Tess Thompson's Blog, page 12

Guest Post – Hilary Grossman

Today I welcome the talented and beautiful Hilary Grossman to my blog. She’s delightful in every way, as is her writing.

Enjoy.

**

I used to think I was a sympathetic person. I’d hear the news about tragedies or natural disasters and I would feel bad.  But like many, my sadness would be fleeting. I’d quickly go about my day, with hardly a second thought to those suffering.

I lived in a world of false security. In my worst nightmares I never seriously thought that a natural disaster could turn my world around.  Destroyed homes and devastated communities happened to other people!  The horror and misery is something you see on your television set, not something you witness first hand.

Oh man, was I wrong! I learned my lesson the hard way on October 29, 2012.

As word of Hurricane Sandy spread, like so many of my neighbors, I didn’t take the approaching storm seriously. Even though I live on the ocean in New York, I didn’t think the storm would impact me. In fact, I didn’t want to leave my home. If my electric wasn’t shut down as a precaution, I probably wouldn’t have. The thoughts of what could have been will haunt me forever, just as the memories of what were still do.

I wish I could erase the images of my brother-in-law’s house, the home my husband and I evacuated to, flooding with two feet of water.  I wish I never had to walk into my own home, the day after the storm, to find my den and basement filled with ocean water and my deck covered in tampon applicators and seaweed. I wish I didn’t have to spend weeks on end, in the cold and in the dark, as my basement ceiling collapsed on my head, carting out our destroyed belongings and tossing them to the curb. I wish I could have spent the months following the storm living in my home rather than just existing there, as we repaired and rebuilt.

But I can’t. And it is sad and it is hard, but it is not all bad. In fact, it is a good thing!

Hurricane Sandy caused a lot of damage, but she also brought a lot of good.  Individual lives stopped. Neighbors became one. We all worked together as a team, sharing whatever we could, even if it was just a shoulder to cry on.

Sandy taught me how compassionate people can be. I will never forget the first time I approached the bridge that leads to my house following the storm. In order to gain access, I had to show my driver’s license to a member of the National Guard. As he glanced at my address, his eyes clouded over, and he simply said, “I am sorry, I hope you have a better tomorrow.”

Sandy reminded me to appreciate the little things in life, things we can’t help but take for granted, like being able to sleep in your own bed or being able to take a hot shower any time you want. Despite the fact that I spent my days and nights cleaning, and was covered in dirt and grime, I couldn’t bear to take an ice cold shower in November, so I didn’t. When I finally showered I sunk to the ground and cried.

Thanks to Sandy, I found an inner strength I didn’t realize I had within me. I learned that I don’t need worldly possessions to be happy; all I need is the love and support of my family and friends. Before Sandy, I “sweated the small stuff”.  After Sandy, my priorities shifted, I realized how precious life really is and how we have to enjoy every moment we have, because we never know what tomorrow may bring.

**

Find Hilary Grossman and her novel “Dangled Carat” here:

Twitter – @feelingbeachie
Blog – http://www.feelingbeachie.com
Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/HilaryGrossmanAuthor

Book on Amazon – http://www.amazon.com/Dangled-Carat-Hilary-Grossman-ebook/dp/B00M3AVGDA

 

 

The Witch Under My Bed

I wake in the middle of the night from a dream that fades the moment my eyes open. The room is half-lit from the yellow light that creeps in from the hallway. The electric bill, I think. Must we sleep with lights on? My oldest daughter is the culprit. She’s afraid of the dark and leaves the lamp on in her bedroom and the hallway lit but then sleeps with the covers over her head, just like my mother. Turning away from the light, I shift in the bed and meet a warm obstacle in the form of my eight-year-old daughter, Emerson. She’s afraid to sleep alone since her dad left 2.5 years ago. Since then, she sleeps with me. My mother teases me about how that might be a hindrance if I ever find a boyfriend. My retort to that is, “Well, he won’t be sleeping over when the kids are here anyway, so what does it matter?”

Now, Emerson’s legs shift in sleep, searching for mine. She wraps her soft feet around my ankles and taps three times before letting out a ladylike snore. I watch her in the dim light – blond hair spread over half her face, eyes gently shut. I suppose some mothers would mind if their little girls slept with them, but I see it as a gift. Soon, very soon, she’ll want her independence, her own space to sleep, like her sister does. But for now she wants the physical proximity to me. Because it began when her father and I parted, I know it was her way of dealing with the loss. She told me the first night we were alone that she was afraid now that her dad was no longer here to protect us. So I pulled back the covers and let her inside.

Like my girls, I was afraid of the dark when I was a child. Although I was lucky enough to have my own room, a source of pride to my father (raised poor) that he could provide spaces for his three children, I slept in my little brother’s room where my mother had installed a bunk bed she bought at a garage sale. The explanation was simple. A witch lived under my bed. She could only come out at night, which was unfortunate, because that was when I was alone in my room. She could not get me if I was with my brother. She would never enter his room. I’m not sure how I knew this to be true, but I did.

In my brother’s room, I had the top bunk. My fears were not of heights, only darkness and spiders and the witch. Anyway, in the mornings I hung my head over the bunk bed to watch Jake sleeping. Three years younger, he was as much ‘all boy’ as I was ‘all girl’. Tough, stubborn, opinionated and extremely physical, he chopped a fir three down in our front yard with a kindling splitting hatchet when he was only three years old. We were country kids and no one thought anything of a three-year-old with a hatchet. How times have changed!

I loved him. Especially when he was asleep. Even though we were often rivals, his face in sleep never ceased to melt my sister heart even though during waking hours he was completely immune to my attempts at nurturing or molding him to my ways. He was impervious to my charms, as so many men have been in my illustrious past. But I digress…

The eight acres we lived on in southern Oregon were Jake’s stomping grounds. He played from morning until dusk if my mother allowed. I was the bookish type, curled up in my father’s easy chair with no concept that the world went on around me. At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon, growing up in the 1970’s was quite different than the childhood my children are experiencing. There were no electronic devices, no worries about too much “screen time”, or the dangers of the Internet. We played outside. We read books. At night we watched our one television channel on our black and white set. Something was wrong with the volume so we listened to it turned as high as it would go. All was well unless my dad started snoring on the couch.

Now, in my grownup bed, I turn away from Emerson, hoping to find a comfortable position. Another obstacle. One, no both cats, are asleep, two lumps of black fur as close to me as possible. With Emerson on one side, the cats on the other, I’m unable to move without disturbing them.

It would seem logical that I would kick the cats off the bed, or take Emerson to her room. But I don’t. I don’t even want to because I know a time will come when two spoiled cats and one indulged girl will no longer be here. I know this because my brother is no longer the sweet little boy asleep below me but a tall, strong man with a family, worries, disappointments and all that comes with adulthood. My parents are aging. Their house no longer large and scary, even in the dark. There is no witch, only the palatable fear of my mother’s delicate health. And, God, I’d take that witch any day over the fear I have now. But that’s the crux of it, really. When we love, we must accept that in tandem with the joy is the possibility of loss.

So for now, I make myself smaller in the bed. I listen to the rain falling against the window, Midnight’s loud purring, and Emerson’s slumbering murmurs. Hold on to this moment, I think. Memorize it so that I might pull it out later when my little girl is grown and gone, when she no longer thinks the night is scary and begins to fear my exit instead of the witch under her bed. I’ll remember it so that I can tell her of this time, perhaps when she’s struggling and frustrated because her own little girl sneaks into her bed at night. I’ll tell her how we used to read next to one another, both turning pages, lost in the world of the story before we turned out the light. I’ll tell her how she confessed secrets and worries right before we fell asleep. I’ll tell her how her foot reached for me in the dark.

I’ll tell her those moments were some of the happiest of my life. The small, ordinary moments with those we love are the ones we remember, the ones that make a beautiful life. Time cannot take that away.

