Thus far my words have only found their way onto pages in my travel journals, writings on fatherhood, personal journals, and a few songs. They are like items in the attic that you can’t throw away-the instamatic camera from your first trip overseas; the journal you wrote for tenth grade English; the mask a Fulani man gave you in Liberia. Each has a story.

Not all seeds find their target. Some are carried by the wind and land on a concrete patio, drown in the ocean, or are shielded from the ground by a dense thicket. Others flow down stream and are pressed into the soil at the water’s edge by the hoof of a white-tailed deer or a brown bear. Birds transport seeds in their feathers . . . and sometimes in their intestinal tract where they may survive and be deposited in the excrement. The cashew has a shell of toxic oil which creates chemical dormancy until it scarred by an external force. Other legumes are completely impermeable to water.

Writers don’t always know where their instincts come from. It’s in the writing process that rocks are rolled over and inner sentiments, angst, and joy are exposed, sometimes as secrets that were shielded by a chemical or physical dormancy. We wonder where that cloistered pain or love came from. Our eyes survey the room. Nobody is around and we embrace it.

I was pleased when my ninth-grade teacher, we called him “Killer Kowalski” because he was an amateur boxer, read an essay of mine called “Bean Pickin’” to the class. It scared me when he did it, but my chest heated, not with pride, but with the satisfaction that someone paid attention to something I wrote.

NEXT: I will soon post an excerpt from my first book along with thoughts and questions about gene editing.

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