I wish I could…An Open Book blog hop post

 

Welcome to Open Book Blog Hop. You can find us every Monday talking about the writing life. I hope you'll check out all the posts: you'll find the links at the bottom of this post.

What skill do you wish you had, either as a hobby or a career builder? 

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I wish I could sew. It comes up a lot--repairs and alternations to clothing, making useful household things. Sadly, I just don't have the hand dexterity (arthritis) and these days, the eyesight isn't what it used to be either. 

When I was a kiddo, my mother made all my clothing. I later learned that this was as much out of saving money as it was out of love, but, as a kid, I just knew how special it made me feel that I had unique items crafted just for me. 

I guess the good news that I'm not dripping in remnants of fabric and bric-a-brac, trying to figure out how to fit my hobby in my house like some of my friends who sew are! 

How about you? What do you wish you could do? I'd love to hear about it in the comments below. 

You are invited to the Inlinkz link party!

Click here to enter

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!

2019: Most Popular Blog Posts

I blog mostly as a form of reflection, a kind of public journaling, where I record the details of my writing life and can look back on my journey.

That said, I still love it when other people read what I write. What writer doesn't?

Some of my blogging friends, like the fabulous Lidy Wilks have been doing recaps of their year in blogging, and I quite like the idea, so I'm stealing it. And hey John Scalzi does it, too. So, here's a quick recap of my most popular posts of 2019.

#10, with 138 views: Favorite Fierce Fictional Mothers, my Mother's Day post.

#9, Flash fiction written as part of Andy Brokaw's Wording Wednesday Prompt Challenge made up three of my most popular entires. "Left Turn at Alburquerque" (142 views)  #8 "Mornings With Helene" (147 views) and #2 "A Happy Life" (362 views). I'm happy to see my flash fiction attracting some attention. I mostly write it to play, to have the chance to remember what it was like when writing was something I did only because it was fun. 

#7 (158 views) and #4 (236 views) were posts for the Insecure Writer's Support Group, a blog hop I participate in each month. I'm always so glad I did. They are such a kind and supportive group and there's such relief in finding out you're not alone in whatever weirdness your writing life has become. "Taking Myself By Surprise" is about the joys of being a pantser. "When Part-Time is Not Enough" is about my frustrations of having opportunities to fill a full-time writing life, but not the matching income or time. 

#6 (182 views) was my theme reveal for the A to Z blogging challenge. I always love participating in this challenge and last year I wrote letters to favorite dead authors. It was a great excuse to revisit beloved books and authors and express my gratitude for the place those works have in my heart. 

#5 (221 views) was my summary post about the September Submission Challenge, in which author Ray Daley challenged his friends in the writing community submit one piece of writing every day for a month. He's doing another one right now, BTW, in January 2020. I'm playing along again. Wish me luck!

#3 (242 views) was a guest post by friend and colleague Diane Burton, who was celebrating a new release. I know I appreciate the signal boost writer friends have given me, so I try to return the favor when I can. 

And (drumroll please)…………………

#1 (421 views) Beginnings and Endings: My Curiosity Quills Story, the story of the end of my first publishing relationship. Don't worry, though. It has a happy ending. I was quickly signed by another publisher who is doing well by me and my work so far!

All in all, I wrote 87 blog posts in 2019, which means I exceeded my once-a-week goal. I'm finding that I really enjoy the camaraderie of participating in blog hops and challenges, so you can expect to see more of that from me in the future. 

Thanks so much to everyone who follows and reads my rants and meanders. I'm so happy to have your company on this journey! Let's hope 2020 is one exciting ride. 

Disney+ Project: Part Three: The Reluctant Dragon

Welcome to part three of the Bryant Disney+ project, in which the youngest Bryant and I watch all the animated features in chronological order. You can read our earlier adventures with Snow White and Pinocchio here and with Fantasia here.

We're up to 1941 and The Reluctant Dragon, an interesting piece consisting of a live action narrative that gives behind-the-scenes access to the animation process at Disney interlaced with shorter animated features.

