Who Knew? I'm a Juggler!

I’ve been juggling three books this week.  Found them all on our vacation to Maine and each one is a gem to read and a great addition to my writing library in their own unique way.   

I found the first two when we stopped at the Big Chicken Barn.  On the second floor of the building about half a block long, I walked the creaking floorboards to the writing section near the far end.  The very first book I reached for was HOME – American Writers Remember Rooms of Their Own.  It’s hardcover, with near opaque parchment wrapper with bold black writing was soothing to the eye even before feeling so comforting in the hand.  HOME had found its place with me. Each of the contributing eighteen writers shares a story of home, of rooms they lived in and the people found there, where memories were made and woven with dreams and imagination.  I love it not only for the stories, but for the opportunity to view in one book the styles and points of view used to express the same theme.  No case of writer’s block could stand against the flow of characters, settings and plots found within.

A few creaky steps later, I came across Writing Articles from the Heart – How to write & sell your life experiences, by Marjorie Holmes, waiting for me.  Written in 1993, it comes across at times as a bit dated, yet there are sections on ideas, organization and techniques that have classic staying power or can be updated for today.  Its tone is conversational and at times feels like Marjorie is your own personal cheerleader.  What I love most so far though is the previous owner’s markings.  Many of the pages are dog eared and there are notes scribbled in the margins.  One part of the book that reviews “Contrast and Comparison” has a line to the margin where it’s written in blue ink “styles of Russian researchers vs. statistical caution of Americans.”  In the middle of the table of contents, written in shaky, capital letters is, “DASHING MY DREAM OF SPEECH FOR THE DUMB & DEAF”.   Sometimes the most joy in a used book is in imagining it in the hands of a previous owner and what it meant to them.

A few days later, strolling down the sidewalk of a little town on Route 1 we came across a few tables on the lawn in front of a library with boxes for a book sale.  It didn’t take long to glide my hands over the book spines as I read them and I got very near to the last of the boxes empty handed.  Then, the big red hardcover spine caught my eye.  Booknotes – America’s Finest Authors on Reading, Writing and the Power of Ideas, by Brian Lamb. This is a BIG BOOK.  Booknotes was a television show that ran on C-Span from 1989 – 2004 and showcased 801 one hour interviews with the author of a recently released non-fiction book.  I’m going to plead a mother’s excuse here and point out that I had a newborn distracting me in 1989.  How I defend the ignorance of not knowing about this show for the following 23 years until I saw this book in a little box on that sidewalk table a few weeks ago I don’t know.   But I know now and this treasure trove of author interviews full of personal history, writing practices, and tips is like Christmas morning each time I open it. I may even treat myself and watch the author interviews (available online) after each author’s section to get the double effect!

So I juggle a little each day on which to pick up and how long to read before moving onto the next one.  I didn’t intend to be reading them all at once, and certainly Booknotes will take me the longest, but what a writing smorgasbord!  And lucky for me, this is one spread where the goodness never seems to end and I never get my fill. 

Maine: Land of lobster, hikes and writing tidbits…

Steven and I spent five glorious days in Bar Harbor, Maine in early August filled with hiking, eating, drinking and relaxing.  Steve looked forward to the “Lob-stah”, of which he got plenty and I came away with a treasure trove of writing goodies.  Vacations have always been an opportunity for me to collect “detail tidbits”.  Away from the distracting daily grind, my writers mind is more attuned to people and my surroundings and thoughts of how to weave those details in to future characters, settings and plots.  

Just makes you smile!

This trip’s constant turned out to be an enormous blow up white swan, strapped to the top of a Subaru.  We saw it at least once a day.  It was everywhere we went.  It was big.  It was bold.  It elicited ridiculous smiles. 

After a glass of wine or two on our balcony at the Holland Inn B&B, we strolled down the block for a quiet dinner at the Black Friar Inn, choosing a table in the near empty bar area.  Just after we ordered, a young woman at the bar made her presence known to anyone within earshot.  Throughout our “quiet” dinner, we learned of her Portuguese heritage, listened to her commentary on the Olympics, and found out that her husband was upstairs in their room with a headache.  We honored him with a silent toast and the future that lay ahead for him. 

Crying children have been a part of our vacations and a source of amusement to us in how they always show up since our honeymoon 30 years ago.  This one, around three years old, cried as she leaned on her mother’s knee for ten minutes straight as we all sat waiting for a shuttle bus.  Remarkably, her mom was able to totally ignore her, offering no consolation at all as she texted on her phone the whole time.  The dynamics of their mother-daughter relationship a few years down the road will be fascinating!      

