When I was five, I had a big brother, two little ones, two German Shepherds (inexplicably, one, mine- black male), two cats, and great dreams intermingled with great fears.
I t was an age where, if your parent went next door to play bridge at bedtime, you needed to stay in bed, and let your 7 year old brother pick up the phone to talk to the town operator to tell her the babies had woken, and she would call the neighbors and tell your parent.
When I was seven, I had three little brothers. At ten? Four little ones.
I was responsible for babysitting, as they called it then,
and at bedtime, noone would listen to me.
I would explain to them that I really needed them to come upstairs
and they would cry; then I would console them,
they would apologize, then the lot of us
would slowly make our way upstairs, sadder and wiser. For the moment.
I'd change the baby and give them their bottle, close their door, get the other little ones to get their pajamas on, read them all stories, rub their backs, hear the baby finish the bottle and begin to cry, tuck the older ones in, and run in to try to rub the back of the baby.
Their diaper would be wet again, I'd change them again.
Give them a bottle again, lay them down again,
and again hope that maybe this time, they'd fall asleep in the process.
I kind of understood that the crying they did, waiting for me to be done with the other little ones, made them a bit tired out.
I felt guilty, but what could I do?
When I was done, I'd go find my big brother. In his room. Door closed. Music on. Gently knock knock. And yeah, he was kind to me. Let me bug him all the time. Once when he wouldn't let me in, I stood by the door, mouth to the opening of it, imitating in the most irritating manner the blues music he listened to, or Bob Dylan, which I tried but somehow couldn't get yet. I'd bug and bug and usually he would finally give up and let me in. Totally exasperated.
ONCE he pulled some of his hair out.
But he was kind to me. He understood some of the bad parts of my life.
So he always was a good friend.
He was a remarkable musician. I admonished him when he traded the guitar my parents gave him - for a better one. I had no understanding of quality of instrument, versus sentimental value.
He became addicted to acoustic guitar, and then bass.
When we were kids, we had piano lessons. I could never understand or learn how to read music . I just faked it at lessons so that the teacher would not be pissed off at me.
There were recitals. Puffy stick out dresses for the girls, that I hated.
Everybody would gather In the town hall. Up front would be the grand piano. You were supposed to bring your sheet music, which was like reading Chinese, to me. Bow. Put your papers on the thingie that held them. Sit down politely.
And play your thing. I would always be dying of anxiety. What the hell came after that first part, and before the ending?
Crap, I have no idea what the teacher thought, or my parents. But I don't think anyone was paying any attention, if your kid just shut up and went to lessons and complied with recitals. If you student shut up and just faked their way through and you just thought she was stupid.
Just that, like many a well fed, unhappy middle class WASP, I was yelled at in the afternoons, in the living room, when I would secretly veer from the plodding pieces to playing for pleasure. Pleasure that moved through me like a dream. Like a true song. You'd have to play very very quietly so your parent couldn't catch on. And a benefit? The door could be closed and no little kids allowed while you 'practiced'. So I often 'practiced'. Why not.
So yeah, during recitals, with every person dressed up in their sunday best, my time would come. My palms would be practically dripping sweat. My heart going wacko. All those people. What the hell was I supposed to play? What? But I bumbled through, and of course, noone expected me to do well at it, just endure it. Afterward, everyone would socialize, and I'd slip out back, sit on a rock in the stupid dress
with the stupid pinching shiny shoes, and breathe again.
Whereas my amazing big brother, amazing at all things, would excel. He would excel and I knew it. I would be carried away by it, the way I am today whenever my brother here plays. There is a story or a movement of the heart and soul or a swelling of the seas...I don't know.
Its so monumental. And so I would sit in the town hall and be breathless, so happy that everyone there but the stupid restless younger kids, was absolutely breathless too.
In a way, I felt then, as I do now, part physics and part neutrinos and part Einstein of there is not time and all time occurs simultaneously, I felt that his music, and , hell, mine, went out out into the universe. Into forever. To exist. I had no idea if anyone else there felt that. And I eventually would have conversations with him about virtually everything; but not that. So I'd sit there, and be swept away. He could play any old dumb thing, and it would have a powerful swing off into all time.
