In the fifth grade, we all were beyond the astronaut, President of the United States, superhero, and Radio City Rockette kind of answers. Following the mandatory presentations on puberty, and made hyper-aware of our impending adulthoods, our teachers and school nurse encouraged us to become more serious about future career choices based on what little we knew about the world and how it worked.
My best buddy Hailie had traveled to Nags Head, North Carolina over the summer and I had traveled to Homestead, Florida, over winter break. Returning home beautifully tanned and full of souvenirs and ramped up stories, we'd both become infatuated with and scared to death by the idea of man-eating sharks in the ocean. Jointly, based on our travels and subsequent anecdotes, we decided that we were going to be marine biologists.
As kids, we were confident enough to take the single thing that frightened us most, gave us the craziest nightmares, caused us to shriek in ponds and lakes when wading amongst plant material, and made us wear diving masks in chlorinated pools so we could see what was sneaking up on us, just in case...and make it the focus of our future career aspirations. I think back and I'm in awe. Really, do you miss those pre-teen attitudes and ideals where deliberate bravery, possible stupidity, and optimism ruled? I most certainly do.
When Hailie and I had library time at school, we raced to where the books on great whites, oceans, and Jacques Cousteau were held. We were Marine Biologists in training and everyone knew it. The cards in the back of those heavy, cerulean, glossy volumes had only two names, line after line, inscribed in loopy penciled script on the yellow date stamped rectangles of paper. Of course, they were mine and Hailie's. The grand plan between the two of us was to read and keep poring over and exchanging all the books. We figured we'd share information until we knew everything there was to know about the briny seas and all of their creatures. We also were anxious to learn how to deep sea dive and not get the dreaded "bends", which was a mammoth fear of ours. For our age and what we had available to us, we felt mildly successful. For example, we learned what colors not to wear in the ocean (red and silver, still useful to this day) and how to bop a shark on the nose if ever confronted unexpectedly (not sure how useful that would be).
To celebrate Easter 1980, I traveled to Connecticut with my parents, and several other family members, to the estate of my Great Aunt and Uncle. My Great Aunt did not work outside the home, though she worked long and hard inside the home, a large brick turn of the century colonial with 5 bedrooms and scads of bric a brac requiring endless dusting. My Great Uncle did not approve of his wife wearing pants; he grew and harvested all of his own pesticide free vegetables before organic gardening was trendy and proudly built airplanes as a vocation after having grown up poor during the depression. The two of them were childless and enjoyed entertaining a houseful of people. We were welcomed heartily upon arrival.
Dinner was served upon a beautifully appointed pastel linen and antique china bestowed table. The first question, after having said grace and being asked to pass the ham was "What are you thinking of doing when you grow up?" The gravelly voice boomed in my direction from my left where my Great Uncle held court, almost pulpit style. I gulped my milk down, wiped my mouth on my lace napkin, and said assuredly and declaredly "Marine Biologist." He chortled, took his fork and poking an air trajectory toward my face, declared that this was no career plan for a landlocked, upstate New York, silly little girl who was still taking Red Cross swimming lessons every summer. Our crowd giggled softly and passed the vegetables and potatoes. Embarrassed, I hung my head down, pushed my food around with immeasurable dejection, and barely ate anything that day. I'd had plenty of honest discussions about real life topics; my parents rarely sugarcoated things with me, but career goals were not routinely discussed and Hailie and I were just completing 3 solid months of successful shark study! I felt like he had tossed me off of a ledge into nothingness. Sitting on the floor next to a marble topped table for the rest of the afternoon, I listened to the adults argue about politics while I twirled Made in Occupied Japan dancing porcelain pixie figurines around under the watchful eye of my nervous Great Aunt who sat on the couch behind me, also seemingly sad and ignored. I might have left a hard boiled egg in the drawer of that cold hard table buried beneath some old TV Guides when she wasn't looking because my feelings were hurt and I had no other way to make that known.
