Thursday, November 19, 2009

Anger and the skeleton at the feast

"Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations still to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel of both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are wolfing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."

- Frederick Buechner

*******************

I missed my anger management classes today. My restitution? The Buechner quote.

Without going into too much detail, unshowered, make-upless and braless, gnashing teeth, still, I failed to channel this anger into writing. It would've been good stuff, I'm sure. But at least my home benefited {hasn't been cleaner in weeks}.

Let's hope some cleansing breaths, mental yoga, and seeing New Moon tomorrow night with 1,001 other screaming hormonal popcorn and Edward/Jacob drunk teens will clear my head.

What do you do when you get angry?


Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Gratitude: Seeing it


I think I began to grasp the concept of gratitude when I was seventeen.

The summer of 1989, before my senior year in high school, I was dumped by The Boy Friend of my young life who was going to become my husband and the father of my future children. I was sure of it.

Honey, why don't you eat something?” my good intentioned mom would ask. I tried.

Stop moping,” my dad ordered. I tried.

In all, it took the better part of three hundred and sixty-five days, and perhaps several more, to get over Him. The guy whose kisses and love notes and white truck had parked in my thoughts and rested there. Maybe too long. In retrospect, most definitely.

Still, I tried to forget Him. I went to school and did my homework dutifully with puffy eyes and a crushed heart and Depeche Mode songs looping through my mind. And I showed up at my part-time job, my self-esteem ticking, just barely, like an almost broken clock.

I worked as a shelver at a local library for the Blind and Handicapped. Albert was one of the volunteers. He was blind and probably close to my grandpa's age. He had a scuffed up white cane with a red sticker wrapped around the bottom. He wore a funny plaid cap, the kind that old men wear, and a tan jacket when it was cold. His guide dog, Hester, never left his side.

Every week or so, I helped him sort the paper bills in his wallet. I would fold different corners of each denomination, telling him their worth. He would feel each bill, the edges and creases, and then carefully tuck them away. In turn, he helped me open the kelly green plastic cassette boxes, the ones the patrons listened to and returned. These tapes were their lifeline to Louis L'Amour, Pearl S. Buck, The Bible, the world.

Feeling his way across the Braille lettering with deft fingers, he'd place the tapes into a black, industrial looking rewind machine. When they were rewound, he'd refill the boxes, snap them shut, and stack them. Then I would sort them, load them onto a cart, and shelve them according to their alphanumeric labels.

For two years we did this mindless work, side by side, talking when he or I was in the mood. Sometimes the only sound between us was the whir of the rewind machine, Hester yawning, or the tinkling bell at the front door, signaling another patron arriving.

We always knew when Albert was wandering around the library because he would smack things with his cane to the right and left as he went, apologizing loudly to bookshelves and walls, bathroom doors and the occasional chair. It always made me smile.

Without his dark glasses, his eyes scared me. They were opaque, unseeing, odd. And yet, I wondered about his lightless life and it's myriad details: his breakfast, his clothes {usually mostly clean} and how he lived without crossword puzzles and video games and sunsets.

Year around we shared bowls of popcorn, a popular office snack. I told him about my growing up years and big Mormon family and college plans to become a Librarian. We listened to bird calls from cassette tapes I pulled from the stacks, and he would quiz me from time to time.

Seasons came and went. We celebrated holidays together in the office, passing around white rectangular boxes of See's Chocolates. And one year, Christmas 1989, Albert gave me a gift: a hand painted ceramic mug. On one side was a deep blue flower, my favorite color. On the other side he had written my name and the year in gold cursive. It was beautiful. I should have asked him how he painted it; I never did.

He took the city bus to and from the library, an Olympian feat of courage I could never comprehend. At the end of each work day, I walked him and Hester down the gray sidewalk to the bus stop at Maryland Parkway, his shuffling steps next to mine. My steps were just as uncertain as his, but somehow I was ridiculously blessed with vision.

Then, one late August day before I left for college, Albert asked to feel my face. I was tentative, unsure of myself and so many things, and for a heart beat, especially this. But some bold part of me, who had rested dormant for most of my youth, stepped forward, then, and said, “Yes.”

Hester lay curled up at our feet under the long brown table, while he reached out to me, at first touching air. Then he touched my forehead, cheekbones, nose and chin. I tried not to squirm or grimace or flinch. His hands continued, his thick fingers running over my eyebrows, lips, and temples, expertly, not missing an inch.

