As Old Spice is to a daughter, Jim Beam is to me. Daddy. My father is a Vietnam vet. My first full-length play was about two kids - boys listening for their numbers to come up on a radio during the 1971 draft. After my father saw the play, he sat me down and said, "Kid, I don't have the power to tell what happened over there but you do." He then proceeded to talk about the "police action". These stories were locked inside of him for forty years. Forty. Drowned in bourbon. As he talked about "over there" he came to point where he got quiet. Silent. Then he bowed his head and told me about a kid who was walking and then running towards his base's boundary. My father yelled for the kid to stop. The kid continued forward. A shot rang out. Finally, the kid stopped. Threat neutralized. Blood spilled. Life: gone. My father's silence was born.
After 18 months my dad was sent home. Honorably discharged - two words that made him skip his purple heart across the Poudre River like a stone that should stay sunk. He is still there, ' bottom of the river and in that field. Looking at that boy. Running and then not running. Blood spilling at his hands that were sanctioned by a government that drafted him there. He is still frozen in that moment. Forty-nine years now, and my father is still searching for the kid he used to be before that shot. But he is no longer silent. He doesn’t talk about it all the time but at least he gave me the power to tell the secret he thought he was untellable. This is why I write.This is the power of art. This is the power of giving voice to an untold story. It is the power to break silence. This is what I do. It is my role. I am a feminist blue-collar writer, who tells stories about the disillusionment of the American Dream through the context of the lower economic classes of our society. It is my future goal to continue this quest so that these stories can be part of a larger cultural dialog.