Libby Broadbent's Blog, page 8

The Rig Pig, my boy.

My son is working out west on the oil fields. He won’t be home for Christmas. How many other mothers in Nova Scotia are having similar conversations with their children across the miles, in the barren, frozen wasteland of Alberta?

Eli: It was minus 42 today, Maw.

Me: That’s cold. You dress warm?

Eli: I wear long underwear, two pairs of pajama pants, sweat pants, two turtlenecks, a sweater, a jacket, my work coveralls, two pairs of socks, two pair of gloves, a scarf, a touque and a polar bear wrapped around my shoulders. It’s not enough.

Me: Whaddaya do when you have to pee?

Eli: It ain’t easy.

The choice to work on the rigs is a strange one for my son. He’s educated as a personal trainer. Up until a few months ago, he didn’t know the difference between a pick axe and a jack hammer. Not that he isn’t resilient, his sisters took care of developing that part of his character, he just has never been mechanically inclined. Eli is witty, funny and charming, built like an ox, and so social it’s impossible not to like him.  The oil rigs seem like the absolute last place he would ever choose to work.

Eli is my second child, having the questionable good fortune to grow up surrounded by his three sisters, Aunt Kate and Big Mumma. Demanding women, all of us. When Eli was little, his sisters buttered his toast for him because they couldn’t stand the way he held his knife. His mother mocked him for years over his bad penmanship. His youngest sister has fixed more broken-down cars than he has.

His sisters have taunted him for years, calling him Peli, or Penisface. They mocked his early efforts at romance, telling girls he was gay, teasing him when he was hungover, making grotesque “orgasm faces” with their friends when he came out of the shower. I’m convinced it was this sisterly abuse that made him tough enough to withstand the abuse which is the life of the Rig Pig.

And it is abusive. The weather, the long hours, the physically grueling tasks, the isolation. Nova Scotians work hard, we understand bad weather, we can sweat and grunt and get dirty with the best of them, but we do it with family. We do it with community and good times and a beer at the end of a long day. The boys on the rigs get up at four, drive two hours to the work site, slog in the frozen mud for eight, ten, twelve hours a day, drive two hours back to the camp where they quite often have to share a room with a stranger, eat, sleep, and do it all over again the next day. And the next, and the next. My boy is working fourteen days in a row. Sometimes more.  And when I send him molasses cookies they’re stale by the time he gets back to his apartment in Edmonton and finds them crumbling in his mail box. That just ain’t right.

When Eli comes home… hopefully for a few days in the spring… he’s going to come into my classroom and talk to the kids about the reality of ‘working out west’. Without a trade, without experience and training, the life of the grunt is pretty bleak. Some of the kids in my classes talk about heading to Alberta after graduation. It’s the Land of Plenty, after all, and there’s no doubt that there’s money to be made. Eli often makes more than I do, with my two university degrees and ten years’ experience in a professional career, and that’s why he’s doing it. Logging the hours, paying off debt, saving for school. But it’s absolutely grueling work.

Eli: You never know how much weight you can actually lift,until you try to lift something you can’t.

Me: What do you mean?

Eli: The foreman said, “Eli, pick that up and move it over there.” I tried, but it was a million pounds and I couldn’t budge it. Then, the foreman said, ‘Youliftthatfuckingthing andmoveitthefuckoverhere beforeIfuckingkickyourfuckingass, youfuckinghearme?’

Me: Wow. What’d you do?

Eli: I lifted it.

Life on the rigs isn’t for the soft, the wimpy, the delicate. It barely sounds like it’s the life for any normal person at all, really. There’s very little training, very little tolerance of mistakes, very real danger… Eli had a week off when a machine nearly ripped his finger off. His glove has been yanked off his hand by a moving chain. A co-worker had his foot crushed. I tell him that I made all of his parts and pieces and he better come home with all of them still attached, or he’ll be grounded.

I want Eli to tell my students these things. I can barely make them pick up paper off the floor when they drop it, never mind get off their cell phones and pick up a pen. A kid told me recently that he couldn’t do any work because “it’s Monday morning, man. I can’t do work on Monday morning.” Another kid begged me, “go easy on us today, will ya? It’s Friday, can’t we just chill?”

Are these kids planning to go out west to make their millions? I hope not.

My son is going back to school to do paramedic training. He knows the rigs aren’t the life for him. They are just a means to an end for now… but that money is awful nice to have, and you don’t snub your nose at a good job, and yeah, it’s cold, but it’s only for a few months… that Nova Scotian work ethic is bred into our boys like breathing. But he won’t be home for Christmas, and he missed Thanksgiving, and I can’t send a turkey in the mail.

I’m proud of my boy. I love hearing his sense of humor when he talks about his job, and the crazy people he’s met and worked with. I’m amazed by his endurance, impressed that my child who didn’t butter his own toast is working with fierce machines in extreme conditions. But I worry. I want to feed him, or do his laundry, or some other menial Mommy task because I miss him.

Me: Are you eating ok?

Eli:  Maw, I ate an entire chicken dinner without taking a breath. And then I ordered another one. And I ate that too. Send me cookies, ok?

We miss our boys all the time… the husbands, sons, brothers, and also the daughters and sisters who have made the trek across the prairies… but especially on the holidays. Here’s hoping they all stay warm, and that they all come home soon.

Merry Christmas Eli, Peli, Penisface… your family loves you!

