Lynn Rankin-Esquer's Blog, page 5

The Path of Failure (The Short History of a Writer)

I recently saw a Twitter thread started by a writer that posed the question ‘who was the first person who encouraged you to write, who said, hey you are good at this you should pursue it?’ and it was a fascinating read. I did not have a quick answer to that question.

I remember wanting to write almost as soon as I learned to read. I wrote little stories and illustrated them and lived very happily among the Wild Things. I must have showed those stories to people but I don’t remember much about their reactions. Probably something along the lines of the ‘I love those colors!’ kinds of comments you say to five year-olds when they bring home yet another finger painting from preschool.

I wonder, did I never actually say it out loud? Never say I was thinking of being a writer for a career? But surely my actions, writing and reading and writing, surely that signaled the desire. 

I went off to college, a premed major. LOTS of people praised that choice, lots of encouragement when you say you want to be a doctor. At college discovered I could pretty easily double major in Biology and English. I couldn’t believe I got college credit to read books and write papers about them, it was so easy it seemed like a scam. I got all A’s in my English classes and not all A’s in the rest of my classes.

And sophomore year I won a writing award. I didn’t even know there was one, just got a letter in the mail after I returned home that I had won the Bucknell Prize for Women for excellence in English composition and literature.

I had gotten lots of good specific feedback on papers but that is the first time I felt encouraged in any significant way to write beyond class assignments, and I don’t even know how I got picked. There is no face to attach to that encouragement. I’m going to pretend it was Professor Michael Payne who singled me out, I took every class he taught. If he had offered a class called Old White Male Authors Pontificate on Their Prostates, I would have taken it, he was that magnificent of a teacher.

The award was presented at convocation when school started again. My boyfriend did not come me watch me receive it. He was majoring in mechanical engineering and fraternity hijinks. No encouragement for artsy-fartsy types in that group.

I’m pretty sure I heard a lot of ‘what job do you get with an English major’ type comments from my family and my friends at college (it’s a fair question), and when I decided I didn’t want to go to med school I switched to psychology. I ended up in graduate school for that, and it turned out to be a worthy career, full of interest and challenge.

 Flannery O’Connor said about writing, ‘I lent some stories to a country lady who lives down the road from me, and when she returned them, she said, “Well, them stories just gone and shown you how some folks would do,” and I thought to myself that that was right; when you write stories, you have to be content to start exactly there—showing how some specific folks will do, will do in spite of everything.”

Psychology gave me a deeper understanding of how (and why) some folks will do in spite of everything. And it made me even more curious, and that is never a bad thing for a writer.

There is a lot of failure in writing, it can be a lonely process where you are faced, time after time, with falling short, no one to blame but yourself. It occurs to me that I lucked out, that I would not have handled a writing career well as a young woman, as someone in my twenties with too few failures under my belt. Or maybe more accurately, too few triumphs over failure. A soft and privileged person, I was then.

I’m not sure I handle failure well even now, but psychology and age brought me some gifts. I have way more fortitude, more resilience tricks up my sleeve, a thicker skin, and enough failures to know there rarely is such thing as an end. There is the beginning of things and the middle. The end is just the beginning of something else. A rejected manuscript is not an end, it has many more lives to live. It can be submitted to someone else. It can be revised. It can serve as the footstool that lifts you up enough to write the next story, better. It can show you that the rejected story was the thing you needed to create in order to get to the thing that you wanted to create.

The past few years I’ve had people encouraging me to write and I deeply appreciate them, but I have realized that the person who encouraged me the most, from the beginning up until this very minute, was the wild little girl in love with words.

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Midday Moment of Peace

I’ve read so many books on how to calm one’s brain, on meditation, psychology, self-help, brain structure. I studied it, got several degrees in it, taught it, have been paid to lead people through it. There is a big area of my brain devoted to the understanding of how to calm oneself.

Funny thing though, having the knowledge doesn’t translate into calm. You have to actually do the things.

