This story is highly autobiographical, and I credit the Holy Spirit’s guidance in my writing. While the details are somewhat fictional, (I did write a piece in the style of Canterbury Tales, but did not use animals), the reliance on God’s direction is the point of telling readers this story in “Led by the Spirit,” for my intention is writing is to tell God’s story of the Spirit’s guiding in my work. Godincidences are indeed real. No fiction there.
“Canterbury Conundrum”
I remember the assignment; I remember the day Mr. Sullivan tried to motivate us know-it-all-wise-fool sophomores to write a four-page poem. Yes, it had to be about a trip, true or imaginary. Yes, it had to have a least three characters. And, most daunting of all, yes, it had to have rhyme and rhythm Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.
The poetry part didn’t faze me. I have a musical ear and almost automatically fall into iambic pentameter. But the story line—that was a different matter. My world was small, limited. No way could I write about traveling somewhere, meeting interesting, even bawdry characters like the wife of Bath or a lecherous parson. I just didn’t know anyone like Chaucer’s cast of medieval characters.
I’d never taken a trip; I was fiercely protected, sheltered from anyone but positive role models. For heaven’s sake, the only folks we knew were stalwart Calvinists. How on earth was I going to do this?
I was the oldest of four (had to excel and be a good example), wore thick glasses, had two missing front teeth, and was awkward and skinny, even as a sophomore. I wore plain-Jane homemade dresses and carried brown-bagged lunch, unlike my classmates who exuded style with a capital S, bought hot meals for lunch, and got to sit in the big cafeteria. I felt shunned, often ate alone in the band room, and tried to avoid places which made me feel inferior.
But, usually I excelled at music and writing. A’s in journalism. A’s in English. I loved to read (on target to read every book in our school library before graduation). Did I know even then that one day I would teach Language Arts and write books? Hardly. But God was preparing me even then, as I now know.
However, this day, I felt as dismayed as my less-verbal classmates, and the specter of defeat rose precisely in the one area where I usually succeeded.
After numerous false starts, I took this problem to my mom, as usual, the solver of all adolescent struggles. I even cried a little in frustration. She knew me all-too-well. Perfectionist. Sensitive, Achievement-oriented. Capable, but with a serious inferiority complex. Life so far had taught me hard lessons. But, she saw infinite possibilities and once more assured me I could do this.
I remember she stopped kneading the bread dough, flour fingered, took my hands in hers, and prayed, “Lord, you know the struggles and the answers. Once more show Betty June that she is as special as You plan for her to be. Lord, You have given her talent with words. Talent in music. Good teachers. Help her with this assignment, and we will give You all the glory as we always do. Thank you for what You are about to do with her, in her, for her, and we will bless Your Holy Name. Amen.”
Then we got down to basics, a good old “Why don’t you’s?” a technique I later used in my forty years of classroom discussions, brainstorming. “Why not make up a story?” she asked, as she peeled potatoes to stretch yet another casserole. “You’ve read about lots of places and people. You’ve always got your face in a book.”
Usually that was one of her chief gripes. “Why don’t you find a friend to spend time with instead of reading all the time?” she’d say, trying unsuccessfully to run my life as moms sometimes do. “Or what about writing about going to Grandma’s last summer. Then she suggested, and hit the mark, “What about an animal story like your favorite Aesop’s Fables?”
Now that had possibilities—or as I later learned the term, that had legs. That was a keeper.
I grabbed my notebook and ran outside to my secluded alone spot (there were few of those, in a house full of young’uns), under the towering pine trees in the side yard. I did a lot of thinking there, listening to the sighing, or is it soughing? of the branches in the wind, and watching the frolicking squirrels, chipmunks, and birds who loved my sanctuary almost as much as I did.
So with a quick, “Lord, help me do this, okay?” auditory petition, I sketched out my story:
Character list:
- Sammy Squirrel going to visit his sweetie named Mattie (one of my grandmothers’s friends’s names), who lived across town. Carried a basket of hickory nuts from the backyard tree, and marigold seeds from the front bed, as gifts, treasures from afar.
- Stanley Squirrel, a rival for her affections, but sort of a braggart
- Diana, cardinal, every preened feather in place, cunning and fierce–named after my chief rival at school, the rich kid from the other side of town, always in my face about their latest cruise and fancy hotel stay. Surely she’d ace this assignment, I thought. (Yes, I was sophomorically a green-eyed monster, lacking in grace, and not quite sanctified yet!)
- Harry, the gorgeous red cardinal, strutting and proud— but in real life, star football player, my idol. He even had his own red car. (Closest thing to a leech I knew—went through girlfriends like last-week’s news.)
- Elsa, a blue jay,(plus her entourage of hangers-on and fawning followers), bold and brassy, always pushing her agenda at the expense of everyone else’s. (Lots of real-life examples of this character type in this class!)
- Evelyn, my alter-ego. Blue-eyed blonde with a winning smile and the best clothes, straight out of Seventeen She’s the beautiful de-clawed cat that sits basking in the sun, swishing her shapely tail, wishing everyone a happy day. She’d never attack a bird or chase a chipmunk; she just IS, seated on a throne, spectacular in her royal-highness role.
- Ellen and Dottie, my siblings, transformed in this piece to rollicking chipmunks, always dashing here and there, sometimes endearing, industrious, and charming, but usually disturbers of the peace, in the story and in real life. They’d get into my things. We shared a room. Was nothing sacred? Anyway, true to form, they’d disrupt Harry and Diana’s tryst, and foment chaos our knight-hero Harry would joust to make right.
