Storytime Tapestry Newsletter

The newsletter devoted to spreading love and cultural awareness throughout the world.

Special Treat –  Peggy Ann Doak

October 26, 2007

Authenticity A Long Road To Hoe

Peggy Ann Doak

Recently I have been on a truth seeking mission, all about me. Not the Government, not my friends, or enemies, parents or children. Nothing like getting caught up in someone else’s failings (according to Peggy). No this is a different drum beating.

I came to understand a few years ago, that the false God's (this is my interpretation, let it be) that I am not to worship, is the false me. My fa?ade; not just my personality, or I am always being good or bad, or a doormat, or someone you won't answer the door for. It is more subtle that that. How many notions have I picked up because they were cool eat the moment and I wanted to be cool at the moment. Here is an example:

After I came home twenty seven years ago, finally sober with my head only sixty or so degree askew, I was still wearing no bra, with long skirts, dirty bare feet, 'my hippie self.' This genre has changed in Maine but has always carried a purity about it and it does now worse than ever. If you eat meat you’re left out of a conversation. To want nice precious stone jewelry was and is in that segment of Green America, an abomination; the smaller the car, the higher your status. Like a reversal of the ostentatious rich. Funny, my Grandmother, my Mom's Mother was accused of being ostentatious by my other Grandmother, my Dad's Mother who came from the Salt o' the Earth peoples.

One day I had had enough of tofu lovin' hipyups, who had moved to Maine away from their ostentatious beginnings to become cleansed an true to themselves. Except they all looked alike. If there was an organic fiber of the week, everyone was wearing it. I had a membership at the food co-op in Belfast, a co-op begun by some folks from Connecticut and New York who were feeling great about how they were educating us polyester, macaroni and cheese whiz hicks up here. I had my own responsibility in this. I ate food I hated. I wore clothes that were 'ok' and for jewelry, there is nothing like a piece of granite wrapped in hemp for the ultimate luxury item for your neck. And no one died because of your choice. There are more reasons for working to fit in than how I am simplifying it here. It was a great hide out to never have to challenge my stepfather for not allowing me to wear stylish clothes or to appear attractive. And baggy clothes were his thing and the hipyups idea of decorum. In fact there was a movement around then that women were fighting the idea of having beauty be their currency. A righteous fight, if you had beauty, luxury, bath salts and a maid to let go of. Herman Hess wrote about not being able to be free of anything before you have anything. I digress.

So I was standing behind the cash register and I said quite loudly, "I hate tofu." Of course no one had any idea where I was comin from. There was a moment of silence, and then an increased buzz of conversations. So I said, "I want to buy a Lincoln Continental, like my Grandmother’s; black and new EVERY year. Somebody turned to me and said, 'Do you know how much gas those things use?' and I look straight into the person's eyes and said, "Do you know how tired I am of driving a flipping Volkswagen with no heat? Do you suppose the constant frost on the windows is a hazard?" I then was looking at a back.

Through the years, sometimes through an epiphany, sometimes through the help of others, I have confronted the false God in myself; my facade, something like the false front on a western town and just as strong. I worked hard at this. A friend asked me one day, "Why do you wear such baggy pants, you have such a cute little figure."

"I do?" I didn't know. So I asked women for help on fitting clothes and the latest fashions and came to understand the joy of shopping with the girls. What fun! I had never done it! In fact, I got so good at it that a lesbian friend of mine who was rather butchy, wanted to get something for her partner but was clueless. Her partner was rather femmy. So I..ME...of all people, took her to the lingerie department in Bloomingdales. She was so thankful. So she helped me at the Clinique booth to see what colour lipstick I looked good in.

To most people this may seem small potatoes, but not to me. I had never flirted until I was in my thirties, without thinking I was supposed to sleep with the guy, oh, and here was the hardest facade to let go of:

I would always be condescending toward myself. It terrified me if I received out of the norm complements. I had learned over the years to accept complements, like, "What a beautiful shirt Peg." and I learned to say "thank you, I really like it myself." or "Nice butt there Doak" and I learned not to leer back or get defensive. Instead I said, "And she's all mine." Ok, so I got good grades at everyday etiquette.

But then there came a time when, while in College in Massachusetts, I was told that I am a genius.; brilliant,  incredibly gifted. From growing up with stupid, dummy, to being among the top three percent of Smith College students, was a hard, almost impossible truth to swallow. I was accepted and accepted myself as a goof off, funny, humble, loving etc. So now I could not be those other things if I was a stiff with a brain. It has taken sixteen years to begin to accept that version and it was five years ago before I admitted and believed to some level that what was known by others about me, was true. Some of the best Thinkers in the world told me that I was special and that I had a brilliant future.

When I first went to Smith College, and I would sit down by Paradise Pond, or in the many gardens, I expected Security to come to me and with two men, one on each elbow, lifting me up and escorting me off the property with the warning: "Don't come back. Ever." When I would get a notice from the Dean that she needed to see me, I knew in my heart that they had figured it out that I was a fraud. I didn't know how I got the good grades. I didn't know what I did to set me at the top of the performing list, or why my plays were being read so much. I don't think that I told many people that when I took my GRE for Graduate school, even without any math beyond algebra 1, no languages (Smith came to allow their students to pick their own classes, and only were monitored in that we had to take half the classes outside of our major) so I never learned a language or calculus or organic chemistry. Yet in the testing for the GRE, it looked as though I did know those things; same with my GED for my high school diploma.

I had barely finished the ninth grade, as that was the year my appendix ruptured, and I was a raving alcoholic by the next fall upon entering tenth grade. Then I quit. Yet when I took my GED, I was still drinking and drugging. The test I took was the first GED that had to be modified because over fifty percent of the kid’s graduation high school flunked it. But I took it before the modification made it easier. I do not know what I did, except that I do know I was in the top three percent in science of all graduating students from high school as well as all the GED takers. I had done math that I'd never seen. The giver of the test wanted to put me through an intelligence test for four days. I wasn't about to let him find out that it was a fluke that I did so well. Plus, I figured his interest in me was sexual. That is what my Stepfather would always say. "All a man wants from you is sex. Believe it!" So I figured maybe I didn't do well at all. How messed up is that?!

Where is this leading? I have no idea. Except I wonder how many people hold false ideas about themselves in order to not get hurt, or to fit in, or they just don't know. Being intelligent in Maine is not a Social upper. I have no one I can talk to about issues that go deeper than the weather. And he lives two hours away and has a girl friend now.

The upside of this?  I know for the first time and with the help of my friends at gather.com,  that I am indeed moving toward a more completed self. That the future is bright and exciting. I don't have to hide my good looks, wit and intelligence. Oh, and I played cribbage with my son on pogo last night. We had an awesome and heartfelt meeting during the game. I told him how brilliant I think that he is. I've told him this before, but he heard me. Also I told him that I thought it was wild how he is a writer and that his lyrics were phenomenal and how proud I was to watch him and his band put together and mix a song. In fact, I said, "you worked a lot when I was there. Probably because I was there." He didn't deny it. I'll be going to California someday soon. At the same time I need to accept that this is where I live now. So I have been doing laundry and hunting down anything that needs to go to the dump. My truck is full for a trip tomorrow.

I feel good letting my friends know where I am cleaning house, getting down to the truth of the matter, which, the real truth, is always beautiful.

Peggy Ann Doak

pdoak333@peoplepc.com