It didn't last very long but felt like forever. When he was done he nodded as if in affirmation. As if a question he'd been holding onto for two years was just answered. Smiling, he turned to me, sightless, and said, “Yes, that's what I thought. You are beautiful.”

Me? A boyfriendless girl who didn't go to her Senior Prom?

Me, who drove a bright yellow Toyota Tercel with homemade seat covers and no air conditioning?

Me, who didn't know who I was or who I could become? At the time, I didn't know, I couldn't see it. But Albert saw.

It was then, at age seventeen, that I began turning gratitude over in my mind, handling it blindly at first, delicately, learning a little of it. And then, in brief glimpses and flashes, I finally began to recognize it and see it, feel it.

Only now, almost thirty-eight years old, do I see gratitude blooming all around me. Sometimes I can't see it at all, but I know it's there if I take life in my hands and look. Then, what has been cloudy becomes clear. And I become grateful for all the steps that have been light, as well as heavy and uncertain, and every blind step in between.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Note to the reader: This is my entry for Scribbit's November 2009 Write Away Contest.

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

How has gratitude changed your vision in life?


Tuesday, November 17, 2009

I am that girl



















"A woman who writes feels too much,
those trances and portents! As if cycles and children and islands weren't enough; as if mourners and gossips and vegetables were never enough. She thinks she can warn the stars. A writer is essentially a spy. Dear love, I am that girl."
--Anne Sexton

I am that girl. You, too? Yep, I'm the one who writes when she should be sleeping, sleeps when she should be running, and runs when she should be praying, listening, or just sitting still. And eats chocolate when she should be grating carrots or julienning celery, bell peppers, or something else wholesome and green.

And writing. It's like catching the sun's finale as it bows down near the far edge of the sky. The moment the universe falls into my writing and together the colors, the words blend.

Still, I am struck again and again by my adolescence in life, in mothering, in writing. I am such a teenager. Checking the mirror, fuming at zits, imperfections. Anxious for the next stage but not yet figuring out this one. And then thoughts of grandma's cinnamon rolls not yet mastered, Zack's lost solitary blue shoe, and long walks stroll through me.

Who will do them but me?

So I break away from writing, from living, to live, still, too. In Sexton's words, to warn the stars. To spy on life. I often come back with notes, ways of capturing
the shade of an old man's cap or how his hands, capable but blind, handle life, reaching out to the dark corners of table edges and city buses, pulling them in.

He is OK with the unseen, and I know somehow I can be, too.

What kind of girl are you in mothering, writing, life?

Monday, November 16, 2009

Sweet sign: Count your blessings...



















I ran into this sign while blog surfing the other day. The sign collector that I am, I had to nab it. I love the Thanksgiving colors.

The sign was created by Heather over at The Modern Hive. She offers a "gratitude mini print download" that you can frame and use a dry erase marker to write something you are grateful for every day. Right on the glass. How cool is that?

It being the month of turkey, erm, thankfulness and all, I thought I'd list some blessings. In reality I have more like 897,543 blessings, but to summarize, I'll list twelve here, not in any particular order {in case you fear I rank chocolate above my children, husband, health...}.

1. Cadbury "Star Bars." Next time I visit England, I'm shipping a box home. {And checking Ebay right after this to see if I can get some more until then!}

2. My children who snuggle and sass, fight and hug. And sometimes, at the end of a long day, they wrap up presents for me in blue house rags. {The last "present" was a colored picture of Hello Kitty.}

3. Not having to work outside the home. For now, as much as I miss being a Librarian, being able to stay home equals time in my book. Time to have a slower breakfast and actually taste the food, go on play dates with our ever growing two-year-old, and sit under a park tree and watch the birds fly away. And write some, too.

4. Family. Love those near, miss those far. It's party mode, movie time, girl talk, cinnamon roll making {and noshing}, ninja thrift store shopping when we get together.

5. Health. I take it for granted. I know I do. I don't realize how hard my body works for me until I slow down enough to remember, or visit a hospital full of stretchers, IVs, and running nurses. And then I'm grateful. Very.

6. Books. If I could just find a way to work at the Library of Congress someday. Then I could die happy.

7. Writing. They say Rome wasn't built in a day. Neither was a novel. And someday, I'll get there.

8. My husband. King of my universe, barbecue, computer, and homemade hummus.

9. Friends. Good times, as well as good fish tacos, LNOs, venting, etc. My friends are my psychologist.

10. My home. However obnoxiously small it is, it is where my heart rests. Always.

11. Jesus Christ. The example, the way.

12. Music. Violin, piano, accordion, bagpipe, clarinet, my children's voices, and the occasional kazoo. Music transports me like a poem, a kiss, light rain.


