Patterns

I have so much to say right now, and no words to say it. Ever feel that way?

Tonight I sat in the dark on the road leading me home. It was 5:51 p.m. and I sat at a light for ten minutes as a train passed as it does every night before nine cars make their way left through the green arrow. The eighth car gets yellow, the ninth the arrow goes away and the opposing traffic begins to honk. Every night.

I was off for five days in a row which should have left me rejuvenated but instead left me panicked on Sunday that I had to go back. A case of croup and some steroids later, I got the extra Monday which wasn’t enough.

Somehow I had forgotten that this time of year it is dark when I drive to the train, and dark when I return. The darkness seeps into my optimism which I can count on for three out of four weeks a month knocking it down to two.

The holidays approach and although I have stocked up vacation time, it isn’t on the actual holidays. My job has blacked out those days, ironically since my job is to assist the people who are allowed to take vacations and do. Leading into December, the phones slow and I am left with too much time to ponder my life and how to change it.

The thing about my career is that what makes me good at it, is also the part of me I’d like gone. I am tough and sarcastic, brutal at times. I am right because I have to be. There is no room for error. I wish it was a career like a surgeon where at least these qualities could be resolved as being the difference between life and death but alas, it’s all about money.

I may be the only person within a stone’s throw at work hoping that the Occupy Wall Street folks find a way to make it work. Don’t get me wrong. I am the 99%. I just happen to have a job and as you all know, that makes me their patsy. Essentially, I’m playing for the other team, but rooting for the underdog. Yes sir, may I have another.

I believe not so much in things happening for a reason, but as any recovering protestant, that you do what is right and good things will come of it. I believe that you do as you wish done to you, and when you make choices, you have to be present, be accountable. I fell into this business and had the stomach to take it. My first few years in the business, I left numerous times a day in tears. Now, I know I seem like a mushgush on the blog, but you’ll have to have blind faith in me when I tell you I don’t cry frequently. I wish I could cry more, that I could cry easier. It’d be healthier that way.

Falling into the business of money, I always thought that this was a step that would come in handy down the road. I pictured myself learning the ins and outs of business so that at some point I could help a charity to avoid being ripped off. I saw myself as the future Robin Hood. Alas, that job never materialized.

Instead, I end up here and feel that I am not making a decision that needs to be made because first and foremost is that my family is taken care of. The problem is that this job has become something that is toxic to me and I have no skills to switch careers.

A dear friend recently pointed out that you recreate patterns that are unresolved in your life. In order to move forward you need to see the pattern and decide to change it. Before she had finished her statement, my head exploded. I saw before me a woman who was tough as nails and had the respect of her co-workers. I saw someone who commanded respect and would lose her job before she was bullied by an alpha male (prominent in her line of work).

I also saw a woman who would fight every day all day and as of late have to walk quickly to the ladies room before the tears sprung from her eyes. At some point, the channeled anger, the white hot poker faded to red and became a source of sharp pain. She had come full circle. There were moments she wondered if indeed this was nervous breakdown material, followed up with the thought that there was no time for nervous breakdowns. She wiped her tears with rough grey toilet paper and flushed as the sobs were stifled. A pinch of the cheeks and a deep breath sent her back to the phones.

On a daily basis, I prove that I will not budge. That I am stronger, smarter, and better than men that think otherwise. I see the pattern. I acknowledge it. I have no idea how to change it. I. Want. Out.

So I write. I write to be the person who isn’t fighting an imaginary opponent from so many years ago. I write to just be me.

A secret? This is my Plan B. I want to be home and be writing and to take care of my family and to get away from things I don’t believe in. I want to be proud of myself for more than just taking care of my family.

I want my family to be proud of me.

I just don’t know how to get there.

I see the problem, yet can’t see the solution.

Nuts.

 

Book Stack

I received three new books for my birthday.

