“An adventure,” I explained to my daughter who was then 4, “is when you get up in the morning and you’re not even sure where you’ll be sleeping that night.”
The darkness of the pre dawn sky suggested that perhaps we hadn’t even finished the night of sleep at hand as we boarded the noisy cargo plane, my daughter clutching her stuffed Elmo and me embracing dreams of the European trek on which my little family had embarked.
My husband and I were making good on a promise we made to each other when I had reluctantly accepted his decision to complete a stint in the military: that we’d keep short, and take advantage of every benefit the controversial move presented. Cut rate education and VA financing for our first home were among the obvious perks we seized. Then we learned that it was possible to score free travel by hitching rides wherever the military happened to be heading—provided you were OK with impromptu schedule changes or a duffel bag as a potential seatmate. Or waking up in a completely different country than the one you thought you were heading toward when the drone of the whining engines lulled you to sleep. I’ll admit that waking up in England when you thought you were heading toward the Black Forest can be jarring. But for us? It wasn’t really a problem. We were on an adventure.
At various points in the intervening years I'm afraid my adventure mindset has morphed into something that more closely resembles my father’s early beliefs about mustard. Yes, that yellow—or sometimes brown—spread ubiquitously present in the common fridge. As a child, my father was convinced that mustard color was an immutable family trait—you were either a brown mustard family, or you were a yellow mustard family, end of story. You may be able to break out of your assigned hue, but only with great difficulty and eventual disappointment. A sort of condiment caste system, if you will.
Which brings me to the predictable little neighborhood of thoughts I’ve been circling in a boring little holding pattern. I’ve come to know the terrain, to believe that the hills and valleys of the landscape define my boundaries. It is here that I understand that I write little things, for small publications because that is my lot. I accept that the only employment in which I can succeed—at which I even want to succeed—is teaching part time art, for small time pay.
But this space in which I’ve been hovering has been declared a No-Fly zone. I can’t stay here. I have to leave. And just like trading in your drab Grey Poupon for a squirt of sunny French’s, I’m tossing some of my standard assumptions and taking a chance on some new flavors.
I’ll be writing more about my adventure in the days to come. I expect this place will serve as a sort of control tower as I navigate to my new destination. I’ll figure out how to get around the unexpected turbulence of my art job ending. And I’ll be figuring out just how far I can go with the book proposal I’m finally getting ready to launch. I might compare it to Seinfeld meeting Jackson Pollock in a humorous memoir. And I think I finally believe it can take off, once it’s fully developed and ready to take flight.
In short, I am approaching the world with an openness I haven’t had in awhile. I don’t really know where I’ll be when I land, but that’s OK. It’s an adventure. And I’m just fine with that. I’d be honored to have you a traveling companion.
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label writing. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
Wednesday, October 07, 2009
One Line Wednesday: The Official Debut
While out the other day on my morning run, I witnessed a hammer wielding man giving his right rear tire a hearty lasagna treatment.
Don’t you just want to read on? Aren’t you wondering what, exactly, constitutes a lasagna treatment and what hammers and tires could possibly have to do with Italian food, anyway?
If this were a typical post, I’d have to give a blow by blow of the video I happened to catch sometime last week, in which an intense man pummeled a frozen lasagna nearly beyond recognition. A normal post would, likewise, require a description of the local tool toting gentleman and his teetering tire. Most tediously, an ordinary post would call upon me to tie the two vignettes together with some witty wisdom or insightful observations about life.
But not today. Not on One Line Wednesday. No, on One Line Wednesday, vagueness, brevity, and misdirection are the order of the day. One Line Wednesday is a simple celebration of the single good line. No pressure of further explanation. No need to worry if your words are “going anywhere.” None of the tricky transitions or epic endings one might expect in traditional prose.
Here’s the lowdown: Each week, I’ll get things started with the single best line I’ve managed to craft in the intervening seven days –maybe I’ll include the story behind it, but I likely won’t, what with it being One Line Wednesday, and all. Each week there’ll also be one of those cool Mr. Linky widgits that you see below...yeah, there it is, at the very bottom. Just give it a little click, and we'll hope it works :) That’s where you leave a link to your one line post (if you’re an overachiever, feel free to include the story behind your line, but that’s never necessary). Your line can be about anything, as clear or cryptic as you’d like, and who knows—maybe even be true!
If you have no blog, feel free to participate by just commenting as you would for a normal post. If you do have a blog, however, please mention that you are participating in One Line Wednesday, and add a hyperlink to this post. Feel free, also, to copy the official One Line Wednesday image at the opening of this post to illustrate yours, but that’s optional.
But don’t forget the most important thing—have a little low stress fun with the written word. I can’t wait to see what everyone comes up with!
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
One Line Wednesdays
Today I had a botched meet-up with a Dirty Chai, ran long and hard, and eventually turned myself in at the police station for fingerprinting.
Which may lead you to believe that it’s been a notable day, until I tell you that the events didn’t occur quite in that order and that the Dirty Chai was just a wonderful brew on which I missed out at my local coffee house, the run was just my morning loop around the neighborhood (which I’ll typically file underlong and hard) and that the fingerprinting was just the last of a tedious list of routine in-processing items required by my employer. But it kind of sounded pretty intense there for a moment, didn’t it?
The opening line came to me early on, and it cheered me considerably to be able to think about my average day in such epic terms. My first thought was that I might finally be ready to get on Twitter, a social networking feat of which I’ve largely considered myself incapable due to the required brevity. I find the prospect of consistently expressing my thoughts in an engaging manner using no more than 140 characters frankly intimidating. Because, let’s face it, no one really wants to read tweets about actual, real-time events in the spirit of: “teaching yellow and blue makes green today!’ or “fridge empty—looks like pasta for dinner again!” But I think it would be a relief, every so often, to be able to craft a good line and put it out there without the pressure of further explanation a good blog post requires. Problem is, I figure I’m good for about one of those a week, not the constant stream effective tweeting would require.
Which got me to thinking that it might be fun to host “One Line Wednesdays” here at Running With Letters. I see it working kind of like this: I’ll get us started with a post each Wednesday with the single best line I’ve managed to craft in the intervening seven days –maybe I’ll include the story behind it, but I likely won’t, what with it being One Line Wednesday, and all. I’ll also include one of those cool Mr. Linky widgits that will let you leave a link to your one line post of the week (where you can include the story behind your line, or not—you choose!) Your line can be about anything, as clear or cryptic as you’d like, and who knows—maybe even be true! I may as well just put it out there that I’m not-so-secretly hoping that by setting the bar sort of low-ish, at a single line, I might be able to get my sister, husband, and maybe even Jen blogging again, but that may be too much to expect. It would also just make my week if a whole lot of other bloggers got into the fun and joined us!
In the meantime, keep a pencil and paper handy and jot down that witty one liner that pops into your head this week, post it to your blog on Wednesday, and zip back over here with your link. What do you think? Are you in?
Which may lead you to believe that it’s been a notable day, until I tell you that the events didn’t occur quite in that order and that the Dirty Chai was just a wonderful brew on which I missed out at my local coffee house, the run was just my morning loop around the neighborhood (which I’ll typically file underlong and hard) and that the fingerprinting was just the last of a tedious list of routine in-processing items required by my employer. But it kind of sounded pretty intense there for a moment, didn’t it?
The opening line came to me early on, and it cheered me considerably to be able to think about my average day in such epic terms. My first thought was that I might finally be ready to get on Twitter, a social networking feat of which I’ve largely considered myself incapable due to the required brevity. I find the prospect of consistently expressing my thoughts in an engaging manner using no more than 140 characters frankly intimidating. Because, let’s face it, no one really wants to read tweets about actual, real-time events in the spirit of: “teaching yellow and blue makes green today!’ or “fridge empty—looks like pasta for dinner again!” But I think it would be a relief, every so often, to be able to craft a good line and put it out there without the pressure of further explanation a good blog post requires. Problem is, I figure I’m good for about one of those a week, not the constant stream effective tweeting would require.
Which got me to thinking that it might be fun to host “One Line Wednesdays” here at Running With Letters. I see it working kind of like this: I’ll get us started with a post each Wednesday with the single best line I’ve managed to craft in the intervening seven days –maybe I’ll include the story behind it, but I likely won’t, what with it being One Line Wednesday, and all. I’ll also include one of those cool Mr. Linky widgits that will let you leave a link to your one line post of the week (where you can include the story behind your line, or not—you choose!) Your line can be about anything, as clear or cryptic as you’d like, and who knows—maybe even be true! I may as well just put it out there that I’m not-so-secretly hoping that by setting the bar sort of low-ish, at a single line, I might be able to get my sister, husband, and maybe even Jen blogging again, but that may be too much to expect. It would also just make my week if a whole lot of other bloggers got into the fun and joined us!
In the meantime, keep a pencil and paper handy and jot down that witty one liner that pops into your head this week, post it to your blog on Wednesday, and zip back over here with your link. What do you think? Are you in?
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
Not On the Record and Got Off the Press
“Putting it that way makes me sound like a septuagenarian,” I said to my sister, upon citing random fear of rain among possible reasons not to travel.
“Well, even my mother-in-law doesn’t make decisions like that," my sister countered. “She always says life is for living.”
In an effort to salvage a couple of days of fun and togetherness dubbed Sister Camp--a moniker we may or may not have ripped from my friend Jen-—my sister was trying to sell me on a reasonably complicated last ditch measure culminating in a four hour plus solo jaunt across two states. At the risk of damaging my reputation as an adventurer, I find it necessary to admit that I am not especially keen on driving. I’ll pretty much go anywhere, anytime, but I’d just as soon leave the driving to others. I have no sense of direction, for one thing—isn’t north always straight ahead?—and rely heavily on landmark data, a situation making post-sundown driving a nightmare. And did I mention my feelings on rain?
“Well,” my sister’s voice lost a degree of confidence, “Maybe that’s not exactly what she said, but I’m sure it’s her philosophy.” My sister disappeared from the conversation to conference with her mother-in-law who, coincidentally, happened to be both a septuagenarian and in the room. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mom, that life is for living?”
I could hear a lot of murmuring on the other end of the line as my sister’s MIL consulted with assembled advisers. “It depends what you’re living for,” she said, carefully.
“For?” my sister queried.
“Yes, life is worth living if it’s for the right things,” came the guarded reply.
“Not worth living, Mom, for living,” my sister said. More murmuring ensured.
“What’s this for?” MIL halted the conversation to address my sister.
“My sister might not come because she doesn’t know if it will rain next week, and I told her that life is for living and she should come. Do you not agree with me?”
The room exploded in laughter. “I thought she was quoting me for a book,” MIL replied. “Of course she should come, don’t be silly.”
“Sister, she agrees wholeheartedly with me,” my sister triumphed. “She just thought you were writing about her, and wanted to make sure she was properly portrayed.”
“Tell her I wasn’t writing anything before, but she may have just written herself into a blog post.”
“Mom, you’re going to be on the internet,” my sister called to her MIL. “And as far as you, Sister, you can come to Sister Camp or you can draw the curtains, grab your spectacles, and read the newspaper. Start with the obituaries.”
I have, subsequently, been enrolled at Sister Camp for the past five days. I travel home tomorrow. At last report, the forecast called for storms, but the internet has been on the blink so I may not be able to verify. There are absolutelt no newspapers at Sister Camp.
“Well, even my mother-in-law doesn’t make decisions like that," my sister countered. “She always says life is for living.”
In an effort to salvage a couple of days of fun and togetherness dubbed Sister Camp--a moniker we may or may not have ripped from my friend Jen-—my sister was trying to sell me on a reasonably complicated last ditch measure culminating in a four hour plus solo jaunt across two states. At the risk of damaging my reputation as an adventurer, I find it necessary to admit that I am not especially keen on driving. I’ll pretty much go anywhere, anytime, but I’d just as soon leave the driving to others. I have no sense of direction, for one thing—isn’t north always straight ahead?—and rely heavily on landmark data, a situation making post-sundown driving a nightmare. And did I mention my feelings on rain?
“Well,” my sister’s voice lost a degree of confidence, “Maybe that’s not exactly what she said, but I’m sure it’s her philosophy.” My sister disappeared from the conversation to conference with her mother-in-law who, coincidentally, happened to be both a septuagenarian and in the room. “Wouldn’t you agree, Mom, that life is for living?”
I could hear a lot of murmuring on the other end of the line as my sister’s MIL consulted with assembled advisers. “It depends what you’re living for,” she said, carefully.
“For?” my sister queried.
“Yes, life is worth living if it’s for the right things,” came the guarded reply.
“Not worth living, Mom, for living,” my sister said. More murmuring ensured.
“What’s this for?” MIL halted the conversation to address my sister.
“My sister might not come because she doesn’t know if it will rain next week, and I told her that life is for living and she should come. Do you not agree with me?”
The room exploded in laughter. “I thought she was quoting me for a book,” MIL replied. “Of course she should come, don’t be silly.”
“Sister, she agrees wholeheartedly with me,” my sister triumphed. “She just thought you were writing about her, and wanted to make sure she was properly portrayed.”
“Tell her I wasn’t writing anything before, but she may have just written herself into a blog post.”
“Mom, you’re going to be on the internet,” my sister called to her MIL. “And as far as you, Sister, you can come to Sister Camp or you can draw the curtains, grab your spectacles, and read the newspaper. Start with the obituaries.”
I have, subsequently, been enrolled at Sister Camp for the past five days. I travel home tomorrow. At last report, the forecast called for storms, but the internet has been on the blink so I may not be able to verify. There are absolutelt no newspapers at Sister Camp.
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Summing it Up
A post detailing everything I know about math would be a very brief read. Like most who can boast a post-5th grade education, I’m pretty comfortable with the Please Excuse My Dear Aunt Sally acronym by which we recall the proper order of mathematical operations. I’ve memorized the oft-recited and apparently key formula, y=mx+b, although I wouldn’t know how to practically apply this knowledge if my life depended on it. And we would be nearing the end of this post if I did not also know that an equation requires harmony on both sides before it is balanced.I’ve acknowledged several times on this blog my realization that I need both teaching and writing in my life to feel professionally complete. I’ve noted my hopes to resolve the teaching side of my professional equation with a part time gig as an art teacher. I am pleased to say that the happy conclusion to last week’s interview posts is that I have landed the ideal art teaching job. I will be teaching pre-K-5th graders two days a week in a totally outfitted art room, complete with storage room, sink, and supplies, a conclusion that happily resolves one side of my employment equation.
But, as previously noted, a half calculation does not a solution make. Even in aftermath of factoring in the exponential work load that goes along with being an August hire, my thoughts return in a repeating pattern to the unresolved side of my equation. Mathematically speaking, balance will only result from achieving an equally positive result in my writing endeavors, and I find myself divided on where to best focus my efforts. Continue my YA series? Return to reporting? Explore new markets? The possibilities are infinite, but I can’t assume the results will be equivalent.
