Time marches along

Just a breath while I review the last few days. Lots of family, way too much food, plenty of laughter and games, but tears as well. It's hard to say good-bye at the end of a visit. It's hard to reconcile how things are, with how they used to be.

Because of our joint interest in history, whenever Ashley and I get time together, we go on jaunts to museums and historic sites. We talk about what we see, exclaim over the surprises, and yes, get a little snarky about the design or the interpretation sometimes. It sparks interesting discussions and speculation and often sends us to the computer or back to the gravestone or architecture guides that line the bookshelves at home.

What is ever-evolving for me in all of this, is my perspective on time and how quickly life seems to be evaporating. It is not possible to stand in the rooms where innumerable people have stood over the past 200 years, and not think about mortality. What survives through time and what doesn't ---- it's not necessarily related to its social or political importance. Sometimes it's just luck. Or neglect. The stories that are earnestly told about people who have gone before, no matter how well researched, cannot be complete because we don't know what individuals were thinking ---- they may not even have known why they did what they did. How often do you do something and then thump yourself on the head and ask "What was I thinking?"

I love evidence that people lived everyday lives. I'm glad that the interpretation of history has taken that turn in the last few decades, to include everyday life of everyday people, not just battles and elections. But there's still always the possibility that we're getting it wrong. Or that we're neglecting and leaving out significant parts because either they are uncomfortable to talk about (taboos) or we simply don't know about them since life has changed so much.  I'm glad when I hear or read about things like tooth pain and menses and fading eyesight, the stuff that really affects how people live, even though it doesn't show up in the historic record. We tend to take the many, many images we've seen on the screen as truth, even knowing that it can't possibly represent real life. Bonanza? Andy Griffith? Wagon Train? But when you watch movies and tv shows that have some of the trappings but not the grit --- missing teeth and B.O. and vermin and not enough warmth or cooling against the weather. It all looks so . . . . Gone With The Wind. Hoop skirts and satin, dashing soldiers and beautiful women against a backdrop of luxurious antebellum mansions.

Well, I'm not exactly advocating for absolute historical accuracy in all media portrayals ---- really, who does want to watch romantic leads with bad teeth and lice? Not too appealing, in the world of fantasy. But a little reality in the educational setting does add a great deal. Not skirting around issues like slavery and violence, child labor, tenements and open sewers and epidemics, is the stuff that makes history most interesting, most accessible, and much more relevant to today.

The other part of having my family here, rolling out the decades-old traditions like we do at Christmas, is bringing into the family circle the ones who have gone before. We sat in the great-great grandparents' chairs, heard echoes of the grandfather's reading voice, listened to music handed down through generations, ate the special dishes from grandmother to daughters to grandchildren. At the same time, the traditions are renewed with newer family members, born or brought in, to carry them into the future.

I lose myself in time. Sometimes I feel like I'm swimming upstream against a current that's dragging me where I don't want to go. I don't want to join the others, the ones whose presence is still represented, but fainter every year as memories are lost. This chair. This ornament. This song. I know where they came from, what they have meant, who those people were, but what happens when I am gone? Will this mahogany secretary cease to be the piece that Mom and I bought in England, and simply become a piece of furniture? Will these beads be tossed aside as just another necklace, even though they were Mabel's 20th birthday present from her mother in 1923, passed to Nancy with a letter, 65 years later? On one level, it's just stuff. On another, it's the stuff of life.

Another project for this week has been cleaning and organizing the upstairs, my own creative space. It's currently littered with the detritus of my teaching career. Ashley has a knack for organization and can be relentless when it comes to tossing things. We managed to take a carload to Goodwill, load the trunk with pass-alongs, fill two trashbags and a recycle bin, and it's still not done ---- but it's way better. I kept thinking -- and saying aloud --- I better do it now, so you don't have to do it after I die. Kind of a downer, but way too true. Nice holiday sentiment. She assured me that the Indian bag and oil lamp parts I was dithering over would be tossed if the bus were to hit me tomorrow. Off they went to Goodwill, by my own hand.

The underlying theme is passage of time. It's ticking away at a steady pace, whether I am aware of it or not, whether I notice and acknowledge it or not. I have a framed photo of a woman I don't know, hanging in my room upstairs. I bought it in an antique store because I found it so compelling. She might be in her 40s or 50s, wearing small glasses and looking directly into the camera. Her crooked smile reveals a few teeth. She looks educated, wise, amused. She is my writing muse. I have no idea what her name was or who her people were. She probably has living descendants somewhere who might even like to have her picture. But she's mine. I adopted her and I'm keeping her. And someday, one of my descendants will try to figure out where she falls on the family tree. So maybe the stuff ---- the pictures and old books and paintings and letters--- just scatter to the winds and land where they will. Landfill, collector, antique store, great-great-grandson's living room --- or the wall of a stranger who gives new meaning to continuing life.

It's not like I have any control over it, after all.

Harvest of Dreams

Don't you wonder how the fabulous things you do in a dream can disappear so quickly the minute you wake up?

Sometimes I waken with the certain knowledge that I've been speaking another language or have composed some amazing music. I'll have written a short story or delivered a lecture, and POOF! it's gone, and I can't get it back. It's like trying to pick up mercury.

(For those of us of a certain age, when a thermometer broke during childhood, we got to chase the mercury around on the floor, trying to pick it up. Don't even bother to tell me how dangerous and poisonous it is. It's probably why I can't remember my dreams.)

Dreams have probably shaped history sometimes, since people used to --- and maybe still do --- use them as a form of divination. Battles fought, monarchs overthrown, journeys undertaken all may have happened at the bidding of dreams. And who knows? Maybe they were onto something.

When I valued sleep less than I do now, I used to keep a notebook by my bed to write down dreams for the purpose of capturing their insight. Sometimes I would wake up in the middle of the night and write, then go back to sleep for more. Sometimes I would try like mad to hang onto it in the morning long enough to scribble down the essence. When I run across these old spiral notebooks now, they are about as interesting as listening to your roommate in college tell you her dream over breakfast. Uh-huh. Ok.

Needless to say, I've developed a keen interest in how the brain works, and doesn't work, since dealing with demented parents for the past 14 years. I have more than a passing interest in understanding my own brain in an effort to escape that fate myself. A few years ago I enrolled in a study at Duke in the Alzheimers's Research Center, to follow me for an indefinite period and be evaluated every year for signs of Alzheimers. Unfortunately, the funding dried up ----- science? who needs funding for science? Let's just pray it away! --- so I no longer have the assurance of being evaluated regularly, as well as the opportunity to contribute in a small way to the research. I also participated in a couple of shorter research projects, one of which involved having a functional MRI. At the end, I asked, in a joking way, if I could take home a picture of my brain. She not only obliged, but explained to me what I was looking at and assured me that my hypothalamus was "nice and plump". Nothing like a plump hypothalamus, that's what I always say.

So I have my brain framed and on my dresser. Somehow that's reassuring. I know that it's firing and I actually feel more clear-headed, teachable and "with it" than I have for years, right now. Even the stress of being the fulltime caretaker for a demented Alzheimer's parent is nothing like the wretched condition of being a public school teacher. That's pretty sorry, when you think about it.

Having my brain on the dresser is a reminder that my possibilities are endless, as long as I don't give up. I still have my faculties, such as they are. I can still think and speak and write, communicate with others, come up with new ideas. And I still have my dreams, both waking and sleeping.

Now, let me tell you about the dream that woke me up this morning....

Risky business

It is true. I am pretty risk averse. A friend recently tried skydiving for the first time, to which I responded with the thought that I would never in this world do such a thing ---- or even want to. But it made me think, what am I willing to risk, and why?

The risks I took in younger years had much more to do with rebellion than testing my mettle. I was never interested in anything athletic ---- sports bore me to tears. So the risks I took were more internal: defiance, infidelity, cheating, stealing and getting away with lies. It was enough excitement to raise the heartbeat, and was usually fueled by a goodly supply of alcohol and a few other substances. I developed a cynical stance toward "straight" people, by which I meant anyone who didn't behave as I did, church people, folks who followed the rules.

Now maybe the high to be gained from stealing lipstick from the dimestore is akin to the endorphin rush of making a touchdown. I wouldn't know. Both take some sort of courage, since there is the possibility of pain, and the outcome is uncertain. Since the things I was skilled at --- reading, writing, thinking, debating --- were not highly valued among my peers, I tried to keep them under wraps. It surely would have taken more courage to stand tall in my own sphere of accomplishments, regardless of what my classmates thought, but I preferred to hide my lights and find another way to show off. I guess that put me right out of the running for an after-school special; no book-nerd who makes good in spite of social ostracism for me.

The unfortunate aspect of this is that I tended to hide under the proverbial bushel for most of my life. Sure, once I got to college it became acceptable to be academically inclined, and I couldn't help but be challenged and intrigued by all the new ideas I encountered. But the habit of hiding out, of testing the waters and inventing my persona, had become so entrenched that I persisted, well beyond the point where even I could pretend it was good for me. I took hostages and called them husbands and boyfriends. I alternately smothered and neglected my child. I was consistently underemployed, spinning my wheels while I played approach-avoidance with college. When I finally graduated after seven and a half years, I stayed on welfare for another year, dithering about what to do with myself and working in scuzzy bars.

The role of risk in my life has continued to interest me. Long after I jumped off the cliff into recovery and sobered up, I was still engaging in emotional terrorism, unable to break from the old patterns. While I was no longer inclined toward my adolescent larcenies, I still felt that whoever my "real" self was, was not right, not good enough, would be shamed and made fun of. It was a shock to me that I didn't need the alcohol to spur me on; by that time I was self-sustaining when it came to risking everything for the thrill of another flirtation, another deception, getting away with whatever I could. In fact, one of the problems with early sobriety was the feeling that I had moved from life in the fast lane to life in the slow lane and I didn't like it one bit.

