Two Births

            The last year prior to 2012 in which July 4 fell on a Wednesday was 2007, and before that 2001, 1990, and 1984. On Wednesday, July 4, 1984, in Fresno, California, the temperature hit 107, up three degrees from Sunday, down one from Monday. I was nine-months-plus pregnant, insulated like a polar bear, and should have been in the Arctic.

            Being in part Scottish, my then husband, John, and I were excessively frugal, priding ourselves on not running the air conditioner. Even when the thermometer surpassed 100, we were convinced our dry heat was more tolerable than the hot, humid summers of Pennsylvania, where my visiting parents still lived in those days. The heating and cooling bills our forty-five-year-old house could produce, with its inadequate insulation and single-pane windows, were also daunting. My parents had been with us by then nine days, awaiting the birth of their eighth grandchild, despite my warning that this baby would be late. As the temperature climbed, my dad suggested they leave for their other children's homes in the cooler climes of the Bay Area, but my mom responded she'd made it this far, and she was not going to miss the birth.

            As with each afternoon, on July 4, Dad and two-and-one-half-year-old Andrew splashed each other in the wading pool, and Mom and I and our black lab, Puga, looked on. To celebrate Independence Day, we no doubt had fireworks in the street, as we did every year, since we lived in a county island where they were permitted.

            On July 5 it was 109. We went swimming at the gym, thanks to the membership of the law firm for which I paralegaled part-time. The water was somewhat cooler than the air, and it was grand to float. In my bouyant state, I informed my inhabitant that it was time to end his or her state of suspension, which proved prophetically to be a thematically apposite* comment, as this or-else pattern would occur not irregularly over the ensuing years with my second child.

            Et voilà! John and I left for Community Hospital in downtown Fresno at about 2:00 a.m. on July 6. It was one of those Central Valley nights when the temperature does not drop thirty degrees, as is typical, and we were engulfed in stagnant air. At 9:35 a.m., with the temperature on its way to 111, we had a baby boy. I know this because his hospital card, which is taped into his Baby's First Year Calendar says, "I'M A BOY!" The "My Name" section is blank, although we did know his middle name would be Riddle, the boys' maternal great-grandmother's maiden name, as a parallel to his brother's middle name of Shawhan, their paternal great-grandmother's maiden name. "My Mother" confirms that he was ours, as it says "McDaniel."

            My parents brought big brother Andrew to visit Baby Boy McDaniel later that day, and the now big brother with instant new privileges and responsibilities much enjoyed the wine that was served with the new parents' dinner. We were so careless with child-rearing in those days and had so few helpful gadgets. How our children became a pediatrician  and a mechanical engineer I'll never know. My father nearly staged a riot when the nurse came to take Baby Boy for his male procedure, which had the corollary effect of finally waking him and making him want to nurse. His birth was the first and last time he would be too tired to eat. His somewhat traumatic entry to the outside world had been interrupted to cut the umbilical cord from around his neck, after which he had to put up with his home being pushed on from the outside by nurses, as only one shoulder at a time could fit through the exit—or entrance, depending on your point of view. No wonder it took him a minute to catch his breath in the bassinet while the staff hunted the elusive oxygen mask, which fortunately proved unnecessary as he finally gulped air.

            We were left alone to rest for the night not only by our family, but by the hospital staff as well, which, as you know, is highly unusual in hospitals, where preventing rest seems the rule. I guess since Baby Boy and I were doing perfectly well, the nurses devoted their time to the mothers and/or babies who were not, or else they saw no reason to deal with a mother who didn't yet know her child's name, or else they were playing Words with Friends, er Scrabble, no iphones in those days, at the nurses' station. So we got to plan our ASAP escape, and sleep.

            My mother and John talked long into the night, probably consuming a wee bit of wine for inspiration, and finally came up with a name: "Stephen," of Greek origin, meaning "crown" or "garland." Stephen was the first Christian martyr. I'm not clear whether he went by the Hebrew סטיבן (Stiven) or the Greek Στέφανος (Stephanos), which is derived from στέφανος, meaning "wreath, crown, honor, reward…that which surrounds or encompasses." In those dark pre-Wikipedia days, I did not know all these details, but twenty-eight years later, it all makes sense how fitting the name was. Andrew can attest how often Stephen played the martyr, and his sometimes all-encompassing demanding nature on occasion threatened my maternal adoration.

            I'm not sure how long we would have gone on calling him Baby Boy had the hospital not insisted on a name before letting us go, but even Stephen didn't stick long. He was soon called Binky Beans, after the name of one of his brother's coterie of imaginary friends, who also included Abeghee and Abbeeyabbee (not sure on the spelling). He is still known today variously as Beans and Binks, as well as Rosarita, and even sometimes Stephen or Steve or Stevie. Last year, when he married the wonderful, stunningly beautiful and intelligent, warm, gracious Jessie, the mothers were asked to say a word or two during the ceremony. My first ten words were his nicknames, and I left out the essential "Helmet," acquired when he was in grade school and we should have bought stock in all hair gel manufacturers.

            Yes, Baby Boy, aka Stephen, has been all grown up for some years now. For me, July 4, in addition to the birth of our nation, will always mean two days before the birthday of an astonishing human being who came into my life on a very hot day, and who is, with his brother, the profoundest joy of my life.

            And by the way, on July 21, 1984, the temperature in Fresno dipped to a cool 96, the first time in three weeks it had been under 100.

* I learned of "thematically apposite" when a friend came across it in the current New Yorker. I thought I should incorporate it wholesale, i.e., not "thematically" alone or "apposite" alone, into my vocabulary.

Iced Coffee with Mom

          It's iced coffee season, the days when the temperature can climb over 100 and a little caffeine over ice with milk verges on a milkshake.

            As I take a large heavy glass from the cupboard next to the sink, I look again at the sunflowers towering above the glass birdbath that sits on a stand low to the ground in the garden. This morning after the sprinklers ran, water was dripping into the bird bath, causing the tiny rubber duck to swim around. I looked at the sky—no clouds. I imagined the four sprinklers on the drip system now running—no way they could reach the bird bath. Its water had grown still, but then another plop and then the widening circles. Finally it hit me: the slight breeze swayed the sunflower stems enough to knock drops of water off the large leaves and the orange and rust flowers. I smiled, imagining the private little world with its own rain shower.

