Imagined History 5

(Some portion of this post is fictitious – at least the first sentence is true – and part of my participation this month in the Creative Act project. My theme this week is Imagined History.)

I was one of those good girls who liked school. When home got crazy, school was a haven. The right answers seemed within easy reach.

When it came time to apply for college, there was a little tension – this was almost fifty years ago, remember – because my father wasn't altogether comfortable with the idea of his girl going away to school. Finally he let me apply, and I ended up getting in to all three schools I'd sent applications to: Connecticut College, Rivier (up in New Hampshire), and even Radcliffe.

I don't know if this kind of thing still happens, but back then people were very private and prideful about money. At least my father was. There were scholarships at Conn and Radcliffe that I could have applied for, but he would have needed to fill out a confidential form detailing our family's financial situation, and he just wouldn't do it.

I know now that I could have moved out and petitioned the schools to consider me as an independent student, but I don't think anyone in my life knew about that then. So I went to Rivier. And that's why my French is French-Canadian.

(Many thanks to the folks at The Creative Act
for their inspiring challenge this month,
and to AP, who inadvertently inspired this story today.)

Haiku - Dusk

Eye-watering cold
and the graveyard wall at dusk –
distinctions blurring.

(Thanks as ever to the women of One Deep Breath
for their continuing inspiration.)

Haiku - Courage

How can we be sure,
we creatures at water's edge?
Who will step out first?

The pond's gone solid
while clouds scud across the moon.
A friction-free world.

(Thanks to the women of One Deep Breath
and Mama Says Om for their continuing inspiration.)

Imagined History 4

(Some portion of this post is fictitious, although at least the first sentence is true. It has been written as part of my participation this month in the Creative Act project. My theme this week is Imagined History.)

I started taking dance lessons when I was about four, I guess, with a woman who I never heard anyone call anything other than Madame Helena. Tall and regal, she seemed as if she'd come from another country (I think she had an accent), and she could correct the angle of your turnout with one quick glance in your direction. She was a force of nature, and the only game in town. If you wanted to dance in Elmira, NY, Madame Helena was going to be a part of your life.

I don't remember deciding to dance; I was probably small enough that the idea was a combination of mine and my mother's. But once I began, it was clear that I was in it for the long haul. Every year, a few more of the girls who I'd started with dropped out, moving on to gymnastics or swimming or horseback riding, and there I was, climbing the stairs to Madame Helena's studio with my pink tights and black leotard safely tucked into my dance bag.

Since dance classes at Madame Helena's were largely organized according to how long you'd been dancing, by the time I was eleven or so I was the youngest person in every class I took. I got a lot of positive feedback from my parents and other grownups in my life, and I remember enjoying the sense of mastery that came from learning a new set of combinations, but I don't remember that much about actually dancing. Which could be because it wasn't ever all that connected to the core of who I was, or because I blocked it out later.

One day, and I've never been able to remember the specifics, I overheard someone talking to my mother about my dancing, and something about that conversation brought into sharp focus that my "youngest kid in the class" status had eclipsed (at least for this woman) any real consideration of my abilities as a dancer. I was a curiousity.

A little while later, I told my mom that I wanted to quit taking lessons. And I never really danced again.

(Many thanks to the folks at The Creative Act

for their inspiring challenge this month.)

Imagined History 3

(This post is mostly fiction – at least the first sentence is true – and part of my participation this month in the Creative Act project. My theme this week is Imagined History.)

When I was a child, my father's father had an amazing garden. Garden doesn't even feel like the right word for it; it seemed more like an entirely separate world to me. And maybe because in those early years I only saw it once a year – my grandparents lived in Pittsburgh, which was about a five hour drive from Big Flats, my home town – it was impossible for me to imagine that my grandfather's elaborate, terraced garden had been planned and created by him. Just as I hadn't yet made the connection between books and authors, Opa's garden was less his creation than a wonder of the world that I couldn't wait to explore.