The first time someone sharply and sternly tells you that you may NOT consider what you had hoped to achieve in life becomes a moment very hard to forget. Sadly, I also learned that day that people having an opinion about me that runs contrary to how I feel and calls into question my abilities and decisions does not make me love them measurably less, but it makes me love myself measurably less. It also makes me question everything I know that feels authentic and real. My Great Uncle's brash, abrupt statement about how I didn't deserve and had no right to my dreams would not, as you can imagine, be the last time someone brushed off my ideas and ambitions.
I wrote my first creative piece that year, assigned by my 5th grade teacher. The general gist of it was a treasure hunt myth of sorts plotted on a deserted island; but the real gold to be found in the groovy tropical tale was the inclusion of most of my classmates into the story. They absolutely and unexpectedly went wild for it. Being named in the tale was like being part of some fantastical fraternity of sorts. I was actually asked by some of my classmates, after it was read aloud, to please write a sequel, and write it fast. Kids gave me Pop Rocks, Turkish Taffy and stickers as bribes so that they might be main characters. I think I was bitten hard by the writing bug right then and there.
Three years later, I was invited to our local hospital as an eighth grader because I was testing exceptionally well in science, and the hospital wanted students my age to become oriented to hometown medical careers by visiting with doctors in a variety of disciplines. I recall being taken down to the morgue and seeing a horror show which led to the vivid realization that although medicine was intriguing, I absolutely did not want anything to do with the dead or dying. However, I also learned that I liked the hospital jobs which focused on the brain. Psychiatry, brain surgery, neurology, it all sounded exciting and I fancied the idea of being helpful to someone who had compromised gray matter. I dropped the writing as a career idea because I felt this made better sense. I knew doctors but I didn't know any writers.
Heading back to Connecticut for Easter in the Spring of 1983 I wore a pair of green pants with a matching striped Izod shirt knowing full well this might tweak my Great Uncle's sensibilities as he and my Great Aunt were probably expecting a smocked bodice dress and smart new shoes. Head held high, and ribbon barrettes blowing in the car window breeze, I was duly prepared for the career question. I felt so ready, and the anticipation of having a better answer to share made me giddy.
At the museum quality table, several minutes into dinner I had not been asked my burning question or acknowledged, so I enthusiastically piped up with my news about the hospital program which had, by then, met a half dozen times. My Great Uncle listened for about one minute, then noisily put his fork down, picked up his knife, and poked circles in the air across the table from my head and shoulders as he pronounced, silvery tip held aloft like a baton designed to perforate and masticate fantasies:
"Nurse. Teacher."
"That's what you'll choose from if you want to be a success" and then he moved along to other conversant topics like ways to save money and how the best strategy to keep blonde hair a youthful buttery yellow was to use the water from boiled green vegetables as a final rinse every day. People chewed and nodded. No one looked in my direction.
I'd been shut down again. This time, though, I spent the rest of the day wandering through the orchards and gardens in the back of the house. I had nothing left to say. No one seemed to mind. My parents, tired from the holiday and just wanting to get home with a long drive ahead, said nothing after my goals had been labeled as unachievable pipe dreams for the second time. Reading quietly on every car trip with my red dime store flashlight and never ending supply of books was normal behavior, so my silence wasn't a clue to them that what was said was bothering me.
The next day I wrote about my feelings in my diary. Nothing against nursing or teaching but they hadn't been on my radar since I was much younger and role playing at other kids' houses when we needed a game that everyone could relate to so we played "school" and "hospital". Ironically, I then gave up on and stopped attending the hospital program having lost confidence that neuroscience could possibly pan out.
We students took aptitude tests toward the very end of our tenure in middle school and mine showed promise for a few different things. Psychological sciences, communication arts, and...very specifically, deejaying! I remember focusing on the deejay possibility very closely when our grey and white bubble sheets were handed back to us. My 8th grade Guidance Counselor, a jolly bald guy with an affinity for pointy toed cowboy boots, big belt buckles, and gentle flirtation with all the single female teachers in the hallways, didn't seem to care what I focused on as long as I didn't bug him about it too often. Deejaying! Woo hoo! How had I not seen this? My favorite class was music appreciation! Every penny I had was spent on records and cassettes! I begged, borrowed and stole to get into every concert in town! I stayed up late at night behind my closed bedroom door in the dark waiting for the King Biscuit Flower Hour! I adored percussion but our band teacher wouldn't let girls play the drums and playing the triangle for the next few years didn't seem like a great use of my time so I had no musical talent to speak of but deejaying, hey! This was definitely a career I could excel at and learn to love.
