My hand is griping tightly and being squeezed in my mother’s as I walk into an office building on State Street, in Rochester, New York. Could I find this building today I’m not sure, I was not yet five years old? I usually came to this space with my father’s hands grasp, as I remember he had a different force about his grip, I want to believe it was less fearful and more loving. Is this the truth, it is the vision I have. What I can remember is the largeness of the freight elevator we stepped into. The spaces in the wooden slats were what constituted walls as we rode up to the floor where my father had a rifle range. I stepped over a crack between the elevator and the floor we landed on, the jolt of the stop left me with the feeling of being drawn into the eye of a hurricane. Years later I still had the feeling; if any elevators break in the floor was too large; I felt a sinking breath that left me troubled with emotions of being in a vortex of what I labeled my loss. This is where my story begins.
When writing I have to capture my reader with choices of language that will have them wanting to read more. I opt for talking. I can see the person’s response and change my words or stop. This is my expressive drama creating itself in a self centered conversation. The visions I create in my psyche continues and my senses detonate; especially with a captive audiences. This is what I once found at my father’s rifle range, I’m sure of this. I now am much more secure entertaining as I go with chatting and laughing when possible.
In my family of origin sharing tales also seemed to have a boring effect; almost frightening without immediate feedback. Personal lives were to be private. I really learned a lot about the need for secrets from my mother and her southern roots. If the truth was boring a lie was better. My secrets have taken a different form. I thought of the web of my life telling one of my more shocking narratives, beginning with the one’s that gave me a sense of being a star running around the rifle range; I had looked at this but I now feel I own who I was. At this point in my aging life, I can acknowledge it in an entirety, at least I think I can, in this continual self dialogue I have. In my honest fashion it has to be given the right person to listen to me and I have to feel open. I had thought I was honest but a new truth seems to be surfacing, giving me continual surprises.
A few friends who are still in my life for some 45 years reminded me of my being quite the gal. I used to actually get asked for autographs. Why autographs? Well I had been on television, modeled, had full page newspaper article written about my creative wedding and modeling. I had coverage of my work in other newspapers and a National magazine. Being in back stages with rock stars and doing lip sinks on television, which were popular at the time. I sat with the press at concerts and over drinks with rock stars and coffee with movie stars, a back rub from a soft and gentle folk singer, who had become quiet famous. There are also the movie stars I could be flattered by and those stories I would want to hide. I might of wondered why I had a certain heir of wild child but it was the 70’s, however untamed I became; nothing stopped me, until this part of my life. I have a very primal nature with a resilient spirit that just keeps going forward even in the eye of confusion and lack of direction.
As I stepped across the crack in the elevator into an empty room of the rifle range; it was empty, guns laying on the floor, I somehow knew, without words, my father was gone and the excitement and love, with the male attention would also be lost. The vision and repercussion’s of that day continue. This is where my sense of stardom and entitlement began; I presume.