It is just possible that now I am simply old and tired, not really any wiser, but there seems to have been a fundamental shift in the last decade or so. A big part of the hidden self was revealed when I finally came out of the closet and stayed out. But it is not simply the fact that I finally embraced my sexual identity. I probably could have continued staggering from one emotional disaster to another for the rest of my life. I'd had plenty of practice. It was more that I finally, with the help of a therapist, slowed to a full halt and took stock --- lived alone, unattached, taking care of the business of life and figuring out what I like and want.

And that, my friends, was the biggest risk of all. For the first time, after 20 years of sobriety, 50 years on the planet, I came face to face with my unadorned self --- and didn't run away.

These days, the risks are still internal. They involve trusting enough to show and tell how I really feel. They involve being vulnerable enough to let another person know me. And most of all, I risk continuing to know myself, learn more, be imperfect. And the results are amazing, though they'll never show up on a TV show or in the public eye.

Don't look for me to jump out of any planes. I'll leave that to people who are interested in that sort of physical endeavor, and more power to them. No fast cars, highwire acts, motorcycles or mountain climbing for me. But that doesn't mean I don't step out into the world on my own highwire every day. I do, but you just can't see it. And that's all right with me.

 

Dividing lines

Sometimes, I wonder why I do it to myself. I was reading comments again. Oh lawd, it's eye-opening and discouraging.

I escaped the icy winters and cut-throat politics of trying to keep a state job in Illinois 24 years ago, to come to the south. People talk about the New South and the Old South, but since I have a limited experience here, I'm not sure I can compare the two with accuracy. It's probably all in the eye of the beholder, anyway. Since my wife, Jill, is a native North Carolinian, and from a small town at that, I do have more insight than I otherwise would.

The comments I read this morning were not local. I happened on a news headline about infant mortality in Milwaukee, and since NC has a history of poor outcomes for infants, I thought I'd read it and see what was happening in the midwest. I tend to forget just how regional and insular we can be in this country, until I start reading beyond the large news outlets.

I was appalled, when I moved here, that NC was near the bottom of the heap when it came to infant mortality and child deaths. I was raising kids myself, and involved in La Leche League as a mom and later as a leader. I swam in the sea of mothers and babies for years. I watched as the state determinedly pulled up its rankings and addressed not only the mortality rates, but the child health and education issues. Though it seemed to be related mainly to poverty and class, in this state race and class run neck and neck, with a long and divisive history behind them. It is not possible to divide questions of race and class here, but because of that, the discussion is at least attempted, the conversation includes, however self-consciously, the recent and distant grievances and wounds.

There is a myth abroad in the land, I think, that racism is concentrated in the south. We all see now-historic pictures of Selma, of Mississippi, of buses burning and lunch counter confrontations. I'm by no means an apologist for the egregious racially-tainted violence or day-to-day discrimination that has been rampant in the south. But when I was reading the comments behind the stories about infant mortality in the Wisconsin newspaper this morning, it made me sick at heart. This is supposed to be the part of the country where acceptance is a bedrock of the community. North of the Mason-Dixon still holds that "follow the drinking gourd" reputation in the mythologized history of this divided nation.

What is it that makes people so hateful that they actually think parents want their babies to die, that their families aren't really families at all, simply because of their skin color or their "zip code"? (What is it with zip codes, anyway? Is that an urban thing?) I know I can't generalize to "all Wisconsonites" or "all northerners"  ---- or city people or country people or white people or Christians or uneducated people ----- it's so easy, isn't it, to group folks and write them off. I also know that the folks who comment on articles are the ones with the most time on their hands and the biggest axe to grind, by and large. But really? I saw comments that were so hurtful and mean-spirited that I couldn't imagine them showing up in the News and Observer here in Raleigh. And we've got some meanies that like to leave comments, no doubt about it. But these took the cake, and they were so blatantly, horrifically, awful towards black women and children, it was scary.

Maybe I should be glad that folks who write comments like that (and "folks" actually means mostly men, sorry guys) aren't out taking potshots at the objects of their vitriol, but merely sounding off in front of their buddies. Maybe this is the new version of the street corner, the diner, the fishing boat --- the place to sound tough and mean and macho in order to look strong in front of the fellas. The trouble is, if that is what it is, it's no longer out of earshot of its victims. Before the internet, I wasn't on the bench in front of the fire station or out in the duck blind or in the locker room. If that's where this sort of thing was happening before, I didn't hear it. But now I can see and hear and, to me, it sounds dangerous.

Do we raise our kids to be without empathy for others now? Is this new, or is it simply more obvious, given the widespread media available?  I can say that when I was growing up in the 1950s and 60s in rural Iowa, I did not hear this kind of hate speech. There was still an emphasis on being kind. There were prejudices, to be sure. I know that my immigrant older relatives, Aunty Ann and Grandma, used to speak ill of Catholics and Blacks, from time to time, but it was usually in German so the kids wouldn't understand (HA!). And the prevailing attitude was that we were to accept everyone, that we were no better or worse than anyone else. That was what Sunday School taught, that was the talk at the dinner table, and in school. Two direct teachings in our household were "If you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all" and "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you". I don't think that was unusual.

When I hear or read such impassioned bitterness, I wonder at its origin. Where are the cracks in that person's psyche that would create so much resentment? Why, upon being shown evidence of the suffering of others, is the impulse towards blame rather than mercy and charity? Or maybe it HAS been around a long time. After all, we're still saddled with notions of the "worthy poor" or "deserving widows" ---- as if only the unrighteous find themselves in dire circumstances. Yet it can happen to me, to you, to any of us. Perhaps it is that fear, the fear of not having control over life and fate, that makes people so ill in spirit.

I know how privileged I am, and still I'm certain that I don't have a clue how much I take for granted. The best I can do is love my family and friends with all the ferocious gentleness I can muster, be grateful for all the things I know how to count on my fingers, and stay open-hearted and open-minded to the best of my ability. Every day I learn more.

Lesson # 267, I think

It seems like there are always more lessons to learn, at least if you look at life from my perspective. And right now, I'm taking the accelerated class.

Seems like I still harbor the benighted idea that I am capable of being everything to everyone, if not every day, then at least 6 out of 7. Since that is obviously not true, sooner or later it catches up with me like it did last night. Big time blow up. Tears, Yelling, Accusations, Ridiculous Statements, Sobbing in the Shower, Hopelessness, Feeling Trapped, and for good measure, a little more Yelling. Nobody ever went wrong pointing out my resemblance to a drama queen.

The thing is, for the first time, it was disguised as a problem between Jill and me. It's always so much harder when it presents like that. The truth? Fatigue, disappointment, fear, anxiety, unreasonable expectations --- all the usual suspects. Up until then, we had been able to stay in close enough communication to head off breakdowns. In fact, we've been downright proud of ourselves for what a team we've been. Got this caregiving stuff down pat. Piece of cake.

Or not. I know it's inevitable and we're all feeling our way through this new situation. It's not going to unfold perfectly, or anywhere close. I know that in my head, but I don't always know that in the moment.

One of the unintended consequences of last night's firestorm was a change of attitude this morning. I woke up restored, refreshed, ready to resume my role as Chief Comforter and Taxi Service. I loved my wife again, and my mother as well. I even loved my life.

Jill went to work. Mama went to visit Jack. Buddy and I braved the 38 degree temps and went to play at the dog park. He had a good romp and I got to chat with a couple of doggy daddies. When it was time to leave, the gate clanged shut behind us and Buddy started to trot down the walking path, not toward the car. I had the keys, I'm the driver, and as far as I was concerned we'd been in the cold long enough. But he looked back at me with those adorable eyes, asking as clearly as with words "Can't we go for a walk, Mom?"

It only took half a minute for me to remember the night before and bring myself back into the moment, right here, right now, in the brisk, cold air of a morning in December at Millbrook park. Did I have anything better to do? So off we went, not just walking but, after a little start, running as well. Now, I want you to know that I don't run unless someone is chasing me. It's a policy. Buddy liked it and I liked it. It didn't last long, but after that little burst of activity, we slowed down to continue our walk into the woods. And when we came to a fork in the road, we took it!

Off the paved sidewalk and onto a small, leaf-covered path we trotted, Buddy unable to believe his luck at this turn of events. Do you have any idea how many things there are to smell in the woods? As we walked deeper into the trees it became less trimmed, less like a park and more like a real enchanted forest. I remembered how much I've loved walking paths like that, ever since I was a child, playing in the wild area across the road from our house. I thought about kids growing up in the city who don't experience the outdoors like that, maybe even if they live in the same neighborhood as this little patch of wilderness.

We walked through a section where once-tall trees lay across the ground like pick up sticks, and I wondered if they were leftover from Hurricane Fran in '96. For awhile, the whole city looked like that. Then we came to a thick stand of pines where the underbrush grew wild and the light was shadowed. I began to wonder how far this could go on, since Raleigh was all around . . . somewhere. Suddenly we came into the light at the bottom of an embankment. Above our heads I could hear the thwock, thwock of tennis rackets. Against Buddy's better judgement, we scaled the not-too-steep hill and emerged on the solid blacktop that surrounded an enclosure of tennis courts, filled with the ladies in pony tails who play while the kids are in school. As we crossed the parking lot in the direction of the dog park enclosure, I realized that our great exploration had been a large circle --- we were right back where we started.

How often have I stuck to an agenda and lost the opportunity to explore? This day will never be repeated. I look at my mom and see someone who has largely lost the ability to make decisions about herself and her experiences. I may or may not wind up in her shoes, but today I have choices and it's up to me to make the ones that support the life I want to live, instead of just what I "ought" to be doing.