One evening found us at a unique local attraction, Timber Tina’s Great Maine Lumberjack Show as the sun set in the woods of Trenton, Maine. It was surprisingly entertaining, with displays of wood chopping, tree climbing and ax throwing, sprinkled with a side of campy jokes, some lumberjack education and the larger than life personality of Timber Tina. The audience was split into two teams cheering for either the red or green flannel shirted team.  Our red team won, which meant loud a “Yooooo-Hooooooo” shout out for us!

A trip to the Big Chicken Barn, a huge antiques and book market, netted me a couple books on writing.  At an impromptu stop at another antique store down the road I scored the BIG FIND of the trip, a teapot with cozy.  The search for this piece has taken years.  Steve says they are probably so tough to find because the cozy is probably asbestos lined, but the childhood memories of my Nana’s pot & cozy make the asbestos risk worth it!

We spent most of our time in Acadia National Park. Hiking every day is something I could get used to very quickly.  I fell in love with my walking stick, the rhythm and pace it helped me set and the tricks I learned to use it to help my ascent and descent.  It made me feel almost athletic for the first time in my life!

Saw my first tide pool here!

Our trails ran the gamut from the flat sand bar at low tide to rocky shoreline, evergreen forests, rocky stairs and stone steps.  I mused about the workers establishing those trails, the multitude of other hikers that walked the same steps that I did and what they experienced as they travelled them.  Where they in awe of the clouds and fog that rolled in over the mountains around them?  Did they feel the solitude of their surroundings?  Did they find the tide pools as fascinating as I did and wonder at the delicate balance of life contained there?

Our last hiking day, our arrival at the summit on Champlain Mountain coincided with the clouds as they rolled across the top.  A first for me to have the front roll in and engulf me.  To feel the force as it approached, it’s cool whisper caress on heated skin, and the settling dampness.  To close my eyes, breathe in and be a part of it. A memorable moment to say the least.

When we got home and I looked through the (hundreds!) of pictures, I 

smiled to see one in particular.  It was a bumper sticker we saw during our walk through a little town maybe a mile long total where we’d stopped to stroll the sidewalk and look in the shops.   It reminded me of Steven and I, and of other couples I know of who do (and don’t) live their life by this motto. It has me thinking of the plot possibilities and the twists and turns of living a life where you strive to simply …. Be Excellent to Each Other.

Women Like Me on Writer Unboxed!

One of the websites I visit DAILY is Writer Unboxed ~ in short a website all "about the craft and business of fiction".  I love it.  The articles are informative, encouraging and engaging. This summer they've been running The 7 Sizzling Sundays of Summer Flash Fiction Contest, Week 5.  I entered week 5 and although I didn't win, I got a respectable number of likes, so I thought I'd share the piece I entered (below) and introduce the site in case you don't know about them already. AND you can check out the winning stories as well! 

You can find full rules on the site, but the basic rules are:

The story must be inspired by that week’s visual prompt.

Each submission must be 250 words or less. 

Each story must contain a beginning, middle, and end.

All submitted work must be original–not published anywhere else, and written by you, for this contest.

Women Like Me

The box arrived by courier around noon.  Big and gold, with a dark red velvet bow. 

She opened the card:

        
         Meet me.

         Lexington and Park ~ 8 pm.

         Wear only this.

Slowly she pulled the bow apart and lifted the lid.  Her knees buckled, and she sank to the floor, pulling the black ankle length mink cape out of the box and down with her.

Dear God, what had he done? 

She thought back to their stroll last month past Williamson Furs.  “In another lifetime,” she murmured, gazing into the window. 

“So get it, Rebecca.  It would be beautiful on you,” he said, surprising her. 

“Harry, women like me don’t wear furs.”

“What do you mean, ‘women like you’?”

“Sensible, middle aged women.  For god sakes, Harry, I’ll be 50 next week. Where would I wear it, grocery shopping?  It’s just a silly dream…”

And they’d walked away.  And that should have been the end of it.  He couldn’t really expect her to… really, could she?

At 8 pm, she approached the man at the corner.

“Harry…” she called softly.

He turned towards her.  She let the mink hang open just enough and he smiled as he approached her, then slowly ran a finger from the pounding pulse in her neck, down between her breasts.

 “Women like you Rebecca?  You can wear this anywhere and anyhow, you damn well please.”

He pulled the edges closed, pulling her towards him.  “Any other dreams for a woman like you?”

Breathless...