So the computation must continue. Fortunately, I think I can figure this one out without protractors, graph paper, or a calculator, although I suspect I may still be tapping my pencil in frustration until I can scratch out a viable product.
Saturday, July 04, 2009
Post Post Postscript
It took me four days, but once again I’ve learned that there are reasons why I’ve established certain guidelines for general operation.
I don’t, for instance, eat chocolate in the car, because every time I do—no matter how cold the temperature or careful the consumption—I end up with brown stains in unfortunate places.
I never leave my camera bag open on a table or counter top, because I know the first time I do, one of my five furry creatures will manage to get a paw or a snout tangled in the handle and whatever lenses or gadgets happen to be in the bag will take a hard downward tumble.
After the unpleasant experience of arriving at a remote travel destination only to discover that my glasses case contained nothing but air, I’ve adopted the maxim my sister promotes to her bespectacled brood: “on your face, or in the case.”
And this morning—a full four days after my last post—I remembered why I don’t post at night. We’re all familiar with the disappointment of finding the perfect comeback or clever quip hours or days after it would have been witty. I get that feeling anew every time I post at night. I’ll wake up in the morning with the word I struggled to find the night before just hanging out in my head. The connecting link between two thoughts that I couldn’t quite articulate the night before suddenly appears obvious. Embarrassed, I’ll hop out of bed, hoping I can change the offending prose with my readers none the wiser—only to find a comment or two. I’ll still make the change—but now I know that members of my readership experienced draft-quality copy—all because I didn’t take advantage of the delay feature we’re denied in real –time communication, but should use in full online. The opportunity to sleep on your one-liners and retorts—what a deal! We’d all be such witty people if it were real life.
I, of course, have given up on real-life wit and have tossed all of my metaphorical eggs in a single online shopping cart, so you’d think I’d take full advantage of the chance at a well-oiled delivery. But no, I put Monday’s post to bed with a snoozer of an ending simply because I was too tired to craft a real eye-popper.
I didn’t think about the post again until this morning, when I woke up with the post’s current and rightful ending just hanging out just below the surface of my consciousness, where I undoubtedly would have found it Tuesday morning, if I patiently reserved posting.
Having resolved the issues with my prior post (check out the better ending!), my concern now turns to the one you’re currently reading. I began it on Friday, but have just realized I typed straight though midnight into Saturday. I’m thinking of throwing caution to the wind and sending it off into cyberspace. Oh, I know if I do, I risk ending up with egg on my face when I read it later on, which would leave me just one indiscretion away from having chocolate on the back of my khakis as well. At that point, it’s anyone’s guess what kind of rebuttal you might find here by Wednesday.
I don’t, for instance, eat chocolate in the car, because every time I do—no matter how cold the temperature or careful the consumption—I end up with brown stains in unfortunate places.
I never leave my camera bag open on a table or counter top, because I know the first time I do, one of my five furry creatures will manage to get a paw or a snout tangled in the handle and whatever lenses or gadgets happen to be in the bag will take a hard downward tumble.
After the unpleasant experience of arriving at a remote travel destination only to discover that my glasses case contained nothing but air, I’ve adopted the maxim my sister promotes to her bespectacled brood: “on your face, or in the case.”
And this morning—a full four days after my last post—I remembered why I don’t post at night. We’re all familiar with the disappointment of finding the perfect comeback or clever quip hours or days after it would have been witty. I get that feeling anew every time I post at night. I’ll wake up in the morning with the word I struggled to find the night before just hanging out in my head. The connecting link between two thoughts that I couldn’t quite articulate the night before suddenly appears obvious. Embarrassed, I’ll hop out of bed, hoping I can change the offending prose with my readers none the wiser—only to find a comment or two. I’ll still make the change—but now I know that members of my readership experienced draft-quality copy—all because I didn’t take advantage of the delay feature we’re denied in real –time communication, but should use in full online. The opportunity to sleep on your one-liners and retorts—what a deal! We’d all be such witty people if it were real life.
I, of course, have given up on real-life wit and have tossed all of my metaphorical eggs in a single online shopping cart, so you’d think I’d take full advantage of the chance at a well-oiled delivery. But no, I put Monday’s post to bed with a snoozer of an ending simply because I was too tired to craft a real eye-popper.
I didn’t think about the post again until this morning, when I woke up with the post’s current and rightful ending just hanging out just below the surface of my consciousness, where I undoubtedly would have found it Tuesday morning, if I patiently reserved posting.
Having resolved the issues with my prior post (check out the better ending!), my concern now turns to the one you’re currently reading. I began it on Friday, but have just realized I typed straight though midnight into Saturday. I’m thinking of throwing caution to the wind and sending it off into cyberspace. Oh, I know if I do, I risk ending up with egg on my face when I read it later on, which would leave me just one indiscretion away from having chocolate on the back of my khakis as well. At that point, it’s anyone’s guess what kind of rebuttal you might find here by Wednesday.
Saturday, June 13, 2009
A Little Like Limbo
The dilemma here at Running With Letters for the past couple weeks has been whether or not to lower the bar for the sake of a new post.
I am of the mindset that blog posts should be reasonably well-crafted and at least semi-polished, sort of like pottery with a rustic patina. Of late, I haven’t had time for witty commentary. Writing prose that reads breezily and appears effortless is really a laborious exercise in illusion.
So I’ve let the cobwebs begin to accumulate—a decision that comes with a set of consequences perhaps more lethal to the would-be up-and-coming blogger than slightly off-kilter copy: silence. Whisper-low hit counts, the same screen echoing two-week old commentary. Not good.
Which brings us, real-time, to the current post: hardly groundbreaking, but yet functional; a utilitarian message just to say I’m alive, and that I can still string a few sentences together. But sometimes functional and utilitarian is all you’ve got—and I’m a great believer in working in the tangible medium of the messy present. Even if it is a little rough around the edges.
In Other News:
T-5 days until I drink my morning coffee from the alumni mug.
I’m officially moving the much-desired Art Job to reside among the ranks of Things That Would Have Been Nice, rendering my status as Unemployed and Without Prospects.
Hypochondria is currently at bay, but hovering slightly beneath the surface
I secured my press credentials, and will be covering Creation East June 24-27. I claimed in my official paperwork that I “believe I can reasonably expect to place about half a dozen articles” based on this year’s press conferences. Fulfilling this ambition will require a significant hoisting of said bar to accommodate the raising of my game.
I am of the mindset that blog posts should be reasonably well-crafted and at least semi-polished, sort of like pottery with a rustic patina. Of late, I haven’t had time for witty commentary. Writing prose that reads breezily and appears effortless is really a laborious exercise in illusion.
So I’ve let the cobwebs begin to accumulate—a decision that comes with a set of consequences perhaps more lethal to the would-be up-and-coming blogger than slightly off-kilter copy: silence. Whisper-low hit counts, the same screen echoing two-week old commentary. Not good.
Which brings us, real-time, to the current post: hardly groundbreaking, but yet functional; a utilitarian message just to say I’m alive, and that I can still string a few sentences together. But sometimes functional and utilitarian is all you’ve got—and I’m a great believer in working in the tangible medium of the messy present. Even if it is a little rough around the edges.
In Other News:
T-5 days until I drink my morning coffee from the alumni mug.
I’m officially moving the much-desired Art Job to reside among the ranks of Things That Would Have Been Nice, rendering my status as Unemployed and Without Prospects.
Hypochondria is currently at bay, but hovering slightly beneath the surface
I secured my press credentials, and will be covering Creation East June 24-27. I claimed in my official paperwork that I “believe I can reasonably expect to place about half a dozen articles” based on this year’s press conferences. Fulfilling this ambition will require a significant hoisting of said bar to accommodate the raising of my game.
Friday, March 20, 2009
Just Another Cake-on-the-Head Day; or Flashback Fridays, Week 3
The following piece was woven together from 2 similarly-themed articles than ran in the religion column I used to write for the Daily Press. I plan to include some incarnation of the following in my upcoming book.
It was not a cake a rookie should have ever attempted, that much was clear. Three made from scratch layers sandwiching mounds of freshly whipped filling and covered in frosting hand whisked over ice, it required seventeen different ingredients, an intimidating array of kitchen appliances, and, as the recipe title ironically indicated, a “perfect” result.
In a tactical error, I had decided to bake my daughter’s first birthday cake in the kitchen of my grandfather, the master chef, as we were in the middle of a move and I didn’t have any of the aforementioned fancy gadgets, anyway.
The trouble started while layers one, two, and three were in the cooling stages and I began to whip the filling. It was a warm day, and the cream was a bit touchy. I managed to curdle the first two attempts, and I believe that the third carton of heavy cream that the corner market sold me was probably their last. Grandfather, the master chef, desperately wanted to get involved. I desperately wanted to do it myself. My grandfather dissolved into a stream of rapid-fire Italian. I muddled on, wondering how Perfect Chocolate Cake had gone so horribly wrong.
It’s hard to pin down exactly how it happened. It may have had something to do with the cream, but I think more likely it was the icing. A miscalculated gesture brought the entire process to a screeching halt as one of the cooling layers tumbled from the counter and on top of my daughter’s head.
Metaphorically speaking, cake-on-the-head days are pretty much status quo. It’s the chaos in which we spend the majority of our lives: the deadlines, the unfinished projects, the clutter, what we have to do, the things that didn’t turn out the way we expected, all that might turn out later.
We’re working toward some sense of accomplishment and we end up surrounded by the flotsam of unread memos, looming deadlines, the pressure of balancing work and family, and a sneaking suspicion that we’re further from our dreams than we were just yesterday.
The truth is we all want to rise to the top of whatever heap in which we’ve found ourselves. We’re all looking for the fast track out of the trenches.
Looking for the short cut that would deliver my manuscripts from the slush pile to to polished desk tops in the Big Apple, I turned to the successful format of Fox's American Idol for inspiration. Wondering if the successful format of the show could do for writers what it has for music industry hopefuls, I hatched the idea for a spin-off I like to call American Author. A panel including blockbuster authors Dean Koontz and David Baldacci along with a representative from a large New York publishing house would preside as budding wordsmiths make weekly forays into various literary genres. Horror week with Stephen King. Legal thrillers with John Grisham. Romance novellas with Danielle Steele.
I thought the idea was entirely original until I learned about the show my father created called American Programmer. Here, Bill Gates and a panel of high-ranking Microsoft representatives critique the work of a bespectacled cast of young hackers...
Face it, twelve kids or not, real life easily looks more like a scene from Cheaper By The Dozen than anything commanding an agent and a six-figure contract. Too much of our time is spent anticipating the future to have a real strategy for today. We go through the day treading water, convinced that there's an amazing utopia somewhere at the end of a long to-do list--if we can stay afloat to get there. Life spirals into a scene from the pilot of American Programmer: a series of if/then statements: if I can get through this, this and this, then I’ll be able to do something important.
If you’re anything like me, the list of stuff to “get through” just keeps growing. We’re so busy striving for Perfect Chocolate Cake, we forget the joy of the baking process: the nibbled chocolate chunks, the snitched sugar, the beaters waiting to be licked clean.
Life, then, must not be the the end result of the recipe. It must be found on the list of ingredients—in each and every item. Every day the most incredible things pass right through our lives, and too often we don’t recognize their significance until they live only in our memories. Magic moments fly by unannounced. Life just keeps moving, carrying with it the people and opportunities that inhabit our todays. I am reminded of this fact every time I look at my beautiful daughter, who is no longer a baby with cake on her head, or when I feel a pang of longing for my Grandfather, who is in heaven. Babies and grandfathers, and other precious ingredients in life, are to be savored for their role in each today with which we are we are blessed.
Most days aren’t “Perfect Chocolate Cake.” They’re just crumbs from an exotic recipe concocted by The Master Chef. And each one is good.
It was not a cake a rookie should have ever attempted, that much was clear. Three made from scratch layers sandwiching mounds of freshly whipped filling and covered in frosting hand whisked over ice, it required seventeen different ingredients, an intimidating array of kitchen appliances, and, as the recipe title ironically indicated, a “perfect” result.
In a tactical error, I had decided to bake my daughter’s first birthday cake in the kitchen of my grandfather, the master chef, as we were in the middle of a move and I didn’t have any of the aforementioned fancy gadgets, anyway.
The trouble started while layers one, two, and three were in the cooling stages and I began to whip the filling. It was a warm day, and the cream was a bit touchy. I managed to curdle the first two attempts, and I believe that the third carton of heavy cream that the corner market sold me was probably their last. Grandfather, the master chef, desperately wanted to get involved. I desperately wanted to do it myself. My grandfather dissolved into a stream of rapid-fire Italian. I muddled on, wondering how Perfect Chocolate Cake had gone so horribly wrong.
It’s hard to pin down exactly how it happened. It may have had something to do with the cream, but I think more likely it was the icing. A miscalculated gesture brought the entire process to a screeching halt as one of the cooling layers tumbled from the counter and on top of my daughter’s head.
Metaphorically speaking, cake-on-the-head days are pretty much status quo. It’s the chaos in which we spend the majority of our lives: the deadlines, the unfinished projects, the clutter, what we have to do, the things that didn’t turn out the way we expected, all that might turn out later.
We’re working toward some sense of accomplishment and we end up surrounded by the flotsam of unread memos, looming deadlines, the pressure of balancing work and family, and a sneaking suspicion that we’re further from our dreams than we were just yesterday.
The truth is we all want to rise to the top of whatever heap in which we’ve found ourselves. We’re all looking for the fast track out of the trenches.
Looking for the short cut that would deliver my manuscripts from the slush pile to to polished desk tops in the Big Apple, I turned to the successful format of Fox's American Idol for inspiration. Wondering if the successful format of the show could do for writers what it has for music industry hopefuls, I hatched the idea for a spin-off I like to call American Author. A panel including blockbuster authors Dean Koontz and David Baldacci along with a representative from a large New York publishing house would preside as budding wordsmiths make weekly forays into various literary genres. Horror week with Stephen King. Legal thrillers with John Grisham. Romance novellas with Danielle Steele.
I thought the idea was entirely original until I learned about the show my father created called American Programmer. Here, Bill Gates and a panel of high-ranking Microsoft representatives critique the work of a bespectacled cast of young hackers...
Face it, twelve kids or not, real life easily looks more like a scene from Cheaper By The Dozen than anything commanding an agent and a six-figure contract. Too much of our time is spent anticipating the future to have a real strategy for today. We go through the day treading water, convinced that there's an amazing utopia somewhere at the end of a long to-do list--if we can stay afloat to get there. Life spirals into a scene from the pilot of American Programmer: a series of if/then statements: if I can get through this, this and this, then I’ll be able to do something important.
If you’re anything like me, the list of stuff to “get through” just keeps growing. We’re so busy striving for Perfect Chocolate Cake, we forget the joy of the baking process: the nibbled chocolate chunks, the snitched sugar, the beaters waiting to be licked clean.
