Hemingway’s Adventures Of A Young Man (1962)

Writing for the passion of writing

Writing for the passion of writing

It is a pleasure for you to meet me!

I was born in Massachusetts on the outskirts of Boston.  The four years after my birth, we relocated to another city, where I was to spend the next 17 years of my life.  I grew up there with a large family of 13; 6 girls and 7 boys.  My father was a good provider despite the fact that he was alcoholic, he was one of those quiet drunks who drank of course, but always had a good novel at the ready.  I inherited this love of reading from him.  He would sit up and read paperback novels 600 + pages overnight. He would read himself to sleep at night, a novel poised and balanced on his belly.  What a great picture. The man held an IQ of the genius level, being one of the co-creators of the battery for Duracell that makes the pacemaker that continues to save many lives.  What an act to follow, huh?

My mom, although she is no longer with us, still inspires me on a daily basis.  Yeah!  And although she too was alcoholic, she was one of a kind, with a smile to dazzle.  I always joke to others that if I had 13 kids, I’d be alcoholic too!  Especially the fact that she brought into this world six girls; well, that gave her a reason to be anointed into sainthood, and seven boys that gave the girls a run for their money.  My mother had this black and white portrait where she looked like the movie star, Dorothy Dandridge, and although biased, I believe she was lovelier.  She bore a resemblance to a black queen.  Her name was Mary, so, Hail Mary!

So these parents of mine went on to have 13 children and just to get a good perspective on the ages and the durations of my mom’s pregnancies, they went a little something like this: a boy born in 1952, a girl in 1953, a boy in 1955, then a girl, myself, in 1956, a boy in 1958, another boy, in 1959, a girl in 1960, another boy in 1962, another boy in 1963, and to give her womb a bit of a break, she bore no children for seven years…don’t ask ‘cause I don’t know either!  But anyway, she had a girl in 1970, another girl in 1971, a baby boy in 1972, and last but not least, my baby sister, number 13, in 1974.  Whew!  The End. That was tiring just remembering the birthdates.

I have always wanted to write a book on my family, all of them, near and far. I have always had this love for writing, and one of my English teachers told me I had the talent to write like the author Alice Walker because she writes of family and family history, and I love to do just that. 

If I were just to write about my immediate family alone, it would speak and literally be volumes because my family is so large.  I remember when I was about, oh, about 8 or 9 years old, I made a book from a small pad, complete with illustrations.  I cannot recall what it was about, but I assume in my 10 year life-span, it only took just that; a small pad, and not the volumes spoken of earlier.  So I looked in the back pages of a 16 Magazine after reading about the Monkees and Paul Revere and the Raiders, and behold, I saw an ad on how to get your manuscript published.  Well, I was a burgeoning writer and I immediately sent it in.  They wrote me back explaining that I was indeed talented, but to wait another couple of years to submit another manuscript, as I would probably have more material to write about or something to that effect.  I showed this to my family and visiting West Coast members who promptly reveled in this, knowing someday I would be amongst the elite in LA scriptwriting, hustling the many scripts and screenplays.

Although I would love to write the American novel, (I bet you’ve never heard that before), I just enjoy writing period, non fiction being my forte I suppose.  I have never attempted fiction but find a romance novel fascinating to be able to compile.  To bring about dormant feelings of long-lost loves must be a truly amazing feat-did I say amazing?

As far as a career, I have attempted to study the law and found it tedious.  Except for a few, I found attorneys self-absorbed and non-committal, unless there was a large fee involved.  I thought I might make it as a paralegal someday because my mother had expressed an interest in becoming a lawyer at one time.  After she died I thought I’d make her proud posthumously by becoming a paralegal.  So I studied some, became alcoholic myself because I wanted to make my parents proud, (just kidding) tried to study some more, but the suicide of my younger brother, knocked me off my feet.  Nine years later, my mother, she died from an agonizing breast cancer ordeal, and managed to slowly disintegrate before my very eyes. 

I drank some more because at that time I thought numbing the pain through alcohol was the only way I was going to stay sane, although I was far from sane.  And as luck would have it, like a Kennedy curse, my baby sister caught the dreaded HIV virus while pregnant, and one month after giving birth, she passed away, leaving her baby daughter orphaned because the father was institutionalized, leaving the baby in the care of her paternal grandmother.  Not only did I have to deal with the death of my baby sister who was number 13 in the family, Daddy’s special, little girl, but I had to deal with post-partum depression as Nicole and I were pregnant at the same time. I gave birth some 3 weeks before her death.

