Words Where We Live - Part I

     Our family is from Massachusetts, twelve miles west of Boston, in Waltham, where I was born in 1947. We only moved once, but our first house was a monumental scale four-apartment house that my dad was always fixing up. Houses built back in those days didn’t have the family rooms that later on became standard, and I attribute my father’s solution to that lack as one of the ways I got launched as a writer. Ingeniously, he closed off the long hall that led back to the bedrooms and designated this narrow space as our playroom. He put up a trick bar in the doorway; taped down a hopscotch grid; and installed bookshelves above a homework desk he’d attached to the wall. Most importantly, and I remember his pronouncement as clearly as if it was yesterday, he pointed to the bare walls that he’d stripped of wallpaper and said. Have fun, kids. These walls are yours; you can scribble all over these things! 

My two sisters and I were aghast at first. Mom had a knack for the decorative arts and both of them took pride in our home. This invitation became an important lesson in the difference between private and public space. By the time we moved when I was in fifth grade, and Dad had to cover the walls for the new tenants, we Langton’s had, in fact, scribbled, doodled, drawn, and composed with any ink, lead, or crayons at our disposal.  

Mom’s passion for reading complemented Dad’s free-spirited largesse. Stacks of her library books vied for space with the cereal boxes at our kitchen table. My sisters and I competed for who could receive more stars in the Good Readers club during our treasured weekly trips. I was a distracted student; the only thing that got me through my school day was

 the current book I’d always have stashed inside my school desk. That and the consolation of knowing I could pull it out to read, in between conversations with my friends, during lunch. It was a numinous moment when, one day I looked up from whatever great story I was reading and realized I wanted to grow up to be a writer. 

I got a small allowance back then and after one fateful trip to Woolworths, I asked my mother to explain the purpose of the little, red plastic books with the tiny locks and keys. I think I had to save up for a few weeks to afford a diary, but, as I discovered, it was well worth it. Like most kids, I’d make fits and starts at entries; then lose it, the key or both. My affinity for the written word combined with the guilt I felt at having left so many blank pages. In the end, I developed a  lifelong practice of keeping a journal. 

Classrooms in the 50s in Waltham typically sat over 50 kids spread out over several rows of desks. It would be lightyears before the idea of accommodating different learning styles would be a thing, so mostly I’d sit feeling lost. I’d be either consumed by daydreams or worry over how the bad boys in the back row were making the nun so mad.  One fateful day stands out, though.. In fifth grade, Sister Agnes Helene, did a whole class spill on the board around the word: NIGHT. How many different ways, how many different phrases or clauses could we use to expand on this one word? For once, a teacher had gotten my attention; my heart beat wildly as word by word, phrase by phrase the chalkboard filled with the various images the students were offering. My mind raced and, hurriedly, I added my voice to the chorus: Glittering Universe! My heart burst with joy as I spoke, felt the words sparkle, and enjoyed the approval of the class. I was 10 or so. We had transformed the everyday into the extraordinary with a turn of phrase. It was a tasty nibble at the power of poetry.

Five years later, my taste of night turned bitter as life became flavored by Kennedy’s tragic death. My young peers and I were ushered across a new and tragic threshold. To assuage my fears, I donned Jesus sandals and gobbled the likes of Hesse, Salinger, Cummings and Ferlinghetti. The koan mysteries of zen became exotic fare.  Beat poetry and the complex longings of folk and the fury of protest songs, like the dark coffee and cigarettes I was imbibing, tasted just right. A bookworm and a bit of an insomniac, inevitably I’d be up at night reading after my five siblings would be in bed. I’d also been bitten by the worm poetry, and now that primal, invertebrate, prince of darkness, accompanied me as I burrowed, wiggled, crawled and wallowed my way through the shadow side of culture and the muddy medium called teenage life.