I didn't remember this one, so it might be one I missed in my youth, or one that I only saw once.

My daughter enjoys nonfiction, informational kinds of shows. I know this, but I was still surprised with how pulled she was by the live action component. I think she may have enjoyed that more than the animated bits. I guess that makes sense given her own love of drawing and animation. It's really right up her alley.

For my part, I found Robert Benchley too smarmy and the narrative that he was wandering the Disney complex avoiding meeting with Walt Disney an odd choice. But I also liked seeing the color mixing, maquette making, storyboarding, expression studies, sound effects, and other aspects of the craft we explored in his adventures.

There was one cringe-inducing moment with an asian woman in the life drawing class with an elephant, and way too much of Benchley flirting with young women trying to do their jobs, but we were both able to just roll our eyes at those sections and move on.

It was very cool to see the face of the man who voiced Donald Duck and a pleasant little treat to find Alan Ladd portraying one of the storyboard men. I loved learning that Clara Cluck was voiced by an opera singer. How fun!

I learned in reading about this movie that it was released during an animation strike, which might explain, at least in part, why it was the sort of piece it was and why several of the people we see in the movie are not actually animators.

The title is a little misleading in that The Reluctant Dragon story itself only makes up the last fifteen or so minutes of the feature. It's a charming story about a dragon who is uninterested in fighting and would rather drink tea and recite poetry. We both enjoyed it immensely.

Other stories included a black and white segment from "Casey Junior" (from Dumbo), "Baby Weems" told partly in storyboard and partly fully animated, and Goofy's "How to Ride a Horse."

The song from Casey Junior has been running through my head since our watching--it's a darn catchy thing.

Baby Weems was just okay, not really charming either one of us, but we both loved How to Ride a Horse. If you're already a Goofy fan, then you know what to expect and won't be disappointed. Lots of good natured foolishness and hilarious physical comedy.

Alongside this one, we also watched a couple of older shorts including Ferdinand the Bull, a childhood favorite of mine that is still pretty fun (though I wonder if I would feel that way if I were a Spaniard) and The Plausible Impossible, a feature in which Walt Disney talked about the concept of making impossible things seems plausible in animation.

Next we're taking on Dumbo and Bambi, more traditional full length features. It's funny that my daughter has seen neither of these films, but already knows that we're in for a rough go in terms of sad stories. I guess the stories are just that engrained in American culture that she knows them to some extent even though she hasn't viewed them. I'm looking forward to finding out what she thinks!

Favorite Fierce Fictional Mothers

For me, there is a fierceness to motherhood, a mama-bear willingness to fight. As soon as I gave myself over to being someone's mom, this determination and protectiveness bubbled up in me out of nowhere. I had no idea it was there.

I've been lucky. I haven't had any cinematically intense battles to fight for my children. They've been the more ordinary battles with educational systems, friendship, love lives, disappointments, etc. We're fortunate.

But still, that fierceness is there, just under my breast bone, burning like a hot coal.

That's probably why so many of my favorite fictional mothers literally fight for their children:

1. Ellen Ripley, Aliens.

Ripley didn't get to raise her own daughter.

When she left on her mission for Alien (the first film), she promised her girl she'd be back for her birthday, but after an accidental 57 year cryo-sleep, she found she'd missed not only that birthday, but all the rest of them.

Her daughter was dead.

But mothers are made under a variety of circumstances and many mother someone they didn't birth.

The lengths she goes to in order to rescue Newt show the depth and intensity of that love. In the end it's mother vs. mother with Ripley fighting the Queen Alien.

2. Helen Parr (Elastigirl), The Incredibles.

It's not easy when life takes a left turn, depriving you of work you were passionate about and forcing

you to find your happiness in a smaller life. But Helen Parr knew that her family's safety and well being mattered as much as her personal satisfaction. She threw herself into making the new life work.

And, then, when the call to action came, when her children were in danger, she didn't hesitate to bring every skill she had into play.