1. The Virgin Suicides – Jeffrey Eugenides
2. Incendiary – Chris Cleave (because I LOVED Little Bee)
3. The Tiger’s Wife – Tea Obreht

Because neither my husband nor I can manage to order books for a present without picking ourselves up one or two, he also ordered:

1. a visit from the goon squad – Jennifer Egan
2. Let the Great World Spin -  Colum McCann
3. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle – Haruki Murakami

Which are behind the two I’m reading now:

1. The Children’s Book – A.S. Byatt
2. The Marriage Plot – Jeffrey Eugenides

And behind the next two on my list:

1. Little Gale Gumbo – Erika Marks
2. The Lacuna – Barbara Kingsolver

Today the last day of my four-day Thanksgiving/Birthday Extravaganza, I had planned on getting some reading and writing done. Last night, at one in the morning my youngest woke up with the barking seal cough unable to breathe. I brought him into my bed and sat him up on my lap as we attempted sleeping sitting up. Then I laid on my side, and he sat up against my stomach leaning his head back on my hip still wheezing and coughing. Eventually he settled in and was able to lie back down, but not without me spending a good part of the night watching him breathe.

Nothing is ever as important as it seems. List after list of books, schedules and drafts and lists of outlines to be written, they all went by the wayside as I listened to the rattle in my three-year old’s chest. He woke up this morning at 8 a.m. ready to go. I’ve been dragging ever since.

The books will get read. The book will get written. The little guy is okay today, a bit wheezy but okay. And I’m too tired to string together a coherent thought other than “Phew”.

I do look at this ginormous stack of books on my desk with anticipation. I get panicky if I think I’m out of books, and now I have a fresh stack. The potential of worlds to be absorbed into is right under my nose.

Ahhhh…books.

Hope Is For Your Thirties

Drive, passion and desire is for your forties.

And on that note, Happy Fortieth birthday to me!

This year, I am an official turkey girl. I get the day off of work, my favorite meal, a peanut butter cup pie for dessert and to be surrounded by my favorite people in the universe.

I am thankful beyond measure.

This year has been a whirlwind of writing, author readings, writing, meeting up with writers, writing and hope.

But it’s time I moved on from hope. Hope won’t get it written. Hope won’t do the job. Drive, determination, never-say-die…that gets the job done. I know how to get the job done. And now I’m old enough to do it.

Unlike many people who feel angsty regarding their new decade, I am joyful. I was speaking to a friend of mine today. He’s in his sixties and he told me, “Women are just getting started in their forties. This is where it gets good.”

And on that note, my birthday gift to all of you is this list of debut novelists. You’ll notice they all have something in common. Enjoy, my friends.

1. Sherwood Anderson – Winesburg, Ohio (40)
2. Frank McCourt – Angela’s Ashes (66)
3. Sybille Bedford – A Legacy (45)
4. Laura Ingalls Wilder – Little House on the Prairie (65)
5. Richard Adams – Watership Down (52)
6. George Eliot – Adam Bede (50)
7. Annie Proulx – Postcards (50)
8. Isak Dinesen – Seven Gothic Tales (50)
9. Sue Monk Kidd – The Secret Life of Bees (54)
10. Julia Glass – Three Junes (46)
11. Henry Miller – Tropic of Capricorn (43)
12. Elizabeth Strout – Amy & Isabelle (42)
13. Paul Harding – Tinkers (42)
14. Raymond Chandler – The Big Sleep (51)
15. Belva Plain – Evergreen (50)
16. Charles Bukowski – Post Office (49)

Thank you all for being part of my thirties.

But this is the part of the story where it gets good.

Happy Thanksgiving.

Love.

Where Has My Attention Span Gone?

I fear for my attention span.

I currently am reading three different books.

I’m not that person. I read to get lost, to live in entirely different worlds. I get absorbed and then rudely spit out when the book ends. I read unaware of my surroundings, unaware of whether the television or radio is turned on or off.

Yet lately…

Lately, I have begun a book about toddler rearing (desperate times require desperate measures), The Children’s Book by A.S. Byatt and The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides. I have also begun doubling my efforts on my own book, writing on the way into work and the way home, fighting the exhaustion and apathy after a day at my job.

You see, I’m a morning writer. I start writing on the train ride in and I’m surprised every day when we pull into Union Station. I could sit the rest of the day writing on that train. I’m sure of it.