That plan for my future lasted until my mother got wind of it and said, "No way." She encouraged me to read, learn and do my best but to leave the job title "on air personality at a radio station" in the dust. She was convinced I'd be bored and underpaid. Not knowing what to do or how to reconcile my chances for success along with what was on my bubble sheet, I continued loving music as a hobby but the microphone would stay silent, at least for me.
It took until my senior year of high school to even slightly figure things out. My mother suggested I pursue becoming a lawyer. She said this because I argued with her and we agreed I was pretty adept at arguing. My father was as undecided as I was. All he knew was that I felt lost, which I think made him uneasy but also unwilling to suggest anything lest it be the wrong recommendation. We all knew a tremendous amount of money was going to be spent on college. No one wanted to be responsible for interjecting something that would eventually require rethinking, change, and additional stress. Then, like a flash of light, my senior year English teacher told me to write a book. (I think his exact words were "Write a damn book.") He encouraged me to continue with the pouring out of my guts; lofty stuff I wrote for him despite it not ever seeing the light of day because it was far too controversial to be read in front of the class or sent home. Sharing life's tragedies and teenaged traumas in a public way were not what we did in the 80s, unless apportioned on paper, occasionally in rhyming pentameter, tucked away in the Trapper Keeper, fat red "A" in Sharpie marker within the margin.
I read and wrote non stop in college, receiving consistent praise from my poetry teacher and creative writing professor. My editing skills were honed by proofreading papers regularly for a few boys in my Psychology classes for eight semesters straight. In order to get my double major requirements fulfilled within those four years, I had to do two challenging independent study classes in Behavioral Psychology and Experimental Psychology where all I did was read textbooks and write papers proving what I'd learned from week to week. I was a scribing machine. However, as graduation loomed, I grappled my way toward a more lucrative career and put writing, at least as a profession, aside.
Do you write too? Do you fill notebook after notebook with drafts and scribbles and narratives and anecdotes and thoughts and quips and lists on napkins and ideas and scraps of paper? Do most of them end up in the garbage after years of being stored away in boxes in closets and under the bed? I feel you. Something happened though, this year, upon turning 50. Something broke hard and deep inside me and after all this time and all the waiting, I need to tell all the pieces of my stories. Desperate to let my characters breathe and determined to stop squelching my voice, I am working on finding and supporting that ten year old girl who took what she was most afraid of and made it into her career choice. I want to be her again.
Last week, I submitted a blog post to a magazine; a piece of recent and decent writing for them to consider. This is all new to me. I'm just trying to find my way. Hey, maybe they'll want to use me but I know it's a long shot. My Great Uncle, may he rest in peace, would probably tell me that a thousand other people submitted stories this week too. He'd tell me that quitting my job was careless in a way that he cold not possibly fathom. Plus, if he knew how much I spent on hair dye between 1989 and 2017 instead of pouring broccoli water over my head, he probably would have disavowed me on the spot, eating utensil in hand, gesturing and lecturing.
BUT...
Many people are conditioned to have lower expectations for what life has to offer.
Read that again.
Many people
are conditioned
to have lower expectations for what life
has to offer.
And I'm utterly done being one of those people.
And I might not be bopping sharks on the nose but I am looking fear in the face and telling it to bite me.
~ ~ ~
For your visual pleasure, below I have included some of my awesome drawings from 1980. Ha! See the shark? I am still in love with and scared shitless by them.
And I'll never lose my passion for the ocean and everything in it.
And I can't seem to stop starting sentences with the word AND. My apologies to the English professors, I sincerely extend.
Oh, good vibes about the magazine are appreciated, thank you so much...and thanks for reading what I write. I am grateful for the support, suggestions and kind words you have sent to me.
#1970s #1980s #sharks #marinebiology #fins #mushroomtumbler
