I Am Writing Again

 Today being July First means that Camp NaNoWriMo is once again open and letting people explore the thrill of writing fast and intently without too much regard for the finished product.  This is after all, meant to be a quick and dirty rough draft of a novel.

 I'm not there.  I have been working on this novel for quite awhile and have 60,000 words which tell me not to ignore them just because it is camp time. So this year, I am not beginning fresh, and I am editing and writing and loving it.  Such a good feeling to open a manuscript i had closed months ago, and find things I no longer remember writing, and realizing it is better than I hold even though it is a long way from done.

The first draft of Duffy Barkley and my first completed "books", from when I was 10

 Because it is July, and I am not teaching (or unfortunately bringing in any income) I have time to write, and time to play as long as the play is cheap, so I have also been walking at the Redwoods near home. What a great place to look for something to spark my imagination.

 Nothing makes me feel smaller, or yet more a part of something beautiful, than the redwoods

 Also, I managed to capture a rainbow in my living room, if I can do that, surely I can capture the third adventure of Duffy Barkley on paper

Here is a brief sample from where I got to rereading this morning

Oh-oh-ing's eyes gave him sympathy, but no mercy. “Of course it is hard to be you Duffy, it is hard to be anyone. We all have our burdens and the times when the energy to make the effort seems impossible. Then we keep making the effort until we die and our children keep on in our place.”

“Oh, thanks a lot!” he muttered sarcastically.

“You are welcome.” She answered sincerely. He looked up in time to see her mouth twist into a smile that was part amused, part sympathetic but wholly without unkindness. Then she used both of her hands to push her mane back from the sides of her face and when she dropped her hands to his shoulders again her face was serious.

“I don't know what we do next,” Duffy said, with nevertheless, a bit more hope than before he had been reminded that he wasn't alone.

The gathering of Oorah were no longer looking directly at Duffy but had turned away, and now faced the forest. There was a movement in the crowd as it parted left and right and opened a clear path from the back to just in front of Duffy. Oh-oh-ing kept an arm around Duffy's shoulders and murmured low so that only he could hear, “You are not our only unexpected guests at the present time. You remember?”

Duffy's jaw dropped as he stared at the approaching trio. The spectacle their combined presence created would not have looked out of place in the Big Parades back on Earth. A large blue bear, not painted, not a teddy bear costume on a man, not a balloon, but a sky blue, lumbering, four legged predator came down the aisle the parted crowd had created.

He would have been spectacular alone.

He was not alone. Riding on his back was a vividly, orange, wildcat. She stood with her four paws in his fur and balanced gracefully as he swayed from side to side. She was not maned, but her pointed ears were echoed in little pointed feathers of fur at the sides of her mouth and long whiskers twitched there as well.

Walking at the bear's right side was a tall, slender girl who appeared whiter than milk. A spiky tuft of green rose from her forehead above a black, v shaped patch of skin descending from her brow to between her eyes and giving a heart shaped look to her face.

She was wearing a simple wrapped skirt and top of a glittering sequined blue cloth. Duffy had every reason to suspect that the beautiful wrapping was actually soft, supple leather made from fish skin with gleaming scales in place.

At one time Duffy had traveled with and befriended the girl. He had met the bear and wildcat before they helped him get home on his first time in Uhrlin, but the three of them looked so impressive that he froze, uncertain if he should bow or hug them, he did nothing.

The girl stopped and met his eyes and then laughed and twirled in place, skirt flaring wide as her arms swept in a circle that included everyone, “Oh, This is perfect! Duffy is here!” and she bounded toward him and hugged him quickly. As she dropped her arms and turned back to her companions, all Duffy could see was her obsidian black back and the green mane that reached down to between her shoulder blades.

Bullied and Moving On

 I was bullied first through 6th grade very badly. Then our three grade school combined in one jr high and I made some friends. It didn't totally stop but it was way better. Then finally I graduated and moved to a new town for college. I wasn't bullied there but I expected it so much I was really shy and never approached people first. 