Life, then, must not be the the end result of the recipe. It must be found on the list of ingredients—in each and every item. Every day the most incredible things pass right through our lives, and too often we don’t recognize their significance until they live only in our memories. Magic moments fly by unannounced. Life just keeps moving, carrying with it the people and opportunities that inhabit our todays. I am reminded of this fact every time I look at my beautiful daughter, who is no longer a baby with cake on her head, or when I feel a pang of longing for my Grandfather, who is in heaven. Babies and grandfathers, and other precious ingredients in life, are to be savored for their role in each today with which we are we are blessed.
Most days aren’t “Perfect Chocolate Cake.” They’re just crumbs from an exotic recipe concocted by The Master Chef. And each one is good.
Friday, March 13, 2009
Like Cheese and Wine; or Flashback Fridays, Week 2
Today's Flashback Friday post is a much-maligned piece I originally wrote as a contest entry. My hopes for a contest win, however, were crushed by a snarky judge who suggested the article would be truer to its theme if it were to "simply dissolve into nonsense" at its conclusion. Bouncing back from the setback, I retooled the piece as an introductory chapter for the aforementioned abandoned book project I plan to resurrect upon graduation.
Like Cheese and Wine
From an early age, I understood the second law of Thermodynamics. I may not have known it by that name, but I did notice that my music would last longer if I dubbed my record albums onto cassette, and even then, the ones I liked most would need to be taped again after the cassette succumbed to repeated rewinds. I noticed that Barbie’s best gowns would become frayed and wrinkled and pop their seams, until eventually they became castoffs for the Cinderella scenes. I noticed that even my most fantastic cardboard forts could not withstand more than three days of serious play or a single cloudburst.
It wasn’t long before I began to apply my dire observations of entropy to life itself. Hit a certain age, somewhere around thirty by all appearances, and it seems people begin to buckle under repeated use. Creases form, seams pop, and after a long day at work, some folks lack the fortitude to withstand any recreation at all. A cloudburst called time seemed destined to drown the spirit of youth. As I catapulted into my thirties with little more than a windblown umbrella of optimism to shield me from the forecasted deluge, my grandfather and my aged dog departed in the same year, passing me a torch that leaves me completely at odds with Newton.
As any grade school science text will tell you, Newton’s entropy promises nothing short of a total downward spiral. The Second Law confidently assures us that all things eventually return to baseline, leaving no impression, creating no change. Confronting my third decade, I was running scared from Newton and his empirical absolutes. Left to reflect on two radically different lives that each touched mine in seemingly incomparable ways, I discovered common denominator. Within the lives of my grandfather and my pet, I found an affront to Newton, a rejection of his Second Law, and a call to live my story rather than count its pages.
An American-born son of Italian immigrants, my grandfather was a high spirited boy of mischief, who dipped pigtails into inkwells and played pranks along with his trusty steed, Mr. Don, who was both his ride to school and his best friend. As a young newlywed, he cooked his way through World War II on a Navy ship, and when the war ended, he helped his father run the family spinning mill. I’ll never know if his adventurous tales peopled with shady Italian businessmen and ancestors with names like Uncle Icy were more family history or product of his well-honed affinity for spinning another type of yarn.
What I do know is that faster, quicker, sooner were the words by which my grandfather worked and lived. The mill was typically abuzz with excitement as Gramps single-handedly battled stray shipments, overdue accounts, or botched dye lots with an army’s arsenal. His visits to our house were frequent, brief, and sudden in nature. He’d blow through the front door, stir things up a bit with guessing games, cash prizes, and a few rash promises about purchasing ponies, then jingle his pocket change to signal his imminent departure.
Trips to the movies followed a strict blueprint. Waiting—either in line or in theatrical suspense—was not an option. We’d arrive at the theater while our chosen feature was already in progress, secure tickets for the next screening and then proceed directly into the darkened theater to view the final twenty minutes of the movie. After a brief intermission while the crowd and the reel changed, we’d watch the beginning straight though to the first familiar image that flashed across the screen. At that point the soundtrack would invariably shift to the subtle jingling of pocket change and we’d slip out the back. Sure, we had to piece the story together like a patchwork quilt on the way home, but we avoided the crowds.
With Gramps, everything was done both in bulk and with gusto. If a little was good, then a lot was far better. Food in general and whipped cream in particular best illustrated this point. A particularly memorable stomachache in the late seventies was traced to a piece of cake slightly smaller than a breadbox and topped off with a quart or two of cream. He bought in gross, cooked in surplus, and shared in abundance. A local food distributor promoted him to caterer status and gave him a corporate account. To this day, after visits with my grandmother I still return home with several of his industrial sized cans of tomatoes. Never mind the can is four times the size that my family of four really needs—in their excess, the tomatoes are a reminder of the largeness of my grandfather’s generous heart.
A man of adventure, travel, and action, Gramps would leave for his Florida house or a western dude ranch at the mere mention of snow. Things would quiet down a bit. My father needed the winter months to repair relations with the folks at the Dye Works. At home, we kept busy with the ill-behaved ponies Gramps purchased before one of his departures.
As he grew older, doctors worked to stay one step ahead of his failing heart. His adventures changed. Considering his history, I can do nothing but marvel at the things that captured his focus in his later years. Canvases transformed by color and life with scores of brushes and dozens of techniques. Carved furniture protected by coats of varnish totaling in the double digits and each needing a full day to dry. Carefully strung beadwork.
When he could no longer make car trips west to visit his beloved dude ranches, he learned to surf there instead. The Internet took him where he could no longer drive, and he took his zest for life into those journeys as well. An entire forest was sacrificed as he began a campaign to print out every page of every website west of the Mississippi. I smile now at the card on my dresser, reminding me of the trees that were planted in a great western forest, a touching memorial from a dear friend who had no way of knowing the irony of the tribute. In his honor, may they grow tall, strong—and quickly.
In his later years, Gramps learned to put his energies into fighting only chosen battles. He forgave old grievances and let go of past hurts. I think even the Dye Works received a full pardon. Gramps mellowed as maturity gave him the courage to expand and adapt his adventures.
Disease weakens muscle, but time strengthens the spirit.
Surprisingly, my pet’s life followed a similar pattern. An abandoned husky wandering busy streets, Kelly was a high spirited dog of mischief, boasting a long rap sheet on any one of her carefree days of puppyhood. She’d snatched sandwiches from the hands of innocent children. She chased mailmen. She chewed furniture and ate college textbooks. One romp of reckless abandon through my parent’s living room was mistaken for a burglary and the police were nearly summoned.
Like other dogs with a penchant for trouble, Kelly was expected to bide her time in a crate while the family was away. Mistress of Escape, Kelly chose instead to baffle us with her Houdini-like ability to elude confinement. We’d come home to find her crate completely intact while she lounged on some forbidden piece of furniture.
Thoroughly stubborn, Kelly was quite possibly Italian also, preferring to sup in the ancient Roman tradition of reclining on something soft. She’d transfer her meals in large mouthfuls, scatter the pieces across her favorite carpet and delicately pluck and consume each savory morsel without so much as raising her head. Today, stray dog food bits scattered by her offspring, two ill-mannered, genetically improbable Labradors, remind me that some things aren’t meant to be changed.
A dog of intellect, she reveled in new experiences. An unfamiliar walking route, visitors, car trips: things needed to be barked at, sniffed, investigated. As a pup, those traits amused and at times frustrated me. She required supervision, guidance, and discipline.
When she surprised us with a litter of labs halfway through her ninth year, her history made us fear that she would be a disastrous mother. Despite the one groggy moment when she got up after her emergency C-section and scattered her formerly nursing pups across the bathroom floor, she was a great mom.
Her life took on new dimensions as she became an old dog rediscovering the thrill of senseless puppy play. When a new walking route took us to the beach, she found out that the ocean is really a big game of tag, and that the best romps were ones that ended with sand and sea salt between her paw pads.
Maturity transformed my furry menace into a perfect companion. She wanted my company through thunderstorms, reveled in long brushings, and wedged herself in the doorframe to prevent me from leaving her behind when it was time to pick up the children each afternoon. But I didn’t want to leave her, anyway. She had mellowed. Time with her was pure pleasure. Even as veterinarians worked to stay one step ahead of the deterioration of her health in her advancing age, nothing could lift her spirits as high as an adventure. Our last years together are the ones I treasure most and have mourned the hardest.
Years wear the body, but experience makes us whole.
Learn new skills. Discover new games. Extend forbearance. The best times are together times. Grow. Mature. Improve. These are the lessons embodied in the stories of two adventurous souls who taught me that time is to be cherished, not feared. Their legacy is mine now, to nurture as my own story refines.
A high-spirited girl, familiar with mischief, I choose to remain at odds with Sir Isaac as the chapters of my life unfold. Wrinkles will mark the pages where rough edges have been softened. Wear and tear will tell of lessons learned and challenges conquered. I need not fear the evidence time will etch on my body, I must, instead, choreograph its signature on my soul.
It may seem tempting to buy into Newton’s law. One look in the mirror may convince you to accept the notion that the creases, wrinkles, and popped seams revealed therein are the grim but inevitable work of entropy. If you’ve read the right fairy tales, though, you already know that mirrors don’t always tell the truth. Science books don’t either.
Like Cheese and Wine
From an early age, I understood the second law of Thermodynamics. I may not have known it by that name, but I did notice that my music would last longer if I dubbed my record albums onto cassette, and even then, the ones I liked most would need to be taped again after the cassette succumbed to repeated rewinds. I noticed that Barbie’s best gowns would become frayed and wrinkled and pop their seams, until eventually they became castoffs for the Cinderella scenes. I noticed that even my most fantastic cardboard forts could not withstand more than three days of serious play or a single cloudburst.
It wasn’t long before I began to apply my dire observations of entropy to life itself. Hit a certain age, somewhere around thirty by all appearances, and it seems people begin to buckle under repeated use. Creases form, seams pop, and after a long day at work, some folks lack the fortitude to withstand any recreation at all. A cloudburst called time seemed destined to drown the spirit of youth. As I catapulted into my thirties with little more than a windblown umbrella of optimism to shield me from the forecasted deluge, my grandfather and my aged dog departed in the same year, passing me a torch that leaves me completely at odds with Newton.
As any grade school science text will tell you, Newton’s entropy promises nothing short of a total downward spiral. The Second Law confidently assures us that all things eventually return to baseline, leaving no impression, creating no change. Confronting my third decade, I was running scared from Newton and his empirical absolutes. Left to reflect on two radically different lives that each touched mine in seemingly incomparable ways, I discovered common denominator. Within the lives of my grandfather and my pet, I found an affront to Newton, a rejection of his Second Law, and a call to live my story rather than count its pages.
An American-born son of Italian immigrants, my grandfather was a high spirited boy of mischief, who dipped pigtails into inkwells and played pranks along with his trusty steed, Mr. Don, who was both his ride to school and his best friend. As a young newlywed, he cooked his way through World War II on a Navy ship, and when the war ended, he helped his father run the family spinning mill. I’ll never know if his adventurous tales peopled with shady Italian businessmen and ancestors with names like Uncle Icy were more family history or product of his well-honed affinity for spinning another type of yarn.
What I do know is that faster, quicker, sooner were the words by which my grandfather worked and lived. The mill was typically abuzz with excitement as Gramps single-handedly battled stray shipments, overdue accounts, or botched dye lots with an army’s arsenal. His visits to our house were frequent, brief, and sudden in nature. He’d blow through the front door, stir things up a bit with guessing games, cash prizes, and a few rash promises about purchasing ponies, then jingle his pocket change to signal his imminent departure.
Trips to the movies followed a strict blueprint. Waiting—either in line or in theatrical suspense—was not an option. We’d arrive at the theater while our chosen feature was already in progress, secure tickets for the next screening and then proceed directly into the darkened theater to view the final twenty minutes of the movie. After a brief intermission while the crowd and the reel changed, we’d watch the beginning straight though to the first familiar image that flashed across the screen. At that point the soundtrack would invariably shift to the subtle jingling of pocket change and we’d slip out the back. Sure, we had to piece the story together like a patchwork quilt on the way home, but we avoided the crowds.
With Gramps, everything was done both in bulk and with gusto. If a little was good, then a lot was far better. Food in general and whipped cream in particular best illustrated this point. A particularly memorable stomachache in the late seventies was traced to a piece of cake slightly smaller than a breadbox and topped off with a quart or two of cream. He bought in gross, cooked in surplus, and shared in abundance. A local food distributor promoted him to caterer status and gave him a corporate account. To this day, after visits with my grandmother I still return home with several of his industrial sized cans of tomatoes. Never mind the can is four times the size that my family of four really needs—in their excess, the tomatoes are a reminder of the largeness of my grandfather’s generous heart.
A man of adventure, travel, and action, Gramps would leave for his Florida house or a western dude ranch at the mere mention of snow. Things would quiet down a bit. My father needed the winter months to repair relations with the folks at the Dye Works. At home, we kept busy with the ill-behaved ponies Gramps purchased before one of his departures.
As he grew older, doctors worked to stay one step ahead of his failing heart. His adventures changed. Considering his history, I can do nothing but marvel at the things that captured his focus in his later years. Canvases transformed by color and life with scores of brushes and dozens of techniques. Carved furniture protected by coats of varnish totaling in the double digits and each needing a full day to dry. Carefully strung beadwork.
When he could no longer make car trips west to visit his beloved dude ranches, he learned to surf there instead. The Internet took him where he could no longer drive, and he took his zest for life into those journeys as well. An entire forest was sacrificed as he began a campaign to print out every page of every website west of the Mississippi. I smile now at the card on my dresser, reminding me of the trees that were planted in a great western forest, a touching memorial from a dear friend who had no way of knowing the irony of the tribute. In his honor, may they grow tall, strong—and quickly.
In his later years, Gramps learned to put his energies into fighting only chosen battles. He forgave old grievances and let go of past hurts. I think even the Dye Works received a full pardon. Gramps mellowed as maturity gave him the courage to expand and adapt his adventures.
Disease weakens muscle, but time strengthens the spirit.
Surprisingly, my pet’s life followed a similar pattern. An abandoned husky wandering busy streets, Kelly was a high spirited dog of mischief, boasting a long rap sheet on any one of her carefree days of puppyhood. She’d snatched sandwiches from the hands of innocent children. She chased mailmen. She chewed furniture and ate college textbooks. One romp of reckless abandon through my parent’s living room was mistaken for a burglary and the police were nearly summoned.
Like other dogs with a penchant for trouble, Kelly was expected to bide her time in a crate while the family was away. Mistress of Escape, Kelly chose instead to baffle us with her Houdini-like ability to elude confinement. We’d come home to find her crate completely intact while she lounged on some forbidden piece of furniture.
Thoroughly stubborn, Kelly was quite possibly Italian also, preferring to sup in the ancient Roman tradition of reclining on something soft. She’d transfer her meals in large mouthfuls, scatter the pieces across her favorite carpet and delicately pluck and consume each savory morsel without so much as raising her head. Today, stray dog food bits scattered by her offspring, two ill-mannered, genetically improbable Labradors, remind me that some things aren’t meant to be changed.