            The water system in our refrigerator has not worked for as long as I can remember now, but the ice crusher still functions. So we make ice in trays and twist the cubes into the bucket inside the door. I push the glass against the lever in the freezer door and the ice grinder noisily chops and spits out pieces of ice. I add milk, 1%, filling the glass about half-full. The warm stream of coffee from the thermos pot crackles and melts the ice. Back to the door for a few more ice chunks, then I carry the glass back to the counter by the windows, admiring the tan floating on ivory around the ice cubes. I open the silverware drawer and pull out an ice tea spoon, a little pleasure to have, dip it down the side of the glass, watch the colors swirl together, and remember again sitting with Mom at a table by a front bay window at the West End Bar & Grill in Cambria, on the Central California Coast, about ten years ago. I'd ordered iced coffee, a novelty to the waiter/owner, who asked if we were from Boston. I said no, but we were from the east, Pennsylvania. He brought a pitcher of the milk I'd requested, along with the glass of ice and coffee, uncertain how to blend the concoction.

            On a recent hot, humid afternoon during a trip to Panama, I walked the hotel/restaurant staff through the making of iced coffee. Neither my Spanish nor their English quite covering all the bases, first they steamed milk. I picked up a tall glass from the coffee bar, and a waitress brought an entire bucket of ice. They watched in amazement as I put ice cubes in the glass then poured coffee over them. The milk issue clarified, the waitress handed me a small pitcher of cold milk, which I poured into the glass. I requested una cuchara for stirring. My offer to taste was universally declined by the small group that had gathered round.

            The drink was about on a par with a cold Balboa beer on such a hot day, and as I sipped it, I thought, as I had so often during my trip, of how much Mom and Dad would have loved Panama, a trip they had planned but been unable to make due to health reasons.

            My mom would have been ninety-three tomorrow. My nephew, one of her four grandsons, is thirty-one today. They traditionally celebrated their birthdays together; this is the second year they won't be doing so. Heading to my computer to write this, sipping my iced coffee, I recall how these days, when I order iced coffee with milk at cafes and restaurants, I rarely encounter surprised or confused looks, but I usually feel a bittersweet tug at my heart, remembering that day in Cambria with Mom.

Culling the Past

           As private eye Carlotta Carlyle, in Linda Barnes' A Trouble of Fools, pokes through a crime scene of vandalization created by the bad guys and already tossed by the police, she comments,

          The day after I covered by first homicide as a cop, I went home and scoured my bedroom. Threw out all that embarrassing junk Id hoarded, marveling at the bizarre items I'd thoughtlessly shoved into the bottom drawer…. 

          If the cops come and toss my room tomorrow, they won't find much of a personal nature.

Hm, I thought. Not bad advice.

            Moving twice in three years proved the type of exercise Carlotta advises. I hired a dumpster for the first move, the one from our family home. Between a huge workshop and a cottage, we had way too much storage space, and apparently we had discarded nothing in fourteen years. In addition to the unsalvageables that went into the dumpster, I gave furniture away and threw out diaries and piles of school papers. My new house, my solo house, as the boys were both away at college and no longer came home except to visit, had a small attic that I swore I would not fill. I was saved even from the possibility when the AC/heating unit was installed in that space, completely filling it up.

            The morning after my first night in my new home, I drove maniacally back to the family home to get there before the trash collector and pulled all the bags of school papers out of the garbage can. My diaries from grade school and high school could go, but my boys' school papers? I sat straddle-legged on the back deck surrounded by black plastic garbage bags, sobbing as I went through each drawing, story, report, and essay. With great grit and discrimination, I selected a representative few to save for each boy, which remain to this day in files labeled with their names.

            There were other things I hung on to through two moves as well, apparently thinking they would eventually reveal to me my true nature or destiny or stupidity or missed chances. It seems every fall or so I look back through the mementos—diaries, a model of a yellow Stingray from a high school boyfriend, swimming medals, letters, pictures—and experience a tad of self-pitying melancholy. When I read P.I. Carlotta's comment, the light bulb flared to life—it was incandescent, not florescent—and I recalled that among those little saved supposed parts of myself were some items I really, really did not want anyone else ever to contemplate. I don't want my teen and young adult angst and deeds spread across the headlines like Obama's and Romney's. Okay, maybe what we do, think, and feel in high school and college sheds some light on our future behavior and attitudes, but as Joel Stein writes in "The Awesome Column" in Time for May 28, 2012, "I wish I could go back in time and change the way creepy young me behaved." Sure, my kids are more likely to dump my diaries and old letters in the trash when I die, like I confess we did my mom's tens of notebooks, but just in case....

            So I hunted down those items, discovering a few others choice remembrances along the way, and fed them all to the shredder. But my hunt through my past also turned up some things I should have preserved and will still keep. For instance, how many of you women collegiate athletes out there competed pre-Title IX?

            I found an article my dad had saved from my college newspaper. Sports were not exactly a priority at my small, private, liberal arts college. I know this because I was a song girl, and the band was more interested in changing the tempo while we danced to make us look like fools than in whether the football team scored a touchdown. As a Division III school, I don't think there were or are any athletic scholarships. People went to the school for the academics or the Friday kegs in the wash or the hiking and skiing in the mountains west of LA or the proximity to Southern California beaches or late night trips to one of the original In-n-Outs in nearby Azusa or early morning doughnuts from the bakery in Claremont to sustain an all-nighter. If they played sports, it was more or less for fun.

            I joined the women's swim team because I wanted to swim in the same water as former Olympians. Growing up, I really, really wanted to be an Olympic swimmer, or at least to qualify for Nationals. I remember going to the Olympic swimming trials in Detroit, although I don't remember any races or swimmers, just that we sat on green bleachers and we were there. I volunteered at the Short Course Nationals when they were held in the new, state-of-the-art Trees Pool swim complex at the University of Pittsburgh. I always wondered if we'd stayed in California and I'd swum for George Haines at Santa Clara Swim Club if I would have achieved my goal. 

           When we returned to Pennsylvania, my dad was my first coach—he started a local girls' swim team because there wasn't one. After a year or so, my parents started driving my sister and me twenty miles to Mt. Lebanon every day so we could be on a real team. When my sister got her license, we drove ourselves. When my sister went away to college, my parents and I began driving an hour round-trip, twice a day, so I could swim in Oakland, next to Pittsburgh, for the best coach in the area. My dad took me in the morning before work and school, and at night I came home with my mom, who by then was working on her PhD in Library Science at Pitt, her school located conveniently up the street from the YM&WHA. My dad loved to ask the waitress, who happened to be a large, jovial black woman, at the on-site cafe for bacon, to which she'd always respond, "Honey, do you know where you are?" The "H" stands for Hebrew, but we swimmers were a mixture of Gentiles, Jews, and who knows, maybe even Muslims and atheists.

