Check Out These Clown Shoes

Today I had the day off to take my youngest to the doctor for his three-year-old well check.

Such a great day for me, as I got to be home and pretend to be a stay-at-home mom. I got up at seven (which meant sleeping in two more hours than normal), then made the kids breakfast before dropping the oldest boy at school, the oldest girl being at her mom’s last night and tonight.

My youngest and I got a whole day together, which with three kids happens so rarely that it’s as if I was handed an old fashioned pocket watch that was giving me time. Everything moved at a slower pace, a three year old’s pace. We went to the park.

My son and I were climbing up and down, over and around. I got to see him without the filter of his siblings, and he ventured further and farther in what he was willing to do, succeeding more times than not.

Another mom and child approached. She was younger than me, and of the done-up variety, put together as if going out (for my standards) and here I was in cut-offs, a tie-dye t-shirt and my new dark hair fading to an unnatural purple in the sun. I was, however, wearing my new aviator, porn-star glasses. They make me happy.

Her son turned out to be six months younger than mine. He was dressed as well to the nines, matching ensemble, fancy italian walking shoes, and a tan cap to tie it all together. My son was wearing a Flash t-shirt, and some plaid shorts that were too short on him. He’s so thin that he ends up wearing 24 month shorts, when his length in pants is a 3T. To tie his “look” together he also had on some Converse with flames painted on the sides that he had just found that morning. They were his brother’s, so he had to wear them despite the fact that they were a size too big.

Being the friendly sort, I struck up a conversation with my new pal, the size 2, and she as most first time moms told me about her boy, how he has the biggest feet anyone has ever seen and has the sweetest disposition of any child, anywhere.

She had just moved here from New Hampshire, and rolled her eyes when I asked her how she liked the Midwest. Oddly, for someone who herself has had her own Midwest growing pains, I felt oddly defensive of my home state of seventeen years. She asked if my van was the one with the Grateful Dead sticker. Yes, I said, that would be my husband’s. She proceeded to tell me she grew up on The Dead, her mother was a huge fan. Uh oh.

She went on about how they didn’t watch television in her house, they listened to records which normally I would have applauded but there was something preventing me. She told me that her husband was on the road much of the time and they were thinking about trying to get pregnant when she found out, in fact, she was. How far along, I asked, and she told me five weeks. She mentioned how nice it would be to have a boy, and I said, yes, you save so much money on clothes if you hit the season right. She looked at my son’s shoes, then at her own son’s and said, well, I believe in spending money on the important stuff. She nodded towards my skinny beanpole and added, not that those kinds of shoes aren’t cute.

At this point, I normally would have blown a gasket, but oddly I was amused. I said, yes, those are some great shoes he has. Shoes are important. How old are you?

Twenty-seven, she said, but I won’t ask how old you are.

Oh. My. Goodness. Soon-to-be forty, I said smiling, and never so happy to blurt out that number in my life.

You’re really lucky, she said. Most women your age have to worry about their eggs being all messed up.

I laughed. Aloud. Guffawed really. Yes, I said, I’m pretty lucky they haven’t all shriveled up. She nodded knowingly.

We got on the topic of education. I found out from this fount of wisdom that New Hampshire has the best educational system in the entire world, and she went to NHU which, yes, you guessed it, is the best university in the universe. She abhorred what she had learned about the Illinois educational system and would be home-schooling.

She also slipped in how the educational system in New Hampshire was so good, that just because two of her sisters got pregnant in high school, didn’t mean they wouldn’t graduate. They were expected to graduate. That is the kind of top notch schooling she was raised in, she said.

At this point I mentioned that I was from New York and I wasn’t certain on average, but I think I had a pretty decent high school experience. I also mentioned that the state school I went to is the one that people compare to an Ivy league. She had heard of it. Oh, yes, I went there, not proud, but I couldn’t contain myself. Her tone changed and now she really wanted to talk to me. I now had something I could offer her. The change was tangible.

I told her that as budgets get cut, as states get more and more in the red, classrooms will get bigger and teachers will be more overwhelmed. I told her that I felt it was my duty as a parent to do what I can, and if that means reading and working math every night with my kids, then that’s what I have to do.

I mentioned that home schooling while solving a problem for some, really doesn’t give back to a community at large as much as parents volunteering to give back to all the kids. Some kids don’t have the same advantages. Some parents have to work round the clock just to eke by. I told her that I felt it was our job as parents and as a society to see where something was failing, and add to the solution by adding ourselves to the equation.

