Finding My Story

I learned in college that the problem couldn’t be solved by not sleeping, although I certainly tried.

I knew that no matter how wee the hour was when I finally went to bed, I was missing key events.

People were heading to all night dining establishments, drinking coffee and eating pies and pastries. Others were on trains, taking late night forays into the city. Some were just on campus, having heartfelt conversations deep into the night.

And I was missing it.

So I’d get up, get dressed, and get back into the action.

After awhile, I took to wearing a comfy sort of semi-sleep wear, suitable for both late night socializing and early morning class—“instant ready,” my roommate called it. Simply put, I wore pajamas to class nearly a decade before it became fashionable.

I know now that no one can be a part of every story and that times of rest are chapters in everyone’s tale.

I’m keeping all of this in mind as I head out for four days in the Pennsylvania mountains for the Creation 2008 festival. As a registered member of the media, I will have the opportunity to participate in countless press conferences which I could potentially weave into dozens of salable articles. As a journalist woefully low on work, the possibilities are tantalizing.

But as tempted as I am to generate all of this material, I know that there is only so much I can process in a timely manner, what with all of my educational responsibilities and all. So I’m going to keep this manageable. I’m looking for one story. I don’t know yet which one I’m after, but I’ll know it when I see it. I’ll jump on it and make it sing.

That’s my goal: one stellar story. My story. Isn’t that what life is really all about?

It's a Pitcher's Game and my Bullpen's Thin

Thank goodness for Major League Baseball. Without the combined efforts of a gaggle of umpires, mangers, and team mascots focused on discovering why gifted players are requiring increasing amounts of time to deliver a finished game, I might have gone on thinking that I'm incompetent.

I now know that my situation really isn’t any different from the one perpetually plaguing the New York Yankees: I have pitching trouble.

Although the cause wasn’t clear to me at the time, I knew something was wrong when I turned into the school pick up line one day last week and realized that “What did you do today, Mom?” has officially replaced “What’s for dinner” as the Mid-Afternoon Cringer.

With my daughter’s recent interest in the culinary arts, no one in our house is really worried about going hungry these days—we have hot, tasty food popping out of the oven at all hours. What’s really got me wringing my hands is the fact that every day at 3:15 my son asks me what I’ve done all day and I end up looking like a Little Leaguer gaping at birds in left field. Now, I’m certain I’ve been busy—ever since I finally ditched Chaucer, I’ve adopted an impressive range of projects, plans, and pointless diversions—problem is, I have little to show for the four weeks I’ve supposedly been working on this stuff.

Still, I face my son’s daily query in true journalistic form, working my best material into my lead. “I was on my bike this morning,” I invariably say, highlighting the singular pursuit in which I’ve managed to make any kind of visible progress. I’ve been biking the boardwalk for a solid hour every morning, even stopping periodically to execute various crunches and dips on the seawall. And it’s working, too. I'm looking less and less like a graduate student every day.

Mmmmm. My son nods encouragingly at my report, but he’s clearly expecting more. I shift nervously in my seat. What did I do? What did I do? Is that a wren over there?

As it turns out, this sluggish, unproductive response is consistent with what the MLB task force has identified as the end result of a game lacking disciplined pitching. Valuable time is lost by pitchers who dawdle between throws or require frequent mound visits from plodding coaches. It doesn’t matter who you’ve got on the field: if your pitching is off, your game’s gonna drag. In the words of Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports, it’s all about having a pitching staff that's trained "to work quickly so they establish a rhythm and keep fielders from getting too spacey.”

Well, that clears things up. No wonder I’m striking out. Life was so much easier when I had professors and editors tossing out metaphoric pitches in the form of due dates and deadlines. I am bereft of both this summer, what with not being enrolled in classes and the newspaper on the blink (I anticipate any day the news that they’ve parted out all their assignments to a fifth grade creative writing class in exchange for some free pens and a classroom subscription).

Regular readers may recall that over spring break I contemplated dropping out of my Masters program. When I returned to school to discover that my scholarship had some fine print indicating that my funding would expire if I didn't abandon the “slow and steady” plan I’d hatched with my advisor in favor of an accelerated track, I figured game over.

I got more of a seventh inning stretch, instead. My quick-thinking advisor managed to waive a bunch of prerequisites and set up a couple directed studies. At the end of the semester, she sent me home with some books, the names of a couple tests I’m supposed to take and instructions to email her every now and then, in lieu of the intense, summer-long marathon of coursework perscribed in the normal program. As far as traditional schooling, I'm pretty much done until the fall. I was pleased with the innovative plan, although all I initially gleaned was the part about not showing up for four months.

