Flirting with Feminism, 1940s Style

Coincidentally, I picked two movies that premiered in 1942 for my watching this week: Now, Voyager with Bette Davis and Woman of the Year with Katherine Hepburn. Both are striking for their exploration of roles of women, and both left me frustrated by not quite being willing to go all the way. 

In Now, Voyager, Bette Davis plays Charlotte Vale, a woman from a wealthy and respectable Boston family ("Oh, one of the *Boston* Vales"). When we meet her, she is thoroughly cowed by her overbearing mother and deeply unhappy, though her very frustration with her role points to a stronger spirit beneath than sometimes makes itself known. Her story is one of coming into herself. 

In contrast, Katherine Hepburn's Tess Harding in Woman of the Year is a woman very much in charge of her own life, sure of herself and cutting a wide swath in the world as an activist, columnist, and speaker on a variety of social and political issues. Her story is one of coming out of herself a bit. 

Both roles were well suited to these iconic actresses. Who better than Bette Davis to drown us in big, emotional eyes and delivery fiery lines with passion? Who better than Katherine Hepburn to hold tears in a tightly controlled face, resisting the revelations of self laying themselves before her? 

But neither story satisfied me. 

I am wary of stories that romanticize infidelity, due to my personal feelings about marital infidelity, so Now, Voyager had a hard row to hoe winning me over, since a central tenant of the story is the love between a married man and a woman who is not his wife. We're meant to sympathize with the man who made a bad match and is now "trapped" in a loveless marriage (though we never see that wife or marriage for ourselves). To his credit, he was never dishonest about the fact that he was married and had no intentions of abandoning his family and starting anew with our heroine. 

So, one could argue that our heroine knew what she was walking into. I found I had complex emotions, watching the way that they influenced each other while still maintaining separate lives: he returning to the work he loves with her encouragement, she finding confidence to stand up against her bullying mother with his support. Was he an obstacle to her finding happiness with someone else? Or was her own heart the true obstacle?

The story gives Charlotte the opportunity to marry someone else and she turns it down admitting to herself and her potential husband that she doesn't love him. 

What the story doesn't quite make clear is the line between self-sacrifice and self-determination. I could read her eventual care for her would-be-lover's daughter in either light. I've ordered the novel, hoping that I'll get a bit more of the interior life of the main character and understand better why she made the decisions she did. 

In the end, Charlotte made a life for herself that was truly independent, without a mother, husband, or even would-be-lover to tell her what to do, but she still seemed apologetic about it, and I guess I wanted her to embrace it fully. 

That ending line is a honey though, full of ambiguity and poetry.  

(And oh my, how sexy they make cigarettes. I wonder how much the tobacco industry paid for that placement). 

In Woman of the Year, I found myself wondering why two intelligent people like Tess Harding and Sam Craig could ever have believed a marriage partnership between them would work. Maybe it's intended as a lesson about how a sexual charge isn't enough to base a marriage on? (They do really sell that sexual charge, though): 

It's not as bad as Bringing Up Baby where I find myself screaming "Run!" at Cary Grant's Dr. Huxley, hoping he does not get eaten alive by Hepburn's manic pixie dream girl. 

But all the same, Spencer Tracy's Sam Craig seems to be a man who knows what he wants and all signs point clearly to danger! I don't buy that he didn't see it. 

Tess doesn't see him as an equal and shows him again and again that he is not first in her heart, or even second or third, but quite low down the list with things nice to have, but not truly necessary, like a pretty lamp or a pet poodle you pay someone else to walk for you because you don't have time. 

But he marries her anyway. And Hepburn gets her trademark self-realization moment, which she sells beautifully, but at the end I still don't really believe they're going to work as a couple. Honestly, the only thing that holds the romance together is the on-screen chemistry of Hepburn and Tracy, because it's not there in the story. 

While Tess is arguably a feminist character, having built an impressive brand as "Tess Harding," the story falls back on the old saw that ambitious women must feel the lack of love partnership in their lives. Certainly some women (me, for one) want both a husband and a career and manage to have both, but there's nothing in this movie to convince me that Tess ever felt the lack of a husband in her life or wanted to make significant changes to how she lives her life to make room for one. Other than possibly sexual spark, I never saw anything in the story to explain why she wanted him at all. 

One of the keys to traditional romance stories is that the reader/viewer should be cheering for the couple to get together, and I wasn't actually doing that in either of these films. Yet, I liked both main characters and hoped for their happiness. I guess they work for me as sort-of anti-romances. 

If you've seen these films, I'd love to hear what you think in the comments. Same if you have suggestions for other films of the 30-60s with strong female leads for me to check out!

IWSG: Seeing the Weird in the Ordinary

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

September 2 question - If you could choose one author, living or dead, to be your beta partner, who would it be and why?

The awesome co-hosts for the September 2 posting of the IWSG are PJ Colando, J Lenni Dorner, Deniz Bevan, Kim Lajevardi, Natalie Aguirre, and Louise - Fundy Blue!

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I've been fascinated with Shirley Jackson's work since I first encountered her book We Have Always Lived in the Castle in my library when I was weird thirteen year old kid. 

I've returned to her work over and over since then, revisiting her work once a decade or so--re-reading favorites and finding new pieces I've missed. Even though my own writing is not disturbing in the same vein as Shirley's, I feel a connection to her, as if she speaks something inarticulate from deep inside my own consciousness. 

Recently, I watched the quasi-biopic of her, based on the novel by Susan Scarf Merrell, and that feeling of connection was only strengthened. (The book/movie isn't accurate in a biographical sense, BTW, but it evokes a feel that I believed). 

Like Shirley, I am ill-suited to be a housewife, even though I love my husband, my home, and our children and sometimes revel in taking care of them--and sometimes wish they weren't there, so I could focus on my life of words. We'd have that push and pull in common. 

I, too,  have a creative bent, and though I look pretty darn normal on the outside, it's more than a little weird inside my brain. Sometimes my mundane life and the worlds within my mind don't mesh well.

