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!

Writing in the Midst of Life

Like many women (and men, too), I wear a lot of hats in my life. I'm a wife, mother, sister, and daughter. I'm a teacher. I'm a homeowner with a family so that makes me a taxi driver, a cook, housekeeper, pet care provider, academic tutor, maid, an event planner, a sanitation expert, and (sometimes it feels like) all around drudge and flunky.

That's not meant to be a complaint. I've made all the choices that brought me here and I love my family, my job and my home, even if they steam-roll me from time to time.

What it's meant to be is context.  This is the context in which I try to build a writing life. 

When I was a child and young woman, I imagined my life as a writing as full of long quiet hours of reading and contemplation followed by long quiet hours of productivity.  That, of course, is not my life.

But I need to write. I am downright cranky when I don't get that creative outlet.  There's a kind of joy I get in writing that I don't find anywhere else in life.  And, if I kept waiting for those long quiet hours to do it in, I wasn't ever going to write anything.

So I found a way to write in midst of life.  I committed to myself that I would write at least 250 words every single day. And I've done it. For more than 200 days. And writing in these smaller chunks is changing how I write.  I've always been more a pantser than a planner when I write. For those who know me and my infamous color coded google calendar, that's probably a surprise.  But, yes, in my writing, I'm all spontaneity. I don't know what's going to happen until I write and find out.

Maybe it's because I began my writing life as a poet, but novels don't come to me in huge sweeping outlines. I get a scene. A thought. A condition. Then I write to find out what's going to happen. Discovery writing. This is well suited to writing in short periods of time amid the chaos of home. It's almost like reading a serial novel.  I leave myself with a cliffhanger each day and come back the next day to find out what happened. But, I have to write it myself when I get there.


Yesterday, Patricia found out that Dr. Liu couldn't have been her kidnapper. Tonight, when I get to write, I'll find who the kidnapper was. I can't wait!

Jenna's Latest Prince

I participate in a community on Google+ called Writer's Discussion Group. If you're looking for a community of writer's to advise and support and encourage you, I highly recommend them.

A recent addition is weekly writing prompts.  I decided to play along today and give this one a go. The parameters were:

• Use the picture
• End with "once upon a time"
• Use fewer than 600 words

Here's my story:

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Jenna's Latest Prince

photo is by Ksenis Sazanovich (aka Otono Eterno) http://otonoeterno.deviantart.com/

 

 

Jenna wasn’t sure about the whole cosplay thing.

Sure, she rocked the Snow White outfit as well as anyone could. Her dark locks and pale skin had people making that connection even when she wore regular clothing. She’d used it to her advantage in more than one dating situation. But actually wearing the costume made her feel strange.

It was fun, in a little girl sort of way. Playing dress up, twirling your skirt because you like how it moves. But she also felt sexy, and she wasn’t sure she liked feeling both things at the same time. It put her in mind of Lolita, an inappropriate mix of sex and innocence.   Was it cool? Or cheesy?

Bill was different than any other guy she had ever dated though. Given the mill she’d just been run through by the last guy, another type A corporate mover and shaker, Jenna was thinking that different was good.  There had to be something better out there. Bill’s world was very different from hers and she’d learned a whole new set of words to be a part of it, cosplay and LARPing being the newest.

Of course, she’d studied up on something for a guy she was interested in before. She knew more than she cared to about soccer, old cars, and French literature, for example.  And she really enjoyed many of the things Bill had introduced her to.

The anime festival last weekend was what had launched this foray into cosplay.  There had been lots of people there in costume and Jenna had commented on how much fun it looked like they were having.  So, Bill had invited her to go to a party with him. One of his old friends was having a fairy-themed birthday party and all of the LARP folks were going as characters.  It could be fun.  They could rent her a really elaborate costume at this place he knew.

So, there she was, posing in front of the mirror, a grown up version of the most childish of Disney princesses. She touched her fingers to the little white collar. A Peter Pan it was called. It was a style that adorned several of her childhood dresses. None of those dresses, of course, had featured bare shoulders and strapless blue silk. She also certainly would never have been allowed to wear such red red lipstick or such thick mascara as a girl.

She did like how she looked, though. She should quit worrying and just have fun.

The doorbell rang. She ran to answer it, still in her bare feet. There was Bill, in a white blousy shirt and tight black pants, adorned with a golden-handled sword worn at the hip. She’d only ever seen Bill wear jeans and tee shirts. Oddly, this look suited him. She smiled even more broadly. “You look wonderful!” she said, and found that she meant it.

He bowed, spreading his arms to the side, then stood and held out a bouquet of yellow daisies. “M’lady, I think you might want shoes.”