Les Misérables, in Liverpool

I’ve been involved with Liverpool’s Winds of Change Theatre Company for over twenty years, either on the stage, behind the scenes or cheering from the audience.  I’ve been to plays in London and New York. I can sing along to most of the soundtrack to “Chicago”. I love theatre. I love the smell of greasepaint in the morning. I love the music, the lights, the people, the thrill of an audience rising to its feet at the end of the final number. But I am also finicky and demanding, and often quite hard to impress.

The Winds of Change production of Les Misérables, staged this weekend and next at the Astor Theatre in Liverpool, NS, impressed me.

My God, did it ever!

There is a unique delight in seeing  people you know do something marvelous. I have the pleasure of knowing many of the cast and crew of Les Mis, and I have to admit a bias toward the production because these are people I teach, people I share lunch with, people I greet at the post office, people I admire… but my appreciation of this show goes beyond mere loyalty to my peers. While the show was not without minor opening-night glitches, it was a spectacle of delight for the senses which will linger with me for a very long time. There is so much to say… the costumes, the set, the lighting, the characters… but what truly sold me on the entire experience that is “Les Misérables” were the voices… ohhh, the voices!

It’s a tragically beautiful story, with haunting music, but what brought tears to my eyes at the end of every major number wasn’t the content of the plot, but the vocal beauty of the ensemble. This production showcases vocal talents worthy of Broadway, of Hollywood, of a recording I can listen to over and over again as Fantine mourns her fate in my kitchen, my car, my ipod; as Jean Valjean takes Marius home, as Javert sings to the stars… will you please make a CD, Winds of Change cast? We will buy it. We will sing along. I could listen to Laura Purdue sing about the rain in Paris and her unrequited love every day, while I make supper. My Love won’t mind that I cry into the potatoes.

And it wasn’t all about the leads. The chorus was remarkable. Everyone stayed in character. Everyone entered the stage with the look and demeanor of who they were meant to be. Whores were whores. Soldiers were soldiers. Drunks were drunks. The dedication and unity of the cast was obvious. Kayla DeLong was so expressive I forgot that she is actually a lovely young woman and not a nasty factory worker. Young Kinsey, and Raya and Grace were adorable and so homeless-looking it was easy to forget that they were up way past their bedtimes. The numbers where the entire cast were on stage lifted me from my seat, their voices, timing and harmony were so magnificent. And they were delicious to look at.

The set… oh my. There’s a scene toward the end when the young men are fighting at the barricade. I have to catch my breath even recounting it here. The set turns… or is it the audience who rotate slowly from one perspective to another? With perfectly timed precision, our hearts in our throats, the set moves, and takes the audience with it and you are forced to remain in your seat until the scene is over, even though you want to leap to your feet cheering, crying and shouting. The only thing that keeps you still is that you don’t want to miss what comes next.

I won’t even talk about Javert. His final scene is… riveting. Even though you may know the play, you may know the outcome and the fates of the characters, you are torn by his final moments on stage.

When we go to the theatre it is to suspend our disbelief. To throw ourselves into the lives of the brave players on the stage and be swept away. Les Mis accomplishes this magical feat almost effortlessly. Scene shifts to scene without a blackout, tableaus paint such strong visual images it’s hard to pay attention to the ongoing dialogue one is so immersed in the background picture, costumes and props are delightful… from the bosoms of the whores, to the rifles of the rebels, to the mutton chops on the men, the picture is complete.

Except for Javert’s hats. I’m sorry, but those things are huge!

And of course there were quirks… spotlights that occasionally wandered before they found their singer, mics that crackled softly, an orchestra that sometimes seemed too loud; and I wanted to hear so much more from the young McNamara… but when the intermission came I didn’t want it. I wanted more singing. At the end of the three hour show, I would have happily sat longer. My eyes still fill with tears when I think of certain scenes… Fantine’s achingly beautiful “I dreamed a dream”; the delightfully saucy Thenardier’s; everything the chorus sang; and Gavroche… oh, don’t do it, Gavroche!

And Kris Snarby. He teaches with me at LRHS, and I am going to ask the Snarbs to sing “Bring Him Home” to us every day at noon at school. I will be bereft when he shaves off his “lambchops”. Hell, I want the whole cast to serenade us with “One Day More”, just to see us through ‘til June! And I want to live inside every one of Eponine’s solos.

And I say it looks effortless. Endless hours of rehearsal, production meetings, lighting technicals that last until the wee hours of the morning, unexpected last minute changes, people travelling from Yarmouth and Halifax, sore throats, jangled nerves, too much hairspray, not enough sleep… but it is a labour of love. And a little bit of madness.

I could go on. I would like to mention every single cast member, every single song, but that would ruin it, and you, gentle reader, must simply go. The last I heard there were less than three hundred tickets still available. They are going to be snatched up in the next few days.

Call the ticket office at 354-5250 , or book online at astortheatre.ns.ca    (Buy Tickets)

Thank you. Thank you, Winds of Change. I’m going again next Saturday. I’ll be the one singing along in the balcony.

