Author: Ben L. J. Brooks

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3.11

I’ve had this blog for six months now, and this is the first entry where I’m going to talk about what I’m writing.

My novel, tentatively titled A PETAL OF CHRYSANTHEMUM, features the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. I started plotting this back in the summer, and began writing in earnest in September. Before the first draft was finished, I knew there wasn’t enough emphasis on that event, but the concept of going back to make substantial changes paralyzed me. To some extent, it still does.

My wife was born and raised in Japan. I spent a great deal of time there myself. Our ties to Japan run deep. We have friends whose hometowns were affected by the tsunami. I remember March 11, 2011 very well. I didn’t get much work done that Friday. While this was simply a tragic event for most everyone I worked with, for me, it was like watching the towers collapse on September 11th. No, more than that. I sat before my computer reading news stories, English and Japanese alike, watching a live stream from NHK television, the images of fire, destruction, flooding, the displaced, all bundling together to drain the joy, the happiness right out of me. My boss even offered to let me go home to be with my family.

Everyone who came to speak with me in my office that day knew I was distraught. The way my eyes wandered, my lips trembled, my words came slowly, softly.

Today my wife shared this video with me, and I’ll admit it–it took the wind out of me just like March 11th. I had to wipe my eyes a time or three. And after viewing this, that’s when I realized that the pervading uncertain feeling I had about my current work in progress had to be confronted.

I’m starting over. Sort of. Imagine reading a book about a fireman in NYC and his various problems with self-loathing and relationship issues. You get halfway through this relationship drama when 9/11 happens. And while the rest of the story is, in fact, a post-9/11 story, don’t you feel that you’ve cheapened the tragedy a bit by padding the beginning with this relationship drama?

The tsunami was real. People suffered and died. Indescribable damage was done to regions of Japan. Entire cities and families were literally washed away by surges of water topping one hundred feet. I can’t go lightly on this. I can’t treat it cheaply. I’m going back and starting with the tsunami, bringing it to the forefront, not relegating it to a background element, a mere an obstacle in my protagonist’s way.

I have to do it right, or not do it at all.

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Thanksgiving

It’s that time of year where we gather our families together, toss down turkey, get our backyard football on, and, if we’re lucky, slip into a tryptophan coma before Uncle Willis and Grandpa get into a heated debate over worker’s rights in the Balkans. Look, my family’s different.

It’s also the time of year we all take a moment to say what we’re thankful for. Most responses are the ones you’d expect: family, food, friends. My kids were thankful for turkey this year. I’m more of a ham guy myself, but I digress. I know my eldest is only six, and while I would never want them to suffer, I do fear that they won’t have as much of an appreciation for life and sacrifice as I do. And I’m not sure how to instill that in them.

I grew up poor. Not shoeless in back alleys poor, but somewhere around trailer park poor. Both of my parents came from broken families. My dad’s father was a violent alcoholic. He did grow up in a shoeless kind of poverty. My aunt wrote a book about her childhood: Memories Washed Clean by Teresa Cash. I learned a lot about my dad’s past reading this. So many things that he never wanted to talk about, that he wanted to protect me from.

My mom grew up away from her own mother, raised mostly by her grandmother in the backwoods of Arkansas. About the time she hit her teens, her mother showed up out of the blue and whisked her away to a military base in Germany. She spent a few years there among a family she barely knew, before they up and moved to Alabama where she met my dad.

My parents married young. Nineteen and sixteen. And, God bless them, they’re still married today. It’s sad to say that’s a rare thing these days, for such a young marriage to survive for so long.

When I came along, a somewhat unexpected but pleasant surprise, they made a promise to each other and to little baby me that I would not suffer through the things they dealt with growing up.

Mom with my daughter Katie

Before I started school, my dad worked as a sewing machine mechanic at a blue jean factory in town, and my mom worked for my grandmother in a ceramic shop, helping with the casting, painting, and selling of various ceramic decorations. To this day I can’t see a piece of ceramic and not think of those youthful days spent playing around the shop, hands covered in flaky bits of drying wet clay, fingers tracing lines in the moulds, wondering how they were made if the moulds were necessary to make the ceramics. Of course, I know how it all works now.

Money was very tight, but they managed to send me to a private school and piano lessons, always encouraging me to follow my dreams and never wanting me to miss an opportunity to grow myself simply because they couldn’t find a way to pay for this or that. It wasn’t working, though. That was a comfort level we couldn’t easily afford.

