The Writing Lesson; or, My Exquisite First Lie: A Short Narrative by Max Reddick for My Mother on Mother’s Day

You know, I owe my mother so much.  In a number of ways, she is most responsible for the man I have become.  At least, all the positive stuff.  My mother gave me so many things and taught me so many more.  However, there is one lesson that stands out in particular.

You see, in the very beginning it was just me and my mother.  She and my natural father separated soon after I was born.  And between then and the time she met and married the right Reverend L.G. Reddick, I was being raised by committee in a very rural area of West Tennessee with my mother and maternal grandmother being the co-chairpersons of that committee.

From Behind the Mask: My New Year's Resolution

We wear the mask that grins and lies,/It hides our cheeks and shades our eyes —Paul Laurence Dunbar, “We Wear the Mask”

I want to be an honest man and a good writer. –James Baldwin

Okay, I guess it is time for me to end my vacation from blogging or any other meaningful and constructive pursuits. This holiday season I simply did nothing but rest and relax, enjoy the company of my wife and children, and get my mental together.

Though I am usually annoyed by inactivity and idleness, this season of unproductiveness seemed so much different; it allowed me to step back from the usually relentless fast pace of my life and put engage in a bit of self-examination and put a number of things in perspective.

A week or so ago I wrote a post highlighting President Obama’s propensity toward compromise. However, in thinking things through this week, I realized, or was finally willing to admit, that I share that same propensity.

Perhaps, it is all those years being the only or one of a few African Americans in majority white institutions. Perhaps, somewhere along the way, I found the path of least resistance to be the most desirable path. Perhaps, I learned that to move forward, I must necessarily present myself as none-threatening and subdue my voice in such a way that it does not offend.

But perhaps my acquiescent attitude arises out of past privation. I have tasted the metallic emptiness of hunger and want before, and I do not wish to go back. I cling tenaciously to my precarious station in life.

Nevertheless, over the years I have developed a repertoire of masks that I skillfully and seamlessly slip in and out of given the situation. There have been some days that I have changed masks so frequently that I have to stop and remind myself just what mask I was wearing. And with each change of masks, I can only question whether or not I leave a bit of myself clinging to the innermost surface of the mask.

During this holiday season, I happened to find myself at a little impromptu get together with a number of friends and colleagues, some of whom I have known since grad school or as far back as undergrad. We were having a good time, and I let my guard down and really cut loose.

However, on the periphery there was one young lady who I don’t know very well but who I have met and spoken to on occasion. But this whole time she is staring at me with this perplexed look on her face. Finally, I just had to give in and ask her just why she was staring at me in this manner.

She shook herself out of her trance and told me that she had never seen me like this before. She had never seen me so animated. She had never seen me so full of life. Then someone else spoke up and said, “Well, this is the real Max. This is the one we all got to know back in the day but who rarely comes out anymore.”

And someone else chimed in: "Yeah, just during holidays and when we are by ourselves."

Then everyone fell silent for a minute and looked around as if some accusation had just been made.

The real Max? This hurt me, threw me for a loop. Then all those other Max-es are fake? If this is so, then I spend most of my time being something I am not simply to appease others, to appear less threatening, to go along just to get along? The real Max, huh?

But this is my one New Year’s resolution: I will drop the masks, and I will begin to take risks. I will not continue to abdicate my strength because this abdication has become my weakness. I will endeavor to push onward, ever upward toward my goal of becoming, just as Baldwin wished, an honest man and a good writer.

And just what do you propose to do differently in the up-coming year?

I really wish I were able to write more stuff like this.

This morning looks as if it will be a beautiful morning indeed. I decided to turn the television off last night, so as I slept, I did not hear the noise in the background. I did not hear the arguing and fussing back and forth. I did not hear the lies and accusations. But I slept peacefully, perhaps more peacefully than I have slept in quite some time. Perhaps I should turn off the television each night.

And I got up early enough to assist my wife in making breakfast, but now I’m just sipping on a cup of coffee and watching. I tried to surprise her by cooking the oatmeal, but I burned it. I always burn the oatmeal. So we just had a good laugh, dumped it out and started all over again.

When is the last time the two of us have been up this early and alone, all alone? No children, just us. When is the last time we got to just sit and talk and poke fun at one another and laugh like children? When is the last time we wished for time to just stop for a minute or two so that we would have just that much longer to do nothing but enjoy the other’s company?

But soon we’ll have to wake the children up and the chaos of the morning routine will begin. And my wife will be off to work and the children off to school. I don’t have any classes on Friday, but usually I go in just to prepare for the upcoming week. However, today I think I will stay home. I will stay home and just write. I feel like just writing.

But I do not want to write anything angry, anything polemical. I don’t want to write in short, clipped, harsh sentences filled with anger, with disappointment, with resentment. Instead I would like to write long flowing sentences filled with the pleasant dulcet tones of remembrance, of love, of longing.

Perhaps I’ll write something about my grandmother. I am finally at that point in my grief that I can look at her picture without tearing up. I can finally think of her without having to choke down that lump in my throat. I still miss her deeply, but now her memory is soothing, not upsetting. Now I can finally appreciate what a blessing she always was, always will be.

