Roberta Payne's Blog

Amazing Grace

I'm an "Amazing Grace" junkie. I own many recorded versions of it; my favorites are one sung by Christ Church Cathedral Choir of Oxford and one sung by the amazing Joan Baez. No, wait, my favorite versions are ones sung at 12-Step meetings, everybody holding hands, totally grateful. The hymn hinges on fear. "T'was Grace that taught/ My heart to fear/ And Grace my fears relieved." Fear ruled my drinking life; was probably the reason I started drinking in the first place (When I was young and u...

moon day

Today is the 45th anniversary of the first Moon landing. I was living in Italy at the time. The newspaper's headline was "Siamo sulla Luna!" (We are on the Moon!) It was NOT "Americans Win Cold War Space Race." Today my American Field Service sister of 50 years (this year!), Amalia, called me from Buenos Aires to wish me a happy "Friends Day." "Friends Day" is how the Moon landing is celebrated in Argentina. Friends call friends, and friends go to dinner together, all this all over Argentina....

Memorial Day, cont.

Now to a memorial for a person in a different kind of war. I remember and thank, thank, First Lady Betty Ford, who talked to the public about breast cancer and mastectomies, formerly a forbidden topic, even between husband and wife, and then went on, incredibly bravely, to talk about her alcoholism. That during a period when women were hardly visible in AA. I credit Betty Ford at least in part for being visible for me, for helping me go the distance. She led her life well, and I'll never forg...

Memorial Day

On Memorial Day, I remember Mike. He is known as Ned in my memoir. He returned from Vietnam and became very, very, very ill with depression, and was consequently at the same mental hospital I was. Ned committed suicide with a gun. I was the last person he looked in the eye.

Nowadays, of course, we know enough about PTSD to know that people like Mike were probably not "just" depressed but rather suffering from a terrible post-war trauma.

Just for today, Memorial Day, and I know this sounds corny...

Alive

cancer, the lean wolf, white fanged

yellow eyes

fear, inside-my-bones fear

as it rushed me

right now

cancer is the best hunter, teeth in flesh, the wound spurting sunlight

it chewed, dragged me, chewed; stopped, raised its head, turned and left me

dazzled

the wolf, head low,

trotting away on the ridge

down here, dry, dull tundra

for now

Moment

I still have left, now,

soft dust of madness

insect's wing I touched between thumb and finger

on a bright day

then, my arm raised, freed

that pale green meadow moth flew into my mouth

agape at such beauty

and deposited a hundred thousand eggs inside my brain,
which became a hundred thousand squirming larvae,
which became a hundred thousand flapping, muddy moths,

and she flitted out my ear

I still have iridescence on my fingertips

mandalas, cont.

Continuing with the story of Father Mark:

I did more computer research, and found that a young man (name withheld from the public by the court, at his request), now an adult, who had almost certainly been in one of my four Latin classes, had been drugged and raped by Father Mark; he was suing the religious order which ran St. Andrew's for a million dollars. The court documents went on to state that the boy, just a teenager, had courageously gone to officials after the rape, but that consequent...

mandalas

My priest taught me how to make a mandala, in response to a tragedy of horrible proportions that happened to at least one boy who'd been a student of mine, years before.

Somewhere around 1976 or 1977, I returned from New Orleans to my native Denver. I was in the middle of my worst alcoholic years, and the move was supposed to make things better for me, according to my (warped) reasoning. Twelve-Steppers call that a "geographic move."

As soon as I arrived in Denver, in the fall of the year, I h...

End of the Night

One time back in New Orleans, before I got clean and sober, I was spending the night at Wayne’s drug house in the French Quarter. Wayne didn’t sell heroin (as far as I knew). One of the dealers, late into the evening when we’d become mellow on various things, asked me, “If your life depended on it, could you find a bag of heroin here in New Orleans before daybreak?”

Of course I could have. I knew the night well.

That dealer’s question has popped up in my mind from time to time since he posed it...

Thank You!

Dear Friends,

Thank you for reading my book.

Back when I was drinking, I used to sit around on the carpet of my very small apartment at night, sipping from a gallon-jug of cheap white wine, and dream. Not uniquely (I understand now) I’d drink far into the night and burn with passion to be a writer. I just couldn’t understand why all my dreams weren’t on their way.

Many years later, free of alcohol and most of my schizophrenia, I developed cancer. Cancer took a year out of my life. At the end of that year, when it appeared likely I was cured, there I was, retired and healthy, with real life ahead of me. Writing reappeared as a sweet dream. So I dared. I gave myself five years to see if I could write.

This book took five years of writing and two years of rewriting. And I own all the memories and the style.

I find the question of whether or not I’m a writer boring. My real identity is being a teacher, specifically a language teacher. I’ve taught English, Latin, Italian, and Greek to people ages 14 to over 70. My favorites are all of them.

Again, thank you for reading my book.