When I was a little kid, maybe 1^st or 2^nd grade, I read a poem in our reading book at school that made me smile. So, I wrote it down. I liked it so much, I still remember it.

There was a cat,

Who swallowed a ball of yarn.

When she had kittens,

They all had sweaters on.

I added a picture of the mama and the kittens with their warm sweaters.

When I got homeI showed it to my dad, thinking it would make him smile too. He beamed, “Did you write this? You are so clever! My smart little girl!” I swallowed and kept my eyes on him. I meant to share it with him, this nice poem, not trick him into thinking I had written it. But at, that moment, the pride in his eyes shining back at me, I did not have the heart or bravery to set him straight. So my swallow turned to a smile and I took that poem back from his hands and went to my room. I knew then that words had power. Spoken words and silent words.

 

Many years later I boarded the Amtrak train with my older brother. We often took the train from our dad’s house in Orange Country, to our mom’s house in San Diego on the weekends. We knew the drill. We know what side to sit on for the best view, how many cars back was the dining car. We knew what snacks awaited us in that dining car. What shocked me though, each time was Border Patrol agents that boarded the train at San Clemente and exited in Oceanside. They walked up the aisles, slowly, zip ties at their waist, making eye-contact with each passenger as they passed. Sometime, they would be escorting someone they found, an illegal, we used to say back then, hands ziptied behind their backs or to the next person if they found many. One time, the tall INS agent, stopped at the aisle my brother and I sat at sipping our coke and eating our snacks. “Where are you kids from?” he asked. “No hablo Espanol,” my smart aleck brother answered. The agent widened his eyes. I jabbed my brother hard in the ribs.  “Sorry, I was just messing with you. We are from here, Fullerton. We are going to visit our mom in San Diego,” my brother added. “Well be careful kids! he said, as he left us and continued to walk on down the aisle, looking for others, that looked like us but did not speak English. I knew then that if your skin was brown, like us, English had power.

 

Long ago, I read an article by one of my favorite authors, Sandra Cisneros. She said, when she writes, she imagines her reader, in their pajamas or bathrobe, sipping their coffee at the kitchen table.   She did that so she could write, otherwise she was gripped in fear. Fear of her reader. The reader in her mind had too much power. This last month, writing daily, I have often thought about who, who might read my work? Will they like it? Will they hate it? Will they be bored? I have written and rewritten sentences, trying out different words, wondering which worked better, imagining my reader. I know it is important to think of audience, but sometimes the reader has too much power, and that power stifles the writer, making them craft safe stories and safe sentences. So, I have come around to using Sandra Cisnero’s reader idea, except the old lady in her bath robe at the kitchen table, is now me. I am the reader. Words have power, an in this day and age, words in English have power. I chose to take that power and claim it as my own, for me, for my reader.  I hope other will enjoy what I write, see themselves empathize or see a new perspective. We can share the power, the power of words.