Good luck finding those first few steps away from the group that bullies you. They may think they are the whole world but they are not even a drop in the ocean.

I never went back for reunions at my grade school-high school town but a couple of the worst tormentors in grade school have contacted me on-line and apologized and let me know that it is a guilt they have lived with and that they aways kew what was happening was wrong. That means the world to the little girl who still hides inside me even now.

I have been hearing a lot about bullying.  We all have. I know some of the students I see call everything bullying, and it is NOT. But there is a lot of bullying and it can't be ignored or it only gets worse, and the impact from being bullied lasts a life time.

Why do I think it is not all bullying?  Because, having been bullied, and yes, at times having been a bully, I know some of the differences between true bullying and just ordinary bad moments.

I believe that a lot of times when a student claims that they are being bullied, they are really just having one of those sad, frustrating days where kids learn how to get along with other people, where they practice the give and take and learn the empathy and co-operation skills necessary to live as part of a society.  It may bring tears when your "Best Friend" suddenly tells you that she wants to play with someone else, It may hurt your feelings when your classmates laugh at the clothing you chose for the day, and it may make you mad if the kid eating his flaming hot cheetos at lunch refuses to share. However, those are not bullying.

To be bullying, it has to be purposefully targeted at you, and it will probably be ongoing and is usually not just one person because the true bully likes a cowed audience of followers along for the entertainment.  It will probably hit at your weakest area, bullies are good at seeing what those are.

See this girl, awkward yes, different than most of my classmates, true, but not as ugly and stupid and obviously bad as I believed at the time.

True bullying makes you believe everyone else sees the reason you were targeted. It makes you believe there is no escape, that everyone is on the side of those tormenting you, and that those who you could ask for help won't be able to do nothing.  It isolates you and makes you feel like asking for help will only increase the abuse that you must somehow deserve.

Not everyone who bullies you is the primary instigator.  Some will just be almost as weak as you and be afraid that if they speak up the attack will turn on them. It is hard for anyone to willingly volunteer for that kind of abuse and it takes courage and the ability to see that bullies are afraid of groups. There is strength in numbers if other people can join together, which is precisely what the bully wants to avoid.

In grade school I started first grade not really knowing how to relate to other kids. I had a lot of grandparents, great-grandparents, great-Aunts and Uncles, but no siblings until just before I started school. I was severely pigeon-toed and the Dr. ordered dance classes but I failed drastically at dancing when I could barely walk. I was freckled and loud and tried to argue with the teacher who was teaching us to spell wrong, when I had started school already knowing how to read.  The class was using a phonetic program that taught that school was spelled "Skwl" and I knew better.  Cat was not Kat no matter what the teacher said. Not a good candidate for ITA learning!

In grade school, I had a battle every day. My things were stolen and destroyed or passed around from child to child with great drama and screams of "Dixie Fleas! Pass it on!"  They pretended to spray my chair with disinfectant before anyone else would sit there.  I came to believe I really did stink.  I started not doing homework just so I could be kept after school so the kids who threatened to beat me up as I walked home would get bored and be gone.

When I was chased to my house and tried to hide between the screen door and the locked inner door as 4 older girls threatened to kill me, my mom drove up. In sweet voices they told her that "we don't know what is wrong. We came by and she was just crying."  Mom thanked them for trying to help and I claimed I had just had a horrible head-ache.

Once I went to Jr. high it got better, and I had some friends from the other grade schools, but I still had kids who stole my PE clothes or cornered me and smeared raw eggs in my hair and poured cans of soda on me.  Pretty girls would catch my eye and I would stare back, wondering what they knew that made them accepted, that I was missing, then they would snarl at me to stop staring.

I never quite got it right. Once the High School held an anti-bullying assembly with a movie about a boy who tried so hard to be invisible that he stepped off the bus and died of a heart-attack and when the school tried to find his friends, none of his classmates knew who he was.  More kids told me "Hello" after that assembly than ever before but it only lasted a day.  I too was learning to hide, I carried a book and sketch pad and I hid behind them all the time.  I ate lunch in the art room and went straight home after school. I tried to be aloof so no-one would be able to tease me that no-one wanted to be my friend.  

