Finding My Story
by Joseph O’Day
I once got scolded in first grade because I needed to sharpen my pencil. Sister Rose had told us to take out a piece of paper and prepare for a quiz, but my pencil’s lead had broken. Before I could make my way to the sharpener, she hovered over me, and in raised voice declared, “No wonder you need to sharpen your pencil, Mr. O’Day. You’ve been writing all over your desk!” I started crying and Sister Rose sent for my sister Maureen in fifth grade to come see how bad I’d been.
That scene lived in my head for forty years, until I wrote it out. I had an image of short, stocky Sister Rose and of my desk in the back row behind the other kids, and of the patch I wore over my right eye to exercise my weak left eye. I believed I never wrote on that desk, but couldn’t be sure; I was only six at the time and lost touch with most of the living witnesses.
I also believed the story’s essence centered on Sister Rose’s oppression, how she pulled my chair and me to the back wall of closets (which stored our coats and lunch bags), and on my mother’s tepid reaction when I got home – “Those nuns make such a big deal out of everything.” But the more I rewrote and reviewed my memories, the shakier seemed my “facts.” I wondered for instance where the pencil sharpener was located. Was it next to Sister Rose’s desk in the front of the room like I thought? Was I seated in my chair when Sister moved it furiously to the back wall? How had she gotten from the front of the room to the back so quickly? Did she really strut through aisles of frightened students like I’d written, knocking them aside like Moses parting the waters?
Some elements stayed true, like Sister Rose showing Maureen the markings on my desktop, and her directive to tell our mother I’d “damaged school property.” There was another, overlooked, moment I recalled, that occurred away from Sister Rose’s grasp, when Maureen’s facial expression told me how ridiculous this was, when she looked into my eyes and whispered, “Jody, don’t worry. Don’t worry about it.” How soothing her words had felt, how great to have had her on my side. No wonder I didn’t worry about my mother finding out. I realized my story wasn’t about Sister Rose’s stridency, or my mother’s scoffing about nuns. It was about my ten-year-old sister’s kindness in that moment. It was about how Maureen had knocked away my feelings of humiliation and isolation and replaced them with love.
Joseph O’Day’s writing focuses on family relationships and life transitions. His work has appeared in The Bluebird Word, Oyster River Pages, Spry Literary Journal, The Critical Flame, bioStories, and other publications. He served as Director of Pharmacy at Brigham and Woman’s Faulkner Hospital for many years until his retirement and received his MA in English from Salem State University.
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What surprising, fascinating stuff can you tell us about the origin, drafting, and/or final version of “Finding My Story”? Most of my writing is nonfiction based on my life. I want to get the details right, so when my memory begins to fade someday, I can return to my pieces and trust what I read. When I revisited early drafts of “Finding My Story,” I was surprised to find that I’d embellished. Perhaps unconsciously, I’d added drama, and some of my main points felt weak and untrue. I decided to strip the piece down and to challenge the truth of everything I’d written. The more I rewrote with this mindset, the less concerned I became for the embarrassment I’d felt as a first grader, and the more did the significance of Maureen’s actions come to the fore. Maureen had stepped in when my six-year-old self needed her most. That’s why I got emotional whenever I returned to the story, and why, despite setting it aside several times over the years, it never left me. All I needed was to find its truth.
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