So, I'm pretty much expected to self-regulate, which, in baseball terms makes me a one-girl team. It's no wonder, then, that I'm a month in and riddled with guilt over my lack of accomplishments. Here I was, figuring I’m a lazy embarrassment to society who happens to bike on the beach every day, when I find out that my game’s just stalled because I've got no relief pitching.

With no one but me to keep things rolling, I’ve gone spacey. And as comforting as it is to know that my problems are in the same league as those of the Bronx Bombers, it's clear that I'm choking on the mound. Someone really needs to call the bullpen soon.

A Stitch in Time

“It’s just like circular knitting, Mom,” my daughter explained to me when I got teary the night before her thirteenth birthday.

She was at the height of her knitting phase—back when she was going to design and market an entire line of knitwear under the moniker “United Moose”—and she’d just learned how to use specially designed knitting needles connected by a translucent cord to create long, tubular styles. With circular knitting you can’t tell where one row ends and the next begins. “Tomorrow’s just another stitch,” she said, giving me a hug before heading up to bed.

My daughter turns seventeen tomorrow and although she was right--no single day brought a sudden change or clear distinction from one phase to the next--it’s clear now that all those stitches have nearly completed the part of the pattern we know as “childhood.” It seems that the design is beginning to shift into a new and unfamiliar arrangement.

Watching my daughter grow has been the most exciting, rewarding, and painful experience of my life. On one hand, I know the goal is for her to become an independent, vibrant woman, and but the journey has been so sweet I find that I'm in no hurry to reach that happy destination.

How many more times will she climb those 13 familiar steps to sleep under my roof? When was the last time she played with her brother in the clubhouse they built in the back yard? When did they stop taking bubble baths? Milestones happen every day, and in the busyness of life they too often pass unnoticed. I want to capture the moments, but end up chasing ghosts of things that were right here just a moment ago but have now vaporized.

How can I spend every day with my daughter and still miss her?

I miss the toddler who followed the happenings on Sesame Street like a day trader on Wall Street.



I miss the pipsqueak whose affection for goats earned her a stern reprimand from a vigilant keeper at a petting zoo…



….but I’m thankful that some things never change.



I miss the little girl who loved dress up clothes almost as much as puppies.



I miss the middle schooler who rescued the class parakeet from school bullies and brought her home to “love like a sister.”


I miss the year-round Halloween costumes, the piano recitals, the Easter dresses and the endless stacks of hand scrawled pictures. I couldn’t tell you what I miss the most, because I’ve thought of my daughter as pretty near perfect at every age she’s ever been (minus a bad patch at 14 that we’d all rather forget). And you know what? Tomorrow will be no exception. I can’t wait to share laughter, gifts and meals with this beautiful child who is becoming my grown-up friend.

Tomorrow may be just another stitch, but I know it represents the first one in the final row of a pattern that’s permanently imprinted on my heart.

All I can do is notice--and, in noticing, celebrate the moments of life as morph into an amazing new design.

Happy Birthday, Allison.

The World on a String

It was made to fly.

From the moment I hit the beach with my new kite, it struggled against my efforts to keep it grounded while I tied the string and secured the connections. When I finally released my grip, the aerodynamic array of crayons caught the wind and soared, tugging for more line, eager to ascend heights far beyond what my string would allow. My muscles strained against the upward pull, part of me afraid that I’d be swept off my feet, and all the rest hoping that I would.

To fly a kite is to experience the tension between freedom and control; letting go enough for it to fly while still managing to keep it in your grasp.

This is what it means to have the world on a string: to release something beautiful and watch, spellbound, as it takes flight-- never certain of the outcome, but exhilarated by a connection to something soaring beyond the limits of normal reach.

Conditions weren’t as favorable on my next kite-flying foray. Ill-winds buffeted my craft, sending it on frequent nosedives. One particularly nasty blast threw my kite into the clutches of the beach’s singular tree where it dangled just beyond my grasp.

Holding the limp string while my husband extracted the kite from the tangle of twigs and branches served as a grim reminder of life’s darker side: the days when we wish our ideas would take off but we end up hanging on to our dreams by nothing more than a frayed thread.

I’ve always viewed these kind of days as wasted time: sure, I might have learned a thing or two, but if I was on my “A” game, I’d already be airborne. Like many people, I’ve always viewed life as a journey. But I’m beginning to realize that despite being well-packed and eager, I’ve spent the past couple decades a bit fuzzy on the trip itinerary. I’ve skipped along under the assumption that, at least for earthly purposes, life was a one-way ticket toward some type of goal—after which, one lived like a kite on a stiff zephyr—reveling in the experience of living your purpose. Oh, of course there’d be trouble—even I’m not naive enough to doubt that—but it would all come to some sort of meaningful conclusion, not unlike that nasty flap between George Bailey and the bank examiner in It’s a Wonderful Life.