            One night, the fall of my senior year of high school, I climbed out of the pool mid-workout in utter frustration and said I quit. My coach said think about it for a week. My parents said it's up to you. I'd made it to Eastern Regionals in Lancaster that summer, a qualifier for Nationals, but my times were miserable. It seemed I always reached last year's qualifying times for Nationals this year. Sometimes I wonder if I'd been pushed at that point if it would have made a difference. But who wants to push a seventeen-year-old who's made up her mind and who frequently reminds her parents what a bum rap it is to be the youngest and left all alone at home with two parents?

            So the newspaper article is titled "Girls' Swim Team Wails." Pretty impressive title, isn't it? Rereading it, I smiled, and my chest puffed up a little, as I learned that I actually did better in collegiate swimming than I'd remembered! What I recalled was working out rarely and not very hard and going to swim meets. I was more likely to climb over the cinderblock wall of the pool on weekends, when the gate was locked, to "study," sunbathe, nap, and hope some guy would notice me than I was to go to swim practice. Apparently, it was a training regimen that worked well enough.

            I also remember returning from a meet at Stanford and stopping at the Madonna Inn to use the restrooms. For those of you who haven't visited this landmark on California Highway 101, it is hot pink, inside and out. There is nothing that is not hot pink. I've always been partial to pink and green, but Madonna's pink against California's golden hills does not quite cut it. The next highlight was that a Swedish teammate ordered chicken wings for dinner, which I thought was totally weird. I've grown up since then, and now I get it. I also remember we had to stop for my sister to use the restroom about five minutes from campus—she just couldn't make it that last five miles. Oh yea, and I remember my sister hanging out during the meet with her then beau, who attended Stanford and had been a childhood friend back in Pennsylvania—bizarre. I have no recollection of how I or anyone did in the meet.

            So I smiled when I read this in the article:

            The Pomona Women's Swim Team [note how we went from girls in the title to women in the article—talk about a quick maturation] ended their regular season with an impressive showing—including a meet record—at the Southern California Championship Meet at San Fernando State College, last Saturday, May 10.

            The relay team of Becca Harper [my sister], Marilyn Harper, Virginia Miller and Marilyn Walkey set a new standard in the 100 yard freestyle relay...and later in the meet took a first place in the 100 yard medley relay.

            Marilyn Harper and Marilyn Walkey, both freshmen, also gave outstanding performances in individual events—both girls finishing second to former Olympic swimmers. Marilyn Harper finished close behind Cathy Ferguson Cullen, swimming for Long Beach in the 100 yard backstroke.…

            …Becca Harper swam to a fourth in the 100 yard breastroke to round out Pomona's scoring in the A division, which was won by UCLA, with Long Beach State runner-up, Cal Poly and UC Santa Barbara tied for third…followed by Pomona…ahead of six other schools.

Not bad for a D-III women's team pre-Title IX! I must digress to say, also, that I knew three other Marilyns in college, one of whom was Hispanic. I can't speak for the other mothers, but my mom swore Marilyn Monroe had nothing to do with it, and it's true that although the film industry started to notice her in 1950, she didn't hit the big time until 1953. At least we know we weren't named for Marilyn Manson.

            So, this is odd. After reading that article I'd rediscovered while culling my personal files for dangerous items that should be snuffed out, I feel completely at peace with never making it to the United States National Swimming Championships. For a long time, off and on, I've thought that I lost my get-up-and-go when I climbed out of that six-lane indoor pool with a low ceiling that I lived in for one-eighth of just about every day for three years. My competitive streak may have caused me to forget that I didn't just swim with the 100-meter backstroke champion of the 1964 Olympics, but I placed second to her, because placing anything but first rarely counted. But my forty-four-year-older self thinks, I wasn't even a backstroker before college, and I still placed second to an Olympic Champion! That's not too shabby! And I did it while not killing myself trying to see, as a high school friend used to say, how fast I could get back to where I started. Of course, I'd have to assume my competitors weren't training especially hard, either—the article doesn't publish our times.

            As a child, I had other dreams, too: I wanted to be a dancer, and I wanted to own a horse. I always made friends with the girls who owned horses, and after one taste of chasséeing across my friend's long wooden bedroom floor in her ballet slippers, I was in princess land. Quitting swimming left time for other things my last semester of high school, like modern dance and softball. The latter I played only to get a sports letter, since the PE teacher denied my sister and me that for swimming, never mind that as a two-woman team we placed fifth for our school in the first-ever Pittsburgh area high school girls' swimming meet. I accepted my letter with glee, as nearly the entire season had been rained out, and thus I hadn't had to prove myself in softball, for which I definitely had no gift.

            Along with the article about my college swimming prowess, my files contain dance pictures and programs. I took my first ballet class when I was an old twenty-six. Then, seemingly miraculously, I was offered a full-time job teaching dance. For five years, I taught, took classes, choreographed, danced en pointe, and lived a little girl's dream, and I was involved in the local dance world for another five or so years.

            Maybe I would still have taken up dance if I'd kept swimming. Maybe not. But I don't think I'll feel the occasional regrets and what-ifs about swimming anymore. Intellectually I know that every path we take, for whatever reason, provides a new set of innumerable possibilities in life. I'm also told I'm a champion at intellectualizing my feelings to conform them to reality, which often doesn't work out so well. I don't think my life will change now that I've come to terms emotionally with having given up on my swimming dreams. But that nice little sigh of relief somewhere inside and the smile I feel thinking I didn't just get wet with Olympians, I placed second to a gold-medal winner! sure feel good.

            Silly? Sure. We humans are nothing if not silly.

            Thanks for saving the article, Dad.

           

Missing Mom

          It's my birthday. It's also a year since I last talked to my mom. She called to wish me a happy birthday, and at my husband's instigation, they sang "Happy Birthday" to me, Doug standing by my side and Mom on the phone, her voice growing stronger as the song progressed.

            My mom died in the dark hours of early morning two days later, before we had even begun our planned trip to see her. It was the birthday of one of her younger sisters, who had died twenty-two years earlier, and of her youngest granddaughter.

            I last saw my mom about ten days before she died. The final month of her life was a blur, from driving through the night to see her twelve hours after she went into ICU, to settling her into a rehab center, to another emergency hospital admission, to hospice in my brother and sister-in-law's home, several hours from our home. Just shy of ninety-two, her intellect remained stunning to the end, and she'd lived on her own for the nearly ten years since my dad had died, but her heart was plumb worn out.           

            I cut tall white calla lilies from our garden that I placed across Mom's heart when we arrived at my brother's. I wasn't sure I wanted to see Mom dead, but I didn't want to wonder later if maybe I should have. I had a good cry. My younger son, who had arrived before me, came in, and we had a good cry and talk together. After a while, I pulled him into my lap, never mind he's a grown man and towers over me; I needed to be his mother. My nephew said the lilies helped him feel at peace when he went in to see his grandma.

