 Pete Seeger, Photograph by Bruce Davidson / Magnum In 1955, I’d been hired at a camp in Massachusetts as the associate waterfront director but a hurricane wiped out the waterfront leaving me with nothing to do. The camp director, knowing how much I loved the arts, suggested I go to a Pete Seeger concert in a venue near Jacob’s Pillow, about 20 miles from camp. He thought my depression was about the destruction of the waterfront. I didn’t disabuse him. I didn’t want anyone to know I was feeling bad about not hearing from my boyfriend, worrying that he was probably seeing other women. I hated the teacher’s college I was attending—I chose to go because I didn’t think I was smart enough to apply to liberal arts colleges. I hated what I was studying. I had no friends. At 19 my world felt filled with misery and disappointment, a lot of which I didn’t know how to fix or change.
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 My husband, son, and I lived in the same community as his ex-wife and two daughters. Since the girls’ mother and I were friends, the girls freely walked to our house whenever they felt like it. My son teased them, as boys do; they shrieked and retaliated, as girls do. Although there was often tension between the girls and their father, when he wasn’t around, the girls, my son, and I had lots of fun—sort of like when the cat’s away the mice will play.
The call came midday, without warning, from a neighbor. My husband’s ex-wife was having a psychotic break, would I come get her daughters right away. This wasn’t her first episode, but it was the first the girls had witnessed in its entirety. When I arrived, instead of our usual hugs and chatter, they stood, waiting for me--two white-faced frightened children—tightly clutching each other’s hands. I hugged their stiff bodies, reassuring them as best I could that their mother would be okay. She had had previous episodes and recovered, but in the meantime, they’d be staying with me and their father.  In May 1983 my mother was diagnosed with a malignant tumor on her pancreas. After her surgery, when we talked on the phone, she was so vitriolic I refused to visit her. Three of her sisters, as well as my sister, kept calling, telling me, as usual, my mother didn’t mean what she said. Finally, tired of trying to explain why I didn’t want to visit, I gave up and took the train from Delaware to New York, wondering how my mother would treat me. On the way to the hospital, I stopped at a bookstore and bought a beautiful collection of folk tales. If we had trouble talking, I thought it would be nice to read a couple of stories, or so I hoped.
 In 2017, in Santa Fe, I was hiking up a steep incline, almost to the top of the mountain, when I felt a surge of energy, like a bolt of lightning, charge through me, starting with my feet, moving up and out the top of my head. Dumbstruck, unable to move, I stood in the path, wondering what the hell just happened. A man and his dog soon appeared. The man asked if I was okay. I couldn’t speak but I motioned for them to walk past me. The man did, but his dog, big and shaggy, stopped and began to gently nuzzle me, as if it wanted to do what it could to comfort me.
 As a junior counselor, part of my job, in addition to being in charge of a bunk of girls, was to oversee a table of campers at mealtime. Most of them hated breakfast, especially the lumpy oatmeal. One morning, I was doing my best to encourage them to eat when I heard a loud, unpleasant argument coming from the kitchen. Soon the cook stormed out of the dining room, followed by the director who stood, dismayed, watching the cook leave. I heard her say to some of the senior counselors, “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’ll be lucky if I can get another cook by tomorrow.” No one suggested any action.
What possessed me, I don’t know, but without thinking about whether I could do it, I went up to the director and said, “I can make the meals until the new cook arrives.” |
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July 2025
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Nancy King is a widely published author and a professor emerita at the University of Delaware, where she has taught theater, drama, playwriting, creative writing, and multidisciplinary studies with an emphasis on world literature. She has published seven previous works of nonfiction and five novels. Her new memoir, Breaking the Silence, explores the power of stories in healing from trauma and abuse. Her career has emphasized the use of her own experience in being silenced to encourage students to find their voices and to express their thoughts, feelings, and experiences with authenticity, as a way to add meaning to their lives.
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