I read once that if a psychologist was presented with two doors, one labeled ‘heaven’ and the other labeled ‘lecture about heaven’ the psychologist would choose the one labeled ‘lecture about heaven.’ We so often prefer to analyze something instead of just experiencing it.

I meditate every morning and sometimes the calms lasts as long as through breakfast. Nothing left of it by lunch and usually I just plow on through with the day. But today, for a few moments in the middle of the day I walked the walk. Well, I breathed the breath might be a better way to say it.

Put my phone in another room.

Did some deep breathing, the kind where your stomach moves in and out, not your chest.

Intentionally put my attention towards little good things. A cool breeze through the window at night. The birds tweeting to wake me up. Good coffee. My dog following me around the house all day. An unexpected compliment from one of the teenagers in my house. (“Mom, mirrors are weird. When I see your face in the mirror I see wrinkles around your mouth, but when I look straight at you, no wrinkles.”)

It was, for the moment, a comfy-cozy-smooth moment of peace. It was, for the moment, enough.

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Pillow Fight – Grown Up Edition

There is a belief around my house that the magic elixir to a good night’s sleep is the right pillow, that one exists somewhere, an enchanted amalgam of height, weight, shape, and materials. Legend says it will smooth the way to a restful night, restoring all mental and physical functioning while you snooze. Assuming of course one remembers the melatonin a half hour before bed. And keeps the TV volume down low enough that the one who didn’t want to watch TV at all could still fall asleep. And if you don’t have to pee too many times in the night.

But I digress.

In his search for the holy grail of neck support Husband has tried soft pillows, hard pillows, memory foam pillows, hollowed out pillows, a rolled up towel, a thicker rolled up towel, a thinner rolled up towel, and sleeping on the floor.  This has been going on for years. I’m mildly amused by it, and periodically check in on the effectiveness of the most recent contestant.

Recently Son started complaining of neck and back soreness in the morning, presumably (in my non-expert opinion) related to the newly installed squat rack in our garage (a lot of weight lifting going on out there, usually accompanied by grunts and pounding rap music, it’s like, as my friend Ann likes to say, our very own prison yard). Son being such a mini-me to his dad (their baby pictures are distinguishable only due to dad’s being printed on Kodak paper) Son is sure the right pillow will cure it. He asks for a different pillow and the second generation holy grail quest commences.

My own search is over, I found my pillow groove a couple of years ago. A mid-weight memory foam, molded pillow, the kind that has a minor dip in the middle and a lightweight regulation size pillow for my knee pillow (if you are over 40 and don’t use a knee pillow, who even are you?). This combination sends me to the land of dreamy dreams and back again unscathed, neck and back aligned like a twenty-something yoga teacher.

This is how much I love my son. I gave him my pillow to try. From his collection he traded me back a pillow that was similar, a lighter version of the dip in the middle but less memory foamey.  That one worked for me too (supporting my claim to most adaptable in this family, at least as far as pillows go). I’m no princess and the pea, like people who shall remain unnamed.

The other night Husband looked around his side of the bed and started frowning. What happened to all his pillows? He is now down to a little knee pillow (that used to be my knee pillow until I decided I needed more heft and size and traded up).

“How did I end up with only this little knee pillow?” he looks at me, bewildered and then accusing.  “Where is my pillow? I used to have at least three good pillows and now I have this.”

He flings the little knee pillow (that started life as a couch decoration and was already flattened before it transitioned to knee pillow status, if we are being honest) towards me. “How am I supposed to sleep on that?”

I shrugged. “That used to be mine. I haven’t used it for a while. I don’t know how you have it.”

I looked at his area of the bed. “What about your towels?”

“They aren’t working.” He looks closer at my pillow and before I can stop him, he grabs it, pulls the pillow case loose and stares at me with full on accusation now. “This is MINE!”

I snatch the pillow back from him. “No, this is mine now. I traded Son for it.”

