Mother’s Guilt

It began on Mother’s Day. Well, it began long before that but Mother’s Day will suffice.

My two younger kids ran over to play at the neighbor’s house. My oldest, my daughter, was with her mom, being Mother’s Day and all, an odd situation for a stepmom. I get to miss one of my kids on Mother’s Day. I imagine it might be different for most steps, or at least the ones who differentiate between the kids they bore versus the kids that came into their lives but I’m an all-in mom.

I don’t have that edit. I’ve had to learn over the last ten years to back off sometimes, not an easy proposition for someone like me. But I do it because it makes my daughter’s life flow. If you’ve ever been a child of divorce or a parent in a divorce, flow will make sense. It’s the first thing to disappear as people argue over children as if they are property. They argue about money owed, time owed, who bought what when and whose turn it is this time around.

I’m lucky in that we work on flow. We try really hard to keep matters that are adult between the adults. What that means is sucking it up when you need to suck it up. I call it being a grown-up.

So my two youngest went over to the neighbor’s on Mother’s Day. We went for a run/bike/hike in the morning and then they went off to play with their friend who is two and loves them dearly, a couple of dogs and hang out with parents much more relaxed than their own.

Guilt. Mother’s guilt.

Memory engaged: When my daughter was five she got a new baby brother, the first of many. She also got a sleep-deprived stepmother. One day, she asked if she could go down the street to play with a girl that was never really a friend, but someone she really wanted to be a friend.

I peeked out the door, and waved to the mom sitting in the driveway, my newborn cradled in my arms as I prayed he would just go to sleep. I put the baby down in his stroller and pushed him around the house when in one of the very few times for that period, he did fall asleep.

I peered out the front window, just able to see the driveway down the street and I saw my stepdaughter walk over and sit in the neighbor mom’s lap. Now, this wasn’t a dear friend of mine, just an acquaintance. I knew her, felt comfortable with her so it wasn’t that. I stood by the window and cried.

My kid would rather walk down the street and sit in this other mom’s lap than be with me. Guilt. Pain. Ache.

I wanted to be that mom, the one who sat in the driveway as her kids ran around like nutters. Nothing phased her. It probably helped that she taught special needs kids, so her patience and education was leaps and bounds over mine in the area of children. But seeing my daughter there, knowing what a hard time she was having with her new baby brother and how she wouldn’t say it but she felt completely displaced, and there I was watching from a window.

My new neighbors are fantastic people. They are laid-back. The mom is a stay-at-home but used to teach preschool. They don’t yell. They laugh. And they give my kids soda and let them watch the television whenever they want.

I wonder if the battles I’ve picked are ones that will come back to haunt me.

Tonight I help my youngest put together his little gift bags for his friends for his pseudo birthday at preschool. When we were done, we went upstairs where my husband was reading Charlotte’s Web to my oldest son.

I asked my youngest if he wanted to go in my room and I’d read him Harry Potter, his request every night.

“I want Daddy to read it.”

“Well he’s already reading Charlotte’s Web to your brother.”

He sat quietly before he said, “It’s not that I don’t want you to read, but I miss Daddy. Maybe you could read to me tomorrow?”

My heart broke partially because my husband is their go-to and partially because my son felt the need to make me feel better. I swore, absolutely swore, I would never raise children to make them feel guilty. I know what that feels like being too young to handle the emotions of a grown-up.  And yet, here we were.

“Honey, that’s fine that you and J want Daddy to read to you. Really truly. But he can’t read two stories at once.” I tried my best to remove the guilt because if there is one thing I can give them, it’s that. Then my husband walked in.

He told them it was too late to read more of either book so he read this:

It’s become one of their favorites about a boy who gets a kite stuck in a tree and continues to throw things up there to get it out.

Despite all evidence to the contrary, he keeps doing the same thing over and over…

Many people comment on how lucky I am that my husband does all that he does and it’s true, he is amazing. But I don’t know that anyone but a fellow working mom understands how hard it is when your kids don’t come to you when they fall but run to your husband instead.

