From the Period. To the Colon: Memoir of a Child Writer

By Debbie Eisenberg Merion

'Even though I like to write, I don’t always get myself to sit down and do it. But I do have methods—timers, rewards, sayings I’ve made up:
I’m smart enough to know I need to trick myself to get some things done, and I’m dumb enough to fall for my own tricks."

For fifteen years, Debbie Merion has used writing prompts to help students write their best possible college essays. In her memoir, From the Period. To the Colon:, she uses the same prompts to get to the heart of her own story. Whether as a handwritten list of her third-grade ambitions for adulthood or her story about conquering her fear of dogs as an adult, writing felt good to Debbie from the age of eight.

In her Northeast Philly neighborhood in the 60’s and ‘70s, persistence, grit, tenacity, and determination—whatever you call it—informed Debbie’s life, and those of her parents and grandparents. Debbie captures both this moment in time and her love of the written word through story and photos, making the past suddenly become present.

"As Debbie Merion so rightly says, sharing our real-life stories is a refreshing antidote to the flood of fake news and lies that are drowning us on the internet. Reading her memoir will provide you with the prompts and inspiration to get the treasured details of your own best anecdotes down on paper. You will see that even the struggle to get a child to eat a hot dog--or anything but a cheese sandwich--can take on epic significance. And if, like me, you are the same age as the author, her inventory of everything from cap guns to flowered bathing-caps will bring back the best memories of your childhood."
--Eileen Pollack, Paradise, New York

“Debbie’s juxtaposition from photos to text takes us on a whimsical ride into her rich past in the form of a book created for future generations. It’s a loving tribute to family, literature, music, faith and friends.”
--Carrie Jo Howe, Island Life Sentence

“Debbie Merion has taken the pleasures of her daily life from childhood and beyond, and transformed them into a whole bunch of practical wisdom and life-sharing.”
--Anne-Marie Oomen, Uncoded Woman

• Language: English
• Publisher: Debbie Eisenberg Merion
• Release date: Jan 7, 2021
• ISBN: 9781736072622

Debbie Eisenberg Merion

Debbie Merion, MFA, MSW is a mother, the award-winning author of over 100 publications including the book Solving the College Admissions Puzzle, and the founder of EssayCoaching.com. She has helped thousands of students and authors learn the secrets for telling their story in a unique and appealing way. Debbie supposedly lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, but can rarely be found there.

Book preview

Preface: What tricks did you use to write this book?

I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. — Joan Didion

Around 2004, I returned to a Lawton Elementary School classroom in Ann Arbor at the request of one of Alison and Sarah’s former teachers, Sarajane Winkelman, to talk about strong writing. Strong writing means editing. Over and over.

To highlight the importance of editing, I brought two audiovisuals with me: a story that I had recently published in the Ann Arbor Observer, along with one of my rough copies, with all of my cross-outs and additions and copyrighting marks.

And I brought a large roll of packing tape.

I stood up in front of these eight-year-old kids with inquisitive faces and announced the title of my talk by holding the 2 wide roll of clear packing tape in one hand and quickly pulling out the sticky tape with the other as I announced with a flourish, Stick to it!"

I can’t remember exactly what I said to help them learn how to edit, but I do remember that I pulled out the tape at least three times during the talk.

Each time it make a loud clack sound as I pulled out the tape and said Stick to it.

By the third time, all the kids were saying it with me. STICK TO IT!

Years later, when I bumped into SaraJane around Ann Arbor, we would reminisce about my funny stick to it talk.

Although the talk was about writing/editing, it was also about life, since writing and life are so closely linked.

Persistence, grit, tenacity, determination, stamina, commitment, perseverance, stick-to-it·ive·ness, obstinacy or even stubbornness—whatever you call it, I’m all for it.

Having persistence is one of the recurring themes I discovered in my life and my parents’ and grandparents’ lives as I wrote this book.

They stuck to it. My mother had a birth problem with her right arm to overcome. She learned how to ride a bike and became a lefty. She had infertility. She got past that, and my older brother appeared. And then her father passed away while she was pregnant with me.

But I’m here. Hello! My parents named me Debbie, not Deborah or Devorah, because my practical teacher mother figured I’d be called Debbie anyway.

When I was a child of eight, just starting to enjoy writing in Philadelphia, I didn’t realize that I would stick to my writing.

But writing felt good. I liked that. That’s one reason I wanted to share my stories here. Reading my stories will make you think of your life. That’s so great! Maybe you’ll write some of your own stories about your grandparents, or how a friend helped you overcome a challenge.

As I got older, and started to write for Fels Chips, my junior high school magazine, and the Northeast Megaphone, my high school newspaper, and then started publishing in the Ann Arbor News and Ann Arbor Observer as an adult, I had some inkling that I would stick to it.

I’m lucky to say I have my earliest stories and poems that I started in 1964, encouraged by Mrs. Miller, my third grade teacher at Carnell Elementary School in Philadelphia, my mother, and my father who helped me type my stories on a Smith Corona typewriter. I gathered them into a looseleaf binder that I still treasure today.

On the inside of the binder I have a small piece of paper with a list of my ambitions from when I was eight.

Yes, it took me two tries to even spell teacher correctly.

Inside I have stories and poems about my life as little Debbie in 1964-67. I started writing poems and stories in the 3rd grade, and collected them in this binder through 6th grade, when I was a year younger than another Jewish girl who wrote in 1942 about a life so different from mine: Anne Frank.

But my young life, although less dramatic than Anne’s tragic one, had observations, joys, and lessons to learn, like all of our lives.