“Ah! Yes, I might indeed.” Jenna looked around the doorway, but didn’t see the black ballet-slipped style shoes she had chosen. “I knew where they were, once upon a time.”

Level 6: TGFMS (Thank G-d for Magic Spreadsheet!)

So, I've written about the Magic Spreadsheet before.  It's a simple concept.  You commit to a minimum daily word count (level one is 250 words) and record your words in a spreadsheet where other writers do the same.

After taking four years to complete a first draft of a novel, I was becoming desperate to find a way to write more.  I have plenty of obstacles and challenges to that goal, starting with two children and a teaching career.  But I wasn't willing to let writing be that someday thing anymore.

So, in March, I found a mention of the Magic Spreadsheet somewhere in my Google+ feed.  I was curious and looked it up. They had a group on Facebook.  I joined.  I started tapping out my 250 words every day.  It was a revolution.

First, I noticed the difference in what I could do with a brief writing session. Since I was writing every day, I no longer needed thirty minutes or more to "get back up to speed" by reading what I had previously written and shuffling through notes.  I was already in the flow.  Between writing daily and taking a piece of advice from James Maxey to stop writing each session before the well runs dry (where you have a good starting place for the next day), I was flying.

It didn't take long to level up. Now I was shooting for 300 words a day, then 350, then 400, then 450. And now, ta-da!, 500 words a day.

Over summer, I could get my daily words pretty easily.  My days were mine to structure. I often wrote 2000 words a day.  I know that may change now that I have to add teaching back into my life-work balance sheet, but even if I can't keep up 500 words a day, I know I'm an addict now. I'll keep writing every day.

Because you know what? I finished the rewrite of my first novel.  Then, I finished the first draft of my second novel.  Now, I'm working on the rewrite of that second novel.  I have three new ideas for novels percolating that I'm making notes for.  I'm more productive in my writing than I have ever been in my life, even when I was twenty-two, mortgageless and childless. 

My ideas are making it to fruition.  One day a time, a few hundred words in a chunk. It adds up fast. And equals one girl who isn't going to write someday anymore. I'm writing now.

Not Restful, But Joyful

I don't remember my first trip to the beach. I know that my parents took me to Myrtle Beach and Virginia Beach sometime in my later childhood. I've seen the pictures. If we went before that, when I was little, I don't remember it.

About one of those trips, all I really remember is being grossed out because there were millions of grasshoppers everywhere and you had to negotiate among them to get to the sea. Then I was grossed out by jellyfish and seaweed. I think my sister got stung by a man'o'war and I got sunburnt.  I didn't like sand in my shoes, nor the feel of my feet on hot sand or shards of seashells. Of course, I was of the age of not liking things. I wonder if I had any fun. 

But, as an adult, I've grown to love the sea in my own quiet way. I don't surf. I don't even really like to swim.  I don't like crowds or heat or too much sun. In many ways, I seem ill suited to time on the beach.

But I could sit and look and listen to the sea for hours. I could walk for miles along the shore without noticing the distance. 

I love the beach in the morning, when it's quiet and crowds are not yet around, when all you see are a few local people who just nod your direction and leave you be.

I love the beach in the evening, when the heat and crowds are gone, but the sunlight still sparkles in the surf.

I love the beach at night, when it is just a sound in the darkness and the boundaries of earth and sea and sky blend into one encompassing feeling.

I spent the first ten years or so of my adult life living by the sea in Kodiak, then Nome, Alaska.  I would go to the shore to think. It was easy to find space to think because Kodiak and Nome are not huge tourist destinations. I remember pulling up to a favorite spot and finding two other people there, so getting back into my truck and driving a few miles further down for a spot I could have to myself.

The white noise and motion of the waves soothes me at a basic, maybe even cellular level.  I leave feeling clean and fresh, like my troubles and shortcomings have been washed away. It's hard to hold onto stress or anger or anxiety in the face of so much open water. The ocean is a place for quiet contemplation for me. For solitude.

So, when my sister proposed a beach trip for all of us (her family, mine, and the grandparents), I both wanted and didn't want to go. It's a very different thing, being at the seashore with kids and family in tow. It can be more wearing than restful. In the end, though, I couldn't pass up the opportunity. I'm so glad I went along!

My six year old daughter couldn't remember the beach. We live about three hours inland. She's been a few times, maybe three or four, in her life, but since that last trip was two years ago, she didn't remember it. After all, two years is a third of her life. If you asked her about the beach, she'd talk about wanting to go to the beach house where we had Captain Crunch. Apparently, being allowed to eat sugary cereal was what remained etched on her psyche from that trip.

