Things I Have Learned

I don't think we'd identify as a family of writers, per se, but a lot of us seem to enjoy it; rather, a lot of us seem to have a need for it. It's therapeutic, cathartic, creative and fulfilling. Aunt Kay's journals. My dad's long, heartfelt messages in greeting cards and emails. We have things to say.

I started journaling in middle school and kept at it through my first couple years of college. I like looking back at what I wrote because there is never a more honest recollection of a person's thoughts or feelings about things than in his or her secret diary. For the most part, I've always seemed to write about what is annoying to me at a particular moment. But these are not stories. They are mostly just rants, and nobody wants to read that. In order to consider themes and whatnot for this fiction story I want to write, I must look at the people who I've known and the places I have been and the struggles I have had with those people and places and turn them into productive life lessons. I am going to attempt a cathartic release of things I have learned that could be used in a fiction story:

• In kindergarten, around Halloween, I had to go over a dotted-line drawing of a cat with a black crayon and then color it. Mrs. Sampson handed it back to me with a note in red marker at the top saying some derivative of: "This is a sloppy mess." I was inconsolable. This is a moment I can look back on to know I take criticism very personally. 
• In first grade, my best friend was a tiny blonde girl who would periodically decide she didn't like me and cast dirty looks my way on random days of the week. In the second grade, I made a new best friend. In the third grade, she approached me in the cafeteria to say that she would be joining the popular table from then on out. From these childhood traumas, I am left with a few plausible conclusions: a) little girls are horrible to each other; b) I must have done something awful to deserve the looks; or c) I was not very fun to have lunch with. Of course, I know the real answer is secret option d) I was chubby, and chubby girls are decidedly uncool and always will be. 
• In middle school, I didn't have a best friend and I didn't care. All I was worried about was not having a locker partner on the first day of school, or having a locker partner decide she didn't want to be my locker partner anymore at the last minute. This never happened. I had the same locker partner for all three years, and it was fine. But things could have turned out differently - I knew this - and the possibility of standing idiotically alone on the first day of school and being randomly placed with another forlorn loser was the most terrifying thing in the world to me. I can look back on this and understand that I will probably always have intense anxiety about things that are unbelievably not worth having intense anxiety about. *Note to my locker partner: Thank you. I'm glad we're still friends.
• The summer after 7th grade (I think it was), I decided it was time to experiment with anorexia. People seem to believe anorexic girls starve themselves because it is the one thing in their lives they think they have control over. I can't speak for all of us, but this was definitely not the only thing I wanted to control. I had a variety of goals in mind. First, I was tired of being the chubby girl. Second, I wanted to become very good at tennis, and this involved a lot of exercising. Third, I had an unofficial competition with my cousin, Karen, with this unofficial title: Who can eat less? We both did very well and I am not sure who won. In all seriousness, girls should really stop starving themselves. But I guess I've been there so I can sympathize with the neurotic urges. I just can't get around how terribly sad and unnecessary it is, though, because of what I ultimately learned from my minor experience: Being too skinny does not result in happiness, attractiveness, or a boyfriend.
• I joined the swim team in 9th grade. I never properly learned how to dive, even though I kept swimming for all four years. Each time after, "Swimmer, take your mark, beeeeep," there was a definite slap on the water, a bellyflop of sorts, that never got me off to a great start. My first meet was the worst, though. My mom is more embarrassed about it than me, because she had to watch from the stands. I blame the coach. She told me, "You know, Beth, I have most of my beginners start with their arms raised high above their heads. In a point, already in dive position. Why don't you try that?" Yeah, why not? Gripping the starting block like a real swimmer would have added another step I didn't want to think about coordinating. So I stood on the block and raised my arms up high in a point, like the five-year-olds my coach was apparently used to working with. Everyone else was bent over, cold-blue fingers clutching the edge of the block, ready to spring off into the water like, well, racers. I doubt I even really bent my knees. Take your mark, GO! My mom is still mortified for me to this day. Swimming taught me that it is okay to look like an idiot sometimes. 
• Tennis started to wear on me as I neared the end of my high school years. It was Aunt Dana who first got me to look into triathlons, because she wanted to do one herself. We signed up for the Fort Collins Club sprint triathlon, the race to occur in May of 2007. I was 16. The swim didn't worry me (I wouldn't have to dive!). I had a mountain bike. I had ran the Bolder Boulder one time with my cousin, Karl. Clearly, I was destined to be a triathlete. I didn't do amazingly, obviously, on my 50-pound bike, but this race changed my life. If not for it, I would never have bought a road bike, joined the cross country team, trained for and completed a full marathon, or joined the club triathlon team at CSU (and therefore never have met Adam, who is wonderfully patient and kind and helpful with things like fixing flat tires and writing training plans for me to loosely follow). Triathlons have taught me that endurance is extremely important and satisfying, and that you just might meet the love of your life if you join a group of like-minded people. 