Buddy was my teacher today. Jill was my teacher last night. But I can be my teacher, too, and even choose my own curriculum.

Human: For better or for worse

DISCLAIMER O' THE DAY: I lay no claim to original thinking. When you read my posts, you probably go "Shoot, I thought about that months, years, decades ago!"

The past week, since emerging from the fog that is Nanowrimo, I have been catching up with "reality" and sneaking in as much downtime as I possibly can. That means that I begin the day full of ideas about what I'm going to do, and it quickly devolves into sitting around looking at Occupy Wall Street videos and reading op-eds from local news outlets and the NYT. I have, most assuredly, a skewed outlook on the world. It's ever easier to seek out the sources that reinforce my extant worldview. So objectivity is probably not my strong suit.

Except for one thing. I have been blessed (cursed?) with the ability ---- no, the necessity ----- of seeing situations from multiple points of view. This is very handy when you are a writer of fiction, or else how could you ever write a believable character you don't like? It does set me up for being accused of wearing rose-colored glasses, or being an idealist, or not having any convictions. For me, it's simply how I experience the world. And when I come across something completely foreign, I find myself darting in and out on it ---- kind of like Buddy at the dog park when he's playing with a new, big dog ---- trying to figure out what angles make sense in my existing schema.

Admittedly, I often get things wrong, woefully wrong. Since I lean toward the sunny side in general, I usually don't attribute nefarious motives to people unless it's inescapable, and even then, I'm always looking for explanation. I read about murderers and white collar criminals and wonder what made them do those things, how they justify or rationalize such actions, what in their background or psyche gives rise to such hurtful behavior. So, given all this, I am completely baffled when thinking about how our society has become so seemingly cruel-hearted toward others.

I did grow up in the era of Rah Rah America, apple pie and the American dream. I was inculcated with the values that were considered to be endemic in the American Spirit, the virtues that supposedly underlay our every move, foreign and domestic. Americans were open, friendly, welcoming, generous, --- that was the image I grew up with in the 50s. So what happened?

How is it that so much of the public discourse (if you can call standing on opposite sides of a deep ravine and shouting, discourse) is concerned with how we treat other people? Isn't that what it is, or am I being simplistic and idealistic again? Don't questions of income disparity, healthcare access, affordable housing, labor and wages, education, criminal justice, civil rights, and caring for the poorest and disabled people among us, all come down to how  we, as moral and responsible human beings, treat each other? The fundamental questions about life are the same at the top of the income distribution as they are at the bottom, though the outward appearances are different. The richest .01% are not exempt from the human emotions of love and loss, nor from the responsibility of giving and receiving. The poorest, incarcerated crack addict has responsibilities toward the common good as well, beginning with addressing the internal conditions that give rise to that illness and its anti-social consequences.

WE ARE ALL ONE.  Nobody gets out of this alive. The CEO and the crack addict, and everyone in-between, are all riding the same train to the same destination. The longer I hang around on our little blue planet, the more I realize how finite and error-prone we are. We chase the things that don't matter and ignore the things that do.We're rightfully indignant at injustices in other countries, but yell at or hurt the people in our own homes.

My sphere of influence is limited, but I have one. So do you. So does everybody. And we are all extending that influence all day, every day. The only question is what will that influence be? Will it be only for me and mine? Only for my tribe, the people who I think are right or like me? Only for my own pleasure or comfort or self-aggrandizement? Or will I take up the responsibilities of being a person among others and offer the world my gifts of self --- the talent or money or skills that I can. I have a contract with others, not unlike the oath of a medical doctor, to cause no harm. I may not be able to make things better, but I must not make things worse.

And now, a pause

Today is the 30th of November. It is the last official day of the hurricane season. Breathe a sigh of relief. It is also the last day of NaNoWriMo, but I passed the 50,000 word mark yesterday, and validated my work on the website last night to be declared a WINNER! Of course, with Nano, you don't actually win anything except a certificate you can print out (unless your color cartridge is empty, like mine) and a 20 second video of the Office of Letters and Lights staff cheering and yelling for you. And lots and lots of bragging rights!

My mother moved in the day before I started Nano this year. I have spent the entire month of November getting attuned to her and her many needs, at the same time that half of my brain is immersed in the world of Vanetta and Lou, in the first decade of the last century. It's been a confusing time.

Now, suddenly I have several hours completely free. I had arranged to have Mom go to visit Jack so that I could write, but I already finished. The house is quiet. The critters are calm. No tv. No radio. Coffee at the ready. I don't know what to do with myself.

It's not that I couldn't find something to do. I can always hang out on facebook, which I admit I have been doing. What's missing in this breath is the "have to". For 30 days, I've either been dealing with Mom or writing or both. I love the writing, but it is a challenge, this starting a new novel and getting 50,000 words in a month. It's not my usual pace, though I wish it were.

I have not been paying attention to the rest of the world too much. I was surprised to listen to BBC this morning and find that 2,000,000 public workers, including teachers, are on strike because of budget and pension cuts. I zoomed in on the old news that our "Supercommittee" didn't do it's job, and the chips are going to start falling where they may. Since I've been dwelling in the early twentieth century for a month, I'm extra aware of the cyclical nature of economic and political "news" --- perhaps we should call it "olds".

Labor unions? Class Warfare? Super rich squashing the Middle Class? --- read some history. Nothing new there. Women's rights being legislated against? Women have not even had the vote for a century, and birth control information was outlawed back then. Religion pushing into public policy? Have you heard of the Scopes Monkey Trial?
Reminds me of a song: "Everything old is new again."

I'm always reminded of songs; that's a result of growing up in a musical theater household. And today I've been singing songs, to the consternation of my dogs, who wonder why all the noise, when I'm belting out "Birth of the Blues" or "It had to be You".

I love to have a pause, a day when I can catch up with myself, sing, noodle around reading whatever I want, make a cherry pie, walk in the woods with Buddy, and remember who I am. It's one of those days, and I'm grateful just to be alive.

Who's got my back?

Today I thought I lost my Nano book. For those of you who are not keeping up, and you know who you are, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month. About 150,000 of my closest friends and I, are writing 50,000 word novels in 30 days. The deadline is midnight on November 30. Since today is the 25th, I'm pretty far along. When my word count suddenly dropped from 41,000 to 18,000 and the first huge part of my book was missing, I have to admit to some panic.

I'm trying to keep up with the times, here. I got adventurous and started using a web-based writing tool called Yarny that would store my GAN (Great American Novel) in the cloud. You know, THE CLOUD. The only way I can conceive of this, being almost entirely non-technical, is that it's up in heaven with Jesus, who promised, cross his heart, that he'd take care of it and not lose it no matter what, because he's way more reliable than the hard drive on my li'l ol' laptop. So I decided to take a leap of trust. I didn't even back it up, except part of the beginning, when I was trying to see what the "export" button was all about.

Now, I trust Jesus. If my book is up in heaven, I believe implicitly that it will be there, even if I temporarily misplace it through my own lack of know-how. Which is what happened today. I love to sit and write in my little nest at the top of the house. I sit on the old, soft couch in front of the open window, Buddy jumps up and falls asleep beside me, I'm rockin' out to Bach or Chopin on the Pandora and all is well with the world. Trouble is, I keep forgetting that the CLOUD requires a strong internet connection, and up there it's a long ways from the router or whatever that thingy is that makes internet go. Two little bars on my connect-o-meter. Sooner or later I wind up with an error message saying it can't save. I strike my head in a "coulda had a V-8" moment and reluctantly relocate to the lower regions of the house.

But today it wasn't just that it couldn't save --- it ate my book. Gobbled it up with only a few scraps leftover. Five days before the end of month. What could I do? I shot off email to the Yarny Gods and went to buy a Christmas tree with my family.

Now that's the point of this long, sad tale. My usual MO is to freak out, cry, threaten violence on myself and/or the world at large, slide into a hopeless trance and eat a pint of ice cream. I did NOT do that today. It was helpful that Jill was in a good mood, and Mom was stable. In spite of my deep-seated anxiety, we drove to Durham to buy a tree from the drug addicts, like we always do ---- they're in recovery and raising money --- and then stopped to eat lunch outdoors in the warm sunshine. Gradually my tension headache went away, my eye almost stopped twitching and I even started to laugh. I enjoyed being out with these women I love. I was in the moment. I even started thinking, on the way home, that if it was gone, I could still pull it out with a lot of writing time and it would probably be better the second time around.

There are opportunities every day to do things differently. I don't always take advantage of them. I also think I don't notice when I do. But every so often, on a day like today, I get to see the growth that allows me to have deeper, warmer relationships with others, and be kinder to myself in the process.

I got my book back. Tech support is a wonderful thing. My book is back in the cloud, intact and on track. It's also on my hard drive and a flash drive. It's all very well to believe in heaven, and maybe Jesus really is keeping my book in his pocket, but it never hurts to back things up. And back it up again. Lesson learned.

Real life, indeed

Right now, my "real world" is not as in control as I'm used to, which makes the world in my imagination even more important. I've been thinking that doing NaNoWriMo right now, trying to write 50,000 words in the 30 days of November, is a silly undertaking with Mom just having moved in. On the other hand, it's a saving grace in much the same way that breastfeeding a young baby was when my first husband and I were in the process of splitting up. Every few hours, I had to sit down and put my feet up and relax so I could properly feed the baby, which helped me keep my perspective.

Writing for at least an hour and a half a day, in the midst of all this change, serves the same purpose. I can't control Alzheimer's Disease. I can't wave a wand and make my mother happy when she's crying, or help her remember where she is and why. I have to be available and alert all the time --- help her find the bathroom, reassure her that she's where she belongs, give her activities to occupy her. With Mom, and everything else that's going on, I can only control so much, mainly my own actions and reactions.

