Author: Melissa Snyder

Melissa Snyder https://awriterbecoming.wordpress.com Melissa Snyder is an introvert with a flair for the dramatic in her writing. She is a wife, mother, teacher, compulsive writer, voracious reader, and fierce defender of Love and Imagination. She likes to write about faith (her own and faith in general) and self and emotion and society and hobbies, as well as revealing the myriad paracosms that inhabit her mind. These paper bullets of the brain live in her blog and on Facebook where she endeavors to write about life and Imagination boldly and share honestly.

The Taste of Dreaming

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Dream of Stars by `zeiva (http://deviantart.com)

I am a sensory dreamer. Those are my favorite (and most terrifying) type of dreams: the dreams where I can feel, smell, hear, and taste things. I can never quite “see” very well in my dreams, oddly enough, but my other senses can be needle-sharp at times. I can feel a person hug me, smell them near me, hear their voice reverberate in my ears, and feel kisses and touches tingle along my skin. I can feel the warmth of the tears that roll down my face, feel my chest swelling with the heat and sting of crying. There are times that those tears have even spilled over into real life and I have awoken sobbing, unable to stop. Even though that can be difficult, heartbreaking even, I still love those sensory dreams.

I have dreamt about my daughter before, years ago. I dreamt of rocking her in her nursery in the middle of the night, watching her in the moonlight as she settled down to sleep in my arms after eating. I could feel the soft, warm, sleight weight of the child in my arms, hear her little coo as she yawned, and watched her scrunched up her little fists under her chin.

I have dreamt dreams of such peace and beauty and love that, even while dreaming, I struggled to burn them into my memory so that I could remember them when I awoke. I have jolted out of bed in the middle of the night, so compelled by a dream that all I could do was get up and write it down. One night in grad school, I spent an hour sitting on the edge of the tub, writing down a dream in the bathroom so that I wouldn’t wake my roommate. The images and the story were just so powerful and moving that I refused to lose them. I have dreamt dreams that are so detailed as to amount to a memory. I have been reminded of them by the way the sun shines, a certain smell in the air, or particular words that someone might say or a look they might give me that strikes me with a certain déjà vu. I remember looks and kisses as if they had really happened, events and encounters as though they were facts.

We are told that dreams are our subconscious working out the things that we do not let to the forefront or things that lie dormant within our minds. I do not know what parts of me all these dreams are trying to reveal but I will admit that I do love and enjoy these dreams and the lasting impact they have on my memory.

Hearing Voices

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I often recognize voices more quickly than I do faces. I become use to the sound, inflection, and cadence in a person’s voice. My memory stores scents and sounds much more quickly than faces. And even with faces, my memory latches on to one or two parts of a face (eyes or mouth, usually) and not the whole. Specific parts that make them unique. But voices…voices come to me more quickly and elicit more powerful emotions. My mother’s voice singing, my husband’s voice telling a story, hearing Ian McKellen as Gandalf…these voices all bring dearly-loved memories to the forefront of my mind and make me smile without fail.

My propensity for voice-memory is also true with actors and TV shows. I learn parts of actors’ faces and especially their voices rather quickly and I find that, once they become familiar, to hear them again is oddly comforting.

Case in point: I am watching the X-men anime television show on DVD currently and, the minute Wolverine opened his mouth, I said to myself, “I know that voice.” So what else did I do but look it up? I found out that it is Stephen Blum, the same gentleman who has played Wolverine in several of the video games, as well as in “Wolverine and the X-men” and a host of other Marvel animated movies and specials. To hear that voice and recognize it distinctly as Logan, my Logan, makes me ridiculously happy. That gruff voice is oddly comforting to me; it helps me feel even more at home with one of my favorite comic franchises, to put a voice to the lines that I am so familiar with.