 

Guest Blogger – Julia Park Tracey

It’s Monday, which means I have a guest blogger. Today I welcome author Julia Park Tracy. She is a novelist and a poet along with entertaining her author friends on twitter and Facebook with excerpts from her zany life.

Enjoy.

**

It’s Not Single-Parenting. It’s Double Parenting.

By Julia Park Tracey

 

About a week ago I was waiting in the dungeon-like parking garage at Kaiser in Oakland for the valet to bring out my car. He walked up and said, “Who has the Honda Odyssey?” A lady and I both stepped forward and said, “I do.”

Another valet pulled forward in a white minivan, my minivan, and the lady said, “That’s mine.”

“It’s mine,” I started to say, and then I realized that I had actually driven a white Mitsubishi Outlander that day, the only car I own, and that it has been five years since I owned a white Honda minivan. That’s the car I used to drive when I was married. I laughed and shrugged and watched the other woman drive away in what I thought was my car.

It’s one of those things that make you go, “Hmm.”

There are days when I wake up and for a second, don’t know where I am. When I’m asleep, I’m still in a certain house, my little girls in their beds, or the baby crying in her crib. Then I open my eyes and I’m in my own bedroom; my eldest daughter is in London, my teens are in their own rooms, and here I am a single mom, still marching along, still hanging in there.

It’s been five years since I became a single mom, and in that time I’ve enjoyed the full gamut of emotions — rage, sorrow, loneliness, depression, then a glimmer of hope, a sliver of contentment, a moment of cheer, mellowing into a new confidence, the rise of hope and fulfillment and joy. Finally, in most ways, I think I’m through the worst.

What shocks me now is that it has taken this long. I look around and see others who are slogging through the Slough of Divorce, who are gaily leaping right into other relationships and/or marriages, at how some people seem not to have learned anything at all from their mistakes. And I look around at others, the ones who are still curled in a fetal position, and I want to tell them, “Hey, it’ll pass. You’ll come though it, eventually. Patience, my friend, patience.”

I had one friend who said for the first year after his divorce his brain felt like pancake batter. Another said she just sits at home in her echoing house and waits for her kids to come back. One friend waits cringing for the phone to ring from the ex with more drama, while another is on such friendly terms with her ex that they share a house.

We hear tell of couples who split and feel we are forced to take sides, even though we hated it when it happened to us. We gaze in wonder and gratitude at the friends who took our side, and in shock and sadness, or relief, at the friends who took the other’s side.

We look at the half-set of fine china, the four steak knives instead of eight; we wonder what happened to the watering can, and then see it in a photo the kids have on their phones, with Dad’s new partner holding it.

We try to sharpen a knife or find the cordless screwdriver before remembering that we don’t own that item anymore. We want to take the kids camping but no longer own sleeping bags or didn’t get custody of the tent. We want to take the kids to Disneyland but find the other parent already did that over winter break. We want to host a birthday party but that weekend is the other parent’s visitation.

We watch the other parent do things we absolutely disapprove of, and can do nothing about it. We hear things and bite our tongues. We wonder how long it will be before this feels normal, this half-life that isn’t really single parenting, but double parenting, holding up all the tent poles and trying to keep the roof from caving in. We fall into our beds at night numb with exhaustion and fake smiles, night after week after month, until we slowly start to sleep better, we slowly start to breathe deeper, and finally, finally, the dark part begins to fade.

Then there is a day when we don’t cry, we don’t cringe, when we don’t feel the burn of anger like a bad bowl of chili. Eventually, whether we’ve had therapy or taken up tai chi or started a course of antidepressants, turned to our faith or against it, there comes a day when we have passed through and landed in the light, able to see and think and breathe again out of the shadow of the marriage that went awry.

There is no magic pill or substitute for time – and lest that be awarded the most trite and tawdry line of the year, may I just say that, hey, friends, those of you who’ve done this before, you were right. We should have thought twice before marrying that person. We should have known from the start about that little quirk that now seems such an obvious flaw. We shrugged off hints and even blatant signs of danger because we were younger, hungry for love and marriage, and couldn’t see the forest for the wedding cake.

And you were absolutely right, wise friends, we should have given it another chance and tried a little harder for the children’s sake. Brutal honesty here — if I had known how hard this would have been on the kids, we would have stayed together, I would have tried just about anything, as long as I could. But I didn’t think it would be so hard, and once again, couldn’t see the forest for the misery.

And so it goes — we carry on and find that there are no greener pastures, only other pastures, and that my father was right, suffering does build character. We take our stronger characters and try again, and try harder, because there isn’t going to be a next time – only a last time.

 

 

Julia Park Tracey is the author of Veronika Layne Gets the Scoop and the forthcoming Veronika Layne Has a Nose for News (both Booktrope). She is an award-winning blogger, journalist and author, and mother of three daughters. Follow her @juliaparktracey and Facebook/JuliaParkTraceyAuthor.

 

 

Guest Post – Tiffany Pitts

It’s Monday. The weeks go too fast, wouldn’t you agree? I have two sick kids at home with me today. Flu season is upon us, unfortunately. But the good news is that on Monday I have a visitor author stop by my blog to share a piece of their writing. Today I welcome author Tiffany Pitts with an essay about her kids and that ever tricky problem of swearing. Her solution is one I’ve never thought of and apparently has interesting results.

Enjoy.

**

On Swearing.

In our house, the rule is that children are allowed to swear but they must do so in the bathroom. I did not invent the rule. It was suggested to me by a friend who, after spending time with my (then) 6-month old daughter, foresaw a need for such an outlet. Because even at six months old my sweet, loving, happy little girl had a vocabulary that could rival a longshoreman.

No, she wasn’t speaking yet. But she had this way of looking you directly in the eye when she babbled and moderating her voice to sound like words. She could hold a strangely realistic conversation complete with arm waving and appropriate pauses for you to talk back. And in those conversations, she had this baby-babble patois that followed the conversational rhythms of someone who swore. A lot.

It was disturbing.

I think back on it now and don’t know why I was surprised. I never had food cravings when I was pregnant with her. All I wanted to do was watch action movies. All. The. Time. The more fighting and explosions, the better. During the 4 month ultrasound, where they tally up all the fingers and toes, my dear sweet baby girl turned to the camera and gave us the finger. I begged the nurse to take a picture but she refused saying she ‘couldn’t stigmatize a child like that’. But all I wanted was photographic evidence that it wasn’t my fault.

My son isn’t much different. We’ve gone through every iteration of “The [Insert letter here]–word you can imagine. The S-word, the OTHER s-word (stupid), the d-word, the OTHER d-word (Dude-a-pants), the J-A-word, the h-word, the OTHER h-word (hate), the f-word (he assures me this one is ‘fail’), the c-word (which is CRAP. The c-word is CRAP) and an entire alphabet of others made up on the fly. One weekend he came home from school with the word ‘buttocks’ indelibly seared into his brain. Every fourth sentence from his mouth was scripted to contain the word ‘buttocks’. It was a loooooong weekend.

So why do we tolerate it? Mostly because out kids like language. They make up puns and compound words. They’re inventive and talkative and I can’t fault them for that. I like language too. But the main reason I haven’t changed the rule is because of what it’s done to the bathroom. It’s changed the cramped toothpaste covered room into a magical time-out zone. It’s a place where we can talk to each other using the exact same language. We’re more equal there. They have more amnesty. More freedom to say things. And they do.

Things they really don’t understand or maybe are embarrassed to ask about become less taboo in the bathroom. Sometimes they ask me questions in hush-hush voices. I answer them as directly as possible and in the same tone they use with me. Not because I’m embarrassed, because they are. They want information, not editorial commentary. And if they’re too busy being embarrassed, they won’t listen to what I’m saying.

No, I’m not really keen on hearing my kids say the s-word, the OTHER s-word, and the c-word (again, the c-word is crap) even if it is behind a bathroom door and they’re talking to their own reflection in the mirror. I don’t even know why I don’t like it. Maybe because they’re still little kids and swearing is such an adult thing.