Perhaps I’ll finish that piece I started for my wife. It has a catchy title: “Because I Could Never Love You Nearly Enough.” But I must find the prose, the flow, the language to live up to the promise of that title. And if I finish it in time, I can get it out in the morning mail, and the letter will arrive in the mail tomorrow just in time to find someplace for the kids to spend the evening. But I’m getting way ahead of myself. One thing at a time.

I know I need to write a letter to my oldest daughter. I feel the need to tell her I love her, and that I am proud of her, and that I think about her daily, almost hourly. She is always on my mind. She is always in my heart even though she is so far away.

Of course, I could just pick up the phone and just call her, but a phone call does not have the permanence of writing. Whenever she is down, whenever she is lonely, whenever she feels defeated, I want her to be able to pick up her father’s letter and read it. And read it over again and know that whatever she is going through, I am there for her, and I am there with her even though she is so far away.

Alisia, if you read this today, please know that I love you even more than I love myself. And I miss you terribly and look forward to seeing you shortly.

Yes, this is turning out to be an exceptional day. I wish every day was just like this one; I wish I could just spend every day writing more stuff like this. But if every day was like this one, would this moment still be as sweet?

Something like... (The Beautiful Post)

My wife glanced at yesterday’s post and just sighed. She explained that she did not like it when I composed pieces like that. She told me that it seems that as I grow older, I am rapidly becoming more and more cynical, and my writing reflects this cynicism.

She went on to say that she enjoys reading my compositions much more when I don’t write anything angry or fearful or threatening, as has been my main output as of late. And she alluded to when, at one time, I seemed to find beauty even in the most unlikely of places, at the most unlikely of times, and dug deep, deep, deep within myself to find, to discover , the language—just the right combination of words—to represent that beauty in prose.

She reminded me of something I had written on our wedding night. Something I had insisted on reading aloud even as we both waited impatiently and nervously to consummate our wedding vows. Something that managed to bring us both to tears. Something that imperfectly and clumsily--yet splendidly she recalled—gave voice to the emotion of the moment.

“Can’t you,” she asked imploringly, “write something beautiful like that again?”

She wondered out loud what had happened to that idealistic young man she began her adult life with in that tiny little apartment in Riverside when we were plenty broke, yet plenty happy. When the only furniture we owned was a second hand king-sized water bed and a pair of papasan chairs. But how convenient for newlyweds.

She reminded me of a time when I spent every moment that we were separated documenting each and every one of my thoughts, my feelings—every emotion--, in the margins of my class notes, in the empty spaces of those blue examination booklets, wherever I found room to write. And at night, I would read them to her as we waited for the Arsenio Hall show to begin.

“All the stuff you wrote then was so silly, so corny, but so beautiful,” she laughed.  “When we are apart, do you still dominate your every thought now?”

Then she dug out a baby memory book from the top of a closet somewhere. She dug out a delicate, yellowed napkin which I vaguely recognized. She gingerly unfolded it and passed it to my teenage daughter, who just happened to be passing through.

“This is what your dad wrote to you shortly after you were born when we waited night after night in the preemie unit, hoping and praying that you would develop properly, that you would gain enough weight so that we might just be able to bring you home with us. But you wouldn’t stop moving, fidgeting, and you had to be swaddled just so you would not burn off what food you were given. You were unctuous even then.”

My daughter read it once.  And then again. Then she handed it to me with a wistful look in her eye.

“This is so absolutely beautiful, Dad. When did you become so angry?  You should write more stuff like this.  I would devour every word.”

And then my wife reminded me of the obituary I had written upon the occasion of the death of our youngest child. The obituary I had struggled through even though with each and every line my heart broke over and over and over again. Even though it was difficult to even see the page through my tears, which caused the ink to smear and run.

“That,” my wife told me, “was perhaps the most beautiful thing you have ever written, despite the balefulness of the occasion, of the moment, and even in its pitiful, sorrowful, simplicity.”

Lastly, she reminded me of the impending change of seasons when the summer reluctantly gave way to fall. She reminded me that at one time this had been my favorite time of year. She reminded me that at one time the change of seasons, signaling the movement of time, a perpetual cycle of decline and rebirth, awed me, inspired me to write so many beautiful things, most of which I now seemed to distance my from by packing them away in boxes in a storage facility somewhere.

As she prepared to leave for work, she playfully admonished me, “When I get to work and check your site, I would like to read something beautiful. Write something beautiful for me, something like you used to write so long ago.”

So, she left me sitting there, staring at a blank page, trying to figure out just what to write when I suddenly realized that the most beautiful thing that I have ever known or experienced, that I could never have imagined, dreamt up out of thin air—given all the good and even the bad, the positive and even the negative—defied language, and I lacked the requisite talent and skill to ever capture it with words. 

The most beautiful thing I have ever known or experienced, that I could never have imagined, dreamt up out of thin air, is our life together, the life we have made for ourselves.