            I told my siblings I need a third parent. My sister was with our dad when he died. My brother was with our mother. I was hours away both times. But at least I shared a long, long hug with Mom the first night she was in ICU; I got to enjoy all the grandkids and great-grandkids who came to see her during her last month; Mom sang to me on my birthday; and Mom suffered little and was intellectually strong until the end—what more blessings could one wish for.

            I don't know what I saw, sensed, or heard in Marshall's a week or so ago that made me suddenly aware it has been a year since I last saw my mom. The sensation of missing her seems to happen frequently, then not at all. Occasionally when thinking of her, I laugh. Sometimes, like the day in Marshall's, I feel like I'm going to hyperventilate. More often than not, I think of something I want to tell Mom or ask her, then remember she's not there anymore to pick up the phone and take it on what always seemed like a long journey to her ear before she said Hello.

            I remember my dad saying decades after his mother died, "I miss her still." My mom could be frustrating, annoying, selfish, unbelievably stubborn. My siblings and I tell our own children to call us on it if we ever behave similarly as we age; I think they smile knowingly at us. All the ways Mom could get to me slid away with her, and now, I just miss her. I miss discussing books and teaching with her. I miss watching her concentrate on a crossword. I miss laughing at her amazing ability to pronounce a French word ten different ways in her attempts to get it right. I miss her tender moments. I miss the connection she gave me to Dad. I miss her utter love for her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. I miss her intellect. I miss her stories about family and friends from now and long ago. I miss her enthusiasm for golf. I miss talking with her.

            Mother's Day last week began with Doug's loving voice wishing me a Happy Mother's Day, as he rubbed my back like my mom used to do. Next was Earl Grey tea with warm milk, reading a book in my favorite morning spot on the living room couch, with the early sunlight and a cool breeze filtering in through the shades. Earlier that week, I'd decided that since I don't have a mother, I'd send Mother's Day cards to my relatives. My emotional brainstorm having arrived late, the cards were tardy, but so what—and the thank yous were wonderful.

            A Mother's Day card from my older son awaited our return home from UCLA this week, where Doug's brother had heart surgery. It was good to have family and friends there, along with a gazillion electronic devices, to pass the twelve hours before he was in ICU and everyone could heave a gigantic sigh of relief. During the wait, I kept having visions of Mom last year at this time, along with memories of Dad in various hospitals due to his heart problems. Being able to be outside on a beautiful campus in perfect weather reading a book was a good salve for all the emotions.

            My birthday began yesterday with a card from my older son. My younger son was going to visit, but I called him off when he admitted he and his wife had not been at home for the weekend in a month and she is leaving town Monday on business. My husband woke me today with song. There have been text messages and internet birthday cards and phone calls. I cried through the first few minutes of my phone call with my sister. I share my birthday with a good friend's now nine-year-old daughter, who wants to know when we are going to celebrate our birthday.

            My birthday will always have the memory now of my mom singing to me on the phone, of the last time we spoke. Today I was awake at the time Mom gave birth to me, just after midnight, sixty-two years ago. Just like I felt part of me died with her, I felt how so much of her dwells in me, a part of the great chain of life.

            A miniature pink calla lily from my parents' yard bloomed in our yard for the first time just before Mother's Day. Yesterday, a second pink bloom, on a neighboring plant, joined it.           

Helen and Gretchen

            "I don't want any more phone calls from Cap the day before Easter," Aunt Gret said as she came into the living room from the master bedroom. "Last year your mom and now your sister." Aunt Gret was almost smiling, but her eyes did not have their usual sparkle.

            "That's right!" I laughed, half-heartedly. "How could I forget? Mom rose on Easter morning!" My brother's phone call was to report that our sister was having emergency surgery for the cyst she'd recently told me about. Fortunately, by that afternoon, she was home sleeping, and on Easter she felt better than she'd felt in months.

            Aunt Gret is the younger sister of my mom, Helen. She rents a condo in Siesta Key, Florida every year in late March and April, when Ohio winters have not yet petered out. Florida isn't my idea of a destination, but then I haven't suffered through a Pennsylvania winter in over four decades, over three of which I've lived in California's Central Valley, where the sun shines nearly every day of the year. I'd go anywhere, however, to spend time with Aunt Gret. That her daughter, my cousin Ann, was also there was a bonus. Ann and her family live in Connecticut. Five years my junior, growing up we'd only seen each other at family gatherings. We connected a year ago, just days after Mom died, when she and Aunt Gret came to my son's medical school graduation in Albany, New York, and then we stayed in Ann's home. It was Ann who suggested I join her and her mom in Florida.            

            After my brother's phone call, Aunt Gret, Ann, and I went on about our leisurely Saturday. We breakfasted on the lanai that overlooks the pool and Siesta Key Beach, then donned bathing suits, cover-ups, and hats; lathered ourselves with sun screen; and gathered up beach chairs, towels, cameras, and reading material. Walking across the wide beach in the white quartz sand that never gets hot, it's easy to see why Siesta Key was recently dubbed America's #1 Beach. We claimed a spot and went walking through the surf, picking up small shells and looking for dolphins.

            It's impossible not to have a great time when Aunt Gret is around. As she said one day while I was in Florida, "Life is for living!" She's not wild, but rather enthusiastic, embracing all that life has to offer. At eighty-three and a widow for four years and with a hip replacement, she continues to ski, golf, travel to her four children's homes, attend events of her grandchildren and great-grandchildren, vacation at a lake in Michigan with friends, spend a month every year in the town in Florida she and Uncle Don adopted as their late-winter escape twenty-five years ago, and travel to California every fall to see her sister.

            Aunt Gret and Mom looked like twins, despite my mom being ten years older. They loved being together. When their husbands were alive, the four of them visited each other and traveled together. We always laughed at the story of Dad telling his sister-in-law to shut up: he loved talking as much as she and was frustrated that she deprived him of center stage. But he adored her. My parents played no small part in raising mom's much younger sister and even younger brother, and Mom claimed Gret's laughter and jolliness saved Mom's hide more than once when their father was annoyed with her.           

            When I got the text message from my sister a year ago on Good Friday that Mom was in the ICU, my husband, Doug, and I were visiting friends at Pismo Beach. Although he'd just arrived three hours earlier after a two-day drive from Seattle, we left immediately. Nine hours later, at 4:00 A.M., we were driving around the parking lot of Palm Drive Hospital in Sebastopol, in our 1987 VW camper, looking for a spot with enough slope that we could get the van rolling then pop the clutch to start it, because our starter motor had died en route.