But I think that’s what makes the rule so necessary. They’re still little yet. They’re constantly treated like little kids because they are. But they have one safe spot where they can go to practice being an adult for a while, practicing is really important because they want to get it right.

 

**

Tiffany Pitts grew up on a steady diet of candy, cartoons and instant ramen noodles. As a native Seattleite, she does not cross against the light. You can read more of her stuff at snickerpants.com, follow her on Facebook or find her on Twitter @snickerpants.

Guest Author – Dave O’Leary

I’m pleased to share with you author and musician Dave O’Leary as my guest blogger today. He brings poetry to my humble blog for the first time, sharing a piece that illuminates perfectly the challenges of a writer’s life.

As a further treat, we get the first chapter of his latest work.

Enjoy.

**

On some nights

I’m empty,

and the words

do not come.

I’m forced

then to wonder

if I’m done, if they

will ever come back,

to doubt that they

ever came

with the galloping force

I’d imagined,

to linger

with beers on phrases

I’ve banged

out on previous nights:

“Life is too short

for TV.”

“All it takes to settle

the soul is the length

of one song…or poem.”

“I realize I will always think

of her as the Shit Woman.”

That one made

the editors laugh.

But I’m lucky

because

even when the words

do not come,

they

do.

It’s a blessing

or a curse,

this need

to get it down.

I’ll let you know which

after the next beer,

after the next pause

to luxuriate

in the words

just typed,

after the memory

of the next line

has faded

and all that remains

is the idea

the need

to get it

to get something

anything

down

down

down.

**

Bio:

Dave O’Leary is a writer and musician living in Seattle. His second novel, The Music Book (Booktrope, November 2014), is a collection of the writings O’Leary has done about Seattle bands for both Northwest Music Scene and the now defunct Seattle Subsonic. It is a fictional narrative wrapped around and within the actual music, a story about live music in Seattle and, more broadly, about the power of music in our lives. A CD of the music experienced in the book will be released by Seattle indie label, Critical Sun Recordings. His first book, Horse Bite (Infinitum), was published in 2011.

The Music Book is available at Seattle-area Barnes & Noble stores and online at the links below:

The Music Book On Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/The-Music-Book-Dave-OLeary/dp/1620154625

The Music Book On B&N: http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-music-book-dave-oleary/1120420210

The Music Book CD: https://themusicbook.bandcamp.com/album/the-music-book-a-benefit-for-the-wishlist-foundation

Prologue

There was an A chord and then silence.

And then applause.

I looked up from the stage at the sixty or so people in the South Heidelberg, a little underground place in the neighborhood of Ohio State University. It was dungeon-like down there. The walls were mostly uneven white stone dirtied with the grime and haze and graffiti of being a campus-area bar for forty years or more. The few lights were dim, even by dive bar standards, the ceilings low, the pool table never functional. The stage was actually a step down from the audience, which could make one feel small on crowded nights. It wasn’t the most popular music club in town, not by a long shot, but we gigged there often because they let us play from ten until two with no opening band, no quickie forty-five minute sets, no triple bills. The nights were all ours, and we’d let passages and solos and rhythms go and see where they wound up. Time and space were filled with music. I grabbed one of the two Rolling Rocks on my amp, took a swig, let out a sigh, felt the nerves ratchet up like they always did between songs. There was a shout from the crowd.

“Third Stone!”

The next song was a cover, Pink Floyd’s “Pigs (Three Different Ones).” It had a little bass intro over some chords on the keyboard so there would be no guitars or drums for fifteen or twenty seconds. That meant the focus would be on me, and that was a scary thought. I was a musician, but I’d never been comfortable in the spotlight for it brought a kind of nakedness, a fear of being seen, of making a mistake, so I looked down at my Fender Jazz bass. It had a wood grain finish, black pickups, black inlays on the neck. My left arm tightened up a little, and I had the thought, Shit. I’m going to fuck it up.

When the place was absolutely quiet, Stephanie started the song. I looked over as she eased into the keyboard, repeated chords, brought the volume up. I was mesmerized. I wanted to be out there in the audience. I wanted just to listen to her roll along those keys. Right in front of the stage there was a woman with black curly hair. She had her head tilted back and her eyes half open like she was trying to read the notes on the ceiling. She was swaying, and I just watched her for a few measures before remembering I had a responsibility. I knew the keyboard intro couldn’t go on forever, that the bass was supposed to come in high up on the neck. I steadied myself, readied my fingers, played a few notes, the wrong few notes. I felt a sense of panic as I suddenly didn’t know what key I was in or even which one I was supposed to be in. I swayed a little, took a step forward and probably looked drunk. My mind went blank, my face red, but I tried again, played the wrong few notes again. The neck of the instrument suddenly didn’t make any sense to me. It was just a piece of wood with some metal strips on top, a few dots on the side, four pieces of wire running the length of it. It was a bass guitar, but really, what was this thing in my hands, and what the hell was I supposed to do with it? The keys continued, but all eyes in the audience were on me, wondering what I was doing, waiting for something to happen. I knew how to play, really, but in the moment it seemed I’d forgotten. I swayed a little more and took two steps forward, nearly falling down.

Stephanie’s boyfriend, Deon, was working the door, and he just stared in disbelief at my little dance, figured I was drunk and might pass out, that the show would be over right then and there with no Pink Floyd cover to end it all in grand fashion but rather with a headline in the Columbus Dispatch the following morning: “Bass Player Passes Out, Bumps Head, Show Ends, Future of Band Uncertain.” I steadied myself and looked over at Stephanie. She was still playing those chords, grooving in her own way to the music she was making, head down, brown straight hair hanging over a white shirt. She seemed unconcerned with my two fuckups. She had confidence in the music, that I would get it right because I always had before.

I stepped over to my amp and turned the volume up just the slightest bit. The crowd was still hushed, and then finally Stephanie’s chords enveloped me, soothed me, did their thing, said to me in their own strange language, “It’s all right.” The redness left my face, and I took a swig of beer and felt like I was drinking the music. Maybe John Lennon was wrong, I thought, maybe this is all you need. I smiled. Music. Maybe the intro could go on forever, and we could all groove and listen with our eyes half-closed and let the chords take us places.

A few more measures went by, and with my eyes on Stephanie rather than my bass, I tried it again, and this time, I nailed it, played a few high notes, added a little vibrato, sustained one for half a measure, and then descended down to an E on the seventh fret of the A string as the guitars came in, Kevin chunking a low E on his SG, Matt letting his Les Paul ring out a little higher, and the cymbals crashed and everything descended to a B a couple times around and then the singing about those different kinds of pigs. There were cheers, cheers that meant there would be no headlines in the morning, just another small band playing in a small bar. We were jamming, rocking, moving bodies and souls, but it was only for sixty people. Maybe I should have passed out, taken a tumble for the band, a cut above the right eye, a bloody nose. Maybe the world would have taken notice.

We finished the song to much applause and more shouts, “Third Stone … Third Stone!” Deon came up to me. “That rocked, man. Glad you didn’t pass out.” What could I say to him about what really happened? Instead I just smiled, “Thanks,” and there were post-gig beers and after-hours shots and handshakes and hugs. No one in the audience mentioned those awful notes or my awkward steps, but of course the band would tease me for years to come. Even long after we broke up, there were references to it. “Man, I thought you were going to do a face plant right there, or maybe that you’d do another twist and fall into my drums,” Frank would laugh when we met for beers or the odd solo recording project. It seemed everyone just thought I was drunk that night, so I let them, and though I should have, I never told the guys in the band the truth, never told them that I was often filled with doubt, that I sometimes wondered if I was somehow not qualified to step on a stage. It happened during every show, those moments when something unwanted crept in, a kind of uncertainty, a hesitation that meant a few wrong notes from time to time, or a few panic moments when I suddenly felt flushed and nearly fingered the wrong note or hit the chord change a little off time. And it wasn’t because I couldn’t play, but just because I worried about it, so in the middle of a song, in the middle of a measure, the question would come, “What’s the next chord? E? A? Shit!” I feared it. Stepping on stage was a scary thing, so I froze sometimes, and swayed and lurched forward and had to hold the bass steady and ask, “Why do I put myself through this?”

