I remember signing up to take Creative Writing at fifteen years of age for the sole purpose that my high school crush had signed up for the class as well. Looking back, I can't help but smile. One, because I was so fickle to base my decisions on fleeting emotions and petty flings. (Thank God puberty is over). Two, because I had no idea at the beginning of the semester, sitting next to Ryan Brown and his contagious smile, that I would really end up falling in love with writing.
Mr. Frode had a way of capturing our attention. He was an old guy with quirky mannerisms, a quick wit and a gentle disposition. He loved to tell stories. Mainly, I think, because he had the best ones. He'd been a monk at a monastery for a good chunk of his life. After leaving the monastery, he'd been married and divorced and remarried. He had so much insight into the world--some I agreed with and some I didn't--but he made a space for us as writers to express those ideas and insights freely. When he asked us to write, it was never about Hamlet or politics or what we did that weekend--though I think those can be valid and important prompts. But Frode didn't care about that stuff, not ultimately. He wanted to know what was going on inside, the deeper issues of his students. He wanted to cull out our inner thoughts and sift through them and maybe get a beautiful piece of writing in the process.
He understood that creativity acts as a catalyst to process deep emotions, ones that you don't realize you have at first glance. This was the foundation of Mr. Frode's creative writing course. And so, at the end of the semester, it came as no surprise to me that he wanted us to write a memoir of an event that had, in hindsight, influenced our "becoming". Something that had worked to shape who we were at that point in our lives.
It was incredible to hear the stories of my classmates. Some wrote about a joy they had shared, or an adventure they had gone on, or a relationship that had enriched their lives. Others wrote about their parents' divorce, or their dad being thrown in jail, or being abused or raped as a child. I had no idea that these memories had been kept tucked away behind the eyes of my peers. And in the process of drafting and editing and rewriting and editing again, I saw my peers work through the baggage of their stories.
Mr. Frode's goal had been accomplished. He hit a cord with us. We came out on top...not because we passed, but because we had relived some of the scariest, some of the darkest, and some of the best, most sunshine-y experiences of our lives, ascribing definition to them and ultimately understanding their purposes in shaping us into who we were.
And for this, I fell in love with writing. With the way it can caress our minds when our thoughts run wild, and shed light on the mysteries of the things we can't quite figure out.
So cheers to teachers like Mr. Frode, and here's to hoping I can be one of his kind someday.
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