Follow Your Bliss: my road to MidLife Mache

I began MidLife Maché as a reaction to my divorce. Not so much a mindful response, as a knee-jerk reaction that seemed safer than excessive drinking or become Uber-Slut, both of which might have been options at the time. Divorce robs you temporarily of your sanity as you spin wildly amok in the brand new paradox of joyous freedom, and the terror of being free. I was married at 21, had four kids by the time I was 26, and was divorced at 40. I had missed several pivotal years of singlehood somewhere in that span, and maché seemed to fill the gap just nicely. Strange, yes, but I’ve never been much of a drinker and my divorce left me celebrating the fact that I would never have to have sex again… (until I met my darling furry lover… but that’s another story… Fifty Shades of Camo…) so alcoholism and promiscuity were safely off the list. And I still had kids at home. And so the maché began. Artistic pursuits, like yoga, like excessive drinking, like mache, are meditative practices that fill a void when you just don’t know if you’re going to lose your mind, or lose your house, or go to a Fire Hall dance and get laid by creepy guys waiting to take advantage of your weakened condition. I encourage you, my divorceé brethren, take up the flour and water instead of the box of condoms, or the bottle of bourbon. Find something you love to do, and do it.

This weekend I attended my first-ever craft fair, where, for the very first time, I asked nice people to give me their hard-earned cash for my little paper and paste creations. I was scared of this, and so I engaged the services of two of my spawn to accompany me. Hiding behind my children has carried me through many a frightening social occasion. I am a raging introvert. Crowds scare me. The Minor Hockey decade, with four kids, was a nightmare for anti-social me. So the three of us sat behind a table covered in maché… fishermen, cats, Santas, mermaids, copies of my three books… and my girls did all the adding for me, which was a blessing. My meagre math skills vanish in the face of public interaction. And I sold things. Lots of things. It was deeply satisfying to look at the long table of art items that I had made, and to watch them gradually diminish as the day went on. I am a deeply self-doubting person, and my children are wild at me when I talk about my books by saying things like “Oh, this one isn’t very good”, or “I didn’t know what I was doing when I wrote this one”, and they hate it when I give things away for free because I can’t imagine anyone paying money for them.  It’s entirely because of the encouragement I receive from my children that I am able to do book signings and promote my sculptures at all. It makes me really glad I didn’t become Alcoholic Uber-Slut when they were still little. I doubt they would be as supportive of those indulgences.

At the craft fair, I was asked several times to take commissions. The following is a dramatization of a wonderful conversation, with a lovely man and his wife who were requesting a personalized sculpture of their gay friend and his partner. Names have been changed, as has the actual dialogue, because that’s what I do:

Jim: Do you do the naked form?

Me: (Thinking he’s talking about how I make the sculptures) Um… well… I make an armature, then I build on…

Jim: No, no… do you do naked?

Me: I’m not going to do you naked, Jim.

Jim: I want Tom naked.

Me: Many men do, Jim.

Jim: And his partner. I want them both. Naked.

Me: Oh. You want me to make a maché of Tom and his partner, naked?

(My two daughters are peeing themselves behind me. I can hear them making squeaking noises.)

Jim: Tom appreciates the naked form. It would be very artistic and unique. Gardening.

Me: You want penises?

Jim: Lots of penises. Well, only two really. Two penises, please.

Me: Two penises… in a garden?

(Lori… lovely, sane Lori, Jim’s wife, joins us.)

Lori: With hoes.

Me: You want me to make two naked gay guys playing with ho’s in the garden?

Lori: Maybe just shovels. And naked, because it’s all about the art, the human form, you know?

Me: I can do naked. Send me a photograph.

(My girls are having seizures. One of them kicks me under the table.)

Lori: Sure, we have lots. (pause) Maybe a picture just showing their faces.

Me: That’s probably best, yes. I’ll just imagine the rest.

Jim: Thanks, Libby. We want them to be realistic too. Lots of  wrinkles and bumps. They’re kind of old; Tom is a bigger guy, and his partner is normal sized.

Me: Their penises?

Jim: Oh, I don’t know about that part. That would be kind of an awkward question, wouldn’t it?

Me: Apparently not for a maché artist, it isn’t. Yes. I’m on it.

I would never have had this moment of artistic interaction if I hadn’t found a creative release for my post-divorce anxiety, extinct libido, and general sense of terror that I would lose my house and my kids and my mind. My maché is becoming a quirky, silly little business that makes people smile. What a great feeling it is to watch people react to something I made, in my little introverted world, with smiles and giggles and pleasure. And then they give me money.

My advice to you, if you are wallowing in those holes we all fall into occasionally because of stress, or divorce, or unhappy jobs, or loss, or aging… follow your bliss.

Follow Your Bliss.

Even if you think your bliss is ridiculous, because it might just end up making you wildly happy, and it might make other people happy too. And then they will give you their money, and talk to you about penises, and your world will be complete.

Thanks for reading!

Lily’s Valley article in Liverpool Advance.

Lily’s Valley article in Liverpool Advance.

What a wonderful community I live in! Here’s an article in our local paper about Lily’s Valley.

NaNoWriMo

It’s National Novel Writing Month. NaNoWriMo. This means that all across the globe on the dawning of November 1st, eager writers are facing the blank page with fear and trepidation, determination and fortitude. 50,000 words in 30 days. No looking back, no one left behind, no excuses. It’s a gruelling fire-walk toward a novel. And it works. If you can write 1600 words a day. The trouble of it is that you have to start with the first. Word. On the blank screen.

Save me.

