Welcome to July Baby!

Do you remember my call to action?

Well ladies and gentlemen, here it is July 1st. How did everyone do?

My list is a list of things I learned, what I accomplished and what I need to work on. Let’s get to it, shall we?

I am closer than I’ve ever been to finishing my novel. The edits will be massive and severe, but I know where it’s going and have a decent idea on how to get there. The biggest thing I’ve learned as a writer this month is that I need to write every work day (two days off for the family seems a good compromise in my life). Even when I think I have nothing, if I force myself to write whatever comes to mind, I realize that my brain has been at work and it takes but some jostling to shake it loose. Time away does not clear it for me. It just makes it foggy. Writing through it clears the clutter and gets me to the good, the bad and the ugly, just where I need to be.

As for volume it’s hard to quantify. I’ve made it to about the halfway mark in one of my journals. I believe it’s the most I’ve written in a month, but it’s definitely the most focused work I’ve done. I finished a scene today of which I’m very proud. I knew exactly how it would go, and then stopped. The scene I had thought out for plot purposes didn’t fit. Instead of continuing on, I wrote on a different part, and came to the problem. What would suit the plot would not suit the characters. And hallelujah, I know the characters. For the first time, I’ve been able to pinpoint their actions and reactions, stay honest to them and by some stroke of my subconscious get just where I needed them to be. Instead of letting it sit, I powered through and I think it worked.

In the month of June, I have spent too much time blogging, commenting on blogs and following what is going on in everyone’s life. This I know to be true. I wouldn’t change it for anything. I think at times if I was serious, I’d spend this time working on my novel. But as with all things, life is about living and caring about other human beings who struggle. It’s about reaching out and saying, “Yes. I get it. You are not alone.” I have met more amazing people and developed more friendships through this than I ever would have thought possible. The novel may take longer, but it is that connection, that searching, that makes good writing and great friendships. It’s what makes it all (the big all) worthwhile for me.

In the month of June, I got a care package from a dear friend who reads my daily meanderings on life. She sent me notebooks and some other things. She said she doesn’t want me to run out of places to put my ideas. She’s going through a really difficult time, and told me that when she reads me it gives her hope. What I say makes her feel she can be extraordinary. She has no idea what a gift she has given me. You never know when what you say will ring true for someone when they need it most. This is why we should write, or really, create anything in any medium whether it’s a novel or a beautiful dinner for your family. Stuff as much love in there as you can because you might unknowingly be someone’s lifeline on a given day.

In the month of June, I’ve created two tiny clay creatures, a blue bear and a green octopus. I’ve realized the act of creating outside of writing brings back a childlike joy. Playing with clay, and not just to keep my kids entertained, but doing it when they’re in bed is really just fun! The process of writing something substantial can make you lose sight of what’s going on outside of your book. Take a night and instead of vegging out in front of the television, get out some old messed up watercolors, break out the Crayola 64 pack, just do. It’ll be worth it. Lose yourself in something completely unrelated to writing.

In the month of June, I’ve realized I need to be more careful with my comments. The written word can be so easily mistaken if someone is coming at it with their own baggage. I’m certain some of my baggage shows too. I have to temper honesty with some extra common sense. Anyone who knows me, knows that I am far from judgemental. I think we’re all doing the best we have with what we’ve been given. Unfortunately humor doesn’t always travel well on the internet. Neither does complete truthfulness. Tread lightly is my new motto (says the female elephant in her tutu and ballet slippers. Okay, so I’ll try, that’s all I’m saying).

July is here and I’ve got a family vacation planned away from the internet, away from cell phone towers. My seven year anniversary is in two days, and I have a project ahead of me that would take a focused month, but I need to get it done by Sunday. The first part of July is for my family, the people that I am so blessed to share a house with for as long as it lasts. The latter half will see me tying up loose ends and getting this bad boy typed up. It’s big, it’s massive and as of this moment I’m up for the challenge.

The last thing I learned in June was that it takes as long as it takes. It’s not about anything but getting the story right, making it interesting, making someone that is not related to me hear about it and say, “I have to read that book.” Whether it’s done next week or next year, it gets done when it gets done. Then there is a whole other can of worms to open. Plus then I’ll have to worry about what I’ll write next.

And that is pretty damn cool.

Whose up next? Tell me about your month of June.

First Comes Lust

Lust. Is there anything as wonderful as lusting after someone? You hang on every word unsure of where you stand. The wrong words send you into a pit of despair, the right ones have you picturing them with every cheesy love song on the radio. You feel this is the one that will finally get you until you realize that you’re only letting them see the good parts. When it’s unreciprocated, you don’t want to get out of bed. After all, if the good parts weren’t enough to keep them interested, the bad parts, well, you feel like a freak.

