What's (Not) Going On?

Not much is going on in the blogosphere.

Understandably.

It's a super busy time of year. The days are longer; there are places to go and yardwork to do. If you have kids, they're going on field trips every other day right now. Plus, there are the track meets, music recitals, choir concerts, softball tournaments, birthday parties, barbecues, and graduations.

If you're a student or a teacher, you have finals.

Or maybe the decent weather has prompted you to get out and make some money in this sick economy.

There's some wedding stuff, too. I've wondered how the bridal industry has been hit by the recession, which has led me to thinking about depression weddings: if there were fewer than usual, if the gifts were more less-expensive or even homemade, if the feast was pared-down and the guest list trimmed.

Seriously, though. I don't have time to think.

I have All Of The Above, plus two manuscripts to revise.

It might be crazy spring, but it's time to get crackin'.

Note for Note-For Mom who Couldn't be there--Marcia

James composed his first song at around three and a half. He was in time-out in what we call "Granny's Room". I was moving through the house doing what moms do and overheard him singing the blues, hunched over like Mississippi John Hurt. . . "Mommy took my video/flushed it down the toilet/ I loved that video now I'll never see it again--Ohhhh." I was impressed with the composition and the poetic license.

There have been other instances of musical genius over the years. Daniel and his two mock-sisters Jenna and Sophie (mock-sisters to each other-separated only by a few houses) had a band called "Ruby Red and City Slick." Sophie was Ruby, Jenna was Red, and Daniel was City Slick. They used to perform at every BBQ, Christmas Party, and vague reason to gather and drink good wine.

The girls had a much bigger desire to put on boas and flap around in front of the parents. Daniel was having none of it. The last night of his incarnation as City Slick, Ruby and Red were definately macking on the mic, pushing Slick further into the shadows. Finally, when the Sistas realized they were about to lose what could pan out to be their main draw, they threw Daniel a guitar solo. Daniel knows he doesn't know how to play, he does know he has a voice, and it's possible he might think he's a tad better than they are. He might have looked at his girls and said something like, "You guys suck," and left the room. The girls quickly went running after him, trying to get Daniel to consider a reunion tour.

James, however, didn't waste a minute. He was on that mini red Fender like a hungry hawk on a dachsund. He strapped that thing on like he'd been doing it all his life. He addressed his audience from his stage by the fireplace . . . "Okay, ladies and gentlemen, this is the halftime show." He struck the strings with all the vigor of Stevie Ray Vaughn impersonating Elvis. He'd been watching somebody's moves. His head kept time, his shoulders were grooving, his knees flexing, there was flourish, there was passion . . . Sweet James . . . the one who never tried to find a place in the spotlight stole the show.

He did it again Thursday night up at the Manor.

He has been taking piano with Mrs. Brown for about three months. Seeing as my sainted mother-in-law thinks he's delayed, we decided to hone some fine motor skills and harness his kooky mind. Mrs. Brown has been teaching in the little yellow house near the crossroads of Roosevelt and Donut Country for 40-some years. Everyone knows Mrs. Brown . . . If they play piano. That is life in Medford.

Every Monday James rushes straight from school, hops on his scooter, and we race down to Mrs. B's. His clothes are usually covered in dust from the rocks on the Hoover playground (yes, rocks!), his pants are hanging down around his hips a good three inches of whatever kind of underwear showing, and his hands are a little grubby. But he loves Mrs. Brown, and he really wants a "sculpture."

Mrs. Brown keeps a very accurate and elaborate tally system based on homework, memorization and performance. When you get 100 points you earn the bust of a composer. Red aka Jenna, has a whole bunch of sculptures, and James knows it. He told Mrs. Brown. James wants to catch up. So James decided to perform at his first recital after something like 10 total lessons. James picked his own piece, "The Shoe Cobbler." an easy choice due to a favorite fairy tale, The Shoemaker and His Elves.

He was told to dress up and that he would be going on first.

I asked James what he wanted to wear. "I want a blue jacket, a blue and red striped tie, a fancy shirt, and black shoes . . . that tap."

Okey-Dokey.

Put a kindergartner in a tie and a blazer in the middle of a room full of very Senior citizens and you are definately going to be a crowd pleaser. We got to the Manor early to do a dry run, but the room was already packed. While we were standing to the side trying to show James where to get on and off the stage, two sweet little old ladies chatted him up. He made sure they noticed the Westies on his tie and his new top siders. "Mom couldn't find tap shoes."

