Tag Archives: mom

How I Became A Writer

Posted on February 13, 2012 | 33 Comments

Here it is, folks!  In honor of ORIGINS Blogfest (a fabulous idea created by DL Hammons which hundreds of writer/bloggers are participating in today) I present you with my origins story – how I became a writer.  Or rather how I knew I was a writer.

I’ve included the one sentence version of the story in many a bio I’ve written:  I have been a writer since I was 10 years old and realized one day that I didn’t have to wait for the teacher to assign a creative writing project to write something.  But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.

Three year old Merry & her Granddad

I was in third grade.  It had been a rough couple of years for me.  My dad had walked out on us when I was 6, we moved halfway across the country to live near my Mom’s family, my Granddad (who had become a beloved father figure) had passed away very suddenly of a heart attack, and when my dad remarried he took my two older half-brothers (his sons from his first marriage) away to live with him.  Trauma!  I was struggling in school that year too.  It sounds so silly to an adult, but my best friend from second grade had been put in a different classroom than me.  I also had to learn long-division, which nearly killed me.  Everything pretty much sucked far more than your average ten-year-old deserves to have things suck.

My third grade teacher was Mr. Morley.  I adored him.  One day we were given a creative writing assignment.  I don’t even remember what we were supposed to write, but I ended up writing a story about a girl who made friends with and probably fell in love with a wasp (yes, a wasp) named Michael Greer.  Now Michael Greer was a boy in my class that I had been in love with since he kissed me in first grade.  This was the first instance of me making a character out of someone I knew.  I’m sure it was also the first time I used fiction to express and work through my emotions.  There was probably some deep psychological meaning to the fact that I would write a story about myself falling in love with a wasp (I was and still am to this day completely terrified of wasps) named after a boy I had a crush on.

Well, when we did these creative writing assignments in third grade we generally read them aloud to the class after they were graded.  I still remember Mr. Morley asking to speak with me at recess.  He was very tactful about saying that while he liked my story he didn’t think I should read it aloud.  I knew what he was talking about and agreed.  Thank you Mr. Morley for helping me to dodge a bullet that would have meant third grade social suicide!  I loved him even more.

Young Merry coming up with ideas to write about

But this first critique of something I had written got me to thinking….  I had written a story and enjoyed the process of writing it, and even though I had handed it in to the teacher it hadn’t been read aloud like the rest of the class’s stories.  So that meant that not everything I wrote would have to be on display for my class.  And if I could write something for a class that then wasn’t shared, who was to say that I couldn’t then just write something for myself alone to enjoy?

That’s when I started writing.  Granted, I didn’t do it a lot, just every now and then.  Until something else coincidental and wonderful happened when I was in fifth grade.  My Mom took a job as the secretary of the elementary school that I attended.  When she was cleaning out the office she found a bunch of old school supplies that no one wanted.  One of these items was a small spiral-bound three-subject notebook.  I asked if I could have it.  She said yes.  For the first time in my young life I had in my possession the tools to write as much as I wanted.  This was a notebook that wasn’t earmarked for schoolwork.  It was mine to do with as I pleased.  I believe I wrote another story in which a boy in my class who I had a crush on fell in love with me.  And I think there was some time-travel involved too.  Either way, the tide had turned.  I was a writer.

I have boxes and boxes of spiral-bound notebooks with stories I started, ideas I’ve had, and boys I’ve had crushes on.  I suppose I was always meant to be a romance novelist at that.  Those notebooks lasted up until I got my first computer.  I have a few ancient floppy disks with stories on them (that may never be able to be recovered).  Nowadays I have a flash drive with everything I’ve written for the last five or so years.  But really, it all goes back to those heavy, obnoxious boxes of spiral-bound notebooks that I’ve lugged from apartment to house to apartment to state to state for the last 25 years.  And yes, I still have the original notebook.

I was born to be a writer.  It’s as simple as that.  And I’ll be a writer until the day I die and then some.

[Medieval Monday will return next week as I begin an exciting new series on Awesome Medieval Technology!]

