I Was Raised by the Village

I’ve always been moved by the saying, “It takes a village to raise a child.” Probably because I was raised by the village.

I was fortunate to grow up in a neighborhood that was filled with kind people. I spent as much time or more at my neighbor’s homes than at my own. I always knew I had a warm house to go to where the lights were turned on and dinner was on the table. I was a bit of a fixture at my closest friends’ and neighbors’ homes and I’m filled with wonder that they put up with me as much as they did.

It wasn’t always like that. I have dim-lit memories of a warm house of my own filled with a family—people, activity, food. But somewhere over the course of elementary school the people left and the house got dark. Rather than stay there alone or with a sleeping alcoholic in the upstairs bedroom, I’d run off to other people’s houses.

As an adult, when I asked a friend if her parents had realized that something was wrong at my house, she said, “No one called for you. My mom had to send you home every night at 9 o’clock. She knew something was wrong, of course.” That triggered memories of running home in the dark, winding my way across the neighbor’s lawns, through their bushes and across their patios on well-worn shortcuts. I ran past other houses with yellow windows to mine, which was dark.

I’d slip in the front door and call out, “Mom?” But no one answered. I’d flip on the kitchen light, go downstairs and start turning on lights in the family room, turn on the television for more light and sound, let the dog out who was tapping on his toes. Call for the other dog who was most likely inside the next door neighbor’s house. She too was raised by the village.

Now that I’m an adult, I wonder at their generosity. I never once heard, “We’re about to eat dinner. It’s time you went home.” Instead, it was always, “Would you like to stay?”

One of my friend’s parents, also a neighbor, even took me to Croatia one summer. I mean, it’s one thing for dinner every night and sleepovers on the weekends, but who flies some lonesome straggler off to Europe with their family?

My neighbors. That’s who.

Even in high school, I remember spending a week at a friend’s house when my mom went out of town. I awoke one Sunday morning to find an Easter basket in the guest bedroom, filled with chocolate rabbits, candy and a stuffed animal. I held the basket with the morning light streaming in through the windows and cried. I’d completely forgotten it was Easter and the basket brought back memories of the baskets I’d gotten as a child.

I had been loved.

I knew what it was to be loved.

You never forget that. I think if you had it once, you keep seeking it out. Maybe that’s why I kept showing up at the neighbor’s doorsteps? Even though my mother was no longer able to provide it, I knew that love was out there. Somewhere.

Maybe just around the corner.

This post is a part of National Blog Posting Month or NaBloPoMo. Today's post is inspired by the BlogHer's NaBloPoMo Prompt, "Tell us one time that you benefitted from the kindness of strangers." 

Click here to learn more and to participate on your own blog. If you've written a NaBloPoMo post, feel free to share it in the comments here too. 

XOXO, 

Mandy

Writing a Memoir. Getting an Agent. Getting Published. And Telling Your Mom.

Prom, bitches. Check out that 80s hair.

I've been working on my first book for about a year now. I hired a writing coach and she has helped me to keep on a writing schedule and to structure my memoir so it moves along at the pace of a novel. I want to keep the reader interested and I don't want it to suck. Yes "suck" is a literary term. You learn that in graduate school.

Also, I had the ambitious idea to write the memoir as a series of stand-alone essays. Each and every chapter has to have a neat beginning, middle and end. It has to have its own conflict. It has to resolve that conflict in some kind of satisfying way. And it has to have its own point or meaning because otherwise, why bother?

Doing this has been no small task but I am pleased with the results thus far. My favorite writers, people like David Sedaris, Augusten Burroughs, Michael Chabon and Jo Ann Beard have all done this with their nonfiction so I figured, why not me? Plus it seemed like an easier way to transition from a lifetime of writing short stories, essays and blog posts into writing a longer work. Cause that shit's daunting, yo.

The book is a memoir of my childhood. It covers the time period from one of my earliest memories ... maybe around three years old ... to 19 years old. I'm knee-deep in the high school period right now and things have gotten considerably more exciting, as adolescence is wont to be.

I had a literary agent contact me a couple of months ago, interested in the manuscript. This is why blogging is no joke, people. Everything you write on the internet is a potential to attract attention, both good and bad. In this instance, it was good. This is a fancy literary agent at a fancy New York agency. Whenever I write "New York Agency" in my head, I hear the crowd yell, "NEW YORK CITY?" like they do in those Pace picante salsa ads. Yes I know "picante salsa" is not a word, but I think it makes me sound even more Midwestern for humorous effect.

I sent the agent the first 50 pages and haven't heard back yet. My coach encourages me to believe that this is a good thing, because it means I haven't been rejected yet.

This is why I pay her. Because otherwise I would be taking a lot of Xanax right now.