Oh dear. She stood quietly. My son has anaphylactic shock, she said. I was confused. He has it?  She said they just found out that he is allergic to chocolate and one M&M could kill him. I’m so sorry, I said. But you should know that Illinois state law now requires Epipens to be in every school, I think in every classroom. I told her if she was interested she should check it out.

I left with my happy, dirty, mismatched son feeling badly for this lost girl. Her insecurities must be so great to have to start a conversation where you assume you’re the smartest person in the room. I saw a little of myself in her, when I first moved here, making assumptions about people because they weren’t as forthcoming as I was used to.

I hope she improves her social skills. She was fortunate she ran into me and not one of my neighbors, plenty of whom are teachers and wouldn’t have been so gentle upon being insulted. They wouldn’t have gotten past her attitude to see how scared she really must be.

Then again, maybe they would have. I try not to underestimate people, even if they are on the cusp of shriveled-up and two steps away from death’s door. Oh wait, that’s just me. Fortunately for me, I stopped caring about those kinds of eyes years ago, and only care about the two blue ones looking up at me as he ran down the path in his too big clown shoes, his plaid Daisy-Dukes and glad he wasn’t anyone but him.

 

(Now, a little business. If any of you know, I’m now typing out my WIP and have a bit of a technical conundrum. I’m doing Times New Roman and font size 12, but I’m confused about the spacing. I read it should be done double-spaced, but then I end up with extra space between dialogue and it just ends up being a big mass of white. I thought of how people are reading requests on their Kindles, IPads, etc, and I think I’m not doing it right. Every agent has it down a bit differently, but for those of you who are more in the know than me, yes, that would be all of you, how should I do this? The no indent thing makes it so that if I don’t put the extra space between paragraphs, sometimes it looks like one big long mass, and as you can guess…I do that well enough on my own without putting two together.  Thoughts? Thanks, and love.)

Bring on the Beer

I went to a beer festival this weekend, and as my husband summed up, “This is the best carnival I’ve ever been to.”

It was from 12pm-8pm, but we showed up just before 4pm. We ran into an old runner friend, and a friend of his, who brew their own beer and we got quite the education as we went booth to booth in search of the perfect beer to fill our 2 ounce glass.

From malty, to hoppy, from cherry ale to pear and berry cider, from coffee-infused to chocolate-infused, it was enough to make a grown woman cry. I got to taste hops done to varying degrees, the least tasting like crunchy grape nuts, the furthest tasting like bitter, hard, burnt toast. Ick. I learned about where a beer starts, the notes that are carried throughout, and the finish. The finish many times was where the best stood out. I suppose though, that’s always the case.

We left before things could get sloppy, and went to a Thai restaurant that was closed. We ended up at one of the breweries that had sponsored the event. I big, fat, juicy burger topped with a spicy beer cheese completed the night. And one more pint, a nice amber.

Back to home where we had let the kids stay up with their grandma until we got back. By ten o’clock, we were drinking water and watching a new episode of Doctor Who. Oh yes, I cannot be outgeeked.

 

Inappropriate Humor

A conversation with my favorite librarian, got me thinking about how humor is my greatest coping mechanism. I should specify. The worse a situation is, the more inappropriate my humor. I think the reason my dearest friends are who they are, is because they get this. They get the joke.

At seventeen, my best friend’s dad was diagnosed with Leukemia. He wasn’t feeling well on Friday. His assistant made him go to the doctor. He was hospitalized with a white blood cell count that would kill a man three times his size. Being Jewish, his entire family flew in to be at the hospital. For those of you who are not Jewish, that meant that he wasn’t going to live through the weekend.

He wasn’t going to go without a fight and fight he did. He got better, at least for a time. He went in and out of remission more than once. The hospital was a short walk down from the high school, so my friend and I would walk there during lunch to keep him company.

One day, I had some extra time so I went alone to see if he needed anything. I got there and he told me to get him some smokes. He had a chemo bag dripping into his catheter.

“I can’t get you smokes. You’re having chemo for God’s sake”, I said.

“Lyra. Look at me. Do you really think a cigarette is going to kill me?”

“Then your daughter will kill me.”

“That’s your problem. Now go get me some smokes.” And off I went.

