Tag Archive | childhood

R.I.P. Roger Ebert, We’ll See You At The Movies

I just found out that Roger Ebert died. It struck me more than I thought it would. I’m not sure how I felt about that funny-looking old guy with his glasses and tweed jackets. But I will say this, like it or not, he had an impact on my life. Roger Ebert, along with his old partner-in-crime and reviews Gene Siskel, were the first ones who opened my eyes to the idea that you could have an opinion about a story.

When I was a kid, bored to tears on rainy Sunday afternoons, I would turn the dial to flip through all five channels on our giant old TV. If clips of movies – bite-sized nuggets of films I would never be allowed to see – happened to be on, I would stop to watch. I have always loved trailers and snippets of movies, and the first time I ever accidentally stumbled across one that cut to two middle-aged guys sitting in a simple and adequately-lit studio who then proceeded to talk about what they saw, I was mesmerized.

It was a whole new concept to me that you could have an opinion about a story that someone was telling. If you liked the film, that was one thing. But if you didn’t like it, wasn’t it best to stay quiet? Not according to Siskel and Ebert. I watched in wonder as these two went at it, praising what they loved and tearing to shreds what they didn’t.

Of course, the most fascinating moments were when they disagreed. Those where the moments when I learned the most. It wasn’t just “That was terrible” or “This is sure to become a modern classic”. When Siskel and Ebert disagreed, plots were analyzed, performances were examined, and the audience was educated.

Even back in those dim days I was a writer, although I didn’t know it yet. It made a huge impression on me to see that if you did something wrong with your storytelling, someone older and wiser might catch it. I paid attention to these two stuffy guys. On some level I thought they were big meanies for pointing out plot holes and belittling oversimplified concepts. They redeemed themselves a bit when they gushed about the richness of the cinematography (I’m pretty sure they’re the ones who taught me what the word cinematography meant) and the depth of emotion that certain actors were able to portray. I listened. I learned.

When Gene Siskel died in 1999 I felt a huge hole on Roger Ebert’s behalf. I remember feeling it far more than I thought was reasonable or sensible. But in my mind Siskel and Ebert were a package deal. They were the first bro-mance I was really aware of. I have no idea if they got along in real life or not, but in my imagination they were BFFs 4-ever! It was wrenching to think that one chair in that simple studio would be left empty forever.

Of course, life went on, Roger Ebert paired with someone else, and many more movies were criticized and praised. But for me – and I’m sure for many others – it wasn’t the same.

It was also jolting to me when Roger Ebert was diagnosed with cancer and had to have so much of his face removed. Once again, the icon of my childhood became unrecognizable, only this time in a physical way instead of an emotional one. But there is one picture of Ebert that was taken after his surgery that always stuck with me. In it he is holding up his hands in front of his face the way a director frames a scene while filming. If you didn’t know better, you wouldn’t realize anything was wrong.

That’s the Roger Ebert I will remember. He’s a man framing the world in a critical lens, a lens that made me aware that whatever I write, someone will have an opinion about it. He was as intelligent as they come, making cogent arguments out of art. But at the end of the day, he was those eyes, that soul, unchanging.

Yesterday we lost a part of him, but like all icons, he lives on. And it makes me smile to think of him and his BFF Gene meeting up again in the great beyond to watch some heavenly movies. And I’m sure they’ll have as much to say about those divine creations as they did about the wonders produced here on earth.

My Wedding Speech

Jan4

When my wonderful brother Stewart married my best friend Kristine last Saturday, December 29th, I was privileged to be the Maid of Honor. As the Maid of Honor – not to mention the groom’s sister – I got to give a speech at the reception. A lot of people came up to me afterwards and said it was a beautiful speech. I am so flattered by that praise! Although honestly, I was so keyed-up, overwhelmed, and exhausted at the time that it was all a blur to me.

So since I received so much praise for speaking the truth, and since there were a lot of people who weren’t at the reception, here’s as close an approximation to my reception speech as I can write, complete with the two things I wanted to say but forgot to in the moment…..

