My dad was a storyteller. I didn’t think of him that way when he was alive, but after he died all my best memories of Toby were of him sitting at the table or on the front porch or with buddies at the local tavern telling a story. Usually it ended in laughter – he loved to tell my hubs stories about me, like the time I went for my first bra, a 28AAA, and told the clerk, “I’ll need a bigger size next time.”
Sometimes, too, it would be one of those tales that left him shaking his head over some inexplicable woe he just didn’t understand.
My mom didn’t tell stories so much, but every morning before she went to work, she left notes for me and my sister written in longhand, usually on a yellow legal pad. In them, she would tell us what to cook for dinner or to take care of some household chore. Often, they’d be accompanied by a few bucks for a cold soda or ice cream. Once after she’d grounded me for the entire summer, she wrote, “And please tell Lori to behave. She knows I hate to punish her.” The grounding lasted two days.
Between my dad’s verbal tales and mom’s written notes, it seems natural now that I would become a writer. I asked for my first diary at 11, started a journal at 14, wrote my first poem the same year, and at 16, asked not for a car but a typewriter, and received a yellow Smith Corona in a brown plastic zippered case. I already had the portable my mom’s boss had given her when he retired. It was a Remington Noiseless Model Seven and came with it’s own carrying case. It was – and still is – missing the M key. I’d been banging around on it since I was 5.
Writing for me was never a choice. It just is and always has been what I do. I think it may very well be how I cope with life, how I process it, make sense of it. And I love it, but damn, it is a hard way to make a living.
I got my first rejection the same year I got my Smith Corona. It was a postcard from a greeting card company and featured a bunch of people on the front, red-nosed and drinking. I couldn’t even begin to tell you the rejection I’ve known since. But I was lucky, I was able to make a career as a journalist and while I watched rejection after rejection pour in after I’d written first one novel and then a second, at least I had the satisfaction of my day job.
For years, I persevered, convinced if I just stayed the course I would find a publisher for my work. But recently I began to think it was time to give up. No matter what I achieved, I could get no one interested in my novel. Well, that’s not completely true. Once, an agent contacted me to say she loved the book — but she hated one of the main characters – the one around whom the entire plot revolved. Would I be willing to get rid of him?
Every so often I’d say that’s it. I’m done. I’m putting it away for good now. Then I’d stumble upon some bit of hope and send it back out.
Last week, in the middle of a quiet afternoon, my cell rang. It was a number I didn’t recognize.
“This is Lori,” I answered.
“This is … You sent me your novel.”
“Yes,” I said, not daring to breathe.
“It’s beautiful,” she said. “I love it.”
It’s the phone call a writer waits her whole life to hear. It’s the dream call. The one that, once you’ve hung up the phone, makes you rush to pick it up again. And, of course, I did, to call my hubs, my sister, the dear writing friends who have supported me for so, so long.
But it was bittersweet, too. I couldn’t help but think about all those I couldn’t call. My mom. My dad. My brother.
And yet, I like to think for them no call was necessary. I like to think somehow they already knew.
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