There was hell to pay to be sure, but how do you say no to that argument? I was seventeen and a grown man, who had been told he was going to die, hadn’t. Not yet anyway. Within two years, he was gone and I know it’s politically incorrect, but he and I did laugh and that still stays with me, over twenty years later.

At nineteen, I was having throat surgery. I have a very thin neck and I had always had a  small adam’s apple. One night, I awoke to the sensation that I was breathing through a straw. No matter what I did, I couldn’t get air in. I was in college and living with three other girls, one being the same friend whose dad had recently passed away. I went downstairs unable to speak, and turned on her light. She jumped out of bed, looked at me, grabbed our coats and drove me to the emergency room without a word.

The doctors gave me some treatements and said I was extremely lucky. The adam’s apple had gotten infected and was the size of an egg. It had swollen outwards and that combined with canker sores in my throat from too many all-nighters and a type A personality, had given me a breathing space about the size of a toothpick. The doctor said if it had swollen inwards, I just wouldn’t have woken up.

The egg needed to come out. The same friend had a connected uncle and I had the top Ear, Nose and Throat specialist on the east coast at Albany Medical Center. He would cut through my throat, remove the mass, remove part of the base of my tongue and that would be that.

That morning saw my mother and father along with my older sister waiting with me in the hospital room as I awaited to be wheeled into surgery. My sister said she was going to get me some Frankenstein plugs to stick to the sides of my neck to go with the black stitches that would soon be in place. I told her that would be great, and that she better watch it or I’d tip back my head and stick my tongue out at her through the torn opening (They had told me that I was forbidden to tip my head up as I would reopen the incision. You must understand that I am as squeamish as they come, and I couldn’t even think about what they were going to do). My sister and I went back and forth trying to outgross the other until my father finally said, “Enough! Can’t you take anything seriously? Do you know what is about to happen here??”

I looked at him and said, “They are going to cut me open and I’m hoping I wake up. Trust me. No one is more concerned about me not waking up than me. Except maybe you.” My father nodded and my sister jumped back in with some ridiculous comment, and we discussed how I was to go through life now without being able to touch my tongue to my nose. Would I qualify for disability? Would I get a handicap parking sticker? We kept that up until they wheeled me away and I counted back from thirty making it to nineteen, concerned the whole time. They had told me as I was counting that no one makes it past twenty-five in the count. I told them I was an overachiever. Then I went under.

When I was twenty, one of my roommates was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma. Here I was the party girl doing everything I wasn’t supposed to, and my dear friend who played the clarinet for God’s sake, and was studying to be an actuarian (who does that?), who never went out, never drank…she was diagnosed. M. was taken out of school.

Six of us lived in a beaten-up college house, and now there were only five. We got a call that she wasn’t doing well and we should drive to Long Island to see her in the hospital. Of the five there was me,  L.,my friend whose dad had just passed away,  J., who had up until this time had no dealings with the severity of life and death,  K., a solemn introvert who I loved but whom I drove nuts with my apparent inability to take anything seriously, and D.  Oh, D. She was the one person who for reasons that will soon become apparent, I could not stand. She was the furthest from M., but the second M. became sick, it was all she could do to keep it together. She milked the attention she got for having a roommate who was ill.  M. couldn’t stand her anymore than I could.

We drove down and when we got there were told we shouldn’t have come. Her mom had come across her journal, and the last entry said, “I’m just too tired. I want to die.” We got outside of her hospital room and I saw the panic on everyone’s face. We had to wear masks. We couldn’t bring anything into the room. Germs are the bane of the immune deficient.  I grabbed the masks we needed to enter, and passed them out. Then I looked at the ladies and say, “Suck it up. The party starts now.”

For the next two hours, I put on a show. I only have a vague recollection of what happened but I know M. laughed. She laughed and laughed and so did we. The nurse stopped in twice to tell us to be quiet, then to shut the hell up.

At the very end, M. asked to speak to me alone, and the others left the room. Many of them were relieved to do so. I had to get right in her face to hear her and awaiting life-changing words, I was silent. Her wig was crooked and her eyes were intense over the blue paper mask. “Who the fuck invited D.?” She said it and her eyes lit up as we both laughed, the tension broken and we were back in the land that cannot be taken seriously. Life and death are serious. Your head will explode if you let it. Not on my watch.