There was tennis , too, one of my parents a working class urgently reaching up to middle and upper middle class, so yes. Compulsory. Social necessity.
I could never ever understand the scoring of tennis. No clue. Ever. I somehow had this wicked forehand, where I whipped my wrist down and killed it. But it was not a sustainable style. It couldn't last.
Of course, the social WASPY deal, once again, was to sign your kids up for tournaments each and every summer.
In my house, you mostly shut up and did what you were told. So I'd have all these all these tournaments, playing alone or with someone, progressing some how (HOW?) and I had a tricky little method of bumbling out the score, under my breath each and every single solitary time. And then watching...to see if the opposite person went to change sides. Or those watching began to pick up their things. No clue. Never. I didn't even remember if I won or not, never ever.
I only then found out, haphazardly, that "Oh , get ready, you have a tournament today." thing. Crap again. So I'd get all anxious and find the stupid white clothes and sneakers and be a little docile sheep and wander out to the car. I have a vague idea that my ability to play somewhat ok pleased my parents. I'm not certain.
But when we had holidays later on, after I had left home, we would have family tournaments and kick kick each other's ass as well as we could, all the kids old enough having transformed to very wild hippies who eventually wore all kinds of stuff while playing, but my mother could not say no to my brothers, so we were freed. And at that age, between the obligatory excessive beer drinking my mother felt was an important part of life, and the loving fierceness of the playing, it was kind of fun.
We were a team, my siblings and I, and it was , at least in those day, us versus the parents. Changed later, but then, it was nice.
As a preteen and young teen being brought to tournaments, not having a clue about scoring, there wasn't a person I could ask. I think I asked my older brother once, but it seemed like it was almost painful, the thing that were hard for me, so I think he tried once, auditorily, which just breezed through me and was gone. I certainly couldn't talk to my parents about it. That would be trouble and anger and not possible. So I just kept with my mysterious method. Got me through.
You know, I loved hitting that ball, back and forth; the speed, the trying for accuracy, the conversation.
My big brother and I would run through the back woods to a court at the other end, behind someone's estate, where we were allowed to play, on intolerably hot sweaty days, just to get away. Just for fun.
Bam bam, we'd have the greatest time.
After I left home, my parents built a tennis court. Upon the swamp next to the house, way way down in the woods. They named it the 'Robert Zildjian Whites Only' Court. Little sign on the fence. He was a friend of theirs, and it was a play on proclivities.
At home, you actually had to wear white stuff to play, til we got older. I think there was either a sense of propriety, or possibly, automatic membership in the middle class. One, or the other.
They'd have tennis parties (any excuse for Martinis. Truly. ) and their own tournaments, under installed bright lights; that would deteriorate the way each their frequent and popular 'cocktail' parties did. Into LOUD Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee and Bobby Darin, huge elaborate meals my mother would prepare, kids supposed to stay upstairs and go to bed early. Loud adult hanging out in the livingroom. Inter-couple making out in the library, while slow dancing. 
You could actually watch from the top of the stairs, in the reflection of the two windows at the top of the back door.
The window on the left, like a mirror, showed you who was making out. On the right, who was balancing Martinis on their foreheads while kneeling, leaning back, trying to stand without spilling. Right. That's what we thought. How could you be so dumb?
Years later, in Albuquerque, my boyfriend and I would go find courts, and play in the 100 degree sun. Seemed so much easier than a New England summer day in the 90's, as there was no humidity whatsoever.
My big brother played piano remarkably. Majestically. I would go in and sit on the sofa and just listen to him play his lesson crap and his own crap.
He had organ lessons with the music director of our church, and he said it was the coolest thing, the really big sound, and the pause between when you hit the key, and when the sound came forcing its way out, into the air, filling the church. All those foot petals. Way up there in the choir landing. The sounds and songs he played veering out of the open church doors into the summer afternoon beyond.
