My Nemesis Called RBF

Who would think this mild-mannered fellow could be hiding such a surly character flaw?  Unbeknownst to him and millions of other souls like him, his sinister façade seemed to surface at the most inopportune times and usually undetected by its carrier. Here I was a victim and didn’t even know it…until now.

Many women feel superior because they always know what their husbands or significant others are thinking.  They can pin-point their partner’s moods, frustrations and the thought patterns...or at least they think they can. But sometimes it’s just RBF raising its ugly facade. I have this handicap…probably have had it all my life.

Awhile back, an over-eager TSA guard didn’t recognize it while I was going through security at the airport.  His subsequent report had me pigeon-holed as a suspicious character.  Consequently my bags were inspected for over four years before the government finally concluded I wasn’t a threat to national security.  A simple stare was all it took to land me in governmental hot water.

With this handicap, group interactions can be the most challenging.  If I’m pensive people tell me I sometimes look sad or angry. If I’m thoughtful they might think I’m miserable. People have misread my expressions, my moods and my thoughts most of my life. Now I find out it isn’t my fault or theirs for that matter. I have RBF; a pervasive, seemingly permanent sour look on ones face.

My mother, sister Marlene, and Me

It would be very easy to blame genetics.  My mother always seemed to look sad or angry or a bit of both. I could explain that it’s my facial muscles or congenital frown lines that betray my true feelings. Who knew that a pensive look could be so misunderstood?

RBF has been described as having a mouth that might curl slightly downward.  Maybe the brows are furrowed, the lips a bit pursed and the eyes aimed forward in a deadpan stare. It’s called a ‘resting bitch face’ and it’s for real. It’s like a permanent frown you don’t even know you have until called out on it.

Normally I would ask others not to judge me by my looks.  Yet there is one exception that I have to guard against. Sharon would be the first to advise me against playing poker, skip-bo or any other card game for that matter. A poker face I do not have. Feelings, emotions, attitudes, prejudices and the likes all seem to wash over my face without my ever being aware of it. It’s like a rich tapestry of emotions revealed for the entire world to see.

If there were a silver lining to that cloud that passes for my normal expression it would be the flip side of RBF.  I’ve been told there is intensity about me when I speak on any subject I’m passionate about. It speaks volumes of the interest, enthusiasm, and passion I feel for my subject matter.

Recently I gave a presentation about my writing to a large audience.  My RBF came across as true passion for storytelling and the craft of writing. The audience loved it. Any place else outside of that speech they might have wanted to lock me up as a threat.

So RBF is a fact of life.  As I get older and wrinkles slowly slide across my face I guess there will be even more frown lines to contend with. I could Botox my problem lines away but that’s not the answer. I could practice ‘downward face’ which is defined as restorative facial yoga. This exercise is supposed to deliver more blood flow into your face to stimulate the muscles. Then it is supposed to relax the face through the use of focused attention. I could also play mind-games to focus on the positive in my life. A continuous positive attitude would help but I’ve got enough on my plate without having to mind-set my way through each day.

Maybe the answer lies in pondering life’s challenges in private and practice awareness in public.  It could be a more conscious effort to put on a happy face or at least not let my true emotions reveal themselves.

Or perhaps I could just be myself.  I’ve lived with me for so many years I’ve gotten used this old mug staring back at me each morning. It’s neither a bad face nor a sad one. I’ve just got a lot on my mind and more I want to stuff in there on a daily basis.

Awareness is probably the best answer along with a more conscious effort to smile even if it means feeling strange most of the time.  Those pesky nuns could have been on to something way back in grade school. They said to “Turn that frown upside down.” Sounds like maybe they had it right after all. Who knew?

Not a Book in the House

Reflecting back, I realized my love of reading grew exponentially while sitting on some newspaper customer’s doorstep.  Whether I was perusing the Saint Paul Pioneer Press in the morning or the Saint Paul Dispatch at night I found myself immersed in short stories about a world I never knew existed.

Reading had never been a part of my life before I started a paper route.  Newspapers, magazines and books were luxuries my mother couldn’t afford. There was never any reading material in our house save for one book on Padre Pio. My mother probably bought that book out of guilt some Sunday morning after Mass.

About the same time I began a newspaper route my friend introduced me to our local library.  The first book I read was ‘The Enemy Below’ since I was fascinated with World War II; go figure. Then Tarzan, the Hardy Boys and western novels carried me into a world my imagination readily devoured.

 

Since that initial brush with the printed page, reading has always been an important part of my life.  There will never be enough time to read all the books I’ve got piled up around the house. We have libraries for the grandchildren here and there. Each has their own library in their rooms. Books matter to all of us.

So it was rather a shock to learn that a number of kids in my community have no books in their homes.  Like any suburb facing a growing diverse population, I found the disparity in reading levels simply amazing. Last summer my wife spearheaded a campaign to collect and distribute books for the local Head start and EL (English Learner) programs in Dakota County, Minnesota. She collected over four thousand books and, of course, they all passed through our house.

Photo Credit | Sun Newspapers

In Dakota County alone, over 1600 ELL students will use the books.  At the September 30th meeting of Apple Valley Rotary, District 196 Superintendent Jane Berenz spoke about the Reading Recovery Program in ISD 196 and how the intervention program has helped the literacy level of first graders.

She explained “the ELL Program in district 196 supports learners in acquiring the English they need in order to succeed in the classroom and beyond, in accordance with the State of Minnesota Guidelines and English Language Proficiency Standards.  Teachers who are fully certified in teaching English as a Second Language work with these ELL students at all ele-mentary, middle and high schools in the district.”