Your heart breaks a little every single time.

I worked on my book this morning and saw that it’s really about mothers. And how mothers fail. And how they keep trying. And how they fail again.

Surprised?

No beer?

I read this article about Haruki Murakami and it got me to thinking about runners, writers and misconceptions.

He is a serious writer. He is a serious runner. He came by running at the same time he decided he wanted to write a novel. He figured that if he was going to write he would need to be in top physical condition in order to sit as many hours as writing requires.

So many of us are working our full-time jobs and squeezing writing in on the commute or in hours when we could (should?) be sleeping. But Murakami took a more scientific approach believing the body had to be in shape in order for the rest to follow.

Yesterday for Mother’s Day, I went for a four mile run. It was on a beautiful, hilly limestone path that cut through a forest preserve. My oldest son went ahead on his bike and my youngest went with my husband in and out of his “batcave” (stroller sounds way to babyish for him to consider) as they went for a leisurely stroll/roll/full-out sprint/back to roll.

I don’t think about writing while I’m running. I think about breathing, about my form lest my back start to act up. I think about the sounds and I wave at other runners as they pass. I think about how poorly I treat my body most of the time and how fortunate I am that I can still set out for a run.

We got home and as any good mother would, I kicked the rambunctious duo out of the house to go play in the backyard. Soon, they had invited themselves over to my next-door neighbor’s where they proceeded to hang out with them for Mother’s Day. Yes, I know, so wrong.  I thought of that as I curled up on the couch under a blanket with a book.

Alas, Mother-of-the-Year I am not.

So, as my kids celebrated Mother’s Day elsewhere, I read about writing and thought about my book, where it is working, and where it is not. I didn’t do any writing/editing because I was too tired. The run wore me out as did the night before when we stayed up late watching a movie.

I love movies and I love staying up late. I love drinking beer, nice heavy yummy beers. But I hate being tired in the morning. And I hate sleeping in.

Herein lies the dilemma.

If I really expect to do this writing thing, to be in it for the long haul, I have to modify my extremes. Sometimes you can’t have it all. I can exist on five hours of sleep a night indefinitely as far as I can tell, but I’m no good. What I mean by that is I am short-tempered with my kids, and the most I want to do after an hour running is sit down and watch a movie.

My joie de vivre up and left after the waffles were burned off.

The late night hanging out and drinking does not coincide with the life of a serious writer, despite the urban legends you may have heard. The reality is that I’m going to have a day job for a long time.

I think Murakami has a point. He decided what he wanted to do and then logically figured out his best chances for success. Very basic. (For this discussion we’ll leave out the talent he has.) If you are going to be spending a good deal of time sitting and expect to bring your full concentration and your best ideas, you’ll need sleep and exercise and to eat well enough to keep your brain in sugar, and out of beer. Sad but as far as I can tell true.

Makes sense.

Now, the only question remains is how to get from here to there…

Happy writing.

Notes to My Kids on Mother’s Day

If people bring you joy, let them know.

If people are mean to you, don’t give them the time it takes to respond. Walk away and don’t look back.

If a lover breaks your trust, you will get over it. Move on. If a friend does, your heart will be broken forever.

When angry, walk away before you respond. Come back when you can talk.

Know there is nothing you can do that will make me not love you.

If there is an unmarked path, go for a hike.

If you’re near a lake, go swimming. Light a fire to warm up. Trust me on this.

Know that you have to be scared to move forward. New things are scary. Go over, under or through. Just keep going. You can rest when you get there.

Do something that brings you joy. Every day.

Know that if you can debate with me, there is no one that will conquer your spirit.

Know that you always have your family. And your cats. We’ve got your back.

Know that I make you keep your elbows off the table so you can go anywhere and do anything. Same goes for grammar.

Know that I made a choice to have children. One of you I got to pick. The other two I chose to have. There were four times in my life that I didn’t second-guess myself. You were three of them.

Know that I have grown more as a person being your mom than I ever would have without you.

Know that I will love you forever.