I pull the pillow tight to my chest. “I’m not giving it up. My back feels fine when I wake up in the morning. My neck feels fantastic. I’m not giving it up.” Who would give back the holy grail, I ask you?

“That wasn’t his to give!” Husband yells.

We both charge into Son’s bedroom, interrupting his gaming.

“What the –?” Son says, “What do you want? I’m playing. It’s late!” Son manages to convey outrage and disgust without even a flicker of a look away from his game, his fingers clicking wildly on his keyboard. (Apologies to his future spouse, he has reached Jedi level skills in the art of discussion without eye contact.)

We ignore him and start flipping covers around on his bed to find all the pillows. There are at least eight, most of them castoffs from the holy grail search. I triumphantly find my old pillow and brandish it to husband. “See! I told you. I traded this for my pillow.”

“It wasn’t his to give you!” Husband insists again. “I wasn’t done with that pillow.”

“Get out,” Son says, still laser focused on his game.

“I’m taking the pillow,” Husband says, grabbing my old pillow.

“No! I need that to sleep!” Son says, head never moving. “What’s wrong with you two? It’s 11:30, go away.”

We shuffle out, clutching our pillows.

Here’s the thing. I said I’m the most adaptable, but I was really happy with my current pillow set up. I didn’t want to adapt, again. My back and neck were just fine. Why mess with that? Why take the chance of two people misaligned when you could just have one?

“Let me help you roll your towels up again,” I offered, sitting on my pillow so he couldn’t grab it.

“Hrmff,” Husband said, neck propped up by a towel and the old little knee pillow.  I noticed that the volume on the TV was set extra high that night, but it seemed a moment made for adaptability so I let it go.

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Friendship

Our lives can get crazy so fast and in the hustle to work and take care of your family and yourself and your house and your pets it is easy to forget what is really important. This quote reminds me to be still and being still reminds me what is truly of value to me. The picture is of Lake Tahoe in winter and I took it a couple of years ago while out on a dock with a dear friend, Karen Coane. Not much of higher value than a friend. Not too many things more worthy of your attention, your time, or your heart, than a friend.

Bending Toward Love

I’m sitting at my desk in the bay window at the front of our house, looking at the tree across the street. We’ve lived here almost three years and this is the first time I’ve really looked at that tree. It is winter and the leaves are all off it except for some clumps in two different V’s that look like nests. The morning sun, coming from the south, is shining so brightly on the whole left side of the tree, lighting up every branch, outlining them like a half halo. I’m enjoying this beauty, this light on the ever dividing smaller branches and then I realize something else.

Many of the branches, especially the ever-smaller ones, bend towards the left.

They grew towards the sun! It makes the tree seem even more alive, like it has a preference, a longing for the sun, like I long for God, like I bend towards love when I allow myself to perceive it. I can imagine a cell dividing as a tender little branch grows and it feels warmth in one direction and cold in another so it unfolds itself near the warmth. And then the next division does the same thing, cell by cell building towards light and warmth.

These days of pandemic fatigue and political unrest keep my brain always whirring, unpleasantly. But as I look at the tree, watch the sun shift around its branches, imagine the imperceptible but continual reaching of new growth toward the sun, the whirring slows, stops.

I am reminded of a quote from the novelist James Caroll:

“We spend most of our time and energy in a kind of horizontal thinking. We move along the surface of things… [but] there are times when we stop. We sit still. We lose ourselves in a pile of leaves or its memory. We listen and breezes from a whole other world begin to whisper.”

I watch the birds, moving in and out of the sun in the tree as they peck at its trunk for bugs. I watch an elderly man and woman shuffle by, masked up, heads facing forward as if they don’t see me sitting here in my bay window staring out at them. I see the man slip his hand into his wife’s hand as she takes an unsteady step.

Today, the breezes are whispering that we are all bending towards love.