Breathless.  For me, it’s that moment when the world I thought I knew turns on its axis and I feel unable to anchor myself to reality.  Not a word I take lightly or use very often.  Few are the times I can recall in my life the time I actually felt that way.

• Thrice with my husband.  The first, the day following our wedding as we drove to Toronto for our weekend honeymoon.  I looked at him, he smiled and I was breathless.  Second, the breathless moment I realized years later, that no matter how self-destructive I was, he loved me, for myself, without question or reservation.  The third, a fourth of July, many years following that, the darkest moment in our marriage. That breathless moment seemed to last a lifetime.  As we approach our thirtieth anniversary, I am eternally grateful for the significance of all three in our lives.   

• Our son was a high risk pregnancy after three miscarriages and born ten days premature by C-Section.  For a variety of reasons I didn’t get a chance to hold him in the delivery room.  Four hours after delivering him and numerous updates from the ICU neo-natal nurse, I was informed his condition warranted a transfer to the Children’s Hospital ICU neo-natal unit.  They wheeled him into the room in his isolette for me to look at him.  I wasn’t breathless until I realized they’d left with him and I’d never touched him.  With great joy I got the opportunity four days later after I was discharged and went to him.  At 23 today, he’s a blessing I never take for granted.

• The moment before I introduced myself to a group of women in a sexual abuse survivors group.  Breathless and filled with shame. In the 12 weeks that followed, the amazing women in the group, Steve and my writing helped ground me and shed the shame I felt.

•  Shortly after midnight, January 20, 2006, when I walked into the ICU after being separated from my mother for 45 minutes while she was transferred from the ER to the ICU.  The traumatic brain injury she’d suffered earlier the previous evening had done its damage and I feared in that breathless moment that the woman before me, a mere shadow of the woman I’d left 45 minutes earlier, was irrevocably changed.  My heart still aches for what she endured the next three years. 

• December 26, 2009, ten short months after my mother passed, sitting at my father’s hospital bedside, as he took his last breath.  A sudden passing, just 8 short days after finding a giant aneurysm with resulting surgery and complications. Breathless in the relief that he didn’t have to struggle anymore in living each day without his soul mate of sixty years.  His five children at his side as he passed…I know a great solace to him.

•  June 7, 2012 - 7:00 pm as I watched my oldest brother die in the ICU hours after triple bypass. As I stood and watched the activity of the resuscitation team: the CPR, the medications, the communication and the successful result as they miraculously brought him back to us…breathless.  

Eight ground shaking and life altering moments for me.  I’m known to be very pragmatic as well as very emotional.  Hence a lot may touch me, but it takes a lot to shake my core.  And for that I’m grateful.

My Education

My formal education ends with my graduation from high school and although that’s always been okay with me, at times, I’ve felt a need to justify it.  College?  Thought about it – at the long ago tender age of 18 in 1981, going to college was not a given.  If I had to, I was ready to go to college to become a special-ed teacher.  It was the only thing of interest to me at the time, never even imagining that people actually went to college to get a degree in writing….  However, at the time, there was no local college with the degree in special-ed, so I would have to go away.  I was very set and comfortable in my life at home.  Uprooting myself and being that independent, well, that wasn’t happening at 18 for me. 

And, in the spirit of full disclosure and to be completely honest, I just didn’t see the value in putting that amount of time, effort and money into myself so that I could have a “career”.  My true desire was to be a homemaker. 

Wasn't quite like this, but pretty close!

Yes, I wanted the stay at home, raise the kids, make dinner, do the ironing, clean house, bake bread, and mow the lawn kind of life. And that is what I got.  And I loved it. And feel incredibly grateful for it.  I loved being a homemaker.  I worked full time until our son was born and then had the gift and privilege of being a stay at home mom (working part time 12 hours a week) until he was 15 years old when I went back to work full time.  I was incredibly blessed to have a husband who made that dream a reality for me and our lifestyle, which had us living within our means, made it financially possible to do so.

 There were many opportunities in those 31 years for me to continue a “formal” education.  I had the money, the means, and the full support of my husband to do so if I wanted to.   And yet, I didn’t.  And still don’t, even though I work at a University and am eligible to attend for free.   

During that time, I knew I didn’t want to go to school to get a degree to have a career.  My career was as a homemaker.  It took a long time for me to be able to say that out loud and with pride.  Why?  Because publically I had “opted out” of continuing my education.  Formally anyway.  Informally, I’ve had 31 years of self-education, in the area that I feel my second strongest passion for, my writing. 