Love. This person loves the good parts and you trust enough to show some of the bad parts of yourself. They stick around. You want to do things just to make them happy. They know how you take your coffee and don’t comment on your four scoops of sugar. You wake up and they hand you a perfect cup on the way out the door. You find yourself taking better care of you, for them. Not that you’ll admit that to yourself. No. It’s all because you were going to do it anyway. Maybe you start running. Maybe you pick up your guitar. You do these things that you’ve meant to be doing because you see yourself filtered through their eyes and it feels wonderful.

Marriage. (For my gay and lesbian brethren in backwards states, we’ll say long term partnerships with joint bank accounts until the world gets its collective head out of its ass and acknowledges what should have been acknowledged long ago.) The lust is there sometimes. The love is there most times. The work is there all the time. You’ve had to unclog the toilet when it wasn’t your doing. You’ve seen the other when they aren’t proud of what they’ve said, what they’ve done. But you’re still there and can’t imagine being anywhere else. There are times you contemplate running away because it is hard. It’s harder than you ever thought because here is someone that loves you more than you could possibly love yourself. They call you on your excuses. They call you on your bullshit. They’ve seen you in the worn out panties with the elastic hanging from the band, the ones you swore no human being would ever know you still owned. They have not only seen them. They’ve washed them. They’ve seen you at your best, and they’ve seen you at your worst. They work with you through all of it, talking when they don’t want to, kissing you goodnight when they’d much rather turn their back and simmer in anger. This takes more work than you could have ever imagined. And you can’t imagine doing it with anyone other than the person you’re with.

Lust is the idea for your book. It’s so pretty, shiny, and really it’s going to be so beautiful you can’t believe it hasn’t been done before. But oh no, it has not.

Love is when you write it out and it gets tough, but not so tough that you give up. You have your first ideas and write them and they seem good, really good, okay, maybe good enough.

Then comes marriage. You look at what you really have and tear it up. You root down deep because you know what you have is worth every moment, but this is no ride on a carousel. This is weeding the garden and the mosquitoes are out and it’s a hundred degrees but it has to get done. The only reason it has to get done is because you believe in it down to your very core, the place reserved for your children and your love, that it is good. You know that if you dig and prune and divide up the plants, that this will be amazing. But it isn’t going to tend itself.

It’s not about luck. It’s not about faith in yourself or faith in someone else. It’s about sweat and honesty and working hard, harder than you’ve ever worked to get the words just right, as close as you can to what you mean. Then you do it again, and again, pulling out a word, inserting a phrase, getting rid of every damn “just” that has sprung up in your words. This is not for the faint of heart. This is for a visionary who isn’t afraid to get dirty, who isn’t afraid to get to the bottom of whatever it is holding them back. It’s about the story and writing it better than you ever thought you could write.

Give it everything because nothing less will do.

Love.

 

Front Porches

When I was growing up, neighbors were nosier. Every house had a front porch or at least a front stoop and they were gathering places. We knew the name of every person on our street. Even people who didn’t care for each other would wave as they walked or drove by. People held their hand up as they drove by, not waving it to and fro, just held it up a signal that you existed.

Grown ups were addressed by their last names. Kids played together based on proximity. If a group of kids was playing tag, you jumped in and started running when you went by. You were in the game. If you misbehaved, the adults at the house you were at yelled at you as if you were their own. You were expected to behave. Parents took the sides of other parents. Parents took the sides of teachers. If another parent or a teacher called the house, punishment was swift and severe. I can’t recall a case where this happened. People had full authority and didn’t plead or negotiate with children. We were expected to have manners, say please and thank you. Every time.

If someone had a baby, a dish was brought. If someone passed away, a dish was brought. Politics were not discussed. Someone didn’t have to be your friend for you to be empathetic to their struggles and their triumphs. My parents didn’t have to be close to a neighbor to stop and see how they were doing. People took care of each other. People were tolerant.

Along with front porches, the living rooms, or front rooms as they’re called in the midwest, were in the front of the house. If something was happening on your street, you’d see eyes peering out from cracks in venetian blinds up and down the street. Moms would call other moms on what my friends and I called the Red Line, and before we’d get to school the next day, we’d all have the same information. Moms were in the know.

If you were having a barbecue and you ran into somebody you knew, you’d invite them to stop by. And they would. Sometimes it was just for a moment, for a quick beer, but there was a sense of community. People knew how to make small talk.

Now many of us live in subdivisions, myself included. The houses are pushed back from the street, and the porches are no more than a cement step and sometimes a rail not far enough away from the house for so much as a chair. The houses are designed with the living rooms at the back for privacy. We spend so much time commuting that we know our neighbors only on a superficial level if at all. I’ve lived on my street eight years and could not tell you the names of my neighbors two houses down.