He patiently educated me. About music. And instruments. And cameras. For his 16th birthday, or maybe 18th, he got a Nikon camera. For mine, I got a miniature fluffy stuffed chair and ottoman. Fluffy femmy colors. Really.
So, of course, he let me use his camera. Carefully taught me to care for it.
One summer we went with a friend of mine to the St. Lawrence Seaway, to this amazing small island. Absolute peace. Freezing crystal clear water off the dock. An old school with a spin-about you could hold onto, all together, and run run run til it was whipping about going a million miles an hour, then jump on and hang on tight, and pull your head down into your chest so you didn't puke. Take the ride til is slowed, and someone jumped off and pushed it going fast once again.
One day I wanted to take a photo of my brother and my friend. They were standing on the land; I was on the dock. I was looking through the viewfinder and taking steps backward, slowly, to get the shot I wanted, when I fell off the dock. Into the water. Holding the Nikon straight up. I went under. The camera didn't . That's what you call good training.
My big brother later played in bands. I got to tag along. I was 15, 16. I'd fall asleep listening to the raging beautiful noise, at practices.
He played in bands for years, once voted best Bass Player in the Valley here. But I think, between the day job and family and all, it often becomes too much.
That's probably okay. Transforming back into a pleasure, versus gigs.
But at family get-togethers, two of my brothers would play flat out amazing guitar, one brother sometimes a flute, while the rest of us siblings and cousins would sing and sing, far from the adults, far into the night. It was my favorite part.
In that way, it's always interested me, that line between the passion and internal initiation of creativity, and bringing it into the realm of obligation, expectation, and possibly, income.
I grew up with a compulsion to draw. I drew every minute of every day that I was not in the woods, or hanging with my brothers. I drew people. I drew eyes for hours and hours.
I was lucky to be given art lessons, by various people in town.
One woman would settle me on a stone wall, point to a view of trees and stuff, and come back an hour later, to talk about it a little.
My mother had plans for each of her 7 children. And a need for the plans to play out and kind of pay her back for something. Parenting? Who knows. I was expected to be an artist. My progress, as often happens, became owned by her. The better I became, the more she owned it.
She did manage to get me to a boarding school of the arts for girls. Which was my saving grace, after siblings and four footeds and the forest.
You got to escape the insanity, which crushed me with guilt. You also got to paint or draw all afternoon, and eventually, on the weekends. And you had to go, so that enabled me to not feel as badly about those left behind at home, and not taking care of them.
But when I finally managed to leave home at 18, whisked away by a shining knight, I left drawing and painting behind, for many years, tucked into something that belonged to my mother.
And before that, my brain injury at age 2 not understood, nor the consequences, I was flunking out of elementary school and middle school, til I got put in an Academy, where the English teacher, a Mr. Russell, had me stay after, the second day. He said "You can draw every minute of every day if you just pay attention to what we are studying. " I was so happy and grateful to that guy.
My knight in shining armor happened to have a Nikon. And a guitar.
He happened to really like playing guitar with my brothers, and did so for the 7 years we were together, and after.
He had a 12 string Yamaha he kind of lost interest in, and when he and another guy broke up with me, he remained my friend for some time, and gave me the Yamaha. Which I have and relish to this day, with 1,000 year old strings, dust, and a sound that can't be beat.
I couldn't learn songs due to memory stuff, but I could learn chords and look at the songs I loved to play. And I would ask my big brother or my little brother or my ex to help me figure out the chords to songs I wanted to be able to play and sing. Eventually I began writing songs and having a wonderful time sitting and playing them.
I discovered that with creative expression, you can be really upset about something, and in that moment, you could actually choose...which modality to express yourself in.
I realized that each experience had a certain volume of stuff to express.
So if you wrote an amazing song, maybe it would be all gone after that. Or a poem. Or paint or draw something. Or go take a photo (very expensive in those days and I was maybe 22, supporting myself).
Which was an amazing discovery. Because then you could choose.
If you wrote a poem, you could reread it and get off on it every time, til you saturated yourself and had to give that one a rest, for awhile.
