Or, the Life Story of Cynthia Morris
You may wonder why and how I came to be me, a creative pioneer who thinks nothing of trying new things and whose greatest joy is encouraging others to leap as well.
So I've written a narrative that highlights some of the pieces that bring me to where and who I am today. This is a useful exercise - mapping your life story. Try it yourself. Go for 4,000 words!
Enjoy reading and feel free to comment.
Part One
The Kind of Upbringing that Produces Someone Like Me
It’s often pointed out that creative people’s childhoods are marked by suffering and discontent. And then the creative impulse springs from this malaise, yielding an abundant garden from compost.
I can’t say I had a horrible childhood in the vein of stories like The Glass Castle or The Liar’s Club. Not even close. I grew up in a small suburb in Ohio, the third child of hard-working parents. My dad owned his own business installing tile and marble in people’s fancy homes. He showed me firsthand the necessity of hard work and sticktuitiveness.
My mom worked for over a dozen years at an upscale department store. There she expressed her excellent salesmanship, sense of style and taste. Growing up, I wore the best designer clothes, which gave me great taste in clothes. Alas, as an adult responsible for paying my own clothing bill, I find that my good taste does not match my small wallet.
The biggest gift my parents gave me, and there are many, was solitude. They both worked full-time. This gave me hours at home alone where I became accustomed to the pleasures of solitude. Who knows where my siblings were; my sister was probably at her job at the nursing home kitchen and my brother doing something after school at his private Catholic boys’ school.
I escaped at an early age into the wide, wide world of books.
I loved the freedom of having the house to myself, the freedom to do what I wanted. Most often what I wanted was to make myself an afternoon snack of English muffin with peanut butter and jelly and lay on the floor eating and reading.
Part Two
A Dreamer Is Born
Reading allowed me to envision and inhabit other worlds. It gave me the knowledge that other ways of living existed and I somehow took permission to believe not only did that they exist, but that I could live them.
Thus the dreamer was born. I envisioned many scenarios, fueled by Danielle Steele novels. I also read horror novels, but that’s another story.
I determined that when I grew up and was allowed out of reach of my parents, I would:
• Head to New York to make my fortune and enjoy a rich and glittery life.
• Become a writer and publish books that other people would read and draw inspiration from.
• Travel the world.
• Live in France where I would live freely in a long line of Americans who had taken up residency in France, enjoying a joie de vivre not possible in the US.
A trip to NYC at the age of nineteen cured me of my desire to live in NY. Now I enjoy visiting and relish the city’s abundant creativity.
I’ve carved out a life not so much as a rebel but as an outsider. My family lived on the fringe of the suburbs and subdivisions where the houses lined up neatly around cul-de-sacs. Our house sat on an acre of land, with a giant backyard that abutted fields on two sides.
I grew to enjoy this space, and the fact that we didn’t belong to the country club. We spent our summer weekends at our cottage in Michigan, waterskiing and eating watermelon and potato salad on the shore of a small lake.
My outsider status was cultivated by other choices I made. Instead of attending my high school graduation, I was on an airplane to France, where I spent three weeks studying French culture. I fell in love with France on that trip and later returned for my junior year abroad.
These experiences deepened my determination to live in France. After graduating from Bowling Green State University with a degree in French and West European Studies, I made my way back to Europe.
I participated in the work abroad program, moving to Edinburgh, Scotland for six months. I could stay for six months there as opposed to three months in France. I worked at a health food store, drank organic beer and cider, and learned to enjoy life despite the gloomy Scottish winter.
I took a postmodernism class, watched the Gulf War start, and struggled to understand who I was and what I was supposed to do now that I was the proud holder of a French degree. I was paid a pittance and spent most of my free time making dinner with friends or reading in my giant rented room, huddled under the covers trying to stay warm.
One chance at a normal job was thwarted when my trademark honesty refused to be submerged. In an interview in London for a tour guide job, the interviewer asked me what I would do if my group of American high school kids wanted to go to McDonald’s.
Of course I gave the lofty answer that I wouldn’t let them. I’d force them to experience the local culture, and like it, by god.
Vive la difference? Hardly. I didn’t get that job.
At the end of our time in Scotland, my friends and I hitchhiked through Europe, ending in Barcelona, where we each took separate flights back to the States. I lived in dread of my future.
I believe post graduation is the worst time of a person’s life, especially a person who doesn’t have a clear and direct path laid out for her. What to do with MY LIFE? Everyone’s watching, expecting something great. You’re 22 or 23 years old and are expected to choose a life path. Terrifying.
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