I have a similar reaction to the voice of Kevin Conroy, the gentleman who was the voice actor for Bruce Wayne/Batman for most of my life, starring the well-known animated shows “Batman: The Animated Series”, “Batman: Mask of the Phantasm”, and as the elderly Bruce Wayne in “Batman Beyond”. Without his voice, Batman just doesn’t “sound” right to me. He is the only one who has even done the voice difference between Bruce and Batman correctly and believeably. He doesn’t growl or tear his vocal chords to shreds; it’s a simple, well-done timbre change. As he is phasing himself out of the role, I find that I am snatching up as many of the Batman movies and whatnot that he is in as I can. It’s a sweet bit of nostalgia that I am unwilling to give up. Not just the memories of the show but those that accompany it; friends coming over, laughs being had, all the rest of it.

Voices are precious to me – their cadences, inflections, the quips, repeated phrases, and mottos spoken by them. It’s why I’ve been speaking, reading, and singing to my daughter while she’s still in my belly. I want her to learn and know my voice, the things I say, and how I say them, as well as those idiosyncrasies of her father’s voice. Voices are precious, words are precious, and one of the greatest gifts of memory that we can be given or give. It’s a gift I plan on bestowing upon my daughter.

Time Marches On

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Today is the first day of September. A little hard to believe that summer flew by so quickly and that I have already been back at work for almost a month now. It’s been a bit stressful, a new batch of kids, but, at the same time, I am looking ahead and forward to the end of the semester, to when I can finally meet my little girl. I won’t lie, the thought of labor and giving birth (vaginally or c-section) frightens me. I’ve always been afraid of pain, though I suck it up when I have to. It doesn’t stop me from crying when it happens. I worry about not being strong enough to do what I need to do to birth my child, even though – yes, I know – mothers have been doing this since the beginning of time and we have seven billion people on this planet to prove it. Still, that doesn’t stop the fear entirely. But that’s a whole other rant entirely.

I am doing my best to enjoy these moments of closeness with Elizabeth, feeling her move around inside me, kick and stretch and root. Last night, she was quite active as I laid down to go to sleep and turned over on my side; it felt like she was trying to walk or something. So I hummed to her. I hummed “Baby Mine” and, by the time, I finished the song, she had settled down and I could fall asleep. I have a list of lullabies that I have begun compiling for our little girl, songs that I want to resonate in her heart forever, sung by both me and her daddy.

My mother used to sing “Jesus Loves Me” to me, starting every night since I was born prematurely and in an incubator at a hospital in Miami. And, to this day at the age of 29, hearing that song still makes me cry and want my Marmee. I want my daughter to long for me when she gets older, to remember that I was there to sing to her, cuddle her, comfort her, sort out her thoughts and put her heart back in order when needed. I want my daughter to think of me when she’s ill and want me to be there to soothe her and take care of her. I want her to miss me when we are apart, more and more each time we part, just as I do my Marmee. I want my Elizabeth to know that I love her and am always there for her, no matter what.

And to think, for me, all of that began with a lullaby.

Sharing Neverland with My Child

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Illustration by Giacobino – http://giacobino.deviantart.com/art/Peter-pan-part-2-110950641

Yesterday, I reached 22 weeks (5 1/2 months) in my pregnancy and I came to a decision of something I wanted to do. I have begun reading Peter Pan to my unborn child. The story is so enchanting, the memory of it so ingrained in me that I cannot think of not sharing it with my baby. I have a beautiful copy that I believe I received as a gift several years ago. Just reading the first paragraph makes me smile, even with the admittance that “Two is the beginning of the end. (page 1)” I don’t believe that, of course, but that’s the fun of it.

Even now, I’m watching my belly jump and move as my child squirms and stretches and kicks, and I’m imagining him or her running around the house pretending to fly. I want to cuddle my baby and read to them, letting them get to know my voice, my cadence, my love for story, even before they can full realize it. So far we have read through chapter 1 and the first few pages of chapter 2, and I could still feel Baby moving as I read, responding, hopefully, to the becoming-familiar sound of my voice. I want my children to know about conspicuous kisses in the corner of your mouth, to fall asleep safely to nightlights that watch over them, know that Momma is there to tidy up their mind at the end of the day, putting everything back in order and preparing them to have a lovely day tomorrow.

