A letter, a dream

 Dear Zada:

         I miss you. I know this is supposed to be about grad school but I can’t write to you without telling you I miss you. I wish you were here. You would love Ramona. She’s amazing…I feel like you’ve met her, somehow. You were just so much of what I see in her. Maybe it’s her eyes. Anyway.

         I’m applying to grad school! For an MFA in creative writing with a focus on poetry. I know. Crazy. A lot of people have asked why? Why this? You’re a social worker, they say. Or they simply look at me with puzzlement in their eyes. They can’t put it together, this life I already have and this life I’m working towards. I’m a social worker because I want to change the world. And I’m a poet because I have to believe that there is something there already worth changing. There will always be people who move the world around on it’s axis—do the day to day, the mundane, the important, all of it—and there have to be those who move it forward. I can’t move the world forward without this degree, Zada. I need poetry to do my social work, and the social work I do informs my poetry. It is an odd and symbiotic relationship. 

         I want to go to grad school—I need to go to grad school—because I feel I’ve reached the limit of what I can do on my own in terms of my writing. I’ve worked hard, sought advice and editing, and am published. But there is a plateau here that I’ve hit, and I think I still have so much more potential. I can be such a better writer and I’m not willing to be mediocre in this area. It is time to get out of my own way and ask for critique and criticism, training and schooling, peer pressure and talented teachers.

         I want to go to grad school because I believe art is worth pursuing. You taught me that, that it is worthy to carve figurines simply for the act of carving, finding the faces in the wood, finding the life. I want to do that with my writing—find new phrases and ideas that no one has touched upon, or visit old themes with a fresh viewpoint. Writers must be deft and knowledgeable in their writing—technically sound and creatively ingenious. One of my favorite poets, Kazim Ali, says that the poet needs to be equally an oracle of unheard sounds, but also an able craftsman and artisan. I have stumbled into my unheard sounds a few times but I don’t have the skill set to find my way back purposefully. I have the voice, but not the ability to make it heard. I am raw and untrained, and I want to write with great skill and artistry.

         I’m not going to lie, I’m a bit scared. Your son tells me that fear isn’t a bad thing, and he’s right. He also always tells me that you have to want grad school, want it with your gut and heart and mind, before you’re ready to apply. It’s not going to be easy hearing criticism and critiques, but it is necessary. I want to publish a book someday. Grad school will be one of the hardest things I've every done--but still I’ve faced tougher challenges than this. I know what it is to fight for something worried you will fail and what it is to fight for something knowing that you will succeed. And I believe that the only true failure is in not trying at all.

         I want to go to grad school because everywhere--in my work, my dodgeball, my running, my life--everywhere I have words and lack the discipline to write them all. The words are everywhere, under my skin and tattooed on the tops of my toes and forming the beads of sweat at the end of each race, and I will be damned if I don't work for a way to get them to paper.

         I want to go to grad school because I think you would be proud of me if I did. I think you would agree that a creative medium that ignites a fire in me, urges me forward at every turn, can be found in a sunset or in washing dishes, is a medium worth pursuing. And I think you would agree that, as a writer yourself, there is value in the writing itself. You wrote with joy, for the sheer pleasure of putting the words on the page. I want to write like that, Zada. I want to find you in my writing.

         I want to go to grad school because I believe that I have something worth sharing with the world. I want to go to grad school because I have a niece, and one day I will have kids of my own, and I want them to know that following your dreams is always worthy. It is always hard. And it is always right.

         Thank you for the fire in my belly. Thank you for teaching me how to be tenacious and how to be kind. Thank you for my father. Thank you for believing in me every step of the way when you were alive; because of that; I know you would believe that I can do this. I miss you every damn day. And I love you every day.

         Your granddaughter,

                           Ames