Through the gift of writing, a new perspective

Sandra Hurtes

is the author of the essay collection "On My Way to Someplace Else"

I hadn't planned on becoming a writer. When I did, there was something naive and wonderful about discovering I could put words together in a way that lit me up - and, I would discover, that others wanted to read. I was 44 then - no stranger to searching for some form of creative expression to satisfy a deep need to prove myself.

Let me take you back in time: Samuel J. Tilden High School, Brooklyn, circa 1967. I'm 16; hair in a perfect flip (picture Mary Tyler Moore), dressed in the popular-girl ensemble of navy A-line skirt, pale blue crew-neck sweater, gold circle pin (we call them virgin pins) at the throat of my pink starched collar, navy tights, cordovan loafers without the penny. I'm doing OK popularity-wise. That's because the other students don't know who I really am. And who I really am is a Commercial student who studies shorthand, typing, and accounting.

Academic students think Commercial girls are dumb, gum-popping, bleached blondes. I'm neither gum-popping, nor bleached, but I am dumb. Unlike my friends, I have no college aspirations. My parents are Holocaust survivors. They've learned in America that a girl who can type will get married; a girl with a college degree will not.

In low-income Crown Heights, where we lived until I was 14, many of my friends, too, expected to be a secretary. There were the few who wished to be teachers, but I didn't realize that meant attending college.

Just before freshman year, my family moved to a suburban Brooklyn neighborhood with girls who played squash instead of handball. On a sunny summer day, I took my racquet to the schoolyard to play with my new friend Laurie, a girl who'd skipped a grade in junior high.

As we hit the ball back and forth, I asked if she was taking a Commercial program.

"Commercial?" she asked. "I'm Academic, of course. Aren't you?"

"Yes," I stammered, as the world and all my beliefs turned upside down.

On the first day of school, I went to the guidance office to change my program. I didn't tell my parents I switched to Academic; likely they would have been as perplexed as I.

In algebra class, I felt alienated from the first 14 years of my life; my identity crisis terrified me. After one week, I switched back to Commercial, settling into who I was supposed to be. I kept my program a secret from all but my closest friends.

To this day it's painful remembering myself walking down the high school hallway and stopping just before turning toward the typing rooms. I looked over my shoulder to see if the popular kids were around. Not until the hall was clear did I turn left and slide into my seat in front of a typewriter.

My shame was a layer so thick, I could have taken soap and water to it, but it wouldn't wash off for almost 30 years. Not even did the B-plus I ultimately earned in algebra at a liberal-arts college help.

At 44, I was earning a living through a patchwork of temporary secretarial jobs. Around that time, the world was paying tribute to Holocaust survivors on the 50th anniversary of their liberation. It was an exciting time for everyone with a connection.

At my temp job, I began an essay about being the daughter of survivors. I had written poetry and prose years before. But I lacked confidence then and told myself "the writers' club" wasn't open to me.

But for the 50th anniversary, my need to contribute broke through all self-doubt. At the keyboard, I expressed feelings that I'd repressed for a lifetime. Friends who read my work said I was talented. That set me on fire! Writers I met talked about the frustration of the blank page, writer's block, trials of revision. I didn't have those experiences.

My essay, "A Daughter's Legacy," was published in August 1995 in the Jewish Press. I loosened up at the keyboard: Who knew I had so much to write about how to save a marriage (I was divorced and had been single for 20 years), start a small business, and avoid office gossip?

My second essay about my obsession with dieting appeared in the Washington Post. The day of publication, I headed early to Times Square, where I purchased five newspapers. I thought of the Clintons, who were then in the White House, reading my words. I imagined all the Washington honchos, the smart, educated people. And I thought, too, about a Commercial student I once knew who hid in her typing room. Holding the newspaper in my hand, I sat on the floor, stared at the words Washington Post, and cried.

That was a long time ago. Many of my essays and features have been published. Publication was important as it had provided me with a new mirror in which to view myself. But it wasn't my only motivation to write; the process helped me to freeze-frame my life experiences and make sense of them. Words dived into the center of things, helping me mature and learn about the world.

I'm no longer the shame-faced girl I was in high school. But were I to step into her penny loafers today, I'd wear her aspirations proudly. I'd let everyone see her as I now do: a teenager carrying an insatiable need to grow as a human being and the ability to do that, as a writer.