Kids haven’t changed, parenting has changed. Kids sometimes stop by and in the midst of play, try to see what things they can destroy whether it be toys or gardens or flower beds. In the spirit of raising kids to be more free, there seems to me to have been a backlash. When I was nine months pregnant with my youngest, my daughter had a girl over from down the street. They were eight years old at the time, my husband was puttering about the house and I went up to take a nap. I had severe sciatica and an almost ten pound baby in the womb.

I shut the door. I had just fallen asleep when the door flew open and my daughter’s friend woke me with, “Lyra, we need a snack. I’m hungry.” I took a deep breath. “First off, you can call me Mrs. ___.” Then I glared at my daughter, “Where is your father?” I was hormonal, I was exhausted and had a moment to rest while her three year old brother took a nap. “I told her we should find him, but she wanted to wake you instead.” I hefted myself out of bed and found my husband. On the way downstairs I told her friend, “The only kid that calls me by my first name is my daughter. So, unless I tell you otherwise, it’s Mrs. ___.”

I felt awful that I had failed my daughter for not being that free-spirited mom, but it bugged the hell out of me. The whole situation reeked of such entitlement, the kind that I have no tolerance for in kids or adults. I know it must be confusing because my stepdaughter calls me by my first name, but I cannot imagine being a kid and making that assumption. I still call my friends parents by their last names. I don’t think that’s such a bad thing. I address some by their first names, but only if I met them later on in life and only if they have told me to.

It’s a new generation, and my kids are taught to call my close friends Miss (first name) or Mister (first name). Anyone else is to be called by their last name unless they express a different preference, but my kids are never to call a grown up by their first name without a Miss or Mister in front. I think it’s disrespectful. Yes, I know I’m in a minority, but frankly I’m sickened by the manners of strangers during my weekly commute. I hold doors open and I say please and thank you, regardless of what other people do. I expect the same from my kids.

I go temporarily deaf and mute if a kid doesn’t say please, whether it’s my kid or someone else’s. I’m rather a tyrant as my kids are also not allowed to eat with their elbows on the table and must ask to be excused before they leave. Whether they choose to eat or not is up to them, but they will sit there.

I wonder if I’m giving my kids tools for the type of grown ups they will become, or if I am hampering them with outdated modes that they will rebel against. I’m trying to create in them a world that I’d like to see more of. I really do believe that change starts at home, and it starts with them. But then I see kids who don’t have these same constraints and wonder if they’ll be the ones who have the advantage like so many business people I come across. I hope I’m not hampering their creativity because I’m so demanding.

I don’t think times were simpler back when I was growing up. I’m not that naive. I do think that things were more clear cut. Kids and adults knew what was expected, and knew what their roles in the big game were.

I look at myself and think about my disciplined upbringing and wonder if I would have been more creative sooner, if I hadn’t spent so much time rebelling.

Then again, if I wasn’t raised the way I was raised, if I didn’t go through everything I have gone through, I wouldn’t be me. Then I’d have nothing to write about.

I still miss the days when the houses had front porches with broken down chairs, and neighbors stopped by for an iced tea or a can of beer.

 

Play Ball

I threw the ball to my six-year old. Whiff. He swung all about the power. He missed by more than a few inches. I straightened out his stance, had him show me his swing. Level it out, I told him. Then I demonstrated.

I threw a couple more and whiff, whiff, whiff. No contact, all power.

“You keep watching the bat, but you have to watch the ball. Don’t hit it hard. Just try to make the bat touch the ball.” He eased up on the force. Whiff. Still nothing.

“I’m going to pitch this really slow, and I don’t want you to swing. Just watch it as it goes past. Don’t stop looking at the ball.” He watched and as it went to pass him, he swung. The ball whizzed past my leg. He hit the next nine out of ten pitches.

Every story we write, we want to hit out of the park. Sometimes we’re so focused on how hard we’re going to hit it, we miss the ball entirely. If we aren’t watching the story every moment, we’re getting too distracted by the bat, the publishing, the fame, the fortune.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the chances for fame and fortune are slim. We need to take a moment and watch that ball just so we can make contact. We need to get down a good, solid story. Once we’ve done that we can add the power. You don’t start off a power hitter. You grow into a power hitter. You force the pitcher to back up bit by bit until they’re on the plate and you’re hitting from the same distance as the pros. Then you work on controlling where you’re hitting. If I’m playing right field, my standard place of old, you want to be able to aim there. You’ll at least make it to third by the time I chase after that pop fly. There’s a solid chance it’s a home run.

We read so much, the internet is full of valuable advice. However, in the midst of the noise (no batter, no batter, no batter, swing!), it’s too easy to forget it really is about you and the ball. All the knowledge in the world isn’t going to get you to write that story that’s banging around in your head. You have to sit down, write it, and accept the fact that it’s going to take work to make it into something great. I think all of you can write a great story. How hard you’re willing to work at watching that ball?