If I continued on and told you that there were three more deaths in my large family, 2 siblings, one through an accidental overdose of heroin as he sat in a portable toilet in San Francisco, while the AIDS virus consumed him, and that four months previously my brother Lyle was murdered at the ripe old age of 28 on his birthday, during a robbery in Boston, Massachusetts, would you believe it?  And that my daddy died eight months before Lyle from cancer and I couldn’t cope at the law firm, so I continued to medicate and numb myself.  “To thyself be numb” I thought frequently, and learned to follow my own code of numbing. 

My reading interests aren’t the usual sort I suspect for an avid reader because I have never read Hemingway, Shakespeare, Browning, Yeats, Dickinson, etc., ad infinitum.  Now don’t get me wrong.  I plan on visiting their readings soon.  Don’t ask me why, but I may be able to shed a little light on this.

As I was always a fearful child because of my parents drinking and alcoholism, and mom was Catholic, I learned of Jesus Christ and the cross.  I would read the Bible to mom like it was a travel catalog, but I also forewarned her of her travels with evils and sin of drunkenness, and tried to map out a plan to put her on the straight and narrow.  So I practiced reading all things spiritual from day one.  I read the academic readings that we had to read like Tom Sawyer and Huck…that was all fine and dandy.  But I developed at a very young age a taste for all things spiritual, ethereal, an odd child they called me but wise beyond my years.  So I found books on Rev. Fulton J. Sheen and other Catholic peoples because my mother loved the solemnity the church which offered all of its solemnity, incense and rituals, along with miracles and levels of sainthood.

So in my latter years, I still read books on spiritual matters, law of attraction, love and peace, Dali Lama, Wayne Dyer and all the beautiful people that speak of the comfort and peace I get from the comfort and peace they teach.  I don’t think I have ever had anyone love me quite like the English language loves me.  We are both in this together and we are a happy couple.  If I never meet the man of my dreams, well, that would be all well and good, as reading and writing have become one passionate love for me.  I wake up feeling the call and the lure of good writing.  I feel officially obligated to introduce myself to the literary world and to let them know I have arrived.  Not in a boastful or conceited stance, but in an overwhelming desire to give back what I have been given in life. 

So I say move over to all the great American novelists of the centuries past and present.  I want to accompany you to that great reading room we adventure into once we embark upon our excursions into literary heaven.  I want to be one of the angels there.  To meet and greet those that find it hard NOT to write, and give them penance, allowing them to go about their way and re-write, re-write, and re-write.

I can get inebriated and spell-bound by words, and the closer I get to completing a paper-back novel or the great American one, it doesn’t matter which, the closer I get to feeling an accomplishment I have never been able to accomplish before. But the publishing of articles is an abbreviated version of literary ecstasy.  I get to formulate in miniature volumes on a daily, or weekly or even monthly basis, knowledge or passions that I have come upon during a time, and relay them to an audience that longs to hear back from me. 

I only hope I can achieve a standing ovation in literary terms.  I can only pray that people want to come back to me and hear my verbiage over and over again, and pray that it not be verbose.  I want people to feel comforted by my words and made to feel they are with family, comfortable and warm, and not likely to leave anytime soon.  Please feel free to leave, but when your coat is hung in the closet, the hat is put on the table, the fireplace is ablaze, cocktails are flowing along with the conversation of life, and things are well, just fine and dandy, I hope you prefer to stay awhile. Perhaps you won’t be going anywhere soon because you chose to stay here, as it is a very friendly and warm place to be, or read, or write, or just exist.

I want my audience to be the universe.  I want each and every individual to come by my house of words and leave feeling a little bit better than they felt before they stepped into my mind.  The Wizard of Oz to me was one of those creations, where when you first embark into that colorful time travel and unknowingness, you are caught unaware, yet strangely fascinated at the same time.  When it comes time for all of us to go back to Kansas, we are happy, but sad at the same time, to leave the sights, smells, and sensations the City of Oz was so kind as to bestow upon us.  The munchkins and the bad witches are only writer’s block, and soon, soon, soon, you will have reached the Publishing Emerald City and the editor within, who will surely take you by the hand, make you tap those keys on that well-worn keyboard, and give gratitude that there really is no place like home.  That I have always known how to write, how to read, how to give pleasure through my words is a pleasurable hobby, and one I hope to turn into a career. 

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About the Author

Just a single mom with two boys who loves to write.

Hemingway’s Adventures of a Young Man (1962) – Theatrical Trailer – © 20th Century Fox