But then life happens, the job happens, and it sucks that hope out of me. It seems to me I need a certain amount of hope to write. I have the story bouncing about in my brain, but I need that belief that I can write it which occurs in the morning before the rude realities of life have a chance to pick away at it.

I’ve now traded reading time for writing time and that leaves me reading when my brain can no longer find the words. I’m finding that this new way of doing things has left me peculiar. I’m rereading paragraphs I’ve just read. I’m having to flip back more often than not to recall if this character is the roommate or the lover. Where are they going? Where have they been? Damned if I know. Flip. Flip. Flip.

This weekend, I thought I’d try something new. I’d wake up early on the weekends and write before everyone got up. Saturday morning rolled around and my oldest son stood peering at me from the side of my bed. “Mommy can you come down and watch cartoons with me?” After getting my face an inch from the clock, I saw the angry red numbers. 5:45 a.m. How do I get up earlier than these kids? I should also note that it was at this point that I noticed my arm was asleep and I had two small feet in my lower back, surely not my husband’s. I turned careful not to squash the interloper and to confirm that in fact there was a small blond boy between my husband and I.

I was up with both boys by 6:00 a.m. and although I know people write with their kids floating around, I don’t know how they do it. After I’ve unloaded the dishwasher and made the coffee, I was summoned to sit with them. Really, my youngest just wanted his favorite squishy lounge chair, me. I attempted to read, but as soon as the book was opened discreetly to my side, my youngest saw and had to position himself in that arm, wiggling and worming until he had my full attention.

They see me only after work five days a week. I owe them that much to have my full attention while they’re still young enough to want it, I suppose. So instead I went later that day to Michael’s and picked up felt and embroidery thread of as many bright colors as I could find. I spent the rest of the day, on and off, cutting small circles and teaching myself to do a blanket stitch (did I mention I don’t sew?) to turn these circles into something I could string together as a garland.

Why? Because I saw a picture of one, and it’s pretty. Nothing deeper, nothing more. I like to make things, pretty things. And my kids dig it. Writing is so intangible for them. They can’t do it with me and they can’t even read it when it’s done. It’s a lose/lose for them.

My oldest son got invited to a friend’s house and the youngest went down for a nap. Perfect writing time, no? Then I saw my daughter flitting and floating around trying to get my attention without being obvious that she still needed it. I sat at the island cutting more circles. She joined me, a moth to a flame, and I taught her to do what I had just taught myself because we don’t get enough time just the two of us with her traveling between two families, two houses. So we made the circles and she had grand visions of us at a craft fair, renting a booth and selling our wares. She pictured these circles made into bracelets and grand garlands for grand trees.

Sometimes I wonder if I have what it takes to be a writer, a real writer. I’m gone so much time for work and I squeeze in what I can, but I can’t manage to take the time from my kids. Even if I locked myself away to write, the youngest is still too young at three to let that pass and I am thankful for that.

So, I do what I can and I write every day and I hope that one day I can add more time somewhere else because well, sometimes you just have to be crafty and make felt circles.

And sometimes you just don’t finish reading a book.

Friday Short Fiction – New Neighbors

My challenge was to write a story in under six hundred words. Someone had to come to town and someone had to leave town. Without further ado, here is my short piece.

New Neighbors

June slammed the kitchen window shut, cursing her new neighbor’s riding mower and the man himself, better known in the neighborhood as her husband. She peered through the crack between the curtain and the window frame and cringed when he took off his shirt, his vibrating belly bared for all of creation to see.

A red bungee cord strapped a small cooler to the custom-made wooden shelf on the back, a safety belt securing his precious cargo. For every beer he opened, he lifted the can in her general direction as he said, “To Plainsville,” followed by “Amen”.

Harold, which was how she now referred to him, being his given name and one he detested, tucked his yellow-pitted tee shirt under his cooler. He’d need it later when he drove the mower to the convenience store up the road to restock. A grocery store stood at the end of the street, but it was in Blue Ridge. As he told her when he moved towns, he no longer would go to Blue Ridge for anything. She never spoke to him again.

Harold drove three miles out of his way to get to his third-shift job at the factory, but it was worth it.

