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.