Last week, I realized that my cumulative thoughts concerning some TV viewing, a high school play and a funeral signaled a shift in the way I’m learning to view life.

Like the rest of America, I watched last week as newly-crowned American Idol David Cook sang “The Time of My Life.” A big Cook fan, I cheered along with the rest of his armchair supporters, all the time wondering just how many of us even recognize the time of our life when it happens. Chances are slim that any of us will have our defining moments documented live on national television amidst shower of confetti and thunderous applause.

Most of us can better relate to the fictional residents of Grover’s Corners, who some of my former students brought to life in a recent production of Our Town, which concerns the rather mundane comings and goings of small town life in the early 20th century. An omniscient stage manager makes it his business to keep the audience abreast of the town’s trivia, making endless wry observations along the way. “Once in a thousand times, it's interesting,” he observes at the end of the wedding scene, after giving a blow-by-blow of the humdrum minutiae Emily and George would likely weather: domestic challenges, bills, aging, and the like. When Emily later dies in childbirth--I suppose I should have issued an alert about the plot spoiler--she wistfully remembers the commonplace details of life--coffee, sunflowers, hot baths and ticking clocks—as she delivers the play’s key line: “Do any human beings ever realize life while they live it–every, every minute?”

Which brings me to the funeral. It was for our music minister—just 6 years my senior—who died unexpectedly in his sleep. He had a family, a lot of talent, and so much left to contribute to our church. Everything about his death seemed wrong. Everything but—as our senior minister ironically observed—the timing. Harmonious relationships, professional responsibilities humming along at full speed ….this man left earth with all the Important Stuff in tune. His life wasn’t defined by a single moment but by countless choices he made to touch the lives of others while seeking God’s purpose for his own. He lived in the same place as most of us: in a personal Grover’s Corners, drinking coffee, enjoying nature, and composing his own lyrics against the rhythm of the ticking clock.

It’s hard to say what will happen the next time I go kite flying. I have more string now, so maybe my kite will reach unexplored heights. It’s equally possible that I’m simply giving it more thread from which to precariously hang. Rise or fall, the story is still all about flight. Just like our lives. Whether we’ve got the world by a string or life seems to be hanging by a thread, we’re all just testing our wings against some pretty stiff wind. Fortunately, our lives aren’t measured by whether we reach the clouds or bite the dust, but by what we do with all the moments we spend on the launch pad.

We were made to fly.

Welcome to the time of your life.

A Pilgrim's Progress

“Almost there!” the old man enthused.

Palms slapping the water and legs kicking madly, my 12-year old self rallied for the final push to the Styrofoam finish line.

I filled my lungs with air and squeezed shut my eyes, expecting my fingers to make contact with the bobbing white flotation device at any second.

“You’ve got it!”

Slap. Slap. Gasp. Kick.

“Keep going!”

Seeking the encouraging sight of my fingers about to touch wet Styrofoam, I tentatively opened an eye.

Whoa. I stopped kicking and planted my feet in the lake muck. Discovering that I hadn’t spanned the anticipated gap between myself and the flotation-goal would have been grim enough. But even with my admittedly fuzzy vision-- forced as I was to swim without glasses in my pre-contact lens era—it was clear that the goal was more distant than it had ever been before.

“Oh, that Father Bill,” my aunt said of her visiting relation.

“What kind of tricks are you playing on that child?” another lake visitor demanded of the sheepish priest.

“I’m just trying to help build her stamina,” he shrugged innocently.

I have thought of this childhood anecdote from my aunt’s lakeside cottage on many occasions over the past few weeks as I gasped toward the finish line of what I long ago dubbed as “the semester that just won’t end.”

With over 50 pages worth of written material due in the span of a single week, I paced myself by assigning undo significance to a series of inconsequential milestones: the final bibliography, the last page of reading, the capstone assignment for this or that course. Constantly laboring under a premature sense of completion eventually took its toll: I was seeking an endpoint that just kept moving further from my grasp.

But despite setbacks such as the meltdown I had after a particularly gruesome 3 hour bibliography reading (one instructor's idea of a fitting final class), the end finally came—or so I thought. With classes finished and final exams complete, it seemed safe to assume that Spring ’08 was a wrap.

Until I pulled my final grades up online.

Even with my contact-lens enhanced 20/20 vision I had to blink several times, hoping some pesky floaters were responsible for what I took to be the second letter of the alphabet hanging out at the end of a perfect formation of uniform Alphas.

How could this, well, be?

With a perfect average in the bank, I’d turned in a project on The Canterbury Tales that would have made Chaucer cry. It was stamped all over with professor approval. I think she just about kissed my final draft. Really. I know I’m fuzzy with numbers, but this equation hardly seemed mathematically viable.