What are some of your blessings?

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Poem: Turning
















Sitting, watching the trees through the window
I almost catch the moment she turns,
facing the cool light, reaching
for wool socks, slippers, quilts.

She has been waiting, holding her breath,
packing her bags season after season,
slowly, steadily.

Today she exhales,
blowing the leaves,
and they fall
down, all around our feet,
their green days a memory.

--Terresa Wellborn


We visited my grandma last week in the hospital. She has a perforated hernia. They gave her pain medication and sent her home. Not good. That day, I felt her loosen her ties and, like a leaf, begin to fall away from us, from life.

How do you prepare to say goodbye to someone you love?

Saturday, November 14, 2009

Missing a friend who moved to New Mexico








Visiting you was never just a visit.

It was a drive, far and wide across the city. And then a walk up a green path, lined with plants of every kind in pots all shapes and colors. It was opening your front door as patchouli and sweet orange and rosemary crept into my senses. And your furniture, antique, hand crafted, filling the room with Parrish blue and sunflower yellow.

And the park play dates on quilted blankets, sharing pumpkin bread and baby clothes and our children's birthdays, cake after cake. And the stacks of books lining our walls, our thoughts. We read, we quoted, we cried.

Our tummies blossomed again and again in the space of a few years. We nursed our babies on chairs, couches, and floor, cradling them close, so many of us at times, there was no where to sit.

And then came your loss, your pain. Solitary. The biggest fear all of us had, losing a baby, and it was, by ridiculous fate, yours.

Somehow, part of your pain ebbed to our shores, too. Again and again, an unending pain with each word, each visit. I didn't know what to do but be there. And now, I wonder. I hope that was enough.

You lived through each minute, each meal, each sunset. Day after day, babyless, empty. Somehow breathing, dressing, walking. And then for you, pain crashed on top of more pain. A gale force, a hurricane.

At last, somehow still standing, you turned back to whatever you had left anchoring you to life, Maya. And then your sunrise came, beautiful Haddie.

This is how I remember it. Not how you or Astrid or Joann remember it, and maybe not even the way it really was. But how it was for me, written in my heart.

I miss you.

What are your memories of a friend who changed your life?

Friday, November 13, 2009

Dog dilemmas and party poodles













The guy I live with really wants a dog. Bad. Me? Not so much. So we're tug-o-warring over it. I've been couch potatoing on the issue for months now, while he grows more frustrated each passing day.

I'm reluctant to have another baby to potty train, feed, and watch over. However furry and cuddly it is.

But my husband, Ben, islikethis with dogs. Actually, all animals. The strange domesticated rat that ended up nestled in our backyard bar-be-que a few months ago could've become our fifth child. Easily. As well as our friend's stray mutt, that one crane with the broken wing he rescued from Lake Mead in 1996, and all other lonely gutter-licking animals in between.

I grew up with dogs, sure. My childhood family dog, Tally, was as much a fixture in our home as the retro lime, orange, and yellow clown lamps in our living room {true story}.

Tally was cranky and ill tempered, kind of like sea bass on a bad day. Was it her natural born temperament or the fact she had to tolerate five kids? And I'm certain it had nothing to do with us dressing her in gingham print bonnets, pulling her in a red wagon round and round the cul-de-sac, and throwing her into the pool to swim with us.

Which leads me to party poodles. Back in the late 1960's, my parents were trying to start a family, without much success. So my dad bought my mom a pet poodle. One year, the poodle ran off and had a late night shindig with another dog on the block. Later, when she had puppies, my mom was delighted to find out they actually looked like poodles. Beautiful ones, fluffy and poodley in every way.

With so many puppies on their hands and little money in their wallets, my mom ran an ad in the local Reno, Nevada, paper for "Party Poodles." They sold like hot cakes.

When I asked her what a "Party poodle" was, she said she had no idea. It was just a fun name she made up. {My ingenious mom.}

My point? My mom has had dogs pretty much her entire life. All different types from Schnauzers to miniature Terriers to Scottie dogs. She loves them. They are part of her landscape, her routine, her family.