But over the years, I always thought that, fuckups or not, at least I wasn’t a critic. That seemed the worst of all things, worse than any embarrassment a few bad notes might bring. The Critic. I had my fears, but it was not for me to be stuck only commenting on the creative endeavors of others, to wait and wait while artists and musicians did their bits, good or bad, in confidence or in fear, to change the world, and then only to react, never to put forth one’s own voice in the effort to create something new.

That gig was in 1995 when I was finishing a degree in English literature. It was an easy major. I read books and wrote a few short stories, a few essays, had enough extra hours after classes to pursue music. I wanted to get my own thing down in my own voice with a pen or a bass or a guitar, and even though I was in Columbus, Ohio, it was one of the greatest times of my life, even when the music was off by a few notes because that woman who was grooving and looking at the ceiling hung around after the show, walked up to me with a couple shots in hand even though the bar was closed. The Southberg was like that, another reason we played there often. She handed me a shot of cheap tequila. “That was cool. I’ve never seen anyone play that song before.” It struck me then that she hadn’t realized I’d fucked up, that maybe it was something known only to the musicians in the audience. “Thanks. Cheers.” We did the shots, and I knew already that she would go home with me. It was the music, “Roadhouse Blues” or maybe “White Rabbit” or our Pink Floyd closer, or the grooves and the lengthy improvised jams of our original songs working their way though her body. If she’d simply seen me at some random bar, she would not have done that, the grooving and gazing, the shots and the sex. She was moved before we ever said so much as hello. It was the rhythms, the riffs, the art of it all, and all of it in the moment, for live was the thing since it brought the possibility of all else.

The following morning at my place I woke to find her leafing through some of my journals and stories. She was flipping pages, pausing to read a few sentences, then flipping some more. “Sorry. I just saw these here and was only glancing through. You didn’t tell me you’re a writer too.”

“Yeah, I am,” but it wasn’t really true. I didn’t want to call myself a writer until I’d published something, and I somehow knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon. I did consider myself an artist though, and there was, of course, a certain amount of ego that went into that, even with all my panic in some moments, so let’s say I was the doubtful artist, fearful but plagued with a belief in the self, a belief that one’s own voice, one’s own perspective, is important, is valid, is able to change the mindset of others, to encourage reactions and beliefs and feelings that will be remembered or that will help us forget, that will lift, destroy, resurrect, even damn.

“I’d like to read one of these some time,” she said. “What do you write about?”

“Fear.”

She smiled. “Interesting.” She put the journal down, and neither of us said anything more about it. Instead, we went out to McDonald’s for breakfast and talked of other things. Afterward, in front of the trashcans, I asked for her phone number. We’d both just thrown our wrappers away, and she was wiping ketchup from her hand—she was a ketchup-with-scrambled-eggs kind of person—“Can I have your phone number?” I’d thought she was expecting the question, maybe hoping for it, but she said, “I’ll call you. What’s yours?” So I gave her mine. She memorized it and promised to call that night, and we hugged before going our separate ways. At home, I played guitar all day while waiting for the phone to ring. I’d play a song and pause, play a song, pause, play a song. The phone never rang. I never heard from her again. I kept on playing guitar and pausing, but she didn’t come to any future Third Stone shows. She didn’t knock on my door at 1:00 a.m. with a six-pack and a smile. Nothing. And it was like it had always been. Music filled up the space in my life.

It still does.

And these days, there are the moments like this one where I pause at three in the morning to pick up my blue Fender Stratocaster and pluck the entirety of Radiohead’s “2 + 2 = 5,” and the song, the notes, my fingers on the strings and the pick in my hand stir up the matter in my life. There’s recording too, and listening, and yes, writing about music, capturing the feeling when the sound has diminished, trying to remember the meaning of the moment. There is also tinnitus, which means my ears ring all the time. I’m not sure when it started, can’t remember if it was gradual or if it was just there one day. Maybe I’m just use to it. It makes me afraid though, never having complete quiet, and so the great worry is that the ringing will increase and increase until it ceases, until I go deaf, because that will mean not being able to hear a D chord cranked to eleven. I’d still be able to feel the vibrations, but I’d have to imagine the sound, recall some past chord from memory, never knowing for sure if I have the right one, if whatever is in my head isn’t a D at all but maybe a G or an A. I have my doubts even now when I can still hear, and so I question, sometimes, my ability to play, to make music. Maybe when I place my fingers just so on the neck and strum, it is a D, but not a D as big and bold and awesome as it could be. Maybe I’m missing something. Maybe all the Ds in the world are different, mine somehow less. And so I worry, and I wonder, and I lie awake at night counting down the days and hours until the volume is cut. I shouldn’t because I know the sound, I feel it in my bones as they say, but I fear the loss that would mean 0db, and I fear it in the same way I fear waking up alone, or the same way I fear that I might eventually die that way, alone, maybe a quiet heart attack in my sleep after a night of beers and notes and song titles that defy logic, for the loss of hearing is a kind of death, a shutting out of the world, and that’s why I see so many bands now. I’m stocking up, preparing for the possible silent emergency, anticipating the memory of sound, trying to fill the empty space.

Guest Post – Author Tiffani Burnett-Velez

It’s Monday, which means it’s time for another guest post. Today I welcome Tiffani Burnett-Velez, writing about how motherhood requires flexibility. We can all relate to this one, I’m pretty sure.

Enjoy.

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Learning to Swim

Tiffani Burnett-Velez

I grew up in southern California, on the edge of the sea. Literally. When I first moved to Oxnard, California with my mother and stepfather, from our small town in Oregon’s beautiful Rogue Valley, I could hear the ocean waves from my cracked bedroom window at night. I learned to swim in the Pacific Ocean, and the one thing my stepfather taught me (he had been a lifeguard in high school), was that if you’re ever way out in the water, further than you had intended to swim, you need to roll with the waves and not form a rigid stance against them. After all, who can stand in the ocean? No one. So you must loosen your limbs and swim sideways with the waves. This seems insane, and is impossible to imagine (unless you’re in the experience), but it does work. It will save your life and your much-needed energy. I’ve had to do this only once in the ocean, but I’ve had to repeat the directive every day since I’ve been a parent.

When you first bring that baby home, you think you know how it’s all going to go. You believe that the hard part was labor and delivery. The easy part will be feedings and diapering and all those fairly simple things you did while babysitting, and so you begin with lists and timetables and schedules and you think baby will just go with your flow and you’re not expecting to follow his or her directive for anything. But then you experience hourly feedings and diaperings that fail when you’re wearing you best dress in a crowded church on Sunday morning, and you hold that baby who has been crying relentlessly for hours and you forget that your schedule no longer exists, that being a parent is 100% about rolling with the waves and learning to trust the God you’ve been praying to since early childhood. And finally, one day, when your arms ache and your brain is a pile of sleepless mush, you start to crying (even if you’re not the crying type) and you ask this God, “What the heck? Where are you, anyway? What is wrong with my baby? What is wrong with me? Can’t you show up and make this as easy as it all was when I was 15 and babysitting someone else’s kid?”

And there is silence, but you remember that little instruction about swimming with the current, and you loosen your arms, but not your embrace on baby, and you ask yourself, “What is actually going to happen to me if my child screams for another three hours? Will the crying kill them or me? Will the crying do anything more than give me a headache?”