Without belaboring some very sketchy details, let it suffice to say that somehow this project ended up in a non-approved format, and that in order to improve my lot, I needed to buck up for a return visit to Canterbury.

The goal-shifting priest’s sneaky techniques may have been effective for building physical stamina, but let me assure you, the experience doesn’t translate to the academic realm. On the heels of my mental rigors, I currently have the attention span of a middle school boy at a poetry reading.

I’ll admit to exhibiting signs of a weak psychological fortitude at the prospect of revisiting Canterbury. But then I realized that life is full of many “finish lines” that are really arbitrary at best. Is it more important to “finish” by a certain date, or to appreciate the opportunity to reach a little further for a personal best? Where is this “end” that we’re always striving toward, and what happens once we’re there?

Besides, Chaucer’s pilgrims never even made it to Canterbury, but they still had a good time along the way—spinning yarns and swapping tales, all the while angling for a tasty free lunch.

As for me, I’ve thoroughly enjoyed sharing this story with you, and if you have a tale, just throw a comment my way. I’d love to read it. In the meantime, my daughter is up in the kitchen fixing some homemade tortellini that I’m about to smother in tomatoes and garden-fresh herbs. Like Chaucer’s pilgrims, I’m going to revel in the simple pleasures of tall tales and shared meals, and not worry too much about the rest. After all, Canterbury’s nothing but a short stop on an amazing journey I hope I’m on for a long, long time.


What’s Afoot?
…an update on yesterday’s mishap

“It’s kind of like a preview of when you’re old,” my daughter said, as we pulled out of the Walgreens yesterday, clutching a bag containing first aid tape, ibuprofen, and crayon band-aids (I’m employing the red ones as a sort of alert, to keep a sort of safety buffer around my toe. The rest are for cheer.)

I was fumbling through my change, puzzling over some particulars of the transaction. “Why?” I asked, startled.

“You’re confused, you’re hobbling,” her voice trailed off. “I’ve decided you’ll be quite a handful.”

My daughter had spent the better part of the afternoon shuttling me to Dr. M’s office and then to the hospital for some x-rays. It seems that my toe, although fractured, will be just fine in a week or so. Toes, evidently, are “very forgiving,” according to Dr. M.

And all that nonsense about not running? What a waste of time when I own 21-speed, yellowy-orange mountain bike with great shocks and stellar tires, a package my daughter describes as “pretty intense.” Despite being thrilled to receive it as a gift a couple Christmases ago, it boasts surprisingly little road wear. That’s about to change.

Besides, the running really hasn’t been doing that much for me. It’s time for a little shake up in the routine.

Footloose

Smack.

I was flitting about the house, busily investing my new-found freedom in happy home pursuits when my forward-moving toes contacted the door frame with an ominous force. I'd been en route to the front door to investigate the source of widespread canine excitement but never made it past the kitchen where I remained crumpled in a sad little heap of pain and remorse.

I don't manage my toes well. It's as if those 10 little appendages don't really operate in concert with the rest of my body. As a result, I have built an impressive resume of stubbings, cuts, bruises and breaks--most of which eerily afflict the three center toes of my right foot.

The current carnage bears a shocking resemblance to the results of a particularly nasty accident in '03, a late May affair taking three toes--you know which ones--out of commission for the inaugural weeks of summer.

Ironically, my checkered podiatry history is not reflected in the thick chart I've amassed at my General Practitioner's office. As a hypochondriac, I'm all over a wide range of medical anomalies--vague symptoms suggestive of long term impairment or grave outcome, ocular and aural irregularities, ticks masquerading as melonomas--virtually nothing escapes my vigilance. But--pun aside--I have to admit that I find toe injuries thoroughly pedestrian. I mean, really, I know what happened, and I'm reasonably certain that, in time, I'll return to the ranks of the sure-footed.

But, nonetheless, my daughter insists that the bruised digit jutting awkwardly from my right foot needs to be "checked out" this morning.

This is bad news on several fronts. First, I'd already made a personal committment to a summer free of medical drama. Blowing it in May really seems pansy.

Secondly, I've been on a strict regimen of daily running. I figure, minus doctor involvement, I could hit the pavement again in a few days, a la Johnny Damon during the 2007 baseball season. Once doctors get involved, it's a crap shoot.

Finally, it seems a waste of a day, as illustrated by the fact that, despite not feeling really finished with this post, my daughter is jangling the keys and telling me to get in the car.

Links to Pass the Time

I'm coming back. Really. I'll post witty observations, funny stories, and inspirational tidbits. I've been saving them up. Letting them distill, culture, age like fine wine.

In the meantime, you can visit me here:

http://www.dailypress.com/features/custom/mytime/dp-mytime-cookies2,0,830621.story

and here:

http://www.dailypress.com/features/custom/mytime/dp-mytime-cookies,0,5864275.story

I'll be back soon. I promise.