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Breaking New Year’s Resolutions

I’ve been thinking about New Year’s resolutions and how quickly they get broken. For example, who, starting dry January, could have predicted a Jan 6 insurrection? I’m not a fan of New Year’s resolutions because I don’t think there is anything magical about that day and in fact I think making a resolution and failing can make things feel even worse than you felt before you tried. That said, I think there are lots of things that are worth trying to change and I deeply believe change is possible. I also think that that some changes are really hard to make and might take many, many tries. And how sometimes the thing that really allows us to eventually do the thing or break the habit is grace, being welcomed back for yet another attempt.

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Magic in the Midst of Upheaval

Not long ago I took this picture walking at the Baylands Nature Preserve, a protected marshland along the bottom side of the San Francisco Bay. It was just a normal day, the sun dropping in the sky over the Santa Cruz mountains like it does every day. It was dazzling, like someone tossed a handful of diamonds and fairy dust across the water. If it isn’t cloudy, this is what you can see any day of the year. Looking at it filled something in me. Even looking at the picture fills something in me.

Which is a good thing because this year has torn more than a few holes in me. Most days I can’t keep up with mending or filling them. But this day, looking over the water, watching the peaceful ducks who had no concept of politics or pandemics, I felt full.

Most of us are just hanging on, waiting for those moments that soften the jagged edges of this year. Realistically, moments are all I can get these days. I don’t expect long hours of peace, let alone days of it. Not yet, anyway.

But I’m finding that if I get myself out into nature, even if it is just walking in my neighborhood, I can remember that great W.B. Yeats quote:
The world is full of magic things, patiently waiting for our senses to grow sharper.

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Holy Night

Craig and Karen Coane have hosted a Christmas caroling party for over a decade. They have the perfect house for entertaining, open floor plan, cool back deck and back yard, a stunning kitchen. Everyone brings food, mostly crockpots of chili, every variation you can imagine. It is festive and fun and everyone is chatting and enjoying each other and then Craig tunes up his guitar and starts the caroling practice. People are slow to stop talking to each other but eventually we are all pulled in to the music. And then it is time to head out into the neighborhood.  I’ve noticed that over the years, more and more people forego the caroling part of the caroling party, lagging behind inside, enjoying the warmth and the food and the good conversation.  This year, of course, it didn’t happen. But last year, it did. Last year, it had rained on and off all day and it was dark and foggy outside. Their beautiful house felt even more cozy. Fewer people than usual headed out to sing.

Karen sent a messenger inside to remind people that this was a caroling party, after all. Someone grabbed the microphone and shamed everyone into heading out to sing. We love Craig so much that we all went. The first house or two had people welcoming us. Then we hit a run of houses with babies sleeping, the parents at the door wide eyed in their pleas for silence. And then some houses where no one answered the door. And then a couple more welcoming folks. We sang, chatted on the way to the next house, sang again. The fog gave an eerie look to the world, everything fuzzy, all sharp edges gone.

Eventually, we got to a house we go to every year, one towards the end of the route. There is an old couple who live there, they are slow to open the door but the festive wreath and the porch lights signal they are home and we should wait. Eventually the door opens to reveal them in their robes, beaming and happy to see us.  Last year when the door finally opened it was only the man. He told us that his wife had passed away in June. And then tears started to slide down his face.

The group went silent. The laughing and chatting that had accompanied the whole trip stopped. While the rest of us stood tongue-tied, Craig seamlessly shifted from gregarious to compassionate. In a soft voice he told the man he was so sorry to hear that. The man talked about how much they looked forward to the caroling. How much his wife had looked forward to it. And Craig offered more kind words, shifting the whole group into a supportive mood. And then we sang Silent Night. Everyone cried. Even the man as he sang along, his face crumpled in grief, his voice cracking, tears streaming. Even the pack of sixteen-year-old boys who, surprisingly, were still along, still singing, seemingly forgetting for this one night that singing carols is uncool.