I won’t list all I’ve done, but over these past 31 years, I’ve taken a writing correspondence course, numerous online writing classes,   and been part of number of local and online writing groups.  I’ve read about and researched writing styles, methods and rules.    I’ve subscribed to various trade magazines, followed online sites, authors and blogs.  I designed and have my own writing web site and currently regularly write this blog.    

And I’ve written; both for professional and personal fulfillment.  And I’ve been published, locally and nationally in both fiction and non-fiction.  And I love my writing because it’s mine - on my terms. 

Would a “formal education” in writing enhance my skills and abilities?  Most certainly so.  Would I feel a sense of having to justify that education with an output of a certain amount of writing, tasks met and goals to be achieved?  Most definitely.  It’s not that I don’t have all those things for myself, but it’s meeting them and achieving them in my own pace, style and path that I’ve chosen that works for me. 

So I am content for now to continue weaving my own blend of informal, self-education and see where it leads me.  It’s a level of investment in me that I can live with. 

Finding The Wave Again

 

You don't really understand human nature unless you know why a child on a merry-go-round will wave at his parents every time around - and why his parents will always wave back.  ~William D. Tammeus

I don’t recall waving to my parents from a merry-go-round, but I do recall, every single time I left home as a child, whether to go to school or to play at a friend’s house, one or the other (sometimes both) standing at the front door waving goodbye.  Then as an adult, leaving each other’s houses, still waving from the doorway.     

Without a doubt, I’d come to take that gesture for granted, as evidenced by how terribly much I’ve missed in the three years since they both passed away.  This past month, I’ve been surprised and fortunate to be blessed with a little ease to the ache of missing that particular gesture.      

Mom & Dad's bands

Along with waves from the doorway, I grew up hearing the story of how my parents had not taken their wedding bands off since the day they placed them on each other’s hands, May 20, 1949.  Refused to remove them for surgeries, job related hazards or during troubled times in their marriage.  That story, that gesture of love and devotion, resonated so deeply with me that I have not taken mine off since March 19, 1983, when Steven placed mine on my hand (and barring a hand soaping incident or two for Steve, neither has he).    



In 1990, my mother had a bicycle accident and broke her left wrist.  The emergency room doctor gave her the choice of cutting the band off or losing her finger. After much discussion with my father, she did finally allow them to cut it off, and replaced it as soon as she could with her second band which didn’t leave her finger until the day she died. 

Early in their marriage, my dad worked for Addressograph Multigraph and during a service call, had his hand caught in a machine.  It did serious damage to his thumb and bent his band considerably, but he never removed his either. 

So of all the many possessions that came and went in my parents’ lives, their rings were what I viewed as their constant.  When they passed three years ago, and us five kids sorted their possessions, their rings were what I most desired and was graciously granted. 



I always knew that I wouldn’t wear either band or my mother’s engagement ring as stand-alone pieces, but also did not want them to simply sit in my jewelry box to be looked at every now and again. They’d meant too much to sit unused, collecting dust.

Yet for three years, they did just that.  And then I took them out of my jewelry box and rings in hand, went to my jeweler friend, Reg Shopp of deSignet International.    I explained the history of the pieces and what I wanted to do. 



“I have this thing with the number three,” I told him.  “It’s been three years since my parents died.  And I have their wedding bands and my mom’s engagement ring which has three diamonds in it.  There’s the relationship of myself and my parents as a group of three.  And then there’s the group of three that is myself, my husband and our son.  I’m envisioning melting it all down, making a braid of three strands of gold and making three pieces, a ring and a pair of earrings, to represent all those symbolic groups of three, intertwined.”

New ring and earrings

A few months later, when I picked up the finished pieces, I was overcome by the intense connection I felt to my mom and dad as I slid on the ring.  The beauty of it took my breath away, but the significance behind what I now wore on my hand, the near 60 years of my parent’s marriage, their love and commitment woven together, was overwhelming.

Any doubt I had about changing the pieces vanished as I thought of what they’d worn separately all those years, being melted down and brought together.  

I wear the three pieces every day now.  And every once in a while, I walk past a mirror and glimpse the earrings, or glance down as a ray of light dances across the face of the ring, and feel the warm caress of a gentle wave from the doorway. 

Strength

(A fiction piece written for the GBE2 blog prompt)

Harry cracked a smile as his second attempt at pouring a glass of cranberry juice yielded more in the glass and less on the counter than the first one.  Damn Alma and her love of things proper.  He would have just as soon used a tumbler to have his morning juice in.  In fact, could have done so for the last three months since she passed, but he’d stayed with the damn little ones, continuing their morning tradition of juice and meds before setting the table for breakfast. 