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For Breast Cancer Awareness Month – A Trubute to My Mom

Posted on October 28, 2011 | 5 Comments

October is National Breast Cancer Awareness Month, and in honor of that I would like to tell you about my Mom, Susie Farmer, who died of breast cancer in 2001.

My Mom was born on September 23, 1942.  She was a war baby, the first child in her generation.  My Granddad was fighting in the Pacific, working as a SeaBee.  I’m not just saying this, but from the moment she was born, everyone in the family knew she was special.  She was the first one all of her servicemen uncles wanted to see when they came home on leave.  Even after the war, as more siblings and cousins were born, everyone agreed that there was just something special, angelic even, about my Mom.

She grew up in a typical 1950s environment.  She was known for her smile and her sweetness throughout childhood.  In high school she was the captain of the cheerleaders and had a lead role in the musical production of H.M.S. Pinafore.  Whenever I see her old classmates they tell me that they have such wonderful, fond memories of her.  She was popular amongst her peers and amongst her cousins.  Her cousins (people I think of “aunt” Nina and “aunt” Terry and the like even though technically they’re my first cousins once removed?) tell me they looked up to her and everyone wanted to be like her.  I particularly remember my Aunt Martha (Mom’s sister) telling stories about my Mom’s paper doll collection.  She was very precise about how she kept her paper dolls and cut their outfits out perfectly.  Martha says she was always reckless and would cut the tabs off of the dresses, but my Mom would come in and make new tabs for her and repair the broken ones.

Mom went to college at Grove City College in Western Pennsylvania.  She studied to be a secretary.  The big thing I remember her telling me about her college experience was that she was on the synchronized swimming team.  I always thought that was super cool.  I’m a little fuzzy about what she did straight out of college, but eventually she ended up moving to Atlanta, where several of her cousins were, and getting a job at Rom & Haas Chemical Company.

She met my dad in Atlanta.  I have yet to decide if this was a good thing.  They worked in the same building.  Actually, the story of how they met is pretty awesome.  There was a small diner across the street from that building that was often very crowded.  As my dad tells the story, he had noticed my Mom before and was happy one busy, crowded day to get a seat next to her at the counter.  Mom was eating tomato soup and somehow dropped her spoon on the bowl, spilling it all down her front.  Dad turned to her and said, “Looks like someone needs to take you out and teach you how to eat.  How about me?  How about Friday night?”  And she said no.  But he kept asking her until she said yes.  Their first date was in a revolving restaurant in downtown Atlanta.

Mom was 30 at the time and apparently concerned that she was older than my dad.  As things got serious she decided she needed to share her “secret”.  They had a heart to heart … which actually started with Dad saying “Susie, there’s something I need to tell you.”  She apparently answered, “There’s something I need to tell you too.”  As Dad tells it he paused and said, “Okay, you go first.”  She got very nervous and said, “I’m older than you.”  Dad blinked, grinned, and revealed, “I have two small sons from a previous marriage.”  Yeah, he’d forgotten to mention that little detail.  Dad says she got up and walked away around a corner.  He thought he was never going to see her again.  But then she came back and told him, “I always knew I was born to be a mother, and if that happens sooner than I planned it to, then that’s okay with me.”

My Mom and dad were married the next Spring.  My two older half-brothers, K.C. and Kelly, were part of the wedding.  Their mom was, um, let’s just say “not in the picture”, so my Mom became their mom.  To this day they have a deep, lasting affection for her in their hearts and I think when they think the word “Mom” it’s my mom that they see.  I was born not that long after, in July of 1974.  My brother Stewart was born in August of 1977. Mom was very possible the best mother to small children in the history of the world.

After marrying my Mom my dad went back to college.  As I understand it, my Granddad (Mom’s dad) paid for it.  As my dad tells the story, he felt like Granddad was demanding too much of him and he didn’t want to be who my Granddad wanted him to be.  Also, he felt like he didn’t have the emotional connection with Mom that he wanted to.  Did that constitute an excuse for him to cheat on Mom?  I don’t think so.  But he did.  After he graduated from college and joined the Air Force we moved to Minot, ND … so that he could be closer to his girlfriend who was transferred there.  Yeah.  My earliest childhood memories are of flat prairie and tornados.

