Hello Meltingpot Readers,
For those of you who have been following my blog since way back when or have read my memoir, Kinky Gazpacho, or any other personal essay I’ve penned, then you know I’ve always loved to read and write. Every since I was a little girl, I’ve been writing stories, plays, manifestos, and menus for my imaginary restaurant. Just last night I was telling my kids that I had more than one pen name when I was younger, because I wrote in so many different genres. Seriously.
But when you get down to it, how does a little girl of eight fall in love with the written word so deeply? I mean, I loved my dog and wanted to be a veterinarian when he died prematurely, but that dream only lasted until the fourth grade. Soon after that, Sherlock Holmes and Harriet the Spy became my heroes and I begged Santa Claus my parents for a detective kit for Christmas. But the writing? The writing was forever. The writing was a permanent love. The writing was always there, inserting itself into whatever new fantasy or frivolity I adopted.
The day my mother bought me an antique Remington typewriter at a yard sale, she changed my life forever. There was some kind of magic that happened when words kissed paper, in lean, crisp, black letters. Ideas that previously only danced in my head, became real and permanent when they landed on a blank page. I was eight years old and I knew I was a writer. I knew because everything that was important to me, every version of myself I could imagine, included me and my Remington, getting it all down on paper.
Dear readers, I just found my faithful Remington. My mother kept him for me all these years, through all of her moves. I just reclaimed him while we were in North Carolina. And it was like reuniting with an old lover. I caressed his keys and tested their strength. Remington didn’t disappoint me. He never has. After all this time in basements and attics, he still works like a charm.
I think I feel a story coming on.
Do any of you have a Remington in your life? Doesn’t have to be a typewriter, but something that symbolizes the path you’ve taken in your life? I’m totally listening.
Peace!
Comments
4 responses to “Why I Write: Meet Remington”
I was going to write “español, te debo una”. I realize what I wrote sounds melodramatic, but its very much true. It gave me a focus just at the right time. I was so deeply depressed and anorexic that my heart starting beating irregularly and started to shut down. That scared me into a sincere recovery path. Spanish took my mind off of my body image, off of myself. I have actually considered getting an ñ tattooed on me in the colors of the Colombian flag, but where? And I am in my upper 30s!
Body image, self image, and self worth are extremely important to me. I never want my daughter to struggle with this issues. I want her to love her beautiful brown self. For this, I really enjoy your posts about self image and race. I know what its like to have a poor self image. I don’t know what it might be like for her to have a poor self image, partly influenced by the color of my skin. I could just sit back and hope it doesn’t happen, but I would be remiss in my duties of mother if I did that. Therefore I love to read personal narratives, etc about the subject.
This showed up on my facebook this morning….very fitting.
Thank you!!!!! Amazing. Just what I needed to hear today.
Two very important things to me, running and Spanish, came to me when I needed them the most, during two very low points in my life. I have been through dozens of running shoes since 1991. But I have a hard bound Spanish/English dictionary that I got when I first started studying Spanish in 2002. I never use it now as wordreference.com and my own knowledge have taken its place. But opening up that dictionary, I have had to repair several times, is like visiting an old friend. Studying Spanish literally (not figuratively) saved my life. On top of that, I have gone places, met people, learned things, became a parent all thanks to Spanish.
Wendy,
You know I have one of those dictionaries too. I won it because I was the most enthusiastic Spanish students in the 12th grade. Your comment almost made me cry, because Spanish gave me my life. Wow. Qué chulo!