This is my fourth Nano, and I have three published novels to show for my previous efforts. I know I can do this. So why, when I woke at 5am this morning to pursue my normal writing regimen, why did I make a coffee, let the dogs out, check facebook, check email, sweep up the debris around the fireplace (yes, in Canada we have already started burning things for warmth), change the font settings on my computer, go outside and stand in the windy dark pondering the universe, tap the keys indecisively on my keyboard, decide to write about how hard it is to write… anything but start that first word? I have a first chapter already written. I have a loose outline. I have a plot with a tsunami and an epic voyage and nudist grandparents. I have my weiner dog on my lap. I have metaphors, dammit. So why am I writing a blog about how hard it is to start writing, instead of starting to write?

The Inner Voice, man. That damn bitch of an Inner Voice is running her blood red fingernails up and down my ego, playing timpani rhythms that chant “you suck” in several different languages. “You can’t do this. This novel is already lame. Take the dog for a walk, google Antwerp, paint your nails, loser, and leave the authorly stuff to the big boys and girls.”

I hate that slut. She lives for free and fucks with every character, every plot line, every carefully planned moment of suspense that creeps innocently out of my imagination. She dresses in trashy clothes and shows her underwear to old men. She smells like failure, bottled in sour wine and entrails. But she lives in the very tips of my fingers and sometimes she bites.

The blank page is an author’s greatest threat, which is why NaNoWriMo is such a powerful tool. 1600 words, kids. Just blast ‘em out. Don’t re-read, don’t edit, don’t worry that your main character started out at Jim but five pages in he’s turned into a Sharon… just keep going. Editing comes later. Boy, does it ever. But don’t go there right now! Just write! Write NOW!

“You suuuuuck like your grandma’s titties!”

Why did I just get up and check the temperature outdoors, make another coffee, google the geographical location of Antwerp and start singing the lyrics to the new Brett Eldredge song? Which I had to check to make sure I got them right?

That’s what she does. The Inner Voice. She thwarts.

My advice to you darling Wrimos out there who are also sitting at your writing device of choice, staring despairingly at the page, your carefully planned outline scattered like cat shit on the floor beside you, listening to your Inner Voice telling you that ornamental horticulture is the hobby for you… don’t give in! No one can write your novel but you. And in your heart-of-hearts you know that your bitchy Inner Voice is really your evil step-mother, or your elementary teacher who told you that you would never amount to anything, or your first boyfriend who dumped you because you were too fat… so you know what to do? Make the Inner Voice into a character. Preferably one you kill off in a violent manner, hopefully with zombies, dismemberment and an anal probe. That’s the writer’s revenge, isn’t it? Don’t listen to the voice that tells you no.

Rise above. Like water off a duck’s back. Prove it wrong.

I’ve just written 656 words in the past half hour. I’ve just found out that Clive Owen was born in 1964 which means he’s the same age as my sister who lives in New Zealand where it is currently 9:59 pm which means that their Nano first day is almost over and I only have now 709 words…

You suuuu…. NO! No I DON’T suck, you whore of verbosity! I just need to refresh my coffee, and have a shower, and check facebook…

It’s gonna be a long month.

There ain’t no app fer dat.

I recently attended an educational conference where I learned two things. One, tiny women can totally rock floral patterned tights, and technology is going to ruin us. I already knew the technology problem. I keep trying to jump on that beeping, clicking, buzzing digital bandwagon when all I get are bruised shins, but the floral tights were new to me. The tiny woman wearing them was Donna Morrissey… Donna Fucking Morrissey, people. Only one of the most famous Canadian authors on the planet, only an icon and role model for every Atlantic Canadian woman writer who has ever aspired to hold a pen, only five feet tall and tiny like summer. Summer that swears like a sailor. Donna (I’m gonna call her Donna, I don’t think she’ll mind), delivered the opening speech for the conference on the topic of developing story. How does the writer pull the story from their head to the page? She spoke of the elusive muse, the embers of memory from childhood, the serendipitous nature of inspiration. She wove anecdotes of her childhood seamlessly into practical advice about the process of writing and she made us laugh while she did it. In floral print tights. She said “fuck” several times, and we loved her for it because she’s Donna Fucking Morrissey and that woman can throw a flying fuck at a rolling donut any time she wants and turn it into a beautiful metaphor. At the very end of her talk she had to show a video clip of some material she’s been working on with the Department of Ed… the technology failed. It wouldn’t turn on, wasn’t logged in, and after five minutes of flurry, there was no sound. Donna was gracious and unflustered and she filled the moment with good humor and we all went about our day with a reason to smile. Our attention was riveted on her and her words for a full hour before the technology breakdown threw a brief wrench into the plans.

In the next sessions I attended, delivered by thoughtful, conscientious teachers volunteering their time to deliver information to their peers, the technology failed every time. In our education system right now there is a huge push toward technology use, especially for kids requiring adaptations. Ipads are all the rage, and any student deficiency in processing, or transcribing, or reading, or even breathing is addressed with the bandaid solution: There’s an app for that. Don’t get me wrong, and please don’t fire me, but I fear we’re leaping onto a lurching wagon while the horses stampede toward the cliff.

I’ve been doing a bit of vocabulary development with my grade 11 English class, as we read some Poe, some Atwood… they love it. I’m totally lying, they want to lynch me, they call me nasty names and weep when they come into the classroom but I insist that its good for them to know the meaning of words like emanate and prevalent and blasphemy. They curse the gods and my point is made. But, they want word banks. They want a block of the chosen words at the bottom of the page so they can get away with not-really-knowing-the-word-but-only-kinda.

Them: You could at least give us a word bank, ya know?

Me: That’s cheating. That just proves you don’t really know the information.

Them: No, that just gives us more chances to get it right. You’re mean.

