American Girl

I am starting a Facebook memoir group on January 1 because I had this vision that I could do for a group of people what I could not do for my mom—I could be part of getting them from wishful thinking or rough draft to done.

To prepare, I’m cleaning out the tube of me and focusing on what makes me feel expanded and alive.

The other day I was listening to the book Before Happiness, and the author Shawn Achor had asked a number of people to draw a coffee cup. He said that everyone drew it from the side—cup, handle. He wondered why no one drew it from above.

Out of habit, we see things in particular ways. I would have drawn the cup from the side, and I loved the idea that it never occurred to me to draw it from another angle. What else was I seeing in a particular way simply because I wasn’t really thinking about it, wasn’t really seeing it?

I thought of a writing assignment: find a noun you have never, ever thought about and write about it for a page. I imagined someone opening a dictionary and looking for a noun they had never read before. I then remembered that my dictionary is in my storage unit in California. How do you search for a word you have never seen before on the internet?

So this post is not about that assignment because now I have to go find a book and read it until I find a new word and that may take a few minutes, and I want to finish this post so I can get out of bed and go out into the freezing cold.

This post is therefore about the song American Girl by Tom Petty. The album Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers was released in 1976. I was twelve, and I’m not talking about that time. I’m talking about a couple of years later when a miracle happened: I got a Walkman and started to live in a world that revolved around mixed tapes and running.

The first time I really heard American Girl, I was running up Hartford Street to Burgess, a route I didn’t run much. There was a long, steady climb, and American Girl came on halfway up, and suddenly I was flying. It has been more than thirty-five (what the hell??) years, but I remember hearing the words, Tom Petty’s voice, and feeling them in my body and getting so high. I was about 16 years old, and I was alive.

Years and years and years later, my writing partner’s dad made a documentary about Tom Petty, and so I got to hear American Girl in the movie theater. I loved it, but I don’t remember any of it in particular. I just remember wondering why no one ever talked about Tom Petty’s wife. A whole documentary about a man, and his wife is not part of it? Is your spouse that unimportant? Why do we put so much emphasis on picking the right partner, on having a fancy wedding, of making vows if, when someone makes a documentary of your life, your spouse is less visible than your band mates or your car?

Anyway.

This morning I’m listening to American Girl in bed. You could say I’m in bed with Tom Petty. I could say that, except for the fact that 1. I’m not and 2. He’s dead.

Anyway.

I have headphones on and Tom Petty is singing. My head is full of music and memories and dreams and the desire to move. She couldn’t help thinking that there was a little more to life, somewhere else. After all it was a great big world, with lots of places to run (and now I had to go look up the lyrics because this part I used to mumble as Tom Petty mashed together a bunch of words I couldn’t understand) Yeah, and if she had to die tryin’ she had one little promise she had to keep.

What? If she had to die she had a promise? How did I not know he was saying this? What was the promise? Did she keep it? I kept reading the lyrics, And for one desperate moment there, he crept back in her memory God it’s so painful something that’s so close and still so far out of reach.

This song is not about an empowered American girl! It’s about heartbreak!!! How had I missed this??

Suddenly I am drawing the coffee cup from above, from below, from inside. The world is not the place I thought it was. American Girl is not out running thinking about how powerful she is; she’s out on her balcony having desperate thoughts!!

Who knew?

What else have I completely missed because I was not looking or listening closely?

Yesterday I was talking to my daughter and she said something about not living in an athlete’s body any more. I said something along the lines of “It must be strange…” and I gave her this whole fucking analysis of how she must feel. Jesus. I need to go to listening school. To ask questions school. Telling someone how they must feel is ridiculous!

Being alive is so much work! Paying attention is not for the weak of heart, that’s for sure. It takes endurance and commitment and steady blood sugar.

I’m listening to Lou Reed sing Walk on the Wild Side now. This day is getting blown wide open and I’m still in my pajamas.

I can’t wait to get outside.