Growing up I was never what one might call a “decision maker.” The whole process of deciding between two things was often more than I could bear. Weighing the merits of one thing against another was not just painstaking, but left me riddled with doubt as to whether I made the right choice. Fortunately, for myself and for those who I have to make decisions for, I no longer seem to have this problem. I owe it all to four simple letters: WWJD. Yes, that does indeed stand for “What Would Janice Do.”
My mom, Janice, is what one might call a “decision maker.” It’s not so much that she makes decisions, but the fact that she never doubts the decisions that she’s made. When I was 15, my mother picked me up from high school on the Friday before winter break and told me to get ready because we were driving to Disney World. “What?” I asked. Yes indeed, that morning she had decided that we were taking a family vacation during the week off, called the Polynesian Resort at Disney, booked rooms, called my aunt and told her to take some vacation days, rented a 30-foot camper for the drive and then notified my father. She then drove 20 of the 22 hours it took us to get there (my father claimed he couldn’t drive because he saw “giant heads” on the side of the road – if you doubt this, please see my previous post) without a map.
One of her favorite things to say is “So what’s the question?” as in “If you want to do something, and you have the means to do it, then do it – what’s the question?” She doesn’t mean doing things simply for the sake of doing them. When I decided I wanted to try my hand at getting into an MFA program, I was a bit hesitant at first. Of course I was nervous about rejection, but almost more so, I was nervous about getting accepted into one and then finding out that I didn’t have the chops to hang with everyone else. My mother’s response: “Is this what you really want to do? So then what’s the question? Do it.” I tried to squeeze in a “But what if…” when I was cut off “No. You just do it.” So I just did it. There was no question.
There’s also the feeling, as a poet, that you’re being judged – mainly because you are. You’re judged by the editors of the journals you submit to, you’re judged by the readers of the journals you get into, and sometimes you’re even judged by Amy Gerstler and find yourself in the new issue of The Best American Poetry, which just happens to be having its 2010 launch tonight at The New School.
My mother cares little about being judged by others. She’s the first one on the dance floor at a wedding and the last one to leave. She’s the one who starts the “Derek Jeter” chant in the bleachers of Yankee Stadium. She high-fives strangers at New York Giants games. She is what one would call “the life of the party” as evidenced by the YouTube video of her trying to get out of a huge-inflatable-bouncy-castle-thing that she rented for my daughter’s first birthday party last month. She got it in her head that she was going to take her granddaughter into the huge-inflatable-bouncy-castle-ting, and Goddamn it, she did.
I think that her attitude is a huge influence on my poetry. Instead of trying to come up with something quirky or ironic or whatever it is that is now cool, I’ve learned to just do it – to just write and not worry. If other people don’t like it, I’m certainly not going to change what I do just for the sake of pleasing them. I’m sure there are poets out there more to their liking. And of course this is clichéd and the basis for every teen movie made since 1982, but it’s also the truth. I could’ve used the opportunity of blogging on here to do just about anything, but what I wanted to write about was the things that I like, the things that are important to me. If those things happen to wiffle ball or my father’s attempt at poetry or the reason I have confidence in what I write, then so be it. You learn to pick your battles, but you also learn to not make concessions that sell your soul.
But most of all, really, is that I don’t know how often I’m going to have a platform like this one, and I know that I would never have had any of the opportunities that I’ve had without her support, so the reason for this post is pretty much just an excuse to say “Thanks, Mom!”