You know you finally belong somewhere when you have issues with some of the people in the room. I had history--some good, some not so good--with just about everybody in the room. So did my husband, but with him all history is good history. It was fun.

Two seconds before James was to take the stage his nose started gushing like a Brooklyn fire hydrant in July. I couldn't catch it all fast enough. Luckily Mama Katie was right behind me. Having Katie with you is equivalent to having an ER nurse in your hip pocket. She shoveled me advice and Kleenex as fast as she could. My mum-in-law scrubbed at the spots on James'tie while I pinched his nose.

I turned to my sister, "Tell Mrs. Brown to stall a minute." Katie and I tried to get James to leave the room so we could hemmorage in private and not spill on any of the audience. James would not budge. Mrs. Brown adapted. The show must go on. She announced that James would be on a little later and the second youngest took the stage. As my sister said, "The La Fonds are here." We can't help but make a scene. As my sister, mother-in-law, son, and several neighbors shifted around in their seats and went back and forth for fresh supplies, my husband went missing.

I wanted James up on that stage before any of the older more talented kids could intimidate him and I didn't want to send him up without the camera rolling and blood staunched. I hissed at Katie, "Where is my husband?" She gave me a wry look that all married women recognize-- a squint that basically says, "Typical."

"Do you want to stick some Kleenex up his nose?" She asked. We hunkered around my little pianist trying to twist a cone small enough to wedge up one of his nostrils. We couldn't get anything to fit. James didn't cry, panic, freak out, or back out. He kept his eyes on the stage and occasionally checked the state of his fancy shirt.

Once my husband emerged from the shadows and the red sea calmed enough not to surge on the Steinway, it was time to send James upstream. I eased us into the piano- playing lane.

"Are you ready?" I asked.

"I'm a little afraid."

"Do you want me to walk you up?"

"No mommy," and he pushed past me, as the boy before him made his exit, stage right.

Mrs. Brown, seeing James headed for the spotlight, stood to announce that the medical emergency was over and she presented James La Fond.

My youngest acts like a complete spaz at home. Now that he had the stage he was a complete piano professional. He even faked it through his flub at the end.

He was so brave. We are so proud.

And now, with so much ado . . . we present James La Fond playing "The Shoe Cobbler".

Majicl Farm Fresh Furniture -- Kerry

For three days I stood in the middle of my in-laws barn and sold vintage indoor and outdoor furniture and collectibles.

For the first time in since I closed my furniture store ten years ago, I felt the rush of excitement in selling even the most minute of items, from $2 plastic hummingbirds to $200 dressers.

There is a flow state here for me, the same plane I fly when I am writing.

Dust flies out of my brain and also out of the barn floor.

Perhaps I am manic like my sister, insanely excited about giving old picnic baskets new light and renovating beat up coffee tables.

Well, whatever.

"If it makes you happy," sings Sheryl Crow.

Indeed.

Three-Legged Race -- Kelly

Again bereft of inspiration, I'm recycling a favorite from June, 2007. The photo of sweet Poogan was taken by her owner, Lori V. of Do You Realize?

So, dogs and people. A lot alike, according to the old saw.

I adore Ashland's dog park. It’s beautiful to watch the animals run, ears flapping, muscles doing what they were meant to do, coats gleaming in the sunshine. Some are perfect specimens. The rest do all right. Even that miraculous phenomenon that never ceases to amaze me: the three-legged dog.

We’ve all seen one – leg lost in some traumatic way – that runs, wags, even leaps for a Frisbee now and then, perfectly compensating for his loss, never looking back. The disability is obvious, but its effects are invisible. Sure, it must have been hard to relearn some things, and maybe he can’t sit up and beg any more, but he’s done what a dog does. He’s just gotten on with the business of joy.

In some of the early entries in my personal blog, I mentioned the epidemic of change in the lives of my friends (and, of course, my own as well). While some of these changes are positive, many of them – even the good ones - involve loss. The loss is sometimes sudden, an amputation if you will. A parent dies, a job disappears, a child gets in trouble in a spectacular way. Such loss is brutal, ruthless, but is easily defined. Something Has Happened.

But what of more insidious loss? What if the limb isn’t severed but is slowly withering? What if the leg is there, even normal in its outward appearance, but is without function? When these losses happen in the confines of a family or an individual’s essential self, the analogy to limb loss becomes a little less stable.

When an actual limb begins to fail, a person has options: physical therapy, medication, adaptive technologies or supports. In extreme cases, amputation is the answer to creating a new whole. But people and their systems aren’t that simple, are they? Think of the physical and emotional erosion of chronic illness. The slow train wreck of substance abuse. The withdrawal of intimacy in a strained marriage. These traumas – and that is what they are, even if they are not sudden – happen piecemeal, painfully.