He first wrote “Why Plainsville is Superior to Blue Ridge” in black marker at the top of his wife’s shopping notepad that came free with her five dollar donation to March of Dimes. Boy, did they have a fight about that, her being a sucker for those sob stories with them living paycheck to paycheck and all. Classic Blue Ridge thinking, he told her.

He had parked his car overnight in front of their house and the Blue Ridge Police left a ticket on his windshield. He checked Plainsville policy and they were all for street parking. Burning leaves in Plainsville? Check. No special recycling garbage bags? Check.

June wouldn’t hear of moving but dealt with Harold the way she always had and that was to ignore him. She loved Blue Ridge and knew they had no chance of moving because they were broke.

Then Harold’s mother died and the house next door came up for sale. He bought the broken-down heap with the money his mother had left him and moved in on closing day. June’s cedar fence designated the separation between Blue Ridge and Plainsville, the boundary between their marriage and their estrangement.

Harold left the mower running and slipped his beer can into the beer Koozie he had rubber-cemented to the dashboard, right next to the steering wheel. He came out of the garage dragging the six-foot ladder, then leaned it on the garage wall facing June’s house. He climbed to the highest rung, and stood on tiptoe to reach the top of the newest column. “#24-LAWN MOWER DOUBLES AS CAR IN PLAINSVILLE”. He wrote in 4” block letters for June’s benefit.

He heard her car backing out of the driveway over the noise of the mower. She should get the muffler checked. She turned the corner, out of sight, when the ladder tipped as Harold reached too far to write the word, “PLAINSVILLE”. He landed with a heavy thud and only had a moment to smile that June wasn’t home before the heavy paint can dented his head.

June stood next to their adjoining plots and watched as the hearse pulled up, “Blue Ridge Cemetery” emblazoned on the door. Harold had come home.

The Business End or FTF

It’s so easy to get caught up in the business of writing, isn’t it?

• You must capture the agent’s/editor’s/reader’s attention from the first chapter. Make that paragraph. Alright, you get a sentence. Truth be told, they look at one word. Make that word count.
• Every chapter must leave the the reader with a question that they need to answer propelling them forward. It should have the pace of The DaVinci Code with the skill of Jeffrey Eugenides.
• Voice, voice, voice. Enough with this literary crap, get to the good stuff. People have time to be sucked in by you or twitter. You choose.
• You’ll never get read if you can’t write a killer query. If you’re not obsessing about the query now, it’s too late.
• You should be accessible via Facebook, Twitter and a blog. These should be done with alarming frequency to show how serious you take it.
• Don’t let on how serious you take it. No one wants to read a downer.
• Someone should be able to read your book while the television is on, the kids are screaming for dinner, the spouse is questioning the credit card bill. Your book is either that good or it isn’t.
• If you could walk away from your book and never turn back, it means you shouldn’t write it. If it exhausts you, it doesn’t have a big enough concept.
• What’s the hook? Whatever it is, think bigger. Think author YouTube video, think a theme that makes for a great book launch party, think music video, think elephants on roller skates dancing the macarena. Now you’re thinking.
• Where’s my wine?

 

I call bullshit. Sometimes you need to slow down and tear the book up. You need to stop reading about the business and ask yourself why am I writing this story? Is the story important enough to me? Would my best friend love it?

Sometimes you need to shut up the peanut gallery in your head and know that you are good enough, you just haven’t gotten there yet. You may hear that your literary fiction is actually women’s fiction and it may throw you. You may walk away. Then something may happen.

You may be sitting one night and be confronted with the fact that it doesn’t matter what it is, or where it goes in a bookstore. Does the story swing or does it suck? Then make it better. Realize that only you need to believe in it, and you don’t need to believe all the time. Maybe nothing will ever come of it, but I guarantee you, you will become a better writer for it.

Every word you write, every time you stop and stare at a sentence, unraveling secrets until you’ve found the best possible phrase, every time you come up with a phrase that you love that you can’t wait to place, every time you stretch yourself to make words work in ways that has them singing in harmony, a cappella to the Hallelujah Chorus, every time you do that, you become better.

Because you can do this. There is a reason you picked up a pen/plucked at a keyboard/chiseled out the stone and it wasn’t because you were a rule follower. It was because you wanted to tell a story and you wanted the story to be read. Nothing happens before that.

