About Me

October, 1978

I'm rummaging through my toy box, pulling out the figures that go along with my Sesame Street playground set. I love pushing Ernie on the swing, but I can't find him anywhere... I may have to settle for Bert. I can hear my mother talking to my uncle, but it's just background noise, drowned out by the sound of plastic, wood and metal bits as they clash against each other within the confines of my toy box.

"Sweetie, can you go get your 'Jack and the Beanstalk' book and read it to Uncle Ray?"

I consider her request; "Jack and the Beanstalk" versus this quest for an Ernie that insists on remaining lost. My arms were getting tired from all that hoisting and shifting and I was starting get frustrated. "Jack and the Beanstalk" wins out. I abandon the toy box and walk over to my bookshelf to pull out the worn, soft-paged book that I had my mother read to me at least once a day every day. I walk over to my Uncle Ray and he hoists me on to his lap. I lean against him, open the book and begin the story.

As I turn each page, I can feel my uncle tensing ever so slightly beneath me. Where I couldn't feel his heartbeat when I started reading, now the rhythmic pattern is tapping itself out on my right shoulder blade. Strange, mommy doesn't do that when I read to her.

I finish the book, hop off his lap and return to the toy box, intent on pulling everything out of it until I find Ernie. As I start removing toys, I can hear my uncle talking to my mother. His voice is louder and more excited than usual.

"Sally... oh my GOD! She can read?! She just turned 3 years old and she can read? I can't believe it. She paused at the commas, stopped at the periods and turned the pages when she was supposed to - this is incredible, Sally, she's a genius!"

I don't know what a genius is, but I guess by the sound of his voice that it's a good thing. I continue pulling toys out of the toy box, but I make a conscious effort to be quieter so I can hear what my mother says in response. She laughs.

"No, Ray... she can't read. She's got it memorized"

November, 1986

I'm staring at the clock on the wall, willing it to move faster. Sister Rosemond is standing next to Paul, two desks over from me. She's giving him reassuring praise as he stumbles and stutters his way through the painfully basic text he's reading aloud from.

I want to throttle him.

Two weeks ago I was sent to see Sister Rosemond, which I was initially happy about. I didn't know what class she taught, I just knew she was the friendly, kind old lady who stood at the door to greet the children as they came in every morning. I liked her, she was so different from all the other nuns who were all pretty mean and scary.

Now that I knew what Sister Rosemond taught and had been placed in her class, I couldn't wait to get out. I didn't belong here. Sister Rosemond, as it turns out, teaches remedial reading.

I had been sent to see her because my 6th grade teacher, Sister Conan (the Barbarian) thought I was trying to get out of reading aloud by making incomprehensible noise in an effort to make it sound as though I were reading, when I really wasn't. She thought that I was so petrified of reading aloud that I would try anything to avoid it. Little did she realize nothing could be further from the truth.

The first time I went to see Sister Rosemond, she stood over me as she was doing with Paul now. As I read, she would interrupt me and ask that I speak up a bit. I did as she asked and continued on. She interrupted me again to ask that I slow down. I did as she asked and continued on to finish the passage. She had me close the book and then asked me a few questions about what I'd just read. Did she think I could read without understanding the words? It seemed really strange, but I answered all of her questions and waited to see what would be next. She thanked me for coming by, sent me back to my class and then called a meeting with my mother.

When my mother returned from meeting with Sister Rosemond, she had a huge smile on her face. I asked her what that was all about and she chuckled a bit before telling me that the only thing that's wrong with my reading was that I was doing it too quickly and too quietly for others to understand. Sister Rosemond told her that for my age, I am actually reading at a speed well beyond my years, even more so than she's able to determine because reading aloud is always slower due to the necessity of having to translate the words on the page to speech. I beamed with pride, knowing that it had to be due to all the reading I'd been doing over the past few years; I digested books like most kids my age did Twinkies. Unfortunately for me, Sister Rosemond recommended that I stay in her class so she can work with me on slowing down and speaking up.

Now the frustration I felt whenever other kids read aloud during my regular class was exponentially increased as I had to sit there and suffer through listening to kids who really did need the extra help from Sister Rosemond.

December, 1993

I hate college. I want out. It's just like high school only worse because everyone's so much older; shouldn't there be more people my age in a freshman English class? I guess that's what happens when you go to a commuter school as devoid of campus life as UMass Boston is. I knew I shouldn't have listened to my mother when she started pushing me into this. UMass Boston was the only school that offered me enough financial aid to make it a possibility, so I caved to her pressure and accepted it despite the fact that I wanted nothing to do with being in school anymore. I graduated last June, that should have been the end of it. I look up at the clock and notice that the class will be ending in a few minutes. I begin packing up my bag, anxious to get out and head home.

As I start to make my way towards the door, the professor motions for me to come over to her. As I do, I can see she has the paper I had turned in a few classes ago in her hand. When I reach her, she tells me that my paper was excellent and wanted to ask if I would mind if she were to copy some portions of it to share with the class (anonymously, of course). She said she just wanted to provide a solid example of what good writing looks like. I agreed and started to consider the possibility of choosing English as my major.