This post will be continued, because I have continued to learn things about myself and others. I did not have a plan when I started writing this particular post. That is the wonderfully liberating thing about writing. If you allow it to be, it is effortless.

The First Line

I find it very difficult to start writing. Erik and I can commiserate. I think he's interested in fiction for the challenge of it, maybe the beauty of it; so many people can become engrossed and connected to a story that is about something that didn't happen and people who don't exist. I love fiction. My professor for Recent Poetry of the United States (a poet himself) said fiction writers make all the money. This was a joke that came up recurrently in that class, one that all we liberal arts undergraduates would chortle good naturally about as if it was some natural fate we all understood about ourselves: Our degree is not appropriate for a lucrative career. This professor wrote really impressive poems, I'm sure. I never read them. I try to read poems and understand them or at least like them, but most of them are so entirely weird that they just make me feel stupid and like I should have studied marketing or something normal like that. Anyway, he had his collections published in books, but it is people who write fiction who have slim chances at making money from it. I am interested in writing fiction, but I wonder if I'd be very good at it at all.

Erik thinks the first line is very important, and we laugh about it, but I think he's right.

We arrived late to the campsite.

Was that the line you had in Tucson last month, Erik? The next lines are more difficult to come by, because the story is beginning, something needs to start happening, characters need to start being "developed." Are you supposed to map it out like in elementary school when we used to write stories with beginnings, middles, and ends?

It was ok, because the others were already there with the keg. Everyone knows how that story goes.

It's a fun exercise, at least, to think of how a reader might first be introduced into your fictional world. I'll try some first lines right now:

Genevieve was the first one who noticed something was different.

Good parents are not supposed to lie to their children.

My mother told me the thing I will never forget on my thirteenth birthday. 

I ate the apple he was saving for his lunch; I ate it and I am not sorry. 

I am just being ridiculous. Those were the first things that popped into my head; and that's the ridiculous part, how they popped. That's not authentic. I get wrapped up in the thought that I want to be a writer without putting much consideration into what kind of writer I really am. I guess I've expressed interest in it from a young age, and my mom has always told me to write things down before I forget about them.

...


 

White Shoes vs. Honey Badger in Training

Playing tennis was never exactly a prerequisite, but it seemed inevitable. I'm glad. Some of my most poignant memories are from the tennis court - rather joyous or miserable. Emotions were always inordinately high. It (probably) wasn't even due to some pressure of a family legacy to live up to; no, it was more in my chemical makeup to react strongly to and dwell constantly on competition in general. Tennis just happens to be our game of choice.

I'm not the best one to say where it all began, but I can thank my mom and Aunt Kay. They can surely give credit to Uncle Larry and Uncle Bill, and never forget Aunt Debbie: she will never miss the ball no matter how loud or distracting or eventually quite uncomfortable her "tennis grunt" persists. Karen and Kim were obviously the most successful of us "kids", and Kim's certainly always dated the most talented players. We will always remember playing bocce ball on the beach with Xavier Malisse. Even if most of the general public has absolutely no awareness of him, he is still the most famous person I’ve been in the vicinity of. I can’t believe Kim brought him on our family vacation. He’s beat Roger Federer. Is he from Belgium? His pony-tail is unbelievably slick. He’s the real deal. 