Don’t believe people when they tell you an idea won’t work. They don’t know of what you’re capable. And you won’t know either until you try. So try.

Know by the way I look at you how I feel. Words don’t always come out of my mouth the right way.

Know that if I didn’t have to work, I wouldn’t.

Understand what this means:

Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid.  -Albert Einstein

 

Read.

Write.

Draw.

Dance.

Play.

Love.

Oh and please, for the love of all things right in this world, wash your feet. With soap.

-Mom

 

 

Tennis Anyone?

Have you ever swung with all your might only to realize the ball is in fact already behind you?

Yeah. Me too.

368. That’s the current number of pages in my book. Seriously? Yeah, seriously.

Did I mention I’m still writing scenes. As our friends across the pond would say, Jaysus, Mary and Joseph.

Now perhaps if I added some aliens, maybe a Tardis or two and an intergalactic war I could get away with this, but alas, no aliens to be found. Although I am still writing…

Way back when, I had a decision whether to fully incorporate a second story line which would be enormous or to clean it out entirely, erasing any mention of her. I went with incorporation and now I’m second-guessing every single moment.

Today I was working on a new scene. What I’ve learned thus far is that the only reason for adding a scene is that it is necessary. Not lovely. Not lyrical. Not funny. Absolutely necessary. So, I do what I do which is write it all out and know that I can delete it all later.

It’s exhausting. I found myself sitting on the train this morning debating whether to jump back into my story or to jump ship and let Mr. Naipaul and A House For Mr. Biswas do the heavy lifting.

Do you ever do that? Do you ever read an amazing author and want to throw your hands up in the air and shout, “I give!”?

I worked on my book anyway. The thing is I’m not going to get any better unless I keep swinging the damn racket. But I’d like to be one of those kids that sees the ball go sailing past, laughs and then puts their hands out like a kamikaze airplane ready, just knowing beyond a doubt that the next one is going over that net. I’m more McEnroe at this point. Enough said.

It’s getting more difficult to separate out the negativity about my writing and I don’t want to write that here. I think there is so much nastiness and darkness on the internet that I can’t bear it to come from me. That’s why it’s been a little quiet around these parts. As my southern mama says, if you don’t have something nice to say…

And I write here now because I miss you all. And I need to know that someone else is watching the balls go sailing past.

So to sum up: keep swinging the racket. It’s a law of averages. We’re bound to hit something.

Eventually.

 

Huddle

Last party of April. Yes, you guessed it, the Olympics.

So far in the month of April we have had, Birthday Blizzards, a Blizzard cake,  a cheesecake, a banana chocolate chip cake with peanut butter frosting and lastly this, an applesauce chocolate chip cake with store-bought frosting after I overworked the butter cream. Alas.

Tonight I went for a run. I ran around the block with my older son riding his bike and my youngest in the batcave along for the ride. We only went a bit over a mile, but it was a beautiful night and if felt good to sweat in the half hour we had between dinner and a promised game of Apples to Apples.

Did I mention I am a board game junkie? Oh yes. Bring it.

I looked through the photos from the party after the kids went to bed and this one caught my eye.

That’s us.

We’re a group of writers all looking out for who has the plan, who knows how to get this thing done, who knows how to spike the ball and who can be counted on to bump it up, a nice sweet set so that someone else can hit it.

Although writing is a solitary pursuit, this picture reminds me so much of all of us trying to figure it out, someone blazing a trail and the rest of us spying on the competition.

Sometimes it doesn’t matter what happens, it just matters that you have your peeps to huddle with. I thank each and every one of you for being in my huddle.

When you work full-time, you have so much time away from everyone to think. Then the second you get home, you’re so far behind you just hold your breath while you try to catch up. I’m trying to get better about that.

Because I really want to enjoy the ride. Not the publishing one, although that would be grand, but rather the life one. It’s all about the balance. Well, that and knowing you’re surrounded by friends who have your back.

So, there we are looking around. But I remembered something else when I looked at that picture. With the state of publishing and bookstores and on and on and on, there are times that I read online and it seems a fruitless battle to even try to get a book published.

