Writing heart moments…
“In first person, I get to watch her grapple with how the revelation impacts her universe in real-time … No, she cannot be everywhere, but she is somewhere, changing the trajectory of her life.”
I wrote this post from my Auntie J’s house in Montgomery, Alabama. Whenever I visit, I’m up well before dawn out there on the porch swing writing, listening to music, and watching the world go by. It was my last day in town and I was already missing Alabama as I wrote about putting heart moments to paper.
By 6:15, the night sky gives way to slate gray, and the birds are getting their worms. Between long moments of stillness, a breeze rustles the treetops up and down the street as though the wind itself is just opening its eyes. The wind chimes sound once or twice, but are otherwise silently deferential to Mahalia softly singing from my phone about how she got over. With eyes closed, and legs long across the porch swing, I lean my head back as the rain starts to gently worry the leaves. There is a slight, determined chill in the air that finds every inch of my legs uncovered by this blanket; a chill that my sweatshirt cannot fight. But I stay outside, filling my lungs with rain-clean air and thinking the old folks had it right—every day above ground is, indeed, a good day.
I am the only person in the world allowing this exact moment in this exact place to leave its imprint on my heart. Gratitude and sadness fill me this Sunday morning as the hours tick toward the end of my visit to Auntie J’s house in Montgomery, Alabama. I’m grateful and privileged to draw these pre-dawn breaths out here on “my” porch swing—“mine” because my Auntie J and Auntie Mel painted my name on it. Even during these quiet moments, the world feels abundant; demands to be noticed and remembered. Naturally, details will escape me. But what I do notice stays with me as necessary and immediate, imprinted on my heart and on these pages.
Which, to me, is the beauty of writing in first-person—it is an opportunity to put somebody’s heart moments on paper, and to experience the world through another lens. My body of published and yet-to-be published work places Black women in jazz clubs and longed-for train rides and Black towns and settlements in Alabama. Each woman has, and deserves, unique perspective about this world. They would each experience this dawn through their own set of eyes; their vulnerabilities and prejudices informing what they can, and do, take away from it. Some things I overlook or ignore would demand their observation, and maybe the things that stay on my mind wouldn’t worry them at all.
First-person provides fresh, intimate perspective to readers and writers alike, expanding the possibilities of perception. A first-person narrator is not omniscient--no one person can know, and tell of, everything in this old world. But what these women do know is the way they experience their universe in the moment—the conversations they have or overhear; their self-doubt or the gravitational pull of lost love. The women I write know what it feels like to live in their skin—know that their knees start talking to them when the rain is coming; know that their day is impossibly overscheduled, or know the disappointment of broken promises and the injuries of words.
But first-person also gives the gift of experiencing their world through blind spots. The anxiety of not knowing where a beloved hid her key, or the surprise of a mama’s betrayal. These discrete moments allow me to explore every facet of vulnerability. Maybe we never discover what actually happened to the key, or why the mama turned her back, but for me, these questions are almost secondary. While they provide the spark for a scene or story, they require the narrator to open up and breathe in the world around her in its current form. Maybe her skin is alive on a porch swing experiencing the chilled air of a sudden downpour. Maybe she’s smoldering for a love not lost, but longed for. Maybe she’s aflame with rage fueled by self-doubt or treachery. First-person provides limited access to the motivations of others in the story, but boundless insight into the women in the center of the narrative. It’s the writing equivalent of, “You don’t need to worry about what’s going on in ‘the world’; you need to worry about what’s going on right here.” First-person allows for “right here” on the page, giving insight from the insides.
Which is why I sometimes wonder, “But how did they know that?” when reading a first-person narrative. Suppose a narrator tells the reader about a wild tryst between her parents that led to her own not-so-immaculate conception. Not that it is totally implausible for a child to obtain such information, but if she never tells us how she learned about it, I wonder how she knows. Perhaps, in a desperately drunken lament over a pending divorce, her daddy stumbled into her room and warned her never to marry some fool just because she’s in the “family way”. Or maybe an older sister blurted about a night of loud passion between their parents that she suspected ended her reign as the only child.
How does the divorce, or a parent’s intoxication, or the narrator’s age, color the way she receives this information? What circumstances compelled the sister’s words at this particular time? In other words, what does the past have to do with how the narrator is living in a moment? How does the interaction impact her life and shape her world? In first person, I get to watch her grapple with how the revelation impacts her universe in real-time. This is not a limitation, but an opportunity hidden in plain sight. No, she cannot be everywhere and know everything. But she is somewhere, changing the trajectory of her life.
The sky is brighter now, though the sun still hides behind the clouds and the air is full of mist. The birds are full-throated, and probably full-bellied, though the breeze is still tired, and the chill still a blanket, when an older man walks by on the sidewalk. He passes this way every now and again when I stay at my Auntie J’s house, but we’ve never made proper acquaintances. This morning, he’s fussing into his phone, so, to greet him without disturbing the conversation, I hold a palm up and wave. Without breaking stride, he wishes me “good morning” and says,
“How you doing, young lady?”
“Well, sir, you know what they say,” I tell him. “Every day above ground is a good day.”
He chuckles a smile of recognition, slows his stride slightly, briefly, and responds,
“I know that’s right! You have a blessed day, now.” He continues his path and his fussing, though maybe it’s my imagination that the edge has softened in his voice. I wonder what, if anything, he’ll remember from our interaction. I’ll likely never know. All I know is how these moments are imprinted on me. His kindness in the midst of frustration; my name on this porch swing; the tired breeze and the birdsong all come together in my own, distinct world. Writing in first-person allows me to embrace, and explore, the unique existence of women, each in their own way.