Putting a child’s inner life into words, part 2

It’s a writing problem.

I wrote about this challenge before — right here. Given that I didn’t see certain insights as a kid, how do I convey those insights to a reader without stepping out of my child-protagonist’s voice and into an adult voice of today? Readers — friends, classmates, a mentor — uniformly have urged me to stay in the kid-voice. They find it immersive and compelling. And it comes naturally to me.

Here are two examples of the challenge in portraying the real, larger sadnesses and desires behind childhood thoughts and feelings.

At twelve, thirteen, fourteen, I dreaded getting my period. I dreaded getting it for the first time, and after that I dreaded it every four weeks. Having to control this physical mess, while keeping it a secret as we did then, was a burden that enraged me. I hid that feeling, too.

Writing about period problems in my memoir made me realize that the “dread of getting my period” burden was a visceral fear of growing up without my mother. Menstruation showed me it was happening, and I couldn’t refuse. There would be no ongoing help, from the one person who could have helped me, with my most personal matters.

Given that I didn’t see those meanings at the time, how do I convey them to a reader without stepping out of my child-protagonist’s voice? In the protagonist’s voice, I can make the reader feel the feelings. Maybe I just have to trust the reader to discern their deeper, more devastated source, without my telling them?

Then there are dreams and ideas of the future I actually wanted. My journal shows that I knew more about what I didn’t want, at the time, than what I did want. But now it’s clear what I dreamed of. In grade school, then as a high school freshman when I was in the local teen musical, then throughout sophomore year when I learned to play guitar, I longed to be part of a musical team of some kind. Playing music was the most beautiful way I’d watched people express connection and togetherness. I had a persistent fantasy of playing guitar and singing for someone I loved.

I couldn’t have articulated that, and I wouldn’t have dared to anyway.

My connections to my own extended family had atomized after my mom’s death — not because they didn’t care about me, but because we all lived far apart. Everyone else in the family was older and busy, and my dad didn’t reach out, and I was too shy to do it myself. I was the only one of my generation, in my mom’s entire family, who was still a child in the 70s and early 80s. I imagined someday we’d all be together again, but I didn’t have a plan to make it happen. Still, I thought a big, expressive, interesting family was where I belonged. Music was the ingredient I wanted to add to the mix.

I knew a family like this, right down the street from us, a big family who overflowed their little brick bungalow, who played music in their house and on their porch and worked on their cars on the street. My first crush was their youngest, Joe (not his real name*), sixteen when I was twelve. I watched him and his sister in the local teen musical all through their high school years. If the play had been performed all over town, I would have followed them from place to place, a diehard fan. Instead I kept watch for them on our block, dashing out to our porch if I heard a voice or a car door from their direction.

My journals are full of sightings of Joe, conversations with him, Frisbee throws, opinions about his clothes and his car. I adored him, and I showed it. But I also remember how I felt about his sister and his whole family. I wished somehow my dad could date their widowed mom. I wished my dad could go help Joe and his brother work on their car. Then I could tag along, and we could all be together. When the siblings played guitars on their front steps on summer nights, they were like a magnet — but I was too young to go and hang out with them on my own. My dad didn’t know why I was so interested in the family. “Are you turning into a flirt?” he asked, infuriating me.

All I knew at the time was, “I love Joe!!! Why couldn’t I be a year or two older so maybe he’d like me!???”

Behind that, the real longing was to be part of a family. Feeling I’d lost my family, I wanted to be absorbed into Joe’s family, be taken under their wings, learn how to be a teen and a front-porch musician.

Joe as a teenager was as nice and as patient as an adult. He and his whole family were kind and generous without fail. But they couldn’t absorb me. My connection with them, created mostly by my persistence, would be temporary. They wouldn’t become my new family. Obviously.

I’ve written most of the above in my age-59, “telling” voice. That’s not as effective within the memoir. How can I convey, as a child protagonist, what was behind my enthusiasm that was so mixed with lonely longing? That’s my challenge.

*Not his real name, but anybody who knew me then knows who I’m talking about. I was not subtle!