Once upon a time, there was a little girl born to an opera singer and iconoclastic bureaucrat living on the Virginia side of the District of Columbia. This little girl had troubles with speech, school, and motor skills, but boy, was she enthusiastic.
The next moment she remembers clearly is at King David’s Cemetery, when four dozen choristers from the Washington Opera had just sang a transcendent version of “Amazing Grace” to people gathered under the canopy that bright winter day. She was twenty, not yet woman and only a bit more than girl. They shook her hand and said “I’m sorry for your loss,” knowing that this must be epic for one who idolized her mother. The tenor asked, “What will you do with the house – sell it? The piano? The pets?” The girl knew, right there and right then, that her dreams had just been taken out with the tide. Whatever the surf would bring back is what she would have to accept.
She tried to make her life whole by going it alone. Travel was her mask and boy did she wear it out. She found herself in funny places that she had never imagined, like in a Russian banya with a Dagestani hat seller who asked if she was willing and marriageable. (The answer was no, not yet.) Later she was on a bus with six toughs in Montenegro, being asked why she would ever want to go such places without protection? Why would she choose to be alone like this? (She thought about this lots and realized the boys from Herceg Novi were onto something.)
She moved West and got a formal education, an MFA in poetry, along with a priceless informal education working as a telemarketer, dishwasher, baker, house cleaner, ESL teacher, grant writer, labor organizer, and arts administrator. Even as the tide kept taking other loved ones, the tide also delivered beauty and new life.
With her tribe intact and friendships deepening, she began to release all the things that belonged to the dead, so that she could reach out to what was truly hers. She continues to write her own myth, no longer so afraid of being judged for the things she says, but more afraid of not having spoken up before tide goes out again.
The next moment she remembers clearly is at King David’s Cemetery, when four dozen choristers from the Washington Opera had just sang a transcendent version of “Amazing Grace” to people gathered under the canopy that bright winter day. She was twenty, not yet woman and only a bit more than girl. They shook her hand and said “I’m sorry for your loss,” knowing that this must be epic for one who idolized her mother. The tenor asked, “What will you do with the house – sell it? The piano? The pets?” The girl knew, right there and right then, that her dreams had just been taken out with the tide. Whatever the surf would bring back is what she would have to accept.
She tried to make her life whole by going it alone. Travel was her mask and boy did she wear it out. She found herself in funny places that she had never imagined, like in a Russian banya with a Dagestani hat seller who asked if she was willing and marriageable. (The answer was no, not yet.) Later she was on a bus with six toughs in Montenegro, being asked why she would ever want to go such places without protection? Why would she choose to be alone like this? (She thought about this lots and realized the boys from Herceg Novi were onto something.)
She moved West and got a formal education, an MFA in poetry, along with a priceless informal education working as a telemarketer, dishwasher, baker, house cleaner, ESL teacher, grant writer, labor organizer, and arts administrator. Even as the tide kept taking other loved ones, the tide also delivered beauty and new life.
With her tribe intact and friendships deepening, she began to release all the things that belonged to the dead, so that she could reach out to what was truly hers. She continues to write her own myth, no longer so afraid of being judged for the things she says, but more afraid of not having spoken up before tide goes out again.
Judith Pulman’s poems, essays, and interviews have been published in Writer’s Chronicle, Brevity, Los Angeles Review, Water~Stone Review, and Under the Gum Tree. She has received grants from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and been awarded residencies for her writing. Judith holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop and has taught creative nonfiction, poetry, and all-genre classes through the the Multnomah Arts Center, the Attic Institute, the ALS Association of Oregon & SW Washington, and Mountain Writers. She lives with her partner, two Peruvian guinea pigs, and a Llhaso Apso dog named “the Doctor.”
Judith Pulman’s poems, essays, and interviews have been published in Writer’s Chronicle, Brevity, Los Angeles Review, Water~Stone Review, and Under the Gum Tree. She has received grants from the Regional Arts & Culture Council and been awarded residencies for her writing. Judith holds an MFA from the Rainier Writing Workshop and has taught creative nonfiction, poetry, and all-genre classes through the the Multnomah Arts Center, the Attic Institute, the ALS Association of Oregon & SW Washington, and Mountain Writers. She lives with her partner, two Peruvian guinea pigs, and a Llhaso Apso dog named “the Doctor.”
