Hilde on the record, p.6
Hilde on the Record, page 6
But then it happened. My mom’s water broke.
Looking back, I feel like such a brat. My poor mom was gigantic and so uncomfortable. The baby was already almost two weeks late. I can’t imagine what upset me so much or made me act so selfishly, but all I know is my only thought was, This is going to ruin trick-or-treating!
Then I overheard my parents talking.
“No, take them, Matt. This isn’t our first time around. You know it’s going to be hours before the baby comes. There’s no need to rush anywhere,” my mom was saying.
“But the midwife said it could happen really fast since it’s our fourth baby. I just don’t think it’s a good idea to take them trick-or-treating,” my dad said.
“Go. I promise I’ll call you if anything changes. My contractions aren’t even that strong now. We’ve got time.”
I had never loved my mom more than in that moment. I was bummed that she couldn’t come trick-or-treating with us but was so happy she was able to convince my dad to take us. But somewhere between the joy of stealing all of Georgie’s Butterfingers when she wasn’t looking and the freezing walk back toward our house, the feeling of dread crept back in.
The next morning was my birthday party. Usually I liked to have a low-key day with my family—maybe go see a movie, go out to dinner, that kind of thing. This year, though, I had decided I wanted to do something bigger. After much consideration, it seemed like a roller-skating party was the perfect thing. I had invited everyone in my class as well as Kristen. But as we made our way back into the house from trick-or-treating, I could tell right away the baby was coming sooner rather than later. With only a few hours until the party, I started to think it wasn’t going to happen.
When we got home, my Mimi and Pop-Pop were there. My mom was pacing back and forth, stopping every few minutes in obvious pain. My parents weren’t going to have the baby in a hospital, but they did need to drive thirty minutes to their midwife’s house. My mom’s bag was already by the door. I wasn’t surprised when she told my dad she thought it was time to go.
Juliet Poe Lysiak was born November 1 at 3:00 AM. Both she and my mom were completely healthy. My Mimi and Pop-Pop stayed with us overnight, but none of us got much sleep—them from excitement, me from worry about my party. But, as it turned out, my parents were home with baby Juliet by 7:00 AM—three hours before it started.
We have a tradition in our family that the next-oldest sister gets to hold the new baby first. She is considered that baby’s “protector.” When I saw Georgie, who was just three, hold Juliet for the first time, I have to admit, something in me softened. She was so excited to be a big sister. It reminded me of how I felt when she was born. I wondered again what had happened to make me feel so differently this time. Was I just a jerk now? I really hoped not.
Four hours later I sat in the restaurant area of the skating rink, hating life. My mom, of course, stayed home with the baby, but my dad was able to come. Unfortunately, neither of us really knew my skate size, so my feet were killing me from wearing the wrong ones. To make matters worse, only three people came, and one of them was throwing a temper tantrum at the moment because she didn’t like the pizza the rink was serving.
Luckily, Izzy was there. Even though the pizza-hating kid was making me miserable, I was too polite to skate away. Izzy, on the other hand, is never worried about those kinds of manners. Her top priority was that I have fun at my birthday party. As Meghan Trainor’s “All About That Bass,” boomed from the speakers, Izzy grabbed my hand and pulled me out onto the skating rink. Neither of us was very good, but we laughed our heads off each time we fell.
The next day my mom still managed to make me a birthday cake, and we had a quiet little celebration at home. My Grammie and Grandpa were there dropping off food (of course!) so my mom wouldn’t have to worry about dinner. I tried my hardest to act happy as I blew out my candles and opened my presents, but my mood was still unusually low.
One of my gifts was a pretty little notebook with handmade paper. I decided to use it as a diary. On the first page I wrote:
Today is my 8th birthday. It is the worst day of my life.
I know I’m supposed to laugh about this—oh what a silly, dramatic kid I was!—but this is a memory that has not been edited by time or other people’s perspectives. That day was the worst day of my life—at least at that point, anyway. In just a few weeks, I would learn just how much worse things could get.
16
The First Issue
My Mammy would sometimes talk about “the calm before the storm.” Probably a lot of people’s grandmothers used this expression. It means that something crazy or bad is about to happen, but like right before a thunderstorm, there is period of calm. The month after I turned eight could be explained that way. I felt a little better once my birthday was over.
It helped that I had something exciting to focus on as I finished the first edition of the Orange Street News. I decided that even though the new baby was a bit of a bummer for me, it was a great cover story for the paper. When people call me a “genius” or a “child prodigy” for starting my own newspaper, I think back to that first edition and laugh. Someone having a perfectly healthy baby was hardly hard news. But I was learning. And I imagined that most of the neighbors on Orange Street would find it interesting.