So, am I lacking a dog loving gene or what? That I can only imagine the poop scooping and fine leather sofa chewing involved and not the run-and-fetch-my-slippers and curl-up-by-my-side type of love that dogs are famous for?

Why do you suggest getting a dog?
OR
Why do you suggest running far, far away from getting a dog?

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Cool quote #127












I know motherhood is the most important thing I'll do in my life, but there's something about motherhood that makes you feel like you're disappearing - it kind of effaces and erodes you.

I came into writing as a gift, and . . . I really feel like it rescued me. Those first years I would thank God every day for giving me writing."

--Julie Berry, author

{I couldn't have said it any better, Jules.}

What is a gift in your life you are thankful for?


Wednesday, November 11, 2009

It's our turn



















“Buy the ticket, take the ride.”
--Hunter S. Thompson

One day last week I woke up and realized I was past my mid-thirties. I wasn't wondering which of my friends was pregnant. I wasn't flipping through my calendar, charting days, wondering about getting pregnant again, or investing in more pregnancy clothes, cloth diapers, or nursing bras. Baby Gap ads weren't tugging at me, calling my ovaries out of slumber. And I was handing back my squishy, sweet smelling baby niece without a hitch.

I realized with quiet, striking joy that I'm past the new born stage of motherhood and knee deep in grade school. The water's fine, really. Thank goodness the teenage years aren't here yet. {We still have a toddler in tow, but as our most definite almost for sure "last child," he's cake.}

Because now it's our turn to pack the school lunches. The turkey sandwiches, cheese sticks, and chocolate chip cookies, homemade or not. We fold white napkins in half alongside a water bottle. And we tuck our hearts into our children's backpacks, too, hoping it helps.

It's our turn to sit alongside our reluctant grade schoolers doing homework we, too, would be reluctant to do. We sharpen number two pencils, trot through spelling lists, give pep talks {just as often to ourselves}, and somehow find a way to do it.

We buy our seven-year-old daughter new black Sunday shoes and turn around a few months later, finding they don't fit anymore. And the carefully boxed arts and crafts from preschool, once unearthed from our garage last summer, now look like artifacts from a Children's Museum. And we're surprised.

Are we living towards the day our children leave us?

Someday, like leaves falling from the family tree, they will scatter to college in another state, maybe a mission in another country. Life, marriage, and careers may wisk them away to cities, maybe close by, maybe not.

Then it will be their turn. Their turn to birth and breastfeed and rock and raise children. Their turn for late nights with sick children on the cold tile bathroom floor and later mornings when PBS cartoons and video games are your best friend because they mean a few more minutes of precious sleep.

But for now it's our turn. Still. Stretching out in front of us, endless, a stream of todays and tomorrows.

Like a ride at a fair, we anticipated these, our children. We waited in line, scratching our bellies with impatience. And now blinking, we realize, in the heat of this blazing season of parenting, our turn is going to be over before we can stop it. It's out of our hands, really. Breathless, we want it to end, while everything else in us whispers, “No, let it stretch out, let me hold it a little while longer.”

It's our turn. I've got my ticket, I'm on the ride. It's called motherhood. And I wouldn't miss it for the world.

What ride do you find yourself on in this season of life?

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

Waking up








I feel like I'm waking up. In a good way. It's like my mind finally turned over and woke up happy. The shoe fits, the light bulb went on, the glass is half full. You get the picture.

Knowing the flip side of this makes happiness all the sweeter. Other than a sunny spot or two last week, I've felt mired in a post-apocalyptic Halloween candy induced haze. It's been a hellish, canker sore filled, sugary torture. Thankfully, it's over now and as R.E.M. would agree, I feel fine.

It's November, quintessential park weather here in the desert. And things are green. Erm, well, not like Provo, Utah green, Vermont green, or Lake District, England green. But green for the desert. Beautiful.

At the risk of sounding Cheez Whiz cliché or gooey inspirational Stuart Smalley, what the hey? I'm going there anyways. The grass isn't always greener on the other side. The grass is greener under our feet. Sometimes we just have to wait for it. And sometimes, keep on waiting.


Focusing on what we don't have or don't do is a black hole. A time waster, a life sucker. You know, my WIP is still not finished, but every day I still write something and get a little closer towards becoming a published author. Some day.

And, finished or no finished projects, here it is laid out before me like freshly mowed lawn in lovely straight lines. Hallelujah, sweet God of the grasses, that's exactly what it is! The awesomeness of life sits right before me and today, of all days, I can see it.

