Tag: Eclipses of Jupiter

Samples, Writing

From Secret Passages to Aliens – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 8

Chrys Buckley

This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade.

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

24_MG_2742mar386Mom was going to counseling a lot, or some type of meetings. It was all hush-hush and grown-up talk but I had surmised that much. And that it had something to do with her parents. One day she took me with her.

The therapist was named Diana and she was really friendly. They always were. This was not my first therapy rodeo. I knew all the tricks, how to charm them the way I charmed Mom sometimes by pretending to agree with her, or maybe temporarily really agreeing with her on the way home from that visit to Mrs. Domaracki the day before school.

I knew how to pretend to be good. Talk about bad things other kids do, even if you’re really the one who does them more than anyone else. Use logic. Be interesting. Maybe mention quirky things like the flagrant love you had for the blood red octagons of stop signs as a three-year-old. If they can tell you’re smart, that you read a lot, that you think and feel deeply, they’re less likely to blame you. If you can infuse some Dad into your voice, speak with his bland cheerful optimism about topics like the weather, then maybe they’ll think you’re normal, let you draw pictures or play games. You have to not show all your smarts though, so then you can beat them in Battleship.

Continue reading “From Secret Passages to Aliens – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 8” →

Samples, Writing

Dark Winter Chill – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 7

Chrys Buckley

This is another installment of a rough draft of a memoir chapter that covers fourth grade. This one’s a little dark.

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

tlww7imagesAs winter deepened, Mom’s bad moods got worse. I didn’t want to come home from school. Every time I walked inside the front door on days that Randy and I didn’t have Centerstream, there was something in the way the low winter sun fell through the big wide living-room window and onto the wall across the room, across from the front door. Something about the way the light fell on that off-white wall that I saw as soon as I opened the door made me feel sick to my stomach, like it reminded me of something bad I couldn’t quite remember. It made me feel haunted.

I felt so unsettled as I ate my afternoon snack each day, then went upstairs to play Barbies murder mysteries and write my little “books.” I was amassing a collection by then, a handful of stories that were about twenty pages each handwritten. I wasn’t really happy with any of them; I always felt they couldn’t quite capture the darkness of my soul. So I kept writing more.

Continue reading “Dark Winter Chill – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 7” →

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Light as a Feather – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 6

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

cabin-snowEarly that winter, I went on my first overnight Girl Scout camping trip. My mom was working more at the newspaper, so for once, she wasn’t one of the troop leaders. We arrived at a big cabin called Hammond House. The walls were the color of wood and little cots lined the walls. The cabin was a long rectangle. One of the girls had recently learned the “Light as a Feather” game and we played it incessantly. One girl would lie in the middle and we would all surround her, purring two fingers from each hand under her. The person at the head gave a fake eulogy and then we all intoned, “Dead as a doornail, stiff as a board, light as a feather” over and over slowly lifting the scout in the middle up off the floor and up, up, over our heads. There were a lot of us, girls and girls and girls lifting, and it felt magic. We even did it on our troop leaders. I only got to be in the middle once.

Continue reading “Light as a Feather – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 6” →

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Caught in the Act – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 5

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

hall1“What on Earth were you doing?” Mrs. Domaracki asked when she caught me slithering out under a bathroom stall door. She ushered me out into the hallway.

“I was just, well the lock was stuck, so I—“

“I saw you climbing over the stalls,” she said.

“Fifth graders were doing it too!” I blurted.

She looked around swirling her head dramatically. “I don’t see any fifth graders.”

“Not now. They were here earlier. They told me to.”

She put one hand on her hip. “Who? What are their names?”

“I don’t know, fifth graders.”

Continue reading “Caught in the Act – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 5” →

Samples, Writing

Bathroom Jungle Gym – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 4

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

tlww4indexI started asking to go to the bathroom way too often in Mrs. Domaracki’s class, especially when she was about to check homework and I hadn’t done it. It wasn’t a good plan—she always checked mine when I got back—but it delayed things a bit. I got a good sense of when she was as about to check, raised my had and then wandered slowly to the girls bathroom with its pale green walls and three stalls with low walls. I sat on the toilet and read a chapter in a book or thought up what I wanted to write in my next “book “ about secret passages and baby-sitters. Or I did math problems or recited in my mind facts about the Solar System until I couldn’t anymore because it had been more than five minutes and I had to scurry back to class.

Continue reading “Bathroom Jungle Gym – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 4” →

Samples, Writing

Mystery Worlds – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 3

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

the_secret_passage_by_nelleke-d5eoh7j_largeAt every indiscretion—a not perfect grade on a test, talking in class when I wasn’t supposed to, not coming in from the playground in a timely manner after recess, not doing my homework completely or on time (a bad habit I’d quickly slid back into), reading during lunch instead of socializing with kids who made fun of me—Mrs. Domaracki called my mom. Even if it was just one thing in a day, it always counted for two warnings.