But you know what? We are the writers. We create. We work hard to make it better. Without us? There would be no books.

Doesn’t that feel better? Think about it. Most of us have other things that preoccupy us ninety percent of the time. We have to. It’s the way mortgages get paid, the way that kids are raised, the way that families are formed and nurtured.

And then in our spare time, we work to create something that has been done a million times before, a million times better, because that is what we do. We aren’t the sellers, we’re the creators.

And with a team like we have one by one, it’s going to happen.

As long as we don’t give up, or at least don’t give up permanently. If you need to, look around and pick yourself up. Because I guarantee you, I’ll be standing right there in the huddle with my arm reached out to pull you back in.

Folding and How Writing is Like Parenting: A Top Ten

Well hello. I’ve missed you.

The last few weeks have been a whirlwind and I had to shut down a bit, become detail-oriented…

Sometimes the noise gets too loud and I rush along ramping up until there is nothing left. I took the other route this time.

I like to bake. I like the quiet of it. The precision. I like folding in the banana and chocolate chips into the batter. That cake there? Chocolate chip banana cake with a peanut butter buttercream frosting. Yummo. I finished it at midnight the day before the family birthday party for two of my kids.

I’ve been plugging away at my rewrites, word by word, sentence by sentence. When you bake a cake it makes a difference if you stir in the chips or fold them in. For some reason, stirring makes the chips fall to the bottom. Folding keeps them nice and plump throughout. Folding takes more time. Folding makes a better cake.

I’m folding my words at present. I had been stirring, seeing a sentence mashing it up and around and then moving on. But since I write in the morning, the rest of the day at work it would bother me. I felt as if I had left the oven on. So I stopped.

I know. Me. I stopped. I began to really look at the words and instead of switching around words, I disemboweled those letters until they were completely new. New words, new sentences. Ugly and painful and time-consuming but hopefully, the book will be better because of it.

And now because lists are fun:

Top Ten Reasons Writing is Like Parenting

1. The first one is always a disaster. You learn as you go. Either stick it in a desk, or screw the college fund and save for therapy instead.
2. The first book is neurotic. The last book is laid-back and going to run the world.
3. Books have a mind of their own. Don’t try to shove a plotline in there that doesn’t belong. It will rebel.
4. If you do shove a plotline in there that doesn’t belong, be prepared to take it apart and put it back together. See number 1.
5. The more you write, the better writer you’ll be. Don’t disengage. Quantity yields quality more times than not. Just keep going.
6. A book is made of black marks, then letters, then words, then sentences, then paragraphs, then chapters. Don’t worry about the chapters.
7. Think small to achieve greatness.
8. Be kind to your book. Sometimes it really is just having a temper tantrum and needs empathy. Avoid the urge to chuck it out the window.
9. There will always be people who do it better. And that will always be irrelevant. You are the only writer this book has. Work hard at it.
10. When all else fails, tuck the book in bed and pour a glass of wine. Maybe have a bit of cake. Better, right?

 

What A Girl Wants

Definition of LIMINAL

1: of or relating to a sensory threshold

2: barely perceptible

3: of, relating to, or being an intermediate state, phase, or condition : in-between, transitional <in the liminal state between life and death — Deborah Jowitt>

I feel like I’m in a liminal state with my writing. Some of it works and some of it doesn’t. I’m good enough to be able to pick out the words/phrases, okay chapters, that don’t work, yet I’m not good enough to be able to know whether they should go or whether they should be salvaged.

I love the word  ‘liminal’. Putting a word to something gives me hope. If I can tell myself I’m entering my liminal writing phase, that gives it heft. Instead of someone who doesn’t know what the hell they’re doing, I become a writer entering a new phase, a transition towards the better. There is suddenly a lightness about the work because I know soon I’ll know what to do. After all, the liminal phase can’t last forever. It’s in the very denotation.

My body is in a liminal stage as well. Right now, at forty-odd years, I get to decide if I want to be an active fit older person, or call it a day and spend all my time writing.

