11/10 Pre-Writing Stage

I chose my topic by pulling a line from a writing entry in my Writers Notebook, "My History As A Writer." This was my first entry in the Writers Notebook. Students can pull their lines from any other entry they want. In this entry, I discussed how my mother taught me how to read and write and encouraged my writing.

The line I took was, "It was gray and covered in small, pink flowers." This was the description of my first journal, but this sentence is a telling sentence. A telling sentence just means that I'm telling you what's happening instead of showing you what's happening.

My first draft is below. As soon as I can get to a scanner, I'll post my process on the website. For now, though I'll show you my writing in the compose stage and the publish stage. I only have the publish stage with me at home so i'll post the compose stage tomorrow.

PUBLISHING STAGE
It was gray and covered in small, pink flowers.

Unlike what my mother says, my favorite dress is not gray and covered in small, pink flowers. Ripped at the hem line running across the bottom of the dress and decorated with cherry-red Kool-Aid stains, that dress is boring and ugly. My favorite dress is a gown my father bought me for college graduation.

I felt very alone in graduate school. My roommate, a close friend I’ve known since the age of 3, was my closest friend in Boston. It was the first time I’d been away from Georgia to live on my own and I was homesick. I missed my favorite Thai restaurant. I missed running around with my brother and sister on the weekends. I missed shopping at my favorite thrift store, Value Village, with my grandmother. I missed the heat and humidity, hot against my skin. The people in Boston were different from the folks at home. In Georgia, people take the time to say “Hello” “Please” and “Thank You.” You smile at someone and they smile back. In Boston, people were startled when I said hello.

School was another matter. Though I respected my professors, and they me, the people in my program were, well, crazy. One had accused me of plagiarism and another said that my good grades came not from my own intellectual capacity but from the color of my skin. While it didn’t faze me, it certainly wore on my soul. My professors knew what I was capable of. Plus, why would I copy off someone who had two letter grades lower than me.

So, when graduation rolled around, after the baseless accusations, after the introverted New England ways, after a winter that beat me like a slave, I knew my family would be there. They’d seen me through all the other academic milestones in my life: The D I made in advanced geometry; my below-average freshman quarter in college when I almost lost my scholarship; standing up to an ignorant professor and a racist roommate; my undergraduate graduation.

My mom and brother came to Boston, but my dad wasn’t there. He made some excuse about taking care of my sister, who was completing her last semester of middle school, but graduation was on a weekend! Lame excuse. Since September 11, my dad doesn’t like planes and has made that clear. He sternly said one day, “I don’t like planes.” Another day, he told me that my decision to move to Boston. The choice was mine to make and mine to deal with. The dress? Maybe he felt guilty for what he said or maybe he was apologetic for not being able to travel. I sympathize. September 11 is a difficult moment for us all to grapple with in our personal histories.

I wanted a new dress for graduation. It was a designer dress from Barney’s, worth the cost of two roundtrip tickets from Atlanta to Boston made of chiffon and silk and perfect for the spring. The gown’s cream lines danced across the red background like cherry blossoms on a warm day and the gold braid around the waist give it a soft Grecian look. I never asked for it, but my mom told him how much I loved the dress. It was too cold to wear for graduation—the torrential rain, freezing weather and flooded stadium took care of that dream. As I looked at the dress hanging in my closet that day as I put on wellies, jeans and a warm sweater (or was it a turtleneck), I thought, “I’d rather have my dad here, than a frock.”

I love that dress because of what it means to me. That dress is a reflection of my time in Boston. It means strength and courage in the face of the impossible. It means calm in the place of crazy. It means the willingness to be an individual and not walk toward a crowd. It means my dad’s love is all sustaining, whether he has the courage to take a flight and see me take my first steps into womanhood or know that he’s raised a daughter who can do anything she wants. That means more than any degree.