And when you sanely realize that nothing terrible happens when a baby cries, simply because baby has colic or baby feels like crying, you relax, and baby relaxes too. And you both weather the crying periods much easier, because children outgrow colic. All of them, everywhere, and if you roll with it, knowing the hard part is temporary and mostly invented by parents who want babies to respect adult rules of social etiquette and convenience, you save your energy that you’ll for the next set of waves that come with parenthood and things don’t seem so desperate anymore. For a time, anyway.

I have four beautiful children. Two of them have pretty severe ADHD, one of them has Autism Spectrum Disorder, and the other one is 10 and curious about everything in the world, from his waking in the early morning hours to his sleeping way past ordinary bedtime. He may also have ADHD, but I haven’t the courage to ask that question professionally just yet.

I have learned roll with the various waves created by the uniqueness of my children’s brains, to respect the distance my son with Autism needs, that even when he accomplishes something new and wonderful, I must stand back and simply verbalize my praise, because hugs make him feel like he’s coming down with the measles. I can’t touch him, no matter my mother’s desire to do so. I must accept that he hates reminders of birthdays, won’t eat pancakes, can’t stand amusement parks, only uses Sony products (we don’t know why, not even he can explain this), can do calculus, but can’t explain his answer, picks up foreign languages like a CIA translator, but has difficulty expressing a simple thought sometimes. I love him to bits. He’s the joy of my heart. His Autism is a gift, and I wouldn’t change anything about him. Nothing at all. For some reason, his waves are easy for me to roll with. Perhaps, it is because he is most like me, except for the math skills. I don’t have even a hint of that in me at all. We are both introverts and love the same thick Russian books, and he has spent the most time with me. I homeschooled him from third grade to seventh, when he finally revealed the bone-deep boredom that spending hours with me created, and so I sent him to school, which inspired a thousand different moments of anxiety-driven waves for me. “Will he survive?”, “What if there are bullies?” “Will be he lash out and beat the snot of out them?” “What kind of diploma will he receive in high school?”

Turns out, he’s the kind of kid who gets invited into the National Honor Society and is loved by his peers and his teachers. He’s the kind of teenager who comes home from school and makes a pot of coffee and puts the dirty dishes away if I’m not home to do it, and he says things like, “Mommy, are you okay? You look really tired. Do you want me to make you a sandwich?”

Yeah. I have stayed awake at night, anxious about his life, and how he’ll experience it, but reminding myself that I believe in God, and I know He has a plan, and that I can’t control much of anything anyway, has actually aided my son with Autism in fulfilling his own dreams for himself. Letting go is hard when all you want is absolute perfection for your children, but it’s really what we’re called to do, I believe. Nurture, guide, and let go, so they can learn the same sort of lessons about swimming in the big, wide open ocean of life that have helped us get this far.

I’ve learned that my beautiful and talented daughter, who attends a prestigious high school for the arts with my eldest son, is worth far more than all the bits and pieces of her chalk and paints and sketch papers and torn fabric bits she leaves all over the kitchen, dining room, living room, stairs, and the hardwood floor outside her bedroom. I have learned that no matter how many times I repeat, “Eliana, you can’t leave these things laying everywhere!’ that she’s actually trying to remember to pick them all up, but she gets distracted along the way and grabs 1/4th of the art supplies and leaves the rest for whomever trips over them. It can’t be helped. It’s the way her overactive brain works. It’s always moving in a million different directions, creating, planning, designing, expressing…my instructions just get added to the mix. So, I’ve learned to accept what effort she gives me as her love for me, because that is what it is. She cleans best, when I offer kindness in return, when I take what she can give. When I swim with the current, saving my energy for those arguments that really must be made. “No, you can’t spend time alone with that person. He/she doesn’t have your best interest in mind.” That’s a much more important current to navigate than making her feel like a burden to me, because her magnificent brain has a hard time keeping track of her art. After all, I leave books and papers in several places around the house, because wherever I am, I’m writing or making notes about it. I can’t really expect her to do something so much more organized that I do.

My first born is a musical prodigy. He shocks his father and I daily with his vast talents, and I’m not just saying that because he’s mine and has my cheekbones (that’s all my genes have offered to his handsome face), his teachers and his Grammy Award winning composition instructor have all confirmed what we’ve been proud of for years – that he’s uniquely talented. But he’s also extroverted as heck, and this confounds me, the nerd who loves quiet libraries and abandoned forest trails. I like it mostly silent. He likes it loud. I don’t want visitors. He wants people to sleep over on Wednesday nights. What? Why? He expresses love for all religions. I want him to sing in the church choir. He’s polite and compassionate and loves Hemingway just like me, and he lets me kiss him at random. So, when his hyper nature bounces all around my need for contemplative quiet, I have to relent and allow him to meet his need for socializing. I don’t understand it, but it works for him. I save my energy for other battles like, “I realize it’s legal in Colorado, but remember that you live in my house in Pennsylvania, so…” Yeah. That’s a bigger thing to be concerned with than whether or not I have to drive him to the third gig in a week, because he’s wanted by proprietors, professionals, and professors who love his work almost as much as I do, and understand it so much more (because I can still only play the same three Woody Guthrie chords on my beat-up old guitar from high school).

And the 10 year old. The waves are constant, but by now, I have learned that they are a joy. That to watch his wonder and listen to him singing, at the top of his lungs, the lyrics of his own creation, to see his joy at playing with his friends in the park and inventing and experimenting and creating with sticks and canvas, in the library, in the backyard, in the living room at 10pm, when he insists that he can’t sleep, because he “has a new idea!” about something scientific that he is sure will “revolutionize atomic theory as we know it!”, I sometimes have to roll with the moment and let his wonderful mind grow through learning. Thankfully, the Brilliant 10 Year Old, as he is known on my personal Facebook page, is homeschooled, so this allows for more of these wavy moments in parenthood. But these moments would happen anyway, even if he still went to the uniformed private school he attended previously, because he’s smart and I’ve raised him to see the world as something wonderful and curious and new, and so when the crying starts or the talking begins or the questions are asked or the socializing is well under way, I have to decipher which waves to roll with and which to start expelling my energy on.

Either way, parenting requires that the parent be the flexible one, the one realizing that this experience is bigger than us, and that the lessons we learn and teach during this time, will follow our children well past our lifetime and deep into theirs. Peggy O’Mara said, “The way we talk to children becomes their inner voice.” I believe this is the most important lesson about parenthood, and learning to swim with the currents, and letting the crying last as long as it needs to and the wonder live out until it finds a new curiosity, and letting children safely explore their world through our guidance and not our control, will offer them a much better experience. It has worked for me, so far. I have long way to swim still.

**

Tiffani Burnett-Velez has been a successful freelance writer since 1996. Her nonfiction work has appeared in Pennsylvania Magazine, Country Discoveries, St. Anthony Messenger, Yahoo! News, and many more online and print magazines and newspapers in the US and Europe. Her first novel, Budapest (LFP 2007), was an Amazon bestseller and was featured in the New York Book Festival and the 4 2nd Annual Conference of Jewish Librarians. Her second novel, All This Time, will be released by Booktrope in 2015. Her latest work, a World War II era novella, A Berlin Story, is currently available in ebook and print at Amazon and other retailers.

Guest Post – Author Mary Rowen

I’m pleased to host author Mary Rowen on my blog today. She writes of mistakes she made as a teenager. I know we can all relate. Enjoy.

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High school was stressful for me and I made a lot of mistakes. I sure hope my kids don’t repeat them.

I’ll bet more than ninety percent of American parents with young teenagers can make that same statement.

Of course, nobody gets through high school without doing some dumb things; it’s part of the deal. And yet, I see a significant difference between dumb things kids do because they’re having fun, and dumb things that spring from insecurity and loneliness. So when I say that I hope my kids don’t repeat my mistakes, I’m talking about ones I made because I was sad, perhaps even desperate. Therefore, my top goal as a parent is to keep my children feeling positive and confident. And that’s not always easy.

