Many teenage girls dream about becoming an actress. They see themselves on stage or on the screen, so much more beautiful than they are in real life, watched by drooling men and jealous women.

But that was never my dream. As far back as I can remember, I wanted to be a writer. I too fantasized about the stage and the screen, but I saw actors saying the lines I wrote for them, and becoming the characters I created.

And let’s be honest here – those actors, actresses, producers, directors, cinematographers, stage hands, and the rest – would not have a job without the WRITERS. The writers are where it all begins. There would be no movies or plays without us.

It’s always irritated me that the writing awards at the Oscars and other award shows are not considered one of the “big ones”. When the nominations are announced, the writing nominations are hidden in the middle of lists, along with sound editing and costume design (actually costume design gets better press). Critics seldom wax poetic about the writers – even though critics themselves are writers!

My theory is that there’s a conspiracy between the rest of the movie/play crew to keep the writers from knowing how important they are. It’s not just that they might ask for more money (although more money is always a good thing.) It’s because the writers might get more attention, prestige, honor, and acclaim. This would take too much attention off the actors, actresses, directors, etc. And that would never do.

Don’t be fooled. If you’re a writer, the stories don’t get told without you. You matter – even if your award comes in the boring middle of the show.

I’ve been writing essays lately for my family, because my father is old and my mother is dead, and I don’t want their stories to be lost. But sometimes the stories are not really stories. I sat down the other day to write about my mother’s dainty ways, but what I wrote about was a little different.

My mother had a phobia about dirty feet. She once told me a story about her father, a fireman, coming home and getting into bed with her mother. Her mother screamed and pushed him out of bed, yelling about his filthy feet and her new sheets. The disgust and contempt in her mother’s voice made such an impression on my mother’s 10-year old mind that ever afterward she feared dirty feet like they were a dangerous disease that would exile you from all good company, kind of like leprosy.

My mother always made me wash my feet before I went to bed, it was part of the nightly routine, like brushing my teeth. She policed this strictly because I hated shoes and liked to walk barefoot everywhere, even in mud. My mother said this was common and people would think we were poor. I didn’t pay much attention because I knew people didn’t care if I wore shoes or not, and besides she washed my sheets every other day whether I washed my dirty feet or not.

I also didn’t like socks, especially the white anklets my mother insisted I wear. It seemed to me that socks made your feet smell worse; I can still recall the shrieking argument we once had about this point. She herself didn’t wear white anklets, of course, she wore nylon stockings instead, which also had to be washed out every night and hung in the bathroom. I remember her scrubbing with her special nylon-scrubbing brush to make sure she got the last vestige of stray dirt out of the toes of those stockings.

When I was a child and especially a teenager, my mother’s dirt-hating proclivities were a source of irritation. But now I look back on these memories with compassion and pity, and I so wish I had been more understanding. I would have washed my feet more often.