Maybe the answer is to find a less demanding job, one in closer proximity to those I hold dear, and find time to do all of it. Maybe my back would stop reacting to my stresses if I didn’t force my body to spend so many hours a day sitting in the car, on the train, at my desk, on the train, in the car, down to dinner and then finally here to write. Maybe the extra time would allow a slower pace.

I spoke to a friend about how he liked Milwaukee where he grew up compared to Chicago where he lives now. He said he really loved growing up there and the mentality was very much like Chicago. It was just slower-paced.

I’ve always wondered about that phrase “slower-paced”.  I, for one, would love to live somewhere slower-paced, yet in the words of Inigo Montoya, “I don’t think that means, what you think that means.” I picture a place where you can arrive to work late because you have a meeting with a teacher or wanted to squeeze in a run. A place where people aren’t taking three different modes of transport just to get from their house to work. Surely these places exist.

I’d like to put my work into a slow-pace mode so I can expand the boundaries of my writing/fitness life. I want it all out, balls to the wall for those. I want to be one of those women that you see that has a chiseled face and you say, “she’s a runner.”

I know many people think that it’s too much. They find the look androgynous verging on masculine, and all I can say to those people is to each her own. I, for one, saw Linda Hamilton in The Terminator and thought, “I want to be like her. Look at those arms.”

I want the time to do it. I want to be able to keep up with my kids as they get older, not be the woman lying on the floor on her back because her back is “acting up”. Is that how my kids will remember their childhood? The way they’ll remember me?

I’m putting it out into the universe that I want to spend my days writing and running, and work coming somewhere in the margins, not the other way around, the way it has always been.

A good friend once told me that you have to put it out there in order for it to happen. So there it is. I want it.

Bad.

Do Not Attempt This

I am a wound spring.

So, because my back is refusing to return to 100% I made a decision last week. Let’s see what the old back has in it.

That day I went for a short mile and change run. I felt a little pain in my leg, but tried to adjust my form. I pictured the bones pushing on the nerve and pulled up, butt tucked, stomach in and kept going. I was sore afterwards, but you know what? It hurt before I ran.

Saturday I woke up, a little old lady unfolding out of bed. I went and got my hair done. For those of you keeping score at home, it’s now blond on the underside, and red on the top. My hair guy called it ombre. I know. Fancy. I got home and my sore back, leg and myself went for a run. Two and a half miles with my oldest son riding alongside me.

Sunday came along, and, well, you get the picture. Three and a half miles done, because my youngest wanted to ride the first mile and then I pushed him in his batcave on wheels for the rest of the way. He decided the route.

Yep, I’m still getting the twinges, but you know, this is going to end one way or the other. It’s time to push the envelope.

So today at work it occurs to me it’s been awhile since I’ve run a marathon. I’ve never trained where I began injured. Should be an adventure, no? Before the thought was fully formed, I started looking at fall marathons and came across a couple of contenders.

Not that I would do that. I mean, I’d have to be certifiable to have a disc issue and even consider it. Ahem.

Before I knew it, I felt the buzz. Do you ever get that? Maybe you’re writing, maybe you’re thinking about a new job, a new house, a new baby, something new and exciting and your brain goes to warp speed? I get excited and happy and think BIG. My brain swishes and swooshes and I think only of how grand the adventure will be. I am unstoppable in this mode.

I found one race in Indiana, a trail race. The reviews said that it was the hardest race the reviewers (multiple) had ever run. If it rains, your sneakers will get wet and you will have mud up to your knees. If it snows, you run 26.2 miles over treacherous terrain climbing 3500 feet in the snow, over rocks…

Oh yes.

A funny thing about me is that on a normal course, I have run 5 and a half hour plus marathons. The only trail race I’ve run was my fastest time ever. Granted it was only five miles, but I dig running in the woods, over twigs, over hill and dale. I ran about three minutes faster per mile. For those of you who don’t run, that’s considerable. It is the only time in my life I have actually passed people not dressed up as the Nina, the Pinta and the Santa Maria. (They in fact passed me in Chicago, the people in large boat costumes, not a proud moment.)