I was stressing out about my WIP and talking to my husband, uncertain what to do about two plot lines I have going on. He asked, “Does the one make the story better?”

“One is more women’s fiction. One has the potential for literary, but I don’t know if I can pull it off, and I don’t know the two stories belong together.”

“Who cares about that. Does it make the story better to keep her or to get rid of her? That’s your question. It has nothing to do with publishing. It has to do with the story.”

Be true to the story. All the rest is for when the story is done. For right now, it’s clutter that clogs up the flow, confuses the issue, and messes with my precarious sense of well-being.

It’s easy to try something and not finish. By walking away, you retain the image that it could have been great. What I am going to do and welcome you to join me, is to finish those things that have been bogging us down. Write it the best you can, and finish it.

There is no limit to how many stories you write. There is no limit to how much you can improve and there is no limit to how high you can reach. You can do this.

I believe in you. Each of you is extraordinary. So get out there and do something with all of that damn extraordinariness.

FTF.

Whatever Gave You That Idea – David Sedaris

Second balcony box seats. Stage right. Sold out venue. Four thousand people.

All to see a writer.

Walking through the entryway to a crowd that was enough to send me into a panic, the second thing (after the panic) to strike me was that if the written word was dead, this was one hell of a funeral.

To be clear, this wasn’t just any writer. We were all here to be entertained by David Sedaris. We got up to our seats, six plushy seats stuffed into a box. I had never had box seats and felt a bit intimidated. Until the couple in front of us began taking their photographs.

In our booth, no one spoke to each other, only the person they came with. The couple to our right took the classic arm-held-out self portrait. I offered to take a picture for them. They looked at me as if I was insane to offer something so intimate. Then the couple in front began to…pose? They each had their smart phone neatly nestled in their respective palms. As if they had just sent each other a text to proceed, the man stood and looked longingly out into the audience across the way. She coached him as she shot one bad digital picture after another, a profile of this bald, young man doing his best to look serious.

I have an extreme fear of heights that doesn’t differentiate between me being on a precipice or another, so watching this man stand looking out into the great known of the theater, with a balcony rail at knee height, had my heart palpitating. Every time my husband looked at me, he gave me his best imitation of a serious patron of the arts, and I felt on the brink of hysterical laughter.

“He’s going to fall!” I whispered to a roll of his eyes as he said, “Poor bastards below…”

I watched them look through the ten shots of Serious Man At a Venue. She told him, “I need you to give me more.” Oh yes, ladies and gentleman. She was a serious photag at work. He stood up again, chest out, eyes staring into the middle distance as she shot from a lower angle to get the crowd in the center balcony. At this point, I couldn’t look at my husband at all as I was already shaking with laughter. I tried to not blink hoping my contacts would absorb the water in my eyes.

I am certain when they were done those pictures found their way to Facebook before the show began. The instantaneous desire to publicize what you are doing as you are doing it has become a drug. It frightens me to think about what this means to our society. Best not to dwell on some things.

David Sedaris was introduced and walked center stage to a podium. I don’t know that I expected circus performers, but I was surprised to see just a podium with a bottle of water and an empty glass.

My round up on him is that if you ever have the opportunity to see him, do it. He is the funniest man on the face of the planet barring none. His opener was, “I think I’ll read you some new stuff,” and he was off to the races. He didn’t come up for air until he concluded about an hour and a half later. He read three or four new essays, and a couple of pieces that were published in the New Yorker. He interspersed these with some dirty jokes, and ended with page after random page of diary entries from the last two years on the road. The jokes were foul and the diary entries were just as funny as his long essays.

I would talk about them in detail, but being that is his bread and butter, it seems wrong to do so. If his new essays come out in a collection, run out and buy them. Immediately.

Four things stood out to me when all was said and done.

