I have been trying to write this diary for a couple days. Unsure of what to say or how to write it, which is kind of ironic when you think about it. This diary is about a person who inspired me to write when I was in high school. You would never know she was an inspiration to read her obituary. It reads like a dry history text naming places and dates.
She was more than the teacher who taught English at Madison East High School from 1963 to 1989. I remember her as a short and stocky woman with a long pony tail. A woman who once told me that if I wanted my dreams of being a writer to come true all I had to do was to keep dreaming and keep writing.
I will be honest, I was not a really good student by the time I met Mrs. Mielcarek. In my junior year, for reasons I am still unsure of, my ninth grade English teacher had shared a short story I had written for her class two years previously. Mrs. Mielcarek sought me out to tell me how good of a story it was and would I take her creative writing class my senior year. I told her I would think about it, but I never did take her class, even after she had talked to me several times about it and knew that becoming a writer was a dream of mine.
My dad had already been laid off (screwed over by a union-busting boss) and I was looking down the barrel of a future that on the outside I wanted, but on the inside, I was terrified of facing. I skipped school more than I attended in those days—I had a standing appointment to skip on Tuesdays so that I could get home before my parents, because I had to get the skip notice out of the mail before they got home. I knew by this time that I would not be going to college. I was destined to join the army and then work a blue collar life. Now, don't get me wrong, there is nothing wrong with going into the army and living the blue collar life. I did both; however, in the back of my head was that dream. The dream that Mrs. Mielcarek told me was possible. I think she knew where I was at that point of my very young life yet she still made sure to tell me that I could follow my dreams.
It took me almost twenty years before I started chasing that dream again—at first I wrote for my second attempt at college (the successful attempt). I penned paper after paper, never quite believing my instructors when they told me I was a good writer. Mrs. Mielcarek's voice had been drowned out by my first college English professor's voice who said I would never pass her class.
As time went on I started to write to kill the pain of my divorce, writing fiction and non-fiction that even today I find raw, angry and painful to read. I doubt that I will ever let those words see the light of day.
Then something happened—the anger in me started to fade away and I started to find my voice. I began writing here at Daily Kos, feeding a hunger and a dream. I enrolled in a Masters program in writing. I am finally beginning to realize the dream that I had so long ago, a dream that a teacher told me so many years ago was possible to attain.
Thank you Mrs. Mielcarek, I should have taken your class.