“I thought you did. In what world would I bring somebody along who blew my ex? Jesus, you think you have problems.” Now we guffawed until the laughter subsided and the tears weren’t from funny anymore. We saw nothing but each other’s eyes. And she said I love you. And I said I love you. And I kissed her head. And it was the last time I saw her alive.

We went to her wake weeks later. The same crew, D. devastated by the loss of her now best friend, or so she would tell anyone who would listen. I stood at the back of the room with J., overwhelmed by things that are so wrong and she had never been forced to do, and L. who not long before had been through this with her own dad. The memories came fast and hard.

The front row held her mother and a few older women draped in black, as Sicilian cries permeated the room. People fell to their knees and even as I saw them I thought, yes, that is what this feels like. Yes.

There were two kneeler things up by the casket, and I took my two friends and said we must do this. We went up and we kneeled, me between my Athiest and my Jewish friends. I recited the Lord’s Prayer in my head and I could feel both of them shaking.  It was too much. Life was too much. The cries were directly behind us now. I looked at M. with her yellow pallor and overdone makeup. I focused on her wig and then I caught sight of her nails painted gold and wrapped around the rosary.

“She would have hated that nail polish,” I said. And my two friends started chuckling, telling me to shut up. “No really, what in God’s name. Gold? Seriously.” And we all smiled because it was true. And then we cried through the laughter and turned and hugged her mom and random others as we made our way out.

“You have no shame.” J. said to me outside. I shook my head. We walked back out to the parking lot and I passed D. who was sobbing uncontrollably into some random boy’s chest. I smiled as I heard M. say, “Who the fuck invited her?”

What do you do when the world comes crashing down?

 

 

My Own Hyperlink Nightmare

“The time has come. The time is now. Marvin K. Mooney won’t you please…”

Oh. Hello. Lost in my thoughts for a moment there, or to be more precise Dr. Seuss’s thoughts. Some people have the ability to sit quietly and stare out of the window. My husband is one of these people and even under intense questioning, he maintains that he really is in fact thinking…nothing. The absence of thought. He’s also a person who takes things at face value. Perhaps these two qualities go hand in hand.

I wouldn’t know.

I have tried, but when I say I have tried, I mean I have actively tried to think nothing. For the record, one cannot actively try to do something and have it be nothing. The action negates the nothingness. Which reminds me of Being and Nothingness which leads me to Jean-Paul Sartre which makes me think of Simone de Beauvoir and her book The Mandarins. So, while I’m trying to think of nothing, I’m already thinking about how I thought The Mandarins was brilliant, really just an amazing book and how I would love to read it again, and how after reading it I still had no idea why it was called The Mandarins which brings me immediately to Jane Eyre.

You see I read Jane Eyre in two different college classes and really loved it but I detested the ending. My professor was a savant of sorts if you count his ability to tell you what page a given scene someone was discussing was on, and giving the page number in multiple editions. One day, the entire class was talking about the rape scene and as the class went on all I could think was, What the hell are they talking about?

My heart beat out of my chest as I raised my hand knowing I was about to be exposed for the idiot I was. Fortune would have it that I was familiar with the feeling and curiosity had yet to kill that particular cat. I will never forget saying as he called on me, “Rape scene?”

Yes, I had read it twice and still if I were pressed today twenty years later, I’d have trouble finding it although I know it involved going to or from a hothouse. Twenty years older and none the wiser.

Nonetheless, the professor allowed me to rewrite the ending for my final paper and it was the first time my mind and the writing exploded into a loss of time and a magic that to this day I cannot explain and have nothing to compare it to. It felt as if all of the words were at my finger tips and I was just trying to keep up with my hands.

Much like someone going after a high, I have been trying to capture that feeling ever since because for someone like me, my mind does not stop. But for that moment, the focus was so pure, so tangible that I when I was done I couldn’t figure out why I put the writing off until the last moment in a 48 hour streak of writing.

Three years in on my book, I get caught up between two thoughts. It gets done when it gets done and the competition which is fierce, get it done now. I try to find balance in my life, but I’m just not the balancing sort. I’m the all in sort. Unless I’m the all out sort.

For once I have a balance between writing and life, and yet it isn’t enough and I’ve been procrastinating making it more. I’m afraid of the all in because I know me.