 

 

 

Tidbits In Illinois

A weekend in Illinois:

1. Hair colored. Summertime says golden blonde to most, so my man Steve and I decided on dark auburn with some white streaks. Funny, most people want blonde, I keep going as dark as I can without looking vampiric.

2. Nails painted pastel blue? If I paint anything, it’s my toes. Always dark. Dark purple, dark brown. Mind you, my toes are rarely painted and when they are it’s usually old and chipped and I have forgotten (ahem, or been too lazy) to take it off. My youngest son wanted the purple taken off and replaced with a new pastel blue we picked up. He wanted me to match. Enough said.

3. I picked up an enormous cocktail ring from the jewelers. When my grandmother passed, my mother gave me this ring. No one else would wear it, and she wanted someone who’d appreciate it. It’s over the top. I love it. I brought it to a jeweler almost two years ago and he told me it wouldn’t be worth it to restore it. The stone was synthetic Peridot and completly scuffed to an opaqueness you couldn’t see through. It was from the 1940′s, our guess anyway, and although it has beautiful detail, layerings of different yellow and rose golds, he would have to rebuild the setting and get a new stone, if he could find a cushion cut stone large enough. The value of the metal wasn’t worth the price of the labor he’d have to charge me. I heard him out and said, please do. I found out after the fact that this ring had been my grandmother’s engagement ring. The top was so scuffed because she probably wore it all the time. It is now resized, a new Peridot put in place and sits on my right hand middle finger. She was the impetus for my book.

4. Saw Cars 2 with my two boys, my niece and nephew. It is over 2 hours long and I spent and hour of that convincing my son (with his new manicure) that yes, we’d be going home soon, yes really soon, yes it is almost over.

5. Invited a boy from my older son’s kindergarten class over to play. I didn’t know the parents, but it was a great day and the boys got along well not only with each other, but with my younger son as well. Phew and yes!

6. Last load of laundry in the dryer.

7. Went shopping because my clothes are falling apart and decided that before I buy anything that is any of the stores I’m going to hold out hope that house coats (you know, the kind your mom or grandmother wore with the snaps up the front?) will become all the vogue in business casual. Maybe I’ll start the trend.

8. Went to a new brewery had a wonderful summer ale and linguini with red and green peppers and blackened chicken. Really good. See number seven about house coats.

9. The butterfly weed has exploded in the butterfly garden and I’m happy to say the bumblebees are throughly enjoying themselves. Go make some honey you lovely little creatures!

10. While waiting for my hair to suck up the dyes, I worked on my WIP which has taken a dark turn in a scene. It’s either really good, or really awful. I don’t know if the tone suits the rest, but I think when I get to round two I’ll know. I’m sticking with my plan of write it all out and cut later.

11. Two separate times today, my son was asked first by his friend and later by his cousin if they could play video games. Both times he responded, no it’s not a video game day. Normally, he’d come and beg me but I talked to him recently about it and instead of laying down the law, I told him that I was worried he would forget how to play and all of his imaginary worlds he created with his action guys would disappear. I told him we were taking a break because he was so neat, I didn’t want him to lose that. The video stories are told for you, I said, but you make up the stuff with your guys and it’s so much better.

He said they couldn’t do it today, and the next I knew they had set up an entire world with dinosaurs and army guys, although I believe Batman and Anakin made an appearance. Yay him for not feeling that playing videos was the only way he knew how to have fun with other kids.

12. I spent a couple of hours making a small blue clay bear, and a green octopus about the size of a penny. This is so not as easy as one would think visiting this remarkable site M.A Forsyth. Mine came out nothing like her remarkable creations, but the two boys loved them just the same. Unfortunately, now they want more…

Happy Monday. And here’s to the last week of June and getting some writing done.

 

 

Constant Noise

In 2011, writing is a strange thing to do with your spare time.

We’re surrounded by constant noise, from our families as many of us strive to raise our children differently than we were (if the expression, “Children should be seen and not heard” rings a bell, then you know what I’m referring to), to our jobs with the constant worry of being outsourced as the world becomes more technologically advanced (and the need for human beings with years of experience becomes a dated thing of the past), to news stories with hyperlinks, to reality television which for many of us beckons as the world of soap operas did for our parents generation.

We ruminate about our responses to our children convinced by every two paragraph “study” that we are doing everything wrong and buy all of the latest books to teach us how to do better. We’re further away than ever from a sense of community as lines are drawn, and judgements are thrown about as we watch each other from the shore ready to jump en masse on the person doing it worse than us.

