By Accident

Sometimes I think I became the woman

I am by accident, nothing prepared

the way, not a dramatic, wayward aunt,

or moody mother who read Middlemarch,

or godmother who whispered, "You can be

whatever you want!" and by doing so

performed the god-like function of breathing

grit into me. Even my own sisters

were more concerned with hairdryers and boys

than the poems I recited ad nauseum

in our shared bedrooms when the lights were out.

"You're making me sick!" my sisters would say

as I ranted on, Whitman's Song of Myself

not the best lullaby, I now admit,

or Chaucer in middle English which caused

many a nightmare fight. "Mami!" they'd called,

"She's doing it again!" Slap of slippers

in the hall, door clicks, and lights snapped on.

"Why can't you be considerate for once?"

"I am," I pleaded, "these are sounds, sweet airs . . .

They give delight and--" "Keep it to yourself!"

my mother said, which more than anything

anyone in my childhood advised

turned me to this paper solitude

where I both keep things secret and broadcast

my heart for all the world to read. And so,

through many drafts, I became the woman

I kept to myself as I lay awake

in that dark bedroom with the lonesome sound

of their soft breathing as my sisters slept.

~ Julia Alvarez

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I think of life itself now as a wonderful play that I've written for myself, and so my purpose is to have the utmost fun playing my part. ~ Shirley MacLaine