We have a home movie of me helping him in the garden when I was about six years old, and sometimes I wonder how my life would have turned out if my father hadn't decided to test out his new 8mm camera that day. Early in the film, I am carrying armfuls of trimmed branches down the central steps and then out of the frame. A few minutes later, you can see me crouched in the shade of my grandfather, a tiny pair of trimming scissors in my hand as I snip as directed while he holds a rose branch between the thorns. He then gives me the rose, and tells me to take it to my mother, and this is the part of the movie that the rest of my family always comments on.

"Look, there he is," my father will say teasingly, "mommy's best boy!" My mom always puts up a protest. "It was sweet! You can give me roses anytime, Jimmy."

But the part of the movie that always stood out for me was the look on my face as I carried the branches down to the compost, carefully feeling with my little foot for the next step. So proud. And then, again, the look on my face as I listen to my grandfather talk about how to choose a pruning spot. Such concentration.

When I was about twelve years old, I finally figured out that my grandfather wasn't just the caretaker of his garden, he was its creator. And as soon I figured that out, it's what I wanted to do for the rest of my life.

My father (the engineer) and my mother (the chemist) were taken aback, I think, in the beginning. But I wore them down with the persistent fact of my happiness. And I am happy with my choice.

But I do sometimes wonder what my life would have been like if some other home movie had been the one that got played over and over again.

(Many thanks to the folks at The Creative Act
for their inspiring challenge this month.)

Sunday Scribblings - Goodbye

He doesn't want me to go. And I don't want to go, either. And yet we do this, every weekday, as we head off to our separate schools. Most mornings his sadness is masked by his excitement to see his friends and teachers at school. But some days, the goodbye is really hard.

For the first three years of his life, there were few of these; the idea of leaving him in someone else's care was so hard that I quit my waged work to stay home.


But then the money ran out, and I started to long for a life in which I was contributing to a broader enterprise than the well-being of my own family. He began to show signs of being able to stand up for himself and ask for what he wanted and needed. And I found a really great job. We have a tradition now that started one day when I said, "Hey, did I tell you yet today that I love you? "No," he said with a smile, "but you do." Now we go through that call-and-response almost every day. "Oh my gosh! Did I tell you yet today that I love you?!" "No, but you do." It means I get to tell him I love him many many times, all the while pretending that I'm not sure I have yet. It means that if I do forget to say it, he knows that it's true anyway. It means that I know that he knows. And it means that the goodbye is forgiven.

Gotta go scoop up my boy now.

(Hello!)

(Thanks to the women of Sunday Scribblings
for their continuing inspiration.)

Imagined History 2

(This post is mostly fiction – at least the first sentence is true – and part of my participation this month in the Creative Act project. My theme this week is Imagined History.)

When I was a junior in high school, my beautiful friend Lynette talked me into trying out for the school play. I tagged along, mostly to keep her company, and as soon as I got to the audition I realized that I'd made a mistake; these were the people I should have been hanging around with from the beginning.

Although I have a hammy side, and got a part in that first show, I quickly gravitated to the tech crew backstage, drawn by the twin lures of lingo and behind-the-scenes knowledge. It was one of the first times that I felt like I was bringing my whole self to school. I loved learning the tricks of the trade, from hanging and focusing lights to putting up false walls and painting screens to look like almost anything.

By the time I was a senior, I had painted more backdrops than anyone else in the building, and designers were starting to draw with me and my crew in mind. I could make canvas look like marble, plastic look like wood, you name it. There was something so powerful in knowing that I was helping to draw the audience into an alternative universe and keep them there. All I wanted to do was paint.

I should probably have gone directly to a studio. Or maybe an apprentice program.

But in my house, when I was growing up, all the sentences about college started with "when." So I went to college (UMass, sight unseen), and although I had a mostly good experience, I couldn't help but feel out of place.

Coming from a tiny little town, I was used to being a known quantity, and could never really adjust to the opportunities for anonymity that life at a big school offered. And I couldn't get Monica Russ out of my mind.