For the length of that song we were with that man in his grief. I’d like to think it offered him some company in his sadness, a lessening, for a second, of his profound loneliness. I loved every person in that group in that moment. I felt connected to every person, to the man, to life itself in all its gifts and losses. Singing with that man was a reminder of what life is really about, being truly present with each other in all the parts of life. I will never sing Silent Night again without thinking of that man and that night. I’m not sure I’ll ever sing it again without tears.

Craig has been a musician his whole life. He brings the music wherever he goes. He has a relentless cheery outlook. Without being the least pushy, he inspires people to enjoy life, to sing even if they have no great voice, to dance even with poor moves. Even people who don’t know him are pulled into his charisma, as evidenced by the bartender at the Field of Dreams in Manteca who said ‘you do you Boo!’ to him, as evidenced by the ski resort employee who sold him lift tickets and said, ‘here you go, Craig-a-licious.’  People are drawn to him and it is fun to watch.

Although he is an accomplished musician, it wasn’t Craig’s skill with music that made this moment – it was his skill with people.  He inspired us to get out and sing, which brought us to the very place we were most needed. And he responded with compassion and tenderness to a heartbroken man. He turned an awkward situation into a holy one.

This year in particular we are all in need of a holy moment. My family just watched a Christmas Eve church service online. The songs were beautiful, the message was meaningful but the separation and distance of not physically being in church left me a little cold. And then the last song of the program was Silent Night and I was transported back to that foggy, damp night singing to the grieving old man. And just like that, the magic of Christmas found its way back to me. We will find a way to love each other despite distancing and illness and political divides. We will find it, through music, through empathy, through the mundane conversation, through extending extra grace, through taking turns being the ones to find a path to empathy. It might come in singing a song, or it might come from telling the checkout girl you like her pink hair, or it might come from showing understanding to a misbehaving teen instead of anger. It will come from looking for moments of grace, of that I’m sure. It will come from allowing fate to find us, which requires an openness that isn’t the default option for some of us.

I believe that fate found Craig that night, inspired him in the exact way to comfort the old man. I believe fate can still find us all, in big ways and in small ones. I believe love and inspiration is still here, looking for us. It could find me today, or you. It isn’t gone from the world. It’s just waiting for an opening.

[this story was originally part of a longer post https://wordpress.com/post/lynnrankinesquer.wordpress.com/321 ]

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An Ode to my All-Clad Pans

Dear All-Clad Pots and Pans,

I would like to take a moment and thank you for your long and esteemed service. This by no means suggest I am retiring you, as you have not faltered in your assistance in any way over your over thirty years with me. No, this is just a mid-career recognition of all you do for me, and my family. Consider this a written version of a Lucite commendation plaque.

Yes, you were quite pricey but there were those who told me you would be worth it, and they were correct. The long duration of your time with me has turned the high initial cost (a $240 frying pan???) into literally pennies a day. You are reliable and beautiful, the work horses of my kitchen. You are solid and so well made I would call you well crafted. You have withstood over thirty years of use without thinning or getting dented. Amazingly, the non-stick surface is still non-stick. The stainless steel still shines.

Of course, I have done my part. I have hand washed you every time I have used you. No harsh and indiscriminate dishwasher for you. You get a sudsy soak in a lovely bath, no scratchy scrubbers just gentle sponging, followed by a soft toweling off before you are returned to your private drawer. I would never ask you to cohabitate with the cheap fly-by-night Teflon pans that get switched out every year or so when their Teflon inevitably wears away. You are royalty and should not rest next to the hoi polloi.

My lovely pans, you have withstood my fondness for new trends, outlasted the cast iron, the sous vide, the crockpot, the Dutch oven, the air fryer. Sure, I still use all those things, but not with the day in and day out regularity of you. My All-Clad, you are secure in yourself, never jealous of the other cookery. You know I depend on you, like foundation garments or toothpaste. Daily in your value. Not showy, just quietly reliable, my own private Jeeves.

