A Sensitive Subject

For some reason I can’t quite remember, I found an hour or two to myself on Christmas Eve of all days. Presents were wrapped, someone else was responsible for Christmas Eve dinner, the table was set, and the Sunday New York Times was sitting on the end table waiting to be read. it turned out, that that Sunday Times contained a little lump of coal in the form of an article about the advent of sensitivity readers at publishing houses. I shouldn’t be surprised that there are 1 million ways to offend potential readers or that publishers might want to keep one or two of those readers, but I was suddenly very grateful for all the classic works of literature that, having survived government censors, had the good sense to be written before sensitivity readers existed. 

Then I thought about my own kids’ book (and future book ideas) and all the ways it might possibly offend people. 

The pictures are black-and-white and red all over, so some people might get offended by the predominance of red or the fact that the starring role in the book is played by kid with really bad hair. Or some sensitivity reader might worry that I’m insinuating that mom is with bad hair can’t get their kids to clean their rooms. 

 But as I thought about the ending of my little book about a kid who has his own idea about the definition of a clean room, I realized the people with whom I’m really gonna be in dutch are the millions of moms who are also trying to get their kids to clean their rooms. OK, so maybe I’ll only be in dutch with the moms who still have kids under 12. And I can whittle down that number to the number of moms who read my blog who haven’t figured out the magic formula for getting their kids under the age of 12 to clean their room. So that’s like, five or ten moms at least.

I don’t want to scare you because the book does have a happy ending, if you’re the kid with the messy room, and I do want to go on record that I am not endorsing the non-cleaning of rooms. I do find myself in the controversial situation of being willing to support a flexible definition of the term “clean room“.

This last week, was winter break and, after ordering Thing2 to clean his room two days in a row before he was allowed to invite friends over for “get together’s“ (formerly known as “play-dates” which, out of sensitivity to our resident tween, has been dropped from the approved household lexicon), I realize I’ve been a bit insensitive to him on this sensitive and highly controversial subject. 

Thing2, now getting better at making the room look clean (at least to the casual observer), will stuff a few things end of the bed where they were less likely to show and spend the rest of his energy putting away all the shards of paper from his last homemade light saber, organizing his props for his next special effects project, and finding a place for all the disassembled electronics he rescues from the trash.

When he’s done, the room still looks like hazardous waste site, but in all fairness, the madness is the result of a creative but methodical and investigative spirit. What looks like a shambles to me is for him a laboratory of life.

I’m a huge believer in encouraging the creative spark in everyone, especially in my offspring. That laboratory is why he comes to me at the end of the day to show me the special effects space movie he’s just made or the book he’s just “published”. So even though even a domestic anti-goddesses such as myself sometimes has to draw a line between the dirty socks on the floor to establish benchmarks for distinguishing the a laboratory from a trashcan with a bunkbed in it, the laboratory is part of what makes Thing2 grow.  

It’s also why, at the end of a book about a little boy who has his own idea about how to clean room, I decided to let that idea win out.

That Mom just isn’t Right


At the beginning of the summer thing one and I traded spaces. He wanted privacy in the attic office/guest room (translation: at least one story between him and T2),  I wanted a workspace with a window downstairs,  and T2 wanted me close enough closer to him.  

So, for the second time this year, I relocated my desk and printer to a new home. The first time I moved them out of a tiny windowless room with a small skylight whose main selling feature was a two walls  of books.  now I know somethings not right in my head, because it took less than two months before I decided I’d rather be surrounded by the books and paintings then look out the window.

Now I know somethings not right in my head, because it took less than two months before I decided I’d rather be surrounded by the books and paintings then look out the window.

And as John Lennon might’ve said if he had been a nerdy hermit, you might say I’m a bit goofy, but I can’t believe I’m the only one. I hope someday you’ll join me (in your own little cave, of course) and the world will unwind with a few books or even just one.

Rules to be Broken


One of the great things about DIY publishing is that you get to break rules when you feel like they need to be broken.

One of the rules in traditional publishing it’s the children’s picture books should be 32 pages. There are a few exceptions, but not many. The irony is that those exceptions often tend to be exceptional.

As I’m perusing books pilfered from Thing2’s bookshelf, some of the most dogeared titles — The Giving Tree, Where The Wild Things Are — break rules with regard to page length. 

As I dig deeper, I also notice that the books that still stand out for us are those that may not have perfect “story book” endings but are somehow still satisfying. They may hint at a darker side of life but enlighten their readers. 

They do something truly exceptional. They trust children.

As I’m whittling words and laying out spreads, I’m keeping in mind that there is at least one rule I don’t want to break – and that’s to trust kids.

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It’s In My Job Description

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I'm trying, with limited success, to work three jobs. I got the one that pays the bills for 40 to 50 hours a week. I've got the one I took on when the Big Guy and I decided to become parents. And I've got the one that I'm still auditioning for – The one I get up at – still early, Buddy, don't you want to go back to bed? – 4AM to scribble in my notebook and doodle in my sketchbook for.