But in Buxton ----- ahhhhh, there, I am God. I decree everything from the weather to who falls in love. I put my characters in sticky situations and either help them get out or watch them squirm. I get to live through their sorrows and their exquisite joys. Last night I put the two main characters, Vanetta and Lou, into their first intimate situation. I'm at the kitchen table with my laptop, headphones drowning me in my Ella Fitzgerald channel on Pandora, while Mom, Jack and Jill were watching a movie in the living room. Little did they know what was transpiring in Vanetta's chamber by kerosene lamp, the night her husband was arrested and hauled off to jail and the children stayed with the neighbors. It reminded me of writing a similar scene for another book while sitting in the rather busy teacher's lounge of some elementary school back when I was doing Travels through Time. There I was in my demure 19th Century clothing, writing a scene that was scorching the  pen and paper, while the teachers around me ate their apples and salads and complained about the school food.

It is always this way, I guess, when I'm in the thick of a book. I straddle two worlds, and the one I made up often seems more real for awhile.  There's an old song that starts out "Imagination is funny, it makes a cloudy day sunny..." That's what I get to experience whenever I'm writing. Regardless of what's happening in "real life", I get to have something else.

Now, is today the day that Elmer has to die? Or is it too soon? Or will he somehow be spared and mend his ways? Imaginative minds want to know.

Signs of the Times

I was filling out a form the other day and came to the question that always stumps me:
Married ____ Single _____ Widowed _____ Divorced ____

I'm married. On the mantle, there is a framed certificate, duly signed and certified, issued by the Division of Vital Statistics, Nova Scotia, Canada.

But on the form, what do I check? Married? Single? It is not, after all, recognized by the State of North Carolina, nor, for that matter, by the United States of America. And this was a Social Security form.

Now, this piece is not a broadside in favor of marriage equality, though I could certainly write one of those. No, this is inspired by a talk I heard yesterday at Unitarian Universalist Fellowship of Raleigh, by our interim minister, Don Rollins. It corresponds with something I've been thinking about a lot more lately ---- worldview, or how we organize the world.

My field of devotion is, and always has been, education. I steeped myself in educational theory, I trained to be a teacher, but really I was more interested in how humans learn. My first ambition in the field was to research infant learning. Instead I went the traditional route and majored in elementary education.

From the beginning, it has seemed to me that the industrial model of education is counter-intuitive. Knowledge is not a commodity, learning is not a static skill set, and children are not identical products to be churned out at the end of a conveyor belt. Humans have the amazing capacity to take in information from many sources, combine it with previous learning, and form new, completely unique ideas from that process. Schools often do everything in their power to deter that.

Yesterday's challenge at UUFR was to think about how the perception of reality is undergoing a shift. I'm a 1950 Baby Boomer, used to being in the leading edge of change. It was my generation that, through sheer force of numbers, brought significant social and political shifts to American society. Some of the arguments still linger, given new life by the new traditionalists. But now, the early Boomers are going into retirement, and soon, retirement homes. The generations that follow don't share the mid-twentieth century worldview of the Baby Boom generation.

Some time ago, I read a book about "Indigo children", kids who seemed to be growing up with a different view of reality, more intuitive, less binary. Not for them, the strict categorizations of old, the black and white world that divides everything into either/or, yes or no. To those imbued with a 20th century worldview, this seems incomprehensible, at best --- unhinged, at worst. Everyone knows that people are either male or female, right? It's self evident. So what in the world is genderqueer? Transgender? Twin-spirited?

In a twentieth-century worldview there is right and wrong, Republican and Democrat, conservative and liberal, Ford and Chevy, Us and Them. But people growing up today live in a vastly different world from the rose-colored memory of 1950s suburbia, where people knew their places and were By God happy to have a place at all.

Technology that was imaginable only to the visionaries of 70 years ago, has become ubiquitous, and has shattered the divisions that defined the geopolitical world in which today's powerfolks came of age. We still have boundaries and tariffs and wars and race, but make no mistake, the shift has already happened, and we're simply experiencing the after-effects.

It's not comfortable. I've always taken pride in my labels, whatever they currently were. I could define myself through the eyes of a world that understood the boundaries. I was a daughter, a mother, a libertine, an alchoholic, a Socialist, a wife, a lesbian, a Unitarian. It gave me both something to embrace and something to rebel against. But the labels meant something. At the same time, there has been a spark inside of me that yearns for transcendence.

I'm greedy now, for everything. I want to taste the coffee just the way I like it, rich and sweet with sugar and cream. I want to drink in the sky however it shows itself to me, whether it is heavy, leaden clouds or brilliant blue. I want to swim in the strains of Chopin until I find tears running down my cheeks from sheer joy. And I want to listen hard, speak from my heart, seek the soft center of the people I know and those I don't as well. I am no longer willing to cling to outdated labels because they seem to make life more manageable; you are not young, old, black, white, gay straight, ---- worthy or unworthy. You are the unique, amazing individual you are, and if I can't see that, it is a problem in me, not you.

It is the first time in life that I really know that my time is starting to run short. That causes me some consternation, not out of fear but curiosity. I want to stick around and see what happens. I don't want to come to the end of my consciousness chapter and not find out what the next chapter brings. But since I can't, while I'm here I want to keep greedily taking it all in, savoring even the hard and uncomfortable parts. Because even that is a label, you know.

Good, Bad.     Easy, Hard.      I, Thou.

Procrasti-blogging

Right up front I'll tell you I'm behind on my NaNoWriMo word count, so the obvious thing to do is put off writing and do a blog post instead. Of course, I can justify it as priming the creative pump. And thanks to my niece, Emily, for the title. She said she was procrasti-baking ---- an activity that I can certainly get behind ---- instead of doing her homework.

This morning feels like near normal. Jill went to work without waking us up. Jack is at the Heritage. Mom and I both woke up about the same time and had breakfast and did some housekeeping. She's at her best in the morning, so we were able to talk and laugh over blueberry smoothies and English muffins.

As we were tidying up, I started thinking about all the people and animals who are represented in this household. I have to admit that I have the gene for hoarding, though I do all in my power to keep it under control. Sort of. It dovetails my rock-bottom belief that material culture is what tells the story of the past. So you can well imagine who's the first in line with her hand up, when there are family heirlooms up for grabs. We have, in this 1800 sq. ft. house, furniture, books, letters, photographs and clothing that span 5 identifiable generations. And now, with the addition of Lucky Lu on top of the entertainment center in a wonderful little wooden box, the ashes of two loved ones.

That brings up the question for me ---- what's to become of all the ashes? Think about it. Many, many more people are being cremated these days. Now, I know that lots of times the ashes are spread across mountains and oceans and favorite park ponds. But my bet is that there is a growing number of households across the country who have forebears parked along the mantle piece or stashed on the dresser. When my father died, we buried some in the family plot, spread some over the graves of his parents, dusted the "graveyard" in back of the house and still had ashes left over. I have them in a Christmas box on top of the music cabinet that belonged to his mother, along with a couple of pictures of him. I like having him in the house. I like having Lucky here, too.

But one day, Jill and I will expire and we may have an entire shrine of deceased family members, human and otherwise, for somebody else to dispose of. Can you imagine the conversation?

"Who wants Grandma?"
"Well, I suppose I could take both of them, but I don't have room for everybody."
"Uncle Ralph? Anybody taking Uncle Ralph?"
"I'll take half if somebody else will take the rest. I've already got Aunt Barb."
"And what about the dogs?"
Dead silence.

I think about what a task it will be to dismantle our household one day. We have some splendid furniture that's already a century and a half old and probably should not be sat upon any more, though we do. We have mementos from all over Europe that the folks picked up and passed along. And I have quite the collection of my own things, though nothing that's of any dollar value, I don't think. Should I spare the kids the problem of disposing of my things, or leave it up to them? I have the advantage of having spawned a congenital, as well as professional, curator, who shares my archival sensibility. I pity her poor, future spouse, who will get a delightful partner and a houseful of STUFF!

For the moment, though, there is nothing that must be done besides unpacking the last 6 boxes that came with Mom and finding places to put it all. Oh yes, and write 4,000 Nano words.

Or maybe bake a banana bread . . . those bananas are getting mighty spotted.

Petal to the Medal

I have an interesting, somewhat problematic, relationship with compliments. I know I'm not alone in this. Recently, I've been much more aware of it because I'm on the receiving end so much.

I think it's uncomfortable to be praised for something "good" that I do. I was very aware, when I was teaching, that praise can be as destructive as criticism for a child's sense of self. Kids aren't good because they wear pretty clothes, draw pretty pictures, get all the math problems right. They're not bad because they don't understand word problems or they can't catch a ball. Maybe it's my time in the classroom and thinking about self-esteem that makes me hyper-aware of the pitfalls of judgment and the difference between acknowledgement and praise.

That said, this month is chock full of opportunities for the people around me to sing my praises and shower me with acknowledgement. Yup, I'm up for the daughter-of-the-year award and I truly deserve it. Not only that, but I'm the loving, supportive wife of Jill in the loss of Lucky Lu, her best friend ever, the Being who she poured herself into so completely that sometimes they were indistinguishable, at least on a soul level. All that and writing a book, too? Do I hear orchestral music swelling in the background?

You might not be surprised to hear that my reaction, when people lovingly, supportively tell me that I am being saintly or incredibly patient and giving, is to turn up the volume on the harsh parental voice in my head that says WRONG! -- LA LA LA, I CAN'T HEAR YOU!!!   Because it is taking everything I've got --- all the words of wisdom from years in AA, all the therapy, the books, the conversations with friends, meditation, deep breathing, tea with honey, and self-discipline to keep it going. It feels like a culmination, of sorts. It's like the "overnight success" of an actor who spends 20 years in backwater rep companies and suddenly makes it big in Hollywood.  I have been preparing for these moments my entire life and still don't feel really ready. Each day I wake up with a flutter of fear that something will come up that I can't handle. Each night I sink into the pillow, grateful that the household is still intact and nothing terrible has happened.

