I’ve got my laptop
open but I’m not writing. Words were my
lover for so long, but now spurned, I just sit at my kitchen table staring out
into space. No thought in particular. I glance at my forsythia bursting out in
yellow bloom. It’s cheerful even if I’m not. The grass needs repair. Our dog
Pip has left her pee marks zigzagging there and about. I hate to go to the side
of the house where there is hardly any grass left. Her muddy paws tell me the
story sight unseen.
If I still had the gig
with our local newspaper that I had for ten years, writing a column each
month, I’d be at my keyboard clicking away, happily lost in a tangle of
sentences. I’d be chuckling at the little joke I was writing or sobbing at an
incident I fished from my memory bank or maybe getting upset at a perceived
slight to my ego. Once a month I went through a mandatory emotional catharsis
that left me alive and renewed.
“It’s a
business decision,” they told me at the paper.
It’s a
rejection, I
thought. As a realtor, you’d
think I’d be used to rejection.
“Are you
thinking of selling your house?” I ask at the door.
“No.”
“Thank
you. Have a good day.” I smile and go on to the next house. Multiply this
by 30 and I’ve had my quota of rejection for the day. Tomorrow, I’ll get some
more. It’s a numbers game. One yes, and the sun smiles through the clouds.
Yet this
one rejection from the newspaper has left me disconsolate. Rejection from
homeowners is just my job. Rejection from my paper, hit at my soul.
Why,
indeed do I even want to write?
I am not
a political analyst. Although I come from a country with a turbulent political
history, I am quite matter-of-fact in my political views. In terms of interest,
I rank political debates with waiting in line at the grocery cash.
I am not
a financial wizard. My crystal ball was out of whack when I told my boys to buy
Nortel at the bargain price of $56.
I am not
a scholar. Oh wait, let me dig out the paper I did on Ibsen a million moons
ago: “His characters grope through the asphyxiating atmosphere into the open,
freer life of the liberated.” Whew! Just reading that sentence feels like
navigating through a dark, smoke-filled pub.
I wasn’t
paid to pontificate on politics, finance or the arts. My job was simply to bare
my soul once a month – which I did 120 times.
My love
affair with words started in college. Our school paper needed to fill a column.
My friend, the Managing Editor, looked at me; I accepted the challenge and was
instantly hooked. I even had the gall to publish in Spanish. The
Augustinian Fathers must have rolled their eyes behind my back.
I
magnified this minute experience and landed a job as editorial assistant to the
editor of a national entertainment magazine. For my first article, I put my
by-line to an AP release of an interview with Richard Burton! My editor
blanched. AP didn’t find out. I kept my job.
I
flaunted my press card everywhere, then dashed to the office to beat my
deadline. I wrote about food, fashion, and dance – even architecture. I went by
gut feeling and wrote with authority. I reviewed TV shows, eyeballed
celebrities and picked the brains of society’s business leaders. None of my
subjects questioned my “profound” views. So I kept on faking it and every week
had the pleasure of seeing my by-line. My youthful ego blossomed with abandon.
 |
| "Well, Tessie, I'm glad you asked me that...." |
And then
everything came to a screeching stop. I got married. Had two kids. Came
to Canada. Scrounged for a living. Had two more kids. Scrounged some more. Then
one day, I lifted up my head and saw the world again. Through eyes, wide open,
with time in my hands and laughter in my belly, saw that life beyond work is
good.
Finding
the funny side of an attack of shingles started me off writing again. The
editor was entertained; a friend said I made shingles a must-have disease. I
found myself once more filled with joy and clicking away. My hiatus from writing seemed to evaporate.
Now I feel I am again waking up. My fingers hover over the
keyboard. My pulse races. And then ... my heart is skipping with the staccato
of the keyboard.
I am re-starting my
torrid affair. I
wouldn’t call this affair clandestine, for that would denote an affair
concealed in the shadows of darkened alleys. It is, however, all
consuming, relentless. I wouldn’t call this love sordid either. In fact,
it is pure. It transcends age and weight, wrinkles and love handles. It is
enduring, and exquisitely passionate. I have a love affair with the
English language.
In university I inhaled
words then exhaled sentences like: “The winner of the recent contest,
sang ”Hallelujah” with such rejoicing that one can imagine a staircase from
heaven descend among the clouds with our Saviour’s hands spread out to welcome
everyone to His kingdom.” As you can see I was a
drama queen. I couldn’t get enough words to string together.
I have
come down from the heavens a tad since. English is a vibrant language. What other
language lets me describe so many varying degrees of anger? The fact that
I’m upset does not preclude a smile on my face; when I turn sullen you better
not be talking to me; when I start fuming, I need you out of my sight; when I’m
raging mad, all the knives better disappear; and watch out when I start foaming
at the mouth!
Every thought has a
nuance, every action a measure that can be peeled off layer by layer like the
petticoat of a wedding dress, exposing just enough until the next level of
revelation. What power!
…the gentle quiver of a
leaf; the muted sigh of helplessness; the serene face of acceptance. Life at
its best is the translucence of the newly sprung leaves of spring; the angelic
grin of a toddler; the rapture of first love; the impassioned rhetoric of a
politician; the wild and frenzied leap of a triumphant athlete. Such infinite
shades of being!
… a baby cries, a widow
weeps; the action is the same and yet different. I can only imagine a witch’s
cackle, but I hear my daughter chuckle, my grandchildren giggle and my men’s
earthshaking, belly-wrenching guffaws. And
talk about a sexy language; a young girl’s coquettish look, a young man’s
tremulous caress…
Actions are graphic
realities; easily understood; emotions are brush strokes on a painting, the
soft cadences of a musical phrase. “I
hate you” is trite but to loathe is to nourish a caustic venom in one’s
insides. Loathing permeates its host with impunity, feeding on the excruciating
anguish of a broken heart, crushed expectations, a tragedy; to fall into
despair, alone into the dark abyss of hopelessness.
English
grew some more while I was busy scrounging for a living. A hundred years ago, I
knew only ten figures of speech; now I can understand only the top twenty among
hundreds. Oxymoron is my
current favourite. True lies (Arnold’s movie) comes to mind first, then “brawling
love, loving hatred,” (Shakespeare’s Romeo
and Juliet); and “deliberate haste” (Obama).
I
remember onomatopoeias when I hear the commercial “snap, crackle and pop” and
those that make me shiver: the slithering snake, slime; the screech of
nails on a blackboard.
Dr. House, MD (a TV show) is a master in
metaphors. “Saying there appears to be some clotting is like
saying there's a traffic jam ahead. Is it a ten-car pile-up, or just a really
slow bus in the center lane? And if it is a bus, is that bus thrombotic or
embolic?”
Given
these infinite expressions of being, how then can anyone not love the English
language? How then did I build a wall of procrastination
to the very thing that gives me life and purpose? I am no stranger to
rejection; why would I allow a hundred editors’ rejection affect me? All
logical questions. Do
I have a logical answer? No…
Psychologists
say that putting a name to the problem is half the battle won. Is my enemy pride? Fear?? Ego???
Whatever!
I am writing again.
Tessie Lagtapon was a supply teacher
for the Dufferin Peel Catholic
School Board for seven years, then discovered Real Estate was a better fit and
has been doing it for the past thirty-one years. More recently, her daughter has
been gracefully taking over the business. “I call her my pension fund,” says
Tessie. “I earn my keep by being her backup, office personnel, and to go-to
resource. Thank God she likes selling houses. Meanwhile, I can be in the
garden and plot the next article.” This essay originally appeared in Forever Young.
See Brian Henry’s
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