CREEK ROAD GANG
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Writing My Body for You
Leonard Gottesmancopyright 2010
For me, writing a personal story is a process of putting my body onto paper. The stories that I write are deeply grown within my arms and legs. They live in my chest and in my shoulders. Certainly they are in my head, but it’s not true that they live in my head alone.
They live in the hands that have felt the table top from which I lifted the fork with which I ate. They live in the same hands that have touched the body of each of those I’ve loved and held close. They live in the neck I’ve strained to look into the stars and to see clouds or a rainbow filling the sky. The experiences of my life are also in the butt that aches from sitting at a ball game.
As I grow older all that I have lived becomes part of every part of me. I don’t know if the first excitement of meeting my true love was in my head or in my heart or in my penis. At one time it was in each of those places, but now it lives as part of my heart and my head and my penis.
When our custodian died in a fire at my childhood home, his death was his. His death was also part of me. When he died he was gone from my basement, but he continues to be inside of me. I don’t know where in me he is today, but he’s there every day I live and in every breath I breathe.
Seven year old grandson, Jacob, who came to his first sleepover at our home, is the same boy who as a baby lay on the table and was held by his dad as the rabbi cut his penis. That cut was on his penis, but the cut went into my tissue. It was not a cut that hurt me, but a cut that became part and is still part of me. Feeling today the experience of that cut and of his dad holding him, and restoring the experience of the loving family standing with pride and fear, needs to be rebuilt from all my tissues.
Watching my mom cut a gallon block of ice cream into 12 bars and put a stick in each as she dipped it into rich chocolate, lit up my eyes, but also must be somewhere in the tissues of my back and my chest and my spleen. I have no idea where the experience of my mom doing these things lives. It’s a cheap shot to say that it lives in my stomach or my heart. It lives all over me.
And watching that same mom throw a knife in anger at my dad is also everywhere within me. It may be easier to find the ice cream bars, but that same tissue is also home of the knife thrown at my dad.
And so the baby I helped raise to become my grown up sister, Leslie Gene who shoots a bullet to her head, lives in the me which houses the image of that child spinning on her six year old toes as her skirt twirls in the air. Sometimes the memory is hidden so deep within my tissue that I have to tear myself to shreds just to find it. Sometimes it’s part of the tears in my eyes and the pain in my head.
Putting each part of me onto a piece of paper puts all of me into the ink.
Oh yes, I know that if I dare to share parts of me with you, my task is to tear and wring and squeeze and breathe and think and translate those tissues into words on paper.
I know that if you are to feel my experience I need to find the platform that will hold parts of me and also support the path I must build to your tissues so that my life will also live as part of you!
They live in the hands that have felt the table top from which I lifted the fork with which I ate. They live in the same hands that have touched the body of each of those I’ve loved and held close. They live in the neck I’ve strained to look into the stars and to see clouds or a rainbow filling the sky. The experiences of my life are also in the butt that aches from sitting at a ball game.
As I grow older all that I have lived becomes part of every part of me. I don’t know if the first excitement of meeting my true love was in my head or in my heart or in my penis. At one time it was in each of those places, but now it lives as part of my heart and my head and my penis.
When our custodian died in a fire at my childhood home, his death was his. His death was also part of me. When he died he was gone from my basement, but he continues to be inside of me. I don’t know where in me he is today, but he’s there every day I live and in every breath I breathe.
Seven year old grandson, Jacob, who came to his first sleepover at our home, is the same boy who as a baby lay on the table and was held by his dad as the rabbi cut his penis. That cut was on his penis, but the cut went into my tissue. It was not a cut that hurt me, but a cut that became part and is still part of me. Feeling today the experience of that cut and of his dad holding him, and restoring the experience of the loving family standing with pride and fear, needs to be rebuilt from all my tissues.
Watching my mom cut a gallon block of ice cream into 12 bars and put a stick in each as she dipped it into rich chocolate, lit up my eyes, but also must be somewhere in the tissues of my back and my chest and my spleen. I have no idea where the experience of my mom doing these things lives. It’s a cheap shot to say that it lives in my stomach or my heart. It lives all over me.
And watching that same mom throw a knife in anger at my dad is also everywhere within me. It may be easier to find the ice cream bars, but that same tissue is also home of the knife thrown at my dad.
And so the baby I helped raise to become my grown up sister, Leslie Gene who shoots a bullet to her head, lives in the me which houses the image of that child spinning on her six year old toes as her skirt twirls in the air. Sometimes the memory is hidden so deep within my tissue that I have to tear myself to shreds just to find it. Sometimes it’s part of the tears in my eyes and the pain in my head.
Putting each part of me onto a piece of paper puts all of me into the ink.
Oh yes, I know that if I dare to share parts of me with you, my task is to tear and wring and squeeze and breathe and think and translate those tissues into words on paper.
I know that if you are to feel my experience I need to find the platform that will hold parts of me and also support the path I must build to your tissues so that my life will also live as part of you!
* * *
Author Biography: Len
Gottesman grew up in Cleveland, Ohio as the first grandchild from
Grandma and Grandpa’s litter of 13 kids of whom 9 lived. He went on to
be the first to finish high school, the first to go to college, and the
only one of his many cousins to get a PHD. With a heavy load of
expectations on his back, he had no choice but to become a psychologist!
Now retired for many years, he is enjoying reviewing his life’s
experiences. For more of Len's stories, check Author Index for Prose A-K.