We worry about bills, and college tuition, many of us being barely a mortgage payment away should anyone lose a job. We detest big box stores for their hiring practices and sweat shops, but live in a country where we are shielded from the ugliness in order for us to save a dollar on an organic carton of milk. We send food out of our country even as we’re importing it. Food as a source of sustenance and nourishment has been replaced by food as a political bargaining chip, the big business poker players gambling away our health and our future.

We are a nation begging to be kept in the dark from our own psyches.

We recycle even as we know much of it is going to the landfill. We work overtime, run our cars into the ground, and still have yet to save the proverbial six months mortgage payments as a talking head on the business channel recommends. We are all one health disaster away from total bankruptcy, and this is what I think when I see one of the many homeless people reeking of urine that I pass on my way to get an overpriced cup of coffee, which I have the good fortune to be able to afford.

We can no longer afford to take the kids to a baseball game. Businesses have slowly collected the best sections which many times will stay empty as grandfathers have to negotiate with scalpers to get two overpriced seats in the bleachers.

The fees on music concert tickets alone are what we used to pay for the tickets. Now you’re looking at paying the same rate as you would for one night in a four-star hotel, just to get two tickets to see your favorite musicians perform. The dynamic worsens as the crowds become more homogeneous. The only people who can afford it, are the people just like you. The variety of people who have brought change to policy, politics, music and theater are being weeded out and thrown in the compost bin as we grow our gardens of petunias for the sun, impatiens for the shade. Our wildflower gardens are being mistaken for weeds and treated accordingly by every chemical “garden” company out there.

There are pockets of bees now that are sterile. The spraying we do for the mosquitoes to reduce the chances of West Nile virus are reeking havoc on the insect population fighting for survival. As we kill something for ourselves, we unintentionally kill something else. There are few fireflies. We are destroying the world, but we’re being kept so busy, we can’t see it. We won’t allow ourselves to otherwise we may not get out of bed.

Some of us, block this out and we write. It may be a memoir, a thriller, a mystery, a children’s book. It could be historical fiction, literary fiction, women’s fiction, erotica. It could be a poem, a play, a screenplay, an opera.

But we write. We are unpaid and many times forgotten, but we continue on and I think I know why. Someone has to do it. We feel in our guts that we are that someone. We are right.

There is nothing less than a conspiracy in our culture to get us to stop thinking, to fear for our children’s safety if we even allow them out the front door without our hovering. We are being made to want things like never before whether through television commercials, or magazine advertisements. If you love your spouse, you’ll put a bow on a Mercedes and give it to her for Christmas. If you love your wife, get her a diamond for her other hand. Show her what she means to you, send her a hundred dollars worth of flowers. They’ll even write the note for you. Keep it sterile. Keep it at arms length but it better be expensive.

We use no less than twelve products in our nighttime beauty regimen, the one that doesn’t make our skin look any different than our mother’s skin although she only used Ivory soap. We are surrounded by celebrities stating 40 is the new 30, despite the evidence in the mirror that no, in fact our 40 is the new 50. We are ragged and worn, overworked and sleep-deprived.

Yet we still write. We sit down alone and try to wrestle the words on the paper. It is one of the most important things you can do because it says that you see what is going on and have a say in the matter. For the most part, we aren’t directly writing about any of this. Personally, I shut a book the instance I’m being preached to about anything. We are surrounded by that noise, that insistence that we’d only be better if we’d do/buy/be something else. We are writing indirectly about all of it.

We write word after word, thought after thought, because we want to find a way to say there is more out there. There is more to this life than our current culture would lead us to believe. There are stories that will change your life. There are stories that will give your mind a vacation when you can’t afford to take one. Every story is important to someone. Write it for that one person. They exist. They do.

Quiet the noise. And no matter what head game you may currently be playing with yourself, quit it. You have for some reason been drawn to write it down. Don’t waste that gift. It is a gift. Write a story that doesn’t make me want to be anything but a better me. We have the ability to change the way the whole thing works. All of it. We have to make people start giving a damn. That begins with a good story. That’s it.

We are heading into the last week of June. I’m calling you to task and myself along with you. If you write, do something amazing in the days to come. If you don’t write, do something amazing, something creative. Something beautiful that you can do because you are you and there is no one like you in this world. Draw a picture, paint a scene, sew something, take a beautiful photo and frame it for the world to see. You can do this.

Next Friday, July 1st, we’ll meet back here and I want to hear what’s been done.

Make the magic happen so it knows where you live.

Love.

 

Writers In Utero?

A few nights ago, we were reading a book about coral. My son piped in that it was an animal, not a plant and I was duly impressed (and was skimming ahead thinking, is that right? Oh, I am not proud). My husband told the boys about how he went snorkeling when we were in Jamaica for one of my best friend’s weddings.

“Were we there?” they asked. “Did Mommy snorkel too?”