I was never amazingly talented or really even that remarkable of a tennis player. Just like everything about my personality as the youngest member of the family, I stole from everyone who came before me. Excepting the gruntining, I modeled Aunt Debbie’s annoying persistence. I attempted to be cool and collected like my mom, and even pulled that off occasionally. In 8th grade, I studied Karen’s superior talents at her matches for the University of Northern Colorado. I became a tennis player around the time I figured out I could win so long as I refused to make any unforced errors. This resulted in many of my opponents' worst nightmare across the net. I became very proud of my capability to drive girls to tears with the infuriating fact that I refused to miss. 

In high school, my desire to win became more of an obnoxious obsession with my own self-worth than a healthy relish for good competition. I’ve always wished I could be more like my Aunt Kay. Aunt Kay kicks ass. She always has. AKKA. She provided that acronym to help me with my various disturbing, inflated anxieties about participating in tennis matches: What if I lose, and I was supposed to win? I can’t play her again. I won last time, but it was close. I can’t play her again because I might lose. What if I am winning and then I start losing? What then? WHAT WILL EVERYONE THINK IF I LOSE?! I’M A LOSER! 

I got to play #1 singles my junior year of high school. This privilege entailed occasionally playing girls who were on an entirely higher level of ability than me, which was sometimes nice for my anxiety level. If there was no conceivable way that I could win, what did I have to worry about? (I always found something.) For one of these matches Aunt Kay was due to arrive Colorado to see Karen. It was in Broomfield against Maddie-Somebody who was definitely going to beat me. So Aunt Kay and Karen decided this would be a good one to attend. I’m sure Karen was mildly curious how good the girl was, and I certainly would need the moral support. They would meet my mom there from the airport. 

I spent the bus ride over contemplating the humiliation of losing 6-0, 6-0. This was always my major concern when I knew I was in over my head. Losing is one thing, but getting annihilated is embarrassing. Match conditions were perfect, at least. Sunny. Maybe a crisp spring breeze, but nothing to lose my head over. I got off the bus fully prepared to lose with the poise and self-assuredness I had lost so many matches before, and I felt good about it. But when we lined up across our opponents for the ritualistic shaking of hands, I did not see Maddie-Somebody who was definitely going to beat me. I saw my worst nightmare: a JV player. There was no mistaking this. She stood fixed with anticipation - too much anticipation. Smiling at me. Too-white shoes. Racket in ready position. I blinked at her. I wonder if she could see the fear settling in.

Maddie-Somebody was out of state at a tournament playing other girls who would also definitely beat me. She probably scheduled it as soon as she got her high school match lineup and noticed when she would play me. How boring, she must have thought. No use staying in town to kick Longmont's What's Her Name around. I didn't have time to beat myself up about this for too long, though. Too-White-Shoes was raring to go.

"At #1 singles, we have Beth Silkensen!" Uncomfortable applause. What did the Broomfield captain say the other girl's name was? Can't hear. Intense handshake. Except, she is still smiling at me. This is horrible. Why is she so excited? It's because she is a JV player, and she is going to beat me, and that is the worst thing that could possibly happen in my entire life, and she is happy about it. No more, "No pressure, you're supposed to lose, nobody cares." Now it's, "If you lose, you may as well climb into a hole for the rest of your life, or at least until everybody forgets that you lost to a JV player that one time in high school when you were supposed to be a decent tennis player or something."

As it turns out, her name was Beth too. "That's funny, isn't it?" she said on our way to the court [Purgatory]. "I've never met someone named Beth before!" I don't care. Whatever. Shut up. I am so nervous right now. You are my nemesis. Stop being so chatty. "Oh, really? I guess I haven't met many." I always sound so un-nervous when I am about to hyperventilate. Need to exude utter confidence. The reality is, I think I have always had that utter confidence underneath it all. There was really no conceivable way I was going to lose hardly a point to Too-Nice-Beth-With-Too-White-Shoes, let alone a game or a set or the match. I must have Aunt Kay/AKKA in there after all.