Melodramatic? I suppose. If I weren't, how could I write a 50,000 word novel in 30 days? Even with NaNoWriMo this month, now that I'm on day 8, I'm up against the demons of doubt and exhaustion. I haven't missed a day of writing yet this month and I'm on target for my word count. But the story feels bogged down. I need to plunge into a big new part and I'm not feeling it, not quite ready to give the characters their lead and let them take me down the path.

I guess that's the part I keep circling back to in all of this; I'm not the one in control. I have control over my own reactions, my own words and deeds and thoughts, but I am not in charge of life and death and everything in between, for the people and critters I love. A few weeks ago, I abdicated my crown as Queen of the Universe, put down the scepter, walked away from the throne. But old habits die hard. Maybe I don't want to be Queen, but can't I be the trusted adviser, hissing in the ear of the new Monarch?

So it is ok to shower me with rose petals and drape me with service medals. I do like to know That someone notices. At the same time, I'm simply a work in progress, muddling through with strength and patience I didn't know I had, but also with irritation and impatience and exasperation as well.

Here's what worries me ----- what if this is training for something else? Oy!

Yes, you're right

It really is harder than I thought it would be. I'm ready to admit it. No matter how positive I stay, no matter how much I look for the humor and keep my eye on the greater good, it's really friggin' hard. All of it.

When Jill and I got together nine and a half years ago, she had the fiercest dog --- I was afraid of her. Lucky Lu had a reputation for being very protective, loudly so, and Jill took here almost everywhere she went. I was scared to get involved with Jill at first because of her dog. And Jill was a fierce about her companion as Lucky was about Jill.

I knew from the get-go that when the day came for Lucky to leave us, it would be a crisis, and it is. Lucky has given up. She's nearly 15. Everything is failing. Lucky's days are at their end, but the relationship will continue. I've grown accustomed to her outbursts and come to appreciate that after a rocky start, Lucky Lu and I could have our very own relationship. And yes, she's lovely and loyal and warm and sweet.

Since this is happening against the backdrop of Mom's first week living with us, it is all wrapped up in the enormous changes in our household. I've heard people talk about the "emotional roller coaster" for years, and despite my best efforts to shut down every possible emotional disturbance, I'm constantly being whipped around corners and plunged headlong toward the ground.

Not self-pity, I hope, but bewilderment to find myself here so suddenly. I know that compared to millions of other people, my troubles are really high class. It's just a matter of accommodating a new reality. Is there something inherent in humans that makes us think that we'll somehow be spared the misfortunes of others? It's not that I think I should be immune; it just doesn't fit my pictures of what I expected. There is no history of Alzheimers in my mother's family, and most of them live well into their 90s or past 100. I never expected to have to remind her that she shouldn't wear her pajamas under her pants, or that she needs batteries in her hearing aids to make them work.

A month from now it will be better, if only because it will be more familiar. Three months from now it will be even more different, and I choose today to believe I will feel more settled, happier, contented. It will never get perfect, but I really hope I make the adjustment and regain my balance. I think I can.

Act III, or is it IV?

The move is complete and the learning begins. I have discovered a few things about my mom during this process, and no doubt there is much more to come. It's also an initiation by fire into the world of Alzheimer's disease.

I don't know how many people in the US have this disease right now.What's certain is that the Baby Boomers are aging and we ain't seen nothing yet! My father had it, died of it in 2003, and it looked different in him than what I see now. Much of that was probably because my mother, dear heart that she is, shielded us from it as much as she could. Until just before he went into the nursing home, she put a good face on things and made it look manageable. I'm only beginning to see how unmanageable it probably was for her.

Discovery #1, as we were packing for the move: my mother has way more sexy lingerie than I do.

Discovery #2: Even thought she can't remember where she lives or where her room is, she can still crack jokes.

Discovery #3: My love of all things from the office supply store is genetic. She's the only person I know who has more pens, pencils, erasers, paperclips, envelopes, unused greeting cards, markers and post-its than I have. I do have her beat when it comes to hole punchers, though.

Discovery #4: She actually missed some of the housekeeping tasks she had someone else doing for her the last five years. Her housekeeper came once a week to clean the apartment and change the bed. Now it turns out that she likes hanging out clothes and folding them after they're dry, sweeping the floor, washing the table, washing up pots and pans and dusting. Who am I to say no? Actually, we work together.

I think that we will develop some routines over time. There is still a lot of unpacking and putting away to do, and some decision making as well. We weeded out her overstuffed closet to the tune of 5 bags of clothing and shoes for goodwill. Next comes the desk. Does she really need a package of 20 large manila envelopes?

But so far, we do some housework after breakfast, take Buddy to the dog park, run any errands like the grocery store and come home to fix a little lunch. After lunch, she likes to read and nap. That gives me writing time and a chance to catch up with facebook and email. Before you know it, it's time to feed the dogs and fix supper, watch a little tv or look at pictures and we actually all go to bed at a reasonable hour. Regular meals and regular bedtimes. Sounds like there's a mother in the house!

The parts that don't show are the hard ones. I have to direct her to the bathroom, to her bedroom, find her book and her glasses. I hear the beep, beep of the alarm as she opens the garage door looking for her room or for something she can't even tell me. She falls asleep all askew on the couch and I'm afraid she'll get a crick in her neck. She wanders around touching books, photos, furniture, looking puzzled. She sits and watches the leaves flutter, the birds at the feeder, the clouds above. She tells me she's homeless. She's not always sure who Jill is. She worries that Jack needs her then forgets that she saw him only a few hours ago. She cries because she can't think, can't remember, is afraid, worries that she is a burden. I answer every question as though it's the first time. I give her clues about navigation and hold her hand to show her the way. I help her with medicine, showers, dressing, rebutton her clothes, comb her hair, tell her I love her. Soon enough, she'll forget it all.

And yes, sometimes I worry that I'm next in line. But right now I have more important things to do, like taking care of my mother, and staying close to my wife. Like writing 50,000 words of a new novel in the month of November. And watching the birds at the feeder.

Rubenesque, they say

I don't think, in 1968 when I was put in the yearbook as "Best All Around", that I was supposed to take it quite so literally. This morning I feel like a Thanksgiving turkey, stuffed and trussed.

I'm going in for my yearly physical this afternoon. I really like my doc, who is within a couple of years of my age and has been with her (younger) partner for the same length of time that Jill and I have been together. Over the years I've seen her go through various phases and regimens to deal with unwanted pounds, as have I. But still, when I step on the scales this afternoon, I know it'll be time for a come-to-Jesus-meeting.

Never, in my wildest dreams, did I think I would attain this august age and still harbor the same thoughts and feelings about body size that have haunted me all my life. Think about it. When I was young, back in the olden days, recordings were played on vinyl. I even had my own, very snazzy, battery powered record player. We also had a reel to reel tape recorder and lots of reels of tape. I skipped over 8 tracks, though I knew about them, and went straight to cassette tapes. Then what? CDs I guess, and on to all the electronic gadgets of today.  The point is, all these different devices for recording sound, and the ones that came before them, have become obsolete. Old cassette tapes are filling the dump, vinyl records gather dust in the attic, most of these old things can't even be played anymore, either because they're degraded or there's nothing to play them on. But you know what's survived, intact, at full volume? The endless voice loops in my head.

Enough, already. Yes, I've read all the stuff, all the books, all the webpages, all the articles, all the theories.  Well, not all of them. I'm sure there's enough still out there to distress me the rest of my life. I've had endless conversations, friends constantly recommend whatever lifesaving technique they're currently using. I've been up, down, up, down, off the merry-go-round, back on the merry-go-round. I wake up in the night and scare myself silly with threats of diabetes, heart attacks, hip replacement, stroke, cancer. I resolve, scold, soothe, exercise, cry, pretend, ignore, meditate, visualize, diet, not-diet, follow programs, make charts, harangue, and (momentarily) accept ---- all to no avail. Still the tape goes round and round. Why is this the only recorded voice that never goes away?

This morning, against every instinct in my body and mind, I got up before the sun rose and drove the five miles to walk with friends. By the second lap, my back was hurting. By the fourth lap, it was killing me and I bailed out. Would I have been better just sleeping in? I've been packing and moving boxes all week and I'm tired and sore. But this is my constant fight with myself, the feeling that the barbarians are at the gate and if I don't fight them off with everything, I'll be overrun. And even so, the little buzzards are sneaking in the back gate and feeding me Halloween candy!

What brings me to this pass? I do know I'm not alone. Now that we have 100,000 channels again (a whole 'nother story) I see commercials and mainline tv for the first time in 3 or 4 years. That's enough to make a girl want to throw in the towel. I've been watching voluptuous dames from the 30s and 40s black and white movies the past few years. Now, there are some REAL women!

"And acceptance is the answer to all my problems today. When I am disturbed, it is because I find some person, place, thing, or situation --- some fact of my life --- unacceptable to me, and I can find no serenity until I accept that person, place, thing, or situation as being exactly the way it is supposed to be at this moment." p417 Alcoholics Anonymous


I've been reading that book for almost 31 years. You'd think it would have sunk in by now.

How much are we worth?

I've noticed that we have many ways to speak about money without really doing so. We say that people are well off or comfortable, that they have fallen on hard times or are struggling.There is a reticence about money and finances that belies the overall emphasis which equates worth as a person with financial status.

Somehow, the belief is afoot that the richer you are in bank account and material assets, the better a person you are.  If you are worth your salt, you have "stuff" to show for it. And God loves you more.