Me: Sometimes you just need to know. You have to have a body of knowledge in your back pocket that is yours.

Them: No we don’t. We need a word bank.

Me: (getting mean) Do you think life comes with a word bank?

Them: YES! (they haul out their phones, ipads, ipods) We can google it. Google knows everything!

I don’t give them a word bank, but in my mind I’m swearing even more than Donna. This is their solution to everything, and adults are just as bad. At one of my sessions, where the expected ipad techno something-or-other wasn’t working, people were taking out their phones and taking photos of the presenter’s slides. The presenter, bless his cotton socks, congratulated them and cheered on this marvel of hand-held digital acuity, suggesting that this is exactly what students can do as well. Oh. I see. Instead of writing it down? Instead of having that moment of engagement between the text and the brain where a word passes, at least momentarily, through the student as they write down the information… just take a picture? Then, I guess, they can put it on facebook. Learning accomplished.

A delightful young teacher tried to deliver his session without the powerpoint he had prepared, because something glitchy had happened. He did what all good teachers do when what is planned can’t happen. He rallied, he improvised, he delivered his information even though he kept referring nervously to the blank screen behind him. “I was going to show you… I would have been able to… I had this all on the screen but…” A presenter can get away with that in front of a room of polite, sympathetic adults. Not so much, in front of thirty sixteen year olds who really don’t care about iambic pentameter to begin with… yet we are told that ipads will save us. At least until the wifi crashes, or the batteries die. Then, you’re pretty much on your own.

I realize I sound like a dinosaur when I suggest there is value in writing notes off the board. I’m not suggesting that method to be good teaching, and I don’t make my students do it, but I fear we are losing some of the real benefits of our “old-fashioned” ways of teaching. Ways of teaching that got most of us where we are today, with a backpack of vocabulary, skills and an ability to problem-solve which I fear we are not developing in our new generation of learners. We are facing ever-higher rates of anxiety in our students, greater numbers of learning disabilities, higher instances of spectrum autism, more students with lower skills, and less money to support their needs. Is there an app for that?

Donna Morrissey spoke of the embers of childhood memories supplying the inspiration for her stories. I once read a quote that suggested that everything you’re going to write about happened to you before you turned fifteen. Neil Gaiman tells us “to put it another way, our children and our grandchildren are less literate and less numerate than we are. They are less able to navigate the world, to understand it to solve problems. They can be more easily lied to and misled, will be less able to change the world in which they find themselves, be less employable. All of these things.”* What are our children going to write about? How are they going to face a challenging personal world? What are their memories and skills going to be, when their primary resource is an app, a google, a snap-chat?

We grew up without apps. We old tyrannosaurus adults who currently hold the reins of the runaway horses, eagerly tossing our children into the careening wagon, ipads intended to cushion their fall. I am, obviously, not totally against technology. Here I sit, merrily blogging, happily uploading my novels to amazon, cheerily chatting with readers who contact me to tell me how wrong I am… technology has a place and is a terrific resource, it’s just not all it’s cracked up to be. It fails. I fear it is failing our children.

I don’t want my students to leave my classroom with their only skill being mastery of a search engine.

I spent an hour with Donna Morrissey, completely engaged, fascinated, entertained. I learned more in that hour of digital-free instruction than I did in the rest of the sessions, which were intended to convince me of the value of digital instruction. Teachers today need Superman capes to leap the tall buildings of pedagogy. I think I may need to buy a pair of floral print tights to go with it, although I doubt I could rock them like Donna does. It might make my kids pay more attention to me, though. At least after they google who Superman is.

* (Neil Gaiman, theguardian.com, Tuesday 15 October 2013 14.51 BST)

Pretending to be an author

“I’m pretending to be an author, and you can too!”

This is the title I am contemplating for the book launch of my newest novel, Lily’s Valley. I feel it conveys just the right amount of fear and trepidation, while also begging people to believe in me enough to shell out eighteen of their hard-earned dollars for a copy of my book and a slice of my soul.

I always thought published authors rolled around in mossy fens of self-confidence, whilst blossoms of pride and ambition wafted their heady fragrance over the verdant fields of assuredness and fortitude… who was I kidding? Being a writer shrivels my gut. Publishing a novel is an act of vulnerability and torture. It’s like picking a scab off your most secret scars and then asking all your friends to come look at the mess you’ve uncovered, oozing and raw, hoping they’ll tell you it’s a beauty mark. Am I alone in this reaction? Are there actually confident authors out there who strut around feeling like the mountain has been climbed, the dastardly foe vanquished, the voyage home completed, or do they also just want to hide, with their weiner dog under their shirt, pretending they didn’t do it?

When people ask me about my novels, I invariably answer… “Oh yeah, I did that, but they’re just, you know, they’re not real books. Like, you know… real ? I published them myself, so you know, whatever… you want a free one?” And when I meet new people, or have an opportunity to promote my writing, I don’t. My Love tells people that I write, my kids tell people I write, if my weiner could talk he would tell people I write, but I say nothing. Because then they might want to read them. And that’s just embarrassing.

But I want people to read them.

I want people to enjoy them.

But I suck at promotion.

Lily’s Valley was a finalist in the Writer’s Federation of Nova Scotia’s Atlantic Writing Competition. So was my first novel, That Thing That Happened, in 2011. I have a handful of very lovely reviews on amazon for all three of my novels. (Thank you, darling reviewers!) I have been stopped several times in the grocery store by readers who have said very nice things about my books. Yet, I cringe every time I think about doing a reading, or a launch, and I am still amazed when the few stores that carry my print versions ask me for a few more copies.