And when it came to it, she knew when it time to let her children grow up a little and come into their own:

"Remember the bad guys on those shows you used to watch on Saturday mornings? Well, these guys are not like those guys. They won't exercise restraint because your children. They will kill you if they get the chance. Do not give them that chance." 

You might think Elastigirl would be all about flexibility, but in the end, she's about balance: family, career, personal satisfaction, happiness in her marriage. She working to have it all, and if anyone can do it, she can.

3. Sarah Connor, Terminator 2: Judgment Day.

What do you do when you learn that your child is the one hope for the planet, the future leader of the Resistance?

You become the kind of mother he's going to need.

Yeah, Sarah might have started out as a damsel in distress, but she didn't sit around waiting to be rescued for long.

No. She went out and got an education, and we're not talking about a liberal arts degree from a community college.

She learned self defense, security, weapons, and guerilla warfare. She kept her son and herself off the grid and out of the hands of their enemies. And when that didn't seem like enough, she went on the offensive (which unfortunately, landed her in an asylum).

Everything was always about her son, but the real hero of this series is his mother.

4. Briar Wilkes, from Boneshaker by Cherie Priest.

In an alternate history steampunk story, Briar Wilkes is a pariah. She fell in love with the wrong man and there are those who blame her alongside him for the release of blight gasses that left the Pacific Northwest a post-apocalyptic wasteland.

But she tried to protect her son from all that. She never talked about the past, never let him know what kind of a man his father was, wanting to save him the pain and suffering. Tried to let him have as normal a life as was possible.

It backfired, as secrets are wont to do, and young Ezekial set out in search of his father, into a dangerous world full of people who would use him or kill him.

Briar didn't sit on her hands, fretting at home or seeking a hero to save them. She became the hero she needed: she put on her goggles and breathing mask and set out into the poisoned world to save her son, facing her inner demons and some outer ones along the way.

5. Molly Weasley, of the Harry Potter series of movies and books.

Not every mother wears her fierceness on her sleeve. Some might seem to be a homemade cookies and sympathetic ear sort of woman, taking a supporting role in her children's lives. But, threaten her babies? You'll see a whole new side of Molly Weasley, one that looks a lot like Ellen Ripley:

6. Alana of the Saga series of graphic novels by Fiona Staples and Brian Vaughan.

Alana is complicated. She makes rash, impulsive decisions. She acts before she thinks.

She joined the military to escape her abusive situation, but wasn't willing to take orders thoughtlessly.

Then, she fell in love with an enemy soldier, someone outside her species, and ran away with him even thought it was likely to get them both killed.

Not the best circumstances for motherhood.

I love Alana because of her complexity. She has conflicting motives and emotions and makes bad choices, but her love for her child is a constant, something she'll undergo tremendous trials to protect and rescue.

So, there's my Mother's Day list of fierce mother characters I love. Who's on your list? Or are you a fan of another type of fictional mother? I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments.

Ages and Stages

Well, that went fast.

Eighteen years sounds like a long time, but when you spend it raising a daughter, it goes by in a blink.

I delivered my girl to college on Saturday.

I know she's embarking on another adventure, but I don't get the ringside seat I've had for her other adventures and that's leaving me a little sad.

But I know how fortunate I am.

She's healthy, smart, and capable. She's found a college that seems like a great fit that will prepare her for a future doing what she wants. Bursting with pride and feeling melancholy is a weird combination of feelings. A hard one to describe, which is an odd feeling in and of itself for a wordsmith.

So, here's a verse I wrote for her when she was still very small, and I was struggling with my feelings after divorcing her father. She still saves me all the time.

For my daughter 

You save me from bitterness, sweet girl.
Without you,
how I might rail against heaven
and rue the days I spent
in your father's company
as wasted days, lost time. 

But if it took all those sad, difficult days
to make you,
it was little enough to pay.
If I had to cry
to bring the joy that is you into the world,
it seems a fair price,
a bargain.
I would have given so much more
had it been asked. 

When my heart wants to brood
on might-have-beens,
my breath stops
to think
that you
might never have been.