Mom didn’t know he was having an affair.  She didn’t suspect a thing when she took us, all four of us kids, on vacation to her home near Philadelphia.  My most vivid childhood memory is the phone call she had when my dad told her not to come home, he was having an affair and he wanted a divorce.  Complete chaos.  We never went home from that vacation.

My parents divorced in 1981.  In February of 1982 my Granddad died suddenly of a heart-attack.  In 1983 my dad remarried the woman he was having an affair with and asked for his children back.  Just K.C. and Kelly, not me and Stewart.  I honestly think that it broke Mom in a way she never recovered from.  So all of a sudden it was just me, Mom, and Stewart.

And actually, we had a wonderful time with each other.  We had no money and ended up moving in with my widowed Grandmother.  Mom got a job as the secretary of the elementary school that Stewart and I went to, so we had the same daily schedule, the same holiday schedule, and lots of time in the summer to hang out with each other.  She would play legos with us all the time.  We ate dinner at the table, talked to each other, and played 20 Questions.  We would rent a house in Cape May for a week in the summer and sit around reading books.  Mom loved Anne of Green Gables.

It was more difficult for Mom to identify with Stewart and I as we got older and were no longer children.  We also suffered some serious scars from the divorce (scars which each of us are still dealing with today).  I don’t think she quite knew what to do with adult children.  But just about the time she could have figured it out she was diagnosed with breast cancer.  It was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to go through, but Mom faced it with her usual dignified, quiet grace.  She fought it once, was horribly sick, lost all of her hair, and had to have the lymph nodes near her arm removed, so her left arm was always badly swollen.  She went into remission … for four and a half years.  When the cancer came back the second time it had metastasized.  There was nothing they could do.  We were told that was it just before Christmas 2000.  I have always hated Christmas ever since then.

Mom died on April 3, 2001.  I was in grad school for Theatre at the time, performing in the musical “Children of Eden”.  During rehearsals she kept telling me she wanted to try to see it.  She was always so proud of the things my brother and I did, theater, singing, sports, writing, and wanted to support us at them no matter what.  She passed away in the middle of the run.  I was with her.  We knew the end was near so I skipped classes for three days to sit in her room with her.  She died quietly while I was having a conversation with my aunt Martha and a friend of the family.  I think it was a relief for all of us that she could finally be at peace.  That night I was on stage singing and dancing.

Mom was a quilter.  She made the most beautiful quilts you could imagine.  She loved bright colors, teal, purple, lavender, and blue.  She was so precise in the way she sewed.  I remember her saying that she got so much satisfaction in making the points meet up perfectly in her quilt squares.  Her stitching was tiny and precise.  A lot of people swore her quilts were machine quilted, her craftsmanship was that good.  She worked on a quilt up until the last few days of her life.  And somehow she managed to finish it too.  It was a gift for my brother K.C.’s daughter, Natalie.  K.C. and his wife made a special visit weeks after Natalie was born to bring her to Mom.  The last picture ever taken of Mom is with her holding brand new Natalie.  My sister-in-law swears that Mom is Natalie’s guardian angel and that when she was very young Natalie would talk to “her friend Susie” when she was in a room playing by herself.

My Mom also loved opera.  I saved up one year to buy her a ticket to the Met for Christmas.  Possibly the best gift idea I ever had.  My strongest memories of her are of her listening to the opera on a Sunday afternoon while sewing, the sounds of the radio, her sewing machine, and the unique sounds of her scissors mingling.  I miss her so much, but her presence is still with me and always will be.  I don’t have a lot of pictures of her either.  She was very shy and hated having them taken.  But she was beautiful.  People say I look like her, and I do more and more as I get older.  That’s the greatest compliment of all.