Monica Russ was only a year older than me in high school, but I might not have known her at all if it hadn't been for drama club. She had dark, almost black hair, deep dark eyes, and beautiful skin. She was the first person my age who used eyeliner in a way that didn't make me roll my eyes in response. Backstage, she quickly became the makeup girl of choice, and in the one play that I did have a role in, was the only one who could do my makeup.

I'd worn glasses for most of my life, had only recently gotten contacts, and never wore makeup. My eyes seemed anxious in a way that was completely beyond my control. As soon as a grease pencil got anywhere near my eyes, they would well up and ruin whatever work had already been done. Somehow Monica, with her easy smile and gentle touch, slipped past my defenses and got the job done.

Students in my school stuck to their class year, so we never really became friends, although I would have liked nothing more. But we did share some poetry, enough to know that we were both serious about it, and a few times she let me share her seat on the bus to and from drama competitions.

Then, suddenly, she was gone. Never having hung out with a senior before, I hadn't known to think ahead and ask about her post-high school plans. And even if I had figured that out, I might not have done it; I got the sense that maybe the sentences in her family didn't all start with "when." I got up the nerve to call her house once, but hung up when a man (her father?) answered. What would I have said? "Hi, I've never called this number before, but I'm a sort of friend of Monica's and I was just wondering where she is now?" I couldn't do it. And then the chance was gone.

So here I was, three years later in a chilly UMass studio art class with a teacher whose work I found completely uninteresting. Trying to concentrate on perspective drawing but instead remembering drama club. Thinking about her sweet hands on my face as she worked to keep my eyes from crying, and wondering again where Monica Russ was now.

(Thanks to the people of the Creative Act project,
to my best friend CD, and to Monica Russ,
wherever she is, for their inspiration.)

Imagined History 1

(This post is mostly fiction – at least the first sentence is true – and part of my participation this month in the Creative Act project. My theme this week is Imagined History.)

When I was a junior in college, my mother was diagnosed with ovarian cancer.

When my father called to tell me, he sounded more shaken than I could ever remember. At first I misunderstood him and thought that he was talking about my grandmother. Once I figured out that it was my mom who was sick, I hastily informed the dean of students of my situation, and drove home.

Every test led to another test. Chemo followed surgery, which in turn followed radiation. For a while I was doing the 8-hour drive back and forth every weekend, but then something came up on a Tuesday after I'd just gotten back to school, and something inside me gave way.

I stood in the middle of my dorm room and did a slow turn, mentally calculating what I'd be willing to leave behind. I wrote a note to my roommate. And then, with a plastic trash bag full of stuff over my shoulder, I left.

When people ask me where I went to college, I tell them. And then I pray that they're not going to ask me the next question: "Oh, when did you graduate?" Because I didn't.

My mom died a year and a month after her initial diagnosis, while I was back at my parents' house getting her a change of clothes. Three months later I met Jon. My office in the community art center looks out over the pond he dug that first summer. Next week I'm scheduled for my annual OB/Gyn appointment, and even all these years later I struggle with getting up the courage to go.

(Many thanks to the folks at The Creative Act
for their inspiring challenge this month.)

Mother to Mother

(Wendy Cook, of the fabulous MotherRising, has asked me to be her interviewee this month for her ongoing series of Mom to Mom interviews. [blush] Of course I said yes!)

Mom: Shelley

Of: D, born on September 3rd, 2001 ("Five and a third" as I write this)

Where: NJ

Blog: But Wait, There's More!