It made me a bad friend to the people who really were trying, because I was afraid it was a trap and then they would laugh, and I was convinced I really didn't deserve a friend anyway.

How did I learn to move on?

First I had to move on.  I could never have become the loving friend and Mom and wife and teacher and writer that I am now, had I stayed in that town.  When I went away, I literally kept my head down and made no eye contact, and could not believe those other kids on the college campus were talking to me when they said "Hi"  It took a lot of them to make me understand that there wasn't some scarlet letter branding me an outcast. Then it took one very confident and loving friend to keep holding on even when I pushed away, and another, and the man who loved me and married me, and kept insisting I was a treasure.  It took seeing my worth in a lot of other peoples eyes before I could see it in the mirror.

It took leaving home and creating my own home. It took living overseas in China for awhile and being in the minority and still making friends

So then I became a teacher of special ed. children and a Mom of loving men, and a writer of novels that are anti-bullying pro-loving and I have made a conscious choice to add to the love in this world

So now school is starting again, and kids will be bullied again. What can we all do?  Love each other, hold a hand, offer a smile and a validation of worth, refuse to be silent audiences any longer. Ask for and offer help.

There is more good than bad people in the world.  That is why the bad ones are the news and the good ones are the norm.

Looking for beauty, finding it in the last place I expected.

Looking at this little girl with my grown up eyes, I see the freckles and ragged bangs and gappy teeth, but I also see the smile.  That year was the last year before glasses added to the look.

What I don't see is the sadness and the frightened child who was slowly becoming convinced that all the kids in Sunset Elementary could not be wrong. There must be something truly stinky and flea ridden about ME.

Gradually, I was losing the confidence that being raised in a family full of Grandparents, great-grandmothers, Great-Aunts and great-Uncles
had instilled in me.

The little girl who always had a willing audience among family, did not even know what it meant when her mother told her to go out and "Play," and had no idea that the average 5 year old would not want to spend hours listening to me brag about how well I could read, or watch me.  Soon my lack of social skills with my peers made me an easy target for the cruelty that is, unfortunately, found on every playground.

 There were kids I liked and admired, but I didn't know how to tell them, and soon one of them told me, "I can't be your friend, or no-one else will play with me."

I learned to long for invisibility, and even to keep silent if someone else was being harassed, because, at least that day, it wouldn't be me.  I tried to seek help from adults, but my Mom had also been a victim, and a poor, only child, who's mom made her wear knee high socks and long braids when bobby socks and bobbed pony-tails were everywhere.  She compensated by dressing me the way she had longed to be dressed and my bobbed hair and anklets were the only ones in sight.  She also told me, "The boys always pick on the girls they like."  I knew the difference between being picked on, and being threatened and bullied but couldn't explain it to anyone.

Through public school, I shrank inside, learning to feel disgust every time I caught my own face in a mirror, avoiding looking at pictures of me, never making eye contact for fear of the snide, rejection which always came.  Then in 8th and 9th grade, I made a few friends, but I never was brave enough to trust that they really liked me.  In fact I saw it as proof that they must not like themselves very much.  If they could have gotten a better class of friend, surely they would have, or so I thought, and for that I am so sorry.  Years have proven the true, loyal friends that they are.

Art and writing in college finally turned me outside of my own pain to dazzle me with the beauty that exists in this world, all tangled up with the ugliness, so that the chance that you might see beauty or ugliness is dependent upon the eyes that you use to look for it.

As I started to smile at the flowers or lights around me, people would smile back at me.  At first I did not believe it.  I looked around to see who was behind me, receiving a greeting, and when no-one else was in sight, I waited for the attack, that kept failing to come.

 Two people really made me start to believe in myself.  There was Lance, my brother with Down's syndrome and a passion for life.  Then there was a music and Drama student who started car-pooling with me after I answered his ad in the college, "Hot-Line."  Granted, my insecurity added greatly to the drama in his life as he tried to convince me that I was worth loving, but thankfully he never gave up.