Dad with my son Noah

My dad decided to go back to college in his thirties. And not for just any old degree, oh no. He got a degree in pharmacy. I can’t imagine throwing myself into such a chemistry-intensive study at this stage in my life. But he wanted better for his wife and son, and my mom’s support was overwhelming. During the course of his six years of college–three at a community college and three at Auburn University–she often held three jobs at once to keep food on the table, keep me in school and music, and keep the lights on. Those weren’t easy jobs, either. Managing gas stations in bad parts of town, plucking feathers from chickens, collecting bank deposits from all over northeast Alabama, and serving as a Wal-Mart security guard were some of the various and sundry jobs she undertook to make ends meet. She quite literally took several beatings across a couple of those jobs. Look, you never want to piss my mom off.

It was a hard sacrifice. For many of those years I didn’t see my dad that much. He was just this guy who lived down in Auburn, about two hours away, who I saw on weekends–when he wasn’t working. Some of my favorite memories of that time are making that two hour ride to the university on the back of his motorcycle at night, to spend a week with him while I was out of school on some break or other, eating hamburgers and watching the old animated version of The Hobbit on his television.

He’s been a pharmacist for twenty years now at the hospital where I was born. My mom runs her own business now. I look at that and I have to say I’m very, very proud. Is it strange to be proud of your parents? I hope not.

I’m thankful they showed me what sacrifice means, why it’s worth it, and that no matter what sort of temporary hell you have to suffer through, as long as you keep your eyes on the goal you can accomplish anything you set your mind to.

This thanksgiving, I’m thankful for my parents. I love you guys, and hope you both understand that while as a teenager I may not have appreciated all you did for me, as a husband and father myself I sure as hell appreciate it all now.

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Wedding of a Stranger

I went to a wedding on Sunday. I had only known the bride since ten in the morning and didn’t know anyone else in attendance. That alone is a pretty interesting hook for a story, but there’s something about me, personally, that takes it to the next level.

I’m an introvert. This may come as a surprise, given my background as a project manager, pianist, and Juror #10 in a performance of Twelve Angry Men–the juror with the long-winded bigoted monologue where for a few painful minutes all eyes are on me. The truth is I’m a terrible public speaker, and you’ll generally find me hanging out at the back of a party, sipping a glass of water and wondering how much longer I have to stay before it’s no longer considered rude to leave.

This past Sunday we attended a new church. I’m not sure how familiar the Orthodox faith is to most, but I can summarize my stress that morning with one simple phrase: all children attend service. And I’ve got four of them, the oldest one a mere six years of age.

About halfway through the service, my second daughter grew very quiet behind me. This was a notable event because she’s generally a tornado of a child. I looked back to see her sitting on the lap of a complete stranger. I panicked, wondering what terrible thing she’d gotten herself into now and how I was going to explain this, when my wife told me everything was fine. The lady had asked my daughter to sit with her.

During the announcements at the end of the service, the priest mentioned a wedding at the church that evening. The young lady who had been holding my daughter whispered in my ear that we were all invited to the wedding. I found it strange that she was inviting me to somebody else’s wedding, but as fortune would have it she was the bride. She’d given my wife the same invitation.

When it was time to go, the introvert in me declared that we weren’t going to the wedding. We were tired, poorly dressed, and didn’t know anybody. I did not want to impose on a stranger’s special day. My wife and other children really wanted to go, however, and so in an act of immense willpower I told that introvert inside of me to have a seat.

The wedding ceremony was beautiful. My daughters watched in awe as the bride and groom stood in the middle of the church before the priest. My four year old later claimed to have seen a princess. After the ceremony the bride and groom invited us to the reception.

We sat in the parking lot of the reception hall considering our options. We did not know anybody here. There would be food–food that somebody had paid for without us in the equation. We decided to just run inside, take a few pictures, and leave. As we were getting out of the car, though, the bride and groom arrived and parked beside us. She grabbed up my four year old and carried her off into the reception hall after snapping a few photographs.

We ate, at their insistence, and stayed for all of the events–the toasts, the dance, the cutting of the cake. My children met other children and played until they collapsed from exhaustion, then got up and played some more. I met so many wonderful people and learned quite a bit about the bride and groom–and about myself.

When it was time to go, the bride pulled us aside. She spoke in her Romanian accent, and told us how when she arrived in the States she knew nobody except her fiancé. She felt so alone, and the members of that church took her in just like family. She knew we were new to the area and was simply paying the hospitality and goodwill forward.

And now it’s my turn. Time for this introvert at heart to watch for an uncertain newcomer–to make someone else feel as welcome and comfortable as this Romanian girl made us feel, after knowing us for barely an hour.

Have you ever gone against your own nature to reach out to someone else?

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Why I Write

So many stories and characters inside my head demanding to be set free. I believe we can learn a lot from each other with our shared human experience.

This is why I write.

Today is the National Day on Writing. Writers, bloggers, and general creative types, why do you write?