I see this and I instantly e-mailed a friend who lives down in them thar parts. My enthusiasm can be contagious…

I’ve signed up and not run more marathons than I’ve run. This would be an absolute moment of complete stupidity on the level of Jackass-The Middle-Aged Mother Version.

But isn’t there something really exciting about saying, “What the fuck. Just do it.”

I mean, my book is currently in “This absolutely positively sucks stage.” Maybe it does, maybe it doesn’t, but if I thought for a moment of things that are logical, writing a book doesn’t even fit on the list.

Because it isn’t logical. Because it’s hard. Because it takes forever. Because it may amount to nothing.

But there is this moment, right in the beginning when you say to yourself, “I have this idea and it could be extraordinary.” And you are right. It just takes far longer to get there than you thought.

I’m beginning to think that the only difference between the published and unpublished is that the published kept going when the unpublished dropped out. The published slogged through the crap writing, the crap plot, the crap characters until they figured out how the hell to write a book.

Comparatively, running a marathon is easy. You lace up some shoes and you practice for six months or so. Then you get to the start and go. You decide ahead of time you just aren’t going to stop.

Then when your body says to stop, you tell it “no”. NO.

Actually it’s quite a bit like writing, isn’t is?

Rest In Peace, Mr. Ebert

Our chance meeting with Mr. Ebert only a year and a half ago.

To a wonderful and gracious man who was happy to sign some books and meet some writers. May you be surrounded with all of your favorite movies for the rest of time.

Love.

Your Life in Plastic

Decals on cars. Love them or hate them?

I have to admit, I was anti-people decals. There was something about them that struck me as braggy, as if you were shouting out to people about your good fortune in having such a perfect family, perfect enough to list the perfect nuclear family. Dad stuck forever with his arms swung back in a golfer swing, mom with a shopping bag and purse in her hand, little Susie with her pom-poms and Johnny with his baseball hat and bat.

I rebel against that by nature.

But the more I saw them, the more they intrigued me. Soon the Dad became Darth Vader, mom was Princess Leia and some Jawas rounded out the kids.

We all know my Geek Flag flies high and proud, yes?

I made me think about all the things we do to show who we are, what we’re about. Perhaps my anti-decal furor was about the mom with the shopping bags. I hate to shop and the feminist in me detested the idea of a woman summing herself  up, encompassed in white vinyl the shape of a purse and shopping bag.

Slowly, cars began showing up with two men stick figures or two women. Loud and proud, I thought. Definitely cool.

So we were driving to Florida and the car in front of us had the decals. From a distance all I could see was the blur of white from largest to smallest, but as we got closer you could see where the (presumably) Dad figure had been scratched off. I’ve seen this a couple of times and it always intrigues me picturing the docile woman stick figure with a razor blade scraping all remnants of her ex off of the window next to her. To the left of the Mom figure, between her and the window edge was an army sergeant sticker. It was placed at a diagonal attempting to squeeze itself into a place too small.

I wondered if the new man in her life felt he was being squeezed as well, if there was room in her life, the life of a woman who would razor her ex off of the car. Then it occurred to me that perhaps she was the sergeant, but no, then it would be placed directly above the woman. You don’t become a sergeant in the military and get sloppy with your lines. Definitely a new man (or woman) in her life.

I wondered how the kids, four in all, along with two dogs and one cat, all felt about the new guy. Their relationship must be serious for him to be okay with his presence on the van window. Otherwise, it’d be kind of stalkerish, no?

Must be hard on the kids as well. I mean, how would you feel if your parents not only got divorced but your mom erased your dad from the family car. Every day that you got in it, you notice his absence, a constant reminder where only the sticky remnants remained.

In two minutes, I knew more about this woman and her family than about some of my close friends. Do normal people obsess about the lives of  two-dimensional decals as much as I do, or is it a writerly thing.

If it isn’t a writer thing, I’d just be strange.