They’re not real books, people. They’re just mine.

Putting a self-published book out into the world is like sending a feral child off to fend for itself in polite society. You’re terrified that it’s hands are dirty and it chews with its mouth open, scared that it might make bad smells and swear at nuns and policemen, but you’re powerless to bring it back in to tidy it up. You’ve let it go, and now that little brat is out there leaving a trail of peanut shells and used condoms in its wake and you just don’t want to stand up and say “Yup. That one’s mine.”

I am forcing myself to do a launch for Lily’s Valley, because it’s stupid not to. Right? I have copies of the book, I have to sell them, I want to get my work out to the masses… but it’s scary.  All of my books have pieces of me clinging to their pages. I believe every author bleeds themselves onto the page, even the ones writing about aliens on other worlds, or vampires, or paranormal un-dead space monkeys… my novels are about people finding their way when the shit hits the fan. They’re about kids struggling with the stupid adults in their lives. They’re about laughing at the darkest moment, about finding that one person whose clothes you want to rip off, about being real people when death and despair are just a breath away. And invariably they are about a hairy man, because I have one, and he makes everything right. My books are about my horrible step mother, my crazy-wonderful big sister, my children who inspire all my madness, my students, my friends, my fears, my past, my future… but at the same time none of it is real. No single thing is one single thing, and no one character is one person or moment or memory. That’s why I love doing it. The writing. I love the writing. I hate everything else.

I have students who beg to be a character in my next novel. I tell them yes. Then I tell them they’ll be the character I kill off, and they think I’m joking. (I’m not, Colton.)

So, I’m pretending to be an author… and Lily’s Valley is available on kindle and kobo in print and ebook format. And I feel I have things to say about being an Indie Author, about self-publishing, about the things I have learned over the last three years of my writing life… I just don’t know if anyone wants to listen. So I’m going to launch Lily’s Valley, at a lovely little cafe in Liverpool called Memories, and I’m going to tell whoever shows up what I’ve done while I’ve been pretending to be an author. Then maybe they can pretend too, and we can all hold each other’s hands while we jump into the fields of delight that are the author’s life. I think maybe I’m just allergic to the weeds.

Hairy nest

My leg hair grows inordinately quickly. I choose to see this as a sign of vigor, a sure indication that my youth has not entirely abandoned me and my body continues to thrust forth healthy growth with a fecundity that should inspire awe. I have wrinkles, my children are all grown and gone which makes me feel ancient, I have a hiccup in my giddyup, but man-o-man, can I grow leg hair.

I shave my legs regularly in the summer, because I can see them. With my poor eyesight, I can only see things clearly at a distance, and my legs are quite far away from my face. This explains the problem with with the tuft of hair I noticed growing out of the mole on my cheek . I noticed it in the rear-view mirror while I was driving, which I am still allowed to do although I’m sure my time is limited. The light was gently filtered through the windscreen, and the rear-view was tilted at just the right angle to reveal… not a single hair, not even a couple of hairs. A shrub. A shrubbery of grey hairs waved gently at me in the breeze from the open window. Judging by the almost tropical volume of said shrubbery, I would guess it had been there for quite some time.  I can’t see it when I look in the bathroom mirror so it’s still there, and I’ve grown quite fond of it. Men twirl their mustaches, I twirl my mole-hair. It’s a feminist thing.

I am hairy and half-blind, but I’m ok with that because I can shave my legs and I can remember all of my children’s names although I have to pause to accurately report their ages… 20, 22, 24 and 27.

I have a dear friend who has an infant… just turned one… all dimples and curly hair and cuteness personified. My friend sometimes asks me what I did with my children when they were babies, assuming, I suppose, that having raised four I would have some knowledge on the topic. “When did you start them on solids?”… “When did you let them cry at bedtime?”… I smile, and frown, and search my hippocampus, my medulla oblongata, my bank account and my fridge calendar but, nope. Nada. Zip a dee do da day. Those memories have rattled away in a blur of white noise like lego pieces being sucked up the vacuum.  I try not to destroy her beautiful new-parent hopes and dreams, but I am forced to respond:

“I don’t remember! That was almost thirty years ago, you! I remember when my child got her nipple pierced, I remember when I found an empty wine bottle in my child’s room, I remember when my child’s speeding ticket arrived in the mail…”

At this point my young-mother friend backs quietly away from me, clutching her infant son in her arms and covering his ears with her hands.

I have hazy sleep-deprived recollections of their infancy, but a vivid post-traumatic tic as evidence of their teen-hood. This explains the grey hairs. None of my spawn currently live with me, and it has taken me several months to come to terms… no… I actually haven’t come to terms with it yet, may never come to terms with it, but I am slowly learning to make it my own. The Empty Nest.

Have you ever seen an empty nest? Such a term engenders visions of crushed eggshells and scattered feathers, membranes from various body excretions dried and twisted into the very walls of the house. Mites. Poop encrusting the floor, which somehow renders the parent nostalgic.

“I remember when Junior used to shit himself. Boy, those were good times.”

It isn’t like that at all.

“I remember when Junior stole bowling balls from the bowling alley and rolled them down Main Street at 3am.”

Some things are better left in the past.