Let me start by saying that I don’t blame anyone for my teenage insecurity. Some of it stemmed from the anxiety I inherited from both my parents, who, in turn, inherited it from theirs. Anxiety runs rampant in my family, and I’ll be dealing with that for the rest of my life. But although I was always an anxious child, the proverbial sh*t didn’t really start to hit the fan until eighth grade.

To summarize, eighth grade sucked for me. In September, my mom had a premature baby boy who lived for just five days. As you might imagine, that death—which didn’t come as a complete shock, but also wasn’t necessarily expected—was pretty terrible. All of us—my parents, my two other brothers, and I—suffered in our own ways, and most days, when I got home from school, the sadness hanging over the house would envelop me. Nowadays, counseling would be recommended for a family dealing with such a situation, but it was 1977, and we weren’t a “counseling” family. We were close and I had great parents, but all of us could’ve used some professional help. Again, I don’t blame anyone for the way things transpired; on the contrary, I realize that my poor parents were struggling just to get through each day in the only way they knew how. All of us were.

On top of all that—and this might sound over the top, but it’s absolutely true—my English teacher, who was also my homeroom teacher—had terminal cancer, and she died around Christmas that year. Then, just a few months later, my math teacher also died. I attended a small Catholic school, and the loss of these two wonderful teachers in just a few months devastated the school. The principal scrambled to find replacements, but the best she could do was hire mothers of students to fill in for the remainder of the year.

True chaos ensued. Everyone was confused and hurting—another classmate lost a brother to drowning that year as well—and death really did seem to be all around us. Not surprisingly, kids acted up and acted out. The two moms trying to teach us put in a valiant effort, but I think it’s fair to say that very little learning occurred.

So when it came time to talk about high school, I surprised my parents by saying I wanted to switch over to the large public school in town. I’m not sure why, because my closest friends were going to other Catholic schools, and I probably would’ve had a smoother transition if I’d stayed in a smaller environment. I guess I just wanted to change everything. And in that regard, I got what I wished for.

But you know what they say about being careful about your wishes. I quickly discovered that I wasn’t really a “new girl” at the high school, since I’d grown up in that town, and had a number of acquaintances there: kids I’d met in the past through activities like scouting, softball, and dance classes. Not to mention acquaintances from my Catholic school who’d never been close friends. I’d had this vision of walking into the new, large building and being surrounded by enthusiastic kids dying to meet me, but it simply didn’t happen that way. In retrospect, I’m sure most of the people who recognized me assumed I had other, closer friends. But I didn’t. Within a week of being at the high school, I’d come to the realization that fitting in there was going to be a challenge.

So that’s when I started doing really dumb—even destructive things. For example, I’d hear the popular kids talking about drinking on weekend nights, and that sounded like fun. I was too naïve to understand, however, that the alcohol wasn’t really the fun part; it was simply a component of the weekend parties. So, since I had no one to drink with, I started stealing liquor from my parents’ liquor cabinet, and drinking it before school in the mornings. My warped, fourteen-year-old logic had me thinking that if I did that, I’d be more likeable, more exciting, and hey, maybe I’d make some new friends. In fact, all the alcohol did was make me sleepy, irritable, and, of course, unable to focus very well on my schoolwork. After a while, I stopped drinking in the morning, but it took me months to figure out what a bad idea that was.

Another stupid thing I did for attention was try to steal a test from a teacher. Yes, despite the fact that I’d studied hard for the test and felt fine about taking it, I was dared by a popular student to snatch it off the teacher’s desk when the man left the class unattended for a few minutes one day. So I did it. I jumped out of my seat and grabbed the paper, and of course, as I turned around, there was the teacher reentering the room. I’ll remember that moment until I die. Not just the crippling embarrassment I felt and the laughter from the other students, but the look of disappointment in the teacher’s eyes. Up until that point, I’d been considered a model student in the class, and had been one of the teacher’s favorites, but after that day, I could never meet the man’s eyes again. I also believe he lost all respect for me. If I’d been a more confident kid, I would’ve asked to talk to him after school—I would’ve explained why I did it and hope for some understanding—but since the teacher didn’t give me a detention or anything, the whole situation just got brushed under the rug. But the teacher never spoke to me again except when he needed to. And honestly, if I ran into that guy on the street in my hometown, I’d still feel humiliated.

Finally, I decided that one of the reasons I wasn’t instantly popular was my appearance. I had a pretty normal face and my weight was healthy, but I was six feet tall, and I hated my body. I’d read magazines about fashion models who were my height, but they didn’t weigh what I did, nor did they wear the clothing sizes I wore. So I started starving myself, and then binging and purging. Those eating disorders wormed their way deep into my brain, and would remain with me for many, many years. I’ve written numerous other posts about my history with EDs, so I won’t go into more detail here, but I can assure you that they dominated my life for a very long time. And, most likely, I wouldn’t have developed them at all if I’d felt happier and more confident during my early high school days.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention that eventually, I made some wonderful friends in high school—people who have remained great friends to this day—and by the time I graduated, I really did feel like I fit in. But wow, I’d do almost anything to be able to go back and relive that first year.

Nowadays, one of my kids is a freshman, and the other is in eighth grade. They’re amazing, generally happy kids, but both have displayed insecurity during their lives. Therefore, not a day goes by when I don’t think back to my teenage years and hope my children have the ability to make better choices than I did. People say you can’t overprotect your children, but I do try to talk to them, and get them help when they appear to need it. Still, I’d be lying if I said I don’t lose sleep worrying almost every night.

***

Mary Rowen loves music and is a Boston area mom to teenagers. All of her novels focus on women of various ages growing up, or at least becoming comfortable with themselves. Her essays have been anthologized and/or published on multiple blogs. Mary grew up in the Massachusetts Merrimack Valley, is a graduate of Providence College, and has worked as a teacher, writer, salesperson, and political canvasser. She firmly believes that all of those jobs provide good preparation for an aspiring writer.

Her published books are called Living by Ear and Leaving the Beach ; both are available on Amazon and at select bookstores. Mary’s Amazon page is at:

http://www.amazon.com/Mary-Rowen/e/B00BC9GZD4

You can get to know Mary better by visiting her blog at: http://www.maryrowen.com. On Facebook, she’s Mary Rowen Author, and her Twitter handle is @maryjrowen. You can also find her on Goodreads at: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/6925267.Mary_Rowen

 

 

 

 

 

Guest Post from author Chris Minich

The latest guest post comes from author and friend Chris Minich. Chris took my 12-week writing course in the fall of 2013. A year and a few months later, his first book was released. THE MISADVENTURES OF PRINCESS SIDNEY was started in my class. I’d love to take all the credit, but as all writers know, the only person who can make your dreams come true is you. #ButtInSeat

The real Sydney, above, is available for guest appearances. She also answers to either “Princess” or “Sydney”. Sometimes she steals butter from the counter, but don’t tell her parents.

In this beautiful post Chris writes about his journey from dream to reality. Enjoy.

P.S. This sweet book is the perfect gift for your middle grade daughter or son. Comes in paperback and ebook.

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Let Your Dream Command

I received a message this week to write a guest blog for my mentor and friend Tess Thompson. She is an amazing author, teacher and mother to her two girls. When asked for a subject Tess noted something like, “what motivated you to start writing? What held you back before you plunged in and did it?”

My love for “creative writing” began in high school. I took an English class one semester where we worked on the writing process ­­– finally a creative free flowing outlet to express my thoughts and ideas. Well, an outlet that was critiqued and graded each week. I can still see all the notes in red on my homework assignments. I had a lot to learn, still do, but I was encouraged. Encouragement is sometimes all it takes. It just took a little longer for me. I was in high school and life continued and the writing never made it past short poems or stories for my amusement. Okay, it was the late eighties so they weren’t poems so much as “lyrics.” I still have them somewhere in the garage. To be honest, I wanted to be a mixture of Jon Bon Jovi and Eddie Van Halen. I just didn’t have a band, couldn’t sing and I only knew three chords on guitar. You see the problem here? I ended up with a mullet, yes Janelle I said it, and no outlet for a lingering passion. It wasn’t my time. I had the spark, just not the muse.