Me and Kristine

This is a story of Divine Providence. Yes, Divine Providence. For why else would a Pennsylvanian with a master’s degree in Theater from Villanova University decide to go to cosmetology school in Huntsville, Alabama? But that’s where Kristine and I met, in cosmetology school in Alabama. We became friends and ended up going to work at the same salon (eventually) when we graduated.

I also bought a house in Huntsville, and when I did I asked if Kristine wanted to move in and rent a room with me. She did, and our friendship got stronger. Except when things like The Potato Incident happened. After that we almost weren’t friends anymore. I’ll tell you about it sometime if you ask. But even then, potatoes and all, I knew that Kristine was the sister I never had.

After a while Kristine told me that she wanted to go to college, but since she was home-schooled she wasn’t sure she could. I told her, “Hey! I know this great college in Philadelphia, Bryn Athyn College, that is fantastic with home-schooled kids.” She applied, thinking that she’d never get in. But lo and behold, she did!

It was then that I realized that I didn’t want to stay in Alabama without Kristine. If she was going to Bryn Athyn, then I wanted to go home too. So we packed up the house and moved up HOME.

Again, Providence came into play. It was great to be home, but I’m a morning person. I wake up early and I go to bed early. But Kristine is a night person. She likes to stay up and go out. But she didn’t know anyone up here that summer. School hadn’t started and she hadn’t made any friends yet. The only person she knew besides me was my brother, Stewart. So Stewart asked her, “Well, do you want to come hang out with my friends?” And that was how it all began.

Stewart and Kristine were just friends at this point. In fact, when I directed them in Rosencrantz & Guildenstern Are Dead many years ago and they played Hamlet and Ophelia, people kept asking if they were going out. Kristine’s response to that was “Eew! No! That would be like dating Merry!” Yep, everyone else always knows before the happy couple figures it out.

Then one day Kristine came to me and said, “Merry, I have something to tell you and I don’t think you’re going to like it.” “Oh?” I asked. “What’s that?” And she told me, “Stewart and I are kind of dating now.” And I was upset! No, really I was! Because what would happen if they broke up? Who was I supposed to side with, the boy who broke my best friend’s heart or the girl who broke my brother’s heart?

Fortunately, they did the only sensible thing they could do and got married.

[and then I transitioned into giving a “sister of the groom” speech ]

Stewart and I have been through a lot together. A LOT. We’ve lost a lot of people from our life. Most special of those people was our mom. A lot of people here [at the reception] knew our mom and how wonderful she was. She raised the two of us pretty much on her own. People also know that our mom was a quilter. She made the most beautiful quilts!

What people might not know is that Kristine’s mom, Jodi, is also a quilter.

One of the things I inherited from my mom was a big chest in which she kept all of our school projects and mementos and her quilting projects. What people don’t know is that before she passed away, Mom finished piecing together a quilt top. But then she put it away because she knew she would never be able to finish it and quilt it and put the binding on and all that.

So when Stewart and Kristine got engaged, one of the very first things I did was to call Jodi and ask her if she would be willing to finish the quilt. Well, she said yes.

So at the rehearsal dinner Jodi and I presented Stewart and Kristine with this beautiful quilt, made by both of their mothers together, even though they never met.

I ended my speech there, but there was one other thing that I wanted to say but forgot to:

Okay, Stewart. I found you the perfect wife. So now it’s your turn. You’ve got to go out there and find me the perfect husband! So get on it!

Congratulations to Stewart and Kristine, the two people who I love most in my life. May every happiness come their way!

When Do You Become A Writer?

Oct17

A couple of weeks ago I was having dinner with some family friends, talking about my latest book, and their teenage daughter asked me, “How do you come up with your ideas?”

What a great question! I blinked, tilted my head to the side, and answered, “I kind of don’t come up with them, they’re just there.”

My young friend looked at me and said, “No, but where do they come from? How do you think up all those stories?”

Her mom smiled and told her daughter, “Some people’s minds just work differently like that.”

How true it is! But it also begs the question: Are writers born or made?