Mom knew there was something wrong with her breast for a year and a half before she went to the doctor to have it checked out.  If she had gone much earlier, when she first noticed the problem, she might still be here today.  So please, if you notice anything at all out of the ordinary, have it checked out immediately.  Breast cancer is a long and painful way to go.  I wish Mom could have been spared, but if she couldn’t be, then I hope there are many others out there who can be.

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Heaven and Its Wonders…

Posted on October 7, 2011 | 9 Comments

I usually like to post something light and silly on Fridays (Fanciful Fridays anyone?) but today’s light-hearted post, in honor of Steve Jobs’ journey into What Comes Next is something I actually take very seriously.  What does come next?

I believe very strongly in life after death.  I was raised Swedenborgian,  but I love studying different religions.  I have delved into Catholicism, Mormonism, Hinduism, Islam, Neo-Paganism, and have dabbled in Baha’i, Buddhism, and even *gasp* traditional Christianity.  Everybody has a little bit of something I like (and a little bit I don’t like at all).  My beliefs about life after death are about 85% Swedenborgian and a mish-mash of the rest.

Here goes….

I believe that whatever you think is going to happen to you after you die is what’s going to happen to you….  At first.  The point of the afterlife is not to freak anyone out.  It’s to make a transition from this life to the next.  So if you think you’re going to end up sitting on a cloud with a halo, yep, there’s your cloud and halo.  If you think you’re going to sit in a waiting room until everyone is called for some Great Judgment, oh look, waiting room.  If you have no idea what will happen then you’ll probably wake up on the other side and things won’t look all that different from how they did when you left this world.

At first.

But once you get bored of sitting on your cloud or waiting, when you get confused and frustrated from wandering around clueless or being all non-corporeal, someone will come along and invite you to find out how things really are.  Then you’ll resume a kind of life that feels almost normal as you go through the process of figuring things out and deciding where you belong.

This first place that you end up in is called by different names in different religions, but in the church I was raised in it was called the World of Spirits.  Everyone goes to the World of Spirits first.  I guess you could compare it to Purgatory, but it’s nicer.  It’s like therapy with the best counselors in the Universe.  In the World of Spirits you meet the people you knew who left the Natural World before you.  And yes, there will be parties.  I mean, they’ve been waiting for you!  It’s like a great big birthday bash.  Happy times.

The good thing about the afterlife is that there is no “real” time or space, just the appearance of it.  So you can hang out for weeks and weeks with these loved ones who went before you but you’re not wasting time because time isn’t linear like it is here.  You can also travel as far and wide as you want simply by thinking about the place you want to be.  Then bam, you’re there.  This is true for all of the afterlife, by the way, not just the World of Spirits.  And because there is no time you can take as long as you want to sort through your life, revisit the people who were important to you, and figure out where you belong.

But where do you belong?

A lot of religions believe in a God who sends people to one place or another.  Not me.  Oh yes, I definitely believe in God, and He definitely wants everyone to be close to Him.  And where we end up is either closer to or further away from Him based on who we are and how we lived our lives.  Because in the afterlife we choose where we want to be and we end up spending eternity with like-minded people.  Well, you say, then of course everyone would choose Heaven, so what’s the point?

Nope, it doesn’t work like that.  When I say that we end up with like-minded people it means that by the choices we make in this life, the way we conduct ourselves, the morality we have or don’t have, the things we love or hate, and how we treat other people we form ourselves into who we really are.  There’s a reason the phrase “Writing is in my soul” or something along those lines exists.  Our lives determine who we are.  So, for example, if I lived my life in this world choosing to be a kind-hearted, understanding, compassionate person, then when I get to the afterlife I will spend all eternity living with other kind-hearted, understanding, compassionate people.  Some folks might call that Heaven.  On the other hand, if in this life I was petty, cruel, and loved gossip I would end up spending eternity with other people who are petty, cruel and who love gossip.  Sounds pretty Hellish, doesn’t it.  So be careful who you are in this life because you will end up spending eternity with people just like you.

