Tillie Olsen, In Memory, 1912-2007 - Page 2

During those nights, with darkness pressing against the windows all around me, I wrote - poems, journal entries, even a few short stories I have recently unearthed from a pile of old papers, even though I was told in college that poets like me shouldn't try to write prose. I began to go to readings, and may have even held my first poetry reading at that time. I felt I had, in Santa Cruz, found a place where my writing could flourish.

In the winter of 1984, pregnant with my eldest daughter, I sat in Cabrillo College's auditorium, listening to a group of writers — among them Ellen Bass, Maude Meehan, and Tillie Olsen — read from Tillie Olsen's newly published reader from The Feminist Press, entitled Mother to Daughter, Daughter to Mother. Arranged like a daybook, it contains poems, stories, epigraphs, fragments not unlike a patchwork quilt. This small volume of wisdom spoke very deeply to my heart as a young woman trying to find my place in the world.

I cried openly at that reading, thinking of my own mother locked in the prison of her life, fearing that she was being harmed at that very moment, feeling the grief of losing other significant women in my life. I had a battered copy of Tillie Olsen's Tell Me A Riddle at home, one of the few books I had ever read that spoke to both the pain and magnificence of being a mother.

I had no money to buy the daybook at that time, though I did purchase it later. I took my program up to the writers at the end and politely waited in line for Tillie Olsen. Everyone else had the daybook for her to sign; I had only the program for the reading in my hand, and told her I had a well-worn copy of Tell Me a Riddle at home, but I had forgotten it. Tillie took my face in her hands and gave me a smooch on the cheek, signed my program, and put a note on it: "paste this in your well-worn copy of Tell Me a Riddle." Her moment of attention meant everything to me.

Article Author: Ms. Strega

Ms. Strega is the name-cloak surrounding Joan McMillan. She is the author of a memoir of her Italian-American family, The Strega's Story. She has numerous poems published in such magazines as Poetry, ONTHEBUS, Saranac Review, Chattahoochee Review, Oyez Review, and Quarry West. …

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