Sharon Olds writes about a first for her daughter . . .
First Formal
by: Sharon Olds
flesh like a soul half out of a body.
It makes me remember her one week old,
mollescent, elegant, startled, alone.
She stands still, as if, if she moved,
her body might pour up out of the bodice,
she keeps her steady gaze raised
when she walks, she looks exactly forward,
led by some radar of the strapless, or with
a cup runneth over held perfectly level, her
almost seasick beauty shimmering
a little. She looks brave, shoulders
made of some extra-visible element,
or as if some of her cells, tonight,
were faceted like a fly’s eye, and her
skin was seeing us see it. She looks
hatched this moment, and yet weary—she would lie
in her crib, so slight, looking worn out from her journey,
and gaze at the world and at us in dubious willingness.
I’m not quite sure which is harder to endure—firsts or lasts. Olds’ daughter is obviously uncomfortable in her dress, going to her first formal dance. Formals are the first time young people get their brushes with adulthood. The difficulty is that, when you’re 13- or 14-years-old, you really are a child still. You’re not prepared for all the pitfalls of being in charge of yourself.
On the opposite end of the spectrum, young people usually first experience loss when a beloved pet dies. Suddenly, mortality becomes a very real thing and, unfortunately, never goes away. Even when you’re a grownup (twenty-something, thirty-something, on up), I don’t think you ever lose sight of that first experience of death. I’ve lost some people in my life in the last ten years or so, and I can vouch for the fact that every death feels like a first.
I attended a memorial service this morning for the father of a close friend. It’s been a year since his father passed, but the pain was obviously still fresh. My friend’s father was also one of my profs when I was an undergraduate and graduate student. He was the first person at the university who encouraged me as a writer during a conference in his office. Before that conversation, I was on a clear trajectory for a job as a computer programmer. When I left his office that day, I was carrying an application for grad school in my hands. The rest, as they say, is history.
From all that was said today about Ron (my friend’s father) this morning, I know he had a similar impact on many of the people in attendance at the memorial service. He had the heart of a servant, caring for his terminally ill first wife, encouraging his students to work harder and better, and finding happiness in old-time country music and dancing. I can say, without a doubt, he is the reason I became a published author. Because he said I was good at it and could do it.
It was the first time anyone expressed that kind of confidence in my artistic abilities. Before that conversation with Ron, I pretty much was told by close family members to get my plumbing license or learn how to program computers, to have “something to fall back on” if the writing didn’t pay off.
I went to graduate school. Taught college classes. Wrote short stories and essays and poems. Served as U.P. Poet Laureate. Got married. Raised a family. So much of what defines me as a person is because Ron told me that afternoon that I was a writer. A first for me.
Today, we said a last goodbye to this selfless, giving man.
Saint Marty wrote a poem for his friend’s father today, based on the following prompt from August 18 of The Daily Poet:
Stand up and take three steps in any direction. Look around and note three different items, the color of the wall (or whatever is in front of you), and note what is above you. Imagine that you have just arrived at this place from another country and are homesick. Write a poem that includes what you see, how you feel, and what you miss about your home country,
by: Martin Achatz
for Ron Johnson
1.
I grew up in a house of plumbers—
my dad, three brothers, a sister
shared stories at dinner about
clogged sewers and frozen water
pipes while we forked hotdogs
and meatloaf onto our plates. I learned
how to solder when I was nine,
snake cables into plugged toilets
by the time I was eleven, replace
leaky faucets before I blew out candles
on my thirteenth birthday. Dad put it
this way: You got shit in your veins, son.
I always felt like a displaced person,
refugee child from some war-
torn land where soldiers forced
me to bleed radiators and dig
drainage ditches at rifle-point.
2.
I remember a typewriter sitting
on the desk and shelves stacked
with the likes of Anton Chekhov
and Larry McMurtry. I also remember
the view from the window: the campus
crowded with snowdrifts, students
blown along like winter surf. And I
remember the professor with his
mustache, crooked smile, brown
cardigan, how he handed me
my short story from EN 500,
leaned back in his chair, nodded
at me the way my dad nodded
when I handed him a crescent
wrench before he even asked for it.
You’ve got writing in your veins, son,
the professor said. I’m not sure
he actually said son, but that’s how
I remember it, this moment,
this invitation, this welcome. It was
as if he had just booked me passage
on a freighter steaming across the cold,
cold sea toward some distant place
I didn’t know I belonged.
❤️
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