Night after night, several nights a week, I was sent to bed at seven. I lay in bed, watching the sky still light out outside my windows. Sometimes I’d stare at the tree out my east-facing window by my bed. Or stand at the south-facing window across the room with no big trees outside it but way more sky. I listened to the fire siren as its moan ebbed and flowed. In my head, I talked to my Care Bears on the white shelves near the south-facing window, telling them why it, whatever it was that day, wasn’t my fault. Sometimes they believed me. Sometimes they sided with Mom and Mrs. Domaracki.

Continue reading “Mystery Worlds – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 3” →

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Instrument Analysis – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 2

Chrys Buckley

To start this piece from the beginning, click here.

jazzy-cello-susanne-clarkAnd at first, I tried to be good. All my dittos from class were filled out and filed neatly in my folders. I swept the floor even though I couldn’t see the dirt, going around the kitchen systematically until a dark pile formed in the epicenter. I scrubbed the bathroom sink and only complained silently to my favorite doll Jenny and my Care Bears in my room. I went to the Centerstream after school program with my seven-year-old brother Randy and didn’t cause any trouble.

One day early in the school year, my music class had a test. It wasn’t a real test, our teacher assured us. She just wanted to see what we already knew coming in. Up front she had about twenty-five big glossy photos of instruments lined up side by side, all seated in that little tray that’s supposed to hold chalk and erasers, and leaning back against the blackboard. The teacher told us to get out a piece of paper and number it one to twenty-six. Next to each number, we were supposed to write the name of the instrument in the matching picture.

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Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

The “Truth” About Me – Truth, Lies and the Wicked Witch 1

Chrys Buckley

tlww1imagesI was excited for fourth grade. I had been assigned the teacher I wanted, Mrs. Domaracki. I had new school clothes. I had all my school supplies in order—folders for math and reading and science and social studies and spelling. Some had covers with graded coloring going from almost white on top to a deep fuchsia pink on the bottom. Others were black with hot pink and yellow squiggles scattered about. They were all packed in my backpack, ready for the new school year. There was only one thing left to do.

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Blindness and Disability, Music, Samples, Writing

Music Takes Me Back – Camp Marcella 1993

Chrys Buckley

campmarcellarechallindexOn the Sunday that marked the midway point of the camp session, the routine changed. We got to sleep in an extra hour, and after breakfast, we had Sunday Morning Program. Phil opened the program with a new song, a slower song than the whale song or “Great Balls of Fire” or the aorta song.

“Welcome to my morning
Welcome to my day
I’m the one responsible
I made it just this way
I made myself some pictures
To see what they might bring
I think I made it perfectly
I wouldn’t change a thing
La-la-la, La-la-la-la-la-la…”

Continue reading “Music Takes Me Back – Camp Marcella 1993” →

Blindness and Disability, Samples, Writing

Constant Eclipse: A Memoir Chapter

Chrys Buckley

chrys_boweryclub1bI was scared that Mom or Dad would kill me in my sleep. Dad was an FBI agent and he had a gun that he sometimes kept in the house. I thought even he was afraid of Mom, who screamed all the time, got hysterically mad and spanked me when I was little. It was her I listened for as I laid in bed in my thin yellow nightgown, reading Nancy Drew by the light of my night-light, while I tried not to think about getting murdered.

My parents’ bedroom door opened and I heard Mom’s sharp footsteps in the hallway. They sounded mad. I waited curled on my side with the book under the covers and screamed No, Mom, No! inside my head. If either of them came for me tonight, I’d jump out the window. I didn’t care that my room was upstairs. I’d jump anyway, land mangled on the driveway and run across our yard as fast as I could. I’d pound on our next-door neighbor’s door. If she answered, I’d tell her my parents were chasing me and beg her to protect me. If she didn’t believe me, I’d run faster and pound harder at the next house and go through the neighborhood with wild desperation until I found someone who would keep me safe. It might not last. My parents might follow me, shoot into the distance or use the authorities to take me back, but that was like the second story window and the driveway; if I wanted to survive, I’d have to think about it later.

The bathroom door opened and Mom went in. I kept freezing. She finally stalked back to her room and I breathed. The quiet lasted a few full chapters.

I got up and went to my window. It faced the driveway and our front yard with its giant tree. The moon was out, maybe full, I couldn’t tell. It was big and white and round and it cast shadows through the branches onto the grass. I had a huge feeling of dark and mysterious magic in my chest. If I could touch it, it would be like touching my soul. It would make me huge too, and magic. I stood watching the moon, the tree, and the shadows until I was finally tired.

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~~~

Yeah, it’s just a little dark, I know. This is what I was invited to read at “The Best Memoirists Pageant Ever” at the Bowery Poetry Club in NYC in 2007.  So the picture is from that event. Fun times.

Fun fact: I was kinda freaking about reading this piece out loud and so a good friend had me read parts to her beforehand, and from the first sentence we were laughing our asses off. It’s not really funny, it just somehow struck us that way. Sometimes all you can do is laugh. And that’s okay.

Check out the Samples Page, as well as Published and Early Work, to read more of my writing!

~Chrys

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