1. He is far funnier in person than he is on the page or hearing him read on a Podcast or something preplanned. Of course this was planned, but he was so at ease for someone who makes his living by writing about his neuroses, and his timing with a live audience is impeccable, truly masterful. I noticed him taking notes whenever he had to pause for a longer period because the collective audience we couldn’t stop laughing. This happened more times than I could count and each time he marked it down on his notes. I pictured him writing “Yes!” next to the perfect line, with the perfect delivery. He is perfecting his craft every single day.
2. Ira Glass found him when he was doing his now legendary monologues, an unknown. Ira picked him out to come on his show, and that faith in another artist went on to be one of the huge talents on This American Life. In a way, they brought fame to one another, because Ira Glass saw somebody doing something that they were amazing at, that he hadn’t seen anyone do before. (Maybe there’s something to be said there about doing what you do well, and not what the rest of the world thinks you should be doing, but it’s too late for me to get there…run off with that at your own discretion.)
3. At the very end, he said that an older woman at a previous show came up to him saying that she had always loved him, loved his stories but was repulsed by the vulgarity in the jokes he told, and that it was beneath him. She told him that he was better than that. His response to her was a dumbfounded, “Whatever gave you that idea?” The entire audience lost it as his response, at the perfection, the brevity, the inherent truth. I couldn’t help but wonder how useful that would be in my own life, when I inevitably let somebody down for not being who they thought I was, as if I somehow misrepresented. Because really, “Whatever gave you that idea?” sums up the misconnect between an ideal image, and an imperfect human being.
4. After the applause, and the lights came up, no one got out of their seats. It turns out that he promotes one book at the very end. The book was River Town: Two Years on the Yangtze by Peter Hessler. He said the book was far better than any of his and if you were going to buy one this night, buy Peter’s. He proceeded to read a paragraph, and it was either as funny as David Sedaris, or he brought his delivery which elevated the humor. Either way, an act of generosity and the reason books shall go on.
5. P.S. He doesn’t know Peter Hessler.

Thank you, David Sedaris, a writer who can leave four thousand people wanting more.

 

A Young Poet

 

When I was in seventh grade one of my dearest friends was named, Tina. She was from a very Greek family, probably the reason I am so enamored with My Big Fat Greek Wedding. Tina’s parents were very strict. They called me “Tree” as I was taller than her entire family and Lyra didn’t sound like a real name. They owned a diner. They had a large adorned house that stood out from all of the others, which at the time I thought was just beautiful. Her father was twenty years her mother’s senior and they had had an arranged marriage. When the time came, her sister would also have an arranged marriage and my friend would opt for school. That also meant she opted out of 100,000 dollars in cash, a new car, and a fully-paid off house. She and I have lost touch, but last I heard she was a teacher back home.

We were in French class together, and I remembered tonight that I used to bring her poems to read. I used to write hundreds of poems, depressing, love-struck, adolescent angst, and she would read every last one. She would then tell me that I would be famous someday.

And I believed her.

I believed that there was a reason you were compelled to write. I believed that each person is extraordinary at something, that it was just a matter of finding it. I believed that people could try to crush you, but if you hardened up on the outside showing no emotion, you could protect that thing, that very special thing, that nut that made you extraordinary.

Tina was the first friend I had to give that kind of unconditional encouragement. She was earnest. She believed it and she made me believe it.

So, although it’s been close to thirty years, a silly song on the radio choked me up because I wonder what would have happened if I could have toughened up that shell a little bit more and protected that nut a little bit better. I wondered if she had kids and hoped she had. They would be amazing at whatever they chose.

I’d do better to remember it with my own kids. Because sometimes you’re not as good as you think, or as you want. And your mom should teach you that you are. Just because she’s your mom. And just because you really are.

Roger Ebert Joins Our Writing Group…

Once upon a time…no wait, that’s not quite right. A nun, a priest and a rabbi walked into a bar…no, no, let me try again.

We were to meet at 12:30. At 10:30 a.m., I was dressed and read to go. Then my husband mentioned it was actually only 9:30 a.m. Time change. Nuts.

I killed an hour giving my kids instructions on what they needed to get done that day, and how I would certainly be back before bed. Hehehe.

I got a text at 10:30 from Teri. Amy was early and she was headed up to meet her. I grabbed some cd’s, my coffee and hit the road. I drove into Chicago feeling like a kid who had woken up Christmas morning and just remembered what day it is. I was also completely panicked. What do you say to people that you’ve shared such intimate details of your life, and yet have never met? What if there’s nothing to talk about? What if it ends up being a day of small talk? How I hate small talk.