Shedding

Just like my two big Labradors, I'm shedding winter bulk in the form of fuzzy assignments and hairy class requirments. I'll return to a more frequent posting schedule within the next few days.

Weighty Matters

Awhile back, I had a conversation with a woman who had managed to gain an improbable 200 pounds while pursuing some sort of advanced academic degree. Ironically, she was the first person to seriously sell me on the idea that I, too, should foray into the postgraduate realm, although it’s now clear that I didn’t connect some of the more, shall we say, ample dots in sales pitch.

This week, I realized that I am over half of the way to packing on a 5th of this woman’s impressive poundage, and I came to the grim conclusion that I need to stop acting as though academic “crunch time” means opening bags of study snacks. I realize we’re still dealing with single-digit numbers here, but we hypochondriacs don’t like leaving anything to chance when it comes to potentially debilitating physical conditions.

I began with the admittedly “soft” approach of taking on Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods as my travel-time audio book, as though I expected to become vicariously slim by way of an audio tag-along down the Appalachian Trail.

When that didn’t work, I began building a resume of modest physical accomplishments. A handful of circuits around the neighborhood. A few minutes I appropriated on the track circling my son’s soccer field while waiting for his practice to conclude. An impressively sweaty 40 minute stint on the treadmill.

In truth, this type of activity is really my normal routine. It’s just that—wouldn’t you know—graduate school seems to have me sitting on my butt way more than I think the AMA would recommend. I find it seriously hilarious that an impressive scope of organizations ranging from literacy advocacy groups to health institutions blame television for the rampant snacking and staggering obesity figures in younger Americans while promoting—get this—reading as a solution to this grave cycle of wanton inactivity.

Unlike a graduate student waddling into a library, the theory just doesn’t hold its weight.

Visit me Elsewhere Today

My interview with the Ninjas at Invictus Verbum

http://www.invictusverbum.com/blog/?p=12

Enjoy!

I Think "Court Jester" is a Great Job Title

“May I ask who’s calling?” I asked in the crisp office voice I’ve cultured ever since I was reassigned from the database to Anything But the Database.

“Prince Books.” Startled, I considered asking the caller to repeat himself, but despite the improbability of receiving a call from royalty at the graduate office, I was certain of what I’d heard.

I walked to into Dr. S’s office and asked, perhaps with a bit too much pomp and circumstance, if she could take a call from Prince Books.

For a split second, she too, looked alarmed until she paused, mentally reassigning stress to the appropriate syllables. Her lips crinkled a bit at the edges, but she quickly gained command of her composure before taking the call.

This is more than I can say for myself, as I walked back down the hall, remembering exactly what we do at the graduate office—you know, things like procuring text books from publishers, and the like.

For some reason I think the word “telephone” is about to be edited from my job description.

That Which does not Kill You Makes You Flabby and Stressed

Around 4 PM on a recent Monday, I realized that I’m definitely a real college student.

It wasn’t just a sudden acknowledgement of the five pounds of free flab I received with my registration, or the blown eardrum from the concert in the gym.

It occurred to me that my activities for the previous 24-hours included nothing more than writing a paper, playing video games, and sleeping.

It’s crunch time in my semester, and my 10-day forecast calls for papers and projects, punctuated by breaks for sanity and sleep.

The upside is that I’ve found that college life has driven my hypochondria into remission. Oh, it’s not that I’m unaffiliated; on the contrary, just in the past week, I’ve exhibited symptoms of ocular and muscular tumors, heart disease, and Bell’s Palsy, in addition to the aforementioned aural trauma. However, these days, I can do little more than shrug off or shun thoughts of medical maladies, a format that has yielded surprising results. With no time or inclination to follow up on any of these grave possibilities, the symptoms usually dissipate on their own without intervention.

College life appears, then, to be my “magic bullet” against hypochondria. Now I just need something to alleviate the side effects, lest paunch and papers become the death of me.

Something to do While We're Waiting...

...for me to have time to post.

http://www.dailylit.com/home

Five minutes (each day), no cost, unlimited enjoyment!

Happy reading!

(My progress can be tracked on the left, under my profile)

Opening Day

Summer Girl returns at 7:05 PM EST

Play ball!

Tuesdays With Morrie Became Monday's Sad Story

My daughter was mistaken for a homeless person outside the Books A Million last week, and the most shocking thing about this is that I completely missed the warning.

She went to the bookstore for some type of heated, after-school debate about a group project. Her best friend gave her a ride to the bookstore, and, true to form, my daughter talked her into running through a drive through for some chicken nuggets before dropping her off. Happily clutching her nugget bag, she headed toward the store, deciding at the last minute to eat her nuggets on the sidewalk before going in.