How Did You Become a Writer?

As I continue to find and refine my writer's path, I've decided to try out the DIY MFA Book Club, seeking out new inspiration and new friends and colleagues. The first prompt asks: How did you become a writer?

Or, as I prefer to think of it, whose fault is this? 

It might be my mother's fault. After all, she was the one who introduced me to books and stories, who took me to the library once a week and read me my favorite books over and over again, until I knew them by heart. Her love of reading was contagious. 

Then again it might be Mrs. Alsdorf's fault. She was my first grade teacher. As a handwriting exercise, she had all us six year olds copy out classic poems by Wordsworth, Frost, Dickinson, Shakespeare, etc. I loved the words, fell dreamily into the sounds and images and illustrated the margins with elaborate drawings. Kneeling down to admire my work (it wasn't far for her: she was only five foot tall), she whispered into my ear, "You know, if you want to, you could write your own poems." 

Then again, it might be Emily Dickinson's fault. She wrote such wonderful quirky poems that seemed to speak my very heart back to me, and made me write to write my own to answer her. 

Or it could have been Jo March, or her creator Louisa May Alcott, portraying writing as something a smart bookish girl could do for adventure.

But really? 

Writing was something in the heart of me from the very beginning. I was lucky in that I figured out what scratched that itch early on. When I need to write, it's very much like an itch. It's a discomfort, a restlessness, a twitch that leaves my brain aflame until I can quench the fire with the balm of story. 

Milestones: #45

April and May are milestone months in the Bryant family. Three of us have birthdays (me, the youngest child, and the pup). Both our dating and wedding anniversary fall in this span, not to mention Mother's Day. And, starting last year, April became book launch month. I've launched one two Aprils in a row, choosing that date as a birthday gift to myself, and I'm hoping to keep it going as long as I can.

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Different people set goals at different times of the year. For some, it's New Year's, whenever your tradition celebrates that. For others, it's the starts of school years. For me, it's birthdays. That flip forward on my personal timeline is always a time for reflection and goal setting for me.

So here are my thoughts on #45.

Writing Life: When I was turning 42, I decided to finally commit to taking writing seriously and giving it a real chance. I'm a hard worker and when I commit to something, I see it through. It's been a great run at that life goal.

When I was 43, I signed my first book contract, and when I was 44, I saw my first book in print. Now, at 45, I have two books of my own, and have my work included in three anthologies, which allowed me to take this picture at my book launch party. See that grin? That's pride and joy and gratitude for the chance to follow this dream.

Looking forward, I still have plenty of dreams to pursue here. I'd like to fund a great vacation for my family from the money earned from my words. I want to finish all the books I've started, then start some totally new ones. I want to win awards and try not to brag about them too much. I want to be famous enough to be invited as the featured guest author at a con, but not so famous as to be recognized on the street by strangers. Pie in the sky would be complaining to my writer friends about how the television adaptation changed my stories and characters, but what can you do? 

Family: When I was 34, I thought my life had fallen apart and I'd never be able to put it together again. My first marriage ended. I was in financial straits that demanded that my daughter and I move back in with my parents. Then, on top of it all, I got sick and was practically invalided for an entire quarter of school, and was treated badly by my school district and my insurance company in the classic "kick a girl while she's down move." 

But, when I was still 34, I re-met Sweetman, a man who had been my friend for many years. Timing

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is everything, and for once the girl who is always early and the man who was always late had the right timing. Here I am twelve years later celebrating the first decade of my marriage to Sweetman and I still know how lucky I am. As I write this, I'm finishing a lovely quiet mother's day full of pictures and sunshine, and looking forward to a week in which I'll see my eldest daughter sing at a concert and finish another book with my youngest, and a weekend with an anniversary date to see Civil War! Lucky girl, indeed.

My family and writing career goals are all wrapped up in each other. I want flexibility and time to be able to be there for my girls, my husband, and my dog in the ways they need me. 

