When You Tear the Cellophane Away

Last night I caught the bug. The “I must read now” bug. I am of the one-day-click-order-from-Amazon school of lit-tra-ture. Imagine my surprise when I drove to the library. My memories of the library of my younger summer days were not wonderful. Mom had MS, and part of her maintenance therapy was to rest her legs every day for two hours. Lying down. I was eight; my brothers, five and three. We did not want to lie down for two hours every afternoon.

Mom dragged us (me) to the Yucca Branch of the Phoenix Public Library every single week. She made a haul of six or seven books, my brother John found three or four science fiction books, and Dave, the toddler, drooled on his picture books. I wandered. And sighed. And protested. “There’s nothing to R-E-A-D.” Moments later mom had pulled a random volume of Nancy Drew (in which the 15 year-old heroine wore gloves - gloves) from the shelf.

Last night I read Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea”. The last time I made contact with this material was as a freshman in high school. Funny how different a work feels and sounds after 30 years. (I wish I’d kept Miss Schner’s reading list from my senior year.) I fully intended to write about my lovely experience with this piece of miraculous prose, but a funny thing happened on the way to the typewriter.

I went to the library again.

Today, though, I noticed people were culling and perusing and flipping through books, and they were happy about it. I turned my attention to the books and really took them in. Mostly cool plastic wrapped hardcover books. Have you ever noticed that when you crack the spine of a library book it crackles like fire? Or do you think the pages of an old book smell like your grandma’s couch from when you were ten? Of if the book is newer, do you think the pages smell just like a fresh pack of three-ringed notebook paper at the exact minute you tear the cellophane away?

I slid my index finger across titles looking for just the right words. Those words that stop a strolling finger in its tracks: “Ash Wednesday” by Ethan Hawke. Ahh…. See, in my writing, I just made reference to an Ethan Hawke string of dialogue from “Reality Bites” and this was surely providence.

After my daughter’s rehearsal, after a late dinner, after my son hugs me three times, I will take my book and kiss my husband heading down the hall to our room. I will lie down and read my new book. For two hours. While I rest.

The Bull's Eye

I am a relatively private person. For those of you who know me personally this is not surprising to you. I am rarely "public" in public. Anne Lamott talks about writing three or four rings out from the bull's eye. Where we live.

She spoke at a conference in San Diego several years ago and talked about the nightmare of giving a very long interview in which she thought she remembered discussing her mother. When the article was printed she was mortified to read the quote about her mother. Anne had been lulled to sleep, and made a reference to her mother that was "too close to the bull's eye."

Her words were a cautionary tale. My husband frequently reminds me to speak in short declarative sentences and to talk in sound bites during interviews. Ironically, the only television interview I gave wound up on the editing room floor because I wouldn't bite. The reporter chatted and massaged the other women and eventually got them to give her the crap she was after. And I was really okay with that because I wouldn't want to own those words.

Sometimes I think blogs, email, and all social media are the "lull". For me anyway, I forget that I'm attaching words - immortalized-in-the-cloud words - to real emotions, experiences & people and then putting all that out there for anyone to read. Stories about myself and my family. My friends. My colleagues.

Tonight I sat down to write and was going to post about a very personal experience between my daughter and me. Something very close to her bull's eye. And I wondered if I was willing to look into her baby blues and own those words. Later. Forever.

So I wrote about Anne Lamott instead, who by the way, is my favorite author. :)

Where's the Great Pumpkin?

Halloween 1997. It was 5:45pm when I walked through the front door after taking both kids, 2 years old and 3mos, to the doctor with ear infections. Brad was standing in the kitchen with pumpkin guts laying all over the table and a partially carved pumpkin. Before I could yell at him, I noticed that he was reading our pediatrician’s emergency handbook. Then I noticed that his left forearm was bleeding. So I said in the most, you know, casual way, “Hon…what are you doing, and um…why are you bleeding?”

“I’m researching what to do for a stab wound."

“A what? You’re researching a what? WTF? Let me see your arm!”

And there it was. He had a knife wound in his left arm. “WTF?” I repeated as if clarification of the previous “WTF?” was necessary.

“The knife slipped and went into my arm.”

“Are you sure it wasn’t a cry for help?” Which made us both crack up. I still could not figure out what he was researching. “You need stitches.”

“No I don’t.”

“Yes you do.”

By this time it was 6:30pm and kids were ringing the doorbell. I sent Brad to the hospital while I passed out candy. My son had fallen asleep in his car-seat-baby-bucket-thing. My daughter was cranky with ear pain and hunger. I got her some food and sat her down in front of her favorite video: Winnie the Pooh.

Halloween 2009. This year my daughter is 13 and my son is 12. Driving home from school last week we passed one of a bazillian pumpkin “patches”, and I said, “We need to get you guys to the patch so you can pick out of few pumpkins.”

Silence. (Internal WTF?)

“When would you like to do that?” I asked casually.

“We don’t need a pumpkin this year. They’re kind of a pain.” My daughter said.

“Yeah.” chimed my son.

WTF? [I repeated in my head as if clarification of the previous WTF? was necessary.]

“Seriously? You guys! You don’t want a pumpkin?” I stumbled, “okay, that’s cool.”

I was momentarily elated. And then suddenly I was sad; lachrymose in fact. We have other decorations up: orange lights, a ghost and signs. We even “booed” our neighbors across the street. But no pumpkin? I wondered if there was a tab in the pediatrician’s emergency handbook for this.

So I’ll feed everyone and sit them down in front of a basketball game or the World Series. The grown ups will steal candy from our own bowl, and my brother will fall asleep in the big red chair. My daughter is helping a family with four kids go trick-or-treating, and my son bought a scary mask to wear while HE hands out candy.

I’m not a mom who laments every stage of maturity as a sign of lost youth and innocence. I love being with them every step of the way. I didn’t mind when we left the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny and Santa behind. I wasn’t sad the first time they didn’t want to watch Winnie the Pooh. I wasn’t crushed when they stopped watching every animated holiday special. But for some reason losing the pumpkin for a holiday that I don’t even particularly like made me cry. This year Linus will be all alone in the pumpkin patch, and for the first time, my kids and I won’t be there to watch him.