About halfway through the bag, she was startled when a passer-by of about four years old shrieked out a gleeful request for a nugget only to receive a stern scolding from her scandalized mother. “She’s homeless, dear,” the mother said, giving my daughter a wide berth while steering her child in the opposite direction. “We don’t take food from the homeless!”

We figured the unfortunate mistake was the result of the anteater-at-a-picnic style with which the kid tends to attack a bag of nuggets. It also could have had something to do with the oversized pieces of art and the graffiti-covered gear she had in tow. I’m sure the B-B-Q sauce stains on her sleeves didn’t help.

However, it wasn’t until today that I realized that my daughter's appearance, though undoubtedly a contributing factor, may not have been the primary reason the woman assumed her to be homeless. My working theory is that she probably lives near the Books A Million and sees this kind of thing all the time. Just as the streets of Vegas are populated by those unfortunate souls who pass the time idly feeding the nickel slots, the sidewalks in front of the Books A Million are doubtless strewn with those who count their wealth soely in terms of pages turned. Proximity to the bookstore won't let this vigilant woman lose sight of a fact that I had forgotten:

Reading is addictive.

Although one seldom hears cautionary tales about the pitfalls of reading, I submit here in this forum that, as far as compulsive behaviors go, reading habits need to be regarded with the same concern as gluttony, or off-track betting.

Not that I’m a stranger to reading—-indeed, books are a part of my daily life. It’s just that in recent years, I have managed to convince myself that I don’t have much time to read for pleasure.

I’m not sure how it happened. I grew up consuming Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden on a book-a-day basis. I absorbed Michael Bond and CS Lewis, their British influences infusing my own speech and writing with phrases like “Crikey!” and “there was a row in the queue,” and the tendency to use the favoured spelling of the Monarchy.

It’s just that responsible adult life isn’t designed to accommodate addictive behavior. Even when it masquerades as a wholesome, educational pursuit.

Ironically, my love for literature was rekindled when I got desperately behind on some in-class reading and my husband got me hooked on listening to CD books on my commutes. Eventually, I became so adept at employing CD literature that I got ahead in my reading, and discovered that I had time to listen to other books, too, just for fun.

But I got greedy, which is how I came to find myself crouched in the nonfiction aisle of the Books A Million, sucking up chapters of Tuesdays With Morrie like my daughter on a bag of chicken nuggets.

Remembering the triple digit page count I faced in the form of weekend reading homework, I prudently slid the book back on the shelf when my daughter was ready to go home.

But when I woke up in the morning, Morrie was still with me. I had know what happened, how his talks about life, and love, and death progressed, and how many of Mitch’s questions would be answered before Morrie’s Final Chapter.

I went to the library, ostensibly to pick up a book for school, which I forgot, and left with Morrie, who is far more interesting than linguistics, Chaucer, or that horrible book I have to read for my multicultural literature class. Morrie slam-dunks anything in my sociology book (although, he was, ironically, a sociology professor). Needless to say, Morrie trumps laundry, and dusting, and, to be honest, I read him behind my own booth at the Virginia Festival of the Book on Saturday.

I stayed with Morrie clear through to the end, and all I have to say is that it’s a good thing Morrie’s account wasn’t contained in a lengthier tome.

It’s also fortunate that my husband has a good job, because although my daughter was mistaken for a homeless person, I'd otherwise be in danger of becoming one, especially since my daughter's group is meeting at the Books A Million again tomorrow and I have to pick her up. The truth is, I could come home with anything, and be well on my way to a downward spiral. Indeed, I could even now, be in the final chapters of Responsible Living.

Come to think of it, I think I’ll just wait for her on the sidewalk outside the store and eat a snack.

Brownies, Bunny Cake, and Brewed Coffee (Grounds)

This a quick little post about Monday baked goods and an update for those concerned about the much-maligned New York Capri Pants.

Last week’s photo shoot was a wonderful success. The photographer followed the girls through the entire brownie process: licking the batter, sliding the pan into the oven, eating the proceeds before they cooled. He even sat though our lesson while the brownies baked. My editor sent the final layout to me yesterday, and the piece looks great. She even added an editor’s note, with links to my new website and books.

My son volunteered to take pictures so all of you could join in the fun. I’m sure these images will make you feel like you were right here with us.





Don’t you just feel like you were sitting right here?

This week, I decided to bake bunny cakes instead of brownies. I’m sure you’ll understand why I’m relieved that not only were no reporters on site, no one else showed up, either:



And the word on the Capri pants is that they emerged from beneath the grounds unscathed. If any staining did occur, the overall brown patina of the fabric rendered any defects invisible to the naked eye, a merit not enjoyed by all baked goods.