“Actually J, you were there. You were in my tummy.” I was nine months pregnant with ankles the size of cantaloupes and ready to burst. “I didn’t go scuba diving, but Mommy and Aunt J. floated around the pool from the moment we woke up until it was time to go to bed”, or Aunt J. passed out from the all-inclusive, swim-up bar.  I left that last part out.

“Now that I think about it, the only time you went nuts was when I was in the pool.” He was born a week early at 9 lbs. 14 ozs. My uterus at that point was ready to fall out and he was so crammed in there he couldn’t move much. But whenever I went in the pool he kicked and elbowed me like mad. Taking the weight off of my lower abdomen was worth every kick.

I went in the ocean only once while we were there and became paranoid about sharks. Maybe it was my mothering instinct foreshadowing things to come, or perhaps it had something to do with a comment my husband had made.

“Aren’t you worried about sharks?” I said with my arms spread open to the ocean before us. It may have appeared to the shore that we were basking in the beauty of Jamaica. I was scanning the horizon line for dorsal fin action, while fighting the Jaws theme song winding like an earworm through my brain. We were just above waist-level, or where I had once had a waist, and I was being pulled and pushed by the waves.

“Lovey,” my dear (runner thin) husband said, “I think a shark will look at the two of us, and then back to you, and say ‘Jackpot! Dinner and dessert!” He was still chuckling as I waddled out of there. He underestimated hormones and a women’s inability to negotiate weight ever.

“That must be why you love the water so much, J.” My son was very excited by this, the idea that he had been swimming for far longer than he had thought.

“Mommy, was I there too?” My youngest asked.

“No, honey, you didn’t go swimming when you were in my tummy. Mommy was working then, so you and I spent a lot of time with the music blasting.”

“Did I dance?”

“Oh, you danced every time I put on the radio.” At the time, I was listening only to this one Dave Matthews CD, over and over in my car. Every time it went in, the kid would get his groove on.

Then I remembered, “You also got to go to a concert with Daddy and me.  Just you!”

“I did?” To be almost three years old, and have worn nothing but hand-me-downs of his big brother his whole life, and to have both his brother and sister treat him like a baby, he was thrilled with this.

“I got Daddy, some tickets for our anniversary. It was really hard to get these tickets, but I got them, so we left J and A with grandma, and you came with us.” This time I was 8 months pregnant and the Tom Waits concert was in St. Louis. I knew enough of his music to understand why my husband loved him, but he wasn’t exactly my cup of tea. It is probably one of the top ten concerts I’ve ever been to. What a showman. And baby M, rocking out to the very late hour of 11:30. That pregnancy usually saw me asleep on the couch by 8:00pm, the latest.

“I bet that’s why you like music so much.”

“What about A?” J asked. Oh, this is where things always got a little more complicated.

“She wasn’t in my tummy. She was in her mommy’s tummy.” They both seemed okay with that. For once we didn’t go into a million scenarios. It just was.

“Well who else was in there?” J pressed on.

“No one I know of. Is there something you know that I don’t?” J was earnest.

“No, I mean, who else was in your tummy?”

“That’s it, buddy. You and M.”

“Oh.” J keeps hoping we’ll have more. He loves babies and spends much of the time at the sitter’s trying to make the infants laugh. For a moment, I think he was holding out hope that we had some kids stashed away to surprise him with for his birthday or Christmas.

This got me wondering what my mother’s pregnancy was like. The only two things I know are that 1) she ate Three Musketeers bars by the handful and 2) she had me in a blizzard within a half an hour. She tried to hold out so I’d be born on Thanksgiving, but I was born at 11:57pm.

There is some truth about me to be found there. I have no control over food. It controls me.

I am never satisfied, always rushing to get somewhere and I never know where or why. I am also stubborn and don’t work well making nice for the sake of the family. Sometimes things aren’t picture perfect and your kid is born three minutes earlier than you like. Sometimes there’s a blizzard. Sometimes the doctor is telling you to push, and you are fighting every bit of it, but the kid is more stubborn and will come out when she damn well wants to. That struggle continues to this day. There was a failure to communicate then, and it’s there now. Yeah, that might say something about me.

What about all of you? Who here has a story about how they would be a writer because of something that happened in utero? Anyone else push their way out? Who was holding a pen instead of a baby rattle?

A Night In My Life

My normal drive from the train has increased by ten minutes because an alternative bridge is under construction. Ten minutes shouldn’t be huge, but it is.

My husband has in the meantime picked up the boys, driven them to the older’s swim lessons, and made dinner. We eat at 6:30pm when I walk in the door. By 6:50, my husband has headed to the grocery store, I’m doing the dishes, threatening to dispose of the light sabers once and for all, doing dishes, no really I mean it this time, doing dishes, putting said light sabers in time out, getting out coloring books and markers so my oldest son can color and my youngest son can marker up his fingers, and finally I finish the dishes.