And last night I said to myself, the time has come. I pulled out journal one of six at present, I opened my word document and I began to type. This morning I got on the train and I continued writing where I left off the day before. I am simultaneously typing/editing the beginning that I haven’t seen in three years, and writing the ending.

As I typed, my mind went quiet. I have name changes, plot changes, people that I have rudely yanked out of the narrative only to see their place later, and because I write by hand, I have told myself, you can fix this when you type.

The time has come. The time is now.

Oddly enough, for my Sybillesque personality, I just may be onto something. The new stuff is directing where the old stuff is going, and the old stuff reminds me how I got to where I am. It’s given my mind something to chew on, so I don’t chew off a leg. At least not mine. Maybe I’ll just gnaw on someone else’s when they have this spacy look on their face and tell me they are thinking nothing.

Fortunately for him, I get side-tracked easily. (Why is it called The Mandarins?? Why?!)

Do you know the value of a quiet mind, or are you your own hyperlink nightmare?

(I’m going to be posting on a Monday, Wednesday, Friday schedule. I don’t want to be responsible for anyone’s psychotic snap from reading this daily. Love.)

 

 

How To Open A Hotel in Costa Rica

I got my hair dyed this weekend. For those keeping score at home, I am now an unnatural shade of brown, very, very dark that has a hint of red in the sun. But that isn’t the point of my story.

My hairdresser, S, told me that he just got back from a trip to Costa Rica. He owns his shop and is booked months in advance. He is a responsible man. He can’t take off whenever he feels like it. He called his travel agent on a Tuesday, the third Tuesday in July, and said get me the fuck out of here. She said, you don’t mean tomorrow right? He said, no, Friday’s fine. She said, that’s only three days. He said either you get me out of here or I’m going to be chewing the buttons off of my padded cell with my teeth after they put me in the straight jacket. She had him on a flight for Costa Rica that following Saturday.

He almost cancelled because he couldn’t figure out how to get to the airport. This is a man who travels the world, many times alone. He assists a dentist in Haiti on a yearly trip of three weeks where they’ve removed teeth, set bones, excised tumors.

He could not figure out how to get to the airport. He couldn’t make a decision. None of the answers made sense. He didn’t know the right questions. Yes, I said, this makes perfect sense. I’ve been there.

He didn’t cancel, he arrived in Costa Rica, but he missed the bus. The next one was at 2 p.m., a two hour wait before a four hour bus ride to his friend who owns a hotel on the coast. He looked at the cabs. He assessed the visage of the cab drivers, his only thought being who did he think he could spend four hours with and who would let him drink and smoke in the cab. He picked an old man, a native Costa Rican. He asked how much it would cost. The man said in broken English that it was very far, then named the price. S smiled and said, let’s go and I’ll buy you lunch. They picked up a six pack for the ride and S was on his way.

He arrived at the hotel in three hours and twenty minutes and met his friend M, the owner of the hotel. They had met twenty years before when he had taken the wrong bus and ended up in a shady port city. He was alone then, as he was now, and she offered him a ride. He looked at the men squatting outside the diner who had been eyeing his bag, then at this ethereal Polish woman and a young man with her whom she said was her chef. He thought he was going to be killed. He remembered getting in her car and checking that the back door opened from the inside before they left. They arrived at a hotel, and they have been dear friends ever since.

S spent the next nine days in a small wooden shack with M and her husband J for company. There was no television, no internet and vague cell phone service. No screens on the windows, simple meals of local food. Conversation at night over shots of chilled vodka truncated by the stubbing out of smokes. He was set right within a day of being there.

As S was dyeing my hair, he told me how they had opened the hotel twenty years before, shortly prior to his first accidental visit. They had gone there on vacation speaking Polish fluently and as S said, bastardizing any other language they could get their mouths on. They fell in love with Costa Rica, sold everything they owned and bought a piece of jungle on the beach. J is an architect. They wanted to open a hotel and they did.

S stopped at this part of his story, his black-gloved hand held up toward the ceiling, pointing a bottle of deep brown dye with his other, and said, Lyra, do you know how they do it? Do you get it? Do you know why they succeeded?

S, I have no fucking idea.

Because failure never entered into the picture. That’s the difference between people like them and people like us. We have a brilliant idea and let’s say it’s a hotel in Costa Rica. And where does our mind go? We don’t know the language. We don’t know anything about hotels. How do you get wood to build one? What about plumbing and electrical and sewage and on and on and on. We stop ourselves before the we even have a chance to get excited. We let the silly idea go and get back to our important lives of texts, and e-mails and twitter. We push out anything of importance because we don’t know how. We shoot it down before anyone can tell us we’ve lost our fucking mind.

