Liz Michalski's Blog, page 5

Money Where My Mouth Is

Big Mouth

There are lots of things I keep meaning to do lately, but never seem to get around to actually doing.  That’s particularly true when it comes to my writing community. It seems there’s always something else more pressing (deadlines, soccer games, homework help, actual sleep) or that requires the same financial resources (again, soccer fees, dance classes, dog kibble).

But supporting other writers — and finding that kind of support for myself — is so essential. Before my novel was published, it was amazing to connect with other writers who were struggling to create the best story they could, to find an agent and then a publisher.  And getting to know those writers, watching them launch their own novels out into the world, has been a wonderful experience.  It’s also been pretty cool to get to know some people who have been down this path before me, some of whom I’ve admired for years.

So this month, before the holiday madness truly starts, and my resources start going toward other essentials (like dog kibble, again — the Slobbering Beast can eat! — or books and toys for the kids) I’m going to carve out a chunk just for me.  Here’s what I plan to do in November:

Renew my membership at Grub Street.  I constantly tell people about this fabulous writing resource in Boston, but somehow I’ve let my own dues slip.  Whoops!

Join the Women’s Fiction Writers Association. This is a new group I’ve been eyeing and meaning to join for a while, but haven’t found the time.

Purchase/preorder several books by authors I know. (If you are interested in which ones, I’ve linked to and mentioned them on my FB author page recently.)  They are all great authors at different stages of their careers, and I want to make sure they all have the chance to keep writing. (Oh, heck.  You’re not going to click, are you? Fine. I’ll make it easy.

Joshilyn Jackson’s Someone Else’s Love Story

S.A. Laybourn’s  Christopher’s Medal

Therese Walsh’s The Moon Sisters

There.)

Is your money aligned with your mouth these days?  Tell me how, please.

Redirect

Hey there!

Do you read Writer Unboxed? No? You should. If only because I had a very depressing post planned for today, and then I remembered that nooooo, I couldn’t write that because I had a much more optimistic post about storytelling scheduled to be up on the Writer Unboxed web site.  See? WU already has made your day better. Go check it out! (And please feel free to leave me a comment.)

Muscle Memory

I have terrible muscle memory.  Ages ago, the first several times I tried aerobics, I always went left when everyone else went right. When I rode, my biggest fear was rarely the size of the jumps — it was doing them in the wrong order. (From personal experience, I can tell you there are few more humiliating experiences then being alone in the arena and having the buzzer sound with someone yelling “OFF COURSE!” Not that that ever happened to me.  Ahem.)

On the flip side, once I get that memory, I have it for years. (Seriously. Anyone want to see my step aerobics routine from the 1990s?) Writing is a bit like that, too.  If I can get my butt in the seat, if I can doodle around for a 45 minutes or so, the words start to come without my thinking about them. My fingers and my brain wake up and remember what to do so long as I stay out of their way.

These days, I’m trying to instill a different kind of muscle memory.  I sit by my children at night, taping together a Halloween costume, hearing them recite Spanish phrases, helping with new math. I do this not because I am so enamored of new math (which is different from the new math I had as a child, which must now be old math and is still ghastly) but because I’m hoping that I can instill in them, in their minds and their hearts and in their very muscles themselves, how much they are loved. I want them to remember without even thinking about it, to simply know it the way their lungs know how to breathe, so that when our relationship isn’t as simple, when the questions are so much harder than  How do you say cold in Spanish? and What is the lowest common denominator?, their bodies will remember what their brains may not.

Does muscle memory come easily to you? When is it useful?  And if you have time, check out this gorgeous video which includes footage of my riding crush David O’Connor almost going off-course at the Sydney Olympics.  (It happens around minute 13, but the whole video is worth a watch.)

Fall

The days pass slowly, but oh! The years are flying by!

An Open Letter To Someone Who Just Turned Twelve

Whenever we see babies, I always think (and sometimes say) how much I wish you and your brother were still that age. If I say it aloud, someone — usually a stranger — will tell me I don’t mean it, that (insert age here) is a lovely age, too.

Here’s a secret: I do mean it. I mean it with all my heart.

I’d take three again, the year you had such terrible tantrums I feared for your well-being, actually called the doctor to see what I should do. I’d take three-almost four again, when you started preschool and we began that long, slow separation process that still continues today.

 Five, when you started kindergarten, and I watched you walk so bravely into a classroom filled with strangers, then went home and cried with your brother? Absolutely. The delicious chubbiness of nine months, when your elbows had elbows and your hair was something from a Shirley Temple movie goes without saying.

Even twelve. Someday, off in the very close future, you’ll be sixteen, and I’ll be longing for twelve — the year you are almost, but not quite, as tall as me, the year you’ve started a new school with new challenges and new friends and new opportunities, the year you’ve begun to look so much less like a child. Someday, I’ll see the year of twelve in a haze of golden light, because it will be a year that you were still mine.