It's probably why her horror works so well for me. We both see the weird in the seemingly ordinary.

Luckily, I'm living my adult years in a different era than she did--she died six years before I was born. The expectation that I would marry and devote my life to only the work of household and children still lingers in the corners of my experience with other misogynist mumbo-jumbo, but no one is terribly shocked to learn that I work full time, or that I write. Those limiting views of femininity and a woman's role in the world have lost cachet and are no longer the norm, at least not that in my peer group. 

I don't face social censure for the kinds of things that I write either. Not like she did. I also have a better husband than she did (at least as far as you can judge someone else's husband from what you see from the outside of the relationship).

I don't know that Shirley would have liked my work. She might accuse me of being too light or fluffy. But I suspect that if I could thicken my skin enough to take her criticism, my work would be the better for it. She would call me on it when I try to pull back from hard emotional moments or take it too easy on characters I've grown attached to, even more than my real-life critique partners do (and they don't really pull any punches--especially not Rebecca). 

Would Shirley want or respect my opinion on her work? Maybe? I do have a lot of practice, as a middle school teacher, giving constructive criticism kindly and with support and compassion interlaced. And my admiration is sincere. I would mean the praise I offered. 

Given the chance, I'd sit on the veranda with her and talk about the life of words, even if I had to put up with her cigarette smoke to do it. I like to think we'd get each other. 

My Apocalypse Kitchen: Eating Well Helps

Food is one of my love languages, so here in our time of crisis, I've turned to my kitchen to prepare comforts for myself and my family. Even though I didn't learn to cook until I was in my thirties, I've become a pretty decent and adventurous home cook in the intervening years. I never would have expected to take so much pleasure in preparing food for my family, but I really really do.

I don't always get to cook the way I want to. We're busy people, and often have to plan a meal based more on speed of preparation and facility of reheating than on taste or nutritional value. Since I teach for a living, the amount of standing time is usually a factor, too--I can't handle something that requires too much on-my-feet-time when I've just been on my feet for eight hours already. I'm getting old, y'all. The feet can't take it!

But without commutes and evening commitments, we have more time. Teaching from home is *way* easier on my poor little feet, too.

I've collected a fair amount of ambitious kitchen equipment that doesn't usually sees much use in the hurly burly of my lightspeed life. Standing mixer, fancy blender, food processor, insta pot, etc. Now I finally have time to play with all my kitchen toys!

We also have a good collection of spices and herbs, bought a jar at a time over the past few years as we tried out culinary experiments. And we managed to get our deep freeze and pantry stocked with meats and other useful things before the crisis hit.

All this together means that we're eating well during the Corona Crisis!

Here's what we've been having:

Week One: The Dinner Plan: We comforted ourselves with current favorites, mostly from The Dinner Plan cookbook by Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion. I've been a devotee of this cookbook for a year or so, ever since taking a class with one of the authors at A Southern Season (a fancy kitchen store near us that recently closed). 

It's a great recipe book for a busy household. Recipes are categorized and tagged with helpful headers like "staggered" (for meals that can be served in shifts without loss of taste), "make ahead" (for when you can't cook tomorrow, but you still want to eat), "one dish" (when mess matters as much as taste), and "extra fast" (when speed is your top priority).

We also love this one because the dishes are diverse and interesting enough to please my husband and me, but not so fancy or alien that the picky twelve-year-old won't eat them.

Sheet-Pan Fajitas, Japanese-Style Fried Chicken, Turkey Meatballs with Yogurt Sauce, Crunchy Pork Cutlets, and Beef Stew in a Hurry found their way to our dinner table in the first week of school from home and work from home.

Each can be prepared in a half hour or so (though it always takes me longer the first time I make a new recipe). Even after a year, there are still some wonderful sounding meals in these pages that I haven't yet tried making, and we've only had one or two that didn't have the family excited.

Week Two: Curry and Experiments:  When we moved into the second week, I pulled out 660 curries by Raghavan Iyer, a cookbook I bought shortly after I married my husband and found out that he loves Indian food. Even though that's "been a minute" now, I haven't made even a third of the recipes in this book yet. 

Our youngest, as mentioned, is picky. So, in the past, we've mostly made curries on "just us two"

nights--which didn't happen all that often. I made Yogurt-Almond Chicken, something I make a couple of times of year and never fails to please us. We were prepared to give the kiddo a frozen pizza or something if she didn't like it, but she surprised us by enjoying it, too.

A plus side of making curry is how wonderful it makes the whole house smell. It's high prep, requiring grinding of spices and blending of marinades, but well worth it!

I have come to enjoy making something more complicated. On top of pleasing our palates, it gives me a feeling of accomplishment and pride in my kitchen skills. Indian dishes often have me reaching for seldom used kitchen equipment as well, which is like getting to play with new toys.

Because trying new things is part of how I stay interested in cooking, I pulled out Keepers by Kathy Brennan and Caroline Campion, the same authors who put together The Dinner Plan. I bought it at the same time, but hadn't yet used any of the recipes inside. They always looked just a little too fancy for the youngest Bryant, or too long in prep time for a week night.

But my parameters have changed! So, we've now tried the Chicken Pot Pie recipe (delish!), Miso-Lime Chicken Lettuce Wraps (tasty, if less wow-ing), Asian Pork Sliders with Magic Miso-Mayo (the kiddo LOVED these), and Sausage and White Bean Gratin (a new favorite for the adults).

We have plans to try Chicken and Rice with Ginger-Scallion Sauce and Japanese Style "Meat and Potatoes" in the next few days, assuming our next foraging trip to the grocery store can fill in a few ingredients.

A lot of things are hard about staying at home, even for a group of introverts like us.

I'm so grateful to have this way of taking care of myself and my family. When the house smells of cooking spices, we know that happiness follows.

What are you eating during this time at home? Were you already a cook? Are you learning? Do you lean toward easy comforts or daring experiments when you need comfort and distraction?