The grass is greener in my own backyard. Right here. Where have I been this whole time?? A deep jungle green that's picnic worthy. In the middle of the desert. An impossibility? Not even.

You see, the dirt that the desert rats {who masquerade as my children} used to heap into little piles and cart into the house in tiny cups and miniature dump trucks is no more. We have grass. Finally, after five years, it's here. And it may take me just as long to wrap up my novel, brush my teeth, and find an agent. But in time, it will happen.

For today, the grass is green under my feet and growing. Life is lush. And I'm in love.

What did you wake up to today?

Monday, November 9, 2009

I confess






I have something to confess. The real reason we bought a MacBook Pro laptop earlier this year was not a bold statement to myself and the literary world that I was buckling down to write for reals.

It was for Photobooth. {It rocks my socks, even when I'm not wearing any.} And here's proof.

What's your favorite laptop perk?

Sunday, November 8, 2009

Finding the in-between












"Of all the pitfalls in our paths and the tremendous delays and wanderings off the track...all that seems like fantastic mistakes are not mistakes, all that seems like error is not error; and it all has to be done. That which seems like a false step is the next step."
- Agnes Martin

Tonight I'm grateful for Oreo kisses from my four young children, knowing that someday they will grow up and away from me but I will still remember their voices tonight singing and happy hugs and words, worth more than a published novel, a shelf of published novels, the world.

Sorry, NaNoWriMo. I applaud all of you on board this year, but I can't participate. My reason? I'm a certified over-scheduled mom trying to balance writing and life. It's not easy.

I'm coming to realize that mama authors must be superhuman. And me? I'm just not that super. Mama authors have guts of steel and a strong will and probably perky boobs to boot. Or whatever. You get the picture. They rock, and clearly, I didn't get the memo that said exactly how.

Do they prescribe Prozac for this?

Because I look around my life and can't imagine what else I'd let go in order to participate in NaNoWriMo.

The laundry?

Meals?

Time with my family?

More sleep?

My mind?

I'm already scrimping by on most of those. I'm determined that my four smallish children will not grow up wearing stained hand-me-downs in primary colored prints from the nineties and thinking Hamburger Helper is "dinner." They will not have a crazed mom squirreled away trying to tap into JK Rowling's mojo, burning incense, chanting, and praying to the publishing Gods and writing what she thinks will be The Next Big Thing.

I just can't let that happen.

With writing and mothering, does it have to be one or the other? If not, how do I find the in-between?

How do mamas write, get their books published, and then skip ahead to churn out more books? Are they robots? Stepford wives? Or maybe professional jugglers, bouncing their toddler son on one knee while deftly ignoring that nagging feeling of missing a snuggle, a kiss, a butterfly, hour after hour, day after day.

Is it worth it to miss some of the most potent moments of our children's lives in order to write, or do Any Great Thing, for that matter??

For some, maybe writing is like childbirth where the first one is all anticipation and fear of The Unknown. Then, somehow you roll past it, contractions, transition, and afterbirth {alive, mind you}, and then think, "Bring it on, I want more." Maybe for mama writers, with practice, it gets easier, the deadlines, the juggling, the rewrites, the late nights.

Because I want to write. And I do, in fits and starts. But that's what it's been this last year and what it continues to be. This sparring is getting old.

I fear I cannot do both: write {really write a black streak across my desk into the sky and the heavens beyond} and be a mother. And remain sane. To me, that would be like volunteering to run two marathons but in opposite directions. I have plenty of energy to run, sure, but which way? I don't know how to run both at the same time.

Writing is who I am. I wait all day to write, like the earth waits, rocky and dry for the waves to come back to her, quenching her shores and wetting her lips. For me, writing is as necessary as drinking water.

My problem is that many days, that's all I want to do. Write. And then I end up resenting everything else that gets in the way: my kids and their homework, catching lady bugs with them, hearing their stories, etc. The writer within is crying for her time, too. I feel the pull both ways, so passionately, at times it feels like a bipolar condition.

Is there a twelve step program for this? An Oprah book club book? A writer's handicap sign for my rear view mirror? A gentle yet firm Nathan Bransford Literary Agent post with 287 helpful responses I'll never have time to read? A good humored bumper sticker?

Maybe. But I doubt it.

I'm a mom for crap sake, not the next Steph Meyers {erm, yet...}.

How do you find the balance between writing and being a mom?