And so it begins. I need to write something for the Creative Nonfiction competition this year. At Stanford, they give out prizes for best undergraduate fiction story, best senior fiction story, best poem, and best creative nonfiction piece. The undergrad and creative nonfiction prizes both offer $1000 for first place. The senior prize is $2000 for first place. I will speak plainly—I need that money.
I've never written with a contest in mind, with money in mind. They key to winning, of course, is to forget about the money. It's just another deadline. So, that's how I'll treat it.
I think for the undergrad prize I'll use "Signed, The Repairman" and for the senior prize I'll use "How to Forget a Father." Last year I entered "River Road" into the undergrad competition and I didn't even place. That made me feel Shitty. If I can't even place competing against Stanford kids, how do I compete with people trying to get book deals? But here's the secret: book deals aren't about competing, they're about using shoulders and elbows to make room where you want it, and inviting people into that space. And there's room for everyone. Someone said in a book I liked, There's always room at the top. And I like that. That's good.
I'm at Jo's on South Congress. There's a song playing with violins and the singer is crooning, Sugar Man, Sugar Man, and hey, that's pretty good.
I hear "creative nonfiction" but what my brain really hears is "talk about Mom." That's one of the times I feel like it's okay to talk about it extensively. But, at the same time—who wants another sob story. I refuse to write a sob story—I will write a story first and if a person sobs second, then by God it's a good story.
I have this Last Memory of Mom before the Worst Memory. It's one of those memories you have to work on, like it was a house that needed to be built up, or a shed in the back that needs tearing down. It's costly and weighty and I feel it right Here, right There, and I don't think about it in waking life often but when I do I feel guilty and then sad and then a warmth settles in my chest because I know there's nothing I can do now and that feels Okay.
The Last Memory before the Worst Memory has to do with smoking.
I have to remember—damn it, Lucas. You're writing this for you and no one else so just be you on the page and create and think about it and if you see it well enough then they'll see and don't forget that.
The Last Memory before the Worst Memory—it has to do with smoking. I was in seventh grade and it's the last thing I remember about Mom before the morning she passed away. And I don't want to shock or awe because there's nothing awe-inspiring and there's nothing to gape at and nothing to cry or feel bad about—my mom passed away when I was twelve. There it is. Kurt Vonnegut said in his rules about writing stories—which I find hilarious, that Vonnegut of all people wrote rules (I think it must have been a joke, but Still)—that the reader should know as much as possible as soon as possible. He said to hell with suspense, that cockroaches should be able to eat the last pages of your story and the reader would still know how the story ends. So, this story begins when my mom was in a bad way with bi-polar disorder and pills, and it begins with the best mom in the world who does things with you like lie face down on the grass and saying We're hugging Mother Earth—things like that—and it also begins with her passing away from a blood clot in our bath tub, and me seeing it happen, and calling the ambulance, and to hell with suspense, and the story begins with me shutting down and Plugging In, as I like to call it, to the Internet and the television and living inside buzzing wires so I didn't have to live out the Worst Memory anymore. And our story begins with this, and my dad and I Making It Work, and having a lot of hard times, and him finding three years later the most wonderful woman who could never replace my mom but is the next closest thing, and this story begins with me loving her, and loving my dad, and hard times, and it begins with middle school and high school and being Plugged In and going to Stanford and slowly Unplugging and realizing all these things about what I had missed, and what I had kept my eyes from—things like the Last Memory, things like the Worst Memory. And this story ends with me typing this story as I sidle up to graduation day smooth and steady and wondering what will become of life.
Like I said, the Last Memory has to do with smoking. It's almost worse than the Worst Memory, which means I have my labels mixed up, but each of them have their own taste and the names seem to fit in a strange way, like when people say, I'm doing fine, thank you—which can very often mean, I'm not fine at all but I don't want to talk about it. The point is, just because something has the wrong label doesn't mean it's talking about the wrong thing. Because sometimes a wrong label tells you more than the actual thing does. (?)
And I feel myself resisting the memory and having to suss it out. Crane flies have been everywhere in our house. It's the spring rain that brings them. I love crane flies but on accident I keep killing them. They are so so fragile. They are everywhere in our house always glittering around the edges of my vision. I find them and I try to catch them and put them outside in the night, but all I do is crush their legs in the gaps between my fingers. Sometimes they die all on their own—on the counter they get stuck in thin slips of water until they drown. I want to say, Hey you're so stupid stop flying inside there's nothing good for you in here. But they're attracted to the light, or the air conditioner, and they have very small brains, and so I keep trying to rescue them and my success rate is about one half, and that's what it's like trying to suss out my memories.
Or maybe that's only half what it's like. I have another memory of smoking where my dad and mom were out on the porch and it was raining outside and they were there, sitting, and sitting. And Mom was smoking a cigarette, and I was out there to ask her something, and I saw her drag on that skeleton bone and I told her, You're going to get addicted again, and I said it serious like an adult even though I was only somewhere between seven and eight. And she said, I won't, and I thought, But you will, and then she did.
And three years later she was still smoking but then she was working the night shift in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Babies born with their intestines on the outside. Things like that. I am not kidding. And often babies died on her watch, and can you think of a worse thing for a person who was bipolar and whose father had just passed away and who was on medication and who was working the night shift and who was not lying on the grass anymore and saying, Here is Mother Earth?
And then is the time of the Last Memory when I was waiting for her to pick me up under the elm tree in front of my school. And I was eleven years old and I waited and waited and she was not coming, and I could have gone inside to the office and called her, because she was probably sleeping because of the night shift, which they called the Graveyard Shift—but I wanted her to feel guilty.
But now I can't help thinking about all the ways Mom died. There was That Time Mom Died by SCUBA Diving. There was a hungry shark and can you blame it? And there was a funeral at sea and we scattered poppy petals because they were her favorite, and Dad found and killed the shark one-on-one and he took a tooth and so did I and now we wear them around our necks and Dad's has carved in it, Bastard, and mine says, Shark Fin Soup. There was The Time Mom Died by Toaster Oven. She was getting my Bagel Bites out of the metal trap with a fork when all of the sudden, zap! And I do not eat Bagel Bites anymore, mostly because I have outgrown them.
Of course there was The Time Mom Died Falling Off the Merry-Go-Round, which does not need explaining, and The Time Mom Died by Frogs, which does, but is irrelevant. I remember The Skydiving Incident clearly, though Crossing South Congress Avenue on May 14th is still a little hazy because of all the buzzing buses everywhere, and then the one bus that whisked her under. I can count the ways Mom bit the dust. Trolley Fishing, The Backward-Falling Chair, Losing in a Duel, Saving Me from a Bullet, of course That Time She Rented the Wrong Movie on the Wrong Night, and then Death By Knives.
My mother died in so many ways. One thousand, I know, because I counted. And that's the mystery, and that's what I think about sometimes when it's quiet, because all those One Thousand Deaths are so much better than The One Death, and what about a little imagination? And I'm not delusional and I'm not delusional about anything, but why not make it something magnificent and spectacular, and why not make things up, and why not, and why not?
I was talking about the Last Memory, which is a memory about smoking, and how I was waiting to be picked up, and I waited for an hour under the cool shade of the elm tree in front of my middle school, and I didn't go into the office to call. And then I saw Mom's car at the light far away, and when it turned green I heard rubber cry out and I knew the tires were hers, and she sped toward me and I saw her inhaling and then throwing a cigarette out the window, and I knew it was Bad, and I didn't want her to feel guilty anymore.
I invented things when I was young.
(here, Infinite Telescope, or The Doppler Effect, or Time Travel...)
(more soon...)
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