The schizy thing about that is the reverse: if you are poor, there is something wrong with you. If you were a moral, "good" person, you would be blessed by wealth. So obviously, being poor means that you're not in God's good graces. You're an unrepentant sinner.

Now I know that such thinking, in most circles, is not openly espoused, and is often denied outright. In fact, since it's not polite to talk about money -- or at least it didn't used to be -- most such judgments are silent, or whispered among friends. Aloud, we often hear of the nobility of character that comes with poverty: "Her house was shabby, but sparkling clean." "He had mended clothes, but worked hard to overcome his difficulties." Of course, the assumption behind such statements is that with hard work and good character, the reward will be . . . riches!

What leads me to think about such things right now is the dismantling of my mother's material world. As she prepares to move in with us, she has to pare down her belongings once again. Five years ago she owned a beautiful four bedroom home on a wooded acre. It was filled with a limetime's worth of things, collected from living in Europe for 31 years. She took only the most precious things with her to the Independent Living Community, distributing much of the antique furniture and family pieces among children and grandchildren. Now even those will have to go. She's moving into one bedroom. We already have all the dishes and furniture we can handle and then some. Many things will wind up in my sister's new house. Mom's actual belongings will be reduced to the clothes, furniture, papers, pictures and knick-knacks that will fit in her room.

When Mom's father died in 2000, at the age of 98, we took his belongings back to my aunt's house to look at and give to people who wanted them. By that time, all that was left were a couple of cardboard boxes of things and some map cases with old maps. We found his weather diary where he recorded the weather every day for years, often along with one sentence about what happened that day. There was a wooden box with various mementos --- love letters to Grandma from before they were married, his mother's wedding ring, small tools and a few pictures. His life had been full. He'd owned houses and cars and a business. But in the end, he had a box with precious reminders and little else.

I've been thinking a lot about the conditions of life and of death. I picture a baby sliding into the world, all slippery and naked and helpless --- and unknown. As that baby grows into a child and then an adult, many things come along and stick around, but in the end, no matter how the end comes about, there's not one single thing that can make the trip over. We go out with the same thing we had when we arrived. Nothing. You really and truly can't take it with you. No matter how much you accumulate, no matter how awesome your house is, or your clothes or your car, regardless of who you marry or what a great musician you are, in the end it all goes by the wayside. We slip out as we slipped in.

At that point, I hope somebody remembers me kindly. I hope there will be little reminders of my having been here --- at least for a little while. We have my Great-Grandmother Mimi's parlor chairs in our front room. They probably belonged to her father first. They're just chairs --- nice, carved, needlepoint, mid-19th century chairs, really, just furniture. What makes them special is the story of who owned them, who passed them down, the family that preserved them, the people who sat in them, the love and continuity that they represent. They could be any old chairs, but they're not. They're Mimi's chairs, and I remember Mimi.

Come what may

I'm runnin' on automatic today, nose in the air to sniff the changes I sense coming. It looks like Mama is going to have to move. The family is circling the wagons to see what we can do. It's not a surprise. We all knew it was coming. There's a level of denial that is very helpful for dealing with a long term illness like Alzheimers though, and I've taken full advantage of it. So yes, I'm taken aback.

With my history of depression, the very thing that propelled my retirement this year, I always keep a sharp lookout for hints of a relapse --- overly sensitive feelings, too much sleep, dragged out energy, dwelling on death ---- and have been ticking them off as they arise. I'm on the alert though not falling down a hole.  But sometimes . . . sometimes life IS depressing. Sometimes that's the appropriate response.

You know what happens as the pile of years behind you grows larger than the pile ahead? Your perspective changes. I've seen cycles go round and round in public and private life. Every generation has its own discoveries to make and, unfortunately, has wheels to reinvent. No matter how much experience resides in the elders, some lessons only take when they're learned through experience. So I look behind me and see the swell of new, energetic, young people coming down the path, and I look ahead and watch for signposts that will help me discern the way, and mostly I feel the comfort of being in the middle of the herd, a part of humanity, one of many. But sometimes, I just feel alone.

When sad things are happening, how do you not feel sad forever? How do you move through the tears and believe that there's sunshine further along? I have spent a lifetime learning all the strategies and wisdom that philosophy, friendship and therapy can provide. But there's no shelter from the pain of living and loving and losing them both.

This too shall pass.

Don't feed the dog raisins

Rules are made to be broken.
Color inside the lines.
Don't trust anyone over 30.
Never mix, never worry.

I've been taking inventory of the rules filed away in my mind and it's nothing short of alarming.  No wonder I get to feeling paralyzed sometimes.  It is truly impossible to follow all of the laws, by-laws, suggestions, rules and principles that have accumulated over the years.  Do you suppose there is a special container in some part of the brain for storage of these maxims?

It's enough to make a person throw the whole package overboard and start from scratch. How would I go about that? It would take knowing myself well enough to sort the wheat from the chaff.

You must eat 24 grams of fiber every day.
150 minutes of exercise per week is an absolute minimum.
The body requires 8 hours of sleep per night.
Floss daily.

Every time I look at the news online or pick up a magazine, there's yet another miraculous cure or life-extending practice being touted.  Forget everything you thought you knew about ... (cancer, alzheimers, obesity, addiction, baldness, night-blindness) ... this singular suggestion will trump them all.

Potatoes make you fat.
Short people live longer.
Laptops cause cancer.

It is as though, even knowing that nobody --- NOBODY --- gets out of this alive, the drive toward immortality and perfection is intrinsic in every exhortation from Weightwatchers to Pat Robertson. Somehow, if I only do this, think that, imagine the other, read, pray, meditate, jog, play, admit, surrender, I will escape the only known outcome for being alive ----death.

Living by the rules may make things easier.  I don't want to have to consider every step, every action.  That would be paralyzing, too.  But living by somebody else's rules, without consideration, not only ties me up in contradictions, but absolves me of responsibility.

I was only following orders.
The boss told me I had to.
The Bible said so.
Because I'm your mother, that's why.

I cannot escape the necessity of doing the work. I can listen, I can consider, and sometimes I can even imitate, but ultimately, I have to take responsibility for my own rules of the road.  And that road, like it or not,  leads to the ending place.

Do you suppose there are flags at the finish line?  And hot dogs? And hugs?

That soft, fuzzy gaze

Today, I took off my glasses during yoga.  Usually I keep them on.  Understand, I take chair yoga at my mother's residence with a group of  eighty and ninety-year-olds. And the teacher is no spring chicken her own self!

When I take off my glasses, everything is fuzzy and a little out of focus.  I can see well enough, and as my eyes adjust, everything clears up to some degree.  But it leaves me with that soft focus the camera uses sometimes in the romantic or dream sequences. Today, that's just what I needed.

Sometimes, life is a little too clear.  The edges are too well defined. I can see too many details. Sometimes, I prefer to be a little blurry.

Since there were several people missing today, our instructor spent extra time with each person, helping us improve our postures.  With people of such advanced age, there are many limbs that don't move well, ears that don't hear well, minds that don't understand directions.  It is to her great credit that she simply takes people wherever they are and gently coaxes a little movement from reluctant bodies.  As I watched her work with the woman beside me in the circle, I noticed a glow that began and grew, enveloping them both, but particularly the student, Erna's face.  It was indistinct to my blurry vision, but beautiful enough to bring tears to my eyes.

It's not the first time I've been aware of the beauty of these women. I see it frequently. It is as though the outer appearances of age and the limitations of movement soften and are absorbed by a much stronger essence of that very distinct person.  This class, these women, are a great gift to me.  They call me forward on the path I already tread.  Without even knowing, they urge me to inhabit my physical self in a new way, and expand beyond those boundaries of wrinkles and bulges and aches and pains that I focus on too minutely.

There's plenty of time for clear vision and finite thought when I'm dealing with practical realities.  I'm happy to wear my glasses to drive and read. But there's also a time for melting into the beauty and radiance of the universe.  Right now, I'm much the better for both.

Night of Mystery

We're venturing out to the fire tonight.  We have friends who live near a big lake, way out there in the woods where there are lots of animals and other things we don't see in the city.  They even have stars out there!

I don't actually think of myself as a city girl. When I was a kid, we always lived in small towns, some so small the business district was only one block long. Over the years, I've lived in some cities like Chicago and San Francisco, but the majority of my time has been spent in places small enough that Raleigh feels BIG by comparison.

Occasionally, like right now after reading about Alcott and Emerson and Thoreau, I get the notion that I could embrace the simple life, a rustic cabin in the woods, away from the sights and sounds of cars and sirens and other people.  But the truth is, the country kind of freaks me out.  Especially at night.

This evening, we'll gather with friends.  Each time we do this it is a little different, but it is also remarkably the same.  A couple of people will tend the fire --- nearly always the same ones ---- a couple will decide it's too cold outside and seek the warmth of indoors. There might be some new people, but most will be familiar faces, friends of long-standing, who have gathered for monthly potlucks for years.  By this time we know a lot about each other.  These nights, especially the ones around the firepit, are the times we share tremendous burdens, outrageous dreams, quiet joys and deep sorrows. To speak into this group is to be upheld by the women present.

These are the women I hope to grow old with. These are the women for whom I expect to bake casseroles, give rides, visit when they're sick and sit with when they're sad. I plan to be there in person when I can and in spirit when necessary. This is my family of choice.

Dreams and intentions spoken before the fire take on power.  Sorrows and fears thrown into the fire are consumed and released. We all are witness for each other.

When all is said and done and we've eaten too much and laughed a lot and no doubt, shed some tears, the cars and pick-ups will spark to life and headlights seek out deer on the roads, as most of us wend our way back to the city. There are jobs to do and homes to tend and traffic to curse and people to meet.  But each of us takes some of the mystery of a moonless night by the fire, of secrets told and lives celebrated, back to the "real lives" we lead.