However, when I say “just like you” I’m talking about your core.  I’m not saying, for example, that I will end up in a Heaven full of Writers.  (God no!)  Actually, quite the opposite.  Heaven (and Hell) is made up of a myriad of countries, cities, towns, kingdoms, villages, whatever.  Each one is full of a variety of people who interact perfectly together.  Everyone in any given Heavenly Society contributes something to the whole that no one else can and everyone’s contribution fits in perfectly and is appreciated by the other people in your society.  Imagine how awesome it would be to spend eternity with a bunch of people who you get along famously with, who you love, and who love you.

Speaking of love, I also believe in love that lasts forever.  The Swedenborgian church has its own term for it, Conjugial Love.  Conjugial is a Latin word that more or less means Married or Married Love.  What do these lovely made-up words mean?  They mean that if you haven’t already met them in this life, when you get to Heaven (if it’s what you want) you WILL meet your perfect soul-mate.  And you WILL live happily ever after with them for eternity.  Pretty sweet, eh?

One other thing I should add is that everyone in Heaven has a Use.  And by Use I mean everyone does something.  I’d call it a job, but “job” has such a bad connotation in this world.  Think of it this way.  Whatever it is that you love to do the most, you’ll get to do that.  And you won’t have to worry about money.  If your passion is gardening you’ll be free to spend as much of your time gardening as you want.  If you love numbers (and oddly enough, there are some people out there who really do) you’ll get to spend eternity crunching them.  I’m sure someone in Heaven needs an accountant.  If, like Steve Jobs, you love inventing awesome new things, yep, there will be awesome new things that need inventing.  In Heaven?  Really?  YES!  Because God works through people, not through magic.  Even in Heaven things just don’t poof into existence.  Granted, I have no idea how all that does work, but I’m sure there’s an app for that.

Okay, all of this theoretical stuff might be a lot to chew, so let me give an example.  And I apologize for being so long-winded today, but hopefully it’s worth it.

This is what I plan to do when I die:

First and foremost, I’m going to hang out with my Mom.  She died in 2001 and I miss her.  Who knows how long it will have been since I’ve seen her by the time I get there.  We’re going to have a lot of catching up to do.  And my Granddad, who died in 1982.  I was only 8, but we were close.  And my friend Erin who died just after her senior year of high school.  Lots of parties.  And once I’ve done all that and gone through whatever preparation and sorting process I need to go through I, Merry Farmer, am going to enroll in the University of Heaven (or Heaven U, whichever gives me the best scholarship).  I am going to study the History of Heaven as it has Related to Earth from the Dawn of Time to the Present.  I’m sure this will take me a while.  But it’s Heaven!  I’ve got all the time I want.  This course of study will involve a lot of field-trips to societies of people who died during different times in the history of Earth.  And because those people will be living in places that are most comfortable for them, i.e. places that came into existence in the time in which they were alive on Earth, it will feel like traveling through time.  Yes, time travel is possible.  Sort of.

My Heaven will look like a Maxfield Parrish painting

Okay, still with me?

While engaging in this course of study I’m sure I will write a lot of novels.  Because of course there are novels in Heaven.  Of course there are universities in Heaven.  I mean, some people’s deepest love is to teach, so they get to teach.  Some people, like me, LOVE being a student, so they will get to be a student (to eternity … with no tuition … and no grades!)  Some people love to read, so there will be books.  And if no one writes in Heaven, then I’m not going.  I think you get the picture.

And of course, if I haven’t already met him in this life, I will meet the Love of My Life.  Gosh, I hope he looks like Richard Armitage!  By the way, sex in Heaven?  Hell yes!  The best ever!

I also think that Reincarnation fits in here somewhere, but I’ve gone on WAY too long, so I’ll save that for another post.

I’m sure I’ll do a lot of other things too, but I don’t want to load up my plate too much until I see the rest of what’s at the banquet.  Because as my Mom said when she appeared to her sister, my aunt Martha, in a dream about two weeks after she died, “Heaven isn’t anything like any of us think it is, it’s better.”