A dog of intellect, she reveled in new experiences. An unfamiliar walking route, visitors, car trips: things needed to be barked at, sniffed, investigated. As a pup, those traits amused and at times frustrated me. She required supervision, guidance, and discipline.
When she surprised us with a litter of labs halfway through her ninth year, her history made us fear that she would be a disastrous mother. Despite the one groggy moment when she got up after her emergency C-section and scattered her formerly nursing pups across the bathroom floor, she was a great mom.
Her life took on new dimensions as she became an old dog rediscovering the thrill of senseless puppy play. When a new walking route took us to the beach, she found out that the ocean is really a big game of tag, and that the best romps were ones that ended with sand and sea salt between her paw pads.
Maturity transformed my furry menace into a perfect companion. She wanted my company through thunderstorms, reveled in long brushings, and wedged herself in the doorframe to prevent me from leaving her behind when it was time to pick up the children each afternoon. But I didn’t want to leave her, anyway. She had mellowed. Time with her was pure pleasure. Even as veterinarians worked to stay one step ahead of the deterioration of her health in her advancing age, nothing could lift her spirits as high as an adventure. Our last years together are the ones I treasure most and have mourned the hardest.
Years wear the body, but experience makes us whole.
Learn new skills. Discover new games. Extend forbearance. The best times are together times. Grow. Mature. Improve. These are the lessons embodied in the stories of two adventurous souls who taught me that time is to be cherished, not feared. Their legacy is mine now, to nurture as my own story refines.
A high-spirited girl, familiar with mischief, I choose to remain at odds with Sir Isaac as the chapters of my life unfold. Wrinkles will mark the pages where rough edges have been softened. Wear and tear will tell of lessons learned and challenges conquered. I need not fear the evidence time will etch on my body, I must, instead, choreograph its signature on my soul.
It may seem tempting to buy into Newton’s law. One look in the mirror may convince you to accept the notion that the creases, wrinkles, and popped seams revealed therein are the grim but inevitable work of entropy. If you’ve read the right fairy tales, though, you already know that mirrors don’t always tell the truth. Science books don’t either.
Friday, March 06, 2009
Flashback Fridays
Inspired by last month’s foray into the archives in search of contest entry material, I’ve decided to feature a few weeks worth of Flashback Fridays—previously unposted oldies I’m pulling put, dusting off, and potentially re-working into an upcoming project. Today’s piece is from a proposal for a book that got prematurely abandoned. (The project was entitled Defying Physics: What Newton didn’t tell you about stuffed animals, deep dark fears, and women over 30—by way of explanation for the later reference to the book’s title.)
Biff and Alice
Circumstances forced us to spell out the raw facts of life to our eight-year-old son.
In support of a family-fundraising-slash-spring-cleaning event, Brandon had obediently collected his outgrown assets. The process had been thoroughly uneventful until it became time to price his wares.
There was some back and forth. Things lost their value, my husband was explaining, citing specific items from the gathered assemblage as evidence. Then the conversation turned to Biff and Alice.
I was curious how my husband might handle the query. A refresher look at the title of the book you’re reading should soundly argue my qualifications for tackling the sticky issue of depreciation with the younger generation. The concept has eluded me since my own youth.
In grade school, two classmates and I assembled some odds and ends in front of Sunshine Flagg’s house in a mildly successful attempt to fund an evening at the traveling carnival that had set up down the road. As Sunshine’s mother described it to mine later, managerial conflict was largely limited to disagreement over the pricing of merchandise. I wanted way too much coin for too little bauble, while Sunshine, on the other hand, seemed content to haul our treasures to the curb and simply give them away. (The third party, a neighborhood ruffian named Rob, was a late arrival to the venture and had to be included due to a distant relational affiliation with Sunshine. He somehow wound up taking a cut of the carnival goods in spite of the fact that his sole contribution to the venture was siding with whatever position was more controversial.)
The summer of the yard sale, when I learned the necessity of driving a hard bargain against the ravages of depreciation was the same summer I found out that, unlike my classmates, I did not care for Shawn Cassidy. It was also the summer Sunshine’s aunt Joan taught us the maxim “every cloud has a silver lining.” (My mother thought the observation to be sage, hard wrought advice from the voice of experience, but in truth was merely Aunt Joan’s response to getting to spend time with her boyfriend while supervising us at the aforementioned carnival.)
Thus, I have spent the intervening years in blissful rebellion against the laws of nature, the silver lining here that I can write witty, tongue in cheek prose about my aberrant tendencies. I am, however, tentative about inflicting my own children with such wanton disregard for what I’ve heard others describe as the way things are.
I was, therefore, relieved to hear my husband’s response from the other room. “Biff might be an exception,” he conceded. “What did I pay for Biff? Seven dollars?”
Yes, I agreed, seven dollars.
“I’ll bet you could still get seven dollars for Biff.”
Biff is an old, working class bike that my husband picked up at the thrift store after our daughter Allison’s fifth birthday when she was having difficulty learning to ride her birthday present—a shiny pink model she christened Alice.
We tried, with limited success, to create the scrapbook moment oft used as fodder for life insurance commercials where the father of a young rider runs down the road grasping the back seat of a shiny new two-wheeler. In the ads, the smiling dad slowly relinquishes his grip as the small rider gains speed and confidence and breaks into a toothless grin upon realization that she’s flying solo.
Dozens of such attempts had failed. My husband fatigued. Allison remained stiff, uncertain, afraid to tumble.
“She’s not afraid to crash,” my husband wheezed, “she’s afraid to crash Alice.”
Allison, my husband explained, did not need a support father to learn to ride. This was something she’d have to conquer head on, by herself and for herself –girl vs. front walk, the hard way. It made sense. That was, after all, how I’ve learned just about everything I know.
“You don’t need an Alice right now,” he explained to Allison after returning from the thrift store. Biff, my husband explained, was tough. Well aquatinted with pavement scrapes, Biff could handle the bumps and bangs of the learning experience. Biff, the heavy-duty pick up of the cycling world, wasn’t around to look pretty. Having spent his rust-free youth, Biff had moved on to a higher calling.
Biff’s tough-stuff, no nonsense reputation was never questioned, despite shades of pink and purple still visible beneath myriad scuffs and blemishes-- not even when he was deployed for Brandon’s own training days.
With the aid of Biff and several months’ growth, Allison became a top-notch cyclist. Astride Alice, she pedaled many happy miles, grew even taller, and is now tooling around on Slice, a hefty mountain bike. Brandon eventually grew into his own sleek ride.
Alice, having served her time parading around in streamers sporting little woven baskets and flashy wheel jewelry, is ready to get down to business. There’s a little girl out there somewhere who’s ready to take her scrapes and lumps and conquer the open road. A little shiny around the edges, Alice is still a rookie. She’ll go to a new home at the entry-level rate of $7.
Biff, however, is a seasoned veteran, having gone head to head with both my children’s most spectacular road wars. Survivor of training missions, tested on asphalt, gravel and forest floor, Biff has weathered wind, rain, ice and mud. It’s a wealth of experience he’ll take into his next assignment.
Biff’s not going anywhere for a penny less than $8.
Biff and Alice
Circumstances forced us to spell out the raw facts of life to our eight-year-old son.
In support of a family-fundraising-slash-spring-cleaning event, Brandon had obediently collected his outgrown assets. The process had been thoroughly uneventful until it became time to price his wares.
There was some back and forth. Things lost their value, my husband was explaining, citing specific items from the gathered assemblage as evidence. Then the conversation turned to Biff and Alice.
I was curious how my husband might handle the query. A refresher look at the title of the book you’re reading should soundly argue my qualifications for tackling the sticky issue of depreciation with the younger generation. The concept has eluded me since my own youth.
In grade school, two classmates and I assembled some odds and ends in front of Sunshine Flagg’s house in a mildly successful attempt to fund an evening at the traveling carnival that had set up down the road. As Sunshine’s mother described it to mine later, managerial conflict was largely limited to disagreement over the pricing of merchandise. I wanted way too much coin for too little bauble, while Sunshine, on the other hand, seemed content to haul our treasures to the curb and simply give them away. (The third party, a neighborhood ruffian named Rob, was a late arrival to the venture and had to be included due to a distant relational affiliation with Sunshine. He somehow wound up taking a cut of the carnival goods in spite of the fact that his sole contribution to the venture was siding with whatever position was more controversial.)
The summer of the yard sale, when I learned the necessity of driving a hard bargain against the ravages of depreciation was the same summer I found out that, unlike my classmates, I did not care for Shawn Cassidy. It was also the summer Sunshine’s aunt Joan taught us the maxim “every cloud has a silver lining.” (My mother thought the observation to be sage, hard wrought advice from the voice of experience, but in truth was merely Aunt Joan’s response to getting to spend time with her boyfriend while supervising us at the aforementioned carnival.)
Thus, I have spent the intervening years in blissful rebellion against the laws of nature, the silver lining here that I can write witty, tongue in cheek prose about my aberrant tendencies. I am, however, tentative about inflicting my own children with such wanton disregard for what I’ve heard others describe as the way things are.
I was, therefore, relieved to hear my husband’s response from the other room. “Biff might be an exception,” he conceded. “What did I pay for Biff? Seven dollars?”
Yes, I agreed, seven dollars.
“I’ll bet you could still get seven dollars for Biff.”
Biff is an old, working class bike that my husband picked up at the thrift store after our daughter Allison’s fifth birthday when she was having difficulty learning to ride her birthday present—a shiny pink model she christened Alice.
We tried, with limited success, to create the scrapbook moment oft used as fodder for life insurance commercials where the father of a young rider runs down the road grasping the back seat of a shiny new two-wheeler. In the ads, the smiling dad slowly relinquishes his grip as the small rider gains speed and confidence and breaks into a toothless grin upon realization that she’s flying solo.
Dozens of such attempts had failed. My husband fatigued. Allison remained stiff, uncertain, afraid to tumble.
“She’s not afraid to crash,” my husband wheezed, “she’s afraid to crash Alice.”
Allison, my husband explained, did not need a support father to learn to ride. This was something she’d have to conquer head on, by herself and for herself –girl vs. front walk, the hard way. It made sense. That was, after all, how I’ve learned just about everything I know.
“You don’t need an Alice right now,” he explained to Allison after returning from the thrift store. Biff, my husband explained, was tough. Well aquatinted with pavement scrapes, Biff could handle the bumps and bangs of the learning experience. Biff, the heavy-duty pick up of the cycling world, wasn’t around to look pretty. Having spent his rust-free youth, Biff had moved on to a higher calling.
Biff’s tough-stuff, no nonsense reputation was never questioned, despite shades of pink and purple still visible beneath myriad scuffs and blemishes-- not even when he was deployed for Brandon’s own training days.
With the aid of Biff and several months’ growth, Allison became a top-notch cyclist. Astride Alice, she pedaled many happy miles, grew even taller, and is now tooling around on Slice, a hefty mountain bike. Brandon eventually grew into his own sleek ride.
Alice, having served her time parading around in streamers sporting little woven baskets and flashy wheel jewelry, is ready to get down to business. There’s a little girl out there somewhere who’s ready to take her scrapes and lumps and conquer the open road. A little shiny around the edges, Alice is still a rookie. She’ll go to a new home at the entry-level rate of $7.
Biff, however, is a seasoned veteran, having gone head to head with both my children’s most spectacular road wars. Survivor of training missions, tested on asphalt, gravel and forest floor, Biff has weathered wind, rain, ice and mud. It’s a wealth of experience he’ll take into his next assignment.
Biff’s not going anywhere for a penny less than $8.
Friday, January 30, 2009
Trotting With Scissors or Submissions, Day Five
5 PM Deadline!
Trotting With Scissors
Caution was a valued rule of thumb growing up in my house.
My newscaster father had a not-so-subtle method of instilling the ‘think twice’ maxim. “Girls,” he’d begin somberly when my sister and I sought permission to do some seemingly routine activity like say, make toast. “I know it seems that there isn’t much that can go wrong making toast, but I’m sure that’s exactly what Bill Doe thought last week when he went to the corner market to pick up a loaf of bread.”
We’d listen in grave silence as dad recounted Bill Doe’s sad fate, typically a mugging, decapitation or comparable act of wanton violence. We responded with the dichotomy of emotions that is trademark adolescence—first we’d scoff, then wonder: what if he’s right? What if the world really is a place of limitless danger and senseless violence?
My mother, the embodiment of goodness, is also cautious by nature. Some things, particularly anything involving unmentionables (we know them as underwear) are just too provocative to discuss. On a grocery store trip in the late seventies when pantyhose were still packaged in those irresistible oversized Easter eggs, I asked hopefully if they were on the grocery list, and, by the way, what color if they were?
“Shhh…we’ll talk about this in the car,” my mother said nervously. No plastic egg found its way into the cart, but I’d obviously hit on something. Curiosity mounted.
“Nude,” my mother explained later in hushed tones. “Unfortunately, they’ve named the color of my hose nude. So unpleasant, why if anyone in the grocery store had overheard us using that word! Who knows what they might have thought?”
In defense of my parents, I was certainly not known for caution.
In fourth grade, I was so careless with one of my unmentionable garments that it wound up in a lost and found box. A pair of seniors carried the box from classroom to classroom on a show and tell mission designed to eradicate the eyesore of said box from the hallway. My unmentionable, a full slip, was held aloft and gleefully received for its full entertainment value. Several boys even modeled it for the class. I’m sure you’ll be as shocked as I was to learn that my mother wondered aloud why I didn’t claim it. She actually made me go back and ask for it, but I think I was instructed to ask female PE coach for help because my teacher was a man.
My childhood was consistently punctuated by events that invariably shocked my mother and decreased the hairs on my father’s balding head. When local citizens (read: my father and the neighbor on our party line) reported sketchy bobcat sightings, I spent the better part of a week blazing deep woods trails with the neighbor boys, Lee and Keith, on an expedition of National Geographic proportions. Home play wasn’t any safer. In hot pursuit of a wayward marble, I got my head stuck between the banisters requiring the concentrated efforts of both parental units to extricate me. The marble was never found.
When I was thirteen, I pestered relentlessly for permission to take a solo trip to do charity work with street people in an inner city Chicago subdivision known as Cabrini Green. I gathered that it must be a pretty rough place, because when my parents would relate this story to other family members, the response was an invariable: “What? You’re kidding! Cabrini Green? You’re not letting her do this, are you?” You and I both know I never learned from personal experience what evils dwell in this apparent blot on the good name of our country. I wasn’t allowed to go.
I went to college briefly in Philadelphia and didn’t sleep for several months. Instead, I wandered aimlessly through the city during periods of time my parents referred to as “all hours.” I was, indeed, out all of the hours at one point or another, I’m quite sure. A friendly policeman once asked me, very nicely, to return to my dorm after I wandered into the projects at three a.m. He said I might be a lot safer. At the dorm, I’d stargaze at two a.m. while lying in the middle of the road with my Adventure Friend, a wild boy we called Block.