Back in the day he could have filled a shot glass from three feet with her favorite bourbon as he whipped her up a batch of Whisky Sours or made himself a Manhattan.  But that was then.  And this was today, hopefully his last.  If he could pull it off.  He didn’t need accuracy now; just the strength to make it happen.    

94 days now he’d sat down to breakfast alone.  It was enough. He’d shopped and cooked for one, gone to church each week and tried to find a balance of space in the pew without her.  Each night, told himself to crawl into their bed, but instead, settled into his recliner, her worn green terry robe all the cover he needed.    All this with his back, growing more painful by the day, as he popped Extra Strength Tylenol like M&M’s instead of his Valium. 

He stacked the caps of three amber pill bottles on the table and dumped the light blue pills into a pile, the cutouts in the middle resembling hearts to him more than a V for Valium.  Fitting…as today he wasn’t looking for back pain relief, but the release from the pain in his heart of spending one more day without her.  270 little cut out blue hearts.  How many would it take?  How many little blue hearts to equal her one?

His index finger drew two pills from the group, one for each of them, beginning a separate pile.  That was a start.  The “dynamic duo” she always called them, and nearly every day managed to work the reference in, reinforcing their connection with those two little words.  Two more pills followed, one each for the twins lost in childbirth, the only chance God granted them at being parents.  It was a dark time for them.  For years, each carrying the shadow of the boy and girl, lost hopes and dreams their only common ground.  And yet, they made it through, with six decades passing of celebrated anniversaries.  Harry moved 6 more pills to the pile.  Certainly over a maximum daily dose for him.  Enough?  Of course not…

Her lucky number?  23.  He had a ways to go.  His finger pulled more pills over – four letters he’d written her before they were married, saved in the folds of the Psalms in her Bible.  Seven more pills to the pile, one for every year she stayed and supported him as he slipped into the grip of alcoholism – and one more for the grace she carried herself with through it all.  Damn, she’d saved his life by staying and had made each day worth living sober for since. 

The drunk driver that killed her pled guilty and would be sentenced next month.  Harry didn’t need to be there. The courts would determine the punishment and he’d been assured it would be the maximum sentence with the level of his blood alcohol and his prior DUI convictions. He wondered if the driver had an Alma in his life that would stand by him though this.  He thought of his own “rock bottom” - losing his job, Alma picking up second shifts in addition to her day job to save the house, and the worst time, the one and only time he’d struck her. She’d found the nerve at that moment to place the ultimatum of her or the bottle at his feet.  The resolve in her eyes told him she would only give him the choice once.  He moved another pill from the large pile; one more for his choice. 

That made 23.  Surely that little pile couldn’t do it?  How many more would it take?  Were there enough to cover the life they’d shared?  The picnics at sunset on the river, the walks after dinner, and the paintings he loved, five in all that she had done during her adult education nights in ’73?  How to bundle the nights of lovemaking, the tender snuggles at dawn and the naps that had led to lazy afternoons of passion? 

Tears fell, as the years flashed through his mind of dinner parties, vacations and hiking excursions.  Holidays, birthdays and days they called in sick to work together and watched black and white movies in their pajamas all day. They’d practically rebuilt the house with the renovations they’d done, learning as they went.  They’d been a good working team, a secret pride they’d carried in their relationship that they didn’t often see in friends and family around them. 

Oh, they fought, both stubborn as mules sometimes, but not counting the seven years of his alcoholism (most of which he didn’t remember), it never lasted long and through everything, they never disrespected each other.  Retirement was their reward, life at a pace they could savor.  Every evening the nightly news with discussion and a running game of backgammon after lunch that had lasted for two years, three months and 1 day, the last game being just one hour before the accident.

He picked up a handful of pills from the big pile and slowly trickled them from his palm over the little pile.  He knew there weren’t enough.  There’d never be enough to overpower what they had. 

“I don’t need to find enough strength to escape the memories Alma”, he said out load.  “I need to find just enough...to make it through one more day without you.  And I know, I know, then tomorrow morning I have to do it all over again”.     

He leaned back in the chair and winced at the back spasm.  He dried his eyes, picked up two of the Valium and tossed them back with the cranberry juice.  It had been a long morning and a nap was in order before he went to the grocery store. 

As head headed for the bedroom, he picked up her terry green robe off the back of his recliner.  He gently eased his body onto the bed, pulled her robe over him, and laid his head on her pillow, hoping for a dream of the dynamic duo.