Resurrection

On this Easter Sunday, I would be remiss not to make mention of two facts of note. The first is an update on the ill-fated New York Capri Pants . Evidently, a concerned bystander pulled them from the trash, although I have yet to visually verify this fact, and there is no word yet on how they fared amidst the coffee grounds.

The second is that answers came to clarifycertain uncertainties with which I've been struggling.

New life has been breathed into some stagnant dreams. Isn't redemption a wonderful thing?

Stay tuned.

Lessons of the Pants

For several consecutive Spring Breaks—I’d guess four—I’d fallen into the habit of reading whatever one of the Traveling Pants books was hottest from the presses.

Having read the final installment in the account of the globetrotting jeans last year, this spring left me with no choice but to reflect upon Pants mishaps of my own design.

I’m sad to report that the New York Capri Pants didn’t make it. They were last seen mingling with the coffee grounds in the bottom of my trash can.

There are reasons for the extreme fate of The Pants. For starters, who knew that lugging two layers of shimmery fabric around your waist could be a workout? I should have donated them to NASA for astronauts to use during zero gravity experiments. As far as Earth-bound applications, I suppose you could use them as a paperweight, but my next point will illustrate why you wouldn’t want to.

They’re enormous. The pattern size I measured for was more than double the size stamped on clothes I buy off the rack. “Sewing sizes are different, mother,” my daughter kept insisting. All I know is that the New York Capri Pants could provide shade and shelter over a large portion of Central Park.

Then there’s the fact that every line I tried to sew kept moving—slipping and sliding all over the place, until the midsection looked more like a licorice whip than a waistband.

But the writer in me isn’t content to just let the unfortunate events rest unexamined. No, the ill-fated Pants must be infused with some sort of Greater Meaning, they must inspire, instruct and inform. They must have Purpose.

I wouldn’t blame you for asking why, but the reason is quite simple. It’s the only way I can cope with the personal failure, waste of expensive fabric, and loss of many hours that could have been invested in more productive pursuits.

What then, can the Pants teach us from their gritty grave?

My husband would say that, too, is simple: I can’t sew.

I say it’s a little of that, and a lot of I don’t know when to quit. I don’t know when quitting is good, or when quitting is bad. It seems that there are times for both, but just like a little kid who hasn’t figured out what strangers are OK to talk to (Policemen? The hairdresser? That creepy guy who drives the ice cream truck?) I’m still learning the rules.

That’s what I learned from the Pants. That, and I can’t sew.

Tomorrow Comes Early Every Monday

Every Monday at 6:30 PM, it suddenly becomes Tuesday at my house.

The smell of baking brownies and sounds of canine excitement signal the weekly time warp. Tails wag as teen girls, hungry for a combined spiritual and sugar rush, file through the front door. This weekly ritual played out every Tuesday night for ten years until I started my Masters program. After Tuesday evening classes forced a move to Mondays, everyone cheerfully adjusted to the time change, but not a name change. We’re still the Tuesday Night Bible Study. We just happen to meet on Monday.

What’s different about tonight is that instead of making the brownies ahead of time, I’m waiting for the girls to arrive so we can bake them together. The format change is for the benefit of a photographer who is coming to take pictures for a story about our group which will run in a local women’s’ magazine and, apparently, the newspaper as well. The brownie making angle is a concession to the fact that, for photography purposes, taking pictures of us baking would be more interesting than pictures of us sitting around on couches eating the brownies, which is what we usually do.

I won’t have the pictures to post, but, as I happened to write the article, I’d be happy to give you a sneak peek at it.

It goes something like this:

Who knew when I sat down in my living room one late spring evening with two teen girls, a pan of double chocolate brownies and a Bible that my life was about to change? Sure, I was excited about building relationships with some of the girls at church, but I had no idea I was beginning a chapter of my life that would be peopled by dozens of teenagers who would bring me not only encouragement and joy, but also inspiration in the pursuit of a lifelong dream.

But that’s exactly what happened. Our weekly living room sessions around the brownie pan are now eleven years strong. Over the years, I’ve been in two weddings, and another
two marriages exist because of friendships that formed in Tuesday Night Bible Study.

Along the way, we’ve prayed together over lost loves, sick pets, and plummeting grades. We once sat and cried together at a funeral, too. Sometimes the older girls come back from college or married life and get to know the new girls. It’s a continuous thread.

I was a late bloomer, of sorts. A caution-to-the-wind kind of gal with a flair for the dramatic and a penchant for impulsive road trips during school hours. Having managed to survive into my twenties, I felt a responsibility to extend a map of sorts to my younger sisters—a guide marking the best stepping stones around the tough neighborhoods.

But even my husband, who has been a constant source of encouragement in endeavors ranging from international travel to the ill-advised adoptions of numerous strays, was skeptical.

“It’s a great idea,” he said. “But I’m not sure if you’ll get them to come. I don’t want you to be disappointed.”