Thunderstorms are looming and it’s hot. Not a good combination in my town in this area of Illinois. There is no rain yet, but the thunder has begun. I race the boys up, put them in the shower where they dance around and I attempt to slather them up while explaining to my six year old that I know it feels funny, but there are certain things that require privacy.

“But look!” No, I explain. You’re getting old enough that playing with parts of you should really be private. That’s why they’re called privates. In the meantime, my youngest is asking my son to show him how to get his “thing” to do that. I give them the showerhead to rinse off themselves, their favorite part of the shower, while I fold clothes in hearing-range of their mischief.

Both boys out of the shower and tearing down the hallway under direction to get underpants. I fold, my youngest comes tearing through and unfolds. I send him on a mission to find one stuffed animal at a time and bring it back to me. This slows him down long enough so I can refold and have them put away some of their things that they can reach. They are asked again to find some underpants. Boys must be kept busy at all times. Especially if there are two of them.

My husband gets home with the groceries, the boys run down to inspect the goods, while being told by their father to go sit on the couch. I laugh at my husband’s suggestion as I finish putting away the laundry. He puts away the groceries (and I spy he has bought Reese’s Puffs cereal. Everything right and wrong in the world wrapped up in tiny sugary balls of goodness). The boys have a couple of Vanilla Wafers for a bedtime snack, and I get together my oldest son’s “summerwork” (I send him some worksheets from a kindergarten book, and a journal where I write him a note and he writes me a sentence daily).

We sit down to read some library books we forgot about, and I get to read a story about a boy who played kickball, three times. Three. I know. Just lucky I guess.

The wind picks up and I see my Redbud tree waving furiously. I send my husband outside to make sure the plastic crap, ie little slide and two containers full of kids toys, is secure. He comes in and says, “Time to go to the basement.”

The tornado sirens were going off but we couldn’t hear them in the house until they faced us. The wind was that loud. Now keep in mind, my town has been hit by a massive tornado before so we have more sirens than most places. I shuffle my oldest down the steps, and pick up the youngest while my husband grabs his wallet, cell phone and head lamp he used when he ran in the morning.

We are in the basement and the kids are unnerved until I say how lucky we are that we keep all the toys down here. They had forgotten, although we’re surrounded by them and the kids play a little but are staying close to where I am sitting on the foam mat. My oldest son says how tornadoes can suck you up and you’ll be killed. I tell him that could happen but it isn’t likely. I wish he had seen the Wizard of Oz, but alas he hasn’t. My husband goes to the basement window well to listen for the sirens.

My son asks me what happens if the tornado hits us. I tell him that it could take the house away but we’re safe. We have a basement. We’re lucky and so many people aren’t.

“But what if our house blows away?”, he asks.

“We’ll be okay because the important thing is we are here together. We’re lucky like that too.”

“But where would we live?”

“We can always get a new house, and if we can’t we’ll figure it out. It’s no big deal.”

He seems to take comfort in that because he knows his mom. So much is a big deal. But not now, and not this. There is nothing in this house that means a damn to me except the people in this basement, and the one missing that my husband and I are both thinking about but no one is talking about. We know our daughter is safe, but when there is something like this and you’re in a basement with the only things that matter in the world, her presence is greatly missed. I know she’s safe, I hope she’s home with her mom in their basement. But that unknown quotient is hard to qualify. We are almost complete. But almost complete is still incomplete.

My son thinks for a minute and says, “But houses are really expensive!”

“We’ll figure it out buddy.”

My husband comes back over from the window, the sirens have stopped. It has only been fifteen minutes, but they’re a different type of minute when you’re uncertain about where your life could go from here. We go upstairs, turn on the weather to see how it looks and we’re at the tail end of the red. This storm should be over for us soon. For us.

We brought the boys up to bed and read a book about storms to put my older son’s mind at ease. It seemed to help. I laid in bed with the younger, talking to both of them until they were calm enough for me to leave. The hugs were tighter than normal.

Now the rain is a drizzle.

The storms have passed.

Phew.

 

Clutter Me This

I’m surrounded by clutter.

I’d like to be one of those people who can ruthlessly get rid of their stuff. I’d like to do this, truly I would. There is just so much I want to do, so many things I want to be, and so much that surrounds me relates to dreams that have yet to manifest.

I still print out my photos. Print. Them. Out. I don’t just print them out, I also put them in albums, and they have to be chronological. No one is allowed to look at them (I hyperventilate at small sticky hands even approaching my photos before they’re enveloped in the small plastic sheets, three photos to a page, the pages have a couple of blank lines on the outer edges to write a date or some phrase) until I get them into the album. When I get behind, and I always get behind because of the amount of pictures we take and the fact that a candle can only possibly have two ends, I have an incessant feeling that something is undone. It’s a line on a list that I can’t ever cross off.

