Raw Edges: A Memoir

Prologue

: : 1 : : The folded-tissue ballerinas hang suspended from the mobile tacked to the ceiling above my desk. The dancers twirl, on impulse it seems, but they’re being put into action by currents of heat from the fireplace. It’s cold outside. They seem to be urging me to action. Put a word on the computer screen. Two words. Three. You need to finish your book. They pirouette on strings. Maybe, I think as I look at the white screen in front of me, most everybody talks of writing the story of their life someday. I suspect this has to do with a secret hope that someone, somewhere, will read their words, be moved, enchanted, or, better yet, assisted on the journey through the minefields of life. Maybe, I think as the green-tissue dancer twirls counter to the direction she’s been turning, writing a book is about leaving a trace. Maybe it’s about gathering disparate pieces into a puzzle. Or maybe it’s about wanting to be understood. St. Francis of Assisi once said: “Seek not to be understood but to understand.” I confess I’d like to be understood, if by no one else but myself. I have a story to tell about seven lean years of being lost, when life as I’d known it disappeared. 1995 to 2002—those years when I signed two divorce decrees and failed in yet another relationship with a younger man to whom I gave much. There’s also the story of riding my bicycle across :: Prologue :: 2 : : r a w e d g e s the Midwest plains (as well as across many other highways and byways) during those years when all I could do was think and try to make sense of my Mormon upbringing, the birth of a son with hemophilia, the end of my thirty-three-year marriage, and the way I had made some odd, impulsive choices that seemed so alien to what I’d been. The endless thinking on the bicycle was never experienced in wellordered chronology or form. Rather, it spun out of the vast reservoir of fragments in my head while my legs relentlessly spun the pedals. It is these bits and pieces I want to finish committing to paper as I sit in front of my computer beneath paper dancers doing pliés and arabesques. I want to capture the essence of who I’ve been, who I’ve wanted to be, who I seem to be after all of the trying to be something other than who I am. While this search may be a self-absorbed, even selfish task, I think it’s also a dipping into the river of humanity where everyone bathes. It’s an examination of what it is to be human, to be sensitive, to be idealistic, to have aspirations, to want to love and be loved, and to make mistakes while engaged in these endeavors. It’s also an admission of depression, anger, and self-loathing at times when I’d have given anything to walk on water. It’s about what it’s like to want to be above the human fray and to realize I’m not. I am a pianist and sometimes wish I could speak through the keys on my piano in the infinite language of music—less susceptible to being misunderstood or misinterpreted than other forms of communication. But, in truth, I need words to tell my story. I need them to sort out which version of my story is the “real” one. I need words to explore if there’s somebody who exists outside this particular narrative I’ve repeated so many times— the story that can still constrict the narrow passageway of my throat. I need words to find rest, to write “The End” to this part of my life’s journey. If I could, I’d call this book a novoir, though there’s no such section in the bookstores. That’s not because this writing has been fabricated or imagined, but because it’s impossible to capture the whole of any person or life on paper. We’re all alive—inhaling and exhaling and sloughing off old skin. For every story told, a thousand others are left out, and the past brought to the present is always something new. Prologue : : 3 My story may be different from yours, with different twists and...