You’re not, of course. You never have been. You have always been very much your own independent person. But it’s easier to pretend when you are little that I can hold you forever, keep you safe, keep you happy, keep your heart from being broken and your spirit intact.  I could still soothe your hurts with a hug or a kiss, distract you with a lollipop or toy. The hurts that are coming — and you will have some — won’t be banished so easily. The joys that are coming — and you will have those too — won’t be as easily shared. They will be your own, and you may tell me about them or you may not.

So I miss three. And eleven. And every single age you’ve been, even as each one takes you a step further down your own path. I’m glad I’ve been on this journey with you, glad to be your traveling companion, if only for a little while. No matter how far ahead you may wander, I’ll always be here cheering for you (quietly, so as not to embarrass you).

I may miss three, but I’m awfully proud of twelve.

Walkabout

Today two things happened: I realized I didn’t have a blog post planned, and my daughter thought the dog looked like he wanted an adventure. I will never say anything about blog posts in the dog’s hearing again, so help me.

My kids go to two different schools now, in two different towns with different schedules, and the Slobbering Beast does not like this. He hates when a kid leaves the house on his/her own, as my daughter does when she is carpooling, and this morning he stuck to her like glue. “I think he wants to go to school with me,” she said, and at her words he went and parked himself at the door. “He looks like he wants an adventure.”

We laughed about it and I moved him out of the way and then she left for school and I went up to have my own adventure waking the boy, but not before letting the Beast out. On days when I don’t drive the carpool, the routine is we wait for the girl to leave, The Beast goes outside for a short run around the house and a cookie from the neighbors, and then he comes in for breakfast. 

But this morning, he met his match. I heard a loud noise, like a flame-thrower — Whoosh, thump, whoosh, thump — but when I looked out the boy’s bedroom, didn’t see anything. About five seconds later, the phone rang. It was my neighbor, telling me a hot air balloon had almost landed in our yard. Now, the Slobbering Beast does not fear much, but apparently this thing descending from the sky was the breaking point for him. He galloped out of the yard and headed for the hills. 

I am blessed with very good neighbors. While I yelled for the boy to GET UP! GET UP NOW! and grabbed my car keys, they were already in action. One stayed at home to relay messages and three headed out to search. The boy and I looked too, with no success, until it was time for school. I was just heading back and turning onto the road where we hike when I got a phone call saying he’d been spotted on the trails. I looked ahead of me and there was another neighbor, waving me down.  I pulled in and started calling, and within five minutes the Slobbering Beast came crashing through the undergrowth, looking a bit wild-eyed. He’d taken the cookies the neighbors had bribed him with but wouldn’t let them grab him. I’m not sure if he was spooked or just enjoying his time off, but he’s back, looking quite content. 

Next time in the morning I will say something more useful, like “I wish the Slobbering Beast would bring home a million dollars,” and see what happens. Although perhaps he already did — my neighbors are worth at least that. (Thanks, guys.)

Feed and Water

I read this post a few months ago, and it has stayed with me almost every day since. It is so hard in today’s society to do something you are passionate about that doesn’t produce a dollar return, to make time for something just for the sheer joy it gives you. To give that something some of your best hours, not the ones you have to cobble together around work or family or other responsibilities. Like sleep.

I interviewed a group of women recently who have taken up hockey. Hockey requires logging lots of hours just to be good enough to stand on the ice, to move around without the puck. These are women in their forties, women with children and jobs and carpools and houses to run and dinners to make. And yet they are cheerfully going off and spending hours and hours each week learning to play hockey. I asked one of them what she planned to DO with these skills (because don’t we always have to DO something with our skills? Make something out of them? Turn a profit?) and she looked at me as if I was slow, and said “I’m going to keep skating, I’m going to get as good as I can for as long as I can. Because I love to skate.”

Duh.

It’s hard to put our passions first. It makes us seem selfish, or immature, or oblivious to the needs of those around us. Lazy, even. But sometimes our passions aren’t just what we want to do, they are who we are. And when we neglect them, we starve our souls.

Don’t forget to feed and water yours today.

Recap

It’s officially fall. We’ve made up one last batch of hummingbird food, but there aren’t any birds to eat it. The local farm has switched from selling petunias to stocking mums and is having a sale on sauce tomatoes. The crazy school-to-track-to-dance-to-soccer-to-flag football season has started.  But most importantly, I’ve switched my purse.

Not from Prada to Hermes (neither seems resistant to dog slobber and spilled juice, although I do like the latter’s saddle) but from my teeny tiny summer bag to the portable suitcase I carry around the rest of the year. In summer, to minimize my risk of permanently throwing out my back, I pare down and carry just the basics — my debit card, a lip gloss, a handful of Band-Aids (I said I pare down, not tempt fate), and maybe a few Evenfall cards.  It’s not a lot, but it is enough.