Teaching Career: This is my twentieth year of teaching. I've taught in small places and large places,

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kids from grade six through college and adults. On a day to day basis in the classroom, I still love this. Children inspire you to be the best you that you can be. There's something about being there when they understand something for the first time, whether that "something" is irregular verb conjugation or how to organize their folder or why that one kid behaves so strangely. It's like watching the world be born again, six periods a day.

That said, it's also exhausting and repetitive and it can be hard to hold on to your positive outlook when it feels like the state of North Carolina and the United States government is out to crucify you daily to hide their own failings. Being scapegoated can make you bitter and strange. It's hard not to feel frustrated knowing that, had you chosen any other career path, you'd be making double the money or more after twenty years and that your prestige factor would have grown rather than faded.

My goals here are to find a way to keep working with young people, but in a new way that inspires me to new height and offers a little flexibility that will help me with my family and writing goals. I've got my hat in a new ring on that one, so wish me luck!

So, the TL; DR version:

In my 45th year, my goals include: finding inspiration and flexibility in my paid work, making more money off my writing so it can become my paid work, and writing yet more!

Life in the Aquarium

As I write this, I have been sick for eight days. I have a 101 degree fever and I feel as if I'm underwater. My poor husband has been doing his paying job and the jobs of both parents all this time. 

I'm not nearly as cute as that cat. In fact, I just had to call in the calvary. 

No, not her. This is not the kind of fighter we need for this. We've sent for Grandma. The husband has to leave on a business trip, and I'm not up to being me, let alone being me and him. So Grandma to the rescue!

For the record, our Grandma is much younger and never wears spandex. She's a jeans and paint splattered tee shirt sort of gal. And we are incredibly lucky to have her! Thanks Mom!

Writing While Mom-ing: Writer Mama Bloghop

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+Sharon Bayliss invited me to be a part of her Writer Mama Bloghop and share my "insights" into writing while Momming. So, what it's worth, here are my two cents:

Writing while Mom-ing is challenging, for certain, but I don't know if it's more challenging than writing while doing anything else. When I wasn't a mother, the first twenty-eight years of my life, I wanted to write, and, arguably, I had the time. I certainly had many hours a day that were mine to fill as I chose, but as often as not, I'd choose something else-reading, tennis, dating, movies, hiking, teaching something extra, hanging out with friends, traveling, studying, talking, sleeping. I regarded writing as something one did when the inspiration struck. Sometimes when I look back at that time of life, I feel like I wasted a lot of time. Other times, I think that I needed to do what I did then to know what I know now. In all that navel gazing, I garnered experience and knowledge that serves me now. So who knows?

When I had one child, I continued to write sporadically. I wrote detailed and beautiful journals about mothering, essays about family and life, and a fair amount of poetry. I even published some of this work, but I still didn't take it all that seriously. It still wasn't a vocation, just a hobby. I would be a writer "someday."

Then, as life does, it took turns. I moved, divorced, moved again, married again, moved again, and had a second child. After my second child was born, the urge to write, too often ignored in the past few years of upheaval and turmoil, cried loudly to be filled. My husband (the second one-the RIGHT one) believed in me, and understood that I needed to write to feel right in the heart of me, so he helped me find a local critique group. I began to write much more regularly. Just knowing that someone was expecting me to have pages ready when it was my turn was enough to make me write them. 

I learned a lot during that time, but I still really struggled to make serious progress. I was teaching full time, mom-ing two lovely daughters, and building the foundation of my new marriage. There was a lot on my plate. Maybe I wasn't ready yet. Maybe I still didn't take myself seriously. I'd been working on one novel for four years (and one that I later abandoned for three years before that).

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Then, suddenly, I was going to be forty-two (I know I should have known it was coming, but it was still a surprise). For some reason, forty-two was the year that bothered me, the way that some people are upset by turning thirty or forty or fifty or other milestone years. Douglas Adams wrote in Hitchhiker's Guide that forty-two was the meaning of life, the universe, and everything. So, I decided that forty-two was the year to either make a go of being a writer for real, or to let it go. 