I'd love to hear about your apocalypse kitchen in the comments!

Plus Sides to the Pandemic at la Casa Bryant

I lean towards optimism in most circumstances, trusting that time and energy spent can improve most situations. At least I believe that nothing gets any better if you don't try something.

Looking at our leadership in my country right now, holding onto that optimism has been harder. But at least I'm in this with an intelligent and thoughtful partner, who has a very useful skillset for managing an isolationist life for a while.

And we're lucky, truly, on a lot of fronts. We're all still healthy. Both adults are able to work from home and are still being paid. The kiddo at home is introverted and digitally connected to her friends, so is handling social distancing pretty well for someone her age. The dog is old enough to appreciate a slow life.

So, looking to the sunny side: here are some plus sides to the pandemic at our house.

1. We're playing with our toys. Over the years, we've collected a lot of them: video games, board games, legos, musical instruments, books, craft supplies, DIY project tools, recipe books, etc. An embarrassment of riches really: more than we can realistically use.

But with extra time at home, we're digging into all these wonderful things and enjoying them. Go past us! For buying things even though we didn't have time for them? At least we're occupied now, without having to shop while we're money worried.

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#funinthewoods with #mygirl today. #natureheals #sunshine

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2. We're getting out in nature more. I'm a walker. If you follow me on Instagram, you'll see that my feed is full of pictures of beauty I spot on my daily nature walks. It's my main stress relief.

Because I'm a teacher and my hours are early, even during the winter months, I can usually make it to a trail with a little daylight left to burn. But, my daughter is not so much a walker, and my husband isn't usually home in daylight, so it's usually just me and the pup.

But, without commutes to worry about and with the kiddo legit needing a stretch of the legs, we're able to get out into the woods together. It's a real joy to me to share this love with my people (and still the pupper).

3. Lots of family time. My husband and I have been feeling the rush of time whooshing past us in recent years, as our baby turns into a teenager and our older child becomes an adult.

We've struggled to arrange our days so that we get time together as a family, time for each of us with our daughters, time for just the two of us, etc. all while still holding down demanding day jobs and handling the business of the household.

It's been lovely to be right there for our daughter when she hits a bump in completing her school-from-home assignments, to help her problem solve or just be amazed by how well she does this on her own.

We're playing games and watching shows together. We're really in tune with how everyone is feeling and doing a good job balancing the needs of each of us.

I think we'll miss this part when the speed of life picks back up.

4. The house is getting cleaner and better organized. When it's time to "take a break" from our work from home situations, we're each handling household tasks: cleaning up messes that have been allowed to linger, changing out loads of laundry, running the dishwasher, re-organizing storage situations, sorting things, etc.  It gets us moving and clears mental space as well by making our surroundings more pleasant.

It's lovely to slip these tasks into down moments of the work day, instead of struggling to do them *after* work when we're exhausted and wanting some relaxation and more playful togetherness.

We're even making progress on our giant attic project (building an entire new room up there for game storage). The supplies were mostly already purchased, and now we can repurpose that commuting time for mudding, sanding, and (hopefully soon) painting!

5. We're eating better. We're planner-aheaders, the sort of people who usually have a deep freeze full of meats and boxes and cans lining the shelves waiting for use. So, without panic shopping or hoarding, we've stayed pretty well supplied.

Since I'm not coming home from school emotionally and physically exhausted from managing 160 children across the day, our dinners have become more luxuriant affairs, rather than the "what can I make in 30 minutes that is palatable?" trick we'd mastered so well.

So, new recipes, and old favorites that "take too long" for a school night. Cooking together because we're all there. Dancing to music while the potato pancakes fry. I'm enjoying the prep time as much as the eating.


What's a plus side to isolation time for you and yours? Anything you'd like to hold onto when life returns to something more like normal? I'd love to hear from you in the comments.

Going to the Theater

I love tickets, especially tickets to the theater.

And 2016 has been a great year for going to the theater so far.

There's something about a live performance, even a bad one, that resonates with me. Sure, I love the movies, but LIVE, in person is a one-time thing. No one on any other day will ever see exactly the show that I just saw, even if the same cast is in the same venue. It's like the moment when a dolphin leaps out of the sea. You only see it if you are there. No pause, no rewind.

My first show of 2016 was Ragtime by NC Theatre at Raleigh Memorial Auditorium. Groupon was selling inexpensive tickets on a day when I had a few dollars, so I snatched some up and dragged my husband off with me.

We were seated so close we could watch the actors sweat under the lights. It's really a rather awkward show, using a mechanic where the actors stop and soliloquize in third person about themselves to the audience. Oddly for a musical, there were no "catchy" songs. Though performances were solid and even, at times, stunning, there was no song I walked away remembering.

Our conversation over dinner afterwards though was about striking moments, and our curiosity about which elements were true to history and which were fictional. I admired the difficulty of the writing task to present such a story. My husband admired some of the staging decisions to highlight the contrasts between the different social groups represented. We talked about how the play might have accomplished the narration it needed less awkwardly. So, even a play I don't love brings me joy in the talking about it afterwards.

The second trip to the theater was Matilda at DPAC. We bought the youngest Bryant tickets as a holiday gift. She already loved the book. It's always exciting to see these local versions of the Broadway show, even if it makes me a little sad to imagine all these actors working so hard to recreate a performance first created by someone else instead of getting to make a character their own. But still, we loved the clever staging and several of the songs. I got the double-joy of discussing it with my daughter afterwards, talking about what changes they made from the book and whether those were effective or not. She might be my kid :-)



Not too long afterwards, I got a Shakespeare date! (Those tickets were my holiday gift from the hubby). We saw an experimental production of Twelfth Night by Filter Theatre at Reynolds Industries Theater. In a lot of ways, the show was fun, with audience interactive elements and improvisation. In other ways, it was tedious (like when a game they played with balls went on far too long) or just plain confusing (when they had one woman play both twins, making the identity mix-up more puzzling than amazing or comical). Because my husband and I are Shakespeare geeks, we've seen this play more than once together, so we got to talk about how this production compared to other ones we've seen on stage and screen, recounting favorite moments and how different actors and actresses interpreted the roles.

