READ HANNA’S AFTERWORDS

It’s not like I volunteered to co write The Gentling of (Me). In fact, I burst out laughing thinking it was some kind of bad joke when Alexa first mentioned it. I remember staring at her across the dinner table in the Great Room to notice that neither she nor Andy was laughing. It was that bad a joke!

“You’re not serious?!” I gasped, shaking my head in disbelief. Alexa’s eyes landed on Andy’s, who just sat there holding his glass of wine in midair “stymied” on its way to his lips. He glanced at me with this strange expression I’d only seen a couple of times before, a look like: “It never dawned on me.” I was so uncomfortable sitting at that table with those two pairs of eyes that could see so many private parts of me. I knew I was blushing and sweating at the same time.

“It’s too personal!” I shouted.

Alexa said, in her calming voice, that it wouldn’t be “personal” at all if I simply changed the names, some of the places, and some of the facts that some people might use to try to figure out it’s me.

“You’d be writing this as fiction,” she said, “not a factual reenactment. And we would add a disclaimer at the beginning.”

“What’s that?”

“Stating that any characters’ resemblance to any real, living persons is just a coincidence.”

“I wouldn’t know where to begin,” I pleaded, that “I wouldn’t know how to write this fiction.”

And I knew—before I’d finished with “this fiction”—what was about to happen when Alexa turned to Andy: “But you do,” she said. “You’ve got a couple of books to your credit.”

Andy didn’t respond right away. I’d come to learn that was his style. He was waiting for this to “play out” a little more before opening his mouth. It was a trait I was trying to learn but without much success. I’m getting better at it, but still too much hoof in mouth for a Mustang like me!

“Hanna, it would be a therapeutic extension of your Journal for others to read. And your songbook. With lyrics and notes. Of how that bracelet you’re wearing ended up on your wrist. About your flights of fancy somewhere over the Rainbow. Of how Two Hannas became One. Of Sara and of all of our Zoom sessions, which I’ve archived. Now that’s a story, Hanna.” She turned and looked at Andy, “Wouldn’t you agree?”

It was so silent I could hear Charlotte snoring from the bedroom.

“Quite the story, Alexa,” he said nodding in agreement glancing over at me. “Quite the story.” And I knew I was outnumbered.

“So you mean I have to make up another Me?”

“Just in name, phone number and email address,” Alexa replied.

“Are you crazy!?! I can’t believe I’m hearing this. I just got Two Hannas to finally come together as One and now you’re asking me to create Another Hanna all over again?”

Now they laughed, like I’d just cracked some joke!

“No,” Andy said, “you’d be One Hanna. But think up a name you’d like to go by in the book. A fictitious you. As a character who is very much like you, but in fact not the real you.”

“I feel like I’m going backward in time. Like I’m back in East Bumfuck, Vermont.”

They laughed again.

“No, actually, you’ll be going forward on a firm footing,” Alexa said with a nod. “It’s a dare, Hanna. I’ve seen you risk far more for less. This is a good one.”

Writing about those few months of living with Papa in his cabin was not easy, for either of us, at first. There were so many times I wanted to opt out, especially when it got into personal stuff, like with me and Sara, and really especially with me and Nyke.

And Nyke? He totally freaked out when I told him what I was about to do. I mean, I had to ask his permission even if he’s fictitious now, right? Andy said it was the right thing to do and that Nyke might even help us with his version of his “fictitious self,” for which there is NO Algonquin phrase! “None. Hanna.”

It was very confusing and frustrating for a while, especially for the “characters” who had died along the way, like Sara and Grammie in particular. And Danny. And Clifford before them. Who was going to tell their side of the story? The last I’d heard, dead people can’t talk anymore. But Andy corrected me on that point: they sometimes do in our dreams. And he’s 100% correct about that (if you can remember them, or even care to).

There are some bits and pieces of my Selves that I’ve left out of The Gentling. I’ll give you an example: Alexa figured out that there was a connection between my fits of anger and rage that led to my self destructive behavior and what she called my “eroticism.” Like I knew what that was! But she was onto something, I think, because as I began to connect those dots, as Andy taught me to do, I could see that it’s like a chain reaction in me when those dots do get connected. And that maybe this chain reaction was somehow what led to my cutting, trashing things, slapping and punching my father, doing risky things to avoid confronting my real “psycho sexual tensions” (Alexa’s words) inside of me that are not fictitious. Now I know that. And maybe where they all originated from. The “root cause,” as Alexa calls it.