So, I committed to a daily writing habit (using the Magic Spreadsheet gamification tool to track myself) a few months before that forty-second birthday and in all the days since (I've just turned forty-four), I have only missed ONE day of writing. At first it was really hard. My initial goal was two-hundred-fifty words a day. It doesn't sound like much, but if you write two-hundred-fifty words a day, you can have a novel-length manuscript in about a year. I was ready to start finishing things a little faster. Life was feeling shorter. And it worked beautifully for me. I've finished three novels since then and have first drafts of two more. 

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Besides that daily writing habit, which keeps me "in the flow" of my story all the time and saves me hours of floundering away trying to remember what my vision was in the first place, my other tricks have been learning to write amid chaos and noise and in shorter sessions. Some days, I write for thirty minutes on the Mom couch at the kids' krav maga lessons and fifteen more after the youngest has gone to sleep. Some days, I write early in the morning before anyone else is up. Some days, I write in a car moving down the highway (my husband is driving on these days) ignoring everyone else in the car until I feel carsick and have to stop. 

Now for those who think I am ignoring my children and husband for this, you're only half right. How many times have we all read or heard that good mothers are happy in themselves? Some degree of selfishness is necessary for personal happiness. And my writing is my selfishness. That doesn't mean I don't still give. 

And, as a mother of daughters, I would argue that it's VITAL for my girls to see their mother reaching for and working toward her dreams, and their parents balancing each other's needs and wants in a healthy give and take. We are their model for love and marriage, and I want my girls to find relationships that support them in their personal endeavors and help them be all that they can and wish to be. Being a writer is being a better mother because it's being a better me. 

Friday Mom-a-Thon

Friday has gotten complicated around here. 

The Mom is exhausted from a week of mom-ing and teaching and would like to sit on the couch and stare at the fireplace (with or without a fire in it; it doesn't matter--just so no one asks for anything). 

The Teen wants to go out and is full of wonderful excited energy, but she isn't old enough to drive herself yet (and, thank G-d, neither are her friends). 

The Munchkin shouldn't be allowed to stay up past 8:00--it tends to ruin Saturday if she does. 

The Hubby has traffic goblins to fight and often can't get home at any sort of reasonable time, especially not if stops are need to buy stuff (as often happens).

The end result is a singular athletic event we call the Mom-a-thon.

The athlete in this event is not particularly athletic. She is heavier than she'd like to be and dressed in Mom-jeans and a teacher-geek tee-shirt (because we're allowed on Fridays). It's not as stylish as a sleek uni-tard emblazoned with the flag of my country, but we're all better off if I don't wear such things. Really.

The warm-up is a lovely espresso drink from my local market.  This may not seem like the kind of thing an athlete ought to do to warm up for an extended race, but it's surprisingly effective, better than yoga. It's my reward for having survived the work week. There's one particular gal who usually makes it.  She's wonderful. Besides making great coffee, she knows us (the Teen goes with me) and asks about little things we tell her.  I'm sure she doesn't get paid enough for how much better she makes my day. 

If my brain is firing on enough cylinders, I remember to get cash back when I check out. I'll need it for the Teen's Friday night expenses and Saturday morning guitar lesson. If not, it becomes one more thing to handle between 4:00 and 6:00.

Then, the first event starts: The Kiss and Go Lane. The Kiss and Go Lane should probably be called the "Harried Parents Hurl Your Tweens from the Car Lane." It's almost as dangerous as driving in a grocery parking lot right after work.  There are clear patterns the cars are supposed to follow, but they don't. You never know if the person in front of you is going to stop suddenly, turn in a random direction, or fail to stop when they should. The hubby handles the Kiss and Go Lane for the Munchkin. The Teen goes to the same school I teach at, so we're trying to get around the Kiss and Go Lane to get to the teacher parking. Luckily, espresso helps my reflexes.  We survive and even score extra points for landing our favorite parking place: nearest the exit.

Friday at our school is club day. Thanks to the warm-up of a double-shot latte, I am able to pull off thirty minutes of theater games.  Bonus points because the kids seemed sad when we ran out of time.