Then, a few days later we got to go the Carolina, one of my favorite venues. This time it was a family date, though the elder daughter had to back out at the last minute due to homework overload. Tao: Seventeen Samurai is a diverse and exciting show intermixing Taiko drumming with choreography, stagecraft, and creative costuming. At one point or another, each of us gasped with delight from the sheer spectacle and impressive feats of the performers.


The conversation in the car on the way home was all "did you see it when" recounting and our cheeks hurt from smiling.

So, three shows in three months, way above average for what my pocketbook will usually allow. The eldest got some theater as well, seeing The Cabaret talent show her school put on and a high school production of Beauty and the Beast in which a friend played Belle.

Each show is a treasure in its own right, a moment in time, shared with those you brought with you and those who just also showed up. Someday, when I'm fabulously wealthy, I'll go to every show in my area. It's wonderful living in the twenty-first century, a time when performers from all around the world can come to my corner of the planet and let me watch them work. Lucky, lucky girl!

Q is for Queer: A to Z blogging challenge

Gender and societal roles is an integral part of Going Through the Change,  nowhere more obviously than in the marriage of Linda Alvarez. 

Linda and her husband have been married for thirty years. They've raised three daughters together and seen all of them married. They have five grandchildren. Linda and David are a solid, devoted couple when the story begins. They've weathered many storms together. 

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Still, when Linda is unexpectedly transformed into a man, she's sure it means her marriage is over. She dreads having to tell her family, especially since the changes are so hard to explain. She knows that the truth is going to be hard to swallow. She worries that her daughters won't accept her as a man. She is especially worried about Carlitos, the grandson she is closest to. 

But her grandson understands right away. She's his grandmother, regardless of how she looks on the outside. 

“Abuelita?” said Carlitos, looking confused.

Linda knelt, putting her face near his and nodded silently. “Soy yo, Carlitos.” The room grew quiet again, all eyes focused on Carlitos and Linda.

Carlitos tilted his head as he always did when he was thinking deep thoughts. He was an old soul, Linda had always said. The boy laid one hand on each of Linda’s cheeks, looking very seriously into her eyes. “Abuelita, did you make my favorite cookies?”

“Of course, I did. Biscochitos y marranitos, también.”

He nodded. “And are you going to be a boy now?”

“Yes, Carlitos, I think I am.”

“But you are still my abuelita?”

“Soy tuyo, querido. I am yours. Siempre.” 

 As I continue to write Linda and David in the sequel and beyond, I know they'll continuing to show that love can truly be about the people we are inside. The rest is just surface details.

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!
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click the image to preorder on Amazon!

F is for Family: A to Z blogging challenge

Family, in one sense or another, is one of the most important aspects of human life. Whether we mean our parents, our children, our significant others, our pets, our friends, or something else entirely. Family was a vital part of writing Going Through the Change, both for me as the writer and for my characters.

For me, writing this novel represented a change in our family dynamic. If I was going to take myself seriously as a writer, I needed to finish things and submit things. That meant I needed a shift in home life. I needed my children to respect my writing time, and my husband and children to help balance home responsibilities to free me for some writing time. I definitely could not have written this book without the loving support of my family.

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For my main characters, family was a major theme. Linda Alvarez was a forty-eight year old grandmother when her life took a super-heroic turn.  Adjusting to the changes in her life was no small feat! Helen Braeburn's family had recently gone through changes of another sort--divorce and estrangement. So, she was vulnerable, without the support she might once have relied upon when her changes came. Patricia O'Neill had always been a lone wolf, but her best friend, Cindy Liu, was her sister under the skin. When Cindy betrayed her trust, it hurt to the core. Jessica Roark's children saw her fly, and it changed their world and hers.

Family shapes who we are. How the people closest to you react can change your life, for the better or the worse. Lucky for me, I've got a good one.

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This posting is part of the A to Z blogging challenge, in which bloggers undertake to post every day in April, excepting Sundays, which amounts to 26 postings, one for each letter of the alphabet--preferably along a theme. My postings will all be about my debut novel and my experiences writing it and seeing it published.

Blogging A to Z is a great opportunity to connect with some excellent bloggers and interesting people. I encourage you to check out other participating blogs, too!

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click the image to preorder on Amazon!

I Won't Be Home for Christmas, Part V.

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Recap--skip to the line if you already know what's happening. Today, the finale :-)

Part One: Gillian and her sons become snowbound at a hotel stop on the way to Grandma's for Christmas.

Part Two: Gillian is befriended by a set of grandparents, also stranded in holiday travel.

Part Three: Gillian and her boys go tubing with the Balfours.

Part Four: Gillian and her boys have breakfast with the Balfours. Mrs. Balfour and Gillian have a heart to heart about the state of her marriage.

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Gillian woke in the middle of the night. She sat up and rubbed her eyes, confused for a moment about where she was. She felt reassured when she saw her boys sleeping in the other bed in the room, then instantly sad again. Tomorrow was Christmas. She checked her phone for the time. Three o'clock. Make that today. Her boys were being brave and understanding about not having any gifts to open in the morning, but Gillian still took it to heart.

It compared poorly to all the other Christmases her boys had celebrated. Usually, Gillian was the one who hosted the parties. Their living room was transformed into a wash of twinkling lights and ribbons. She sent beautiful cupcakes for the teachers at school. She hadn't had the heart for it this year, nor the pocketbook. She wished now that she had stayed home and given the boys a smaller scale holiday. At least there would be gifts and a tree at their own house.

She and Phillip had always loved spoiling the boys together, each trying to make sure that their boys got to experience every joy the season had to offer. Ice skating. Caroling. Baking. Gingerbread houses. Handmade gifts. The season was true family time for them-all about bringing that spark of joy to their children's eyes any way they could.

Gillian knew she could still have done a lot of those things. They didn't all require money. But they did all require heart and hers had been broken.