I wish I were less emotionally and more—I don’t know—rationally inclined? But as Alexa says “There’s the Yin and Yang in all of us, Hanna.” I still don’t know which is which, but let’s call Yin my songwriting life and Yang my everyday life. I’m hopeful they’ll get along more harmoniously one of these days.

I think the hardest part about writing The Gentling with Andy was his story. Mostly, his marriage to Grammie and her divorcing him the way she did. And especially her dying in their bed in his cabin. For me, that’s the saddest story next to my losing Sara to an overdose. Both have taught me a lesson. As you now know.

Suicide and divorce: Is there something they share in common? I hope I never have to find out. But I know from helping to write this story that they might be somehow related. Two parallel swim lanes that converge. Either way, it’s putting a sad ending to someone’s story even if Grammie called it her “Hallmark ending.” It certainly wasn’t for Andy.

Writing about my parents, Will and Cassidy, wasn’t easy either. They were are so well intended. So caring and loving. But God created them clueless when He/they created essentially me. God’s like that. He gives you this “bundle of joy,” this “Gift of Life,” and then screws around with your kid’s genes, body parts, and their heart and mind creating what Alexa calls “serial dislocations.” Next go ‘round, ask me first if I want to be born into this body and into this totally fucked up world of yours.

I know that my parents played into what my Grammie called this “sweetness and light” thing about raising me and Archie. And so they never really sat me down and told me what to look out for. All the dangers of growing up. I never heard the word “pedophilia” until after the fact. They said that Our Town was a kind of special place. That School was just an extension of our House, only for learning and playing sports. That teachers and coaches were our greatest “best friends,” and our classmates were all fine kids. My parents didn’t lie to me, they just never told me the whole truth: “sins of omission” as Papa would say “that became Elephants in the Room.” School room. Dining room. Bedroom. Locker room. And now in my own troubled Head room.

And I know now that it all comes down to one word: trust. A word that Andy’s been working with me to define from day one in his cabin. This is another of the things that Will and Cassidy never taught me. In fact, no one’s taught me the meaning of trust—of what it is or how or what to trust in the first place—except for Andy. He took a huge risk upon himself to let me learn how to trust myself. Huge. As did Alexa. They double teamed me, and I am forever grateful. I know something about my strengths and weaknesses now, what Alexa calls my “susceptibility.” I hope Mom and Dad learn from me, for Archie’s sake.

Besides Andy, Alexa helped a lot with getting The Gentling written. After all, I had to remind her that it was her idea in the first freakin’ place. She spends time with Andy and me, meeting up mostly virtually on Docs and Zoom writing this book and working on building CampCollins for adolescent girls with behavioral/psychological issues like mine. I find it kind of unusual that we all somehow get along so well. Andy’s almost seventy eight, Alexa’s thirty four and I’m sixteen “going on twenty six.” I love them both. Like a second set of parents.  I’m just very fortunate that way.

I know that some of my “issues” probably won’t ever go totally away. But like Alexa says, every one of us has “issues,” it just depends on recognizing them and managing them the best you can. She also told me something very interesting: that “deep thinkers like you (me) bear a burden that others don’t,” and that my songs are voices that those others don’t have, and that being creative is at times a lonely place to be. I know she was referring to some of the songs I’d written, like in “Sara’s Song” and “Goodbyes” and that I needed to understand “that place” and always be wary of staying there too long, like how Amy Winehouse maybe overstayed her stay. Alexa was referring to the list of creative people who got tired of themselves and their issues, even people younger than me. So tired that they just needed a good night’s sleep. Like van Gogh and Sara staring up at those Starry Starry Nights filled with wonder, love and light.

Andy knows that I know that surviving a good night’s sleep is what The Gentling of Hanna Johansen: A Betrayal of Trust is all about, for both of us. About always leaving the bedroom door in your mind opened like Andy does. And now me.

12 May 2024

Lakeville, MA.