People like them? They get the idea and then they work on the answers. Simple, one at a time answers. Failure does not enter the picture. Period. They already know they are going to open a hotel. The rest is just some details they need to work out.

Failure does not enter the picture.

I propose that we, my writing troops, do this. For the next two weeks, don’t tell a single soul that you are trying to write a book. Period. There is no try about it. Wrap your head around the fact that you are writing a book and the rest is just filling in the blanks. You need a plumber, get one. You need sewage, dig that hole. Buy a shovel and dig and dig and dig because that’s all this book thing is about. Sit your ass down in a chair and don’t worry about anything other than the bits you need to make it happen. Enough with trying. Let’s be the other sort of people and get it down.

Now.

Saved

My Aunt died yesterday. Her name was Jo, not Aunt Jo, just Jo. She married into a southern family, and was a Yankee. My uncle was a drummer in a band and eked out a living doing small gigs and any other odd jobs that would come up. They lived for a time just outside of Woodstock, NY and for those of you who like trivia, that is not where Woodstock, the festival was held. It was held on a farmer’s land in Bethel.

She was ten years my uncle’s senior and full of piss and vinegar. She could be defensive, and called things the way she saw them. She questioned people and did not take being put down lightly. In other words, she was not a good southern wife.

I don’t think people really understood my uncle’s marriage. They were very poor and many in the family didn’t find her to be “agreeable”. I, on the other hand, loved her. She was honest and didn’t speak down to children. I was a bit frightened by her brusque nature when I was younger, but as I aged so did my views. Being quietly unliked by a southern family is insidious in its kindness. Tight smiles let you know that you’re out of line. Having been the receiver of those tight smiles, I assure you, they are not children’s play.

As my mother would say, they didn’t have a pot to pee in or a window to throw it out. She crafted these small velvet bags that she sewed small things on. After thirty years I still have a black velvet bag with a gold moon on the outside. I thought of that today, how it sits in my jewelry box when many things haven’t made it through more moves than I can count. The bag remains still holding my treasures the way it once held some beautiful stones she had given me. I think she knew that I got it. That I got her.

The last time I had seen them was ten years ago at my cousin’s wedding. It was a disaster for many reasons that I can’t get into here, but suffice to say that my uncle, Jo and I spent much of the night in an outdoor tent in North Carolina while the rest of the 200 plus guest list were inside doing the chicken dance and other acceptable wedding practices. I fit in as much as the chicken would have.

We sat and talked for hours making our way through beer after beer, discussing many family secrets that I had only been at arm’s reach from. At one point in the conversation, my uncle said, “She saved me, my life.” I looked at him and said, “I know.”

I knew and I had always known the way you know a like person through the facade of daily living, and kids, and jobs, and all of the crap that surrounds us. You see through it and you see yourself. You see it because you know what it’s like to have someone save you. I didn’t know then how that felt. I hadn’t met my husband yet. I did however know the desperation that some of us feel whether due to our lives, or our inability to cope. Some of us were born poorly equipped and spend so much time trying to sabotage ourselves before someone comes along sees us for us, and says, “Stop.”

They tell us we are good enough, and beautiful enough, and stronger than we know. They tell us we don’t have to bare the burden of our family history, and that they will not carry us but hold our hand so that as we struggle to face what we have not thus far, we will not sink. They will keep our head above water and the secrets we tell, they will keep.

She saved him. And they loved each other. And they got by barely, but they did. He spent the last three years caring for her because he refused to put her in a home. No one understood. They all said it was too much.

But it wasn’t too much. Because there is no too much. She died in her bed with him as the provider of the morphine. And I want to celebrate that life, that love.

It isn’t about the sad end, but about cherishing another human being to the point that there is no too much. They lived there lives filled with music and crafts and beads and surrounded by creativity because they couldn’t fit in any other way. She saved him and he saved her back and kissed her head and wished her well on her way.

Because I think she would be amused, these are the clay people

Power Rangers

And here is the cake…

Blue Power Ranger Mask Cake

I can hear her laughter about both.