My dad and I stuck to that deal we had made in his room all those weeks earlier and would keep for all the years I published the Orange Street News. I did all the reporting and writing; he did the layout and the formatting. This didn’t mean that I was without help. My dad was a mentor to me. As someone who had successfully done what I was attempting to do, my dad would give me tips and advice that had worked for him. One of the most helpful things was a handwritten template he came up with for how to write a news story. My dad explained to me that even the most complicated article still followed this basic structure:
• Lede: This is the catchy introduction to the story that is supposed to grab the readers’ attention and make them want to keep reading. According to my dad, the best ledes are short—ideally, one sentence.
• Nut: This is where those Five W’s should be answered. Any of the who, what, where, when, and whys that are not in the lede need to be addressed here.
• Quote: This is where you put the exact words of someone you interviewed that are important to the story. Whereas the rest of the article should be straightforward without anything flashy, the quote is different. It is the one opportunity to really give color to your story while moving it along. For example, in a crime story, everything besides the quote should be facts. However, a quote like, “I was staring down the barrel of the gun watching my life flash before my eyes” brings emotion and interest to the article while also moving the story forward.
• Support: This is a place for additional information that isn’t as important as what you put in the nut. A news story should be like an upside-down pyramid with the most important information at the top and the least important toward the bottom. The support is the place for facts that add interest to the story. For example, if the article is about a lost dog, the Five W’s would have already been answered in the lede and the nut. The reader would know who the dog belonged to, what kind of dog it is, where it was last seen, when it went missing, and why it got loose in the first place. A good support might then be, “This is the third time the dog has run away this year.” This isn’t crucial to the story, but it does add something more intriguing.
• Kicker: This can be a call to action or a quote that makes the reader want to get the next issue of the paper. For example, in a crime story, a kicker that is a call to action might say, “If anyone has any information on the robber’s identity, please call . . .” In the case of the lost dog story, the kicker might be a quote from the dog’s owner that says, “I don’t know how I’ll be able to live without my dog!” This makes the reader want to check back in on the next issue of the paper to find out what happened: Did they find the dog? How is the owner surviving without it?
So when I sat down to begin writing my very first full issue of the Orange Street News, I had all my notes from the interviews I had done spread out on my dad’s desk, along with the template my dad made. It was tricky at first to figure out how to arrange all the information properly. My first handwritten copies didn’t follow this format at all—I just wrote the information like I was talking to someone. Doing it the right way took more time, but it felt good to take all the information I gathered and organize it in a way that made the most sense for the readers.
On December 1, 2014, from a little home printer in my dad’s office, the very first issue of the Orange Street News was born. That first copy was one folded page that contained four stories and a short “Message from Hilde,” where I introduced myself as the publisher of the paper.
I’ve gone on to do some pretty awesome things, but nothing I have experienced could top how I felt that day holding my very first issue. There had been moments of great doubt along the way, but I pushed through. I felt so proud of myself!
But somewhere off in the distance, the storm was brewing.
Juliet Lysiak’s birth makes the cover of the first issue of the Orange Street News.
17
Gathering Speed
A full day went by where I rode on the happiness of my success. The next day was Tuesday, and I couldn’t wait to bring a copy of the Orange Street News to my Grammie and Grandpa’s house for dinner. Even though my Grammie acted very excited for me, something seemed off at their house. But I was so wrapped up in my paper, it wouldn’t be until after dinner that I realized what was going on.
In the meantime, my Grammie insisted on paying me for my paper. Eventually I wanted to begin charging money for a subscription, but it seemed too soon. I thought about those grocery trips to Fairway in Brooklyn with my mom and how the store always had people passing out yummy samples of food for free. Of course, if it tasted good, people would end up buying it, even if it wasn’t on their list. I thought I would use a similar plan. The next day, I would knock on the doors of every house on my block, handing out a free copy. If I gave them something good enough, eventually they’d want to buy it. But as Grammie shoved two dollars in my hand, who was I to resist? Her one condition was that I keep writing.
I figured two dollars was a pretty good price for a year’s subscription. It also put a little pressure on me to keep reporting. If I agreed to Grammie’s deal, I would owe her an issue each month. I decided to accept. Grammie then proceeded to buy four more subscriptions—one for each of my uncles and two for her friends—and then called us to the table for dinner.
If I was paying attention during the meal, I would have noticed that my Grandpa didn’t eat. I would have seen that he looked much thinner than the last time I saw him. The sound of Grammie’s leg jumping up and down under the table (something she did when she was nervous) would have bothered me. But I was busy planning which doors I would knock on first the next day.
After the dishes were cleared and Izzy and I were hanging out with Boo in the other room, I overheard something that caught my attention: “The family doctor says it’s not back, but I just don’t understand—look at him—he’s so thin and frail, he’s not eating, and he hasn’t taken his walk in weeks,” my Grammie was saying to my mom and dad and aunt and uncle.
“Mom, relax. It’s probably nothing. I mean, he’s getting older. It’s probably not crazy for him to slow down,” my dad said.
“I think we need to make an appointment with the oncologist to be sure,” Grammie answered.