            Mom looked at me and held her arms up from her hospital bed, and we hugged a long time. She was alert but sported a bi-flow oxygen mask that was keeping her alive, which the doctors and nurses had spent several hours accomplishing. Over the course of the day, my siblings and their spouses and our children who lived close by arrived at the hospital. The attending doctor's last words to my brother, sister, and I that evening were that Mom had about a ten-percent chance of making it through the night. Having been with her all day, the prognosis did not surprise us.            

            That evening, we all supped at the home overlooking the Pacific that Mom and Dad had retired to twenty-five years ago, having astutely deduced that their three children and their offspring were not going to be returning to Pennsylvania to live. Dad had embraced their new surroundings with undaunted enthusiasm, his approach to most everything in life. Mom followed his lead, as usual, and became as active as he in the church, golf association, and community. Both assumed various leadership roles, and their gregarious natures meant they were acquainted with most and dear friends of a number. Still, Mom always had a bit of reticence about the move, which passed her lips a bit more after the death of her lifemate nine years earlier. But no matter how logically her children exhorted, and even when we demanded she no longer drive, she was not leaving that house. In the end, she left the same way Dad had: in an ambulance.

            I suppose it was not wanting to face the inevitable that kept everyone hanging around Mom and Dad's house Easter Sunday, until my sister and her husband finally decided to head to the hospital. Less than an hour later, the phone rang, and my sister announced, "Mom is sitting up and eating." Despite the congestive heart failure and being at death's door the night before, Mom was alert and conversant and quickly making friends with all the hospital staff. I can still feel the smile that broke my face, not only because it was Easter and Mom, as we joked, had risen, but because once again Mom had exhibited the sheer stubbornness that had kept her going so many times in her life. We had noted that her stubbornness bordered on pig-headedness at times, but there's a lot to be said for sheer will power, and none of us could say that we had not inherited the stubborn gene.

            It being Easter Sunday, the hospital was minimally staffed, and only two of six ICU beds were occupied. When Mom's great-grandchildren arrived, the nurses opened the refrigerator and had them choose a juice box. Ignoring the rules, the staff allowed our family to crowd into Mom's room. When the crescendo of our talk and laughter became excessive, they simply closed the door.

            My mom died peacefully a month after calling 911 herself. I was glad my older son and his wife had been out from Albany and so were able to visit with her one last time. Being with  family at his graduation in Albany, just a few days after Mom died, combined with the bonus of the strong connection that my cousin Ann and I felt, gave a degree of balance to my sense that part of me had died with my mom.

            During our visit at Ann's, Aunt Gret said perhaps she shouldn't come to my younger son's July wedding in California, "since I was going to stay with Helen." I told her she must still come, unable to imagine not sharing this event, as we had so many others, with Aunt Gret. My siblings and I quickly reorganized her trip and lodging. At the wedding reception, one of my nephew's shot a wonderful video of Aunt Gret dancing to techno music with the bride and groom. He comments, "All right, Gret! Woo!" See what I mean? Aunt Gret is vital. The day after the wedding, we had an informal family memorial for Mom. Then Doug and I brought Aunt Gret home with us for a two-day tour of our area and the national parks in our backyard.

            On Ann's and my last night in Florida, we drove down Siesta Key, lamenting the McMansions that have replaced so many fishing cottages on both the gulf and intracoastal sides of the narrow island. We ate seafood on the deck of Turtle's, overlooking the Intracoastal Waterway. There was activity in the huge osprey nest built on top of a pole at the neighboring marina. A couple of boats puttered in, and a fishing kayak was moored a few hundred yards out.

            After dinner, we crossed the road to Turtle Beach to watch the sunset, as we had every night, and look for sand dollars. While looking for seashells on our first beach walk, I'd told Aunt Gret how much Doug likes sand dollars, and she was determined to find him one from Florida. The steep beach and pea-gravel-like sand contrasted sharply with the flatness and white quartz of Crescent Beach outside Aunt Gret's condo. Several children still played in the water, while the adults kept one eye on them and one on the setting sun.

            "Everyone gathers like this for sundown in Michigan, too, but the sunset is nothing like here," Aunt Gret commented. Aunt Gret loves the sunset, as my dad did, so it makes sense that she would differentiate between "sundown" and "sunset," something I'd never heard before.

            "It's a good puddle tonight," said Ann. A sun "puddle" was another term that was new to me. That night I could see it clearly: a red puddle spread out on the water beneath the sun.

            "Maybe tonight we'll see a green flash," Aunt Gret said, and we had yet another family discussion of exactly what a green flash is. "Is there really such a thing? I never saw one in Bodega, but your dad had that list of everyone who did." I had found Dad's list in Mom's dresser, when we were cleaning out their house. It's labeled "Green Flash Believers: This certifies that I witnessed a green flash of the setting sun of our solar system on this date at Bodega Bay, California," and is signed and dated by sixteen family members and friends.

            Then, just after the ocean rolled over the sun, Ann and I both saw a green-blue puddle on the surface of the Gulf of Mexico. Aunt Gret missed it, but I think that is at least in part her eyesight, which of course she never ever complains about. It seems perhaps the "flash" refers not to the shape, as we all thought, but the length of the phenomenon. I'm so glad I saw it, because Aunt Gret so fervently wanted for us to see it.

            Walking back up the beach I spotted a small spiral shell, picked it up, and called, "Look, Aunt Gret! I found one!" She had just mentioned the existence of such shells before we stopped our shell hunting for the sunset. I felt like a child who needs her mother badly, and I didn't care that the top of the shell was broken off.

            Shortly before my mom's death, the matriarch of Aunt Gret's inlaws also died. When her sister Helen died, Aunt Gret announced, "I don't think I'm ready to be the matriarch of both families!" Of course, she's taken what life has dealt her in graceful stride. 

            "You're coming to California this fall as usual, aren't you, Aunt Gret?" I asked over breakfast on my last day at Siesta Key. We had just dropped Ann off at the airport, and I still had a couple of hours before my flight.

            My heart dipped as she hesitated briefly, but then I heard the words I wanted to hear: "Well, sure—let me look at my calendar when I get home to Ohio."

            "We'll pick you up at whatever airport is best for you to fly into and make sure you see everyone," I told her.

            Even as I'm writing this, my eyes are tearing up again at the thought of my next visit with my Aunt Gret.