My six year old is also a bundle of energy. I didn't see my potential beach time with her as restful. I was worried I wasn't up to it. And I was right. It wasn't restful. What it was though, was joyful.

One of the joys of spending time in the company of children is the infectiousness of their enthusiasm. What they feel, they feel wholeheartedly and express without reservation. When N saw the ocean for the first time, I saw the wonder of it in her face and looked at it with new wonder myself.  Even M, my teenager, who is at a more difficult to impress age, was drawn in. We all ran laughing straight to the shoreline anxious to feel the water on our feet.

Usually, I'm not one to play. I love to do things with my children, but have short patience for "let's pretend." I'm also sedentary by nature. I have to fight to make myself do physical things. But N had all of us running and jumping in the waves, calling out to the birds, stomping on sea foam left behind. For her, it was physical joy.  She ran. She jumped. She splashed. She squealed. She danced. She spun.

And I played along.

No it wasn't restful, but it was definitely restorative. It can be good for a quiet soul to remember how to make a joyful noise. I'm fortunate to have my girls to remind me of that.

Why I Became a Writer

  Look at this little girl behind the typewriter. Isn't she adorable? She's the invitation to a writing contest I've decided to participate in on Positive Writer. It's an interesting topic. How did I become a writer? Here are my thoughts:

_______________________________________________

My first inklings (ha!) that I might be a writer came very early. 

First grade. I had this teacher (so many great stories start that way, don't they?): Mrs. Asdorf or maybe Alsdorf.  I remember thinking she had a weird name. To my memory, she was very short. She had to be because she didn't seem tall to me, and I was in first grade!  I also thought she was very old.  I have no idea if she actually was or not. This is a kid's eye view after all. When I try to picture her, her face is all mixed up with my great-grandmother's face, in the way that many childhood memories are mixed up and distorted. She might have been all of thirty. She might have been eighty. I don't know.

Mrs. Asdorf loved poetry. We had this project where we copied poems neatly (we were still learning the mechanics of writing after all), and made illustrations for them, then collected them in a folder made out of wallpaper scraps.  My first blank book.

I loved this project.  I'd always been drawn to poetry. Before I even went to school, I memorized my Mother Goose book and, thanks to my mother and all our hours in the library, had a love for Amelia Bedelia and Dr. Suess, children's books in love with the sounds of words. I loved writing. I liked the feel of the pen or pencil on paper. I'd get this urge I thought of as "itchy fingers" and have to draw or copy something. (It still happens, though now, mostly I type).

At some point, Mrs. Asdorf came by to check my work. I don't remember exactly what she said, but I walked away with the realization that I could write poems myself, that it was okay to make up your own! So, I did.  I wrote a little set of rhymed couplets about Beauty (capital B Beauty; very high-concept). Here are the ones I remember:

Beauty is in the great, tall trees
Bending over in the breeze

Beauty is in each butterfly
That just happens to flutter by

It ended with one about "smile" and "while" that I can't remember fully anymore.  It was very well received and I began my first career as an occasional poet.   I wrote poems for birthdays, holidays, seasons, thank yous.  They were published in little school newsletters and once or twice in the teeny tiny local newspaper. I read them over the announcements for the school to hear.

After that I always wrote. I kept journals. I wrote poems and stories. After reading Little Women, I thought I could be Jo March and earn money to help my family with my stories. Of course, no one pays children for their stories, but I did get lots of positive attention. In high school, I even wrote most of a novel about a tennis team romance.

By college though, I had been doused with enough realism to know that I needed to do something else for a living. So, I trained to become a teacher.  English of course. And Spanish.  I still wrote. I just didn't think that writing was something I could do for a living. Especially not since my form of choice was poetry. I figured I could still be a writer, on the side.

Then I was off into the world, making my way as a teacher, learning what it meant to be an adult, finding new people, places and things to love. 

As many women do, I hit a lull in my public writing when I became a mother.  My first daughter was absorbing and most of the writing I did at that time was about her.  Teaching and mothering were my top priorities, so writing took a decided backseat, though I still managed to create a few essays and poems and even see them published. Life went on, as it does. I divorced, moved, lost people I loved, moved, remarried, moved, became a mother again, moved. 

I wrote my way through all of it.   The writing was all very personal.  It was how I worked my way through whatever I was working my way through.  How I made decisions. How I cherished things. How I grieved and how I celebrated. It was how I found out what I was feeling and thinking. The thoughts and feelings just whirled around unformed until I recorded them, sorting them out, pinning them down and analyzing them.