Sometimes the loss is a realization, an “I will never…” statement. Not the whining kind that calls up a response like, “Don’t be silly! You have plenty of time/energy/money to do a, b, or c.” but the peaceful, mature knowledge that the time for a certain action is truly past, that the skills required are beyond a person’s reach, or that some dreams will simply never come true.

None of these scenarios are uncommon, and none are beyond our imagination. They number as many as the grains of sand on the floor of the ocean. The challenge comes, as always, in how we react. Is a full recovery possible? Sometimes the loss is too great, the energy required long gone. People do hit bottom, and they don’t always come back up. I’m not a character-Nazi, the kind of person who believes that a stiff upper lip and a strong work ethic can bring you back from anything. And not everyone is capable of adaptation.

But what of those who don’t want to stop walking, who dream of leaping once again for a well-tossed Frisbee? Even if you do persevere through loss, even if no one around you has any idea that recovery is in process, you still must face the absence. The leg is never going to function again. You leave an untenable situation. You strengthen the remaining limbs. Perhaps you find substitutes.

The challenge lies – at least for me – in the choice of a metaphor to understand your life from the loss forward. Do you choose the four-legged-but-one-is-impaired dog image, or do you radically remake yourself as the three-legged dog?

The answer means the difference between staying in the crate or chasing the tennis ball with your ears flapping and your coat gleaming. You may no longer be the fastest dog, you may no longer have AKC conformation, and you may even elicit pity from those who stare at what is no longer there.

But you will have found your balance.

And you will continue to run on your three strong legs, and the sun will feel good on your back when you take a big slurping drink of cool water and collapse, happy, in the soft, green grass.

The Claws That Haunt

I am not always a good mother. Revision: I am often not a good mother. But, if you want to grow something in water, I’m the mom to have. Triops, fish, crustaceans, frogs, snails, seamonkeys, algae—you want it; I’ll help you grow it. 

So this week we built a pollywog nursery in the yard and went out pollywog hunting. We made three stops before we finally tracked some down at an old reservoir, and we now have 14 beautiful babies scurrying around under a layer of lacy duckweed. 

My children’s first experience with tadpoles ended with me possibly breaking some environmental bio-hazrd laws. It started innocently enought through a grow-a-frog by-mail thing. You get this tiny aqua version of a hamster habitrail called Tube Town, put the ’wogs in, and watch them grow. It was great (for me, the kids got bored after about 42 seconds) to watch them sprout their tiny little legs and arms and turn into itty-bitty frogs. After a week or two I noticed one of the frogs was getting much bigger than the others, then one morning one of the smaller frogs a had vanished and the larger frog had a bit of a pot-belly. A few days later the other small frog was gone, and the lone frog remaining was licking his smug little frog lips. I kept my distance and had the kids feed him after that. He was the kind of frog that had long toenails that you could hear click against the plastic of his aquarium. My daughter enjoyed picking him up and feeling the little claws, but that’s something I really can’t abide. 

One day we realized he could touch all four walls with this arms and legs and the clicking of nails was getting louder as he grew, so we transferred him to the lovely new aquarium chock-full of a variety of interesting fish that my in-laws had given the kids. I think you can see where this is going. The next morning the aquarium was empty, save for the frog, who looked like he could use a cigar and a couple of Tums. 

By that time we learned not to put anything in with him. But after that massive fish buffet, he grew really big, really fast. I started to dream about him and those sickening claws tapping against the glass. I won’t say exactly what we did with him because after looking this species up on the web and reading things like, “when released into the wild they have the capacity to wreck entire ecosystems by eating native wildlife such as fish and turtles that have no natural defense against these creatures,” I’m pleading the fifth. 

Lesson learned: no frogs by mail. Now we just get native species and let them do their thing outside the house. Who doesn’t love the sound of frogs at dusk? 

Insomnia--Marcia

An hour ago it was 3:00 in the morning. Obviously, I am still awake. My husband, back from his foray to le toilette, is snoring comfortably. As for me, the thoughts come rushing in.

At first it's the little things: pack a gym bag, pack a lunch, pack for the trip this Friday, need a haircut and clothes for James for his first piano recital tomorrow,things my trainer told me to help me to stay positive on my long, long road toward fitness, images of Daniel out on the field last night, looking like a twenty-something rather than a ten year old as he swaggered in his catcher's gear toward his spot behind home plate. And then my thoughts settle down and fix on the unavoidable. My mother is in the hospital.