Five years before this, my Grandpa was diagnosed with a type of cancer called mantle cell lymphoma. He went through chemotherapy and had a bone marrow transplant. Although the treatment almost killed him, it ended up working, and there was no more cancer in his body. The doctors did tell my Grammie, though, that the cancer had a high likelihood of returning. As I sat in the other room eavesdropping, I understood that my Grammie thought the cancer was back.
On the way home, my parents were doing this weird thing when they don’t want us to know what they’re talking about. When Izzy and I were younger, they would spell words out, but that wouldn’t work anymore. Now they had a weird kind of code that involved using people’s initials instead of names and omitting certain words while they made really intense eye contact. It was kind of bizarre to watch, and also pretty ineffective. As my sisters slept, I listened carefully and was able to deduce that my mom shared my Grammie’s concern that the cancer had returned in Grandpa. My dad, on the other hand, seemed to think that was crazy.
My mom has often said that a person’s best quality can also be their worst. This sounds backward and confusing, but when I think about my dad, I understand better. One of his best qualities is that he is an optimist. That is a fancy word for someone who always believes the best thing will happen. This means he usually has an upbeat attitude and doesn’t think anything is out of reach. I think one of the reasons he works so hard is that he believes anything is possible if you just put your mind and energy toward it. The downside of this is that sometimes bad things happen and there is nothing you can do to prevent them, no matter how much you hope or how hard you work. Being an optimist means you might have a big shock when those bad things happen.
Riding in the car that night, I wasn’t sure what to believe, but as I thought back about how my Grandpa was at dinner, I started to worry.
18
“Where Are
Your Parents?”
I didn’t sleep much or well that night. When I finally opened my eyes the next morning, the thought of passing out my paper replaced some of the worry that had made me toss and turn all evening. I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and grabbed fifteen copies of the Orange Street News from my dad’s office. As I was leaving, I ran into my dad in the hallway.
“Hey, kiddo. Off to pass out your paper?”
“Yep!” I said as I dropped half of them on the floor.
My dad laughed. “Come with me, Hilds.”
I followed him back into his office, where he handed me a canvas New Yorker tote bag.
“Why don’t you use this?” he asked. “And here,” he said, handing me five dollars. “Why don’t you stop by the Kind Cafe for a bagel and a tea?”
“Actually,” I said, as an idea struck me. “Do you think I could put some papers there?”
“Hilds, that is a great idea!” my dad said. “You’d better grab some more copies.”
Forty minutes later, with a full belly and five copies of the Orange Street News on the reading shelf at the Kind Cafe, I began knocking on the doors on my block. Most of the neighbors were very excited to accept an issue. But I was about to find out not everyone supported what I was doing. This would be my first small taste of bigger problems I would encounter later on.
There is a lesson to learn when dealing with the public. It seems very simple but can be much harder than it sounds: don’t care what they think about you. Of course, I wanted everyone to love my paper. But I was also prepared that some people wouldn’t. If that was the case, I knew I would just have to work harder and get better. What I wasn’t prepared for were all the opinions people would have about me.
On the more harmless yet annoying side were comments like this:
“Well, aren’t you just adorable!”
“Look, honey, this cutie-pie is handing out a little newsletter.”
“Well, well, well . . . what do we have here? Are you selling Girl Scout Cookies?”
Even though these people were speaking out of kindness, I still felt annoyed. I wanted desperately to be taken seriously. I wanted people to read my paper because they wanted the news, not because they thought it was adorable that an eight-year-old would put together a “little” paper. I also had to wonder if they would be saying those things if I were a boy. Still, I tucked my feelings inside and carried on with my door knocks. Then I began hearing things like:
“Where are your parents?”
“It’s not safe for you to be walking around by yourself.”
“No, I don’t want your newspaper. You should be home playing, not out roaming the neighborhood.”
This was so confusing to me. Izzy and I had lived in the biggest city in the country and were allowed to walk around our block by ourselves. Our parents always taught us that if anything ever happened—if we ever felt unsafe—to go into a store and tell an adult. But now it seemed as if many of the adults were afraid. I did not understand the world to be the dangerous place they spoke of. Sure, I had seen a lot of crime while reporting with my dad. That just made me realize how fortunate I was to live in places where there were no gangs or big drug problems, where people weren’t struggling in poverty or living on the streets. I knew many of my neighbors and would have no problem going to them if I felt in danger, just as I had felt comfortable going to an adult in a business back in my Brooklyn neighborhood. But in all the days I had spent riding my bike or walking around by myself, I never once felt scared. It seemed silly that I would start feeling fear now in a small town of five thousand whose biggest recent crime was teenagers stealing change out of unlocked cars.
I also didn’t like that people were criticizing my parents. This would be something we’d all get very used to (to the point of boredom, really) in the coming years, but this was the first time anyone had ever suggested my parents were anything besides awesome. Sure, they annoyed me sometimes, but I was so appreciative of the space they gave us. I may have been one of the only eight-year-olds to be able to ride my bike around town by myself, and without that freedom I doubt there ever would have been an Orange Street News.
