Familiarity. Memory of the way things
get said. Once you have heard certain expressions,
sentences, you almost never forget them.—Eudora Welty
Words are so powerful they can resonate in our minds and hearts forever. The words someone said to you when you were a child that filled you with pain or joy, or a story someone told you that affected you in a certain way, can have a lasting effect.
Would you marry me anyway, even if there wasn't a pink dot? A pregnancy test sat on the bathroom counter. I followed the directions on the box and waited ten minutes. When the dot turned pink, I was stunned. Even Leao, our Portuguese water dog, looked befuddled. Brian and I had been living together for almost six months. He had said he hoped there was a pink dot. I wasn't sure I believed him. Many years back, while in college, I got pregnant. The painter I lived with had not responded positively—at all. "What do you want to do about it?" was about all he said. That said it all. I will never forget the tone of his voice, his lifeless green eyes.
When Brian walked through the door, I stood by the sofa, holding up the white plastic stick like a thermometer, watching his eyes. He saw the look on my face and said, "It was pink." I said, "Yes," and held it out to him so he could see the dot. The sweetest smile bloomed on his face. As he knelt, he pulled a black velvet box from his pocket, opened it, and removed an opal ring.
"Yes," I said, "I'll marry you."
"Would you anyway, even if there wasn't a pink dot?"
All of life is material when you're a writer. Words can change the direction of your life. What the painter said to me, and my husband's words later, mark turning points in my life.
The incident with the painter more than twenty years ago, the more recent scene with my husband, and the words both men said, have stayed with me. The painter's words were so powerful that they became the genesis for a long short story ("Quickening") that I wrote and eventually published in the Oyez Review and a second short story I started several months ago. Brian's words launched a magazine column on good fathers and became the inspiration for a character in a novel in progress. I imagine that the words each man uttered packed enough wallop to fuel my writing for some time to come.
The stories people tell you can be a powerful stimulus for your writing, even if what they say has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them. T. Jefferson Parker, author of Cold Pursuit, was recently a guest on my radio show and talked about how such a story inspired that book.
"Years ago my little brother Matt told me about something that happened when he went away to sea right after high school—I'm guessing it was 1974, 1975," says Parker. "For four to five months he worked at sea on a commercial tuna boat. When they returned, he was told the money he earned would pay for his food and supplies on the boat and that he would get paid nothing. It stuck in my craw, his story, a young man being taken advantage of, and a tale like his forms the kernel of the story that takes place in Cold Pursuit."
Can you remember words someone said to you that changed the direction of your life? Hearing or saying the words "I do" or "I'm having an affair" can send your life veering into new, unexpected realms.
Has someone told you a story that, as Parker said, stuck in your craw? What was said? Take fifteen minutes and write down your memories.