Column: Rough Drafts

My favorite
column photo
(I still look like
this--Honest!)


This is the first column I ever wrote, beginning a 15-year career of publishing Home Front in California newspapers. It speaks of the identity shift that happens after becoming a wife and mother. At the time it was written, I had a one-year-old boy, a two-year-old girl, and a husband of just four years. There didn't seem to be much relationship between my old life and my new one, but I tried to make the connection here.

I was a girl like any other. I had dreams. I had ambitions. Can I help it if they were a little far-fetched? If I haven't achieved them, does that make me a failure?

My particular dream was to be an artist: to write great poems and present them to the world; to run in rarified circles; to travel to Europe, often; to live each moment like there was no tomorrow.

I remember that dream now, from the distant plateau of reality, of years worn away like rock and worn upon like clothing, because I recently got a letter from a firend, and old friend, whom I haven't seen in six years.

In those six years I have metamorphosed from poignant, struggling, would-be artist to plain old househag: married woman, mother of two.

Explaining this transition to my friend was a problem. Would he still respect me when he knew what I'd become?

The kids were easy. I've always wanted children. I didn't expect to have two in two years, but they're cute, they're healthy, and they're not old enough to be juvenile delinquents. I told him about the kids.

Describing how I spend my day was a little more difficult. I haven't written a poem in years. I rarely go to the movies, the theater, or a concert. I can't seem to finish a book. My current idea of excitement is letting my two-year-old run around without diapers during infrequent attempts at potty training. For adventure, we go to the drive-thru car wash.

Still, there are justifications. Everyone knows toddlers take up a lot of time. I decided not to dwell on it. One or two sentences would suffice.

But when it came to describing my husband, I was at a loss. I love him, sure, but perhaps that's because I never sat down and listed the personality traits that make up the man.

For instance, my husband loves monster movies. Our living room wall is adorned with posters of the Wolfman, Frankenstein and Ymir, a really angry looking giant lizard that came from somewhere, out there, 20 Million Miles to Earth.

Our video library is stocked with classic titles like The Hideous Sun Demon (man gets mean and hairy in the daytime); Fiend Without a Face (disembodied brains with spinal columns that can fly and suck your brains out); I Married a Monster from Outer Space (sound familiar?); and Monolith Monsters (really scary rocks that terrorize the planet by growing big and falling over on people.)

You might think that because my husband is a movie buff he would occasionally take me to one. Not so. New movies just don't do it for him. He likes his entertainment, like his philosophy, in black and white.

He also loves animals, but not the cute and furry kind. With the exception of his attack cat, Rover, he saves all his loves for amphibians, reptiles, and fish. The problem with these animals is that they die a lot.

He hates to travel, but on what basis, I'm not sure. He's only been out of the state once, on a trip to Boston when he was 10 years old. He doesn't even much like to leave the yard. His idea of a fun weekend is waxing the Studebaker or building a deck. Or, more accurately, ripping out an old deck and leaving debris all over the yard.

He doens't fancy himself a deep thinker and we almost never stay up late discussing the meaning of life.

After a couple of unsuccessful rough drafts, I finally told my husband of my dilemma. Given this list of attributes, how could I describe him as a mate suitable for a poignant, romantic, struggling would-be artist? When I met him on the college newspaper, he wanted to be a writer. Where had all his creativity gone?

"That's easy," he said. "Tell him at first I put my creativity into fixing up the house, and now I'm putting it into the kids." When he said it, I knew it was true, or at least true enough to play in Poughkeepsie.

I mean, his most endearing quality is the way he chases the laughing toddlers around the living room. Instead of a poem, or a short story, or a novel, we were creating a childhood, a family, a life. There will be time for all the rest of it, I hope.

So that's what I told my friend, and no more. I just didn't see the point of bringing The Beast With Five Fingers into it.

This column was first published in The San Francisco Progress on April 1, 1988.