I slept in today. It was 5 AM when I finally dragged myself out of bed and into the shower, but I figured I had enough time before the rest of the house was awake – Stop that, kid – to get through a story revision – No you cant have the remote when everyone still asleep.
Thing2 usually does his own figuring on Saturday mornings, however. Like most seven-year-olds he has a sixth sense that tells his body clock when it's a school morning and went to get up early. Today the body clock was working perfectly, and as I sat down with my notebook and a short story I'm updating, somebody padded out in his jammies and socks.

Now, I'm sitting on the recliner with my story in my notebook and no daylight or molecules between me and my seven-year-old. i'm still editing and writing. I don't know if these are the kind of working conditions that Louisa May Alcott had to suffer through when she was an aspiring writer, but I figure scribbling away with a giggly seven-year-old – Cut it out! wrapped around my writing elbow is in my next job's description.

I can get used to that. The pay isn't so great, but the benefits are hard to beat.

 

Radio Silence

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 For the last month, I’ve been wondering if my bipolar disorder had evolved in to something more insidious as the chorus of demands created by a stint of intense overtime at work and holiday social obligations amplified, drowning out much of what matters to me – fitness, writing and even family from time to time.   I had been joking the last few days that – even as a work-at-home-mom – I spoken to my kids no more than twice a day lately (Once to tell them to get on the bus, and another time to tell them dinner is ready and go to bed).  

There’s an old saying goes, “When mom ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”. I never believed that. I was thought I was putting my family’s health and happiness first – even when I wasn’t so happy.  But Saturday, as the Big Guy and I arrived home from a  cross-state work party too late to get to another outing and knowing I had to throw together a potluck contribution for the town’s annual holiday Christmas party (the only place with a Santa who actually knows if Thing2 has been naughty or nice),   I realized I wasn’t happy.  And I wasn’t making my family happy either.  I was running on empty which doesn’t leave you much to give the people you love.  

Saturday night Mother Nature gave me a sign.  Actually she threw up an eight inch powdery white stop sign. And Sunday, the din stopped.

We knew the storm was coming, and, while the forecasted 5-10″ isn’t’ enough to morph my Saturday grocery shopping list into disaster planning mode, I knew the weather would likely keep us housebound in the morning.  I did a mental inventory of our hot chocolate and popcorn supplies, but I also began making a list of the commitments outside my door that I could now reasonably avoid a day.

Sunday quickly became a day of rest.  For me, it was a day of no iPhone, no email – work or personal, no iPad or TV.  There was no Facebook and no news.  After a late-night saturday look at the weather map,  there was Radio Silence.  

Sunday, with the cacophony shut out, I was finally able to hear the things that matter.  Three of them are still sleeping down the hall.  The other I am nursing for the first time in over a week.

 

The Windchime

Windchime

After the storm, the windchime is still in its spot.  It was a gift from the Big Guy’s sister who is not my sister-in-law.  She’s my sister.

We didn’t have to go through all the in-fighting that adolescent sisters inflict on their parents.  She lives in Southern New England, so we see each other a few times a year.  Over the years, we’ve become friends and then truly family.

She brought this chime as an xmas gift a few years ago, and I keep thinking when we build a deck (which could be very far in the future given our ability to procrastinate building decisions), I’ll design a special spot for it.  Now it’s hanging form a post that’s sunk into a corner of our very over-grown stone patio.  I actually like it there.  It seems to survive all kinds of storms, and it’s seems like it’s there to remind me to suck it up and stand firm when things don’t go perfectly.

It’s a lot like the giver in that way, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last few weeks as the storms of late autumn bluster through our mountain.  My day job has claimed all my daylight hours and even most of my waking night time for the last few weeks.  Everything else has disappeared – running, writing, down time.  Even if I can set the alarm for my 4 AM writing time, often I do the numbers, realize I’ve slept four hours and reset the clock.

Sometimes it seems like it should be nothing.  Writing’s just a hobby, right?  But it’s also who I am.  Not doing it makes me incomplete.  Not providing for my family, however, would create an even bigger hole.

I’ve been there before and not by choice.  A few years ago the Big Guy spent a week in the ICU because our then lack of health insurance had deterred him from seeking medial attention until a minor infection became an absess that nearly ended his life. It took years to pay off that bill, but it isn’t the fear of another ruinous bill that helps me accept being incomplete right now.  It’s not even the determination never to let lack of insurance determine when we get care.  Right now, what’s got me up at 5AM, girding my soul for another soulless day is that wind chime.

The Bookmaker

BookMaker copy

Last Saturday, to much fanfare from my family, I clicked an upload button and published my first short story.  Fifteen minutes later, I had my first sale and, somewhat hesitantly, added the moniker of ‘author’ to my Facebook profile.

Hesitation has been the hallmark and stumbling block of my short writing career.  

I’ve wanted to write most of my life.  Only in the last year and a half – on joining the Hubbard Hall Writer’s Project – did a professional writing career seem like a realistic goal.  

Over the year as I’ve sketched and posted, seven-year-old Thing2 has written and sketched with me.  He’s filled 5×8 notebooks with trees and robots and star systems.  He’s pilfered printer paper to produce his illustrated, staple-bound paperback stories.  

