The title of my blog was designed to not be specific to poetry, though it was created for National Poetry Month. Yes, I know it may shock you that there was any design behind this project at all, but rest assured, there was. Though I'm even worse at writings of other types (save for academic essays, I can crank those babies out no problem) than I am at poetry, I had initially hoped to include a variety writing samples on this blog. I focused too heavily on poetry to start, and so I am only now getting around to writing other pieces.
I really love Creative Non-Fiction, at least when I'm reading; I find it nearly as difficult to write as fiction (I HATE writing fiction), but it is such a wonderful form for expression and information. As I've always loved telling stories, I initially thought I would take to it naturally - was I ever wrong. Like most things in my literary world, I was introduced to this genre by David Wright, who taught my Creative Writing course at Wheaton College. He exposed me to some fantastic authors, and I soon developed a passion (if not a talent) for non-fictional prose.
This piece is going to be in three parts, dealing with two things that have defined my summers since early high school. This excerpt is the introduction, leading up to the first section, which I have yet to complete. It's not too long, and it is my attempt to introduce the subject matter and find a voice of my own.
For most people, any mention of summer conjures archetypal visions of baseball, hot dogs, and beaches. I won’t say that I’m immune to those delights, and I have many happy memories involving family vacations, fireworks, and swimming pools. None of these things, pleasant as they are, truly define my summers, however.
At this point, my inner-qualifier (if you don’t have one of your own, you’re no doubt much happier and better rested) wants to scream, “There are dozens of things you could list as being the defining features of your summers!” I am not going to listen to him today; the two defining features of my summers are a bike race and some books, some very special books.
In the summer of 2004, I was done with my freshman year of high school, and looking forward to what was likely the last summer I had that was largely free of obligation. I was taking two summer school courses, one in civics and economics, the other on the Old Testament of the Bible, to free up my schedule so I could take other electives. They were in the form of packets I filled out at home, which the principal graded once a week when I came in to his office to be tested. On the whole it was easy, though I do remember some laborious searching for random phrases in the Minor Prophets until I realized no one ever read the packets, and I already knew the books well enough to satisfy my own conscience and the tests.
It was pretty boring, overall, especially compared to the summer before, when I traveled to France with my older sister, Anne, and my dad, in the company of two former missionaries who had become teachers at local high schools. The Babcock’s daughter, Katherine, was a year older than Anne, and they were both on the tennis team, so we were allowed to join the twenty odd French students for a two-and-a-half week tour of that beautiful country.
My family always emphasized the value of travel, and I first made it out of the United States three years prior to visiting France, when our family rented a flat in London for two weeks. There had been trips to various national parks as well (I was raised in Fresno, CA, a mere 60 miles from the southern entrance to Yosemite), and one or two visits to family members in Texas. I was eager to go abroad again, and after an obligatory stay in Paris (incredible, yes, but featured on enough postcards to make it rich ground for Don DeLillo and Walker Percy’s theories of perception) we made our way out into the countryside.
We visited Normandy briefly, stopping at the Allied cemetery before swimming in the channel, concrete bunkers filled with aluminum cans and spent condoms sitting silently nearby. Brittany, with the majestic Mont St. Michelle, followed after Normandy, in turn succeeded by a progression of sights in the Loire valley (Monet’s gardens stand out particularly), before we made it to the Riviera; Nice, Nime, and Monaco. A quick jaunt through Italy (I remember one gas station – it was overwhelmed with flies, and I bought a can of mixed nuts) brought us to the Alps and Chamonix. Two nights later, we were in Geneva, spending out last euros where we could before boarding a flight back to California. (That flight in particular stands out as one of the greatest in my life – it was before airlines demanded every seat be filled months in advance, so I ended up with four seats to myself in some massive Airbus, with the brand new Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and a large quantity of Swiss chocolates)
I did make one trip that next summer, in 2004, immediately as the school year ended, tagging along with my dad to a conference in Washington D.C. He spent the days in meetings at the Omni Shoreham, and I toured the city with a colleague’s husband and two kids. Pleasant enough, on the whole, but the combination of a nasty heat wave (despite the ghastly streaks of triple digits Fresno goes through, there is never a mention of humidity; Washington lifted the scales from my eyes) and the appearance of one of the species of cicadas en masse meant that the experience lost its luster before I even made it home.
So I sat at home, unable to be entirely at my leisure, with my mom keeping me on task with those blasted packets of busywork. I’ve always been a bit of a morning person; from the ages of four to seven, I took a delight (perverse, I know) in waking up as early as I could, with exotic times like 4:30 and 5:15 a.m. as thrilling to see as a bulldozer (If you were never a little boy, understand that bulldozers are very, very thrilling). Knowing this, my mom would wake me up around 7:30 or 8, so I could begin to become fully conscious and then start in to fill in blanks and bubbles.
My mom had stayed home when Dad and Anne and I went to France, as my little sister Mary was too young to come with us. She listened to all of our reports with great enthusiasm, and, I see know, a certain amount of longing. It was this coupling – the testimonials of her family and a desire to travel – that led to her discovery and devotion to Le Tour de France, which she promptly shared with me as I lay mostly asleep on the family room floor five days a week.
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