This essay is for anyone who’s ever been put down, minimized, or squelched around a creative endeavor. Thumbs up to keeping on keeping on.

FLIGHT DELAYED

When I was eight, I wrote a poem. I lay on my stomach on my twin-sized bed, on the bedspread my grandmother made for me from squares of cotton cloth. A bonneted little girl was stitched on each square, a different color fabric and thread for each special little girl.

I wrote in my spiral bound notebook on wide-lined paper, with a number two pencil, so my words were bold. I wrote about George Long, my secret boyfriend, secret even from him. I scribbled and erased till I got it right. When I finished, I hugged my notebook. I had captured love with my poem.

That night, my parents had friends over for dinner. Betsy wore black pedal pushers and dark eyeliner. Her husband, John, had salt and pepper hair and a silver tooth that glinted. The grownups laughed and drank whiskey around the yellow formica table in our kitchen, and I hung out, listening.

They needed to figure something, the cost of a golfing weekend, I think, and I offered a piece of paper from my notebook. When I opened the notebook, my father grabbed it from me. He stood in the middle of the kitchen, waving the book around, poking his nose in it. “Well,” he snickered, “What have we got here, I wonder?”

“It’s mine!” I swiped my hand at the notebook as he held it above his head, then, quick, behind his back, playing Keepaway, Keepaway from Carol. He flipped pages, then stopped when one caught his eye. “Well, Lookee here,” he said. “A writer.” He held the book out, elbow length, and straightened imaginary glasses.

“No,” I said. “Daddy. Don’t.”

Daddy snapped his tongue against the roof of his mouth, then swayed back and forth, the top of him dancing, his lips shiny and wet. “She’s a poet—doesn’t know it. Look at her feet and they will show it. They’re Longfellows.”

I smelled the whiskey on him, dark and sour, and tasted it like it was in my mouth. He held my notebook out in front of him with both hands, and he read my treasured words out loud.

Airplane, airplane, oh so strong.
You remind me of George Long.
He draws airplanes all the time.
Now’s the end of my little rhyme.

“Daddy, Please don’t,” I said.

Daddy stuck out his tongue and swigged his drink. I looked at John’s tooth, gleaming as he sipped from his glass. At Betsy’s and John’s eyes, brimming with something—laughter? At my mama, standing behind Daddy, looking down, her lips pressed together like when she blotted her lipstick.

“Awwww,” Daddy said, handing me my book. “A luuuuvvv story.” He smacked a kiss in the air. “Luuvvv in bloom,” he crooned. And he couldn’t catch me as I swept by him and ran to my room, where I lay on the special little girls in their bonnets on their very own squares of cloth and wished that I, like one of George Long’s airplanes, could fly far, far away.

*****

Forty years later, after my own whiskey really did fill up my mouth and almost choked me, after I’d sobered up a lot and wised up a tad, after I’d agonized over and published my first book, I did a reading at Elliott Bay Bookstore in Seattle. I had dreamed of reading there the first time I laid a hungry writer’s eyes on the place. I loved the vast complexity of it, and the scratched wood floors, and the smell of books piled everywhere, towers of them. And now I would be reading there. Hallelujah. Oh my God. Oh, Shit.

The night before my reading, I slept about one hour, writhing in sweaty sheets, dreaming of catcalls and overripe tomatoes splatting my platform and my face. She’s a poet, doesn’t know it, look at her feet and they will show it. They’re Longfellows. As three o’clock, the time for me to perform, grew closer, I trudged around Pioneer Square, my father’s words stalking me. Awww. A luuuvv story. I shook as I walked through the door of the inner sanctum and faced the surprisingly decent sized crowd.

I read from my book. I didn’t pass out. I didn’t stutter. I even sang a bit. I looked out at my friends who’d come to see me, along with enough strangers to make a real crowd. They were smiling and clapping and giving me thumbs-up signs. Not a scornful face nor a rotten tomato out there.

After selling and signing twenty-three books, as delighted as if I’d sold two hundred, I sat in a coffee shop with my sweet, supportive husband, and I drank a double shot Americano with an inch of steamed milk and foam on top. I remembered my first poem. Airplane, Airplane, oh so strong.

“Hey,” I said. “Guess what, Daddy?—I’m flying!”

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