She'd tried to call Phillip, just as she promised herself she would, but her three attempts had only gotten voicemail. She picked up her phone again to check now, but there were no missed calls or text messages.

Gillian stood and walked back to the window. She could see the tracks their afternoon sledding expedition had left all over the parking lot. There were gaps in the parking lot now. Travelers who were heading east had excavated their cars and continued their journeys, but the road westward had still been unsafe for travel at nightfall. They wouldn't arrive at her parents' house in time for Christmas morning now. Maybe Christmas night, if they were lucky.

Gillian leaned her forehead against the cool glass and watched the moonlight sparkle on the untouched snow on the other side of the road. She turned and looked at her boys sleeping. They both looked small and vulnerable in the king-sized bed. Even ten-year-old Steve's face, which had been looking all too adult, looked pudgy and toddler-ish squished against his pillow. Jack's arm was flung across his brother liked he'd fallen asleep tapping him on the shoulder, which he might well have done. Gillian resisted the desire to stroke their hair. Let sleeping angels rest, she reminded herself.

She shivered a little then, and decided she'd really like a cup of tea. She wrapped herself in a cardigan sweater over her pajamas, left a note for Steve just in case the boys woke, and locked them in the room and headed for the lobby. She didn't want to disturb the boys with her preparation sounds and Maxine had said she'd leave the hot water pot hooked up in case she and the boys needed to make a cup of noodles or something.

The lobby was dimly lit. Apparently the small hotel didn't leave the lights blazing all night. The little decorated tree was still lit, though and it looked pretty reflecting in the tile floor. Gillian crept into the kitchen area and flipped a lightswitch. She made herself a cup of lemon tea in one of the little tan paper cups the hotel provided.

When she turned to go back upstairs, she glanced over at the sofa area. There was someone there, lying on the couch. She looked nervously at the reception desk, debating ringing the bell and waking whoever was resting in the back room. She put her cup of tea down on the counter and circled a little nearer the sleeping person.

It was a man, a man who was a little too long to fit onto the couch fully. A man resting under a hotel blanket, which meant that the clerk must know he was there, but that he hadn't taken a room for some reason. A man who was wearing one red and one green sock on the feet that dangled off the end of the couch, just like Phillip always did on Christmas morning.

"Phillip?"

The man made a sleep-grumble sort of sound, and shifted on the couch, making the upholstery squeak.

"Phillip?" Her voice was louder this time.

He heard her. He bolted upright. "Gillian?" He stood up and rushed to her side, pulling her into a hug. She wrapped her arms around him and squeezed him back.

"What are you doing here?" she laughed.

"I couldn't stay away. I was going to meet you at your parents' house, but when I called, they told me where you were and I decided to meet you here."

"Why didn't you come upstairs?"

"I got here at two in the morning. I didn't want to wake you all up."

Gillian laughed again. "I just can't believe you're really here!"

He raised a hand to her face and rubbed at the tears that were falling there. "Ah, Gills. It's Christmas. I needed to be with my family. I needed to be with you."

They embraced for a long time after that, until both of them started to shiver a little from sock feet on tile floor.

"Come on," she said, pulling him by the hand. "Wait till the kids wake up and see what Santa brought us!"

THE END

An Autobiography in Cars

My mother tells me that the first car she drove when I was a baby was a '62 Dodge Dart, but I don't remember that car, not even from pictures. The first one I remember was her '66 Oldsmobile Cutlass. 

I thought it was beautiful, and she was beautiful. When I grew up I was going to be tall and blond and beautiful and drive a red fancy car like my mother. (I'm medium sized,  brunette and drive a black SUV . . . so 0 for 3, I'm afraid). 

After that car, Mom drove a series of utterly unmemorable Honda Civics, each one interchangeable with the one it replaced. But given the miles we covered with dance classes, band competitions, and tennis matches, it was probably good that she went with cars that got good mileage. 

The other vehicles I remember from childhood are all trucks. There was my grandfather's truck, a '52 Ford. What I remember best about it is the really wide flat running boards. I was a skinny kid. 

When I played hide and seek with my cousins, I could hide in one of those running boards and cling to the side of the truck. If I timed it well, I could keep moving from one side of the truck to the other without being seen by the other kids. 

My dad had a truck we called El Porco, because of the amount of gas he consumed. I can't explain why the truck had a Spanglish name. My sister and I thought he was awesome, though. He was big and tough and strong, and had little fold down seats behind Mom and Dad's seats for us. 

After El Porco, Dad had a series of Toyota trucks, mostly red, mostly interchangeable with the one that came before just like Mom's Hondas. Though, there was one that got dolled up by an uncle who was into body work and perhaps a little stuck in the '70s.  

It looked like they had won it at the fair. It was blue with sparkles in the paint and had an airbrush-looking window that had my parents names in a heart, like a teeshirt bought at a beach vacation. I was just old enough to find this mildly embarrassing, and redneck enough to imagine someday having such a thing myself. 

After that, we get into my own cars. My first one was a red Honda Civic that I called Gertrude. My mom always said it was a glorified roller-skate. True, Gertrude wasn't powerful, but she never let me down, and, for her size, she held an incredible number of my friends on the way to King's Island Amusement Park. Certainly more than the legal limit. 

Gertrude went to college with me, but was replaced by something a little newer and arguably better in my sophomore year. Etsuyo was a grey Honda Accord. I never took to her, though she served me well. I let the then-husband (yes, I married stupid-young; that's part of why it didn't last) name the car. He named her after a girl from Japan he had known. Thinking back on things, that was probably a bad sign. 

After that came my Alaskan adventure. Dad helped me find the perfect truck. Of all the vehicles I have ever owned, this might be my heart's wheels. His name was Beauregard, Beau for short. He was a '77 Sierra Grande GMC truck (which made him only a few years younger than me). He had 6 cylinders, and 3 on the tree. I felt like such a gearhead for knowing things like that about him, and, believe me, I am not a gearhead. When I looked in his old and simply designed motor lacking any computer-based parts, I understood what some of the parts were, and even replaced some of them myself, standing on his bumper to be able to see into the cavernous engine area. It was an empowering feeling. 

