Scribings I: A Berkshire Girl Takes Holy Orders

SCRIBINGS I


A Berkshire Girl Takes Holy Orders

You might ask where all this ScribeGirl business comes from.
How on earth a Berkshire girl, a person of the female persuasion, born into a serious, good, and, at one time, robust little mill town in Berkshire county, came to be a scribe. A scribe being one who, in service to some higher purpose, sits for endless hours taking down words with the single goal of getting them all recorded properly. Who listens carefully, and faithfully makes notes just in case anyone else is interested. A person who, at the same time is also reasonably busy with other endeavors- working full time as a therapist, courting & marrying in mid-life, and showing up for all the sundry needs and celebrations that bubble up in the life of a large and loving family. One who, as a young woman, kept many what might be called ‘diaries, ’ a practice that had ferried her across the rough patches of her life, but who never exactly saw it as a calling- just a way to complain on paper and to register whatever the current rune, or psychic, or self-help book might be telling her would fix her life. That was all the pre-scribe writing and it got more or less put on low flame once life became more tolerable and graduate school papers sucked all the juice out of the scribe.
Something happened then that changed everything. While deliriously enjoying the season of falling in love at 43, along with building a career and sharing all this with a most wonderful circle of friends and family, the unthinkable came to visit. In the form, as it seems wont to do, of cancer. Not as in mine. My own cancer had been dealt with at some length in the registering-of-tribulations portion of the journals.
This time the cancer came to my sister. My dearie younger sister, my ‘Irish twin,’ born just 13 months almost to the day, after I was brought home from the hospital. The person, who, all my life ever since then, was right here at my elbow, hiding with me from the mean little Venerini nuns during our abortive stint in nursery school, sharing a bedroom wallpapered floor to ceiling with Beatle photos - tho’ one wall, it must be said, was reserved for her shrine to Carl Yaztremski. My Oscar to her Felix.
My little sister who later lived a few doors away with Wayne, the husband that I, in a burst of courage or madness, fixed her up with one New Year’s Eve, when they were both in danger of spending it alone. My sister who, more recently, came to take me by the hand to fetch me when I was, on a 90 degree August morning, late to my own wedding. Kathy, my sidekick, my confidante, my shopping buddy, my sister, was mortally sick. After endless walks at all hours in the wooded park near our home, sobbing to the trees and the wind, I was in desperate need of solace, of outlet, of distraction. That’s how it began. I had shyly, oh so shyly joined a creature called a cooperative artist studio in my new home in Boston. And there, Kate my coach, began to ask me: “Can you write about it, Maureen?”
We did a lot of playing then at the studio. Making plays with beans and feathers and fabrics and rocks. One object that kept turning up in my plays was a wicker basket filled with scraps of yarn. A basket of yarns. Kate handed it to me one day, and said “ Why don’t you take this home with you for a while?”
I had no idea what she meant, or why she made this suggestion. Only that around this time, living in a heightened state of holding opposites- the true bliss and blessing I was feeling in my personal life, and the shattering terror at the peril my sister and her family were in- I felt I needed something. Something bigger than myself, to contain all that was unfolding. I needed something to distract me, a place I could go in my mind where I could spin all I was feeling into something that would hearten me somehow to face, along with Kathy and Wayne, the battle ahead. A silly little romance, I thought to myself, thinking of the McCartney line about a silly little love song. I felt a surge of longing, for a story to contain the happiness that had fallen on me like grace, and to take me away for a bit from the overwhelming sadness and fear. So that when I needed to, which soon became pretty constantly, I would have heart to be there with her and for her.
And next thing I knew, I was standing in the shower when I heard the first line of a story. I dried off and got my pen. I listened carefully and started to scribe. Here is what began to show up.