So, while I'm glad we get to come home to our snug little house with a two-car attached garage with a push button opener, I'm even more glad we can wrap the cold night around us and warm ourselves at the fire with the women we love.

This is not Law and Order

Death came to the neighborhood today.  It's startling.  I know, of course, that domestic violence can break out in any neighborhood.  After all, look how much press goes into the high profile murders between rich husbands and wives.  But here, on our quiet little street full of hard-working people --- a street of families and folks of many backgrounds --- it feels garish, out of place, hard to comprehend.  It's a friendly neighborhood, but not up-in-everybody's-business friendly.  More like wave and shout hello friendly. Meet in the street to talk about the tornado or the big snowstorm friendly.There are a few more individual connections than that, but no block parties, no trading babysitting and dogsitting, no gossiping about the neighbors.  So who knew?  Who knew there was trouble in the tidy white house down the street?  After all, the yard was cut, the dogs were cared for.

I've had several conversations lately with people who wistfully remember the "old days" when they were young.  It seems that can range from the 1930s to the 1990s.  Back then, kids were safe in the neighborhood.  People looked out for each other.  You knew about your neighbors and everybody helped each other.  Back then, people took cakes to the new family that moved in and casseroles when somebody died. The kids played outside, the old people sat on the porch, the dogs didn't bark and it only rained on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  No wait.  That's Camelot.

The problem is, when we were growing up, whatever the decade, it WAS different.  Not only that, we were kids.  We didn't know that Mr. Jones had a drinking problem and Sally across the street was inviting the delivery boy in during the day.  We didn't have to worry about paying the mortgage and the light bill, or whether the city would tell us take down that tool shed, or getting the neighbor's teenager to quit playing loud music.  Those weren't our concerns.  If somebody was acting weird by the swingset, we could tell our parents and they would take care of it.  We got to keep playing.

Things always change and they always stay the same.  There are people who have terrible anger problems.  Mix that with alcohol and drugs, and it doesn't matter where you live or how much money you earn, it's a disaster in the making. It was like that in 1492 and it's like that today.

What truly befuddles me though, is why we have so many, many firearms on the loose. I don't know what happened in the house three doors down.  But I do know that it involved a couple and a gun.  It is one thing to get angry, really angry, vein-popping, yelling and screaming, pushing and shoving mad, and it's another thing to shoot someone with a gun.  If there had been no gun, would she be alive now?  It seems like, too often, the easy availability of firearms is what makes the difference between a really bad, horrific fight, and a murder.

Many people's lives changed this morning.  And yours came to an end, dear neighbor.  Rest in peace.

Teensy Weensy Baby Steps

OK.  If I'm not going to carry the scepter and wear the mantle of Queendom, and I most assuredly am not, what shall I do instead?

This morning I decided to take inventory. That has a nice, organized ring to it. Sounds like someone who's ready to take charge, make changes, forge ahead --- all that good stuff.  Because nothing happens in my world without  a great many words attached, I took out my journal and wrote several analytic pages before actually making the inventory chart.  Simple, though.  Three columns: Positive things now, Negative things now, What's next. Fill out one column at a time, left to right.

I was surprised at how many positives there were.  They flowed easily from the tip of my pen. The negatives in the next column flowed just as fast.  Oh well.  I wound up with 17 in each column, quite by accident.  At a glance, that would appear to mean that overall, it balances out.  But that's not true.

The final column, Solutions, or What to do Next, took a little more thought, but was not too difficult.  It came in at 12 items, with rather a long sublist under number 9.  I took off the cover sheet that I used to prevent me from jumping back and forth from one column to another, and just sat with the visual presentation.  Lots of words, as usual.

As I read it over I realized several things.  First of all, I was glad I used that format.  It's similar to the format for a 4th step inventory in AA, which gave me confidence in the process.  The next thing that struck me was that there is not a lot of big change to be done.  I'm not going to suddenly make huge changes in my life, and I don't need to.  That's reassuring.  What I need to do is simply bring things back into balance.  I'm spending too much time on some things and not enough on others, so my teeter-totter is all out of whack.

I also realized that I don't have to do everything on the list all at the same time.  If I do, it won't work.  That's unbalanced, too.  Baby steps, that's what it takes.  And what's more, I can organize it make it as entertaining as I want to.  So yes, there WILL be gold stars. And glitter. And probably some colorful, shiny fabric as well as trips to the dollar store.  This is MY project. To hell with intrinsic motivation.  I'm going for the extrinsic rewards!

One of my third column items was to spend more time outdoors. Doesn't matter doing what, just being outside. My baby step today was to take the book I'm editing and a pen and doing it at the table on the deck.  That's all.  But it led to eating both breakfast and lunch outside, and playing stomp and run with Buddy for a little bit, and chit-chatting with Jill as she puttered around in the yard.  It also meant I didn't even turn on my computer until 4 o'clock --- another one of those column three items: less facebook and game-playing on the computer.


Gold stars?  That's next.  I've got a whole box of stars, stickers, glitter, fancy paper, and award certificates upstairs in my teaching materials.  If it's good enough for seven-year-olds, it's sure as hell good enough for me!

Vacancy: Queen of the Universe

Due to the unexpected departure of the current monarch, this position will be filled with all due haste.  The successful candidate will be well-versed in management techniques, crowd control, supervisory experience, caretaking, and rescue operations, as well as mindreading, prophecy and fortunetelling.

This position requires extraordinary attention to the problems, complaints, whining, and ramblings of everyone in her presence.  She will be expected to listen avidly, assess and evaluate quickly, and react compassionately, while maintaining an unassailable attitude of understanding and acceptance.  Her advice and solutions should always be followed by her subjects, hence the necessity that she be held to the highest level of competence. There is no room for error; consequences of failure are severe.

While the requirements are stringent, the benefits are generous. The successful Queen is held in the highest esteem, at least until her plan is is undermined by wayward subjects. Presiding as Queen of the Universe allows the monarch to avoid the discomfort of recognizing any of her own problems or concerns, encourages the concealment of her own shortcomings and doubts from general knowledge, and provides ample diversion from attending to her determined goals and dreams. The most gratifying perquisite of this position is the unobstructed illusion of control over people and circumstances of all description.

Compensation is commensurate with the expectations and experience of the candidate. Busybodies and martyrs need not apply.


                                        I QUIT!

Too cool for school

It's arrived.  I believe that autumn is here, or at least in the neighborhood.  And not a moment too soon to suit me.

I went out for my 7AM walk this morning and it was barely even light.  The air was quite cool, delightfully cool.  The sun was barely skimming the horizon. My walking buddies were in good form.  I am certain that the exercise of walking is secondary to the spirit-lifting laughter and talk as we circle the empty soccer field.

Yoga came next, my first day in class with long pants instead of shorts. My classmates are all 20 or 30 years older than I.  We each bring our own strengths and limitations to the circle.  Creaky hips, sore shoulders, stiff fingers, and low energy are offset by strong thighs, firm stance, inside jokes and foreign tongues.  And laughter.  There is plenty of gentle teasing and shared recognition; if nothing else, we all can breathe.

At times, these days, I feel lost in a sea of other people's needs and pain.  It's a helpless feeling that leaves me wondering what I can do, how I can help, even when I know I'm consigned to the sidelines.  I can offer a hand, drive the car, listen and smile, but there's nothing, not one damn thing, that I can fix. My mother's  Alzheimers will claim its own and the inexorable progression can only be observed. As for the other, my own sweet Jill, I can offer tidbits to tempt her appetite, I can go to appointments and take the notes, keep the calendar, remember directions.  I can offer the backrub or the cold drink or a listening ear, but none of it touches the pain or the misery that is hers alone.

Maybe it's left over from being a Mommy.  Kiss the booboo, hug him tight, calm the fears, dry her tears.  I know how to be the mom and take care of day-to-day problems of childhood.  Perhaps it inflated my ego, made me think I'm more powerful than I am.  Now, when my power is limited to band-aids on gaping wounds, I feel ineffective.

Uncertainty is unsettling.  The cool winds of autumn lift the leaves and part the clouds.  It won't be long till the days are short and the nights are cold, till snow swirls in the lamplight and icy roadways counsel the cars to stay home. Will the wind howl in the chimney?  Will the wolf howl at the door?

This field is fallow for the moment

I didn't think this would happen, but I think I'm suffering from writer's block.  How very trite of me!

Usually, I can put my fingers on a keyboard and out it comes.  I don't know where it comes from, but the flow is there and I'm the conduit.  Lately, it's like pulling hen's teeth.  I'm trying to finish my NaNo book from last November, and it's already at about 65,000 words, but I've come to a dead standstill.  As a matter of fact, I threw out the last chapter I wrote, with nothing to replace it.  That's a little like quitting a job before you have another one.

I've always been fascinated by the "creative process" --- an overused phrase if ever there was one.  I eagerly listen to interviews with authors and read writers' blogs or articles to see how they do it.  Not surprisingly, they all have their own ways, just as I do.  They talk about how it varies, about often having to simply get started, even when the muse seems to have gone AWOL.  They also talk about being in the flow, feeling the creative high, watching it happen as if someone else were doing it.  All of those things happen to me as well.  The thing is, when I'm in a block ---- or perhaps I should say a fallow period ----- I am fearful that it's all dried up and will never come again.  I'm struck dumb.

Now I know that's not true.  It never has been yet, and actually, I have a very exciting idea on the back burner, bubbling away and trying not to scorch before I can get to it.  It's my own sense of order that says I need to finish what I'm working on first.  Step one.  Step two.  Step three.  Don't put the cart before the horse.