In my twenties, I became a mother and suddenly I feared everything. I struggled between my desire to embrace the world and my fear of it. There were so many things that could go wrong. Just look at the newspaper! It’s a mixed bag of horror out there. Accidents, cancer, poverty, crime, even bread muggings. There’s no end to the combinations of potential disaster that could be lurking under the surface of so called normal living.
I fear less now, in my thirties—partly because I got bored of it, but also because some of the things I feared have already happened. Amazingly, none of them were gruesome enough for me to wind up in the newspaper. Especially not in my unmentionables.
Trotting With Scissors
Caution was a valued rule of thumb growing up in my house.
My newscaster father had a not-so-subtle method of instilling the ‘think twice’ maxim. “Girls,” he’d begin somberly when my sister and I sought permission to do some seemingly routine activity like say, make toast. “I know it seems that there isn’t much that can go wrong making toast, but I’m sure that’s exactly what Bill Doe thought last week when he went to the corner market to pick up a loaf of bread.”
We’d listen in grave silence as dad recounted Bill Doe’s sad fate, typically a mugging, decapitation or comparable act of wanton violence. We responded with the dichotomy of emotions that is trademark adolescence—first we’d scoff, then wonder: what if he’s right? What if the world really is a place of limitless danger and senseless violence?
My mother, the embodiment of goodness, is also cautious by nature. Some things, particularly anything involving unmentionables (we know them as underwear) are just too provocative to discuss. On a grocery store trip in the late seventies when pantyhose were still packaged in those irresistible oversized Easter eggs, I asked hopefully if they were on the grocery list, and, by the way, what color if they were?
“Shhh…we’ll talk about this in the car,” my mother said nervously. No plastic egg found its way into the cart, but I’d obviously hit on something. Curiosity mounted.
“Nude,” my mother explained later in hushed tones. “Unfortunately, they’ve named the color of my hose nude. So unpleasant, why if anyone in the grocery store had overheard us using that word! Who knows what they might have thought?”
In defense of my parents, I was certainly not known for caution.
In fourth grade, I was so careless with one of my unmentionable garments that it wound up in a lost and found box. A pair of seniors carried the box from classroom to classroom on a show and tell mission designed to eradicate the eyesore of said box from the hallway. My unmentionable, a full slip, was held aloft and gleefully received for its full entertainment value. Several boys even modeled it for the class. I’m sure you’ll be as shocked as I was to learn that my mother wondered aloud why I didn’t claim it. She actually made me go back and ask for it, but I think I was instructed to ask female PE coach for help because my teacher was a man.
My childhood was consistently punctuated by events that invariably shocked my mother and decreased the hairs on my father’s balding head. When local citizens (read: my father and the neighbor on our party line) reported sketchy bobcat sightings, I spent the better part of a week blazing deep woods trails with the neighbor boys, Lee and Keith, on an expedition of National Geographic proportions. Home play wasn’t any safer. In hot pursuit of a wayward marble, I got my head stuck between the banisters requiring the concentrated efforts of both parental units to extricate me. The marble was never found.
When I was thirteen, I pestered relentlessly for permission to take a solo trip to do charity work with street people in an inner city Chicago subdivision known as Cabrini Green. I gathered that it must be a pretty rough place, because when my parents would relate this story to other family members, the response was an invariable: “What? You’re kidding! Cabrini Green? You’re not letting her do this, are you?” You and I both know I never learned from personal experience what evils dwell in this apparent blot on the good name of our country. I wasn’t allowed to go.
I went to college briefly in Philadelphia and didn’t sleep for several months. Instead, I wandered aimlessly through the city during periods of time my parents referred to as “all hours.” I was, indeed, out all of the hours at one point or another, I’m quite sure. A friendly policeman once asked me, very nicely, to return to my dorm after I wandered into the projects at three a.m. He said I might be a lot safer. At the dorm, I’d stargaze at two a.m. while lying in the middle of the road with my Adventure Friend, a wild boy we called Block.
In my twenties, I became a mother and suddenly I feared everything. I struggled between my desire to embrace the world and my fear of it. There were so many things that could go wrong. Just look at the newspaper! It’s a mixed bag of horror out there. Accidents, cancer, poverty, crime, even bread muggings. There’s no end to the combinations of potential disaster that could be lurking under the surface of so called normal living.
I fear less now, in my thirties—partly because I got bored of it, but also because some of the things I feared have already happened. Amazingly, none of them were gruesome enough for me to wind up in the newspaper. Especially not in my unmentionables.
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Ripped From My Resume: The Making of a Snake Handler or Submissions, Day Four
We're dipping into the archives this week in search of material to submit to a contest with a 5 PM Friday deadline. Comments appreciated!
Ripped From My Resume: The Making of a Snake Handler
A couple years back, I volunteered to serve as a snake handler for my city’s public library program. Although this was just a one-time gig, not ongoing employment, it is noteworthy on my life resume none the less.
Snakes were pretty high on my childhood list of dreaded creepy crawlies. I grew up in the country, where sightings were common and the Snake Scream—a very specific ululation, uniform in pitch and intensity, would summon one of two sources of help. By day, such shrieks would bring Lee, the neighbor boy. At his discretion, the vermin would be either housed or tortured. If the sighting and resultant scream occurred in the evening, my father would come running with the shovel.
Mulling over a Sunday School lesson one afternoon, I was thrilled when the Biblical basis of snake loathing hit me. Cursed eternally, the Serpent in the Garden of Eden was put on notice that his kind would forever have difficulty with women. My childhood was a swift and just payday for the entire species.
Not under Biblical mandate, little boys’ fears seem to manifest themselves in a different form. Most of the little boys I know live in a constant state of combat with a seedy cast of Bad Guys. At any given moment my 8-year-old son could be engaged in battle with Onion-Onion Early Head -- a car crunching vegetable that debuted in a nightmare-- or Bubkis, a shady villain of whom we can’t extract much in the way of concrete information.
Real or imaginary, creepy crawlies embody our childhood fears, eliciting bloodcurdling screams, sweats, and other sundry manifestations of the fight or flight adrenaline rush of Psychology 101 fame. Watching my mom didn’t give me much hope for the future, either. I vividly recall a laundry room battle with a Big, Furry Spider in which my mother engaged during the summer of ’77. The struggle left her so emotionally drained she had to lie down for a large portion of the afternoon.
Indeed, my fear of creepy crawlies followed me to college. One afternoon, I was run out of my dorm by a particularly menacing red spider. I arrived, shaken, at the door of a friend on a higher floor. “D-d--don’t—need-- much space,” I gasped. Really. I was confident that I could pare things down to just a sleeping bag and little pile of essential texts. Any corner would do. Before I had a chance to compile and submit official room change request forms, my roommate came to visit me. She delivered a triumphant account of the relentless stalking and subsequent death of the menacing red spider. Would I please come home?
I wasn’t brave enough or, as it turned out, smart enough, to demand to see the carcass. Months later, when I was moving out of the dorm for real, Jill confessed that she’d never seen the red spider again, let alone killed it. She missed me. She knew I’d never come back as long as the spider was still at large. I was sufficiently touched, and didn’t hold it against her. I did, however, pay special attention when I unpacked at my new destination.
Perhaps in part because the killing was a hoax, any non-cuddly creature with a suspect number of legs or an ancestral history tainted by the Bubonic Plague still wielded power. I left the dorm to live in the insect infested state of Texas with my new husband, Brad. Texas roaches are big enough to eat The Big Furry of 77, all my childhood snakes, and the menacing red spider for dinner. They swarmed and festered on the sidewalks that surrounded our apartment building. Coming and going at night, I’d hold my breath and walk as if wearing blinders. I took comfort in the thought that our apartment was too clean to invite such a dreadful creature.
But, alas, these predators invade without invitation, as I discovered to my horror one evening as I lifted a cast iron skillet and revealed the great grand daddy of all the Big Roaches. I am quite sure he was Guinness book large, but who’s measuring at a time like this anyway? I did what any sensible woman would. I violently threw that cast iron skillet and screamed the snake scream.
Brad, sadly, was unfamiliar with the signal. Confused, as new husbands often are, he didn’t know whether to comfort me or kill the vermin. In the confusion, the roach got away, and things went downhill from there.
Unnerved and drenched in sweat, I wouldn’t stay alone in the apartment—for a week. This meant I had to go to my day job as well as Brad’s night job with the eleven o’clock news team. It was a tiring schedule, and, eventually, I had to give it up. Subsequent roach sightings were less dramatic. I became more like my mother, who, in ’84, was forced to single-handedly exterminate a mole from my bedroom. I don’t even think she had to lie down.
Bugs and bad guys, I think, stay with us until we’ve learned what we can from them. They’re our friends actually, appearing every so often to give us the opportunity to be brave and to conquer. Each sighting offers the possibility of a small victory to savor, until, eventually, we’ve outgrown our bad guys and they’ve empowered us.
I like to think, then, that my multi-legged victims were finally avenged the day I met Penelope. Six-feet in length and likely twice that in girth, the python requires the assistance of ten brave volunteers to greet children during her annual visits to the public library. I’m proud to report that I was the first to volunteer.
Wednesday, January 28, 2009
Brain Tumors and Other Boogiemen or Submissions, Day Three
We're dipping into the archives this week in search of material to submit to a contest with a 5 PM Friday deadline. Comments appreciated!
Brain Tumors and Other Boogiemen
“I have a brain tumor,” I confided to my friend as we arranged our dinner selections on our plates.
“So do I,” she said. We carried our plates to our chairs and sat down. “In fact, Peter really doesn’t like it when I get on the Internet anymore.” Kathy lowered her voice as her husband came within earshot.
“Brad feels the same,” I nodded, knowingly, thinking of all the medical sites my husband would love to block.
The conversation wasn’t really headed the direction I expected. I had no idea Kathy had a brain tumor, and she stole my thunder. No sign of concern, no follow-up questions, my tumor obviously wasn’t being taken seriously. This wasn’t the same, intermittent brain tumor that’s been known to flare up since grade school. This time, the world wide web was solidly backing my hypochondria.
I had realized earlier in the day that the fact that my right ear had been blocked for several years might be a problem. Once, I had a doctor check for wax, but none found, I accepted it as a one of life’s little quirks and forgot about it. Every now and then (although web research now indicates this was a mistake) I’d shove a q-tip as deep as I dared and wiggle it around a bit, or while showering, press my palm over top of my ear to create a bit of plunging action, but that was about it.
I attempted to explain to my husband and the ENT I later consulted why, after all these years, I had chosen now to investigate the problem. The truth, if you must know, is that I blame it on The Auto Mall, a mechanical group who has, at the time of this writing, taken over twelve weeks to perform a standard repair on my jeep. I no longer care, as I have long since given up hope that they can complete this maintenance before my young children graduate. The fate of the jeep is now left for the courts to determine and I wanted a new car anyway. But this was in the early days of the problem, when my husband still had to take the children and I to and from school in shifts in his two-seater pick up. I was subsequently left on the front step of the school building with absolutely nothing to do but think.
Now, I realize that I could have used the time to think about anything. The world was my palette. I had characters in works of fiction that I’d abandoned in grave peril weeks earlier. There was the stimulating article I’d read about the Irish potato famine. Doubtless, I had no dinner plans. But, no, none of those topics crossed my mind as I sat on the steps and wondered: Why is my ear is plugged?
As with all things I wonder, I decided to consult the Internet when I got home. The results were alarming.
A well-documented symptom, “fullness of the ear” could signal any of a widely varied range of dysfunction, some of which, I read with fascinated horror, had nothing to do with the ear at all. Fullness of the ear was obviously an overlooked malady. All these years I thought I was living in relative health, I actually had the dreaded fullness of the ear, harbinger of disorders ranging from ear wax and chronic infection on the tame end, capping off with MS, brain, and nasal tumors on the other.
“The symptoms you report are pretty common,” the ENT told me, just before I asked about two specific and especially insidious tumors I’d read about. Seeing no evidence of either, he quickly sapped me of any relief I was tempted to feel.
“Who knows? Could be a tumor, cancer, or worse. Could be absolutely anything or nothing at all. People worry about all kinds of things.” He gave me an order for a CT and a hearing test, and sent me on my way.
Worse than brain cancer? No web page anywhere had mentioned possibilities that could stack up against such a prognosis. This was exactly the kind of situation I feared: an ongoing investigation in search of unknown and potentially terrifying horrors.
Without a doubt, I’d end up like the faceless patients I’d read about in a recent newspaper article on new advancements in facial reconstruction. I would be hideous, if I even lived, and would I want to, anyway? My husband, the poor man, isn’t a lot of help at times like this. Having seen me through other tumors, gynecological uncertainties, and numerous suspicious moles, he’s become a bit hardened to medical drama.
“Your symptoms aren’t any different from the 20,000 other patients he’s seen,” said Brad, resorting to factual statistics to back up his unnerving calm. “How many people have you seen walking around Hampton without a face?” my husband demanded.
“Maybe one,” I said, determined not to lose ground. There was the facial reconstruction article. Truthfully, I didn’t know where the woman featured in the piece actually lived, but she was in my local paper and that was certainly good enough for the purposes of this argument.
“One?” my husband raised his eyebrows in challenge. “And the newspaper doesn’t count.”
Transactional Analysis, I remembered from my undergraduate psychology studies, purports the idea that we all live by a set of life scripts, or predetermined ways of responding to life events. TA- based therapy focuses on examining the predictable patterns, the scripts, by which we live by and changing or erasing those that are destructive or that we’ve outgrown.
As the author of scripts, director of productions, and small time actor, the concept of living by a psychological script intrigues me. On one hand, I don’t like the idea that I might interact with the world according to a limited range of predetermined responses. On the other hand, I am the author of the script, so the responses are mine.
There’s a very Dark Place I go when confronted with any type of medical uncertainty. After leaving the ENT, the Dark Place beckoned as if on cue.
In the Dark Place, I shuffle around listlessly. With a host of disfiguring treatments and the grim reaper looming, clearly, there was no point in working on my novel. Ditto for working out. Instead, I wonder if Brad and the kids will decorate for Christmas, and if they know the recipe for pasta fagoli. I burst into tears at the mere sight of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, because I’m certain I can’t hold on for enough family readings to see Frodo through to Mordor.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Images of the Dark Place don’t quickly fade and I don’t want to burden you with them. But somehow, this particular trip took an unexpected turn. A voice of reason—my husband will tell you it was his—somehow made a Hollywood-style plunge through the thick blanket of cloud that enveloped me. All it said was “you don’t have to behave this way.”
“Duh,” I answered the voice (it really was my husband.) Even as I scoffed, though, I understood for the first time that the Dark Place is nothing but a setting I’ve scripted for myself in which to worry and brood.
More importantly, in a flood of realization, I knew why I went there.
In one of those flip-of-the-switch discoveries, I knew it was the promise of euphoria drives me to the Dark Place. I totally get off on the moment when the whole tawdry affair is laid to rest by whatever negative x-ray, lab result or simple a reassuring office visit the situation requires.