Then, after the birth of my second child, with the encouragement of my husband, I joined a group of writers.  All of them were writing novels, so I decided to give it a try.  It was hard, writing something so long.  In fact, it took me four years (not counting the abandoned first novel) to write the first draft of my first novel, another year after that to shape it into something readable, a few months after that to make it good.

It's not published, though I'm hoping it will be someday. It's out there in submission limbo. But regardless of whether anyone ever publishes it, I have written it.  I'm writing another one now, and already have ideas for the two or three after that. I am writing every day, with the intent to publish and be read, to possibly earn my living from my words.

I am a woman who writes every day, who sees the world through the filter of her art, who doesn't know what she thinks until she processes it in words. So, paid or not, I am a writer.

“I am participating in the ‘Writing Contest: You Are A Writer’ held by Positive Writer.” - See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-you-are-a-writer/#sthash.vTZuVKPR.d

I“I am participating in the ‘Writing Contest: You Are A Writer’ held by Positive Writer.” - See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-you-are-a-writer/#sthash.vTZuVKPR.dpuf

I am participating in the ‘Writing Contest: You Are A Writer’ held by Positive Writer - See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-you-are-a-writer/#sthash.vTZuVKPR.dpuf

I am participating in the ‘Writing Contest: You Are A Writer’ held by Positive Writer - See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-you-are-a-writer/#sthash.vTZuVKPR.dpuf

I am participating in the ‘Writing Contest: You Are A Writer’ held by Positive Writer - See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-you-are-a-writer/#sthash.vTZuVKPR.dpuf

I am participating in the ‘Writing Contest: You Are A Writer’ held by Positive Writer - See more at: http://positivewriter.com/writing-contest-you-are-a-writer/#sthash.vTZuVKPR.dpuf

This Girl is a Woman Now, or How to Hold on Loosely (But Not Let Go)

It seemed to happen overnight, sometime this past school year, during seventh grade.

It's not that I hadn't foreseen this.  Daughters grow. They become women.  I had seen the signs year by year. I would walk into her bedroom to look on her sleeping face at night. Sometimes it was the face she had worn as an infant still, but, increasingly, I could see her woman's face forming beneath the surface, a shifting of bones and sinews, a remaking.

Still it came as a shock when it happened. She blossomed. Not just her body, but her mind and spirit. 

She's beautiful, of course, in that way that only a girl new to womanhood can be.  Not quite in a woman's proportions yet, with girlish shoulders, but womanish hips.  Her legs seem incredibly long, like a baby giraffe's, and entirely out of bounds with the rest of her. There's a charming awkwardness to the way she stands. It seems impossible that she could move her limbs evenly, yet she is a graceful machine in motion, tearing up the basketball court or the soccer field, head and shoulders taller than the other girls.

She's independent, too. Sure in her own abilities. Creative. Always making something. She's in that in-between world, standing in the center of the seesaw between girl and woman, rocking back and forth, trying to balance new privileges and new responsibilities. It's terrifying and wonderful to watch. I'm proud of who she is becoming and my role in that. I'm more frightened than I have ever been in her whole life.

It's a new world of mothering.  I have to pursue her when once she would have come seeking me. I have to ask to see her art when once she would have pulled me by the hand to get me to come see.  I make appointments to ensure we spend time together. I learn about the oddest things so that I can hold up my end of the conversation.

I make sure I'm the one to drive her where she wants to go, just for the little moments when she rhapsodizes about the song on the radio, or analyzes her relationships, lets me in on what is worrying her.  Time in the car is vital. When I can't look into her face, when I have to keep my eyes on the road, she'll reveal her heart to me in a way that she won't do across the dinner table.

Friendships are so important right now.  As is time alone.  But she still needs us, even when she pushes us away. Parenting is a balancing act at every stage, but this one feels more precarious, like an over-reaction or failure to respond on my part will tip the seesaw permanently, letting her slide away from me.

Like always I need to protect her, but now, more than ever,  I have to protect her from herself. I have to let her hate me sometimes. I have to be mean. As her parents, we have to give her room to develop confidence by making her own decisions without letting her walk into a situation that will have life-long consequences.

I try really hard not to linger too long over news stories (Facebook bullying, sexting, pedophiles stalking Instagram, Steubenville). It can be paralyzing.  I can't worry about all the things that could possibly happen to her. Instead, I try to make sure she has the skills to watch out for herself.  Without frightening her unnecessarily with "what-ifs," I try to guide her thinking, to show her how to watch out for herself and her friends, to make smart decisions, to take measured risks.

So, if when you next see me, you notice that I suddenly look older, it's not your imagination. My hair has grayed. I might have an ulcer. My girl is a woman now (and she has a boyfriend).