: © Roman Milert | Dreamstime.com

We all learn to write at some point. For me it was first grade. I had learned my letters like everyone else, and as that eventful school year progressed I learned the magic of putting them together to make words. This was more than just an exercise in phonics. It was the dawning of a whole new era. I still remember the day that I learned to write the word “grasshopper”. It was the longest, most beautiful, most complicated word ever! I remember staring at my extremely wide-ruled page of writing paper and thinking *sigh* grasshopper!

When mankind first began creating signs and pictures to represent words it was considered miraculous. Storytellers who could capture their words in stones or on paper with a few simple lines were considered shamans. They were revered by their tribes as people of great power and wisdom. They could do what no other people could do: they could speak to people far, far away. They could tell stories years after their deaths. These were amazing people.

But does the ability to form words on a surface make you a writer? Evidently not, as my young friend reminded me. How do you come up with your ideas? People have been asking writers those questions for millennia.

At the same time, coming up with stories and ideas isn’t exclusive to just a few magicians. If you watch young children at play you can see they are just bursting with stories. Whether its reenacting their favorite tale or coming up with an explanation for why the toy dog and the toy dinosaur aren’t getting along, children create stories by nature. Play is the developing mind’s way of ordering the universe and making it familiar. Coming up with stories to explain the narrative of any given play session is just what kids do.

So if we all spend a huge amount of our childhood making up stories, why do only some of us become writers?

Ah. Here’s where I think my friend’s explanation to her teenage daughter was right. Some people’s minds just work differently.

: Future Adventure Novelist?
© Dianne Mcfadden | Dreamstime.com

I happen to believe that you can’t teach someone to be a writer. You can teach someone to write, you can teach them grammar, you can teach them plot structure and character development, but you can’t teach them to have a passion for it. And you definitely can’t teach imagination. Imagination is as much a genetic trait as athletic ability or musical talent. Either you’ve got it or you don’t.

But what if you do have it? What if you’ve got the perfect storm of neurons and synapses that allows your imagination to run free and the passion to drop everything in order to focus on getting those stories out there? When does natural talent translate to you being a writer?

My argument would be that you become a writer when you start writing. Not when you learn to spell grasshopper, not when you sign a book deal with a big six publisher, but when you first decide that there’s nothing more that you’d like to do in a given moment then find a pencil and some paper and write a story.

For me that moment came in third grade when I realized that I didn’t have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something. I was ten years old. It was awesome. For my niece it might just have come earlier. A couple years ago, when she was eight or nine, her mother, my sister-in-law informed me that my niece had taken to writing plays for her and her friends to perform. Thus furthering the argument that this crazy writing thing is genetic.

Do you have to start when you’ve just learned to write grasshopper? Not at all. You’re still a writer and have every right to call yourself one if you wait until you’re old and grey to pick up a pen for the first time. I might be willing to argue that you become a writer when you start imagining stories in your head, whether you write them down or not. Although if you do that you might actually be a filmmaker, like my brother. But as long as the spark is there, you’re on your way.

So what about you? When did you first realize you’d become a writer? Do tell!

Class Reunion

Oct12

So today my twenty year class reunion begins. And for weeks and weeks I’ve had it in my mind that I would write a big, somewhat ranty post about why I’m not going to my class reunion. I’m not going, by the way. For several reasons. But now that the day is here, I don’t actually feel like being ranty about it. Huh.

I didn’t have a good time in high school. In fact, my freshman year was probably the worst year of my life. Agoraphobia, therapy … it was not the best time in the world. But as I sit here I keep thinking that the whole four years couldn’t have been that bad, could they? Surely I had to have had some good times in high school.