I hope and pray that our child loves books, stories, and reading as much as I and their father do. I shall do my damnedest to foster a love for all the different types of Neverlands with them, as well as explore them with my child. I will be happy to be the dragon that they chase to slay, the fairy to grant their wishes, the evil pirate whom they must battle. I want to hear my child demand of Daddy, “Tell me a story,” and then listen as my husband weaves one of his beautiful tales from mid-air and dances it in front of our child’s imagination. I have always been a Wendy – always been ‘mother’, ‘story-reader’, ‘advice giver’, ‘dreamer’. Now I get to be Mrs. Darling, a little more grown up but still with lots to learn about childhood.

And, I have to admit, I’m rather excited about that. ^_^

What I Am…

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Almost everyone “knows” what makes a great teacher. They’ve seen the movies, after all: “Stand and Deliver”, “Mr. Holland’s Opus”, “The Great Debators”, “Freedom Writers”, “Dangerous Minds”, and, coming soon, “Here Comes the Boom”. I mean, obviously, these teachers are bold, bucked the rules, and used rash and unconventional methods in order to get to their kids. I mean, that’s what it takes. Right?

I don’t know. You tell me. I am most certainly NOT that type of teacher. I’m not going to give up my family life to be at school until 9pm every night tutoring students. I am not going to put myself in the way of bodily harm (especially not now) to save a child from what I judge to be a bad situation; couldn’t do it legally, even if I wanted to. I’m not going to allow my work as a teacher to so consume me that I end up hospitalized from the sheer stress and pressure on my system.

I will tell you what sort of teacher I am, however. I am a teacher who is there every possible day, there for my students with the information and help that they need. I will stay after for a certain while or be there early if students need some extra time of mine in order to do better in their work. I am willing to explain when students don’t understand. I am more than happy to answer questions that feed into the building of their character, not just the development of their academic skills. For example, today, during a reading of “Raymond’s Run” by Toni Cade Bambara, my lowest level class (and the one with the largest personalities & discipline issues), one of the students asked, “Why would you make fun of someone with special needs?” I should point out that this particular student has huge problems with impulse control and failure to think ahead. However, his question allowed for a quick lesson on character to this class, to which they all listened (!) and, I hope, took to heart.

So while I am not the teacher in jeans and a leather jacket showing off my marine training to my kids, or promising students who can barely do basic algebra that they will pass the calculus AP test, I AM a teacher who does my best to give my kids the best I absolutely can. However, as I tell them at the beginning of every year, I can give them all the tools they need but, if they choose to do nothing with them, there’s nothing I can do about that.

I am not a “stand and deliver” teacher. I am not. And I never will be. I believe that movies like that can create an expectation, not only in people outside of the education profession, but also in teachers like me to disregard what we already are. I refuse to watch those movies because they make me feel badly about myself, like I am “not doing enough” if I am not changing lives that dramatically. Or at least, that publicly. But you know what? I do what I do right now, even if I won’t do it forever. I do it for my students, not for myself. Miracles do not need to be cataclysmic, apocalyptic, or even just earth-shattering. Miracles can be quiet little things that few people even know exist.  I think Taylor Mali said it best when he simply said,

“I am a teacher. This is what I do.”

On Fountain Pens

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I love fountain pens! Absolutely adore them! When I write with fountain pens, I find that my words seems prettier, more stately. They were made for letters, notes, calling cards. I could easily see myself sitting at a secretary of a morning, replying to bits of mail. A few acceptances here, a few regretful declinations there, a congratulatory note to a friend. It’s why I am working to get back into letter- and note-writing to my friends and family. It’s a beautiful skill and habit to cultivate. I very much much enjoy what I see and feel when I write. I also love receiving letters in the mail that are not bills or something of that sort of dire importance to be taken care of. I also know that I am remembered and cared about.

Part of me – a large part – loves to see my mind poured out on paper. I love the evidence of my thoughts. I have told some that, a great deal of the time, I feel less than adequate mentally because my brain doesn’t move at the same pace as others’. It often takes me a long time to consider concepts and ideas before I can reach a conclusion or opinion about them, and there is no physical evidence of that process. So I fear that people often think I am not thinking or that I won’t think about things. When I write, the evidence of cognitive thought is there on paper. Proof that I do actually think!

