Second-Grade Me

The past can sometimes feel like it’s just a timeline with stories stuck to it at random places. Some of the stories are exact; others are embellished. Personally, I like to slide back and forth on my memory timeline to pick up things I thought I’d lost. The stories in today’s blog are some that I revisit a lot--you’ll see why.

In Second Grade, my class was asked to write a poem. This assignment came seemingly out of nowhere. Our usual work consisted of doing worksheets or reading a paragraph and restating what it was about, so this poem assignment was different, and I really liked it for that. I wrote a poem that I called Ode to the Sun. This was my first poem.

I wrote Ode to the Sun in pencil on that yellow/green tablet paper that the school gave each student at the beginning of the year. (One time, one of my friends filled her tablet before the year was up and she was issued a second one. When I found out that was even a possibility it became my mission each year to fill my tablet and get a second one. I hope that makes me a nerd. I’ve been hoping to reach Nerd Status for quite some time.)

From what I remember, Ode to the Sun was more of a story poem without rhyme (free verse). It was about searching for sunshine. In Western Pennsylvania, we don’t get much sunshine (305 cloudy days here each year—I Googled that for you). If you’re having trouble imagining that, here’s something to help you: I remember playing out in the snow one afternoon when I suddenly realized, with alarm, that the sun was out. I thought that all the snow would melt immediately because it must be summer, and summer meant that the school year was over. I even took my coat off. But I quickly got too cold and reluctantly put it back on. Something else was at work here, and the school year was never over this quickly. I finally concluded that something was very definitely wrong with the world. I mean, really: Sunshine in winter?? I was probably about six at the time, so the point of the story is that I’d lived through six very cloudy winters before learning that sunshine could even happen in the winter. That’s how many cloudy days we get north of Pittsburgh.

So I was the ripe old age of sevenish when I wrote Ode about searching for the sun. After I turned it in, Mrs. Husser then announced that top poems (three? five?) would be chosen and the writers invited upstairs to read them to the Sixth Graders. I remember thinking that if I had known that from the start I might have written something better. But mine did get chosen and there I was, days later, climbing the stairs to the Sixth Grade room with a few other students to read our poems.

The big reading was a Friday and I know that because I spent the week bargaining with myself that all I had to do was this one little reading and then I could go home and have the weekend as a reward. There was nothing to be nervous about. All I had to do was read. All week long: The Sixth Graders aren’t scary (they’re terrifying); some of them even ride my bus (a thought that did not give me comfort), once I’m done I can go home and forget about school for the whole weekend (unbeknownst to me, I was an introvert—surprise, surprise). Later in the week I was comforted by one thought, however: My poem was good. Not genius good, and not good because it happened to be chosen. It was good because it meant something. It made you think and it made you feel. I did that on purpose with the words and for that, I knew it was good. People would like it, as long as I didn’t mess up when I read it. No pressure.

Friday came and as I stood alongside my classmates in the Sixth Graders’ room waiting for my turn to read, reminding myself not to mess up the words. My turn came. I took a moment to look at my audience. I took in a deep breath, and I opened my mouth.

And I delivered.

(Of course I did. I wasn’t just a skinny, gangly, mousy kid anymore. Not me; I was a poet, a real writer. Of this I had no doubt. The way that only kids can: I was all in.)

Somewhere along the line, you think being a writer (or anything creative) is a goal-oriented notion…

You think you need to live through a bunch of crap, finish your first novel, get it published, hit a bestseller list, travel the world, write and publish more books… You think you need to do more, have more accomplishments, be more. Always more.

But, consider this: When I was in Second Grade, I had none of these things. Yet I still thought of myself a writer. That’s really all it took. And that was everything.