Here’s to a woman who spent her life marching to her own drum, the masses be damned. A woman with a raspy laugh who wore embroidered smock coats and always looked a kid in the eye. A woman who lived a creative life because she had no choice. She just didn’t fit anywhere else. Rest in peace, Jo. Your memory and chutzpah live on in nieces like me who got it, who loved you, and who get that it is that important to make something pretty and give it all you have. Then give it away.  Love.

Has anyone saved you?

 

While the Oven Is On…

Friday night after a full day of work, my parents staying with us and knowing I had to bake a cake for my son’s birthday, I decided that my three year old really needed Power Rangers made of clay.

I had planned on letting the kids help me bake the cake right after supper, then icing it when they went to bed. Alas, when grandma and grandpa are in town, things don’t always go according to plan. The kids were in bed at 9:30 and the dishes were done soon after. The cake was put in the oven at 10:00, and I pulled out the clay.

For the record, I do know that it is ridiculous. I do know that a three year old could care less in the larger scheme of things and won’t remember some clay Power Rangers. The thing about me is, I get something into my head and it’s stuck. It’s a continuous loop and won’t stop until I finish. In some ways it’s a good thing. In many more ways, it’s just bad. I’m completely unreasonable about limitations and goal setting.

I set a goal, and then I make myself crazy.

I ended up making two cakes, the one he wanted (the confetti nonsense one that all kids love) and the one I wanted which was a pumpkin I was trying out. I stacked the cakes all together and then carved out an oval. I let it cool.

I pulled out the clay, and very slowly built three mini Power Rangers. I baked them while I was icing the cake, I iced the cake, a blue mask of Kevin, who I’m sure you all know is the blue Power Ranger. No? Just me? Okay, whatever.

Two in the morning. Done. Little Power Ranger people and a cake that was not my best. It was messy and while ideal for my three year old, it didn’t hold up to the image I had in my head. After all, if I knew it would come out half-assed, I wouldn’t have stayed up so late doing it.

Which brings me to writing. I think I may be trying too much for the extras. I may be spreading myself so thin, that I can’t tell a clay figure from a cake. I think I need to take a bit more time and focus, or just limit where my focus is at. Because sometimes I start and don’t know where to stop.

I don’t have the pictures at the ready, but I’ll put them in the next post for those of you who are interested. I really like the clay guys, but that wasn’t the point. I was supposed to be making a cake and my OCD got the better of me.

Kind of like I should be working on my book…

What do you do that sidetracks you?

A Birthday Wonder

It was only yesterday that you wondered what kind of baby short straw you pulled to get picked to be in our family.

Whose Dumbass Idea Was This Ensemble?

But then you got the hang of it and took Chicago by storm. The walking bit was a tad trickier.

Yes, Ladies. I Am The Real Batman.

And now you’re a golfer,

I'm Gonna Just Give This Ball A Little Push...

A fisherman,

Here fishy, fishy...

And a yachtsman.

Like My Ride?

To a boy whose mom and dad will never count him out, Happy Third Birthday. I will never forget that doctors are fallible, and you are here, and you are you. I am the luckiest mom in the world.

LOVE.

Who Thought I Would Miss Polly Pockets

I spent two solid years arranging Polly Pocket shoes, finding matches and setting up shoe stores. I was repaid by this feat, and if you understand that the shoes are no bigger than a wooden matchstick head you’ll appreciate this, with hugs and giggles and the sheer joy in my daughter as we played hour after hour of store.

I wanted to bash my eyes out with the shoes, but was foiled by their bouncy, plastic design. My reprieve was when we pulled out the Barbies, all thousand of the tangled hair, mostly naked, disproportionately designed women of the past. A. being the youngest girl cousin at the time, got handed down the dolls and then her own were added until we had nothing less than a clone colony.

I set up clothing stores, sorting and matching, and once again A. would be giddy with the organization. She would gingerly pick up the outfits and pay me, the cashier, trying on the new outfits with the delicacy of a pastry chef.

Here I was a woman firm in her beliefs teaching her daughter to shop. Oh, the irony, I would think as I shook my imaginary fist at the gods. I detest shopping with the passion of a thousand angry female cats displaced by their naughty young brothers…wait, that’s another story.

Now, don’t get me wrong. A. also had her Matchbox cars for which we would draw intricate chalk lines as roads, cities and parking lots. We would crawl along, her hand rarely leaving the car as she drove them down the road and parked them in their allotted spot.