Speak of the devil. We were in the middle of the first game. She was serving. I am pretty sure she plopped eight serves into the net in a painfully long ten minute opening game that was briefly interrupted by a raucous fan. The car turned into the parking lot in plain view of Court #1. Window rolled down, eyes peeled. "GO BETH! WHOOOOOOO! Whoo-whoo-WAHOOO!" It was piercing. I loved it. Other Beth got embarrassed. "Oh, sorry, I have, like, some really obnoxious friends." That was probably my opportunity to say, "No, sorry, I have, like, a really obnoxious Aunt Kay." I don't even remember what I said. 

It was the perfect thing to have happened, though. Karen and Aunt Kay were anticipating some major ass-whooping at my expense. Kay shouted from the car maybe to calm my nerves about that, but probably just because she is Aunt Kay. She makes a spectacle of herself. It's her core personality that drew her to laugh at repeated viewings of "Honey Badger" in recent years. Who gives a shit? Not Honey Badger. Not Aunt Kay. And after her presence at my match was alarmingly announced, neither did I. At least, not for the remaining 45 minutes of my 6-0, 6-0 victory. I wonder how long it took them to realize I was not in fact playing last year's state champion.

Tennis is more than something that we all did. There are too many stories about neurotic league teammates and horrifically rude opponents. There are too many lifelong friends we've all made, all because of a silly game with a bright yellow ball and expensive equipment and intense emotional investment. Tennis will always be a part of who we all are. It's a family history.          

Introduction

I may sound like someone pretending to be old and wise when really I am young and inexperienced with the ways of the world when I say: I have been looking for the right characters for many years. I have always wanted to write a "story," an "American novel" with dynamic characters who fight adolescent pangs and fall in love and have fierce philosophical debates and do all the things that characters do in books that people like to read.

But I can't find them. I can't find the right characters. So then, a few years ago I thought, if I really want to be a "writer" (in a van down by the river), I am going to need vampires. Otherwise, I am never going to make money, because people [teenage girls] only want to read about vampires. When that phase passed and I still had no characters, zombies. But I hate vampires. And zombies are gross.

Last night, I had a revelation. My dad was driving us to meet Anne and Steve and Kyle at the Mexican restaurant. He had on a mix made especially for Mom and Aunt Kay with upbeat tunes. He had to burn it before we could leave, as well as yell at Erik on the phone some more about how he can't live in an expensive Boston apartment without heat for three days and just sit there and let it happen, "YOU HAVE TO STAND UP FOR YOURSELF!" but Dad seemed to have forgotten about that conversation once Bob Seger came on. "BEAUTIFUL LOOOSERR! Whennn you gonna fa-a-all? When you realize...you just can't have it all?" Dad and I both were yelling it. And that's when I realized, I do have it all. Why did I even know the words to the song? My dad has provided an advanced History of Rock and Roll course, mandated by my upbringing in his house. He is a raucous, colorful, passionate man. My brother, who minutes before was being loudly advised on the phone, is a stoic, brilliant person who can put on five sweaters and do work I can't even comprehend in a 40 degree apartment with no complaint. My mom patiently sits, with occasional enjoyment, next to Dad as he sings his heart out on the way to the Mexican restaurant. She is our constant: smart, caring, strong, patient, funny. And I am a product of all of them.

That's when I realized, I have the best characters of any book that has ever been written. I don't need to create fictional ones. If I did, they'd surely be more boring. I'd surely care much less about them. I've said this before: I don't know any family that is as awesome as mine. I have always wanted to publish something but I've never known what. I am not sure what form this will ultimately take, but my characters are foolproof. They're flawed, intelligent, caustic, rude, compassionate, and loving. They're teachers, mothers, fathers, computer programmers, engineers, and athletes. They're everything I've ever needed. They're my story.