Broken Dreams Can be Mended

Broken Dreams Can be Mended

Growing up in the 1950s, my home life was far from ideal. I often found places to go, physically and mentally, as a way of finding some comfort and escaping the abuse. One of my escapes was writing poems and stories. I enjoyed sitting under our big oak tree in the front yard and writing of places far away from my dreaded reality.

I knew my fifth grade teacher Mrs. Yearout enjoyed my writing. She’d often tell me how talented I was and made me feel like a very special person. One day, our doorbell rang, and to my delight and surprise, Mrs. Yearout was at the front door. She had come to tell my parents, in person, that I had a wonderful imagination and that she always looked forward to reading my next story. “Your daughter has great potential,” she said, “and you must encourage her to keep writing.”  I couldn’t believe that my teacher had actually come to my house. Did she go to other students houses? Did she tell THEIR parents they had potential?

   As I sat at our dining room table listening to her words, I thought my heart would burst with pride. Mrs. Yearout added that she hoped my parents would make sure I always had plenty of pens, pencils and paper so I could keep writing my stories. My mother assured her they would.

Mom had a big smile on her face, but Dad definitely did not. Mrs. Yearout hugged me, and, her eyes filled with kindness and love, said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, sweetheart.” I had never felt so wonderful, but that was about to change.

As my father closed the door after her, I could feel the energy changing in the hallway, as if a volcano was getting ready to erupt. As my mother stood silent in the hallway he motioned for me to go into my room. He then started screaming, “No daughter of mine is going to be smarter than me! If I ever see you writing those silly stories again I’ll beat the living hell out of you. Do you understand?” With that, he broke every pencil, tore up every piece of paper and left my room looking like a war zone. So much for feeling loved.

After that, I spent most of my life avoiding writing in any way I could. In High School when I had to write term papers I would lose myself in doing the research and loved doing it, but when it came time to put everything into words I would break down. There were cold sweats and lots of tears. I didn’t go to college after high school, fully aware that college would involve lots of writing. Instead, I had a number of different jobs, trying to find ones that didn’t require me to put my thoughts on paper.

My first job out of high school was in San Francisco at Pacific Telephone, as a switchboard operator. I was responsible for connecting people to each other, all over the world. This was great because there was absolutely no writing involved. I loved the old cloth cords and being able to manage multiple phone lines. This was my first exposure to multi-tasking. I then went to work at Paul Elders bookstore, again as a switchboard operator and loved that I was surrounded by books. I moved on to St. Francis Hospital as a Candy-Striper and switchboard operator. My final work as an operator came at the Hilton Hotel in San Francisco. I started as a teletype operator and then became a computerized reservation agent. So far so good, not much writing involved. When I was 21 I left the Hilton to become a Flight Attendant for Trans International Airlines (TIA). I had to write why I wanted to become a Flight Attendant but that was easy. I had wanted to fly since I was 12 years old. I could escape to the places I wrote about as a child. In my 6th year of flying I was badly injured carrying blocks of ice. I had to quit. As this was a Workman’s Compensation case the airlines paid for me to get my Realtors license. Writing contracts was easy and I enjoyed helping families find their homes.

    A family tragedy in 1988 took me off to college. The pain I felt was so great that I could only ease it by being in an environment where I could be distracted by the stimulation of learning new things. I muddled my way through the first two years, mostly taking art and photography courses. I moved from my Community College on to California State San Bernardino for my junior year. It was now becoming impossible to avoid classes where I had to write.

   Terrified beyond belief, I took what I thought was my upper division writing midterm, even though, it was in fact, a school wide exam. We had to write about a personal experience. I managed to write about “the murder of my sister in 1988”.  Between the subject matter and my fear of writing, I was so anxious that I feared I might fall off my chair, slide to the floor, and die. It was grueling to revisit the memories.

    When the graded exams came back, my instructor told the class, “We have someone here that has scored in the top 25 out of the entire school.” He said my name and I looked around the room, hardly daring to believe that I was the person who had scored so high. He walked to my desk, laid the paper on top of  it, and said, “Congratulations, Sandie. I know how difficult this was for you.” The class erupted into applause, and, for a moment, there was the oddest sensation of my mind and body separating. I tried hard not to cry but the feeling of a tremendous weight being lifted left me sobbing. The instructor told me I had scored 22nd out of the 568 students! Wow, what a confidence builder.

I went on to get my MFA at the School of Visual Arts in New York. After graduation I got a job teaching art in a high school for students with learning disabilities. I was able to get my teaching certificate while I was working. I could not believe that I was now a teacher.

I would often share this story and others with my students as I watched them struggle to learn. I truly believe that my life experiences prepared me for my teaching career, and helped me to become the kind of teacher who could offer hope, compassion and love to students in the way that Mrs. Yearout had done for me.

The positive feedback I got throughout my teaching career helped me to see that I had given my father’s voice way too much power over the years. I learned that my creativity was rusty but not dead. Perhaps, my broken dreams could be mended, and I could once again be the person who loved to write and create. Perhaps my imagination would allow me to be the artist who used words as well as paint, paper, clay and other art materials to fill the world with light.