When she was five, I had her brother. One of my first thoughts was, “At last! Boy games!”

Little did I know.

By the time I knew, I had yet another boy, a little over three years apart. Every day as I am blessed with my boy games, for a woman who always scoffed at the gender roles I thought people put upon their children, I chuckle at my naivete. I laugh at my innocence. I remember back to the hours of playing Polly’s and Barbie’s and The Little People with their small, plastic dollhouses and the peace with which we would set up a city and then politely put them back in their bin apologizing for their inconvenience. I recall this peace even if at times I thought my brain was dribbling out of my ear. Now I know better.

Now it is too late.

A., barring the occasional walk down memory lane when she brings out the old toys from the basement, is over the dolls. Plus being much smarter than her stepmom, she saw playing with the dolls for what it was, an exercise in frustration as her brothers destroyed every city before it could be built.

Tonight, I got home and laid on the floor in the living room where the boys were playing. Within moments, my youngest stepped on my hair. I got up realizing my amateur mistake, one never lays where a boy, no less two, is playing. I went and sat on the lowest step of our stairs. My youngest walked over where he had a limbo game set up. He turned it on, the music screeched and he proceeded to punch the foam rung off of the side bars. The hard, laminated cardboard giraffe laughed as it fell on my big toe.

“Sorry Mommy. It was an accident.” Yes, he accidentally punched it and it accidentally fell off. He picked it up and I flung my head back covering my face with my hand, my ninja-like reflexes honed by life with two boys and a husband who has a tendency to step on my feet. I dodged the foam bar. As he turned to see if he hit me, he hit me.

“Accident, Mommy?”

“Yes, M. That actually was an accident.”

“Oh. Sorry, then.”

I stood up realizing that sitting low was foolish and so the night continued. As we were coming down for their bedtime snack, I hear a matchbox car coming down the step close on my heel. I step out of the way just for it to bounce on the rug and bound off of my toe. I tried explaining that they only become airborne when they start airborne. No throwing cars!

We go to bed, and my oldest son gives me a hug. He takes his chin and jams it into my left breast laughing all the while.

“That’s it!” I push him off of me, and rage against two boys who are clearly trying to damage me enough so that I cannot leave home, but not enough that I can’t reach the ice cream. I railed in a Mommie Dearest fashion, and told them they could go to bed by themselves tonight, I had had enough. Then I see my oldest’s face which is near tears. My youngest is begging me to stay. I’m bruised and not proud of myself.

I give them the opportunity for a do-over (along with myself), which they agree to. We give hugs and my husband sings their night-night song as I lie in my youngest’s bed, my glasses off so that they don’t accidentally get jammed into my face, but my hand close to my face at the ready in case M. decides to roll over and misjudges the space, headbutting me which happens twice a night on average. Cat-like reflexes here.

Instead, M. taps me on the shoulder and asks if he can lay on me and proceeds to crawl up and lay down as if I am the finest spun silk that he doesn’t want me to wrinkle. I didn’t know he had it in him. I stay for my two songs, then give them both hugs again and know I need to talk to my big guy.

“Hey.” He sits up and gives me a squeeze with all of his might. “I love you. You just have to be more gently with Mommy because you’re getting too big and strong to mess around like that.”

“I’m really sorry Mommy.” And I nod because I know, and I get him laughing because that’s how he knows we’re good. Then I shut their door but not before telling them they had better go right to sleep and I mean it. Uh, yeah, right.

In two hours I have two bruised toes, a bruised breast, and far less hair then I started out with. Man, do I miss playing girl games…

Things Not To Do When Writing A Novel

1) Tell your family and friends you’re writing one.

2) During Thanksgiving dinner during a huge fight with your mother, whip out a tape recorder and say, “You don’t mind if I record this, do you?”

3) Walk into your boss’s office and declare, “I quit, sucker!”

4) Eat when you are at a loss for words. There will be no loss of words.

5) Eat when you reread awful words. There will be no loss of awful words.

6) Tell your ex that the psychopathic serial killer who meets his demise at the hands of a band of ninjas is only loosely based on him/her.

7) Get a cat, a cabin without heat and running water, and declare yourself an artiste.

8) Under any circumstances refer to “your art”.

9) Tell people you haven’t showered.

10) Wait for the words to come. Wrestle them, wrangle them, but write something. If you write it, they will come.