I’d get the good news and realize that I was going to live. After which the sky would seem bluer, the air would smell cleaner and life’s little trials would roll off my shoulders with ease. After all, I just last week I was dying. Reveling in life, I called it. It was a tremendous high that can only be achieved by going very, very low.
Kathy’s response made me realize that we all have brain tumors. Some of us even refer to them as such. Other people have different names for their boogiemen. Fear of failure, fear of commitment, monsters under the bed—we all have something that sends us scurrying into our own personal hell. My “therapy moment” made me realize that growing up is not only about finding better ways to confront our ghouls, it’s discovering why we’re hanging out with them in the first place.
Evidently, I’ve been playing mine for cheap thrills.
Will all my new found wisdom keep me from running to the Internet the next time unusual symptoms crop up? I don’t know—I threw out my script.
Brain Tumors and Other Boogiemen
“I have a brain tumor,” I confided to my friend as we arranged our dinner selections on our plates.
“So do I,” she said. We carried our plates to our chairs and sat down. “In fact, Peter really doesn’t like it when I get on the Internet anymore.” Kathy lowered her voice as her husband came within earshot.
“Brad feels the same,” I nodded, knowingly, thinking of all the medical sites my husband would love to block.
The conversation wasn’t really headed the direction I expected. I had no idea Kathy had a brain tumor, and she stole my thunder. No sign of concern, no follow-up questions, my tumor obviously wasn’t being taken seriously. This wasn’t the same, intermittent brain tumor that’s been known to flare up since grade school. This time, the world wide web was solidly backing my hypochondria.
I had realized earlier in the day that the fact that my right ear had been blocked for several years might be a problem. Once, I had a doctor check for wax, but none found, I accepted it as a one of life’s little quirks and forgot about it. Every now and then (although web research now indicates this was a mistake) I’d shove a q-tip as deep as I dared and wiggle it around a bit, or while showering, press my palm over top of my ear to create a bit of plunging action, but that was about it.
I attempted to explain to my husband and the ENT I later consulted why, after all these years, I had chosen now to investigate the problem. The truth, if you must know, is that I blame it on The Auto Mall, a mechanical group who has, at the time of this writing, taken over twelve weeks to perform a standard repair on my jeep. I no longer care, as I have long since given up hope that they can complete this maintenance before my young children graduate. The fate of the jeep is now left for the courts to determine and I wanted a new car anyway. But this was in the early days of the problem, when my husband still had to take the children and I to and from school in shifts in his two-seater pick up. I was subsequently left on the front step of the school building with absolutely nothing to do but think.
Now, I realize that I could have used the time to think about anything. The world was my palette. I had characters in works of fiction that I’d abandoned in grave peril weeks earlier. There was the stimulating article I’d read about the Irish potato famine. Doubtless, I had no dinner plans. But, no, none of those topics crossed my mind as I sat on the steps and wondered: Why is my ear is plugged?
As with all things I wonder, I decided to consult the Internet when I got home. The results were alarming.
A well-documented symptom, “fullness of the ear” could signal any of a widely varied range of dysfunction, some of which, I read with fascinated horror, had nothing to do with the ear at all. Fullness of the ear was obviously an overlooked malady. All these years I thought I was living in relative health, I actually had the dreaded fullness of the ear, harbinger of disorders ranging from ear wax and chronic infection on the tame end, capping off with MS, brain, and nasal tumors on the other.
“The symptoms you report are pretty common,” the ENT told me, just before I asked about two specific and especially insidious tumors I’d read about. Seeing no evidence of either, he quickly sapped me of any relief I was tempted to feel.
“Who knows? Could be a tumor, cancer, or worse. Could be absolutely anything or nothing at all. People worry about all kinds of things.” He gave me an order for a CT and a hearing test, and sent me on my way.
Worse than brain cancer? No web page anywhere had mentioned possibilities that could stack up against such a prognosis. This was exactly the kind of situation I feared: an ongoing investigation in search of unknown and potentially terrifying horrors.
Without a doubt, I’d end up like the faceless patients I’d read about in a recent newspaper article on new advancements in facial reconstruction. I would be hideous, if I even lived, and would I want to, anyway? My husband, the poor man, isn’t a lot of help at times like this. Having seen me through other tumors, gynecological uncertainties, and numerous suspicious moles, he’s become a bit hardened to medical drama.
“Your symptoms aren’t any different from the 20,000 other patients he’s seen,” said Brad, resorting to factual statistics to back up his unnerving calm. “How many people have you seen walking around Hampton without a face?” my husband demanded.
“Maybe one,” I said, determined not to lose ground. There was the facial reconstruction article. Truthfully, I didn’t know where the woman featured in the piece actually lived, but she was in my local paper and that was certainly good enough for the purposes of this argument.
“One?” my husband raised his eyebrows in challenge. “And the newspaper doesn’t count.”
Transactional Analysis, I remembered from my undergraduate psychology studies, purports the idea that we all live by a set of life scripts, or predetermined ways of responding to life events. TA- based therapy focuses on examining the predictable patterns, the scripts, by which we live by and changing or erasing those that are destructive or that we’ve outgrown.
As the author of scripts, director of productions, and small time actor, the concept of living by a psychological script intrigues me. On one hand, I don’t like the idea that I might interact with the world according to a limited range of predetermined responses. On the other hand, I am the author of the script, so the responses are mine.
There’s a very Dark Place I go when confronted with any type of medical uncertainty. After leaving the ENT, the Dark Place beckoned as if on cue.
In the Dark Place, I shuffle around listlessly. With a host of disfiguring treatments and the grim reaper looming, clearly, there was no point in working on my novel. Ditto for working out. Instead, I wonder if Brad and the kids will decorate for Christmas, and if they know the recipe for pasta fagoli. I burst into tears at the mere sight of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, because I’m certain I can’t hold on for enough family readings to see Frodo through to Mordor.
I could go on, but you get the picture. Images of the Dark Place don’t quickly fade and I don’t want to burden you with them. But somehow, this particular trip took an unexpected turn. A voice of reason—my husband will tell you it was his—somehow made a Hollywood-style plunge through the thick blanket of cloud that enveloped me. All it said was “you don’t have to behave this way.”
“Duh,” I answered the voice (it really was my husband.) Even as I scoffed, though, I understood for the first time that the Dark Place is nothing but a setting I’ve scripted for myself in which to worry and brood.
More importantly, in a flood of realization, I knew why I went there.
In one of those flip-of-the-switch discoveries, I knew it was the promise of euphoria drives me to the Dark Place. I totally get off on the moment when the whole tawdry affair is laid to rest by whatever negative x-ray, lab result or simple a reassuring office visit the situation requires.
I’d get the good news and realize that I was going to live. After which the sky would seem bluer, the air would smell cleaner and life’s little trials would roll off my shoulders with ease. After all, I just last week I was dying. Reveling in life, I called it. It was a tremendous high that can only be achieved by going very, very low.
Kathy’s response made me realize that we all have brain tumors. Some of us even refer to them as such. Other people have different names for their boogiemen. Fear of failure, fear of commitment, monsters under the bed—we all have something that sends us scurrying into our own personal hell. My “therapy moment” made me realize that growing up is not only about finding better ways to confront our ghouls, it’s discovering why we’re hanging out with them in the first place.
Evidently, I’ve been playing mine for cheap thrills.
Will all my new found wisdom keep me from running to the Internet the next time unusual symptoms crop up? I don’t know—I threw out my script.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Submissions, Day Two
If this is your first tune-in to the blog this week, we’re dipping into the archives in search of material for a writing contest with a 5 PM Friday deadline. Today’s contender is actually a continuation of yesterday’s offering: I thought it only fair to give you the rest of the story, although it would need a new intro to work as a stand-alone piece.The Second Career of a Breakfast Icon
My 30-year old-stuffed tiger has a new face.
The episode with the vacuum cleaner left me so inspired that I immediately sat down and typed out the previous chapter, shut down the computer and sighed contentedly. Clearly, now, I could put the entire matter behind me and send Tony off to his Happy Hunting Grounds in good conscience. Somewhere between garbage can and closure, however, former CIA agent Robert Barron added the rescue of a famous breakfast icon to his resume.
A newspaper write-up on Barron’s post-CIA career had grabbed my attention the previous week. Already, the piece had secured his status as my new favorite twenty-first century artist, but it was his choice of canvas that became the inspiration behind the biggest comeback in the history of elderly stuffed tigers.
By trade, Barron had been a disguise specialist. Our government paid him to render operatives unrecognizable to anyone in their family, circle of acquaintances, or, if the assignment required, race or gender, either. Accordingly, Barron’s palette consisted of the startlingly lifelike ears, eyes, and noses he expertly crafted. His canvas was the human face.
When he retired, Hollywood came calling, but, like many true artists, Barron isn’t following the money trail. His chosen work is too important.
Today Barron painstakingly rebuilds faces lost to accidents, fire, and cancer. Neither his palette nor his canvas has changed since his CIA days, but his mission has taken a 180. Barron used to work to conceal identities, but now he rescues them. His masterpieces are the salvaged dreams behind the illusions of flesh that he designs.
Art, I tell my students, communicates.
Barron’s work is about loss, but says more about hope. It’s born out of endings, but paves the way for new beginnings. His art is about using your gifts and talents for something a little bigger than yourself. It’s about living the adventure you were put here for, even if it means coming out of retirement to do it. It’s about preserving life and dignity and grace. It’s about resurrecting dreams. It’s about having the courage to confront the dreadful and transform it.
Like all good art it is very, very beautiful. And, for some reason, in the moments after I disposed of Tony, Barron’s work was all I could think about.
I pulled Tony from the trash for the second time in a week, rounded up as much spongy burnt orange stuffing as I could, and carefully matched the jagged edges of his facial tear. I slapped a sturdy piece of clear packing tape across the seam and, viola! Tony’s not only back in the game with his back-alley plastic surgery, he’s got a new gig. Of late, he’s been tooling around town with his head poking out of the top of my writer’s bag as a poster tiger for my latest book project—a cheerful rebuttal to the utter downward spiral Sir Isaac Newton promised us in our grade school science texts.
Tony’s brush with mortality is a reminder that anything at all can survive if you put a new face on it.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Of Submissions and a Mission
Welcome to one of my good ideas that showed up just south of Timely. Regular readers know that the path toward my nearly-completed master’s degree has been strewn with so much lost writing time: blog posts that never made it to cyperspace, articles that were never pitched, an entire novel’s worth of characters with fates hanging in the balance—the literary causalities are as numerous as they are grim.
Still, in the midst of the academic frenzy in which I’ve been embroiled, I’ve never forgotten that I’m a writer. And four months from now, I plan to delve deep back into my chosen profession. In the meantime, I’ve signed up for a writer’s conference to get back into the game (and take advantage of free student admission!). Like many good conferences, this one includes a contest. Not having the aforementioned writing time to craft new material especially for the event, I’ve decided to dip into the archives and submit some unreleased material that’s been distilling for a couple years. Which bring me to my slightly tardy idea.
For the rest of the week, I’ll be posting prospective contest entries here on the site—partly because this gives us a week of guaranteed posts, but also because I’d like some feedback about what piece to enter. So what makes me wish I had this otherwise win-win idea two weeks ago? The deadline is 5 PM Friday. So let’s get busy and don’t be shy—let me know what I should submit or just let sit!
Here's our first contender:
A Tiger on a (Suicide) Mission
What is it about stuffed animals? Little more than wadded cotton encased in plush and adorned with thread and buttons, these faux friends find their way onto the guest list of life’s meaningful moments. They show up at baby showers and hospital visits, on Valentine’s Day and at graduations. And they are always welcome. So why the perennial welcome mat for these cloth clones? My husband blames Sesame Street. Spending our formative years in the presence of friendly bath toys, charismatic letters, and well-spoken pieces of home furniture, it’s no wonder our society is predisposed to animate the inanimate.
PBS or not, I am a grown woman with a collection of stuffed animals dating back to the Carter administration. Parting with them would seem too much like betrayal. Yes, I realize that I’m the stuffed-PETA equivalent of those crazed animal hoarders occasionally exposed on the 11:00 news, but I’m also willing to bet there’s trusty plush friend or two in your personal archives.
In general, we’re loyal to our childhood stuffed animals because they’ve always done their job. They share our secrets. When squeezed, they don’t scratch, bite, or offer unsolicited advice. They are for us whatever-- and whenever--we need them to be.
My home, then, became a safe haven for stuffed animals, not unlike a no-kill animal shelter.
At least until my two ill-behaved Labradors assigned themselves the task of tackling the nasty business of the overpopulated stuffed species. It began with some isolated outbreaks, most notably the rabbit winnowing of Y2K. Mocha, the brown one, went on a rampage one morning and bit the faces off every stuffed rabbit in the house. Just rabbits and just faces, executed with frightening precision.
Hippos were targeted next, although more out of fond fascination than menace. As a training gift, my daughter, Allison, had given Mocha his own green hippo, which he apparently adored. He carried it everywhere, including muddy romps. Finally, the hippo was nothing more than a mass of filthy threads and had to be disposed. The next day Mocha went into Allison’s room, plucked a blue hippo from her collection and carried it around with a lone green sock. Time passed without further incident, and we began experimenting with tentative indoor privileges for the dogs when we’d leave for short periods of time.
Then came a Bad Day for elderly tigers.
A box top mail in prize from when I was three, Tony of cereal fame had come out of semi-retirement in my storage loft and had spent the night in the family room. Rain prompted a spur of the moment decision to leave the dogs inside alone while I took the kids to school—a decision I never considered being of consequence to Tony, until I returned to a horrific sight. Tony’s face was split and his innards had been strewn in what I pictured as a gleeful romp.
No doubt our cockatiel, Casey, had squawked in warning: “Dangerous! Dangerous predators!” as he’s prone to do at the sight of canines or wanton destruction. With no one home to hear his pleas, however, the labs put some snap, crackle and pop into their morning and left Tony not looking so g-r-r-r-eat.
Tony spent a week with his tail tentatively sticking out of the wicker trash basket in my bathroom, but when push came to shove on garbage day, I hastily pulled him out and transferred him to a laundry basket. In an effort of be helpful, my husband later dumped a freshly laundered load into the basket. And then another. And, possibly, another. Many days passed.
One morning, on a Bad Writing day, the computer wouldn’t work. Frustrated, but determined to accomplish something, I decided to exercise, but, for want of a hairclip, my workout simply didn’t. So I took a shower only to discover that I couldn’t find a pair of what my saintly mother would call "unmentionables." Even in the triple load basket where Tony, sole witness to my subsequent rantings, lay forgotten at the bottom.
Flinging clothes across the bed, I suddenly hit a pocket of spongy, burnt orange stuffing. Tony stuff began to fly around the room.