“I remember when Junior ran away in a torrential downpour on her bike, on the highway, and I thought she was probably dead in a ditch for about three frantic, life-altering hours, before she rolled in, soaked and contrite and I could start to breathe again although I had lost fifteen years off my life. Fun!”

Do these memories explain the abundance of grey foliage sprouting unheeded from random places on my face and soul? Probably.  But I miss them terribly, those crazy spawn. I’ve spent twenty-seven years with their umbilical cords wrapped tightly around my heart and I can feel myself gasping as those bonds loosen and they drift away to start their own lives. As parents we spend years preparing our children to leave the nest, it’s the ultimate goal, the “vacancy” sign of our success as parents is to have our kids flutter off independently and successfully.

And then we want them back.

There was a time when I didn’t have a free moment to shave or pluck or pee by myself. I remember wondering if I would ever not have someone’s sticky hands glued to mine. Now I have all the time in the world to exfoliate in peace and quiet… sigh. Had I known how much I would miss those sticky hands… but, I can only see things clearly at a distance, after all.

If Marilyn Monroe had lived longer, she would have had mole hair in that beauty mark. Then, mole hair would have become an iconic beauty trend. Just sayin’.

I think I’ll just twirl my mole-hair until my kids come home for a visit.

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I fail at shawpping.

On Long Island, NY, they pronounce coffee… cawfee. Daughter is dawtah.  Dog is dawg. Beer is beah. There’s a plethora of w’s and h’s in their speech that leaves you wondering if these wonderful, funny, generous people are being serious. Like, do you really talk like this, all the time?

“We’ll grab a cawfee once my dawter gets up. The dawg usually wakes her up when he bawks.”

My love and I had an adventure in a far distant land. We drove eighteen hours to Long Island from Nova Scotia… where is it said that we also have a strange accent, but I dunno wut yer talkin’ aboot, cuz we don’t say nuthin’ weerd heeyah… that’s heeyah, as in here… the purpose of our adventure was to annoy the border security.

No, that was just a bonus.

We went to breed a dog.  International canine romance.  My love breeds Chesapeake Bay Retrievers and the love connection was being pimped out in Long Island. That’s “Lowng Oyland”.

For us in Nova Scotia, going to the States means shopping. I have friends… lovely, fashionable friends who own more than one pair of shoes and more than five pair of underwear… what? One for each day of the week. Weekends are panty free laundry days… anyway… my stylish friends go shopping in Maine a couple of times a year, and they come home with BARGAINS! A plethora of shopping delights, and as a result, they don’t wear the same outfits to work every week. Like some of us. Who shall remain nameless.

I do not shop. I own two pair of jeans and three sweaters and five panties. I haven’t owned a fall jacket since I was fifteen. I use a black marker to hide the scuff  marks on my five year old womanly shoes. I asked my shopping friends where I should go to shop, determined that I too would bask in the commercial glow of cheap clothes, coming home with baskets of new outfits and five-dolla shoes, the accumulation of which they make seem so effortless.

The Christmastree Shop, I was told. Marstens. Target. The Dress Barn. LLBean.

The Salvation Army Thrift Store, my daughter said. She knows me best.

My love, the Great Camo Hunter, drew a straight line from our front door to the parking lot of Cabela’s. Dick’s. And several other outfitter’s along the way. I was perfectly happy with this, because Cabela’s has a HUGE display of stuffed everything from zebra to groundhogs and if you can’t enjoy a good taxidermy display there’s something wrong with you.

We bought hunting supplies. We encouraged romantic canine liaisons. We ate gumbo made by our delightful hosts while we teased them about their accents. I fretted about the shopping.

I bought a tank top and a pair of flipflops. That’s it.

We’re allowed to bring $800 of goods back across the border… I spend $12.95.  Not for lack of trying… we went to all the recommended shopping venues… I just couldn’t do it! I can’t spend American money any easier than I can spend Canadian money! I am doomed to go panty-less every weekend for the rest of my unfashionable days!

“If you wanna go shawpping, I can take you to the mawll aftah my dawtah has her breakfast.”

Even with the gentle intervention of our hosts, my wardrobe remains woefully bare.

I fail at shawpping.

I did buy a kayak, though. It’s green. Me and my shitzu, Max, happily paddle around the river and it is probably the best purchase I’ve ever made. Is it a problem that I paddle naked?

Max in the kayak on the Medway

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Giiiiit!

It’s June, beautiful June, and I despair that I am losing the battle.

This is not the despair of the unexperienced, not the despair of the uninitiated. I’ve been teaching for ten years. I’ve raised four children. I have survived everything from Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, to the advent of facebook. I have been sworn at, cursed at, blasphemed at, spat at… I once had a kid tell me I was a pain in the ass. I have stopped fights, dried tears, wiped up blood, settled relationship disputes… all in my classroom, never mind what my own kids have put me through.

But this semester… this semester I have taught grade ten English. To thirty-two darling fifteen year olds. Thirty-two fifteen year old Millenials, if I may use the word with the kindest of sentiments.

First of all, let me say how much I enjoy them. Don’t get me wrong, they exhaust me. They frustrate me. They leave the room at the end of a 75 minute class and I have to lie on the floor for ten minutes to recover. But they’re funny. They smile, they say hilarious things, they laugh at my jokes and my ridiculous accents that pop up when whenever I talk about literature or Singapore noodles. They seem to genuinely like each other, for the most part, and they seem… oddly enough… to like me, especially when that vein in my forehead starts pulsing. But…

They do not read. They have incredibly short attention spans. They have limited control of grammatical elements. And everything is boring.