Awesome.

Granted, I’m not exactly in a hurry to get there, but I’m also not remotely afraid of death.  Dying, yes.  Death, not a bit.  Call me crazy (and plenty of people do) but I can’t wait!

Someday, maybe next Friday, I’ll come back and describe to you what my Hell would look like.  Hint: Eternal late February with a car that doesn’t work.

P.S.  This post is intended to entertain, not proselytize.  So if I’ve offended you *cringes* Sorry!

(But if you’re really curious about the beliefs I was raised with that formed the basis of what I developed as my own personal belief system feel free to look here: http://www.newchurch.org/beliefs/life-after-death )

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Unlikely Hero of the Week – Danny Kaye

Posted on September 8, 2011 | 5 Comments

Ladies and gentlemen!  My first crush ever:

For some people, like me, Danny Kaye isn’t an unlikely hero at all.  In fact, he was pretty darn awesome in every sense of the word.  But I’ve thrown him in with the other unlikely heroes because I have this horrible suspicion that there is an entire generation of people out there who might not have a clue who this fantastic man is.  And so, I will tell you a happy-sad little story…

David Kaminskey was born in Brooklyn to poor Ukranian immigrants.  He had nothing growing up except for a hugely over-active imagination and a talent for making people laugh.  He started doing this, and getting into trouble, at a very young age.  He never graduated high school.  Instead he ran away with a friend to Florida to try to make a living as a performer.  He failed.  When he went home his father didn’t try to make him go back to school.  So David got a job in a cabaret act, changed his name to Danny Kaye, and started touring the Far East.

Danny Kaye didn’t necessarily want to be a performer.  He wanted to be a surgeon.  But he knew there was no way he would ever be able to afford medical school.  Instead he was ‘discovered’ after working a lot of little theatery jobs in New York and began making movies.

The vessel with the pestle has the pellet with the poison...

Danny Kaye was an outstanding performer, but he was also a pretty awesome guy off camera.  He became an ambassador for UNICEF, a pilot, a chef, raised $5mil for a musician’s retirement fund, and yes, he finally got to dabble in surgery.  Watching open-heart surgeries was a hobby of his.  It’s kind of sad and ironic that he then died of a heart-attack at age 74 in 1987, shortly after I saw him in a guest role on an episode of The Cosby Show as a dentist.  I remember that episode vividly.  He was brilliant.  But, of course, the first thing I saw him in was White Christmas.

But as fantastic a comedian as Danny was, his life had a lot of sadness to it.  He was married to Sylvia Fine, a composer and arranger who wrote a lot of his most famous pieces, but she sort of hated him and used him as her meal-ticket to Hollywood.  She was, let’s face it, a bitch and made his life miserable, even turning his daughter, Dena, against him.  There are also a lot of rumors about Danny Kaye’s sexuality, and the jury is still out, but one biography I read suggested that Sylvia fabricated that story to get back at him.

Anyhow, I always thought he was amazing.  Not just funny, not just handsome, AMAZING.  He was the hero in one of my first ever romance novels.  The Court Jester was my Mom’s favorite movie of all time (yeah-verily-yeah!).  I went through a phase were I tried to watch as many of his movies as I could (in the mid-90s, pre-Netflix, so I didn’t catch them all).  I have always been fascinated by the way he moves his hands.  It goes beyond grace.  It’s hypnotic!

But this, this is the moment I fell in love with him (and with Vera-Ellen’s dress):

Yep, Danny Kaye was my first crush ever.

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Boy Crazy

Posted on August 31, 2011 | 6 Comments

I love men.  I really do.  They are a strange bunch of creatures, but delightful all the same.  I love the way they look, all strong and square and masculine, even the ones who aren’t muscly body-builder types.  In fact, I prefer the ones who are just average-looking.  I love the way they smell when they’re all cleaned up and ready to go out.  I love the way they sound, be is a grumbly bass or a smooth tenor or a ragingly gay twang.  As long as what they’re saying isn’t completely douchey.  Yes, men are wonderful.

