looking for him. 

"What will they do with him," I asked. I felt guilty that I had not been able to handle the boy and I never wanted him to  leave school under such horrible circumstances. He was so young and already in trouble with the  police. 

I later learned that he was found by the police that afternoon, and that he was going to be sent to his grandmother's to live. 

I wondered why this boy hated the world. Had he been abused at home? Maybe he had a stepfather or father who was mean to him or a mother who mistreated him. A child would not normally have so much anger inside if he had not faced major problems. I wondered if there had been more time, would I have been able to reach him. 

I never heard anything else about this child, but he is just one of the many I still feel concern for, feel I  somehow failed. Looking back, I think I  have too  much empathy to  be a good school teacher. I should have studied psychology. I wanted to help these kids more than I wanted to teach them to read and write. 

What I should  have done

Looking back, I see what I could have done with my early years that might have been more helpful, places where I  could have made more of a difference, work that would have been more suitable to me. Like my sister, Gay, I think I would have liked counseling. Or maybe I could have taught psychology, a subject I most enjoy. Maybe I should have worked for a non-profit that helps children in distress. I might have been a good counselor or children. 

All throughout our lives we learn, gain wisdom in many ways, and when we are too old to start over, we finally discover what we should have done or been.

Have you ever felt you failed at something or failed someone?