Beau held all my wordly possessions (books and clothes, mostly--you should have seen the guy's face when we crossed the Canadian border) and I drove him to Kodiak, Alaska with two college friends. We took turns sleeping in the back in a sort of bunk on top of all my tubs of books. He explored that island with me and moved with me to the mainland a couple of years later. 

Beau died saving the life of my then-husband in a winter-roads car accident that surely would have killed the man if the vehicle in question had been a modern chunk of plastic instead of an old piece of metal. Beau had an honorable death, and I still miss him. 

Beau was replaced by a Mazda truck that I never liked as well, but got good mileage out of.  I didn't name her, but knew she was female. The Mazda had belonged to a friend named Marcia, and it was one of those help each other things. She needed to sell it due to a change in her marital circumstances; we needed wheels. The Mazda was the truck that I explored mainland Alaska in, with my German Shepherd/Husky mix dog, Häagendog. 

When I moved to Nome, it would've cost too much to take the Mazda, so, instead, I took it on a cross country trip with my mother. We traveled the Alcan down into the Dakotas, then went to Yellowstone, and eventually brought the truck to Kentucky, where an uncle took her over and drove her until she literally broke in half. He said that she smelled of my dog for the rest of her life. 

I arrived in Nome with no wheels, so the principal at the school gave me an old Ford Bronco he had to beat around in. It was really beat up. Only one door opened, the windshield was cracked, and the seats were torn and covered in towels, but at least I didn't have to worry about whether he'd be upset at me for damaging it with muddy footprints and the smell of a dog who rolled in dead Walrus. 

After a few months, I was able to get a Suzuki Sidekick. It was cute, and we set it up with a gate to keep the dog in the back section, away from the child, when he ate a moose leg he found somewhere. The Sidekick served us well for a few years, though getting body work done in rural Alaska is interesting. The then-husband backed the car into a telephone pole one sleepy morning. They had to fly in a new back door from Anchorage, so it took a while. Luckily, it was summer. 

When we left Alaska in a last-ditch effort to save the marriage, we moved to Kansas. As part of the compensation package, I got a beautiful old house and the newest car I'd ever had: a 2000 New Volkswagen Bug. (I had to part with both when I parted with the husband, but they were nice while they lasted). 

The Bug was Kermit green. Darn it was cute. We called it the Bubble Car and the little one and I drove it to every zoo, farm, apple orchard and other kid-pleasing thing in the whole darn state. There are an inordinate number of small zoos in Kansas, by the way. The seats flipped up and I could stand inside the back of the car when getting the kiddo in and out of her carseat. The seats were also leather and heated. I felt spoiled as heck. I got a speeding ticket or two in it, too, because that thing had zip. That, and hay trucks make me impatient. 

The divorce car was another Honda Accord. It had been my sister's. It was another help each other car. She was moving to Hawaii and needed to get rid of her car. I needed a car. It was a perfectly reliable and serviceable car. I never liked it. I don't miss it, but I was grateful for its years of service. One of my uncles has it now--the same uncle who took the Mazda. I wonder if it smells like our new dog. 

Now, I drive Duncan. He's a Toyota Highlander, hence the name. He's posh, with heated seats and such, like the Bug was. But he feels like a truck, like Beau. I like him so much that my now-and-forever-husband is jealous of him. I think I'll keep him as long as he runs (that's the car . . . and the husband). 

Why I'm a Small Town Girl

The smallest place I ever lived was Kenny Lake, Alaska, population 400. I taught in a school of 100 children, grades K-12. My Spanish class had four students in it.

I loved it.

I knew nearly everyone, when I'd been there only a year. The people I didn't know by name still knew me, because I was a teacher at the school. The life of the community was around the school and the children. Everyone came to the hockey games.

We dealt with each other as individuals. None of this crap of making a blanket rule about something because there's a problem with one person. You would just talk to the one person, directly. I miss that.

The biggest place I ever lived was Madrid, Spain. That was just for a summer tour of study. For the summer, it was fine. Though I was intimidated at times, especially since I was living in a country that I only kind of spoke the language of, I really enjoyed walking everywhere, exploring gorgeous public parks, taking trains, living a public life. I enjoyed the feeling of life and vitality, like there was something exciting around any given corner.

But, when I got back to small town Kentucky afterwards, I was glad to be home. Madrid was exciting, and exhausting.

Cities are nice to visit. I kind of like living within reach of one, where I can drive there when I want to take advantage of what they have. It's nice to go hear a variety of types music, go to good art museums, see professional theatrical productions, or eat really specific ethnic foods. But I am not a city girl.

I don't like traffic. I get grumpy if I have to wait more than a few cars worth of waiting. This is bad enough that I generally stay off the road between 5:30 and 6:00 in my current hometown (population 6200), because you might have up to ten minutes in traffic getting through town.

I also don't like crowds. They are loud, and there are always at least a few truly obnoxious people in them. Crowds make it hard to move because there are always people in your way. Crowds make it hard to hear the person I'm walking with. The energy of a crowd worms its way into your psyche and influences your mood. This makes me feel stubborn. I want to feel what I feel, not get sucked into a group feeling.

Related to the crowds thing, I don't like being forced into physical proximity with people I don't know. Whether this is jostled around in a crowd, or just sharing a bus seat with a stranger, I don't like it. My personal bubble is large. If I don't know you, stay out of it!

While I do like people, individual people that I know by name and face and build a relationship with, I don't like PEOPLE as a big anonymous group of individuals I may not ever encounter again in my life. It makes me happy to walk into a small business and be recognized by the sales clerk, to know to ask about her new grandchild or puppy or home improvement project, because we talked about that last time I was in. It makes me feel connected.