But come they did—sometimes in trickles, others in droves. And our group quickly expanded as the girls brought their friends. Soon girls from all over the community began showing up at my door each week for a dose of scripture, a listening ear, and, of course, a brownie.

I keep a few trophies—but not the kind you have to polish. My favorite is a little Ziploc baggie full of “contraband” a couple of girls unexpectedly gave me one night at the end of a study. Not even 24’s Jack Bauer could get me to divulge the contents of the bag, but I promise you, it was worth way more than every chocolate chip I’ve ever had to buy and every hour that stretched beyond our usual two.

And that lifelong dream I mentioned? My experiences with the girls actually gave me the nudge I needed to jumpstart my frustrated writing ambitions! It began as a chapter-a-week online saga featuring a protagonist who, as one girl put it, “is a little bit of all of us.” The experiment grew into two young adult novels that have opened doors for me to talk with girls who would never have the opportunity to walk through my door on a Tuesday night.

Those who come usually hit the door with a single question: “Are there brownies tonight?” They claim my super-chocolaty recipe has “ruined” ordinary brownies for them.

I understand. A brownie isn’t just a brownie for me anymore, either. It’s a warm, gooey celebration of enduring friendship and the unexpected joys of giving.

Cynthia Davis is pursuing an MAT in English at Christopher Newport University. To contact her or learn more about her work, visit http://www.runningwithletters.com

Maybe you'd like the brownie recipe?

Bible Study Brownies (Nestle Double Chocolate Brownies)
This is the recipe for the authentic Tuesday night brownies!
3/4 cup unsifted flour
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon baking soda
1/3 cup butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 tablespoons water
1 package Nestle semi-sweet morsels
1 teaspoon vanilla
2 eggs
Preheat oven to 325 degrees. In small bowl combine flour, baking soda, and salt--set aside. In small saucepan, combine butter, sugar, and water. Bring just to a boil, then remove from heat. Add 1/2 package of morsels and vanilla. Stir until morsels melt and mixture is smooth. Transfer to large bowl. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition. Gradually blend in flour mixture. Stir in remaining morsels. Spread into greased 9 inch pan. Bake 30-35 minutes.

Enjoy!

Knowing When to Say "When"

“Don’t end up at Barnes and Noble,” my daughter pleaded at the end of a cell phone conversation right before my husband came home from work on Friday.

We were going out on a date—spring break item #7, for those who are counting—and if history was any indication, about one troubled meal and ninety minutes away from aimless aisle wandering and a video on the couch.

My husband had given this date a pretty good trailer, though, so I’d looked forward to it with some anticipation. I’d categorized it in the “mystery” genre, as I had next to nothing to go on, but when he came through the door carrying a slender manila folder, I started thinking along the lines of James Bond, or Mission Impossible.

Inside the folder were three columns of numbered sticky notes with the headlines “Dinner,” “Shopping,” and “Film.” The rules, he said, were simple. Once an option was uncovered, I had to decide to accept it or move on, but the catch was, I couldn’t go back.

Twelve possibilities for dinner, seven for shopping—each with varying funds I could spend—and nine potential movies—what fun! I quickly removed the starting options in each category—obvious throw-aways (McDonalds, Wal-Mart, and a movie called “Jumper,” which may be a perfectly fine film, but not one with which I was familiar.)

I kept going.

The options got better—a nice Mexican restaurant, a decent Target allowance, a fun romantic comedy. But all those uncovered options...what might I miss?

I continued peeling Post-its.

From bar and grill fare, Barnes and Nobel (“I can’t go home and tell our daughter I ended up at Barnes and Nobel”) and a well-reviewed drama, I wound up with: “Bag Lunch—PBJ,” “$25 at K-Mart” and some really scary sounding flick called “Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins.”

There was nothing I could do but keep peeling.

It’s a good thing my husband knows me well, that he’s no stranger to my “grass must be greener” urges. Because brown-bagging it in K-Mart duds at a B-movie is what people like me typically come to in the end. By the time I’d reached a tidy, three digit sum at Macy’s and WAS STILL THINKING my date had tuned into “Deal or No Deal” and I was the contestant poised to reject a massive payday and go home with a penny.

But my husband knows I can’t stand the unknown. That I have to know “what could have been,” that I struggle with understanding that the best things are the ones that you have.

Knowing it would likely get to that point, my husband saved some sweet options for the end, allowing me to enjoy a piping hot pot pie, a shopping spree at the mall (variety!) and the same romantic comedy I reluctantly passed by in the number four spot.

He says it won’t go down this way next time. He says I need to learn when to embrace what’s before me and stop second guessing my choices.

Otherwise, next time I’ll be wiping peanut butter off my Wal-Mart T-shirt as I trudge into the video store.