Do Sweat the Small Stuff

          In the late 1990s, Richard Carlson, PhD, came out with Don't Sweat the Small Stuff—and it's all small stuff, which, according to Amazon's synopsis, "…tells you how to keep from letting the little things in life drive you crazy.…reveals ways to calm down in the midst of your incredibly hurried, stress-filled life." Personally, I think the word "stress" is way over-used and should be eliminated from the language. And of course I thoroughly dislike anything that purports to zero in on the cure-all for the malaise du jour. I will confess, I have not read the book, although it was once recommended that it was reading from which I could benefit, as I happen to believe small stuff can be incredibly important.

          Recently my husband has been preparing the coffee machine at night and leaving a note on it that all I need to do is push the button in the morning. Rinsing the coffee pot, pouring water into the reservoir, dumping the old grounds, rinsing the coffee basket, grinding coffee, putting the grounds in the basket, and then at last pushing the button can seem a huge task in the morning, but really, it's such a small thing. My husband going through the process at night is still a small thing, yet it's huge. It says "I love you," and what can be huger than that?

          Since retirement, I've taken up quilting in earnest. At first, I wasn't overly concerned with perfect cutting and stitching of pieces. So what if one piece was a little small and I had to stretch it to fit other piece or, heaven forbid, I allowed a tuck in the fabric? There is debate as to whether making a "humility block," a deliberate mistake in a quilt so as not so seem too prideful, was in fact a common quilting practice in the past, but making a mistake in a quilt certainly is not uncommon, nor is deciding to leave the mistake if it does not ruin the overall effect. My quilts have been replete with humility blocks, but I easily dismissed them. After all, quilting is a hobby, and everyone who receives one of my quilts marvels at and loves it. I've  made two discoveries in recent months, however, that rocked my quilting world: the seams I thought were one-quarter inch, as most quilt stitching is, were actually slightly more than one-quarter inch, which explained why my quilts were smaller than expected or didn't go together as neatly as anticipated. All those slightly-more-than-one-quarter-inch seams add up. I was amazed and thrilled at how much better my quilts went together when I began to make true one-quarter inch seams. I also began to be even more careful when cutting pieces, in order to promote one-quarter-inch-seam perfection.

          The second discovery was the benefit of pinning the heck out of every seam in a quilt, from the first two pieces sewn together to the last strip of binding. Especially when putting the three pieces of a quilt together—the top, the batting, the backing—I used to think a couple of pins would do to sew a simple straight seam. Thus, I encountered the tucks in the top, the backing that turned out to be too small even though I'd measured it three times before cutting, the rumpled batting, the crooked lines. Since I've been using a gazillion pins on every seam, not only is the sewing easier, but the quilts look more uniform, more expert, and give me a great deal of satisfaction—it's as good as scrubbing the brass clean on the bottom of a Revere ware pot. I take much more pleasure in the process and the result.       

          There's a lot of small stuff that for sure isn't worth stressing over, but there's also a lot of small stuff that is the stuff of life. When my sons and daughters-in-law leave a phone message, of course I'd much rather I'd been there to talk to them, but the small message makes me feel wonderful for the rest of the day. I take enormous pleasure in watching the birds at our backyard feeders and birdbaths, although some might say we are turning them into welfare birds. What's small to me may be big to someone else, and vice versa. When I clean the tile floor not because it bothers me but because I know how much my husband likes it to be always clean, his pleasure is worth my effort.

          Of course knowing when to let go of something small—and sometimes even something big—is important. Of course not letting minutiae dictate one's day is important. But some very small things produce satisfying results: the ready-to-go coffee, the rare goldfinch at the birdfeeder, the text message from a child, the chore done to make someone else happy, the quilt blocks that snuggle together like the pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.

           

It's the Gargoyles

            I love gargoyles. I climb up to visit my favorites hunkered atop Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris every chance I get. That’s only been twice in my sixty-plus years. Anne Lamott, fortunately, is more accessible.

             With all the raving I do, to friends, family, and acquaintances, about Anne Lamott—her writing, her humor, her gut-wrenching-to-the-core observations, her humanity, her fragility, her vulnerability, her strength, her transparency, her hunger, her tears—you’d think it would be easy to write about why I love her. But how do you write a feeling? How does Anne Lamott write feelings?

            She does it with a purity and eloquence as simple as gargoyles, always at the ready to ward off evil spirits and meanwhile channeling rain water.

            I love Anne Lamott because a friend introduced us. We’re both writers. He asked if I’d read Bird by Bird. Hadn’t read it. Hadn’t heard of it. Hadn’t heard of Anne Lamott. He said I reminded him of her. I said oh, flattered to be reminiscent of any real writer. When next we gathered for coffee, he handed me a copy of Bird by Bird. He said my honesty, vulnerability, and passion reminded him of the author. I got stuck on the vulnerability part, since I have a perfectly good suit of armor, but I figured if she was good enough for him, she was good enough for me. Besides, I like un-birthday, un-Christmas gifts. They prove my worth.

            As I read Bird by Bird  the magnitude of the compliment emerged. Anne Lamott writes profoundly, exquisitely, of her life and of life. Nothing is held back, but she doesn’t gush. If she’s seen it, heard it, touched it, smelled it, tasted it, fallen in it, stepped over it, walked around it—we know it. We know it through the crucible she has been through living it.

            I love Anne Lamott because she makes me laugh, from deepest in me. Reading Traveling Mercies, at times I’d begin to think, Okay, Anne, this is bordering on becoming repetitive, this self-examination, other examination, life examination—what is the thread? Somewhere in the back of my mind I’d be contemplating—dare I admit it?—skimming a bit, when bam! Out of her pen would trip an outrageous one-liner that could only be drawn from real-life experience. A smile and a laugh would spring from deep inside to play with me. I’d return to devouring every word, bouncing contentedly along to the next episode. Well, except soon again I’d be having trouble reading, what with wet lenses and warped pages from the falling water.

            I love Anne Lamott because she delivers life to us as the finest art. She helps us understand that to live one’s life is a work of art, and sometimes it’s inspired and it flows, and other times it’s trial and error and mountains to conquer, or submit to, or observe for a long time until we glimpse a path. We know Anne Lamott through her pages, not just a writer, a celebrity, but a person. She has opened the book of her life, because she is courageous. And because she had to. Every writer knows you have to write. Whether or not fame and fortune choose to follow a whim and come along, you can only hide from the urge to write for so long. It won't leave you alone, even if you think you have it submerged, calmed down, out of the picture.

             It’s awkward trying to write about why I love a writer to whom I’ve been compared. This isn’t just your garden variety writer down the street, not that I disdain zucchini, chives, and weeds. It seems presumptuous to even acknowledge the comparison to a writer who is not only famous but respected and adored. And more human than maybe I’ll ever manage to be. I am awed and humbled to be reminiscent of her.