Knowing that first 50 pages is out there has encouraged me to want to finish this thing. I've tried to pick up the pace of late, to try to get it done. I wish I had more time to do it. The full-time job and the graduate class are infringing on that a bit, but I think I can still manage. I pretty much either work on the book or do homework from 9pm to midnight each night. I heard that Hemingway wrote only for four hours a day, from 8 in the morning until noon. That is basically my bar. It has been set. My life's goal is to be able to write from 8 to noon one day. Or even 9 to 1. That, to me, would be success. But right now, I'm living the nocturnal version of the Hemingway dream, which is okay too.

Anyway, I think I had a point with this post but now I've forgotten it. Perhaps it was merely to catch you up on the status of my first book, to tell you a little more about it, and to encourage myself to keep on writing it.

Now that I'm on the adolescence part, it gets harder in some ways and easier in others. It's easier because it's all about me. I don't have to worry about hurting my parents' feelings because the older you get, the more you are responsible for your own life and actions. When you're a little kid your parents have much more power, clearly.

I've talked to my mom about the memoir, because you can't really write about being the child of an alcoholic without telling the recovering alcoholic that you're doing so. I mean, at least if you still want to have a relationship with your parent, that is. She is incredibly awesome about it. She says, "Your story is your story, and no one else's."

That's pretty incredible, isn't it? It's a gift. Possibly one of the greatest gifts she has ever given me. You know, aside from that whole giving birth to me thing.

I'll have to remember it in case either one of my kids becomes a writer. Lord knows I've given them plenty of material.

Now I have to get back to my memoir. The current chapter is about how I simultaneously developed both a crush on a boy and an eating disorder. Some of it's funny I swear! Okay, some of it's sad. It's kind of how the whole book is looking at this point. Inappropriate humor, dark humor and a lot of brutal honesty.

Now, where did I put that Xanax?

Dante's Forgotten Circle of Hell. Part 2.

Are you there, God? It's me, Mandy.

This is the second part of a series. If you missed the first part, please click here.

As it turned out, the Summer of Rehab wasn't half bad. Mom dried out and stayed sober until Christmas. That summer unwound in the soft golden light that only the Kodak film of the time can accurately capture. My feelings were the same butter yellow, soft and mellow, as the sound of seventies soft rock playing on the radio in the kitchen while my mother simmered ground meat in a pot of Ragu spaghetti sauce.

My mother even took me on a shopping trip before school started. We didn't have much money and if I hadn’t been so damn tall, I probably could have worn more of my older sister's hand-me-downs. It was with pride and care that I selected two new pairs of jeans. I was quite certain that wearing jeans that weren't too short for me would propel me into popularity in the seventh grade. There would be new kids and new opportunities. Things were going to be different, I could feel it.

I showed up at middle school that fall, the only girl in straight-legged denim. Somehow, over the summer, every other girl had gotten the memo that both puberty and the eighties had officially occured. I don't know why I wasn't on that mailing list, but there I stood — braless, flat chested and woefully out of date. Tapered jeans and pinstriped denim had appeared overnight and I was standing at the bus stop in a pair Lee Easy Riders.

Not one to be easily overcome by obstacles, I resolved to win over new friends with the sheer force of my personality. I was the youngest child of an alcoholic. I was scrappy. I had wit. I had chutzpah. I loved attention. What could go wrong?

In elementary school the most popular people had two things going for them: 1) They were nice and 2) They were good at sports. I had both of those things. I was just too darn shy. I simply needed to hurl myself out of my usual reserve and strike up conversations with people, I reasoned.

So it was that I sat down in my first class, in front of four kids who are all talking and joking around in the desks behind me. Here was my chance. New Outgoing Popular Mandy was going to make her appearance. I overcame every alarm bell that was sirening off in my head and turned around to chat. I slung my arm over the back of the chair, super casual-like, and crossed my legs.

"Hey! What are you guys talking about?" I flashed them my toothiest, most Popular Girl grin.

"Turn around," a sullen, acne-faced boy replied.

"I'm sorry?" I cocked my head. "I was just asking what you guys were talking about." I tried the super popular girl smile once more, in case he hadn’t noticed it the first time.

"Turn around," he said again, this time circling his finger around in the air in case I was a complete moron.

"Okay," I slowly turned back around. I heard their laughter as my back was turned and felt my face turn hot. I secretly vowed to hate that spiky-haired, pizza-faced, pop-collared wanna-be for the rest of my life.

Unless he decided to talk to me. Then we would be totally cool.