My muse showed up in the form of this beautiful girl I met in the fall of 2007. She made me feel alive. As we got to know each other and developed a relationship, I started to write again. Leaving her messages on post it notes, birthday or Christmas cards. After several months of dating, I decided I wanted to marry her. How to do it? Well, I decided to express my feelings, in words. I wrote a letter to her, the words just coming out of me. Just before I got on one knee, I read the letter to my soon to be bride. That yearning to express myself I felt so many years earlier came alive in me again. I continue to this day writing about my beautiful wife. She has always told me I had a talent for words and I should do something about it. There it was again, encouragement.

My wife developed a new friendship with a local writer in our area. I met Tess about two years ago when a love of French food and Julia Child brought her and my wife together for a meal at our house. As we got to know each other, I learned through my wife that Tess was offering a writing class. Reluctant at first I was unsure if I should take the class. I’d had the itch before. Maybe I wasn’t good enough? Where I had lacked confidence in the past to pursue that creative part of me, this time I decided to go for it. I’m glad I did. For a couple of months I met Tess at her house once a week to learn more about writing. The words began to come out of me. Each week I started to write more and more. However, this time it wasn’t just a poem. With Tess’s help, I learned how to structure a story and create characters. I felt alive sitting at my keyboard. The weekly homework assignments turned into the basis of a story that would become my first book. Last month my dream of becoming an author became a reality when Misadventures of Princess Sydney became available. That’s a long way from creative writing in high school.

I learned one key thing from Tess that will stick with me for the rest of my life. For motivation, “write what you know.” I have very special people/dogs in my life and they inspire me every day. It took me a long time to figure out that I was holding myself back. Well, for better or worse, I’ve let it go. All you need is a little encouragement.

 

 

Jumping Off the Perfect Train

Several days ago a writer friend of mine relayed a conversation he’d had over the phone with a mutual friend (another writer).

“Well, nobody’s perfect,” she said.

“Right,” he said.

“Except Tess. She’s perfect.”

I’m sure her assessment was said with some humor, but still, it gave me pause. Is that what she really thinks, I thought. Although she may be the only person in the world to think so, I feel obligated to set her straight on this assessment.

As if some of these flaws are not evident, here are a few. There are more, but this is a blog post not a novel.

I take too many photos of my cats and post them on Facebook. Actually, I post too much of everything on Facebook. I’m one of those people other people make fun of because I over share- what I made in my slow cooker for dinner, what I’m watching on television. And seriously – all those bragging posts about my kids are enough to make anyone want to punch me. Yeah, I’m that person. I get it. Probably half the people I know have unsubscribed to my Facebook feed because of it. I’m sorry, by the way, although you’re probably not reading this because you’re sick of my blog too.

I can defend it, of course. Partly it’s because writers are supposed to have a media presence in order to find readers. This is the reason I subscribed to Facebook in the first place. Four years ago I didn’t even know what it was. So, there’s that. But it’s also because I’m lonely. I work alone and have to be extremely disciplined or I cannot produce the work I need to produce in order to take care of my children. This means I decline lunch invitations and other social outings more than I want to. “I have a deadline,” comes out of my mouth too much. But it is what it is. Between this and the lack of a partner – an actual adult that I would have the privilege to share all the ups and downs, triumphs and trials with, well, he’s nowhere to be found. As a side note, if you have a partner and he or she is coming home to you tonight and you’re going to share a meal and brag or complain to one another about your kids or your work or the state of economy, please take a moment to know how truly blessed you are. Cherish the fact that someone loves you enough to come home, in whatever shape they’re in or you’re in, however battered or blown, they are there with you, right there, in your kitchen. Take it in. Appreciate it. Love them hard.

I feel sorry for myself way too much. I’m ashamed to admit this because there are people with real problems, but it’s the truth. When the kids are gone for weekends with their dad it feels so quiet in my house I sometimes have this sensation that I might be invisible, that I might not even exist or matter to anyone. So I wallow in self-pity. I write stories about lonely women to console myself. I call my mother and try not to cry when I hear her voice. But sometimes I feel too down to do even that, knowing that I will cry if I hear her voice and I don’t want her to know how bad I’m feeling. I have friends. Wonderful friends who would take pity on me if I called them and said, “Hey, can I come over?” But they have lives. Spouses. Families. Plans. So I wallow instead, watching sad movies on Netflix and drinking wine by myself. Does that sound perfect? That’s a big fat no.

I’m scared for the future pretty much 100% of the time. This book business is rocky right now and I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep doing it and feed and clothe my children. What we did when RIVERSONG came out isn’t working any longer. I spend so much time thinking about how to sell books of late that it distracts me from actually writing them. In fact, the thought of the future is so terrifying that I have come close to panic attacks in the last six months. Just today a writer friend told me how brave I am. I’m not. I’ve just tried hard to make this work and I love it so much that I am afraid it might break me to admit defeat. So I stay here, butt in seat.

I’ll leave you with a few others. I can’t figure out how to use the television remotes. Technology mostly befuddles me. I have no sense of direction. There are two distinct rolls around my middle that no amount of working out will get rid of (I’m pretty sure it’s the wine – again, refer to point 2). Sometimes I yell at my kids. I’m always running about five minutes behind. I’ve never read “Moby Dick”. I hate crafts. I put off mopping the floors until it’s practically time to call the germ police. I never fill my gas tank until the light comes on. I always hit the snooze button. I’ve lost approximately four dozen water bottles at the gym. I take long showers with no regard for the water shortage.

I gave up trying to be perfect when I admitted to myself how unhappy I was in my marriage. I had to let go of my dream of perfect wife, perfect mother, perfect home. In that decision, I let go of my lifelong pursuit of perfection. I have to say, it was like dropping a hundred pound weight. It feels good to let go of all those false expectations. Despite all my flaws and fears and all the sacrifices that came with that decision, I’m better off for it. Now I just live authentically. If you don’t like me, too bad. If you do, great. I am what I am: crazy cat lady, loving but imperfect mother, absentminded writer in residence, hopeful romantic prone to sadness.

Maybe this year, you could let yourself off the perfect train too? I’ll still love you. So will everyone else who matters. Because perfect or not, we will be there for you no matter what. I know because I’ve been there.

 

 

Guest Post – February Grace

I’m pleased to welcome author February Grace to my blog today. She’s written a poignant piece about the fleeting nature of motherhood.

After her beautiful post, she was gracious enough to give us a sneak peak into her fiction with a chapter from her latest work.

Enjoy.

**

Never To Come Again

By February Grace

The world is in such a hurry these days to rush kids along to grow up.

Hurry to get them out of diapers.

Hurry to get them into play groups and preschools.

Hurry to get them into… everything. Sometimes, whether or not the activity interests the child or not.

So often lately, I see people comment on social media about how doing things with/for their children is taking time away from things that they wish they could be doing instead.

Since most of the people I follow tend to be writers, that ‘thing’ is usually working on their latest story in progress.

Seeing those remarks always makes me sad.

Don’t get me wrong— I’m not saying that you should give up the things you love to solely serve your children. Certainly, I am not speaking of parents who must work to support the family: that is something different, entirely.

I am speaking of those who are wishing away time with their children they will never be able to get back again, for the sake of things that will be waiting for them later.

On the other side of the coin, I also see many proud parents who can’t get enough of spending time with their kids; taking them to lessons, playing their favorite games, rereading the same beloved stories, even helping with dreaded homework assignments. I admire and respect these parents so much, because they are keenly aware of something that I wish every parent was.

I wish every parent realized today is a time with their child that will never come again.

Every day from the moment they’re conceived, they pass milestones they will never look back on the way we will.