I love men, but I have really bad luck with them.  It goes back to my childhood, really, when my dad left.  I was six.  My Granddad became my father-figure.  We were inseparable.  Until he died suddenly a heart-attack when I was 7.  And then when I was 8 my dad remarried and took my two older half-brothers (his sons from his first marriage who he’d left with my Mom when he ditched us for this other woman) to live with him.  Tough way to start your relationships with men, eh?  Made worse, of course, by the fact that I developed a lot of emotional issues that kept me in and out of therapy through elementary school and high school.  Guys in high school don’t really want to date the crazy girl.

I love men, but through my twenties and into my thirties they never loved me.  I broke my heart over guys time and time again through college and my twenties.  I was the master of unrequited love.  I could shine some seriously intense affection on the objects of my desire!  Because there was just something about those guys that was fantastic.  And then all my friends started to get married … and have babies … and not have time for me.  I never got so much as a second glance from any of the men I fell for, pined for.

That’s when I felt the clock tick.  That’s when I looked at myself and didn’t like what I saw.  I’m not the kind of girl that boys go crazy for.  I’m not gorgeous.  I have an average body.  I’m smart, too smart for them maybe.  I have an over-active imagination.  I get bored with men who can’t keep up with that.  Not that I have much chance to get bored.  I don’t have whatever spark it is that men are attracted to.  I don’t have those pheromones.  I’m not lovable.

I love men, but throughout my early life they made me miserable.  The sheer volume of rejection I felt from not one, not two, not a handful, but the entire opposite sex was depressing.  How is it that none of these wonderful, attractive, good-smelling guys cared two bits about me?  I mean, I lived off of a steady diet of romance novels and if there was one thing they taught me it was that there was someone out there for everyone, right?  How could I go on and consider this life a success without a man as my very own?

Well, I thought to myself with an enormous sigh, I have no choice.  I’m not going to sit around here letting the thing I love keep me from being happy.  I want more than that.  I want to adventure, to travel.  I want to WRITE.  If I can’t have a dad or a Granddad or a brother or a husband to take care of me then I want to hold my head high and say that I can take care of myself in every way.  I want to make my own decisions.  I want to be the architect of my own happiness.  I want to be me.

A funny thing happens when you define yourself by the things you love.  It shifts your soul on some fundamental level.  I grew up in a town where marriage is lauded as the most important and worthy thing that a person can do with their lives.  Weddings are community events and girls quite often leave college to get married.  I grew up believing that without a man I was a failure.  I loved men but since I didn’t have one I wasn’t worthy of one.  Then things changed.  I don’t know if it was age or moving around a few time or coming to terms with my father’s betrayal.  I don’t know if it was embracing the other things I love, like writing and theater and knitting and cricket.  I don’t know if it was the catharsis of being accepted by my cricket team as their own and having an entire club full of (mostly married) men who love me right back.  Something changed.

I am not defined by what I lack.  I am defined by who I am, what I have accomplished, where I’ve been and where I’m going.  I love men, but if they can’t see that then I can’t be bothered.  And yes, there is a sort of bitter irony to the statement made by one of the (married) guys I was putting on a play with a couple of years ago: “I don’t get it, Merry, you’re pretty, intelligent, hard-working, easy to talk to … why don’t you have a whole line of guys falling all over themselves to date you?”  I don’t know, Will, I don’t know.

I love men.  I dream up wonderful male characters and write about them, describing them in great detail.  I love to talk to them, even though I generally make a complete fool of myself over the ones that I still to this day get goofy crushes on.  I still break my heart over the ones who don’t love me back.  But I get over it and move on, write something or go to a cricket match.  I love the ridiculousness of men, the douchey bravado that makes me want to shake my head and laugh, “Who do you think you’re trying to impress?”  I love men who love their wives and families and go out of their way to make their lives better.  Someday maybe I’ll find one of those for my very own, to be his very own.  Maybe.  In the meantime, I love me too.

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