The third event is broken into three rounds. I'm an elective teacher, which means I teach all three grade levels at my middle school.  My rounds are called "eighth grade," "seventh grade," and "sixth grade."  This is extra challenging because the energy level of the kids goes up across my day in direct inverse to my own energy levels.

There's a dance tonight, the first one of the school year, so my sixth grade students, for whom this is their first ever middle school dance, are practically vibrating when they arrive in my room.  Teaching sixth graders under these conditions is akin to throwing a threadbare saddle with a broken buckle across the back of a rabid rhinoceros and trying to ride it. I live through it, but feel somewhat beaten and bloodied. On the way out, several kids remember to say thank you and wish me a good weekend. I am buoyed.

The fourth event is the after school run-around. This is a juggling act combined with one of those puzzles where you have to get things across the river without letting the lions eat the lambs. I get an assist in that the teen can be left at home unsupervised.  Still, it was five stops between leaving school and arriving at home. Everyone is eating dinner by 6:00, so the judges award me an extra star.

The traffic goblins are winning tonight, so the Munchkin goes with me to deliver the Teen and her friends to the place with the music and the laughter. We stay for a little while, but I have to get her home before she turns into a goblin herself, so back into the car we go. 

Another hour later, a clean and sweet smelling Munchkin is tucked into bed, only half an hour late. Half points, since bedtime was missed. We'll find out tomorrow how bad that is.  The Hubby has defeated the traffic goblins at last and is left at home to watch over sleeping Munchkin while I go back to the place with the music and the laughter to retrieve the Teen.

I like the place they have chosen tonight. It has wi-fi, coffee, and live music, but I can sit far enough away from it that I can still hear myself think. I write while I wait for hugs goodbye. I try not to get the heebie-jeebies (or at least not let them show externally), when the Boyfriend kisses the Teen goodnight.

On the way home, in the quiet of the car. The Teen thanks me. She says she feels lucky to have a mom who will go to this kind of trouble for her. Some of her others friends aren't so fortunate. That folks is game-set-match. Mom won this Friday Mom-a-Thon. And there are seven days to prepare for the next one!

Flash Fiction #4: February with a Twist

This week, I'm participating in "February with a Twist" a project +Becket Moorby has organized through the +Flash Fiction Project on Google+.  These pieces are supposed to feature a twist of some kind. Thanks for reading!

 

Image courtesy of Growinnc via an attribution license on Flickr Creative Commons (Attribution Link)

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Elaine walked into the shop with a purposeful stride. It looked like one of those little curio shops common on beach-town streets. She expected to find balls made of colorful blown glass, fish-themed art by a local artist, tin signs with sayings that seem clever if you've never seen them before. Usually, these shops were a good place to pick up a "I thought of you on my vacation" present for her mother, a tee shirt or a mug with the name of the town and some flowers maybe. The Georgia O'Keeffe quote on the door made her hope the shop might swing more towards arty than kitschy. 

Elaine was two full strides into the shop before she looked up and saw the young woman seated on a platform. She was sitting on a stool, with her ankles primly crossed. This struck Elaine as strange, given that she was otherwise nude. The woman waved and smiled.

"The door, darlin.'" 

Elaine jumped. "What?"

"The door. Maggie's getting chilled. Close the door and come inside." Elaine obeyed, then peered into the darker recesses of the shop in search of the voice. There was waft of smoke from behind the counter. Maggie didn't know whether to walk out or ask for a light. It had been more than a decade since she'd someone smoking in a public place. She hesitated in the doorway.

"Do you draw?" The voice was scratchy, dark, more suggestive of bars and backrooms than of art shops or tourist-bilking. Something in the voice made her feel warm.

"Not for years," Elaine admitted, surprised at the wistfulness in her tone. "I was just looking for a gift, for my mother, before I have to go back home."

The woman stood, pushing a sketch pad across the counter with work-worn hands in fingerless gloves. "You know, a mother always likes to get something her children have made."

