We got up early, dug the car out, and headed out for day in Providence. Went first to the house where I grew up on the East Side, from four years old on. I left that house when I was 14 and my family moved to Atlantic City. I have few memories of that place, other than of the antiques my mother skillfully acquired and my bassett hound, Sam, and of the room where I kept my tropical fish. One of the highlights of my younger life was helping develop a cross breed – Mollys and Platys – in my Frankenstein/Lab like fish room. Got on the cover of Tropical Fish Hobbyist for that. Maybe the high point of my childhood, besides handing out in the Rochambeau Library.
The sun came out and I drove Maria around, showed her this part of my life, took her to meet my parents in the cemetery where they are buried, and then we walked all over Thayer Street and Brown University, where I hung out quite a bit as a kid, drawn to the notion that creative things were happening behind those Ivy walls. Disorienting going back there again today. Then to Benefit Hill and downtown for seafood. Providence is looking good, mostly, but as I remembered from my childhood, many neighborhoods there are still struggling. I tried to find my grandmother’s house, but I think it’s gone. That’s the thing about going back. It isn’t always there.
Our Room, by Maria Wulf. Something new and quite wonderful on this book tour. Maria Wulf, my former girlfriend is drawing sketches of our trip through some wonderful libraries. They might become potholders or quilts, or whatever her fertile mind spits up. You can see her work on her website, fullmoonfiberart.com
January 27, 2011. The storm is over. Providence, like much of the Northeast, is digging out. We will survive, despite the Armageddon pronouncements of Storm Center. They have already moved on to the next drama.
The talk tonight at the Providence Public Library’s Rochambeau Branch, on Hope Street, my first library and the place I became a writer, is on as scheduled (books will not be sold there) for 7 p.m. I appreciate Tom O’Donnell and the library choosing to open up as much of the rest of the city is closed or opening up late. If a handful of people show up, it will be great.
This is the first time I have come back to Providence in many years, the first time I have ever come back to the streets and places that marked my childhood since I left as a teenager. It is strange, like there are two of us here, me giving a talk at a library and the little boy riding the bus all over the place and hiding out in cemeteries, back yards, and yes, a library. I think of my mother and father, my sister, my brother. I think of the little odd boy. I feel a lot of things, a lot of images flashing through my mind.
Mostly, I see the boy’s life has changed. He is not lonely at all anymore, and only frightened once in awhile and he is traveling with a wonderful person he loves very much, and he is doing work that he loves in a place that he loves, something the boy did not even imagine, so I find myself talking to him a bit. Hey, I said, it turned out okay. Better than that. It took awhile, but so what? He got there. I do want to take him in my arms and tell him it’s okay, these are all the bits and fragments of life that add up to being a human being. And a writer, for sure. Or an artist. Or photographer.
I am clear about one thing. Our story – me and the boy – is a happy one, not a sad one. I don’t want to tell it any other way, and I am learning not to think of it any other way.
We are, I think, like everyone else, comprised of the story of our lives. We can tell it any way we wish, as a story of sadness, struggle, loneliness, anger, the helpless and tormented victim. Or we can tell it a different way. We can move ahead. We have learned, grown, changed, taking the experiences of our lives and woven them into a different fabric. Our stories are personal, up to us.
This trip is not about me, it is about libraries and how sweet it is that the boy who took refuge in a library and was saved in some ways by a librarian, can return and make some noise on behalf of libraries, who now need his help. Isn’t life like that? So as I drive through Providence, and revisit a part of my life there, it is not a sad trip. Not one of lament or struggle or pain, or gauzy and painful memory. It is bright, colorful, uplifting. The building block of my life, the start of my story, and I am a story-teller. Honestly, I have no regrets, and no complaints. How could I? Why would I?
For me, coming here is nothing but a celebration, a benchmark in an amazing trip, and an affirmation. We can write our own stories, and they are, in fact, the story of our lives. Can’t wait for tonight.
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Tomorrow, Friday: Osterville Library, Osterville, Mass., 2 p.m. At 7 p.m., the Scituate Library, Scituate, Mass. Saturday 2 p.m., the Edgartown Library, Martha’s Vineyard, Mass. No storms or sub-zero weather in the forecast wow. Best book tour of my life.