If you wrote a song, you could play and sing and play for quite a while, til you blottoed that too, and had to give it a rest.
You could paint or draw, til you got tired, and return to it until it was finished. Though during the process, sometimes, you couldn't really 'see' the internal stream that was generating the painting. In which case you figured out you could hold it up to a mirror, and with the mirror image, find the stream of whatever was moving the painting to life, again.
I began to realize, like everyone before and after and during me, that distress or strong feelings or experiences generated creativity which built up to uncomfortable levels internally, good or bad no matter, unless you expressed it.
And so, expressing continued to take up a big part of my life, a way of siphoning off the buildup.
At 21, fresh back from living in New Mexico, and then Westchester with my boyfriend and my extra-parents (his), I had a job as a bookeeper at the Brattleboro Retreat, in Vermont, where many of my friends worked as aides. I had math disabilities, which somehow my boss didn't ask about, and was in charge of half the accounts! I was young and restless and hung with the local young women who worked as secretaries in this big office on the second floor of the glorious Main Building, with the big boss down the hall one way, and my little bookkeeping monster machine on the other.
The other young ones and I would go out to lunch together, or zip to their homes and back. They all were married, and lived in trailers, and we were pretty pretty different, but managed. They totally didn't get the hippie thing, the writing thing, the freedom thing, the living with one guy and going out with another. I guess I ingested lots of 70's ideas, and lugged them up into Vermont with me, as many others did, at the time.
I arranged my desk in the big room so my back was to the windows; the front of the desk to whoever was walking by. We had a ding dong of a supervisor, who had no power whatsoever, spluttered on while we tried to be nice and pretend to listen to him, and then did what we wanted to. Our big boss was very kind to our little boss. And to us.
And what I wanted to do was worship my IBM Selectric typewriter. WORSHIP. Oh, the sound of the keys; the speed. the dark clarity of the ink upon the white page. I was nutso for my typewriter.
And often, after doing some work in the morning, except when the end of the month frenzy was approaching, I would return from lunch, and just write poems. All afternoon.
It was like there was an electric cord between my brain and my ire and my chaos and my distress and my angst...and the machine.
And I would just sit down, and zap zap zap zap out everything. I would fake working, and carefully stop now and then, to put the pages in file folders in my desk file place. And at the end of the day, secret them home for editing and devouring.
My office friends would come by and slip behind the desk, catch on to my poem writing, punch my arm, smile , and then look serious and purposeful, and walk away. Or zip surreptitiously by my desk, and knock on it, to let me know that I was particularly spaced out in writing-land and the boss was making rounds.
At the time, I had moved from one 3rd floor walk-up to another, near the middle of Brattleboro, that I shared with two friends. There was this beautiful view, and a porch with stairs, and a wall that protected stairs from all that snow and the view of us from the street, giving some privacy for hanging out way up there. You could hear the footsteps of someone beginning the stairs, and tell when they were stopping at the first floor, second floor, or on their way to you.
We would have gatherings at all our houses, always studded with mandolin and banjo and guitar and fiddles, so that talk and eating pot lucks or spontaneous get togethers would morph in to music fests, which would morph into bundling up and going down town to our favorite bar-fests.
When it came time for my birthday, all my friends got together and handed me a big heavy present. In a box. I was shocked. I was embarrassed. I was surrounded.
I pulled off the wrapping and yanked open the box, and out slid my brand new baby. A smooth, thin, angular Smith Corona electric typewriter, worthy of my cross-legged, on the bed, typewriter on knees, style I would develop. Selected just for that purpose.
I couldn't believe the moment. Everyone around me. Knowing how I slid away from every event, or went driving down the road after , ahem, bar-festing, to pull over, shut the engine, and risk my battery, while jotting down all the lines and songs and stories and poems bursting out of my head. They all read them, and discussed them. I had no idea how precious that was, but I was touched. And now? They had gotten together to finalize my capacity to do this thing. Legibly. Saved. On paper.
Something I had, that was absolutely my own. 
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