1. In what ways has becoming a mother changed you?

As soon as I opened myself up to the possibility of parenting, I could feel the changes start. I spent the length of my pregnancy practicing patience, because I knew myself well enough to know that those muscles were going to need to be in MUCH better shape once a small someone joined our family. There's still room for growth, but I've definitely gotten better. Since becoming a mother I have also become much more politically active. I carry in my heart this image of my almost-grown son asking me questions like, "What did you do about the war in Iraq?" or "Did you ever do anything about AIDS, mom?" Who knows if we'll ever have those conversations, but I feel this intense responsibility to live into my expressed values now, to "walk the walk." I am more willing to say "no," and more aware in general of time as a precious, non-renewable resource. I don't listen to the radio anymore in the mornings, because I can't predict when the next utterance of "roadside bomb" or "suicide bomber" might be, and I don't want those phrases in D's head. I spend much less time in retail space now than I did in my pre-parenthood years, again because I don't want that to be a significant part of D's childhood. I am simultaneously proud and humbled that I gave birth. Sometimes now, for fun, when a healthcare person is apologizing for a needle stick or some such, I'll look at them and say, "Please. I gave birth." I love that.

So much has changed. I am more in love with my partner, and with life in general, because of D's inadvertent role as the daily bringer of wonder and goofiness into our lives. I look at adolescent boys completely differently (might ours turn out like that one?). I am constantly running on two clocks: mine, and his. I have largely let go of the concept of sleeping in. My television-watching has dwindled to almost nil. I spend more time at the public library, but less time reading. I think nothing of finishing off leftover whatever. Oh wait... that was true before. :-)

2. What is one tip you would like to share about mothering?

Judge not, lest ye be judged. Seriously, moms are so invested in their decisions (midwife or doctor, homebirth or hospital, breastfed or bottle, on-demand or scheduled feedings, cloth or store-bought or no diapers, co-sleeping or crib sleeping, uncut or circumcised, TV or no, video games or no, and the list goes on and on) that the path to holier-than-thou-itude can be super-short. If you start choosing up sides you'll find out pretty quickly how lonely life can be. By the same token, I think it's important to decide early on what things you will not "up with put," as my father would say, and commit to sticking to them. External influences can be very hard to resist.

(My non-blogging life partner's answer to this is so fabulous that I have to share it: "Say 'yes' reflexively, and 'no' selectively.")

3. What is your creative outlet/medium?

I blog, sing, teach high school students, bake, co-write nonsense songs with my son, whip out my camera at a moment's notice, and write essays, poetry, and a teensy bit of fiction.

4. How do you find time for creativity?

Stolen moments, mostly. I ignore the mess that is our house, and my partner's pre-sleep routine takes longer than mine. I pathetically eat lunch in my office while hunched over my laptop (but no crumbs in the keyboard, I swear!). I've also lately been "swapping out" listening to the news on the way to work in favor of writing haiku... at least some mornings!

5. Why do you blog/journal?
I started blogging when I was making the shift back to waged work after spending three years mothering our son at home. It was a way to keep my friends up-to-date with my search without having to slog through the depressing (at least at the beginning) details. Then I discovered that blogging is a great way to chronicle the little things you think you'll remember but in fact probably won't. Plus, as a natural extrovert and ham, I like the idea of having an "always on" presence in the world that enables people to connect with me on their own terms, as their lives and schedules permit. I love that strangers and I can find each other and discover that we are actually members of the same tribe. Finally, I have recently found, with prompts like those at One Deep Breath, Mama Says Om, and Sunday Scribblings, that blogging has become a way to reaffirm my sense of myself as a writer. So the list of reasons is a moving but growing target.

6. Which blogs do you frequent?
Right now, I'm grooving on Sassafras Mama, a wrung sponge, GenreCookShop, and Beyond the Fields We Know. I check in on brainhell almost every day, to see how he's doing. And ze frank's video blog has become "my show..." I even helped get the Running Fool across the country.

7. Who are some bloggers that you would like to meet?

Other than you, Wendy? :-) I'd love to meet everyone who's ever posted a kind, thoughtful, odd, or funny comment at But Wait, There's More! and I'd love to meet just a few of the other people to whom I feel indebted: Keri Smith of Wish Jar Journal, Patti Digh of 37days, Susan and Jennifer of One Deep Breath, Stefan Bucher of Daily Monster, Dana and Liz Elayne of Poetry Thursday, all the wonderful people who are pouring their time and talent out into the deepening ocean of gifts that the blogosphere has become for me.

Whew! That was fun; thanks for listening.