I Wrote this 10 Years Ago! Ha!
Untitled by Lesley-Ann Brown
That my mother worked in a bank and we were poor did not make any sense to me. I asked her over and over again, “Well if you work in a bank, how come we don’t have any money?” Such a question often came after asking for a bike or new-fangeled Barbie doll. “Because it just doesn’t work that way.” My exasperated mother would reply. I was confused and took comfort in the fact that my mother was obviously, doing something wrong.
Day after day I witness my mother fatigued from work. Snapshots of my childhood is filled with an exhausted mother coming through the front door as I was leaving for school. Only to see her again the following morning. My mother never complained about this lifestyle, although I know it was not necessarily what she wanted to do. “What did you want to be when you were a child?” I’d ask her. “I don’t know...I never gave it much thought.” That again baffled me. Then what was her job about, if it were not an actualization of her childhood dream?
My father on the other hand was an artist. I grew up with the sounds of calypso and honey-dew like jazz emanating from my father’s
My father was a musician, thus not a wage earner. The two were synonymous in my mind. So from an early age, I believed that in order to succeed financially in this world you had to either work at a job you did not necessarily enjoy, or if you were an artist, you were bound to not make any money. Successful artists were an enigma in my child’s mind and at that age I vowed to eat with the likes of Raoul Dahl at my Pulitzer Dinner ( I had written him and he had “written” me back as well).
I always dreamed of being a writer, and to me, there was no doubt that my job and my dream would come hand-in-hand, a neat little gift life would hand to me, that I worked towards. It didn’t dawn on me that even if you had a dream, sometimes (most times) life threw you challenges and in order for your dream to become your job, your line of work, you had to work very hard.
But for many, writing isn’t seen as “work”. It is. Sure, there are some writers who tell you they love to write—and have to write. I agree with the latter. The former I must beg to differ. Having to do something is a strong condition. If you have to do something, you must do it, whether you enjoy it or not. Therefore, there are times, I must admit, when working on my novel or an article is “work”. My true self, my nature sees this finish product of my novel or work at hand in it’s ideal, perfect form. Everything between my putting down the words and that idea can be, in every sense of the word “work.” Blessed is the day when I am paid for my literary endeavor. Blessed are the times I get paid for my articles. But being a writer, or any artist for that matter (and even more so if you are an artist of color) usually requires that you take a myriad of jobs to pay the bills. A common conversation in
“So what do you do?”
“I’m a writer.”
“No—I mean what do you do for money?” See the difference? These two variables are often on very diverging paths. When the paths between doing what you love and receiving financial rewards for it merge, then you are deemed successful. Thus my father was not considered a “successful” artist. But having my father as a role model for the “artist’s” life prepared me. I knew from the get-go that I had better get used to a montage of various jobs and no money.
So, it was with great excitement that I ventured on my first real job. This job came after such unsuccessful ventures as selling useless trinkets of mine to fellow friends and elders. Although I did baby-sit on a few occasions before, I do not consider it my first job because I was still in familiar space, besides, I had only done it once or twice at that point.
My first real job was at the mall which added to my excitement as being a wage-earner. Not only was I to make money, but I was to work in the temple of pre-teen joy—the mall—a place where I could pay tribute with the very same money I worked for! My job was to assist, for Christmas, a boutique. I would be taking home about a hundred dollars a week—not a bad salary for a twelve year old.
Unfortunately, as a lover of shiny, new packaged products—my salary would go right back to the store. A phenomena difficult to explain to a bewildered grandmother who encouraged me to do the wisest thing—open a savings account. What good was saving money, when I was able to purchase glittering baubles, allergy-producing colognes and even a ceramic pipe (who cared that I didn’t smoke, it was gorgeous!). For the entire month that I worked at Potpourri, I am sure that I “invested” my salary right back into the store. For that alone I must have been employee of the month.
I continued to work at this store on and off, helping with a smile querying customers. Ringing things up, handling money, packaging, closing up the store. It was a novelty to me and I reveled in it. The act of waking up every morning, donning my church clothes and going off to work was exciting to me. It unfolded, for each new day, a mystery that was reserved for adults only. It was the right of passage to adulthood, and I had passed.
I soon missed, however, lazy Sundays, and cartoon-filled Saturdays. I yearned to sleep late again and lounge about the house with my book of choice. Not so willing to barter my childhood for some odd dollars, I relented to my youth and ceased working. I quit.