            When I read Anne Lamott I read myself. Our experiences are similar; the details are different. We share the fears and joys of every woman, every person. We have our  demons, sorrows, and contentments. In her utter honesty and joy and pain and catatonic moments, I feel life. I hear all the secrets in myself, and I’m not afraid to listen anymore. I can commune with gargoyles and let my armor rust in the rain. 

1999, revised 2012

A Mother Like Any Other

            For this week's blog entry, we try to inject a bit of humor. I wrote this little ditty when my sons were in high school.

A Mother Like Any Other

            Once upon a time there was a mother. She was like any other mother, though sometimes more, sometimes less. She had two wonderful sons, who were loving and thoughtful; wonderful students; had wonderful friends, girlfriends, and dogs; were great athletes and musicians; and who generally were just about perfect. She adored them and would do almost anything for them.

            There were just a few things that, in her great wisdom as a parent—which wisdom is acquired only on the job and is always in doubt—she wished for them to do as part of their “responsibility training.” Now, this mother knew for a fact that her two adored sons were nothing if not responsible. She knew this from many observations, such as their performance in school, their treatment of their friends, their usually remembering to call her when they knew she might worry as to their whereabouts, their helping with meals and putting shades down and so many other things she sometimes had a habit of forgetting.

            So, speaking of forgetting, there were just a couple of things the adoring mother truly wished her wonderful sons would not need to be reminded of, at least not too often.

            One of these was to not leave standing water—or wet rugs and towels used to soak up the standing water—in the corners of the bathroom floor, for she knew floors were not free, as they had twice learned already.

            Another was to keep their rooms picked up, so that when, for instance, she wanted to do something like get their cell phones insured, she could get in their rooms without falling headlong over a barbell, and when she didn’t fall, also find the paperwork she was looking for. Now here, of course, it was one of those hated “do as I say, not as I do" situations, her excuse for her own not-always-neat room being, of course, all the many, many, many responsibilities she had.

            Speaking of tripping, the mother didn’t much like tripping over dog poop or aluminum cans, either. Hm. Maybe she should haul all those aluminum cans to the recycling center herself, to help pay her monthly cell phone bill.

            Well, this story could drag on and begin to get boring. So, this is

            THE END.

Who Wrote That?

            I have not written much since I finished my MFA degree over a year ago. Looking back through writing in various stages of being, I wonder at times who this person is who wrote the words, and I relearn lessons I have forgotten.

            Nine years into my relationship with Doug and now over three years married, we struggle so much too often, it seems. We try not to offend, but we do anyway. I say I won't be impatient, but I am anyway. I remind myself that what I think existed with anyone else at any time in the past probably was not even remotely as I remember it through the rose glasses of time. As I learned so quickly when my mother died last year, the aggravations are so easily forgotten. I must let the aggravations with Doug be forgotten.

            When I was first divorced, I decided, against my counselor's advice, to "see" men. (I cannot bring myself to say "date," as that is for young people. In my defense, it was all quite accidental, as I fully intended to be  full-time mother and teacher, but that is another story.) I used to ask myself when preparing to go out, Would I be going out with my children's father if we were still married? That was the yardstick by which I tried to judge my actions. The yardstick I'm trying to learn to use now, in my relationship with Doug, is do I have aggravations with other people and, if so, would that mean the relationship is intolerable? The answer, of course, is simple. I have been aggravated at one time and another with everyone I know, and no doubt, they with me, and they probably more with me, because really, I think I am quite difficult to be around, a fact to which those who have known me longest, my siblings and parents, would readily, and lovingly, testify. In fact, when I told Doug recently that yet another person had commented how glad they were I had married him, because he is so much happier now, he asked, lovingly, if I'd told her how difficult I am to get along with.

            When I focus on what Doug and I like together, the rest melts away. I feel a lightness, and I think, Well, this is so much easier than slogging through being aggravated! Really, the minute I feel aggravated, I should think of something we enjoy together. If I think about the bird feeders he hung to bring birds to the yard for me; the joy we both take in the birds, crazy in numbers in our yard, emptying the feeders daily; the two birdbaths we added this year that they sip from and splash around in, I am happy. If I think about our VW Vanagon trips that I love, I am content. If I look at the yard and gardens we have gradually transformed into ours, I smile.              

            Thus, I look at what I wrote a few years ago about my relationship with Doug, and I realize the enormous potential for contentment in the years that remain to us has always been there, and I tell myself I must try harder to put aside aggravation, in favor of fulfilling that potential. I wrote what follows after a hike to Ladybug Meadow in the southern end of Sequoia National Park.

* * * * *

            On the way back down Ladybug Trail, we pass a white-haired couple who ask if we saw the ladybugs. I look at Doug, chagrined. "We forgot to look!"

            "We'll be back," Doug says.

            Ladybug Trail follows the South Fork of the Kaweah River. It is a hike we do only in winter, as the low altitude makes it too hot for a summer hike. Towering, gnarly oaks, their limbs naked for the winter, climb the hill above the trail and descend to the river below.

            As we continue on, I comment to Doug, "That oak has roots to talk to God about."

            If I didn't have roots in who I am, who I come from, I could not put down roots with Doug, who has the roots of here: the roots of memory, of childhood friends, of family and places. I wouldn't change that I have lived different places, that I have no sense of physical roots, no geographic home to return to, that our children, mine and Doug's, will not likely live here. But it is because Doug has roots that I am drawn to this place. I like that I can let my roots grow down into the soil of this place, much as I dig into the soil of the yard that I begin to call mine, too. We learn to let the branches of our own ways graft themselves to the same root stock and create a tree that is ours.

            On our next hike to Ladybug Meadow, we remember to lift the carpet of leaves, and we watch in awe the community of ladybugs that lives beneath them, sheltered from winter's cold. I must remember to shelter our tree of grafted branches, so that it will continue to send its roots down deeper and wider and grow stronger and fuller.

* * * * *

            This cloudy winter day, the birds sing merrily, dashing from feeder to feeder, sometimes pecking at each other for supremacy. Some prefer the ground under the feeders. A blue jay couple puts on a comedy routine, hanging precariously from the feeders, squawking their arrival and accomplishments. Mid-week, we will head for Death Valley, in the VW, the same destination as our first VW trip together, nine years ago. It now sports a quilt I made of VW camper appliqués, a new retractable awning, and new black bumpers we just put on together this week. I loved lying on my back in the driveway helping to mount them, and I felt a bit of pride in us and our accomplishments when Doug told me a friend who has just purchased a Vanagon says he has bumper envy.