I’m a list maker. For a list maker to have something they can’t cross off, it’s a short bridge to insanity. So, yes, there are the photos. There are also the photos that don’t go in the album. These are photos that might not be the best quality, but there is a story behind them, or an expression, and there only need be one expression, that I have deemed beautiful. I have photos stashed here and there, on my desk, in books, in my desk and I can’t throw them out.

Perhaps it’s because I have a superstitious mother, but it feels like tempting fate to throw out a picture of one of my kids. Truth be told, I held my breath when I typed that.

Then there is the kid art. I’ve gotten better as there’s no way to possibly maintain the volume that they produce, but how do you just throw it out? I read an interview with either Michael Chabon or Ayelet Waldman, I forget who, and with four children they said they just throw it all out. The kids know, it doesn’t make them happy, but they don’t care. They cannot live with the clutter.

I heard an interview with Mo Willems, oh how I adore Mo Willems, and he found a way around it by painting his dining room walls as a chalkboard, adding a paper tablecloth and the art is always changed and renewed. What a lovely idea, a lovely concept. Alas, our dining room has no walls, it’s between our kitchen and family room, one big, fat room. Nuts.

Then there is the book. I have notes on paper that has been in the bottom of my bag for so long that the paper is the consistency of fabric and the seams have broken apart having been held together thus long only by sheer will and determination. I have interviews with authors, publishers, agents that have touched me and I wanted to remember what they said when the time comes. I printed it, folded it and stuffed it in my magic bag. I had to get rid of many of these things after the chicken soup fiasco of 2011. If you’ve ever commuted, I need say no more. What I will say is the moment I reached into my bag to find a full container of greasy chicken noodle at the bottom, I stopped breathing. I didn’t think of my phone or my train pass or even all of the odds and ends notes. I reached for the drippy greasy journal, praying I wouldn’t throw up. You know I use a fountain pen with real ink, the kind of ink that smears when it gets wet.

I pulled it out, dried off the cover, pulled off the thin elastic band, to find the words untouched. Scariest writing moment I’ve ever had. It wasn’t all bad because I got rid of the odds and ends paper, but I’d be lying if I said it converted me.  I still wonder if there was some key written in there that I might not remember when the time comes.

I have a desk stacked with credit card bills, mortgage statements, insurance bills. These are all waiting to be filed because I can’t just look at them and get rid of them. I’ve worked too long in business. I know that sometimes computers have issues and you need to keep a record.

All of this is my way of saying, the organization, the ridiculousness of all of this is eating into my quality of life. I work full-time, come home as Mommy, do some chores, sit down to write, and I’ve got all of these things in the back of my head that I’m unable to let go. Some people, some dear friends of mine have given me ideas, but it really does go so much deeper than I admit. I want to change. I want to live for the moment. I want to live as I did in college where if you moved once a year, sometimes more, you cleaned out each and every time because it made moving easier.

Now I have kids, and worries, and I’m turning into a neurotic obsessing about the idea I had that I can’t remember because there is just no more room.

The amusing part is that if you stopped by my house right now, you wouldn’t see it. I no longer keep more than the most recent issues of magazines, and my piles are stacked neatly, all things that I’m waiting for a moment to get around to. It’s that I know it’s all there the same way I know I have a section of size 10′s in my closet that I refuse to give away. There they sit.

I know I’m not alone in this. For the life of me, I cannot figure out why otherwise intelligent people torture themselves like this. It’s just so dumb. I wonder if it’s some silly game of procrastination to keep from fully focusing on the novel, an excuse of some sort.

I saw this great thing over at Tahereh Mafi’s.

Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same amount of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Michaelangelo, Mother Theresa, Leonardo DaVinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.

-H. Jackson Browne, Jr.

Indeed, sir. I found that statement to be so grounding that I thought I’d share it in case any of you are like me. It gave me a boost. I read that and wanted to just clear it all out.

Yet. I cannot.

 

For Every Dad…

For every dad that takes his kids swimming, although he doesn’t like the water…

For every dad that carries his child upstairs although they’re far to big for a ride…

For every dad that goes without so that his child may have…

For every dad that takes a deep breathe when a child says I hate you…

For every dad that stops what he’s doing because a tired kid fell and was too tired to stop crying…

For every dad that talks a mom off of a ledge…

For every dad that says I love you all the time…

For every dad that reprimands their child so that someone else’s parent won’t have to in the future…

For every dad that responds to anger with kind words and a hug…

For every dad that goes it alone…

For every dad that makes dinner with extra love…

 

Happy Father’s Day.