So I savored my youth, it conveniently delayed the pending unavoidable reality of work, up until my sophomore year of highschool. It was the first time I viewed the Tour-de-France. Watching the svelte bodies, the gliding of the bikes against the beautiful landscape, I became possessed with the idea of owning a bike and training up to the world championship. I didn’t even realize that there were no women in the race! It was a dream that took me away from the sober realities of my parent’s separation, my mother’s new boyfriend and a particular lonely excursion within the walls of my
Care I did not for the minimum wage. Care I did for the free MacDonald’s meal guaranteed once a day to a willing employee. That to any adolescent is heaven. Mopping floors, fixing salads, and ringing up orders was no small task. At lunch time I was duly rewarded with a big mac and besides, I had visions of my bike speeding like a phantom across the road of my brain. I always did have a vivid imagination.
A sadness slowly cast it’s shadow over my dream. The rush hour of customers and disgruntled co-workers gradually pulled my bike dream and the tour-de-France away from that tangible part of my mind only to reveal my original, true dream—my writing. The Tour de France dream, however far removed from reality it was, saved me from the despair of my teenage loneliness. A dream such as this kept me away from experimenting with drugs and alcohol like so many of my other peers had slipped into (I waited for College for that!). But as this dream fizzled away, as it lost it’s momentum, my truth revealed itself again—my urge to write
Paper, pens, pencils and words always excited me. My mother often recalls that I always took the newspaper away from her and insisted on reading it myself (most of the times upside down) when I was a baby. I learned to read incredibly young. Words were the key to a different world, to knowledge and foreign places. Paper was the medium that conveyed this sacred right. I loved and still love the smell of a book. Often, in a book store, my picking up a book and smelling the fresh, moss-like smell is not an uncommon sight. I wrote my first story when I was eight, bound and illustrated it myself. This urge of mine to join the annals of literature was beyond my understanding and still, to some extent allude me. I have, however, resisted it on a number of occasions.
Having a father as an artist, an “unsuccessful” one at that contributes to this reluctance of dedicating yourself to the arts. You learn first hand, that your art, your desire, your dream may not pay your bills. An artist forced to work can be like a ferocious lion caged in a zoo. This is no exaggeration. Fearing a life of poverty, or worse, working a job that I loathed made me think about other options available to me. I was always a good student. Loved history. Could memorize a historic book in record time. Perhaps a historian? Loved science with a passion. The miracle of the human body was a perpetual puzzle awaiting my dedication for the rest of my life. Saving lives in distant countries or right here at home appealed to me, somewhat. Literature was to me what a date is to history or oxygen to hemoglobin. So why not a Doctor of Literature?
Because I needed passion. Passion, when directed constructively, can be the fuel to success. I realized that my focusing on a second career was in a way, admitting defeat to myself. I was chopping down the very tree that I had planted the day my eight-year old hand had written The Little Leaf. I had to take the universal story of the Little Engine and apply it my own life. Thus, in my junior year of high school, I reembraced my artist instinct and changed my English major to English and Creative writing. When doubt crept in my little mind, I had the biographies and books of Jimmy Baldwin and Fitzgerald to offer me solace. I wrote for my school’s literary journal a story Take Time to Listen, the tale of a young girl whose often helpful, older friend informs her that he is gay. I interviewed Daddy-O of Stetsonic for.Spew. My senior year I interned at a trade newsmagazine and learned enough about magazine publishing to let me know I didn’t want to work at one.
By the time I applied to colleges, I knew without a doubt what my major was going to be—creative writing. So off to college, a great writing career (I hope) and lots of invaluable education. But that was not all! I continued to work throughout college to subsidize my tuition and living expenses. I worked in the student affairs office, in bookstores, furniture stores, a publishing company, a farm. I was a nanny, a barmaid and finally a bookkeeper. Throughout it all I focused on my true purpose in life—to live through words. There were long periods of dry spells where my creativity lay dormant like a bear in hibernation. Where it lay in fear of what it might reveal to me. Where it seemed frozen like a deer in headlights. But through it all , I knew it was there, tucked somewhere between my intellect and heart waiting to be warmed by my discipline and patience. It waited for me and nourished itself on my experiences, building within it a treasure chest of experiences waiting to pour out of my finger tips at any given time. It consoles me when even today, I may find myself waiting on a table, planting a row of zucchini or tucking a stranger’s child into bed. It no longer bothers me when my mother says, “She’s like her father, an artist” after someone asks, “What does you daughter do?” Because I know that I am just like my father, and I know that in his own way, he was very successful.