Everything.

I try.

I have a curriculum to follow, of course. We have to read, we have to write, we have to view and talk and share and consider and persuade and infer and visualize and text the guy two seats over and take a photo of the teacher when she’s not looking and go on facebook because WTF? Did you see that picture she put up of herself?

I try.

Thirty-two bodies is not to be underestimated. When they are all in attendance I can barely make my way through the room to distribute papers. Papers? Oh yeah, didn’t those die out with the dinosaurs?

This group of students are, for the first time in my experience, truly addicted to technology. Cell phones and facebook have been present for several years in the schools, and the issues around them have gradually been increasing, but this is the first year that I find myself losing the battle. I’m not just meaning the battle of “put away your cell phone”. That part of it is easy. I take them. I put them on my desk… the ones who are brazen enough to hold them in front of their faces while I’m instructing. Five cell phones buzzing, clicking and flashing on my desk. Twenty-seven cell phones vibrating in pockets. These are children who can text blindfolded in a howling snow storm on a mountain peak surrounded by slavering wolves. With a sense of entitlement. They dare that wolf to chew off their arm before they’ve finished their text message. I am not winning.

The texting takes an even more subversive role when it comes to classroom management. If a kid leaves the room and I either go into the hall to find him, or reach for the phone to get the office to search for the wayward child, his friends are texting him before I even cross the threshold. “She’s coming to get you.” They text each other from across the room as I am mingling while they use the laptops, alerting each other seconds before I see them on facebook, or kijiji.

Full points for Surveillance Techniques and Evasive Maneuvers, neither of which are curriculum outcomes for English 10.

But it’s not the physical addiction to the cell phone that is the problem here… it’s the evolution of these kids that is making it hard for me to adapt to their ways. They want immediate gratification. They want the answer NOW, they don’t want to problem solve, they don’t want to actively ponder and sort and find their own individual creative solution… they want to google. Google knows. “Why don’t you just google it?”

These children have no filter. The social barriers that would not be crossed when I was a kid, and when my children were kids, are melting. It seems that if you can post anything on-line, you can also talk about anything in-class. If there is no restriction on what you can read, and see, and share, and like in the digital world, why should there be restrictions in the real world? I hear graphic discussions about sex, drugs, family situations, crime,  inappropriate slang and teasing, and of course the ever-present F-bomb… things that I did not hear ten years ago when I started teaching, things I did not hear even five years ago. When I shut them down… with the twitching forehead vein in full hyper-pulsating mode… they look at me and say:  “What? What’s wrong?” They honestly don’t see a problem with their conversations, in a classroom, right in front of a teacher’s desk, with a teacher sitting in it.

They apologize… and continue talking, because they “aren’t finished yet.”

But I love them. They are so, SO funny. These kids have wit and charm and sarcasm at their fingertips. Without a filter, they often amaze me with their eloquence. And at times, they are so foul.

“This is fuckin’ stupid.”

“I hate this fuckin’ shit.”

“Who the fuck cares?” : This, in response to Shakespeare.

“Whaddafuckyadodatfer?” : This, in response to one student drawing a penis on another student’s binder. (We didn’t draw phallic symbols when I was a child. Pot leaves, yes. Peace signs, yes. Penises? No.)

“Giiiiiiiiiit.”:  This, in response to almost everything.

Translation: “Giiiiit”, is a monosyllabic exaggeration of “Please remove yourself from my personal space, field of vision, general vicinity, and life”. It is accompanied by a hand gesture reminiscent of an Italian Pizza Chef giving the backhand to an annoying delivery boy who has made a bad smell in the vicinity of the pizza oven.

“Giiiiiiiit!”

For maximum auditory impact and accuracy of delivery, the “iiiiiit” sound must be somewhat guttural, as if one is attempting to expel a small rodent from one’s esophagus. It takes a while to get it right, but once one has mastered the intonation and appropriate physicality of both the gesture and the enunciation, it is surprisingly effective. Try it. Raise your left hand to ear level, palm facing you, fingers erect, thumb clenched strongly against the side of your palm. Wave your hand toward the offending Bad-Smell-Producer as though calling upon the Gods of Frustrated Teachers and Parents the World Over and articulate your displeasure with a good-old-fashioned, gutteral “Giiiiiiiiiiit”. One small wave of the hand for each i of the “Giiiiiit” is quite dramatic. I tried it with my weiner after a particularly offensive exhalation and found it most effective. (Weiner dogs are very sensitive.)

This has been the running joke all semester, as it is a phrase that encompasses a world of meaning in one syllable. That’s what these Millenials seem to want from the world. A gesture, a word, something quick and easy that gets to the point so they can move on to more important things, like twitter. I’mlinking a video here by Sulibreaks which is brilliant piece of spoken word poetry that speaks to exactly what young people are looking for in education today. I get it. I sympathize. But what does this mean:

“So this one is for my generation, the ones who found what they were looking for on google, the ones who followed their dreams on twitter, pictured their future on instagram, accepted destiny on facebook.” (Breaks, Suli. “I will not let exam results decide my fate” 2012)

Um. Destiny on facebook? I think this is a whole other blog post. For when I feel stronger.

It’s the end of the school year. I’m exhausted. The little darlings wrote their final exam today and I am through with them until next September when many of them will come back to me for Grade 11 English. Until then, I will bask in the good memories… or try to erase them from my soul.

But for now? Giiiiiiit!

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