- Tom Cat, Evelyn’s suitor, who visits from afar, wagging his luxurious tail, preening his whiskers, circling her as if she’s the center of his universe, and bringing her a just-captured mouse as evidence of his prowess and provision for her, and his allegiance.
So, I had my cast of characters and began to write:
Prologue
With warming April exuding her fresh springtime charms
The beautiful kingdom of Animaladia lay
Where romantic encouters occur, many knights are disarmed
Where wooing, and flirting and frolicking intrigue do play;
And stories of courting, cuckolding’s adventures alarm
And feminine innocents await, \obvious assets displayed
For suitors’ attention, beckoning brave knight to disarm
From knights’s jousts to their haunts to be swayed.
These not-so-sweet damsels these knights will entice
With waves of the hands, their scarves and their laces
They’ll weave their intrigue and designs with advice
To lure champions’ pleasures, their jousts to replace
With tales of myths’ beasts, and adventure and spice
And soothsayers’ predictions you’ll find in this piece.
And so began my Animalandia Tale. With little revision, the story told itself, (a writer’s dream), and when I finished, I knew it was a winner.
Indeed it was.
Mr. Sullivan bragged about it to the class, even read it out loud without revealing the author’s name.
We were seated alphabetically in that class, actually in most of my classes, now that I think about it. I was always behind Ralph Vogel, a big lout of a guy who, in monotone, read so slowly I thought I’d never get a chance to read aloud with affected inflection before the bell rang. But this day, we would not read what he called “our nuggets,” the best part of our description or the paragraph we liked the most from our latest assignment.
On this day, in Mr. Sullivan’s Advanced English II class, I rejoiced, because I could see the glances of Diana and her cohorts of “the in-group” looking around quizzically, trying to figure out whose writing piece was taking center stage. And for once, it wasn’t theirs, certainly not hers.
Meanwhile, Mr. Sullivan, the drama coach, whose teaching I later would emulate, read my poem from start to finish, with enthusiasm, dialect for each character, and rhythmic accuracy as if he were reading Chaucer’s words in true poetic form. I was astounded to hear how good my writing sounded, and so was the class.
Mr. Sullivan entered my piece in a national writing contest for high school students. Just as I eagerly anticipated my bid to National Honor Society, and my Quill and Scroll pin inducting me into the journalism honorary organization, I awaited the May 15th announcement of winners of the English Teachers’ Exemplary Writers’ prizes. He had given me a copy of his nomination form. Could he be writing about me?
“This student excels in translating her vivid imagination into capable wordsmithing, creating characters into ‘jump off the pages and into your hearts” personalities, and in her enthusiasm for poignant details, provides dynamic settings, plots, and descriptions far beyond my expectations. Perhaps it is because she is an avid reader and a keen observer, obviously adopting styles of writing as her own. She deserves recognition for her achievements in writing, and I nominate her without reservation.”
It was signed Francis G. Sullivan.
As I reflect on this victorious moment over fifty yeas ago, I realize that one’s hidden muse emerges, sometimes comes up for air, a time to be appreciated. This piece caused me to dig deep, to recognize characters could be symbolic, that a writer’s style could influence mine, that it was actually fun to create something my imagination could embrace, and my writing could “truly live,” as Emily Dickinson, another idol of mine once wrote. And I won national recognition, Third Prize. And thanked God.
I went on to teach Language Arts to over 4,800 middle and high schoolers in four states. Perhaps more than any other teacher or professor, more than numerous books about writing, more than memorable seminars on writing I’ve attended or presented, I celebrate Mr. Sullivan’s influence in searching for each child’s special voice.
It’s elusive. Sometimes it’s just a couple of words in a jungle of confusion, but when I found it, each time, in BIG letters, I wrote YES! ♥ My kids knew that they had attained greatness for that turn of phrase, or for that paragraph, or rarely, for that piece that just “had it!”
And, because one’s life-experiences influence who they become, I always had a special place in my heart for the child who exhibited what I felt in that sophomore class. The child who needed encouragement in his/her life, the child whose life was pathetically grey, the child who seemingly had no future. Those were the ones I cherished when the guidance counselor told me, “If anyone can reach this child, you can.” These were the foster kids, the ones who had no books at home, the ones who wore the same shoes all year, tattered and mended, the ones whose parents never came to conferences or answered my notes home. These were my target kids. And these are the ones whose hugs I remember when I taught them as freshmen, and again as seniors writing college entrance essays and winning scholarships. There’s not another feeling like it!
And for me, the first one to attend college on either side of my family, the one who had eye surgery and finally got her teeth capped after marriage, that one shining moment in Mr. Sullivan’s class was pivotal. I call it a Godincidence that he taught me at a time when I was so vulnerable. I call it a Godincidence that I was so ready for that breakthrough. I call it Godincidence that I was blessed to influence other parents’ children, and to see the rewards which came from a caring teacher’s special touch on a life. Furthermore, I think as he observes from his obvious-to-me place in heaven, he would write in the margin of at least one of my twenty-one books, “nice touch there, Betty,” or “I think there’s a story here,” or “let’s submit this to the such-and-such” contest, or “I think you’ll write books someday.”
Epilogue:
I had such a student here in Brevard County. She is now battling cancer at the age of forty-one, and last year published her first book of poetry. I knew she could do it, way back at McNair Magnet School in Cocoa. I am praying fervently for her healing. Will you join me? I publish this in honor of Retinna Bell.
About the Author
