A Dreamed Deferred

Dreams and aspirations need not be thrown away because one has entered into older age with them unfulfilled. “What happens to a dream deferred? Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” This is a quote from one of my favorite poems (Dream Deferred) as a child. It also mirrors my life as an author. I first found this poem in one of my father’s poetry books. He was a reader, and there were always books around his house. It fueled my love for great literature and to write stories that had great character story lines. Do I think I had the makings of greatness? But of course mon ami! However, somewhere down the line, something went awry. Everyone that has done anything great in his lives has failed at something. However, for every great a great many others have become failures. Behind the greats and the failures, there are stories, and this is mine.



My name is Frank Elvin Norman III. My pen name is Francis Oracle Davenport. I wrote my first piece at the age of nine. It was in elementary school. The teacher gave us a picture and asked us to write about it. I do not even know what the picture was or what it was that I wrote. However, what became evident on that day was that I could write well. My teacher read it and was so impressed that she took it to her colleagues. I really did not know that I had done anything extraordinary because it was what I always was doing in my head. I was a veracious reader and I would rewrite the stories in my mind even though I had yet to put anything down on paper. I also liked going to movies, which would later define my writing style.



The amazing thing is that the very people who would start me on the road to writing would be the same individuals who would stifle my development. How this seemingly paradoxical situation could occupy the same space and time would befuddle some people but not me. My life was seemingly one big contradiction, and this was just one of them. My primary education years were in a European setting. Other than my brother, another young lady, and I, there were no other black faces. I guess I was innately introspective and incidents of racial profiling help to train me in the art of reflection. Racism would plague my life and direct my writing in surprisingly distinct ways. The problem was I was too young and inexperienced to navigate the labyrinth of contradictions that would mark my existence.



When penmanship was being studied, I was allowed to sit in the corner and read, which, to a young reader, is like giving cake to a fat kid. But like the fat kid, it also contributes to the delinquency of a delinquent. While others were developing a precise, clear, readable script, mine was barely legible even to me. I really do not think my legibility even matter to my instructors because they constantly praised my undeveloped stories as if they were the highest form of prose. I was the exception rather than the rule. I realized now that even then I felt like the trained animal being taught to do tricks. As I grew older, I would do almost anything possible to keep from having to look at my own illegible scribbles. I developed a script that was as small as a 6-point font. It is amazing how art imitates life (or at least the life of this creator). I first noted this difference of musing when a teacher of mine wrote a poem on the board that we were supposed to interpret. The poem was “the Purple Cow,” by Gelett Burgess. I wrote a lengthy (for a ten year old) discourse on how the author was explaining how odd it was to see a purple cow, but it was to be an oddity than to see an oddity. I was proud of my eloquent treatise on feeling out of place. My teacher dismissed my commentary as pure rubbish. I was devastated; in my eyes, what more could the poet be saying? I refused to give more than rudimentary attention to writing from then on. Two strikes were against my development as a writer. One, I hated my own script, and two; I was neurotically insecure which was being fed by both home and academic environment.



In 1957, writer and cartoonist Allen Saunders offered this quote: “Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.” This is so true. “Life happens”; few are the people who can stay on course. They put off what other people call life and follow their own dreams. They drop out of the rut of getting married, having kids, and getting a vocation in favor of traveling the world or majoring in Janis philosophy. Some of them are broke and happy, and others of them find a way to make their passion their profit. But alas! For the majority of us this is not to be our fate. We always wonder what could have been as we change the baby’s diaper or wander off to work at some meaningless job for some meaningless company. However, somewhere down the line while encouraging my children to follow some whimsical fiasco or another, I decided to follow my own advice. I dropped out of an underpaying job, I stood up to my demons like a quivering Israelite before the Philistines, and stated with as much squeak as I could muster, “I got six rocks and I am going to use them.” I stilled my knocking knees, took a deep breath, and without the counsel of anyone, I enrolled in school. Every day, I tell myself in the morning that I can write. In addition, if it seems that the rigor of scholarly academia eludes me, who cares? At my age, nobody expects greatness from me but me. And just like when I was in school, the square peg in the round hole. Nevertheless, guess what? The fact that nobody expects greatness this time is liberating. I can write without putting restraints or the expectations of others as my barometer, and if it turns out not as good as expected, who cares. Cause at the end of the day a sixty-year-old freshman in a writer’s class is extraordinary enough.

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