My high school … fairly recently

One great moment that sticks out in my mind from my freshman year was the first time my friend Rita saw snow. Rita came with her family from Ghana the summer before. It doesn’t snow in Ghana. So there we were sitting in English class one dreary morning, the sky clouding up more and more. The air had that cold, dry, impending feeling. Then all of a sudden Rita yelped in joy. Class came to a screeching halt. It was snowing! Well, a few flakes were meandering through the air. Our wonderful teacher, who was from South Africa herself, let her class be interrupted so we could all go outside so Rita could experience snow. That was probably the only time she ever enjoyed the cold, wet white stuff.Another fun memory that sticks out must have been from my junior year. Brief background. We had “clubs” that were comparable to sororities in high school. Every year the sophomores pledge into the clubs. … Okay, no idea how to explain that to anyone who’s never done it. I guess it’s like hazing for sororities only much, much tamer and with no alcohol. Anyhow, my friend Jess and I were in charge of teaching the pledges our club’s motto, which is in Greek. I remember having so much fun as we wedged them two-by-two into a dark, narrow basement stairwell and shone flashlights on our faces as we chanted in Greek. At least I think we had flashlights. I mostly remember how fun it was to freak the pledges out … and how many of them came up to us later and said they thought our thing was the best.

Let’s see…. I also remember a balmy afternoon in the spring of my senior year. We had less than a week of school left. I was really starting to feel that soon, very soon, I would be free from the torture of the last 4 years. It was so liberating to finally feel like I could be whoever I wanted to be and not to play the role I had been cast in. I threw caution to the wind and got really goofy and started saying all of the funny things I’d always wanted to say. I forget what class it was we were having outside or how I ended up talking to Megan, who I had always considered one of the popular, cool girls. What I remember vividly is the smile on her face and the way she laughed in the sunlight at all of the silliness I was letting break out. And then she said, “I had no idea you were this funny!” Such a great compliment and so heavy with both possibility and regret. I realized in that moment that yes, I was funny … and I also wondered why I hadn’t been funny like that for all those years when I could have. It was a deep, beautiful moment. Thank you Megan!

But you know, it’s strange that as I sit here trying to think of my best memories from high school that I can’t come up with much. I don’t know if that’s because it was all twenty years ago plus or if it’s because there weren’t that many good memories. I have far more miserable memories. But I think a lot of that is because I was in a miserable place. And it wasn’t just my class that caused me to be there.

My school and surrounding area a loooong time ago

You know, the interesting thing about growing older is that you start to hear bits and pieces of what was going on behind the scenes of your childhood and the childhoods of the kids you spent all day with five days a week. Not only do you hear them, with age you start to understand them. You start to understand that the cool, popular kids were under tremendous amounts of stress. You see that the rich kids who had every material thing handed to them had absolutely wretched family problems. You come to understand that everyone was hurting in one way or another. What made the situation unbearable was the fact that no one knew how to deal with it all. So people lashed out. The anger and hurt that was inflicted on each of us could only stay trapped inside for so long before spewing out all over the easiest targets in our lives, our peers.I don’t know if my classmates have gotten the help they needed for those miserable childhood problems. I did and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. The road to recovery was and is a long one though. I had to smirk the other day when one of my classmates found out I wasn’t coming to the reunion and sent me an email which contained the phrase “It was twenty years ago, we’re much better people now.”

The fact is, it wasn’t twenty years ago. For some of us it’s every day. It’s every time we interact with family or stand on the verge of making a new friend or dealing with the opposite sex. The damage done by bullying, peer pressure, family destruction, the pressure to be perfect, to make things alright so that the pain has a chance to stop is every day. It follows us to adulthood and won’t let us go until we turn and face it. Even then it might never fully let us go.

For me the answer is to avoid the people and situations that rip the Band-Aids off of old wounds. I can’t stand to feel certain varieties of pain again, to be made to feel the way I felt at the worst times in my life. So I avoid. Some might argue that isn’t healthy. Well, maybe not if we’re talking about family or romantic situations or something that has to be faced. There is no rule that says I have to associate with my school peers again. They’re the past and it’s okay with me for them to stay there. I’m still friends with the ones I need to be friends with. As for the rest, I wish them all the health and happiness and healing that I firmly believe each and every one of them deserves. But I don’t need to deliver it personally.

So that’s why I’m not going to my twenty year reunion. We’ll see how I feel when our twenty-fifth rolls around. In the meantime, I wish the Class of ’92 every good thing and hope they have a spectacular time this weekend.