I wrote poems and stories with titles like, Spring, The Lost Suitcase, Fun for All, Purim, My Tree, A Book."

I wrote about the squirrel who I fed under our maple tree, playing a trombone, my brother, and the television shows I liked to watch.

I wrote about TV shows I liked, and about things that didn’t happen:

Since The Lost Suitcase I’ve learned quite a bit. But losing things and finding time remain as two of my life challenges.

Even though I like to write, I don’t always get myself to sit down and do it. But I do have methods: apps, timers, rewards, sayings I’ve made up.

"I’m smart enough to know I need to trick myself to get some things done,

And I’m dumb enough to fall for my own tricks."

—Debbie Merion

So when Sarah gave me a Storyworth subscription for my 63rd birthday, I was very grateful for the interest and the help. I could not have done this without her.

The Storyworth.com website sent me a writing prompt every week that Sarah had selected for me. In response to the prompt, I wrote a chapter in this book. Storyworth then distributed each chapter to my shortlist of readers.

I didn’t write a chapter every week. Some weeks I skipped. And some weeks I incorporated stories I had written earlier and wanted to share. You’ll read two stories published in 2005:

-Did you ever have any pets as a child? contains Doggedly Searching, published in the Huron River Review.

-Did you write any stories about your grandmother? showcases My Grandmother’s Spirit is Showing Me Her Pearls, published in the Crazy Wisdom Community Journal.

And two of my favorite unpublished stories:

-Did you write any stories about your grandfather? fictionalizes a surprising incident via The Furrier (about my grandfather, David Rudnick).

-Did you ever get into trouble as an adult? jokes about a travel moment in the story, My Arresting Incident in Harrods of London.

Read What was your Mom like when you were a child? for a revealing chapter from my previous memoir, Hot Dog Between Fear and Desire.

Bob helped me find and scan the photos. I’m so grateful to Bob for his help too; I could not have done this without him, either.

One of the biggest tricks that I’ve used to stick to it is that I’ve lowered my own expectations about my first draft.

As Anne Lamott (one of my writing heroes) says, I knew there would be a shitty first draft. And as Natalie Goldberg (a writing mentor) says, I felt free to write the worst junk in America.

Later, I edited each chapter about fifteen times. (I also like to say that typos reproduce while we’re sleeping.)

I’ve been actually thinking about doing this book for nearly 15 years. In fact, I created a cover when I was 50, to help me visualize a collection I wanted to put together. But which stories to choose? I had so many.

But Storyworth gave me a deadline and a goal—one year.

I’m glad I was able to stick to it.

As the grandmother now of Jordyn Grey Arena, the beautiful daughter of our daughter Alison and her husband Adam, and now that my brother Gary and cousins and friends are grandparents too, I have a whole new generation of people who I can hope might read my stories.

Will you learn something from these stories? I hope so. But mostly I hope you just enjoy the read. And share your own stories. Tell them. Write them. Record them.

Sharing our own stories is an antidote to fake news and a lack of morals in our government. Your own stories are real stories about what we really care about.

Although I do feel as though I have advice to impart, both silly and serious, I think the best way we all learn is by watching the behavior of people we admire and feel good about, and imitating that behavior.

It’s really that simple.

And if you don’t believe me, here is some advice from a poem I wrote when I was 11. I wrote this poem at Camp Kweebec in Schwenksville, PA. I was sitting under a tree, I always sat under the tree to write and felt some sort of kinship with it as I recall. I was lonely, it was my first time at sleep away camp. But I knew I was starting to grow up. I knew that soon I would be getting my period.

(Of course at this time, I had no idea about the colon—the other body part/punctuation/older stage of life referred to in the title of this book—a reference to the colonoscopy that doctors recommend we get when we turn 50 years old.)

But as an eleven-year-old at sleep-away camp, I was determined to deal with my issue of being afraid to eat so many foods. I made the paper and pencil my friend. And they have been my friends ever since.

Here is some advice from a little Debbie (I looked like the girl on the snack cake label)!

1967: Life by Debbie Eisenberg (11 years old)

My dad loved making home movies with 8mm film. Film was expensive, so time was money. Ten seconds was the longest he held down his camera’s record button for a scene. My mom clipped coupons. Neither time nor money were something to waste. I was a sponge, like all children. My hardworking parents showed me their values in their actions.

Maybe I felt confident enough to write this big pronouncement about life at the tender age of eleven years old because I had spent half my life—six years—working through my fear of eating any meat, fish, chicken, fruit or veggies.

I had stuck to it.

I still am trying to meet my challenges head on, with a lot of help from those I love and admire.

You’ll read inside about some of my bigger challenges—like running a half-marathon in my 60s or getting over my fear of dogs, and see the result of one small challenge. Sometime after this poem I learned to use it’s correctly —it’s is the most common typo of all time.

We keep getting better. Stick to it!

Enjoy your life, and enjoy the read!

With love,

Debbie Eisenberg Merion, February, 2020

What were your favorite toys as a child?

I played with the earliest toy I can remember on the basement floor of our little semi-detached house at 1224 McKinley St. in Northeast Philadelphia.

The room I frequented—barely 10’ x 10’ I’d guess—was a combination of my father’s work room and my mother’s laundry room. Dad’s table was sprinkled with sawdust and metal filings from his drill saw and adorned with an oddly appealing assortment of nuts and screws in Gerber baby jars. Mom’s space next to the washer and dryer cuddled freshly washed underwear.

How my two parents shared a tiny room with such opposite purposes was a testament to their loving relationship. But that room seemed to be a safe haven for me, and I would sit on the cement floor with this silly little toy that looked like a