A Story About the Horrible Glorious Truth

March 26, 2013 By 3 Comments

I want to write a beautiful story.

I want my reader to cry when the story has ended, not from sadness, but because she wished the story could continue. I want her to wish for a sequel, but at the same time to feel the story was complete.

I want my characters to be noble, and then ignoble, and then truly noble after all: the kind of characters that learn from their mistakes and then go on to be heroes. I want a full-blown, victorious, everything-becomes-right-again-at-the-end story where characters fall in love with the right people, without being contrived.

I want the book to have a happy ending.

And I don’t want to write this book simply so that I can be the one who wrote it. I want to write it because I’m looking for this story in real life. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Faith, Jessica Eddings-Roeser, Writing Tagged With: , 3 Comments

Rodeo and the Church Calendar

March 15, 2013 By 5 Comments

Despite my Christian upbringing, I didn’t grow up with the church calendar. Easter was a single day affair involving plastic eggs hidden in hill country pastures and Sunday school handouts with coppery brads to swing a construction paper stone away from an empty tomb. The graphic was always neat and tidy—flowers and grass and “He is Risen!” written alongside.

I knew the story of the suffering, but the celebration made more of an impact.

So between Valentines Day and Easter when my elementary school started serving fish sticks at the end of each week, I asked my reluctant classmates, “Why do you eat fish on Fridays?”

“It’s bad to eat meat on Fridays,” my friend Adrian told me.

“Why?” I asked. [Read more...]

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Living in a Border State

February 24, 2013 By 11 Comments

I spent elementary school in a Mexican neighborhood in Austin, Texas. I attended birthday parties with piñatas and ate in a school cafeteria that served home-style enchiladas, tamales, and beans made with lard. And because of my dark hair I truly didn’t realize a difference between the other students and me until fourth grade, when my Latino classmates nicknamed me the Holy Ghost on account of my fair complexion.

I came home in tears, alarming my parents. But when they asked the reason they couldn’t help but laugh at my classmates’ creativity. These were my friends, they said, and the Holy Ghost was always with me. I considered these truths and cheered up.

My classmates and I were still the same. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Jessica Eddings-Roeser, Relationships Tagged With: 11 Comments

Learning to See Beauty

January 30, 2013 By 7 Comments

When I taught Spanish in public school I projected Hispanic and Latino artwork on my pull-down screen and had students journal or make comments for a daily grade. Initially, the still worlds of painted color intimidated my media loving students, and they complained.

“How am I going to use this painting in the real world?”

“This isn’t art class.”

“Can’t you just give us a worksheet?”

“We’re going to study it silently for five minutes, then make three comments in Spanish,” was my answer.

“It’s ugly. It’s hard. It’s weird,” someone called out every year.

My students were not stupid, but they lacked the practice required to see. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Jessica Eddings-Roeser, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , 7 Comments

Weakness is Truth

January 11, 2013 By 16 Comments

A couple of weeks ago in the gym locker room I averted my eyes as a young woman aided her grandmother, a stroke victim. She removed the older woman’s clothes and underwear, and helped her put on a swimsuit. The grandmother could not speak; her face remained still. She had to be lifted, naked, from a wheelchair, to a chair, and then back during the entire change of clothes. After settling the elderly woman, the granddaughter disappeared momentarily, and I dared to look at the grandmother’s frozen face.

For a moment I imagined myself sitting in that chair, in that locker room, naked and unable to hide. I shuddered and hurried to change out of my own suit and leave.

Growing up an uncoordinated asthmatic, I was self-conscious about my body. I feared looking foolish in front of my peers, so I avoided trying new activities and instead, mastered the things I was already good at rather than risk exposing my weakness.

I’d shrug my shoulders if I received a compliment. “It’s just easy for me,” I’d say. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Jessica Eddings-Roeser 16 Comments

The Christmas I Sat Next to a Sex Offender

December 16, 2012 By 11 Comments

Last year my husband and I celebrated our first Christmas with our infant daughter. She couldn’t understand the holiday, of course, but that didn’t stop us from discussing Advent calendars, wreaths, and Jesse Trees in depth, continuing a friendly argument about Santa Claus that has been going on since our engagement.

Citing our childhood experiences as rationale, we hashed out the significance of the Incarnation in the form of felt, cardboard calendars filled with chocolate, and a fat man driven around by reindeer.

Christmas in my youth meant festive cooking and fellowship. My mom made Greek kourabiedes, baklava, and pecan pie with nuts from my grandparents’ trees. My dad roasted beef or pork, carefully basting it with the au jus so that it melted on our tongues. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Faith, Jessica Eddings-Roeser, Relationships, Uncategorized Tagged With: , 11 Comments

Pennies for a Conquistador

November 26, 2012 By 13 Comments

Today Good Letters welcomes Jessica Eddings-Roeser as a regular contributor. Jessica holds an MFA in Creative Writing from Seattle Pacific University. A former high school teacher, she now lives in Charlottesville, Virginia with her husband and daughter. We are glad to share her words with you.

If you cultivate a healthy poverty and simplicity, so that finding a penny will literally make your day, then, since the world is in fact planted in pennies, you have with your poverty bought a lifetime of days.
—Annie Dillard, Pilgrim at Tinker Creek

The first time I read Annie Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek I was in grad school and teaching full time. Each morning I rose early to drink coffee and write. Then I put on black eyeliner and three-inch heels—my own carefully calculated self-image designed to sensationally guide unruly high school students before moving on to happy hour.

Afterward I’d head home to brew more coffee and read stacks of books till my eyes closed. I lived every moment like a conquistador trying to dominate the new world: I had a degree to obtain, one hundred and fifty-five students to educate, a social life, and summer adventures to plan. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Jessica Eddings-Roeser Tagged With: 13 Comments

Halos and Other Important Things

August 21, 2012 By 13 Comments

By Jessica Eddings-Roeser
Guest Post

In second grade my mom put me in an art class taught by a fluffy-haired blonde who took us to a museum to sketch a Madonna with child. Before we began, our teacher asked us what we noticed about the painting. I raised my hand.

“She has a golden crown.”

“It’s a halo, not a crown,” my friend Sarah corrected.

“I want one,” I said.

“You can’t have one,” she said. “Only angels have them. Or if you die and go to heaven.”

I didn’t like those options. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Faith, Jessica Eddings-Roeser 13 Comments