How I Fell in Love with Romance Novels

Sep14

Once upon a time, many years ago, I was stuck in a frightening, cruel, and heartless place. It was called HIGH SCHOOL.

Now I’ve heard rumors about this place called High School. I’ve heard that it’s a teenage paradise. I’ve heard that people learn a lot there and that they date there. I’ve even heard unsubstantiated rumors that some people think those are the best years of your life. But for me this was not the case. For me high school was a never-ending cave of psychological torture from which there was no escape. I was bullied, I was excluded, and I never got any attention from the boys.

But I did have a few very close, wonderful friends. One of these friends, Jess, slipped up to me one day and said, “Hey Merry, I’ve got this book…. You totally have to read this.”

Jess proceeded to slide a well-worn paperback into my hands. On the front of its dog-eared cover were a man and a woman, locked in a fierce embrace. The hero was bulgy in all the right places, his hair thick and windswept. The heroine’s dress was falling off. She looked as though she would collapse entirely, but the hero held her in a possessive embrace. Her tousled hair not only begged the question “which direction is the wind coming from anyhow?”, it spoke of passion, freedom, love.

“Dude, there is no way my mom is going to let me read this,” I said to Jess, even though the book beckoned to me.

“It’s okay,” Jess assured me. “Just put it inside of another book and she’ll never know. Or read it when you’re alone in your room.”

Well I am a teenager, I thought. I’m alone in my room a lot. “Okay,” I said. “Hand it over.”

I don’t remember the name of that first romance novel, but I do remember that it had pirates in it. And sex. Lots of vividly described sex.

Now to put this in context, I was raised by a single mom. She was the sweetest, meekest, most selfless and wonderful woman to ever walk this earth. She was also one of the shiest, particularly when it came to talking about sex. In fact, our big conversation about the birds and the bees went something like this:

Mom: Did they show you that video in school today? Me: Yep. Mom: Do you have any questions? Me: Nope.

So there I was, devouring the pages full of pirate adventures with passionate kisses and scandalous embraces, when all of a sudden, OH MY GOSH, HE PUT HIS WHAT WHERE???

Well, I was hooked. I mean, who can resist a well-written and completely over the top love scene? With pirates! Yes, I, Merry Farmer, got the bulk of my sexual education from romance novels.

But I also got something else. Because the world that is depicted in romance novels is pretty much the polar opposite of high school, or at least my experience of it. I’d spent so long lost in a world where young people were cruel to each other because they had just discovered what cruelty was and needed to test out their new powers. To then turn around and discover a world in which the hero and heroine always get together at the end and have a happy ending? With sex? Well!

Pirate Captain, by Howard Pyle – Argh!

After that first book, Jess loaned me a few others. Pirates seemed to be a major theme for me in those early years of romance novel reading. I think they must have been really in back in the late 80s and early 90s. When I’d exhausted Jess’s supply of tales of love on the high seas she shared another secret with me. She took me to this delightful little used book store … where they had (and have) thousands and thousands of romance novels just waiting to be devoured!Well that was pretty much the second most awesome day of my life. (The first most awesome, incidentally, was when I realized I didn’t have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something) I’d discovered my world, my passion, my calling.

There are a lot of people out there who would try to tell you that romance novels are cheesy or inferior or cheap. People call them chick porn or trashy books. And yeah, there’s a bit of truth to that, but mostly I just take offense to the oversimplification of the genre. Because at its very essence, Romance is about love. It’s about overcoming obstacles to find life-long love.

That was a message I very much needed to hear as a teenager. I was dealing with bullying at school, a broken home, and anxiety disorders. Romance novels came along at exactly the right point in my life. When things looked blackest, here were these amazing stories. They pulled me out of what could have otherwise been a period of total misery. They gave me hope.

And they had sex in them!

So next time you’re tempted to poo-poo the genre as being trashy, just remember…. Contained within those pages, sealed behind that half naked hero and busty heroine, love awaits. It’s a love that can save a lonely teenager’s sense of sanity and inspire her to create even more where that came from.

Merry Farmer

An Historical Romance