I'm bad at meeting people. City life strikes me as transient, full of new people all the time. It stresses me out. I told my husband that one of the best things about starting to date him a decade or so ago was that I didn't have to meet him. We had already met a decade or so before that and were friends.  Maybe familiarity breeds contempt, but I'm more worried about stranger danger and making first impressions. (shudder)

They're putting a hospital in, here in my small town. They knocked down a bunch of trees for it, and built three big brick buildings that would look at home in a much larger, more modern place. I hate it. I get how it's good for the community, but it's bringing changes I won't like. It's already added a traffic light to my life, with a turn arrow and everything. What's next? A Starbucks?

Yeah, it might be time to start thinking about my next home. I can breathe in a small town. I can be myself in a small town. And that's good enough for me.

Had we but world enough, and time

How can it already be 5:00? I didn't get done with half of what was on my list for today.  (sigh) That's a normal Saturday, too.

It's another busy weekend.  And I really do want to do most of what's in it. But I wish I had an assistant or a maid to iron out all the details so I could just show up and enjoy. How do people without a partner do this?

Item #1: Watch my older daughter play soccer.  Easy enough, right? Preparation: wash uniform & stinky shin guards and shoes; choose, shop and gather team snack; an hour in the car (repeat weekly). Once, I'm there though, I get to sit and talk to other moms about how great our kids are. That's a fair trade.

Item #2: Hosting a playdate for the younger daughter.  Preparation: cleaning up her room, so there's room to play in it; pumping up the balls and bike tires which have gotten flat; planning, shopping, and preparing little girl pleasing foods; making logistical arrangements with the friend's mom. This one stays pretty intense:  managing disagreements, ensuring cleanup of each activity before we move on, taking care of boo-boos, etc. Surprisingly, though, I sat for almost 30 minutes during today's playdate!

Item #3: Going to the movies with the husband. Preparation: finding time to shower and make myself presentable, arranging for babysitting, finding the checkbook so I can pay the babysitter (one of two things I still do by check), emptying that big purse I only carry when going to movies or other events where I have contraband to sneak in, getting movie tickets (it's a movie festival thing, requires a little more plan ahead). If I can just there, all I really have to fight is my own tired-ness.  Luckily, they have coffee!

Item #4: Hosting my writing group.  Preparation: Cleaning house to the point of feeling okay about letting friends enter, preparing food for eight, reading the pieces up for critique and preparing thoughtful commentary, making a plan to keep the family happy enough without me for 4 hours, calming my nerves (it's my work on the chopping block this week).  Luckily, this is a group of busy women . . . they very politely never notice the parts of cleaning I didn't find time for.

Item #5: Gaming.  This is the closest I get to "just show up and enjoy it"  . . .because the hubby is the GM.  Of course, that means I'll need to get the children out of his hair long enough for him to prep. Hmmmm . . .

First world problems for sure, worrying about logistics for my very busy leisure life. I'm a very lucky lady, to get to do all these awesome things with all these awesome people.

Married Without Children

My husband and I have never been married without children. When he married me, I was already a mother.  So T, the brave soul, jumped in with both feet--he became a husband and a father all in one fell swoop. Not long after that, we had another child together.  She was practically a honeymoon baby . . . or would've been, if we'd had a honeymoon.  That's how it goes when you marry "late" (I was thirty-five).  Biology waits for no woman!

So, now we've been married six years.  It's weird. I can't believe it's already been six years because it seems like we are still very much newlyweds. At the same time, I think it must've been much longer than six years because of how well established we seem to be.  It probably adds to this effect that our oldest is now twelve and looks fifteen.  People assume we must've been married at least sixteen years.

One of our struggles is getting "us time."  That's hardly news. Everyone with kids has this problem and probably some people without kids have this problem.  But, when I look around at our friends who also have kids and our friends who are still thinking about whether they want to have kids, I realize there's a big difference between us.  We have never had a time when we were married without kids. Maybe that's why it bothers us more than it seems to bother them when we can't get enough time alone together.

The closest we came to "married without children" is when we were dating. We got a few weekends together where we got to sleep when we wanted, eat when and what we wanted, make our days without planning around the needs and wants of children.  Those weren't "real life" weekends though. That was vacation time, days taken off work and other responsibilities to run away and play together.  Mostly not even in my town or his, but some other town we chose to visit. Not real life.

I wonder how this will play out as we age.  It's already only six more years till the big girl goes to college. If they go as quickly as the first six years of our marriage, that'll be tomorrow afternoon. When the littlest runs off to college, I'll be (oh my) fifty-four years old. Fifty-four, and married without children.  I think we'll be a whole new class of empty-nesters: newlyweds. Maybe that would be a good time for that honeymoon.

I've written a novel!

It's done! I finished the clean up of the first draft of my novel yesterday!  So, regardless of whether I ever find fame and fortune, I am now a novelist!  I sent it off to my critique group last night, and they'll help find and fill the holes in late July.  I'm both excited and nervous as hell. It's the biggest thing I've ever written.

It's been a four-year journey.  I'm a mom of two wonderful girls and I work as a middle school teacher, so simply finding hours to write in was probably actually the hardest part. Well, that and learning how to write a novel while doing it. Luckily, I also have a very supportive husband.

When I look back on it, T gets a lot of credit for getting me here. He was the one who looked around at gather and craigslist and meetup for a critique group for me when I expressed a desire to get back into writing after our youngest was born.  That critique group has grown into one of the most important things in my life.  They keep me honest--in life and in work.

T was also the one who found a writing retreat for me when I said I needed a longer stretch of time to focus on the task.  As an eighth night gift, he bought me three days of writing time through a local organization called Resource Center for Women and Ministry in the South, run by Jeannette Stokes. Periodically, they hold these weeks of quiet and writing for women at Pelican House at Trinity Center.

It was perfect for me.  The house is silent during work hours. You're within easy reach of the beach and some marshes if you need to walk.  They feed you (quite well), so you don't have to spend any time and energy on figuring out where your meals will come from.  There's even usually coffee that someone else made.  I've been able to go twice now, and I've never been so focused and productive as a writer as I was at Pelican House.