“Dangerous! Dangerous!” Casey squawked as I pulled out the vacuum and aimed the hose at airborne bits. Hurriedly, I jammed the hose into the laundry basket in an attempt to stop the spread of Tony bits at the source when: whoosh!--something from the basket shot up the hose and into the canister.
My vacuum gives one the benefit of viewing the captured dirt swirling inside the canister as it accumulates, so I quickly looked to see what had been sucked into the wind tunnel. Amidst the general sea of compressed dust and in stark contrast with the occasional wad of crumpled white tissue were flashes of silky black fabric. Although my mother will be mortified to learn that I’ve found it necessary to mention the unmentionable twice already—there they were, orbiting the eye of what my vacuum’s literature proudly references as the "whirlwind."
I quickly turned off the vacuum and noticed Tony staring up at me from his unseemly state at the bottom of the basket. Disapproval. I definitely saw it on both sides of his split countenance. I suddenly realized how unfortunate it was that Tony, whose only mission in his artificial life was to provide me joy and comfort should come to such a miserable end, insides spewing forth into my laundry and listening to me say things I can’t mortify my mother by writing.
Then I finally understood. Life is too brief to lose sleep over bad writing or not to be outrageously thankful that I even have hair. And what a terrible waste it would be to miss the humor in seeing my unmentionables swirling around in the vacuum canister.
I popped the canister open, shook out the offending fabric and laughed uncontrollably.
Tony’s expression changed. It was admittedly imperceptible, but I caught it. After all, who can crack a half smile better than a tiger with a fissured cranium?
Tony left me on a high note, stoically keeping my secrets, gently exposing my childishness, and reminding me that it was time to grow up.
He did his job well.
Still, in the midst of the academic frenzy in which I’ve been embroiled, I’ve never forgotten that I’m a writer. And four months from now, I plan to delve deep back into my chosen profession. In the meantime, I’ve signed up for a writer’s conference to get back into the game (and take advantage of free student admission!). Like many good conferences, this one includes a contest. Not having the aforementioned writing time to craft new material especially for the event, I’ve decided to dip into the archives and submit some unreleased material that’s been distilling for a couple years. Which bring me to my slightly tardy idea.
For the rest of the week, I’ll be posting prospective contest entries here on the site—partly because this gives us a week of guaranteed posts, but also because I’d like some feedback about what piece to enter. So what makes me wish I had this otherwise win-win idea two weeks ago? The deadline is 5 PM Friday. So let’s get busy and don’t be shy—let me know what I should submit or just let sit!
Here's our first contender:
A Tiger on a (Suicide) Mission
What is it about stuffed animals? Little more than wadded cotton encased in plush and adorned with thread and buttons, these faux friends find their way onto the guest list of life’s meaningful moments. They show up at baby showers and hospital visits, on Valentine’s Day and at graduations. And they are always welcome. So why the perennial welcome mat for these cloth clones? My husband blames Sesame Street. Spending our formative years in the presence of friendly bath toys, charismatic letters, and well-spoken pieces of home furniture, it’s no wonder our society is predisposed to animate the inanimate.
PBS or not, I am a grown woman with a collection of stuffed animals dating back to the Carter administration. Parting with them would seem too much like betrayal. Yes, I realize that I’m the stuffed-PETA equivalent of those crazed animal hoarders occasionally exposed on the 11:00 news, but I’m also willing to bet there’s trusty plush friend or two in your personal archives.
In general, we’re loyal to our childhood stuffed animals because they’ve always done their job. They share our secrets. When squeezed, they don’t scratch, bite, or offer unsolicited advice. They are for us whatever-- and whenever--we need them to be.
My home, then, became a safe haven for stuffed animals, not unlike a no-kill animal shelter.
At least until my two ill-behaved Labradors assigned themselves the task of tackling the nasty business of the overpopulated stuffed species. It began with some isolated outbreaks, most notably the rabbit winnowing of Y2K. Mocha, the brown one, went on a rampage one morning and bit the faces off every stuffed rabbit in the house. Just rabbits and just faces, executed with frightening precision.
Hippos were targeted next, although more out of fond fascination than menace. As a training gift, my daughter, Allison, had given Mocha his own green hippo, which he apparently adored. He carried it everywhere, including muddy romps. Finally, the hippo was nothing more than a mass of filthy threads and had to be disposed. The next day Mocha went into Allison’s room, plucked a blue hippo from her collection and carried it around with a lone green sock. Time passed without further incident, and we began experimenting with tentative indoor privileges for the dogs when we’d leave for short periods of time.
Then came a Bad Day for elderly tigers.
A box top mail in prize from when I was three, Tony of cereal fame had come out of semi-retirement in my storage loft and had spent the night in the family room. Rain prompted a spur of the moment decision to leave the dogs inside alone while I took the kids to school—a decision I never considered being of consequence to Tony, until I returned to a horrific sight. Tony’s face was split and his innards had been strewn in what I pictured as a gleeful romp.
No doubt our cockatiel, Casey, had squawked in warning: “Dangerous! Dangerous predators!” as he’s prone to do at the sight of canines or wanton destruction. With no one home to hear his pleas, however, the labs put some snap, crackle and pop into their morning and left Tony not looking so g-r-r-r-eat.
Tony spent a week with his tail tentatively sticking out of the wicker trash basket in my bathroom, but when push came to shove on garbage day, I hastily pulled him out and transferred him to a laundry basket. In an effort of be helpful, my husband later dumped a freshly laundered load into the basket. And then another. And, possibly, another. Many days passed.
One morning, on a Bad Writing day, the computer wouldn’t work. Frustrated, but determined to accomplish something, I decided to exercise, but, for want of a hairclip, my workout simply didn’t. So I took a shower only to discover that I couldn’t find a pair of what my saintly mother would call "unmentionables." Even in the triple load basket where Tony, sole witness to my subsequent rantings, lay forgotten at the bottom.
Flinging clothes across the bed, I suddenly hit a pocket of spongy, burnt orange stuffing. Tony stuff began to fly around the room.
“Dangerous! Dangerous!” Casey squawked as I pulled out the vacuum and aimed the hose at airborne bits. Hurriedly, I jammed the hose into the laundry basket in an attempt to stop the spread of Tony bits at the source when: whoosh!--something from the basket shot up the hose and into the canister.
My vacuum gives one the benefit of viewing the captured dirt swirling inside the canister as it accumulates, so I quickly looked to see what had been sucked into the wind tunnel. Amidst the general sea of compressed dust and in stark contrast with the occasional wad of crumpled white tissue were flashes of silky black fabric. Although my mother will be mortified to learn that I’ve found it necessary to mention the unmentionable twice already—there they were, orbiting the eye of what my vacuum’s literature proudly references as the "whirlwind."
I quickly turned off the vacuum and noticed Tony staring up at me from his unseemly state at the bottom of the basket. Disapproval. I definitely saw it on both sides of his split countenance. I suddenly realized how unfortunate it was that Tony, whose only mission in his artificial life was to provide me joy and comfort should come to such a miserable end, insides spewing forth into my laundry and listening to me say things I can’t mortify my mother by writing.
Then I finally understood. Life is too brief to lose sleep over bad writing or not to be outrageously thankful that I even have hair. And what a terrible waste it would be to miss the humor in seeing my unmentionables swirling around in the vacuum canister.
I popped the canister open, shook out the offending fabric and laughed uncontrollably.
Tony’s expression changed. It was admittedly imperceptible, but I caught it. After all, who can crack a half smile better than a tiger with a fissured cranium?
Tony left me on a high note, stoically keeping my secrets, gently exposing my childishness, and reminding me that it was time to grow up.
He did his job well.
Monday, November 10, 2008
A Seasonal Tale
There's a lot of seasonal action underway these days, and I'm not just referring to the hasty pounce retailers have made on the Christmas season.
Stray jack-o'-lanterns and the occasional roadside dum-dum serve as daily reminders that Halloween hasn't even fully exited the social arena--and with Thanksgiving waiting a mere two weeks in the wings, one can stand on virtually any street corner in America and witness pilgrims cavorting recklessly with elves and reindeer under the watchful gaze of a tardy grim reaper.
It's unsettling, really, this wanton intermingling of frivolity. Personally, I'm for strict regulation of inter-holiday commerce. Costumes and candies should enjoy a grace period into early November, handing the show over to the pilgrims and Indians around mid-month. As suggested by the format of the traditional Macy's parade, the North Pole should be ushered in on Tom Turkey's tail feathers.
This brings me to a dilemma. I've got a little something for my readers that it just doesn't seem right to withhold. Sort of like the Santa socks you receive on New Year's Eve, or the ornament you open on January 1st, this is the kind of thing you should be enjoying all season long. And I want you to share it, too, and I know that it can take awhile sometimes for things to circulate around cyberspace.
So I offer the following link to a short story I wrote as a Christmas gift to my readers. Set in the world of my two Young Adult novels, it also works as a little stand alone story that should get your thoughts moving in the right direction this holiday season--no matter which one you're currently celebrating.
http://www.greenroombooks.com/ACampEdsonChristmas.html
Stray jack-o'-lanterns and the occasional roadside dum-dum serve as daily reminders that Halloween hasn't even fully exited the social arena--and with Thanksgiving waiting a mere two weeks in the wings, one can stand on virtually any street corner in America and witness pilgrims cavorting recklessly with elves and reindeer under the watchful gaze of a tardy grim reaper.
It's unsettling, really, this wanton intermingling of frivolity. Personally, I'm for strict regulation of inter-holiday commerce. Costumes and candies should enjoy a grace period into early November, handing the show over to the pilgrims and Indians around mid-month. As suggested by the format of the traditional Macy's parade, the North Pole should be ushered in on Tom Turkey's tail feathers.
This brings me to a dilemma. I've got a little something for my readers that it just doesn't seem right to withhold. Sort of like the Santa socks you receive on New Year's Eve, or the ornament you open on January 1st, this is the kind of thing you should be enjoying all season long. And I want you to share it, too, and I know that it can take awhile sometimes for things to circulate around cyberspace.
So I offer the following link to a short story I wrote as a Christmas gift to my readers. Set in the world of my two Young Adult novels, it also works as a little stand alone story that should get your thoughts moving in the right direction this holiday season--no matter which one you're currently celebrating.
http://www.greenroombooks.com/ACampEdsonChristmas.html
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
It's All in the Spin
Six weeks. The words have been running in a constant loop through my thoughts for, well, the past five weeks.
My first semester of masters work ended five weeks and one day ago, after thousands of pages of reading, approximately 24,243 words worth of papers, and couple of last minute saves--including an emergency real-time edit of a presentation in progress (an offhanded comment by a professor exposed a critical misreading of a piece of literature as a classmate and I made our way to the podium to present the merits of said piece. Good thing I wore my hip waders and packed a shovel that day...)
Six glorious weeks between the end of my fall semester and the beginning of the spring term seemed like a Christmas gift that could best the entire contents of Santa's sleigh.
Six weeks! At first, the words swelled in my head like the Hallelujah Chorus. Every morning when I woke up, it seemed like the entire Boys Choir of Harlem sang out the refrain, complete with the backing if the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
No papers!
No research!
No vital up-or-downloads!
No Don Quixote!
You'd think that the last thing I'd want to do during this soul-cleansing time of catharsis would be to write. But write, I did. First, for the newspaper--that's right, I remembered, I used to get paid to write. And then, for my sadly neglected but dearly beloved YA fiction venture, as appeared in my previous post. Yes, I remembered, writing is beautiful, when you write what you love.
But it was more than the joy of writing for profit and pleasure that resonated in between the notes of my Ode to Freedom. There have been so many other facets of my hijacked life that I've been able to resuscitate, such as warm, homemade meals on our dinner table: Tuscan chicken, stromboli, risotto, pots and pots of minestrone--tonight we're having lasagna.
Then there's the world of friends and entertaining, into which I wholeheartedly delved one evening just prior to Christmas. Can you imagine ending a meal for 6 adults and 13 children around a chocolate fountain? I can, and the memories are precious.
Oh, and I can't neglect to mention the nearly lost art of reading for pleasure. That book that's been sitting on my must-read list for the past 6 months? Read it, and relished every word like a the last bite of a Hershey's Special Dark bar.
Looking back, it's kind of hard to believe the amount of things I've packed in around Christmas and a week-long New Year's trip to Pennsylvania. Those professional headshots? Done. Undecorating from Christmas and redecorating for winter? Done. Rearranging most of the major furniture in the house? Done. Book signings and school visits? Done. Done.
(See, here I am looking a little more authorly than I usually do, toting around my stuffed tiger):
Maybe all this activity is because that looping refrain in my head morphed into more of a cadence. The Boys Choir moved out last week, making way for The Corporal. The Corporal is intimately aware of the passage of time, and the parameters of the upcoming mission. Spring '08, I believe they call it. The Corporal is big into belting out marching orders, repeating the whole six week loop with a decidedly do-or-die flair.
The Corporal has me shooting off emails to my friends, informing them that it's now or never if they want to get that lunch, or catch up over coffee. The Corporal rides me hard if I sit, staring blankly, as I'm prone to do when overwhelmed. Don't just sit there, he barks, Six weeks, six weeks, that's all you have, six weeks. The Corporal's responsible for all references to the commencement of my studies sounding like the musings of one reporting for a court-appointed prison term, or beginning treatment in an Iron Lung.
Bad news is, an email from Dr P, a Spring '08 Sergent--er, professor, has now sent even The Corporal packing. Dr. P is teaching this pesky one credit "lab" --a "gimme" my son would call it. In the grand scheme of everything else I've signed up for, I didn't view the lab as anything worth much worry. Something about visiting classrooms. No problem.
Dr. P was kind enough to send her syllabus along early. I got bleary-eyed somewhere around page three, and a few paragraphs after that The Corporal's cadence morphed into a dirge.
Among other things, the syllabus outlined various tasks I am to complete during the course of no less than 15 visits to a local school where I will apparently become something of a fixture. These tasks range in complexity and scope. During the course of my tenure, I'll be expected to participate in parent conferences, attend extra-curricular events, observe student hallway interactions, and, perhaps, attend a PTA meeting. I will also be required to conduct interviews with teachers, substitutes, and--I'm not even embellishing here--bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and janitors. Essentially, I'll be examining the school from the ground up. At this point in my reading, the drone of the mourners silenced even The Corporal's most rousing calls.
The worst of it? I'm not even sure I want to teach, at least not in the full-time, public-school capacity.
See, I am, at once, an appreciative but reluctant student. I didn't really set out to return to school full time. Oh, I always intended to get my masters degree someday...after the kids were out of the house, and I got bored with all of my other pursuits. It's just that seeds of restlessness and dissatisfaction began to sprout in the drear, dank sunlessness of last winter, and one blustery February afternoon found me wandering aimlessly around the campus where I now attend. I thought I might pick up a catalogue, browse some selections, and sign up for a course or two; something to spark some new thoughts, that sort of thing.
I left that day with an offer for a full ride.
Suddenly, someday was upon me.
Some days I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunity. Other days, I'm simply overwhelmed.