The weekend before I published my story, I mentioned his endeavors as I was standing in the living room of a friend and writing mentor and his wife.  I had been working on their computers, and my friend was taking the opportunity to harangue me for my hesitation, even enlisting thirteen-year-old Jack to keep me on the hot seat until I hit ‘Publish’.  

“I think you’re scared,” said my friend’s wife.

 “You’re right,” I said and pointed to Thing2 who was hanging on my friend. “You should see the books he makes,” I said.  Thing2 smiled shyly.  I thought I was off the hook, but my friend’s wife smiled, apparently knowing her husband would not be so easily distracted.  “He’s really talented,” I said.

 “And I bet he doesn’t doubt himself,” said my friend.

 “No he doesn’t, I admitted.  

A week later, we were at Bob’s diner.  I was enjoying the glow of seeing my first royalties.  

Jack and Thing2 quickly put my accomplishment in perspective as they setup a game of table hockey, complete with salt-and-pepper shaker goal posts  and a straw wrapper puck. Fulfilling the requirements of my primary job title, I did the mom thing and barked a reprimand.   

Thing2 asked for my notebook, and I gave it to him. 

“Are you starting a new story?” I asked.  He grinned and nodded, staking out the back 10 pages for illustrations.

“Mommy,” he announced, “I want to write a book just like you when I grow up.”

“You’ll be a great writer,” I said.  There wasn’t a shred of doubt in my mind or voice.  The Big Guy concurred with the same confidence he expresses when he’s encouraging me.

That’s when it hit me.  Thing2 and I have the same dream.  I see his innate talent, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have his hills to climb.  Each of us will only succeed, however, if we don’t start (or in my case stop) worrying if we have the right stuff and just climb. 

Small World

Kitchen table

I don’t have a career.  I have a job.  It’s not a bad job at all, but it’s not the kind of work that changes people’s lives (for good or for ill) or – like a doctor’s or lawyer’s or reporter’s – is filled with action or big issues.  It is the kind of work that lets me work from home and put food on the round pedestal table in our open-floorplan kitchen.

It’s 5:00 AM and an hour and a half from now, there will be scrambling and a mad rush out the door to meet the school bus at the end of our dirt road.  Then there will be a brief calm before the workday begins.  Except for the days I go to the country store, I won’t see another human being until the Big Guy rolls in with our two boys after the school bus brings them home.   It’s literally a very small life.

But somewhere among the eat-your-peanut-butter-sandwich and passing-the-potatoes, at some point during the how-was-your-day’s and even on nights when the Big Guy or I might be licking a wound from a careless comment or Thirteen-year-old Thing1 is barely speaking to us because of a lost privilege, we each know our small life is pretty good.  

There aren’t any late model cars in the driveway.  I can’t remember the last time we sat down to dinner with 4 matching plates.  There’s always dust spontaneously generating around furniture, and the next big bill is always just waiting around the corner.  

But there’s also always safety.  There’s always food on the table.  There’s always a fire in the wood stove warming us when we need it and when we don’t, we’re still at the kitchen table making our own magic.

So, this morning, even though it’s not cold outside and even though I have a room designated as an office down the hall,  at 5am, I’m already settled at the kitchen table near the wood stove.  It’s not just the heat that draws me here.  For me, the kitchen table is where the action – valuable and small – happens.

The Game

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I woke up a few Fridays ago determined to get my ‘down’ time in on the trail before the workday started.  I got it.  I also got a lesson from  Mother Nature down time management.

I got the kids to the bus, miraculously in time for the first stop.  Then I headed to the trail at the park.  It had been raining all night, and there were still drips and drops, but there were also peeks of sunshine.  By the time I stopped at the park, it was drizzling, but I wasn’t too worried.  It was about to clear up.

Wrapping my mp3 player in a plastic sandwich baggie and then into my belt, I pushed play and headed down the trail.  Five hundred feet into the park, the sky opened up.  Instantly, I was drenched from head to toe and supremely grateful that, in my now-soaked shirt and running pants and looking like a jelly donut entering a wet T-shirt contest, I was the only person in the park.  I thought seriously about turning back.

It wasn’t fortitude or courage that kept me going.  It was the knowledge that I had a To-Do list a mile long.  Work was next on the agenda, then (hopefully) blog posts, getting ready for a class I was about to help teach, laundry (always laundry), vacuuming, dinner and writing before bed.  I knew this was the only time to get my down time.

I took refuge under a shelter when the rain was too blindingly-heavy to navigate the path.  When the rain slowed, I restarted my run from the beginning, figuring I couldn’t possibly get any wetter.   Mother Nature laughed and let out another sprinkle.  As I got to the end of the third mile and started the fourth, it had stopped feeling like work and begun feeling like down time – without and with the rain.

That’s when it struck me that the rain was just part of the game.  The weather is going to do nothing but get worse over the next few months.  As I write, it’s still dark this morning.  Weather and time changes close in with their excuses not to run, but the dark is also part of the game.  Winning that game and getting that down time – on the trail or the keyboard – is ignoring those excuses and getting it anyway.