April, 1998

Having been "administratively withdrawn" from UMass Boston following a letter informing me that the school had run out of funding and couldn't offer me the same financial aid I'd been given during my freshman year, I spent a few years working full time, dead-end jobs before arriving at the realization that a college degree actually is a priority for me.

Thanks to an unbelievably generous great aunt who sought to find a way to thank my mother for all she'd been doing to take care of her in her old age, I'm in my 2nd year at UMass Amherst, the flagship campus of the UMass system. Although it's only a 2 hour drive west from my home on Boston's south shore, Amherst is a lush green world away from everything I'd ever known. I'm beginning to enjoy the autonomy of living on my own for the first time and discovering things about myself that I hadn't realized, having previously been nothing more than my mother's daughter.

It's a beautiful spring day and I'm sitting in a writing class that's mandatory for admission into the English major program. I'm smiling to myself because I just received the most flattering compliment of my life thus far.

We had just finished reading "This Boy's Life" and had been assigned the task of writing a memoir of our own. The professor made it clear that it should speak to a core truth about ourselves, something that has been a repeating theme throughout our lives that we find ourselves faced with over and over again. He wanted to see the experiences that shaped us, he wanted to know how we felt about each, how we learned something from them, how we moved on, or if we hadn't yet... how we planned to. It was the most challenging assignment he'd given yet, and I couldn't wait to start it. I knew exactly what to write about: my absent father.

I wrote about how, as a child, I was painfully jealous of all my friends who had two parents.

I wrote about how my mother showered me with gifts on every birthday and Christmas, trying desperately to make them perfect enough to erase the emptiness she knew I felt from not having a father.

I wrote about how my father wanted to meet me when I was 9 and made promises that we were going to start doing things together, just the three of us... that we were going to be a family from now on.

I wrote about spending an hour talking to him, me in the front seat next to him and my mother in the back seat of his parked car at the beach just a few minutes from our house.

I wrote about how after that initial meeting, we never heard from him again.
I wrote about asking my mother to invite him to my 8th grade graduation a few years later, and how he declined because he had a wake to go to, but offered to take us out to dinner on another night.

I wrote about that dinner, and how he spoke to my mother about me as though I wasn't even there and how at the end of the night, he handed me an envelope with $15 in it and said "Here, go buy yourself some hamburgers or something".

I wrote about how I wrote him a letter that I planned to have arrive on Father's Day when I was 21 years old, about how I told him that I just wanted to know who he is; I just wanted to know something about half of my heritage... I told him how proud I was to be half Italian, even though I only knew the Irish side from my mother.

I wrote about how I never got a response from that letter, and about how just a few weeks ago, I found out that he had died of late onset diabetes through an obituary that my mother's boss had run across in the local paper.

I wrote about crying as though he had been a real father to me, about mourning the loss of the chance to know the man half responsible for my existence, my heritage, my identity.

I wrote about realizing that I had spent my entire life chasing after a man that wanted nothing to do with me, and the sudden fear I felt at the prospect that this absence of a relationship with my father could result in a series of dysfunctional romantic relationships with men who might treat me poorly.

I wrote about arriving at the conclusion that my mother had been right, I was better off without him.

When I finished that paper, I felt relieved. I felt as though a burden had been lifted. I felt vindicated. I felt that justice had been done. I felt alive.

I handed it in for my grade, not caring what it was because I was just happy with having produced something that I was truly proud of; something I had poured my heart and soul into.

When the professor passed back the papers, mine was the last one at the bottom of the pile. He handed it to me and as I went to take it from him, he let his hand linger on it just long enough for me to look up at him in curiosity as to why he wasn't letting it go. He looked me dead in the eye, smiled the most genuine, heartfelt smile I had ever seen, and winked. He let go of the paper resumed his post at the lectern.

I flipped through the pages, looking for the comments that typically dot the margins, but found a scant few. I got to the final page and found a large "A" that had been circled several times and a rather large paragraph worth of comments. Among them were reassurances that these experiences, while painful and difficult to work through, had shaped the person I am today and although I may not see it now, the day would come when I wouldn't wish my life any different from how it had been. He continued on to say that I "stand head and shoulders" above the rest of my classmates in my writing abilities and he has no reservations whatsoever in recommending that I be admitted into the English major program at UMass Amherst.

June 2009

It's been six weeks since I was laid off from my decidedly non-writing related job at Microsoft. While enjoying the unexpected vacation and much needed time with my husband and son, I've also been thinking about how long it's been since I've been able to write just because I wanted to.

During college and for a number of years afterwards, I had written live music reviews for online music publications on a fairly regular basis. I even took on a freelance position as Publicist for one of my favorite bands. That was the last time I had been able to really focus on writing for the sheer enjoyment of it.

That was eight years ago...