I even tried to quit once, when it looked like the timing of certain course offerings were going to tip life too far out of balance, with non-stop course work all summer long. The prof I work for wouldn't hear of it, and is teaching me the ill-timed course herself, just her and me. How could I quit, in the face of that kind of confidence and commitment to my success?
The trouble is, I'm a writer, and although this program will give me a masters degree in English, it's also a teaching program. I have a love-hate relationship with teaching. I love being with students. I love discussing deep topics, engaging them in life and learning. But I think it's a little like being a grandparent--it's great as a part time gig.
I love swooping in as a substitute, keeping things spick and span like an educational Mary Poppins--and flying away on my umbrella when the day is done. I love going into classrooms as a special guest, sharing my novels with students, listening to their questions and interpretations of my work, and inspiring them toward their own aspirations. Go in, stir things up a bit, go home. In and out.
Real teaching kind of looks like the anti-writing from where I'm sitting. Grading papers? No, thanks. Calling parents? I don't even call my friends! Attending staff development sessions? Arsenic seems like a more expedient way to go.
Which is why all this business about interviewing safety guards and grading surplus tests really packed a punch. I'm a writer, darn it, a writer. A writer who doesn't go to her own kids' PTA meetings because she'd rather be home, playing with them. I awoke this morning to the lamentation of the mourners. Six weeks, almost gone, six weeks, moving on.
Writers don't interview lunch ladies, I told myself. They don't do grunt work for teachers. They don't rove up and down hallways listening to students gripe, I insisted.
About this point, the journalist in me kicks in. I'm picturing myself walking all over the school with my digital voice recorder and notebook, making copious notes in hallways. We call that "getting the story."
Then it hits me. I write for teens, and I've been given an all access pass to their daily stomping grounds. This is research at it's best! I'm a writer, darn it, and I'm going in.
Someone had better call VH 1 and find out where the Spin Doctors are now, because I think I'm going to need them to pick up the refrain. It goes something like:
One week until I begin research on my upcoming novel!
My first semester of masters work ended five weeks and one day ago, after thousands of pages of reading, approximately 24,243 words worth of papers, and couple of last minute saves--including an emergency real-time edit of a presentation in progress (an offhanded comment by a professor exposed a critical misreading of a piece of literature as a classmate and I made our way to the podium to present the merits of said piece. Good thing I wore my hip waders and packed a shovel that day...)
Six glorious weeks between the end of my fall semester and the beginning of the spring term seemed like a Christmas gift that could best the entire contents of Santa's sleigh.
Six weeks! At first, the words swelled in my head like the Hallelujah Chorus. Every morning when I woke up, it seemed like the entire Boys Choir of Harlem sang out the refrain, complete with the backing if the New York Philharmonic Orchestra.
No papers!
No research!
No vital up-or-downloads!
No Don Quixote!
You'd think that the last thing I'd want to do during this soul-cleansing time of catharsis would be to write. But write, I did. First, for the newspaper--that's right, I remembered, I used to get paid to write. And then, for my sadly neglected but dearly beloved YA fiction venture, as appeared in my previous post. Yes, I remembered, writing is beautiful, when you write what you love.
But it was more than the joy of writing for profit and pleasure that resonated in between the notes of my Ode to Freedom. There have been so many other facets of my hijacked life that I've been able to resuscitate, such as warm, homemade meals on our dinner table: Tuscan chicken, stromboli, risotto, pots and pots of minestrone--tonight we're having lasagna.
Then there's the world of friends and entertaining, into which I wholeheartedly delved one evening just prior to Christmas. Can you imagine ending a meal for 6 adults and 13 children around a chocolate fountain? I can, and the memories are precious.
Oh, and I can't neglect to mention the nearly lost art of reading for pleasure. That book that's been sitting on my must-read list for the past 6 months? Read it, and relished every word like a the last bite of a Hershey's Special Dark bar.
Looking back, it's kind of hard to believe the amount of things I've packed in around Christmas and a week-long New Year's trip to Pennsylvania. Those professional headshots? Done. Undecorating from Christmas and redecorating for winter? Done. Rearranging most of the major furniture in the house? Done. Book signings and school visits? Done. Done.
(See, here I am looking a little more authorly than I usually do, toting around my stuffed tiger):
Maybe all this activity is because that looping refrain in my head morphed into more of a cadence. The Boys Choir moved out last week, making way for The Corporal. The Corporal is intimately aware of the passage of time, and the parameters of the upcoming mission. Spring '08, I believe they call it. The Corporal is big into belting out marching orders, repeating the whole six week loop with a decidedly do-or-die flair.
The Corporal has me shooting off emails to my friends, informing them that it's now or never if they want to get that lunch, or catch up over coffee. The Corporal rides me hard if I sit, staring blankly, as I'm prone to do when overwhelmed. Don't just sit there, he barks, Six weeks, six weeks, that's all you have, six weeks. The Corporal's responsible for all references to the commencement of my studies sounding like the musings of one reporting for a court-appointed prison term, or beginning treatment in an Iron Lung.
Bad news is, an email from Dr P, a Spring '08 Sergent--er, professor, has now sent even The Corporal packing. Dr. P is teaching this pesky one credit "lab" --a "gimme" my son would call it. In the grand scheme of everything else I've signed up for, I didn't view the lab as anything worth much worry. Something about visiting classrooms. No problem.
Dr. P was kind enough to send her syllabus along early. I got bleary-eyed somewhere around page three, and a few paragraphs after that The Corporal's cadence morphed into a dirge.
Among other things, the syllabus outlined various tasks I am to complete during the course of no less than 15 visits to a local school where I will apparently become something of a fixture. These tasks range in complexity and scope. During the course of my tenure, I'll be expected to participate in parent conferences, attend extra-curricular events, observe student hallway interactions, and, perhaps, attend a PTA meeting. I will also be required to conduct interviews with teachers, substitutes, and--I'm not even embellishing here--bus drivers, cafeteria workers, and janitors. Essentially, I'll be examining the school from the ground up. At this point in my reading, the drone of the mourners silenced even The Corporal's most rousing calls.
The worst of it? I'm not even sure I want to teach, at least not in the full-time, public-school capacity.
See, I am, at once, an appreciative but reluctant student. I didn't really set out to return to school full time. Oh, I always intended to get my masters degree someday...after the kids were out of the house, and I got bored with all of my other pursuits. It's just that seeds of restlessness and dissatisfaction began to sprout in the drear, dank sunlessness of last winter, and one blustery February afternoon found me wandering aimlessly around the campus where I now attend. I thought I might pick up a catalogue, browse some selections, and sign up for a course or two; something to spark some new thoughts, that sort of thing.
I left that day with an offer for a full ride.
Suddenly, someday was upon me.
Some days I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the opportunity. Other days, I'm simply overwhelmed.
I even tried to quit once, when it looked like the timing of certain course offerings were going to tip life too far out of balance, with non-stop course work all summer long. The prof I work for wouldn't hear of it, and is teaching me the ill-timed course herself, just her and me. How could I quit, in the face of that kind of confidence and commitment to my success?
The trouble is, I'm a writer, and although this program will give me a masters degree in English, it's also a teaching program. I have a love-hate relationship with teaching. I love being with students. I love discussing deep topics, engaging them in life and learning. But I think it's a little like being a grandparent--it's great as a part time gig.
I love swooping in as a substitute, keeping things spick and span like an educational Mary Poppins--and flying away on my umbrella when the day is done. I love going into classrooms as a special guest, sharing my novels with students, listening to their questions and interpretations of my work, and inspiring them toward their own aspirations. Go in, stir things up a bit, go home. In and out.
Real teaching kind of looks like the anti-writing from where I'm sitting. Grading papers? No, thanks. Calling parents? I don't even call my friends! Attending staff development sessions? Arsenic seems like a more expedient way to go.
Which is why all this business about interviewing safety guards and grading surplus tests really packed a punch. I'm a writer, darn it, a writer. A writer who doesn't go to her own kids' PTA meetings because she'd rather be home, playing with them. I awoke this morning to the lamentation of the mourners. Six weeks, almost gone, six weeks, moving on.
Writers don't interview lunch ladies, I told myself. They don't do grunt work for teachers. They don't rove up and down hallways listening to students gripe, I insisted.
About this point, the journalist in me kicks in. I'm picturing myself walking all over the school with my digital voice recorder and notebook, making copious notes in hallways. We call that "getting the story."
Then it hits me. I write for teens, and I've been given an all access pass to their daily stomping grounds. This is research at it's best! I'm a writer, darn it, and I'm going in.
Someone had better call VH 1 and find out where the Spin Doctors are now, because I think I'm going to need them to pick up the refrain. It goes something like:
One week until I begin research on my upcoming novel!
Saturday, December 29, 2007
A Little Story in the Spirit of the Season
Here's a link to a short story I wrote freaturing the characters from my YA novels.
Enjoy!
http://www.greenroombooks.com/ACampEdsonChristmas.html
Enjoy!
http://www.greenroombooks.com/ACampEdsonChristmas.html
Monday, December 03, 2007
Whittier, and Why I'm Not
Of all sad words of tongue or pen
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
--John Greenleaf Whittier
Thus concludes every email sent by one of the university professors for which I work. Today, these poetic words summon memories of witty, incisive commentary I planned to post but have since been lost to the avalanche of research that descended upon me in violent fashion.
Forever lost to literary discourse are several humorous school foibles, a marvellous Thanksgiving Eve piece (half written) concerning some culinary misfortunes involving several lumps of substandard pie crust, and at least one semi-poignant epiphany of the life-appreciation vein.
I had pictures, too--beautiful photos of fall and food, fun and feasting.
But alas, the sad word emitting from my metaphoric pen is simply that there is but an empty void in cyberspace where words should have been.
The saddest are these: "It might have been!"
--John Greenleaf Whittier
Thus concludes every email sent by one of the university professors for which I work. Today, these poetic words summon memories of witty, incisive commentary I planned to post but have since been lost to the avalanche of research that descended upon me in violent fashion.
Forever lost to literary discourse are several humorous school foibles, a marvellous Thanksgiving Eve piece (half written) concerning some culinary misfortunes involving several lumps of substandard pie crust, and at least one semi-poignant epiphany of the life-appreciation vein.
I had pictures, too--beautiful photos of fall and food, fun and feasting.
But alas, the sad word emitting from my metaphoric pen is simply that there is but an empty void in cyberspace where words should have been.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Transitions
You don’t have to be the author of much more than a term paper or book report to understand the difficulty transitions pose for the writer. Sliding seemingly seamlessly from one scene, concept, or thought to another can be jarring. Choppy. Sloppy.
I’m sure my sister would be happy if I were to report some sort of breakthrough or insight into the mastery of the craft, as she has encountered some tricky transitional elements in a novel she has undertaken; however, the only wisdom I can impart comes from the hard-knocks school of first-hand experience, and I can’t say I’m impressed with the curriculum.
Transitions can’t be simple on paper, because there’s nothing simple about them.
In Stranger than Fiction, Dustin Hoffman’s character, Professor Hilbert, explains to the Harold Crick, the protagonist who hears a voice narrating his life, that plots are driven forward by action. For instance, he explained, exiting his office continues his story--the story of him through the door. On the other hand, staying in the room would halt the plot altogether.
When I woke up this morning, I was tempted not to advance my plot. At the time, it seemed preferable to let my story just kind of drift off—you know, go back to sleep and avoid the next scene.
I decided I liked the vacation passages of my story, and I really wasn’t all that interested in opening the scene with the laundry and dirty camping equipment set in the house with no food. I wasn’t too jazzed about the heavy rain and rolling thunder backdrop, either.
I realized that in upcoming chapters, I’d no longer be driving a new car, but rather a slightly scarred model with a vanishing warranty. Furthermore, with a full time course load and a lot of field work on the horizion, the plot is taking a decisive turn in a direction that seems to involve a lot of work.
Having served their purpose, foreshadowing devices--the map on the kitchen door, covered in stickers marking our route; the now-depleted collection jar on the counter where we used to dump our change to fund our journey— would have no longer hold meaning.
In short, the pultzer-prize quality plotline I’d been following for the past month ran cold, and I just couldn't find a good lead with the material with which I was left.
Fortunately, I have hoarded dozens of writers’ magazines addressing sticky transitions, and I knew the articles all offered the same advice.
If you don’t know exactly how to get your characters from point A to point B, you just have to go to the next thing you do know. Press forward. Get the characters moving--or at least out of bed. Just keep typing--or cleaning out coolers as the case may be--and sooner or later, you’ll hit on something.
In the meantime, I discovered that coffee has the ability to smooth over even the rockiest of transitions. After the first pot, I had the sense to throw a little bit of foreshadowing into the otherwise dreary scene by dumping all the change I found into the collection jar. The glass is nearly half full.
I’m sure my sister would be happy if I were to report some sort of breakthrough or insight into the mastery of the craft, as she has encountered some tricky transitional elements in a novel she has undertaken; however, the only wisdom I can impart comes from the hard-knocks school of first-hand experience, and I can’t say I’m impressed with the curriculum.
Transitions can’t be simple on paper, because there’s nothing simple about them.
In Stranger than Fiction, Dustin Hoffman’s character, Professor Hilbert, explains to the Harold Crick, the protagonist who hears a voice narrating his life, that plots are driven forward by action. For instance, he explained, exiting his office continues his story--the story of him through the door. On the other hand, staying in the room would halt the plot altogether.
When I woke up this morning, I was tempted not to advance my plot. At the time, it seemed preferable to let my story just kind of drift off—you know, go back to sleep and avoid the next scene.
I decided I liked the vacation passages of my story, and I really wasn’t all that interested in opening the scene with the laundry and dirty camping equipment set in the house with no food. I wasn’t too jazzed about the heavy rain and rolling thunder backdrop, either.
I realized that in upcoming chapters, I’d no longer be driving a new car, but rather a slightly scarred model with a vanishing warranty. Furthermore, with a full time course load and a lot of field work on the horizion, the plot is taking a decisive turn in a direction that seems to involve a lot of work.
Having served their purpose, foreshadowing devices--the map on the kitchen door, covered in stickers marking our route; the now-depleted collection jar on the counter where we used to dump our change to fund our journey— would have no longer hold meaning.
In short, the pultzer-prize quality plotline I’d been following for the past month ran cold, and I just couldn't find a good lead with the material with which I was left.
Fortunately, I have hoarded dozens of writers’ magazines addressing sticky transitions, and I knew the articles all offered the same advice.
If you don’t know exactly how to get your characters from point A to point B, you just have to go to the next thing you do know. Press forward. Get the characters moving--or at least out of bed. Just keep typing--or cleaning out coolers as the case may be--and sooner or later, you’ll hit on something.
In the meantime, I discovered that coffee has the ability to smooth over even the rockiest of transitions. After the first pot, I had the sense to throw a little bit of foreshadowing into the otherwise dreary scene by dumping all the change I found into the collection jar. The glass is nearly half full.
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