First kick.

First breath.

First cry, first smile.

First laugh.

First word, first step.

First sentence read.

First book finished.

First crush.

First date.

First boy/girlfriend.

Learner’s permit.

Driver’s license.

Graduation…

…then, whatever comes after.

And what comes after, my friends, is something that we will have very little control over.

Our love for our children only grows as they do; but so does the size of their problems, and we find we suddenly long for the days when a bowl of dry oat cereal and a sippy cup of juice made everything right with the world again. When our lullabies could soothe them, and all it took was our kisses and hugs to dry their tears. When Christmas was magic, and we saw everything again, for the first time, through their eyes.

The span of quickly passing years when we were their world, as fully as they were ours.

If we’ve done our job correctly, the day arrives when they look us in the eye, and begin a sentence something like “Mom and Dad, I love you, but…” then they fill in the blank with the path that they have chosen to follow as they head into adulthood.

Then they follow it, and that path takes them away from us.

Sure, we can opine and bluster and worry and offer our undying love and devotion, but we can’t control their fate or heal their pain anymore, as once we were able.

We may warn them with our years of experience, but can’t spare them the lessons in life that they are destined to learn for themselves.

We will wish for the moments when things were simpler, and we will ache to hug, one more time, the little child that tugged at our sleeve when we were on the phone having some mundane conversation that really didn’t matter in the long run—one that we thought was so important then— and we will wish we could reach back through time and hug them that way again.

So when your children come to you and you must set your own interests, whatever they may be, aside for the moment, I beg you’ll see that moment for what it is.

It’s a chance for US (more than it is for them) to make a memory to hold on to, long after the kids have moved out, the house is quiet, and you have all the time in the world to pursue your own dreams and desires.

Children don’t choose to be brought into the world—one way or another, in most cases that’s on us. So it’s also on us to be there for them, to the best of our ability, and to find a balance in showing them that we can do the things we love, too, while making sure we don’t neglect their changing needs in the process.

At least if we’re there for them as much as we can be when they’re growing up, when they’ve grown and gone we’ll be able to look back, and remember.

Hopefully, when they need to, they’ll look back and remember, too.

Three toy horses sit in a row on my bookshelf. I remember the adventures a little girl with big brown eyes and long dark hair once took them on. They keep me company now, even if they do bring tears in moments I miss her most.

I am glad that I can look back, and remember, all the times I shared those adventures with her.

I wouldn’t trade a moment for the world.

February Grace is a published writer and artist from Southeastern Michigan.

She is also the proud mother of one beautiful, smart, gifted, and very independent grown daughter.

Find her on Twitter @FebruaryGrace

or visit her blog http://www.februarywriter.blogspot.com

 

 

UPON A TIME by February Grace is now being serialized on Wattpad, before it is published in the spring by Booktrope! You can read it before it goes on sale here: http://www.wattpad.com/story/27443179....

Enjoy an excerpt below.

**

Gather around one and all, and see an ancient tale reborn.

A story so alive and vital, it has lived since time immemorial. No one really knows exactly where it

began, or where it will end.

It is a story that has great impact upon those with attentive hearts; those who comprehend its meaning and realize that there is more to life, love, and happiness than simply ever after.

Read on, and see if you are among them.

It begins as so many others have before… with four simple words.

Chapter One

Once upon a time in a faraway land, a call went out across the hills. It echoed through the valleys and over the streams, and the royal guard did not cease in their assigned duty until every household in the kingdom had been reached with an engraved invitation.

There was to be a grand ball at the palace, in honor of the Prince. Every maiden who was eligible for marriage in the entire land was commanded, by royal decree, to attend.

The ball was a bright, sumptuous affair with feasting and song. When it was time for the Prince to choose his dance partners for the evening, young ladies—with fluttering nerves and hope in their hearts—were lined up against the wall and divided into two groups.

A small number was selected from the first gathering; the rest were sent to console themselves, and each other, against a wall lined by towering pillars of chocolates embossed with the Prince’s fine silhouette.

The second group scarcely made it to the center of the polished, gleaming marble floor before there was a stir of commotion in the room. An angelic girl with golden hair appeared, wearing a dress the shade of a pure summer sky. As she was escorted in, all assembled began to ripple and part like the surface of a lake in her wake.

The Prince took one look at her and whispered to his attendant. The man nodded, moved beyond the second group of bridal hopefuls, and led the young blonde woman gently by the hand to be introduced, directly, to the Prince.

The King called for a waltz to be played. As the music swelled, everyone stood transfixed, awed by what was taking place.

Murmurs swirled all around as it seemed obvious the Prince had instantly, as if by magic, found his future bride.

This is not her story.

This is, in part, the story of the girl who was (by her own count) number sixty-four out of a hundred in the second group of young women called to see if one among them would meet with the Prince’s approval.

“Thank you, you are all dismissed,” Grand Duke Frederick announced, to many tearful women among the former hopefuls. Slowly they began to disperse, drying their eyes and seeking out the comfort of their mothers’ arms.

All, save number sixty-four.

That girl shook her head and held it high, taking in the shimmering flames and sparkling crystal of the chandeliers, the sound of people whispering, and the lush harmonies of the grand orchestra, still playing as the Prince danced his new love interest right out the back doors of the ballroom and into the garden beyond.

That was all she needed to see.

She straightened her shoulders, stood tall, and returned to her seat at the table where she’d mostly poked at her food, too anxious to eat much. She gathered up her shawl and small handbag.

“Leaving so soon, My Lady?” A young footman asked, as he held a large door open for her.

“The party is over, as far as I can tell.”

“Are you certain? They’re still dancing in there,” he called after her, but she didn’t stop to look back.

“Thank you for a lovely evening,” she answered, and then she made her way through the grand foyer and down the seemingly endless steps leading to the courtyard.

She walked quite a distance, until she reached the stables. Her faithful horse was waiting there, tied up. And at least, she hoped, enjoying a feast of apples and sugar for having brought her so far for what turned out to be no reason at all.

“Hello, boy, did you have a good time?” For a moment she buried her face in his mane. She gulped back a lump in her throat along with the threat of tears; she would be damned if she would cry over missing out on a dance with a man she never even got to see up close.

The horse whinnied in response and she patted his back. “Good. But it’s time for us to go home. We’ve a long way to ride before we get there.”

Under moonlit skies she made her way over the hills, through the countryside, and up into the small mountain village where she’d been born. On most nights it would have been dangerous to take such a trip alone for fear of robbers, but tonight, so many families were making the journey as well, she was never really alone for long.

Once she reached her family’s tiny abode, she opened the creaky old door as gently as she could. If habit prevailed, her parents would have dozed off by the fire while awaiting her return.

Indeed they had, and she reached down to silence the insistent meowing of her beloved, elderly cat before kneeling beside him.

The cat, completely blind and nearly deaf, was older than she could remember. She cradled him in her arms, petting his favorite spot between his ears as he meowed at her again, almost in question.

“No, no dance for me,” she mumbled. Her mother stirred in her sleep, her rocking chair groaning as she moved before finally settled back into dreaming. “No dance, I… I didn’t even get to say hello. So many of us never got to say hello.”

The girl sighed and wondered what would become of the Prince and his future Princess. Mostly she wondered what would become of her now that her own royal dreams, fleeting though they had been, were dashed.

She was not the girl that His Royal Highness chose at the ball… nor did she come from a family of wealth and privilege.

She was a regular maiden from a humble place, and she was called Charlotte.

This is not her story, alone.

It is, in whole, a tale of surprise and revelation: one that shows you never know what matters most, or who you really are, until all things in your world are tested.

***

February Grace is a published writer and artist from Southeastern Michigan.

She is also the proud mother of one beautiful, smart, gifted, and very independent grown daughter.

Find her on Twitter @FebruaryGrace

or visit her blog http://www.februarywriter.blogspot.com