I have been keeping journals since I was 17 years old and entering college. Most of them are leather-bound, golden-edged books that evoke thoughts of libraries and drawing rooms, of sunny parlors and crackling fires. I love to look back at them and see how my handwriting has evolved over the years and to take joy in the pages and pages that I have written about my life over the years. It also makes me realize just how much I need to invest in more notebooks to carry around with me. Always need something to write in, after all. Pen without paper isn’t quite as useful, you know?

“I CAN’T, you say?”

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I’m not used to being told “you can’t”. It’s not normally in my vocabulary. When someone says to me, “You can’t do XYZ”, my response is usually, “Watch me.” I take it as a challenge to excel and I usually meet those challenges. I’ve always been rather independent and willing to work towards whatever goal I or others set for me. In fact, I often welcome the challenges and joy in rising to meet them.

However, pregnancy presents a brand-new set of challenges. Now I am being told more and more “don’t do that” or “you can’t do that”. I actually growled a little when my mother told me I couldn’t lift my in-laws’ retirement cake the other day as we were going through the check-out line. I’m used to working hard, to lifting, carrying, doing for myself and others a great deal. So, to be told that I can’t do the things that I am rather used to doing is, admittedly, a bit tough to swallow. It’s like telling me I can’t walk and have to be carried everywhere. And, yet, it makes me wonder if I will be able to do what I need to as the months progress. I am a middle-school teacher and there is a LOT that goes into that, as you are aware, I’m sure. Long days, and sometimes even longer nights, are involved, naturally. However, I’m used to managing it all, doing it all, and so being told or finding out that I can’t do things right now is rather jarring. I’m not used to being treated like I am made of glass, even as I am doing my best to be careful, for myself and for the baby.

I’m four and a half months along and already feel huge, so I have no idea how I will be coping in the months ahead, with the further changes in my body and the weariness and discomfort that will surely come with it all. But I know it’s all worth it.

“A Love Affair with Disney”

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I have grown up on Disney movies, tv shows, concerts, trips, toys, etc. Even now, as a woman of twenty-nine, and especially as I am pregnant with my first child, I am in love with Disney. Whenever we pass the Disney Store in one of the bigger malls in Indianapolis, I have to pull my husband inside to look around. Of course, Disney now owns practically everything – from Power Rangers, to X-men, Captain America, etc., but I still find extreme pleasure in moving around the store, smiling and admiring the loveliness of the costumes, dolls, toys, and clothing that are laid out. So much more intricate and elaborate now than when I was a little girl and longed for such pretty things. But now I find that it is far more nostalgia for me and a sweet nostalgia at that. This past Christmastime, we went to the Disney Store and, when I spied a cute little Stitch in his Christmas pjs and bed slippers. I picked him up and he was so soft and adorable that I fairly started to cry as I held and cuddled him. I didn’t purchase it, however, as the hubby had already bought me a lovely Cheshire Cat and Stitch for our 5th wedding anniversary.

While Disney has sanitized many of the old fairytales, placing in happy endings where traditionally there were none, only fearful, heartbreaking, and sometimes bloody lessons to be learned, I still find a sweetness and joy in watching them. I enjoy remembering when I was a little girl and longed to a heroine. Not necessarily a princess, I think, but a heroine nonetheless. I remember when “Beauty and the Beast” first came out and I watched Belle with her books. I marveled that there should be a heroine so much like me, with a love of books comparable to mine, as I knew no one in school or in my community with such a love and obsession. Therefore, I found a comrade in a fiction when there was no such one in life. Also, like Ariel, I felt that my father didn’t understand me and I longed for experiences, for places to explore and discover.  However, along with that, came a rather romantic spirit but I soon puzzled out for myself that the sort of princes in the Disney fairytales were not the sort of prince I wanted. I didn’t want someone to save me but someone to work alongside me, someone who would get to know me, understand me. Honestly, in all the Disney stories, I do think that “Beauty and the Beast” is the relationship closest to what I wanted. Belle and the Beast were together for a long time, perhaps close to a year, getting to know each other, helping each other, learning each other. None of these whirlwind loves like Ariel and Eric (three days, really?) but a true friendship start to their love. A friendship that fostered understanding and loyalty. That is what I wanted. And that is what I received with Ben.