I walked right past Amy and Teri sitting on a bench waiting for the bookstore to open. I turned and saw them on the far bench and made out Teri saying, “No, that’s not her. Wait? Yes, yes I think that’s her. She didn’t look like that on Friday…” I was already striding up to them and hugging them as they figured out that it was in fact, me. I was informed that they already had resolved all of life’s problems and I demanded a full account. I was to miss nothing this day.

While we stood stalking the bookstore employees who kept entering, Sherry walked up. Hugs all around and they unlocked the door. We found a nook in the attached cafe’s window, four fluffy chairs and a big rolling table that we would proceed to be surprised for the rest of the afternoon as one of us rolled it into another’s shins.

You know when you’re in a moment and all you can think is I have so much to hear, so much to say, and I can’t miss any of it? Yeah, it was like that. We spent the next four hours filling each other in on the deleted scenes in many of our blog posts. We talked writing, motherhood, children, writing, Betsy, agents, politics, friends, enemies, Facebook, twitter, careers and so much more. I felt like I had known them my entire life, and that they were my dearest friends. Because they were. They are.

In a world of cynicism and self-involvement, I had the privilege to spend an afternoon with some of the most creative and generous women on the planet. As each person got off on a tangent, you would look around and see faces, so open and willing to listen, to help, to bounce in and put themselves out there. All of us, every single one, was all in. The blogs that we met through, are such a small part of who we are, and yet it was due to that, due to the honesty that began there, a mutual respect and love, that we would all sit and talk nonstop in between feeding parking meters (damn Chicago privatizing parking, uggh), getting more coffee, more tea, and every time I stood up, I demanded complete silence so fearful of missing something. Yes, I am always so reasonable.

We knew our time was winding to a close. Amy and Sherry had a long drive ahead of them. I went and put the final money in the meter. When I came back, someone told me they saw Roger Ebert. No! He sat signing stock of his new book at a table, as his wife and an employee buzzed around him. Could we ask for a picture? No. That would be too much. Or would it?

Collectively we couldn’t let the moment passed. Teri walked up and told him that we were writers, part of a writing group, some of us meeting for the first time. Would he mind taking a picture with us? Mr. Ebert gave the thumbs up and waved his hand for us to gather around, as his wife spoke for him, saying “How wonderful! Absolutely! Do you want to get in the picture too?” I passed her the camera and she took two shots. Then feeling we had already kept him too long, we picked up some of the already signed stock and thanked him for his time. Sherry told him that she followed him on twitter and he was just wonderful. His wife stopped us before we passed and say, “Don’t you want it signed?” We said that we didn’t want to put him out knowing he had been getting ready to leave. “Are you kidding? He’s right there. He’d love to.” And Mr. Ebert proceeded to sign all of the books, such a generous and delightful man, with a wife truly his equal. I was humbled to be around someone who had so much taken away, and was here signing his book. He was  a joy.

We decided to grab something to eat before separating, trying to drag out the day a bit more. The four of us were seated and the conversation picked up right where it left off for the hundredth time of the day. I cannot adequately express the generosity of these women.

At this point some of us may have switched over to beer. Ahem. I plead the fifth.

I pandered to their good nature and read a little over a page of my WIP. I couldn’t let the opportunity pass to get some feedback, not on the actual writing, there wasn’t enough time and I didn’t want it to be all about me. I did want to know if it jumped out to any of them what type of book it is I’m writing. Unanimous decision. Women’s fiction. I may have ordered another beer.

The day had come to an end. Amy and Sherry headed off into the great midwest. Sherry did in fact misplace her keys. (Sherry, the universe had the last laugh as I stood emptying the contents of my Mary Poppins’ bag into Teri’s hands later that night…).  Teri and I left to our own devices may have walked into a bar, and immediately out again (old man smell).

But, ahem, due to research we had to stop here:

We met a lovely couple who were watching the flat screen television to the right of Teri’s head. He took our picture for us, and his girlfriend just loved us. I could tell. Hehehe.