It seemed that Antoine de Cadillac had somehow telepathically transmitted the message to every adolescent boy at middle school that I was a Grade-A Loser. Or perhaps my Lee Easy Riders were doing that for me? As I looked around, I noticed that in addition to bras and pinstripes, girls were doing their hair. They wore headbands. They had curls. Frosted lipstick. Accessories. Somehow over the summer they'd not only gotten their hands on the hormones that started breast development, they'd also done summer internships with John Casablanca. Clearly I needed a clue and a rich daddy to bankroll it.

Unfortunately I didn't have either.

It's not that I didn't have friends, mind you. I was in orchestra with all of the other socially clueless kids who were still waiting to get their periods and the ability to style hair. My hair up until that point had been a source of annoyance rather than pride. I somehow gathered in the fifth grade that the bowl cut was really over so I started growing it out. It was my nod to femininity. I mean, it would be nice if a boy liked me, but even better if they would at least stop ridiculing me. I thought long hair would help. And maybe I needed to ease up on the plaid flannel shirts.

Unfortunately my hair styling included asking my mother to hack off the bangs every once in a while so I could see. Grooming meant I remembered to pull a comb through my hair before I rode my bike to school. I'll be honest, most days I didn't remember. A couple of my friends had gently tried to help. I remember the sweet-natured Elisha recoiling in horror at the sight of me in a ponytail and twin barrettes when I showed up on the bus for picture day.

"Oh no!" She gasped. "You can't wear a ponytail in your school picture."

"Why not?" I said, confused by her reaction. I was wearing hair accessories. I was being girly. I not only combed my hair, but I put two barrettes it and a ponytail holder. This was me at my fanciest.

"You'll look like you have no hair. You can't see a ponytail in a school picture." My god, it was like the rules were a constantly moving target. One minute you have things figured out and the next you're Dick Cheney. Thanks to Elisha, we managed to remove the ponytail and left the two barrettes in place. When I look at that photo now, I see a sad plane of bangs lying straight across my brow. I had so carefully combed them straight down my forehead so they looked nice and neat. In reality, I looked like a total goon. I didn't need a French witch doctor to hex my social life. I was doing a fine job of it myself.

To read the conclusion click here.

Middle School: Dante's Forgotten Circle of Hell. Pt. 1

     

Can you feel my 13-year-old sex appeal?

I concluded my elementary school career by attending group therapy at my mother's rehab facility. To say I was ill equipped to handle middle school would be an understatement.

I recall telling my three closest friends that my mother was going away to a hospital for a while and she had a disease called "Alcoholism." I thought having a sick mother with a nameable disease would somehow normalize my life. What I didn't realize was that there were acceptable diseases — like cancer — and then there were the things one wasn’t supposed to mention.

A few days later, one of these three friends informed me that her mother said she wasn't allowed to play with me anymore. It is without malice that I now mention that her mother was quite possibly more pickled than my own, but I digress.

It's not like it was a surprise to the neighborhood that something was awry at my house. For several years the catholic school punks down the street had been heckling me on the way home with taunts of, "Your mother's a drunk!" When I was younger I hadn’t known what a "drunk" was, but I did know enough to be ashamed and to find a new route home

In the sixth grade I had already acquired a bully of my very own. For some reason, the quiet, awkward, tomboy that I was had inspired rage in this particular bully’s pre-adolescent mind. He went after me with the full-throated screams of a zealot on the playground and with whispered threats during class. We'll call him Antoine de Cadillac because his name was French and I'm from Detroit.

Antoine alternated between finding me repugnant and wanting to grab my ass amongst the book racks. It was too early for me to understand the kind of sullen loathing a pre-adolescent boy could have for a girl. This type of creature also mistakes being "unpopular" for being "easy." I would encounter more of his type later on in high school. 

However, my lack of dating opportunity never quelled my fervent desire to be choosy and to have the same blue-eyed dreamboat of a boyfriend that the popular girls had. In fact, I thought popularity was something that fell upon you like winning the lottery or getting hit by an asteroid. Although I believed it was out of my control and not likely to happen, I still felt it was within the realm of possibility.

So it was that on one golden June afternoon while all my peers were full of summer hopes and I was preoccupied with dreading group therapy at Mom's rehab, that the slope-foreheaded Antoine de Cadillac grabbed me by the collars of my off-brand Izod shirt and pinned me against a brick wall at school.

"You are a loser, Mandy. You will always be a loser. I know people in middle school and I know that you’re gonna be the biggest loser there," he said, his spittle hitting my face like tender drops of summer rain.

I managed to save face by shoving him off.

"No! You're going to be the loser, Antoine! I know people in high school! So there," I said. But I was shaken by the Frenchman's prognostication. It had the ring of a hex about it. I worried that he could either see me more clearly than I saw myself or that he had somehow French cursed me into a life sentence of unpopularity.

To read Part 2, please click here.

*This is an excerpt from my memoir, from the chapter, "Middle School: Dante's Forgotten Circle of Hell."