You joined my family in Pennsylvania and have moved with me from PA to NC to Palo Alto to Thousand Oaks to Berkeley to Moraga and back to Palo Alto. In a way, you are my posse. Always with me, always got my back, never judgmental. Of course, I had to do some serious training with family members who joined me after you. Made sure they knew how to care for you properly. Assured them that you, like me, are worth the extra effort.

In your shiny containment I’ve made pot stickers and fettucine Alfredo and Béarnaise sauce and Veal Piccata and custard and too many other recipes to count. And you show up and do the job right every time. Any mistakes have been mine, a failure to set the timer, too little stirring, a poor choice of recipe. 

These days cooking is a challenge, living in a house with four different ‘diets’ (we have gluten and dairy free, Keto, anti-inflammatory, and muscle building among other requirements) and there are often nights that I am in despair of finding something everyone can eat. Sometimes I despair of finding something anyone can eat. But with you, my sturdy companions, at my side, the magic of cooking still has the chance to grab me again, the wonder at how a set of ingredients can come together into something so much more than the pieces. Within your faithful help, the alchemy of cooking turns hard dry rice, stinky onion, and chicken broth into a delicious risotto. It turns a tough cut of meat into a tender stew. You, frying pan, sauce pan, small and large pots, you have been my partners in providing sustenance. Even when the thing I cooked is not received well, when the noses turn up, the faces grimace in distaste, it is never your fault. You did your part. I imagine you will soldier on, doing your part, for many more years to come. This is just a mid-career thank you, an acknowledgement of a partnership that never causes me problems, never disagrees with me, never misunderstands me, never criticizes my sometimes poor choices. I turn on the gas, set you to your task, and you do it.

Thank you for helping me nourish my family, because in the end, cooking is that. A chance to give my time and effort to literally keeping my loved ones alive. A chance to tempt the palate, please a picky eater, fill an empty stomach, warm a tired heart.

With you, my lovely All-Clad at my side, I feel richly equipped for the task.

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How Old Do You Feel Inside?

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Let me tell you a secret:

No one feels grown up inside, not completely. I mean, maybe the Dalai Lama or Helen Mirren or Barack Obama, maybe, but I bet even those people don’t feel that way all the time.

I didn’t know this when I was younger. I thought there would be a finish line to childhood. A clear demarcation between child and grown up. Like you graduate high school or college, and you are given your grown up card, along with the instruction manual for adult life.

When I was thirty, one of my rotations on internship was Hospital Based Home Care, where I was sent to work with a woman who was eighty-five, in a wheel-chair and depressed. When I asked her why she was feeling low she said she would look in the mirror and be surprised, every time, by the old woman looking back at her. It didn’t feel like her. I asked her how old she felt inside. She said thirty-five. She said she had never felt over thirty-five and it felt disorienting to see herself in the mirror.

I started asking people how old they feel inside. Not many people say anything over forty.  I started trying to find people who found ways to live as the age they feel, rather than the age they looked. If you try, you can do it too. Haven’t you met an octogenarian who is more full of life and energy than a twenty-something? The old woman in the park doing tai chi, so at ease with herself and the world, versus the wah wah wah girl at the table next to you at Towne and Country, so tired with her low battery phone and her badly made boba tea.

I think my view of being a grown- up, all serious and responsible, was too limited a view and maybe that was the problem with my eighty-five year old client too. Maybe true growth is to take on the parts of being grown up that matter, keeping promises, fulfilling responsibilities, treating people well, but also keep the parts of youth that make life worth living. Keep the fun, the open mind, the pure enjoyment of simple things like playing, moving your body, laughing with friends.

As I get older, and then even older, I am more drawn to energy over appearance, noticing it, sitting down beside it, relieved adulthood is not really about the age. I’m feeling more able to see the essence of people and when I can’t see it I ask, “How old do you feel inside?”

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