But yesterday I took my enormous leather September-to-June  bag down from the closet.  I filled it with the staples — the cards, the cash, the Band-Aids. Then I added everything we need to get through a typical day — the mini-bag with scissors, pens, pencils and tape for doing homework in the car;  a makeup bag so I can go from running to school without scaring small children; a stash of snacks in case someone’s blood sugar starts to fall; breath mints, gum, aspirin, an extra pen and notebook;  hair elastics, dog treats, and depending on the day, 1 pair of clean dry socks. (Never underestimate the power of clean dry socks to turn your day around.)  Just call me Hermione. 

But before I say goodbye to summer for good, I thought I”d do a shout-out of my favorite things of the past three months.  Herewith:

Favorite Sandwich: Roasted tomato, basil, mozzarella cheese, and roasted onion panini. I could eat this every day. (And did.)
Favorite Wine:  Matua Sauvignon Blanc.  Owned by Fosters — who knew?
Favorite audiobook:  A tie.  The kids vote for The Hero’s Guide to Saving Your Kingdom.  I’m partial to The Once and Future King, especially the first book. Best phrase: “WE are the sinners. HE is the blessed.” (Doesn’t look like much written down, but it’s pretty funny when intoned in a Welsh accent by an eight-year-old who has just been bagged for misbehaving.)

How I wish I could fit all of those things, plus this, in my bag:

Summer

How was your summer? And are you sad to see it go, or happy that it is fall?

Missing, One Summer

Have you seen it?  It is covered in lazy beach days and afternoons by the pool. Give me a call if you find it.  I’d really like it back. 

 

I Did Not Cry

Sun and shadow

Today was the first day of school, and it’s tradition for me to drop off the kids and then bawl my eyes out. Three years ago, when my son transitioned from kindergarten to first grade, I didn’t even make it out of the parking lot. The second grade teacher on parent duty had to pat me on the shoulder and tell me to keep my sunglasses on so I wouldn’t upset the students.

But today I didn’t cry. Part of that is because the schedule is different this year: My son actually started school last week, and my daughter was with me when we dropped him off.  (At his specific request, I did not exit the vehicle.)

“You’re not going to CRY, are you?” my daughter asked from the back seat, a sweet combination of comfort and amusement. So I put my sunglasses on, swiped away an errant tear, and spent the day enjoying her company instead of my usual first day ritual, which is to take myself off to the hill where I hike.  That day, when her brother started school, the girl and I were talking about something in the future. And I said, without thinking “That will be six years. Right around the time you start college.”

“Six years,” she echoed, and we looked at each other, a bit aghast. More than two-thirds of my time with her is through — it was light years ago that she was a six-year-old, starting school herself, and light years beyond that a tiny newborn, when what seemed like unending time spooled before us.

But today it was her turn to start school, a new place where I know she will be happy, since I have researched it as only an over-protective, ex-reporter can do. And still it was more than bittersweet, dropping her off at the door where she’ll spend most of her waking days, in a sea of teachers and other students I may only ever come to know by name.

“You’re not going to CRY, are you?” she asked from the back seat, amused and a little panicked. “Because if YOU cry, I’ll cry.”  And so I put on my oversized sunglasses once more and assured her I would not cry. I offered to walk her in on this first day, and she was willing to let me, but the boy was bellowing “GO GO GO! She’ll be fine! I have to get to school too!  Don’t cry!” And so I let her go.  I drove off, watching in the rear view mirror as we moved away from each other, she growing smaller and smaller in the distance.

And then I took the boy to school, where we met up with one of his friends, and they played ball in the back seat until it was time to go in.  And then at last, in the sudden silence, I drove to my hill. There are other places that are more beautiful,  that offer a longer trail or a more scenic one, but this spot is so tightly wound into the fabric of my children’s childhood that there is no other place for me on days when I need peace or comfort. In my mind the hill is always the green of springtime, with short new grass and robins overhead. And today, my first time there in several months, that picture is what I was expecting.

But of course it was different. It’s September now, not May. The grass is high, almost to my chest, turning brown along the edges, ready for mowing.  The tall grass tunnels in, narrowing your options, making it more difficult to choose another way.   In past years I’ve run to the top, but today I took my time, winded by the humidity and a summer spent choosing beach walks over pounding along the sidewalks. It was supposed to rain, and half the hill was cast in shadow. When I reached the top, I sat and thought about all the times I’ve done this route, and how often I’ve had a baby or a toddler or small child along with me.  And I might have shed a tear or two then.

But it is hard to be melancholy with a dog, especially one who has had to be polite and on-leash for most of the summer and suddenly finds himself with room to run. The Slobbering Beast stretched out his legs and spronged through the tall grass like a rabbit, urging me on with friendly persistence until at last I got up and took the path toward the woods, the trail curving along ahead of us, dark and mysterious, with secrets of its own for us to discover just around the bend.

Happy Beast