So, in a way, I suppose, Disney has helped me decide what I did and did not want out of love and relationship. So, thank you, Disney. Thank you for that.

“Nesting with Alcott”

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If anyone were to ask me who my favorite character ever is, I would have to say Josephine “Jo” March, from Alcott’s Little Women.

Over the past day or so, I have been seized by the desire to have as many of my Louisa May Alcott books by my bedside as my poor little nightstand can handle. On there now, I have Alcott’s biography and journals, Behind a Mask & Other Stories, A Whisper in the Dark, From Jo March’s Attic, Alternative Alcott, Under the Lilacs, Eight Cousins, Rose in Bloom, and The Inheritance. An Old-Fashioned Girl is sitting here on the arm of the couch next to me and my large hardback volume of Little Women is on the shelf above my head. I have read all of these books at least half a dozen times, some of them at full dozen at the very least.

I was gifted with my first copy of the 1990s film “Little Women” when I was but twelve years old, for Christmas. I fell in love with the March Girls, with Marmee (which is what I call my mother to this day, seventeen years later, and have gotten other people to refer to her as such), with Laurie, with Jo’s stories and determination to be a “great writer and earn barrels of money”. I have been blessed and excited to even have some parallel experiences with Jo in my life, such as selling my first story for $5.00 and marrying a teacher of German (instead of a German professor). Jo has always inspired me and she will always be my favorite.

Alcott’s books have always brought me joy. I remember when my mother put a copy of The Inheritance into my hands as a surprise, Alcott’s first novel written as a teenager and unpublished until that year. I was overjoyed and sat down to read it right then. Since then, I read that sweet little book about goodness and purity whenever I need a reminder of what is important in life. Just as I cry and remember my family losses when I read of Beth March’s quiet, patient, loving life and gentle departure from this world and resolve to live so that those gone would have been proud of me. Eight Cousins allows me to live, vicariously, through Rose. I have always dreamt of having brothers, especially those who were kind and loving. Boys whom I could love and care for as family. I was gifted with those in the form of God-sent male friends in college, and I am ever thankful for them. An Old-Fashioned Girl reminds me that there is nothing wrong with being a simple person with simple tastes and to have hands that are always willing to do for and encourage others, whether they notice it or not, appreciate it or not.

These are the books I grab when I need something to feed my soul, something to lift my spirits and give me hope and a smile. When I need invigorating, I pick Alcott’s “other” stories. Her sensation pieces, her “blood-and-thunder” tales. I was absolutely fascinated when my mother returned from a trip visiting her friends and gave me Behind a Mask & Other Stories (you can easily see who feeds my obsession). I read it and re-read it to make sure I hadn’t missed anything in the mysteries of these stories. My favorite collection of these sensation stories, however, is the now-out-of-print From Jo March’s Attic. I love “My Mysterious Mademoiselle”, “Which Wins”, and “The Countess Varazoff”. I actually ended up writing my thesis for my Masters of Arts in Literature on body theory as utilized by Alcott in her stories “Behind a Mask” and “Betrayed by a Buckle” to call for a reform of women’s rights and the constructs of what it meant to be a “proper woman in her proper place”. It was a joy to use two stories that I have treasured all my life, as well as Alcott’s strong views on equality and femininity, to produce a work that I dare to think she might have agreed with if she were alive to read it.

Alcott is imprinted on my brain, my emotions, and my heart, and she will always be. I would not have it any other way. And may I someday be a Jo, a Rose, a Polly, an Edith, and embody those beautiful qualities that she wrote into these amazing characters who remain my dear friends to this day.

Perhaps, like Alcott, I may, someday, be able to echo the lyrics that Jo sings in the Broadway staging of Little Women:

Here I go
And there’s no turning back
My great adventure has begun
I may be small
But I’ve got giant plans
To shine as greatly as the sun

I will blaze until I find my time and place
I will be fearless,
Surrendering modesty and grace
I will not disappear without a trace
I’ll shout and start a riot
Be anything but quiet
Christopher Columbus
I’ll be Astonishing
Astonishing
Astonishing

At Last