Now we live together, and have shared nearly 30 years of marriage, in a world so beautiful that it catches my breath and makes me cry.  We have raised two wonderfully confident children, taught thousands of students, travelled to Asia and Europe and I keep writing and painting and taking pictures.

 Amazingly i can look at my old pictures and smile at who that little girl has become.  I may never be the most beautiful person you will ever see, but I am beautiful, I'm a great Mom, a loving friend and not a bad writer, and most of all, I can help other people see the beauty inside and outside of them.

If this isn't a welcoming place for you, I can Promise that there is one waiting somewhere. It is a big, wonderful world, and when you step out into it expecting to make friends and find beauty, that is often what happens.  And when that is not what happens, remember, things move on, the days change, and the path you take will be largely determined by the baggage you carry with you.

So let go of the fear, leave the self-doubt and loathing behind, and look at first, for just one beautiful thing and one person to flash a smile to.  It does get better.

 The sun will rise again, and last years dead flowers will have left seeds behind.

I wish you all the best in your journey through this world.  When you set forth, take a smile with you, and give one to the small child that you used to be.


Thanks for Reading,

Love,


Dixie





Josh Billings, said,


"If we had no winter, the spring would not be so pleasant: if we did not sometimes taste of adversity, prosperity would not be so welcome."

School Shooting, Bullies, and Violence in Books for School Kids

  I am 48 years old, but I have never been away from books for young people.  As a Mom and a teacher and a writer - but most of all, as someone who loves books, from picture books to Paradise Lost.

    In writing, Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog, I gave myself permission to play around in the world of fantasy and to use some traditional features from the types of Fantasy novels that I enjoyed as a child, but also to use some of the issues that the world is dealing with today.

     One of these issues is the fact that, "School Shooting" is a term which was unheard of when I was a student, but which is sadly a common thing to hear about on the news today.  As a teacher, I have to practice safety drills with students, and along with "earthquake" and "fire" drills, we also practice "Gunman on Campus."  I hate this reality, but my hating it makes it no less prevalent.


    There were guns at my High School, a lot of them, and no one cared.  I grew up in Wyoming, close to Yellowstone Park, and the students who lived out of town, on ranches or farms, carried shotguns and rifles in gun racks in the window of their unlocked pick-up trucks.  The targets were beer bottles, jack Rabbits, magpies, stop signs, coyotes.  There was never any thought that the target might be a student or a teacher.

    We had bullies, we had school fights, we went to school while the Vietnam War was on the news every evening and assigned for current events.  We knew that teenage pregnancy and hard core drugs were issues.  We read books where there was violence and favorite characters died.  And yet, it was more innocent still.

   In Junior High I loved, The Outsiders and, The Chronicles of Narnia, and, Bless the Beasts and the Children, and Johnny Tremain.  In High School I delighted in being terrified by Jaws, and Christine and, Carrie and Flowers in the Attic.

    But rogue sharks, and evil automobiles are a million light years away from the violence in The Hunger Games or City of Glass or the second quartet of Tamora Pierce's "The Circle Opens" books.

    And I have to ask myself, if reading so much violence, and hearing it on the news every day, and being saturated in it, doesn't make these kids vulnerable to being involved in it.  Do they come to see that as inevitable.  Yet here I am, selling my book, with a 9 year old turning his gun on a school assembly.

     I don't believe that violence is inevitable, or that suicide is a good response to being bullied, or that life can not be mostly about life and growth - and yet I wonder what the kids believe, and hope that my book gives them more than just a ray of light in the dark.

     I hope, that like Duffy, with his crutches and his Cerebral Palsy, that they find themselves realizing that they can be the peace and the good in the world, not just in-spite of their weaknesses, but often because of them.

    I know that I became a strong, loving woman, because I was bullied and threatened and ridiculed as a child, and while I do not wish any child to suffer as I did, I hope my books shows them, that there is life after school and a whole world just begging you to let it love you.