Back to the Blogdon

            Since finally completing an MFA in creative writing with a poetry emphasis over a year ago, I've sporadically tried to get published. It took me nine years to complete the degree, with life, work, and waxing and waning motivation and inspiration causing me to drop out of and in to the program. Professors and students came and went. Whether the university liked my money—tuition about doubled over the years—or my advisor actually thought my writing decent, I was readmitted three times. Given the efforts required of former professors on my behalf the last time, I figured I owed it at least to them to finally finish what I'd begun.

            Unfortunately, my last poetry-writing workshop left more than a little to be desired. The professor, whom we'll call Solomon, and whom I'd benefitted from working with in an independent study when he first came to campus, seemed steeped in personal problems, mentioning not infrequently his need for his job and his sex life with his wife; devoted to a younger coterie of students, who mostly lacked curiosity; and interested in doing as little work as possible. When discord erupted in the class over how the workshop should function, he swayed. I at first encouraged him to please take charge and run the class as he saw fit, no holds barred, let the brutal comments fly for it's what we need to improve. But as the class stumbled along, we in the elder population grew increasingly frustrated, which we expressed to both Solomon and the program director. He usually gave little input on my writing, and when he made a point of speaking first on one of my poems, I couldn't tell if it was because he thought it was so awful that he wanted to get something out there to save me embarrassment or he actually thought it was good. When he announced whatever we wanted to turn in for our final project was fine and we'd all get A's regardless, contrary to my usual philosophy that I will give it my all to glean from a situation what I can, I did little, then wrote copious complaints on the class evaluation.

            But still, what I took most from the class was the memory of poems written by the cowboy of the group, a young man who worked the back country trails of the national parks in the summer and wrote poetry vivid in the pictures of horses, people, and nature in potent interaction with each other. That made it all worth it.

            In a political arrangement, Solomon, whom I had chosen as my thesis advisor a couple of years before, was joined by my former advisor and the program director, at my request, after Solomon told me to simply turn in my thesis when I thought it was done, which shocked me, as I had assumed there would be input along the way. When I did submit a rewrite, his sole response was to chide me that an erroneous comma he had previously pointed out remained, and to direct me only to show the poems to him when I thought I was done. I'm an editor. I love punctuation. But it seemed it was his ego—or his laurel's ride—that was talking. He'd made a point once that the founder of the program had personally wanted him to join the faculty. I basically begged him for input, of which he provided a modicum. Fortunately, my former advisor provided more, yet still not the analysis, challenge, and guidance I would have hoped for. Perhaps because of the political situation I fell between the cracks. Perhaps they just wanted to shuffle another student across the stage. Perhaps my writing was that good.

            That fall, when Solomon and I met for him to sign off on my thesis, we seemed to work out our differences, and I acquiesced to my former advisor's request that Solomon introduce me at my thesis reading, that it would mean so much to him. I was touched by his introduction, but he was gone before I could greet him after the reading—he was on sabbatical after all. Then, a few weeks later, he declined to write a job recommendation for me. I was stunned.

            Degree in hand, I submitted poems here and there and collected the usual rejections. I did have a few poems published, as well as a few essays in the Fresno Bee, years ago, but, as is the norm, most submissions have been rejected. Yesterday, yet another call for submissions came into my email box from the MFA program list.serv, and I yet again thought, okay, I'll try again, thinking of an essay I've long wanted (in principle) to publish. I remembered, too, that I'd been thinking of submitting to a sports-oriented poetry contest.

            I sat at my computer reworking the baseball poem for about six and a half minutes, then stopped, realizing I just do not have the emotional stability to revise and submit. I was still hearing the former head of the program, when he visited a poetry workshop once, saying I needed to learn how to write a line of poetry. I was still healing the wound of Solomon never saying to me, as he seemed to say to someone or ones each week during that last poetry-writing workshop, You should submit this poem to such-and-such journal. When I practically begged to know if there wasn't anything I'd written that was worthy of submission, his response to try a journal he'd suggested seemingly to everyone seemed begrudging—and definitely unsatisfying. I was still hearing Solomon saying counting syllables (which I did for much of my thesis) worked as well as anything to determine line breaks. I was still hearing him say a good line of poetry is like a Honda: it's not fancy, but it's reliable. I was still hearing him describe my poetry, when introducing me at my thesis reading, as being just that, saying it wasn't propaganda but poetry "we can trust."

            But I just don't want to keep revising the same poems or write new poems that sit on my computer desktop wondering what they will become. I was proud of my thesis. I had it printed and bound for everyone in the family and read from it at family gatherings that Christmas. Just recently, my younger son commented on a favorite poem, and I thought, I should try to get it published. But yesterday, once again, I thought, I really have no interest in being published in a small literary journal read by a few hundred people at best. I want to be in the New Yorker, the Atlantic! I've even submitted to them on occasion. But the chances of publication there, without a name or even a publication record? Pretty much less than nil.

            Mostly I quilt, embroider, and read these days. The sewing gives me the creative outlet I need. But there's always the nagging question in the back of my mind: Am I a writer? If I am, wouldn't I be willing to devote the time and energy to getting published somewhere someday? Was it the bad workshop and thesis experiences—albeit the reading introduction was bittersweet, the refusal to recommend me for a job, which seemed a vote of no confidence, that undermined my desire once and for all? Am I avoiding feeling deeply?

            Even now, as I write, I feel a certain fulfillment, a sense of peace with myself and the world, not even noticing the angry gnawing of a chainsaw until I stop to do something else. But is it necessary to be a published writer to be a writer? Is saying there is too much else to do in life an excuse or the truth? Can heeding a former counselor's admonishment that artists owe it to the world to share their art be fulfilled by sharing only with family and friends?

            This morning while vacuuming, I remembered that this is exactly why I began blogging a few years ago: I could enjoy the process of writing, express my thoughts, share them with those I love, and not worry about the whole process of finding the "right" place to submit, revising what I've already revised ten times, waiting for the rejection, secretly thinking each time the response comes that this will be the one. Of course I'd love to be published! But not enough to go through the process.

            I think I must have quit blogging three years ago when I decided to make a final return to the MFA program. Since then, I taught for a year in a new school district and was not rehired, interviewed furiously all summer, began the new year in another district and resigned three months later, finished my degree. My mom died. My son graduated from med school cum laude and moved back to the West Coast with his wife. My other son was married. My husband's daughter became engaged, and his son enlisted in the Marines. We have traveled for weeks at a time, argued and made up ad infinitum. Life goes on and on. I love to write, but I'm not compelled. I also love to read, garden, quilt, sew, embroider, travel, and talk and spend time with my children and friends. I avoid writing like the plague, and I think about it a lot.

            Time to start blogging again.