We finally left and I dropped Teri off at her hotel where I may or may not have had the pleasure of ending the night with Teri and Mr. Teri, a man worthy of my dear friend, something I don’t say lightly.

I arrived home a full 12 hours after I had left unsure of what to expect, missing my kids’ bed times by a wide mile. I wouldn’t trade it.

How often is the reality better than the fiction? Not often enough. I have a gift from Teri around my wrist, that I have worn since she passed them out. I look at it and it makes me smile. It’s a gray, rubber bracelet and you can’t easily make out the writing from a distance. I like it that way.

Sometimes you just don’t share. You want to keep it all to yourself to keep the magic inside…

Believe me. I know what magic looks like.

Love.

 

Seventy On A Country Road

Tonight was to be the night, the night of potential. This was to be the night when the new me began…

Instead of running on the treadmill, I sit here with a glass of wine (Middle Sister-California Table Wine) and instead of the normal silence as I think of the words I’m listening to Lucinda Williams. Something about her voice, the mourning, the glissandos, the melancholy, the twang of country, but above all the story in every song, yes, that’s it, the story, something about all of that suits me just fine tonight.

I feel like I’m pretending to be a grown up, working the job, paying the mortgage, doing the laundry, doing the homework (my God the homework they give to kids), talking one kid down off the ledge of being six years old and not knowing what to do with his emotions while ignoring another one because there isn’t enough, there is never enough of me to go around. I can’t help but wonder nature or nurture, because this son of mine comes by his inability to deal honestly. Did I donate the genes or is it my lack of skill with emotions, that I passed along that inability to him? And how does a person who doesn’t deal with things well, teach her son not to freak out when things get tough.

When I was growing up, my best friend would take her dad’s car and come get me when the going got too much. I learned to shut my mouth at home, and get out of dodge as soon as I saw her car round the bend. I’d get in the car and usually be in tears. We’d hit the end of my street, make a left then a right and be on a straight stretch for miles. We never spoke at first. She’d pass me a Marlboro Red and turn up the Melissa Etheridge and slowly I’d begin to sing, and then I’d be belting it out, windows down watching butt after butt of glowing orange embers bounce down the pavement in the side mirror.

I’d tell her what went down, we’d agree it was fucked up, and then we’d turn up the music. It would be simple to chalk it up to teenage angst, but that wasn’t it. I don’t have to dig at all, no less dig deep, to feel the pressure in my chest, the burning in my throat that came from keeping my mouth shut. Having no voice doesn’t make the voice go away. That voice manifests as a burning explosive pressure in the chest. It turns from sadness to anger to rage.

Depression for me is the absence of that rage. It is apathy about everything I know, everyone I love, a dark hole with slick, greasy walls that couldn’t be climbed even if you had the energy. And you don’t have that energy. All the energy that you have goes to being normal, doing normal things that grown ups do, and not ever letting on how bad it really is.

I think about my book, and I drink this wine and I listen to Lucinda Williams. I have my book laid out in a pile of papers, a phrase for each section so that I can straighten it out. I’m fighting apathy.

And today it occurred to me what the problem is. I am terrified to dig as deep as I need to let the voice out that I have spent almost forty years tamping down. My voice, the voice of the book is absent. I have a story, a good story, a decent story, but there’s no voice because I lost it before I knew what it was. My best friend knew that. She never asked and always waited for me to offer up. She knew I was incapable of forming the words. Sometimes you just can’t.

My real voice is loving and caring, it is rageful and angry and rarely anything in between. I’ve been called intense and dramatic and hostile. I’ve been told I’m funny and sarcastic. I’ve been called unemotional and all business, all of this by people that supposedly know me.

And all of it is a cover for the shit I’m scared to touch. I spent the first 17 years of my life waiting to get out so that I could finally be free and have a voice, and after all this time at almost forty, I realize I am stopping me. I have to wonder what else I’m stopping myself from doing because I’ve closed doors to those closets, closets that need a good cleaning, skeletons be damned.

I can’t eat it away. I can’t drink it away. I can’t laugh it away. I can’t sleep it away. I need to write it away.

What I wouldn’t give for a car going seventy down a stretch of road with no street lights and music so loud it scares away the deer.

What scares you?