So instead, what do I do?  Hang out clothes, sweep floors, browse recipes, waste time on facebook.  I text my daughter and call a friend.  I zone out and take a stealth nap. None of that brings me any closer to finishing the task at hand.

One writer in an interview said he? she? sets a timer for an hour and sits at the computer, whether or not anything happens.  That sounds too much like being forced to sit at the table until ALL that dinner was eaten, especially the vegetables.  I can still feel the misery and hopelessness of that scenario!

Almost 40 years ago I had a car that had trouble starting on a regular basis.  This was one of a string of cars I owned that I bought for $150 or less.  In order to start this car, I had to remove the air filter and pour gasoline into the carburetor, then fire the engine.  It usually worked.  Once it caught fire and I poured baking soda into it to put out the fire, but that's another story.

This blog post is the gasoline.  I'm hoping it will get things moving without starting too big a fire.  I've got baking soda standing by.

"A Room of One's Own"

When the going gets tough, the tough take a nap.  Or get an ice cream cone. Or maybe hang out at the dog park.  I identified my state of mind last week as "caregiver fatigue", which really means trying to fix things it's not in my power to fix, be terminally optimistic and patient, and put my own needs on the far back burner.  It's an imbalance that's so familiar that it took several days and some outside intervention to identify.

I was polishing up my Earth Mother image. It was somewhat tarnished from several years of therapy and learning to be good to myself, even when I'm not perfect and even when I'm not 100% available for duty to others.  Damn these therapists and sponsors, anyway! So I put away the polish, put on my big girl panties and (with gentle reminders) realized again that there IS a limit to how much I can, or should, do for other people.  Such a hard lesson for someone who, at one time, was praised constantly for being "Mommy's big helper".

What pulled me back from the precipice was writing, of course.  Besides an outpouring in the journal, I have done at least a few hundred to a few thousand words every day for the past four days.  And it works!  I'm feeling more like myself again and the ideas are flowing.  As a matter of fact, they're in overflow ---- I've been bombarded with ideas for my next NaNoWriMo book.  It's not against the rules to do some planning, outlining and research before November 1st, after all.  And after the last two books (Visions and Warnings and the one I'm finishing now, tentatively titled Lost Souls) which veered off into untested waters for me, I'm returning to historical fiction for the next one.  It will be set at the end of the Nineteenth Century in a coal-mining boomtown in southern Iowa.  I'm itching to get started on it, or at least to do some character descriptions and background research.

There is something magical for me about coming upstairs to the room I have created for my various interests and creative projects, and delving into my imagination.  Buddy comes and goes, often sacking out beside me on the old, worn couch.  Light streams in from the window that looks down on the street below.  The fan revolves silently, setting a few of the ribbons and papers aflutter, and I hear the comfortable sounds from downstairs that tell me Jill is here, Torrie and Lucky are keeping watch, and Netflix is still working fine.  I've never had such freedom before.  Virginia Woolf was right --- "A Room of One's Own" is ideal.

How pregnancy and hurricanes are alike

First I have to qualify this: I have never been an organized, well-planned person, and I particularly was not that way in my younger years.  So I have no experience with sitting down with a significant other and planning to have a baby.  Just didn't happen that way in my universe.

It occurred to me this evening that a hurricane event like we had today with Irene, is a little bit akin to a pregnancy scare.  I trip lightly through life, la-de-da, doing whatever and suddenly, on the horizon, is a little bitty cloud.  A tiny question.  Just a blip on the radar.

Days go by and it becomes more insistent.  A tropical storm?  An oooops pregnancy?

As more days go by, it's time to pay enough attention to start considering the possible shift in reality.  A little preparation, at least mentally.  OK.  Put some things in a box.  Buy some batteries.  Stock up on water.  Look at a possible Plan B (or C or D).

If I really were pregnant (circa 1974) do I drop out of school?  Quit my job?  Shift career plans?

If a hurricane really comes are we ready?  Enough food?  What about the animals?  What about the stuff on the porch?  Should we just pack up the pets and head for the hills?

In both cases, the anticipation is the killer.  Not knowing what's going to happen.  Having to wait and see.  I can hardly stand waiting till the end of a movie to find out who done it.  Suspense is not my friend.

Today, the hurricane was more or less a non-event where I live.  Wind enough to make it wild and interesting without knocking over trees or tearing off roofs.  Rain enough to water everything well and sluice down the window panes, but not enough to pool in the yard or flood our street.  Anyway, we live on a hill.  We stayed inside, watched movies, checked in with the news, admired Mother Nature making herself known outside the patio door.  No need to break out the hurricane box.  No loss of power.  Just a blowy, rainy day.

And finally this evening, a little irrational disappointment.  I was all ready!  I watched the videos of assorted NC hurricanes of note, and remembered the stifling, humid days after Fran in '96 --- trees down everywhere you looked, the loss of power for over a week, the interruption of life that seemed to take a long time to get over.  I was ready, in case it happened again.  I didn't really WANT it to ----- or did I?

And that's how it would be back in the "Oh my god what if I'm pregnant?" days ---- relief, then a little disappointment.  I already had Plan B in my head.  It might not be what I wanted, but... wouldn't it be kind of fun? Surprising? Different?

I'm not a risk taker.  I'm actually pretty risk-averse. But sometimes a little shake-up is called for, a little something to test the mettle, call out some hidden strengths, even make life uncomfortable for awhile, in order to relish sunny days all the more.

I go to bed tonight grateful that this storm was no worse than it was, concerned for the people who did suffer losses, and yes, a little let down.  But that's ok.  There's always something more on the horizon.

Slippery

When my children were little, I often reminded myself that the days were fleeting.  I tried to fix them in my mind so I would always remember what they were like, how precious they were, how sweet.  Inevitably, the memories become fuzzy until now, decades later, they are more like stories I tell myself about the memories rather than recreations.  Memory is such a slippery beast.

Now that I'm so much older and time seems to be going by so much faster, I find myself wanting again to preserve the days, fix the memories in time, as though that will make it all slow down.  I was on the deck this evening looking over the landscape, as I do from my place at the table for the many meals we eat outdoors.  The need to fix it in memory was so strong today that I actually took pictures with the camera.  But even pictures don't accomplish the real purpose.

I want to hold onto my life.  I don't want it to slip away and be over.  The older I get, at least for now, the more I want to be here and be conscious.  I spent many years escaping, even some of those years with small children. But escape holds no allure anymore.  I wish I could somehow hold it in my hands, taste it with the tip of my tongue and savor this life and all that it brings me.

Lately, I've been cultivating consciousness --- presence --- mindfulness.  My squirrel brain is quieting.  Urgency fades. Pleasure abounds, much to my surprise.  My 25-year-old self never would have believed that. Pursuit, activity, frenzy, excitement, and strong sensation were the pathways to pleasure for me then. I'm sure it's not that way for everyone.  It was for me.  It's what I needed to feel alive.

Now, aliveness comes in the moment.  This one.  The breath and scent and touch of the moment.  What amazing freedom that is tonight.

All the world's a stage

It's pretty amazing to me that whenever I check the sales on my ebooks, they keep going up.  I've long since passed the time when it's only family and friends who are buying them --- and I'm doing virtually nothing to promote them. So how does this happen?

Magic of the interwebs, I guess ---- thank you Amazon.com!

This summer I spent quite a bit of time and energy getting the books out in both paperback and ebook formats, with lots of proofing, tweaking, and revising.  During that time, my focus shifted away from creation and onto the nuts and bolts of publication.  Taking the self-publishing route, as I have, I get to control the timeline, but the entire responsibility for quality and distribution fall on me.  Drives my little perfectionistic self NUTS!

I have often said, over the years, that I like the creativity of writing, but not the selling.  That still holds true, though I do actually like learning the new skills it took to put it out there.  I also have always known that I would write, whether anybody ever read it or not.  Call it Emily Dickinson Syndrome.  It's not like drinking bourbon or eating cookies --- not that kind of compulsion ---- but it seems that writing satisfies some deep need for expression in me.  So I've always done it, even though much of it has never seen the light of day.

Do I like that my books are selling?  Of course!  It's quite a thrill.  What I'm afraid of is that I will get caught up in "logistics", as I call it, and neglect the creative impulse.  I'm also wary of the ego aspect of it.  I grew up in a performance oriented family --- not only was academic performance a priority, actual public performances were a matter of course.  My father was a musician.  My sister and I sang in one of those ever-popular sister acts on stage and tv.  We all took dance, we all had piano and various other instrumental lessons.  And every chance we got, we were in theater.  From the time we were young, our parents were continuously involved in community theater, and if we kids weren't actually in the production, we were often at rehearsals or working backstage.  While most of us dropped off by the time we were raising kids and making a living, my youngest sister is still active in two theater groups and always at one rehearsal or another. And I guess you have to count the 15+ years that I was straddling the 19th and 20th centuries in museums, schools, festivals and even private parties, as a living history interpreter, educator and storyteller.

And what does this have to do with selling books?  I do love a spotlight!  It's easy to get hooked on the ego of it all.  But writing is a solitary pursuit.  As much fun as I have when I'm writing, for a social butterfly like me, it can get a little lonely.

What I strive for is balance.  I need them both, the public and the private, the creative and the commercial.  And isn't that what I keep looking for in all of my life?  Somehow, even with my full-tilt, obsessive-compulsive, high/low self, who will keep doing something that feels good until it doesn't, I want to find a middle road.  I sometimes feel like my life IS a stage (wait, did somebody already use that?) and I keep weaving my way around and through the set pieces trying to find my way.  Gargoyles, heroines, towers, dragons, and drawing rooms ---- I need it all, in order to feed the me of me.  Not a bad gig, all in all.

Wanna buy a book?