Tiny Victories

Posted 2/26

My father’s favorite phrase to his six children while we grew up was, “You’re good for nothin’.”

I believed him.

He died, but his legacy lives on.

To this day, I look around at people I know who have accomplished so much: book awards, music tours, multiple homes, and secure bank accounts. The voice inside my head says, “See. What are you good for? You didn’t achieve anything.”

I remember being in the fifth grade and admiring my friend Ann’s devotion to writing. She wrote play after play, producing colored folders with filled, lined pages. I’d secretly felt the pull to write since I was five, but never had the courage to try it. Inspired, I put pen to paper. Ann edited my work, improving the verbiage.

My goal was emotional drama: a teen boy, full of angst, experimenting with drugs and whose parents, in the end, pluck him from the precipice of disaster. To ten-year-old me, I felt brilliant and confident enough to show it to my snazzy, young English teacher, Miss Sterling, who the popular girls flocked around during recess. She pronounced it drab. “It needs a lot of work.”

When I got home, I threw the play into the waste can. I was good for nothin’.

I wasn’t good at dodge ball or volleyball or making friends. I did okay with swimming. I got as far as a Red Cross junior life-saving course. But when a hot lifeguard assisting the class, the most popular boy in high school, jumped into the water for me to save, I froze. He pushed me under the water, and when I came up for air, he told me I had failed. I never went to another session.

In eighth grade, I tried out for cheerleader along with some of my classmates. They were chosen. I wasn’t. I lacked their pizzazz and talent.

I did get a surprise in high school. I’d never put much effort into academics in grade school. I knew I was dumb, so why try? But during my first semester in high school, I completed all the assignments and found myself on the B Honor Roll. Wow. Determination and confidence kicked in. I wanted to reach the next level. And I did: A Honor Roll for the next three and a half years. A small triumph.

My parents couldn’t afford to send any of us to college, nor did they want us to remain at home. I did the only thing I could to launch myself into adulthood: I got married five months after graduation.

At eighteen, I wasn’t good at marriage and husband-choosing. I had too many demons, and I developed different goals from Scott. I wanted the world. He wanted his mother. We divorced by the time I turned twenty-one. His mother said of me, “Good riddance.”

I married again at twenty-seven to a drug savvy musician. I was not drug savvy, only naïve, and Marc and I divorced within a year.

At forty, I married my third husband, John, the love of my life. It was John who helped me seek higher education. After receiving my Bachelor of Arts in English, I earned a Master of Fine Arts in Creative Writing. I could hear my father tsking. “What worthless degrees.”

I reminded him that he only received a GED.

When I wrote a few one act plays, Miss Sterling chimed in. Yet I felt vindicated when they were published in a small anthology. I had short stories and memoir pieces published, too. Miss Sterling backed off.

My father continues to chatter in my head. Every. Single. Day. “Not good enough,” he says. He calls me out on my failures. I try to argue with him, pointing out minute conquests.

I taught college English. Not a tenured professor at Yale, but an adjunct at a community college. Not award-winning, but students gave me flowers more than once, and several told me I was their favorite instructor.

I like to cook, but I’m not Baking Show quality. I’ve never piped rosettes or tempered chocolate or made Genoese sponge. I write and have had pieces published, but I’m no Toni Morrison or Ann Patchett. No agent to date has responded to my query letters as I peddle my two finished books.

I exercise six days a week, but I don’t have a Jane Fonda body. I attempt crafts and give away my handiwork, but a giftee told me that my embroidered pillowcases reminded her of over-sized granny panties. I suspect another dropped off my package unopened at Goodwill. But others people have smiled and said, “Thank you.”

My father tells me I’m laughable. I know his mean attitude came from how he was raised by a drunken father. My father had no success, no happiness.

I may not be at the top in anything, but I’m in the race, holding in the middle. I have to take pleasure in what I do accomplish, my tiny victories.

I’m the only one who knows this spinach tart’s lattice is an improvement over my last one, or that my three-day prep for a dinner party paid off in perfection, although my guests take no notice of the hard-wrought details. Agents may ignore me, but I did write two books, and am still writing. I may not have impressive bank balances, but I own my small home outright.

I can easily champion other people in the middle. I spot their strengths in nothing flat. Everyone has gifts. The challenge is turning that spotting skill onto myself.

It takes every atom of will power to stick in those ear plugs and shut out the negative buzz. I remind myself I have to keep doing whatever I enjoy, be it bread making or fancy napkin folds. I have to crash through the fear blocks and build up the molecules of confidence whenever I can.

Every day, I remind myself it’s okay if I never place. I win at trying.