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“When friendships are real, they are not glass threads or frost work, but the solidest things...”
— Ralph Waldo Emerson
Dear Friends,
If you've read Poetic License you may remember that I spent my sophomore year of high school in Lausanne at an international all-girls school with long-range views of the Swiss Alps.
I'd wanted to become fluent in French and my eternally supportive mom suggested I do so by studying "abroad." With my summer friend Sarah Williams' family moving to Geneva the following summer serving as a family away from home, I took off on the SS Constitution with a big trunk and eyes wide with excitement.
That year changed me in fundamental ways. Being among girls from all over the world, without boys around to distract me (except for a sexy Persian boy at our "brother" school across town), I settled into the best part of boarding school life—finding new ways to be taught subjects I'd long disliked, seeing through new eyes, dreaming in French, and a rare opportunity to look back at my beloved family with remove.
We couldn't afford two more years in Switzerland but going home would bring its challenges.
My parents met me at JFK where I presented myself in a red miniskirt, a striped tank top, and sandal heels. My eyes were shaded brown, my lashes darkened with mascara. My mother greeted me with a big hug and a "I like your look!" My father greeted me with a wet kiss which told me I was in trouble, though I could not have articulated what to do about it then (nor could I for years to come).
I returned to a good school in Hanover, New Hampshire, populated by good kids, many of whom had not been out of the state except on vacation. They were another year entrenched in typical American high school life, worrying about boyfriends, grades, and state championships. I'd come from just witnessing the Six-Day War between Israel and Egypt on the grainy TV in our student lounge after spending three weeks during spring exploring Egypt and turning sixteen in Cairo . I'd spent weekends with school chums in London, Milan, Paris, Geneva, had skied down the slopes of Gstaad at night with a torch in my hand, had imbibed plenty of kirsch in ski lodges, and snuck out many nights with my chums for the kiosk a few blocks away to buy cigarettes and chocolate.
Needless to say, embarrassingly so now, I felt superior to the kids to whom I returned in NH. In truth, I was a snob.
Then, shortly after I returned, Anne Sexton came to Dartmouth at my father's invitation, right after she won the Pulitzer Prize. At the after party at our house, pressed full of people, I met Anne, she treated me like an adult which I appreciated. Later that evening, I went off to my room to sleep. Shortly thereafter, my father molested me in my bed.
I guess it shouldn't have surprised me that I needed a new friends, even though I never divulged the molestation to either. Barb had moved to Hanover from Concord, MA for her father's professorship at Dartmouth when we were in 8th grade, but it was in junior and senior year that we bonded. She had written me a fifty-page letter just before I left for Lausanne, giving me every reason to know she'd be there when I returned. Prue had moved from Chapel Hill to Hanover for her father's professorship, too, so I missed that first year with her, but, along with Barb, these two, especially, became the friends I needed.
Barb was smart and curious and we took up learning new skills together— playing guitar and singing cool songs by Dylan and Donovan on the Dartmouth radio station, tearing around campus on our bikes stalking cute college boys at night, making friends with the ABC students, hatching crushes on many boys, spending hours holed up in together in either of our bedrooms talking about all of this. Barb was a deep thinker, with the kind of observation skills that led to conversations about family dynamics. She was introverted and a great listener and as emphatically against the war in Vietnam as me. We signed up to learn Mandarin from a Dartmouth student and were crushed when he was arrested for a sit-in at the college and had to stop our class. She lived in a modern-to-me split-level house across town, so different from my family's colonial.
Prue was brilliant, with enviable beauty, uber extroverted, seemingly self-confident with both girl friends and boys, and her home, along with Barb's and mine, made three points on a regularly circuited triangle. The Arndt dinner table was much like mine—though mine hewed to literature and the arts and hers not as swarmed by visitors, a dinner table where her parents paid attention to what we said and cared if we came up with good defenses of our positions. I was riveted, but despite the twinkles in both her father's and mother's eyes, I felt intimidated by their sharp intelligence.
Fast Forward to Last Week:
Barb and her husband Tobbe flew to the States from their home in Uppsala, Sweden, and Prue Arndt joined us from NYC. A mini-reunion, of sorts, for three Hanover High School alums, each of them new to Portland, Maine. And we had a blast. How lucky are we to have such friends for so long, ones who knew our parents and siblings, our neighbors and townspeople, who felt the same way about many things and differently about a few, who, now, can continue to help me process those final and influential high school years during the Civil Rights movement, the Women's movement, and the War in Vietnam.
A great gift to Barb and me was a trove of letters Prue had received from each of us as we landed in college—me at University of Washington, Prue at Wisconsin, Barb at Barnard—our words replete with anxiety and anguish, hope and love, firm convictions and flighty suppositions.
Prue had saved them through a half century! There will be more to come from some of these letters down the road. In what form, I do not know.
Barb and Prue have been a sisterhood I wasn't given by birth, one that has been there when I've needed it, challenged me when I needed that, and held a vision of how we came of age in the unique moment we did. Barb became a translator of Swedish to English. Prue is an award-winning film archivist. I became an advisor to companies and writer. In each of our ways I think we'd tried to shed light on truth. I love these sisters.
Studio II Reading List
We'll be breaking these down and analyzing them for structure, plot, voice, and craft and I'm eager to learn from these authors.
October Book Query
Have any of you read Wandering Stars by Tommy Orange? Let me know what you loved about it and anything you thought might have been done differently.
From My Stack
Tommy Orange
Wandering Stars
Many writing teachers tell us to write our stories in linear fashion. It makes sense—it's easier on readers and perhaps easier for writers. But when I think of my most favorite books, many are not written this way.
And along comes Tommy Orange's new book Wandering Stars. I was a fan of his debut There There and was eager to read his new one. Orange calls his book a prequel, a sequel, and a stand-alone novel. All three are true. We learn about several hundred years of Native American and Cheyenne history prior to being reacquainted with Orvil and his family (from There There).
This is a book that best requires attention, presence, and an abandonment of ego. And it's a stunner. Its structure is all over the place, the entire first part entailing our history of American racism, expropriation, and genocide. Not something my generation was taught in school. Even though I know of the correct history I found his telling of it mesmerizing, inviting me to slow down and think about his use of language--especially his circular rhythms, his seven-generation outlook, and the searing legacy of that history on his current-day characters in context with their past. “Stories do more than comfort," he has written, "They take you away and bring you back better made.” This book did that for me. Maine is at a critical juncture with its Native tribes so it is particularly relevant in my home state.
I also admired how Tommy Orange portrayed Orvil and Oakland and Orvil's current day family with its own legacy of poverty and addiction. He neither moralizes nor glorifies; he simply shows his characters living with both. And I got a new view on the Oakland hills which I've had the pleasure of hiking.
It may end up on my Top Twenty reads of all time....I'll see how I feel in a year or so, but it's certainly helping me end my reading year on a powerful note.
Moving into late fall and early winter, may you hold tight to your friendships both old and new, and VOTE.
Love always,
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