Elaine brushed her fingers across the pad, then looked back at the model, now curved around herself in a pose reminiscent of a Degas painting. "Do you have an extra pencil?"

Letter to Grandma Liz

Dear Grandma Liz,

Nice trick, dying on your eighty-eighth birthday.  A nice symmetry to that.  And the two eights, like infinity symbols. Very cool. I’ll have to remember that when my time comes.

I kind of wish you could have taken the very end more slowly, and let my mother arrive at the hospital. She was at my house, where she’d been helping take care of my kids, your great-granddaughters, in the week before Kindergarten started up full time for the youngest. She was at the airport, two hours from your side, when she got the news. That was hard.

When it’s time, it’s time, I guess.  I wouldn’t have wanted you to suffer, but Mom would have liked to have held your hand and heard your voice one last time.

She’s staying really busy right now, sorting your belongings and papers, making sure the money and legal details are in place. She’s really pretty amazing.  You’d be proud of her, I think. She’s stubborn like you.  And like you, she’s fiercely proud and doesn’t want to let us help her.  (We’re making her let us help, though).

I miss you, Grandma. I’m glad I got to see you so recently, even if you were kind of angry at the world that day. I can definitely understand being angry. I think I’d be angry, too. Getting old sucks.

There’s all the things you didn’t do yet and it was becoming clear that you were running out of time. Your body wouldn’t do all the things you wanted it to do. And there’s all the things you knew we were going to do that you wouldn’t like. That feeling of not being in control of the things you wanted to be in control of. As you thought back on your life in those last weeks, I hope you thought about the happy things, too, and not just the slights you felt you had received.

I was at your house today, helping sort things and clean up, making it into the space it will next be.  You wouldn’t like the changes we made. We got rid of your gray rug.  We took the pictures off the walls (we’re planning to scan the old ones for all to share and let your children take the ones that apply to them).  We took down about half of the draperies and let the sunshine into your front living room.  I think it looks pretty good!

I hope you understand that none of that was a lack of respect for you.  I think you’ll be happy to know that your old house is going to be home to two young couples in our family as well as to your youngest son.  I’m happy that it’ll still be lived in by people I love. Letting your old house become something different makes it less sad, makes it possible to be there without wanting to cry.

We all really do want to cry. Some of us are holding it in. Some of us don’t hide it as well.  

Looking around at all your pictures today made me both happy and sad. How much you loved us all really showed. After all, you wanted images of all of us around you all the time. So much so that you couldn’t really see the walls at your house for all the smiling faces framed on them. You found something to be proud of each one of us for, and the evidence was everywhere.

Mostly, I liked finding the pictures of you. You as a teenager, taller than the other girls in your class picture, your head ducked down. I had a feeling you got caught about to laugh.

You as a young not-yet-married woman with flowers in your hair, and lipstick on. I imagine the lipstick was red, even though the picture was black and white and I couldn’t really tell.  

You with two babies on your lap, one of them my mother. Already they were pulling in two different directions, my mother and her oldest brother, and you were trying to hold them both at the same time.

You with the big sombrero on. You were so beautiful, and glamorous.  

The ones where you started to look like the Grandma I remember from childhood, your dark-framed glasses and dyed red hair, more orange than your natural red had been, before you decided to let it go white. I liked the one from someone’s wedding where your hair was a big Jackie-O type helmet all around your head.  You were grinning. You must have approved of the match.

And that one of you and me and Mom sitting at Grandma Lena’s grave and eating fried chicken.  That was such a good day.  One of the first ones when I felt like a grownup, included with the other grownups, all three of us missing your mother together.

It was a pretty amazing life, Grandma. I know you sometimes lamented the timing of your birth. That you wished you could’ve had a career like me or my sister and had more independence.  You should know though, that your belief is us is why we can.  We wouldn’t be the women we are if you weren’t the woman you were.

We were lucky to have you.

Enjoy heaven, Grandma. Try not to raise too much hell up there.

Love,
-Samantha