I did most of my writing in this room:

It's perfect for me. I can see and hear the sea. The room is tiny--that photo shows most of it right there.  It's in a cupola at the top of a little spiral staircase.  The only distractions are the ones I bring in with me. Next time, I'm bringing a little folding table and I may just live in that room the whole time.

So maybe this is the first draft of my acknowledgements page.  Thank you so much, T. 

A Woman of Substance

            My sister thought she was a scary old lady. I kind of thought so, too. But I wanted to be scary like that.  People did what our Great Grandmother Lena said.  She was in charge of things. You didn’t cross her.  The world took her seriously.  

            These were all things a skinny little freckled girl wanted.  No one took me seriously. Not the way I wanted them to. At the time, I blamed the freckles.  No one could take me seriously when my freckles and dimples made me look like a cute little girl, instead of the very serious writer I was inside.  Really, it was probably because I was an eight-year-old girl.  I just wasn’t supposed to be this serious and ambitious yet.

            I was a writer! It was my identity. I was Jo from Little Women and, if my family had needed me to, I could have written books to buy our firewood. Never mind that we didn’t have a fireplace. I wrote poems, stories, essays, histories, whole books. My teachers and parents and aunts and uncles all thought everything I did was just wonderful.  I enjoyed the praise, of course, but I knew they weren’t taking it seriously.  They weren’t offering any critique. 

            Great Grandmother Lena was the only one among my relatives who didn’t just respond with blanket praise when I showed her my poems and stories.  Sometimes this made me want to cry, but it also made me value her opinion. She knew that I would grow to write bigger and better things. Things that mattered.  Through her eyes, I could see this, too.  Her praise was worth so much more because it was so difficult to earn.

            Throughout my childhood, I heard a lot of things about her, but not from her. She didn’t talk about herself or her history. She wasn’t a grandmother who told stories.

            I knew, though, that she had been married, and that her husband had died a long time ago, even before my mother was born. I always had a hard time imagining a husband for her.  She seemed so self-sufficient, so sure. Was there really room for someone else’s opinion about how things should be done?  Was he dour and dark like her?

            Grandma Liz, Lena’s daughter, had adored her father.  She said that he was funny and affectionate, that he liked to sing as he walked the little family farm doing the chores. When Grandma Liz talked, you knew it was her father that she had loved with all her heart. It was so hard to imagine this Irish man singing his way through a life beside my German great grandmother.  I always imagined him being a little afraid of her, like the rest of us.

            Now that story makes me awfully sad.  I think she must have really loved her husband, that he had been the lightness of her soul, a lightness that she lost entirely when he died young.  I don’t think she ever even considered dating someone again, let alone marrying. He had been it for her.  And he died when they were both so young. She lived another half a life without a partner. It makes me hope that there is heaven, and that they are together there.

            But that’s all conjecture, probably me projecting how I feel about my own husband into the outline of her story. Grandma Lena never told me how she felt about her husband. That was private.  You didn’t talk about private things.

            What Great Grandmother Lena did talk about were her convictions. She was a woman with a lot of opinions about life and how one should live it.  As my Great Grandmother, she obviously felt she should teach me these life lessons.

            She told me that you can’t rely on a man to take care of you.  She didn’t think much of women who couldn’t handle their own problems.  When something broke at her house, she fixed it. It made her angry when she couldn’t. If she hired a repairman, she made him explain what he was doing so that next time she would be able to fix it herself.  Being afraid was no excuse.  You just bucked up and did it anyway.  This was probably why she and my Grandma Liz did not get along as well as they might. Grandma Liz was happy to let her husband take care of things for her.

            It really surprises me now to realize that Great Grandmother Lena never got her driver’s license.  It seems out of character for such an independent woman to rely on others for a ride.  In a way, I’m glad she didn’t.  I wouldn’t have known her the same way if my mother hadn’t been the one to take her where she needed to go. 

              I wonder now if it was part of her general mistrust of technology.  After all, her house still had things like an outhouse, a pump, and a wringer-washer in the 1980s.  She always said that there was no reason to fix something that wasn’t broken, but I wonder if she was just a little nervous about new-fangled things. It’s a soft thought, imagining this powerhouse of a woman cowed by machinery.  I guess she wasn’t all steel after all.

            What little help she accepted in life, was not from men.  It was my mother, her granddaughter, that she called for a ride. Not her son or any of her grandsons.  So, the lesson is, I guess:  if you have to accept help, it is better to take it from another woman than a man. And you should always repay your debts, if you are forced to take any on. If people help you, you find a way to help them in return.

            She told me that hard work is the most valuable thing we have to give. That God values effort. She had no patience for laziness, physical or mental.  Although she never had a paying job outside her home—few women of her generation did—she worked hard every day of her life.  She canned. She tilled. She sewed. She kept to a schedule of household maintenance including turning mattresses, re-caulking windows and doorframes, and a house-emptying spring cleaning on top of just ordinary daily cleaning and cooking. I cannot remember ever seeing her idle, except when she read. Which, of course, is not really idle. Just still.

            She told me that you should not take anything from anyone.  Good people took care of their own needs. “You don’t buy frivolous things then cry that you can’t afford butter for your bread.” It’s irresponsible not to have a nest egg and emergency funds. 

            But, at the same time, when we have extra, we should share it. You should give at church and support charities to help people who are not as strong as we are.  “Strong women take care of themselves. And others.”

            She taught me that being pretty was not nearly as important as being intelligent and self-sufficient. She believed this without bitterness.  She didn’t wish for the softer life a prettier woman might have had.  She didn’t want someone to take care of her or pamper her. She dismissed it with a wave of her gnarled hand.  “Women like us, Samantha, we don’t need that useless stuff. We are not decorations for some man. We build our own destinies. We are women of substance.”

            “Women like us.” I couldn’t be prouder to be included in any group. I only pray she would still think that we are the same kind of woman.