Ms. Berenz went on to explain that the ELL program develops English skills in reading, writing, and speaking, as well as the language of academic content.  The ELL staff is trained in the same best literacy practices as classroom teachers. She said the need for simple children’s books is critical for these students to practice their reading skills.

The program is working…and well.  Out of the twenty-three seniors who were in the English Learner program for last year, nineteen students were enrolled in a two-year or four-year college. Fourteen students were heading to a two-year college and five were going to a four-year institution of higher education.

Alongside the ELL program is the Head Start Program.  Laura Gilkey, Director of head Start for Scott, Carver, and Dakota County accepted over 2000 books for the Head Start Program. Head Start is a child development program that serves children from birth to age five years and their families. Head Start works closely with local school districts to provide early intervention services for children who need it.

And I thought four thousand books flowing through our house was a bit much last year.  Next summer my wife has a goal of collecting ten thousand books for those two programs. I can’t decide which size tent I’ll need to live in once that begins.

But to bring the world of reading to these children and open up a whole new world for them is a small price to pay for cramp quarters and books piled up in every corner of our house.  I’ve been there. I know what it’s like to be transformed into another world of rolling seas, desert plateaus and the young boys down the block. I return to those worlds every chance I get.

And feel blessed to be able to create them myself for others to enjoy.

Undressing My Avatar

One of the biggest challenges and ultimately greatest satisfaction for any writer comes from creating those characters that inhabit their world of fiction. It’s often the culmination of trying to re-imagine those elusive memories of people, places and events that made a significant impression on them. For me, it’s the art of encapsulating enough of a memory bubble to help recreate an avatar out of my past.

Sometimes the images jump out at me easily, defining themselves as perfect caricatures for the personas I’m trying to create. Other times they’re a combination of several individuals I’ve met or known in my past. It could also be someone’s unique personality, a character or figure from something I read or encountered or observed ions ago.

Yet there is always one major obstacle in creating such an avatar. The challenge of separating the reality of who I thought those people were from the reality of who really were. It’s like playing checkers inside my head, jumping from real to fictional, trading imagination for reality. The length of years passed only adds to the challenge of searching through the fog of time to gleam their true identity.

In essence I’m trying to unlock the layers of my memory bank and figure out who those people were back then and the role they played in my life. I am trying to undress them and in the process reveal their soul to my readers.

But since mindset often colors experience my recollections about that person tend to be less than completely accurate. Usually they’re reactions or prejudices based on limited knowledge or smeared into distortion by the passage of time and age and past conditioning.

Like most writers, I don’t know how to divorce my past lives, relationships, experiences, prejudices, incidents, failures and successes from my story telling. That certainly is true when it comes to creating female characters in my stories.

The female protagonist, with all of her inherent complexities, is always harder to create than her male counterpart. Who am I really thinking of when I create a female character? My avatars aren’t always women I have known. They could be a movie character or stage persona that struck me with their unique characteristics, real or fictional.

Unfortunately, it’s never a straight forward procedure but rather a rather subliminal process each time I want to create a new female character. I wish it were as easy as: “I knew that person…that person would suit my character… I will recreate that avatar in my character’s role.”

At times, it might be a compilation of several people that I’ve known or met in my past life even if I can’t identify with whom and or when or what exactly happened back then. But something did happen that scratched a memory scar on my brain that only now, through the creative process, is being uncovered as its multiple layers are peeled away.

It could be someone I never really knew that well but nevertheless left a strong impression on me. Like the dark-haired woman sipping her demitasse in Montmartre, Paris. She looked right through me with distain and disregard. Maybe it was Snow White in her tight turtle neck sweater pondering a new life in Belgium. Snow White and theSeven Seekers. It could have been Maria from Denmark yearning for her Spanish homeland or the amorous Danish student who wanted to take me away for the weekend. It could have been Tina and our late night cerebral rendezvous in some nameless village in Denmark. Recently, it could have been the homeless old woman I met at Starbucks on Times Square. Off Off-Broadway.

It could be a moment in time that somehow left a scar in my brain. Images, real or otherwise, like that crinoline that framed a bedroom window overlooking the cathedral dome, my mother’s sofa or singing folk songs at the Newman Center.

Photo Credit | Jerry Hoffman

I’ve met a lot of people through a lifetime of living and they’ve all left multiple impressions on my mind even if it wasn’t readily apparent at the time. Yet by wandering those dark dusty passages of my memory alleys and byways, their personality traits/quirks/ flaws or subtle nuances often come to surface once again.

I want to remember what they felt like, smelt like, the vibes they were giving off even though most of us were oblivious to it at the time. I need to explore the essence of who they really were and then use that to recreate that person/s as my character.

If, in fact, my avatar is someone I used to know, I have to glean from those scattered memories the most memorable incidents that defined that person. Their names define a moment, an incident and ultimately a part of me. Yet that process is never cut and dry. It took me six chapters before I figured out who Katherine really was in my novel “Follow the Cobbler.”  I was a bit shocked at first but then it really made perfect sense that this woman would bubble up to the surface and burst forth on my written pages.

Some avatars are easy finds; others not so much. Yet all of them are a part of the wonderful discovery and refinement process that takes place when I finally seduce some fine woman into becoming my heroine, protagonist and, hopefully, memorable character in one of my stories.

Writing fiction for a female protagonist is more fluid than real life but can be just as challenging.