My mother reads my blog when she's well, and so, given that she is one of my two readers, I don't want to bore her with stories about herself or alarm her that the whole cyber world might be reading about her personal life. So, no stories about mom's health.

Still, I know she is lying in French Hospital in San Luis Obispo tonight. Most people would write the word alone after that, but my mother has been living by herself for over thirty years. So tonight whe will have more noise, action, and assistance than usual. Tonight she does not have to be afraid that she will stop breathing. Nurses, doctors, machines, will make sure that she is getting oxygen to her uncooperative lungs. So even though none of us is at her bedside, she is not alone.

My moether doesn't want to be a patient, she doesn't want to lie on a couch, she doesn't want to stop working at the thrift shop she runs for her church, or arranging the flowers for Sunday service, or tell the brown baggers she can't make it, or book club, or her salon (read with a french accent). My mother does not sit still. After feeding everyone, writing up a little marketing piece for the church bazaar, hemming up a pair of pants for her grandson, and designing a new studio for her daughter, she'll finish wiping down the kitchen--even though the movie she insisted she wanted to watch has been spinning around in the DVD player for at least a half an hour. When she does finally finish up every last little thing in the world that needs to be accomplished, she will mosey out to the couch for our "girl time." Nine times out of ten, I am already half asleep trying to rally. Twenty minutes later her eyes are half-lidded and she's slurring. Time for bed.

I love my mother. There is nothing I can do for her tonight. She doesn't want us there. She doesn't want to be pitied or babied. She doesn't want flowers-her arrangements are prettier. She doesn't want fine wine, it's a waste of money. My mother loves to talk . . . that's hard on the days she doesn't have breath. Books on tape, CDs. Those are things I can do for her.

At one point she talked about moving here. She even put money down on Horton Plaza. My sister and I, my boys, all fantasized about having "granny" around the corner. That's the way I wish it was. But she has her wonderful garden, incredible friends, good sons and spectacular daughter-in-laws, and the light of her life, Bella--my three year old, highly unexpected, niece. I smile thinking about mom and Bella. They are a mutual adoration society of two. Maybe that's what mom needs more than anything. I just hope she knows I want to be part of that club too.

"Show a little faith, there's magic in the night..." -- Kely

When I was a college senior, I took a course titled “Fielding and Byron.” I remember telling my professor something along the lines of, “I just can’t get into Tom Jones.” She looked down at me and replied, “You’re not old enough, not ready. Read it when you’re thirty and we’ll talk.”

I was insulted. How condescending! A sophisticated 21-year-old English major like me – well versed in the ways of the world…I could write my own damn picaresque based on the last two years alone...if she only knew – was “old enough” for anything she could throw at me. I even wrote my major essay on “Tom’s Naiveté.” That'll show her…

…that I was the queen of Unintentional Irony. She was, as usual, right, even though I “got into it” quite well just three years later. That professor has been a colleague and is now a friend, and we had a big laugh about that exchange a few years ago when I reminded her of it. Sometimes you’re not ready for a book; it’s just that simple. And sometimes you’re ready again, and again, and again and it’s new every time.

While we may well be able to do dispassionate analyses of our favorite flavor of art (and – burn me as a heretic – sometimes I doubt that we can ever put ourselves outside our analyses), and while we may be ashamed to admit it, we do see ourselves in books, paintings, songs. As a writer, I struggle with taking myself out of the work so a reader can put himself into it. But this entry is getting away from me.

If you’re reading this, you’re probably old enough to remember records. The kind you played on a turntable. The kind you stacked on a spindle and let drop while you lay on your bed and thought about your life in all its miseries and triumphs. Maybe this is something only girls do, but I doubt it. I know enough audiophile men to suspect otherwise. Perhaps you’re back there in your head right now, thinking of a particular song.

If so, track it down soon and play it. Listen to it the way you did back then. Notice the differences in the places it touches you, in the messages it holds. Let go of the part of your intellect that says, “Well, this line doesn’t exactly capture my existential ennui” or “You think your heart is broken now, singer, wait until you express those feelings to the person in question and see how you feel then.” Close your eyes. Be patient. It’s going to be a very different song, but the experience of listening while open to reverie is liberating.

Baboon Metaphysics - Christy

Books titles are tricky. Titling is a marketing function performed by the publisher and while the author does have input, it’s the publisher’s call. That’s okay with me—I like to rely on experts so I’ll go with whatever they give me. I’ve never been wed to any of my titles anyway, and there have been a few already. The book that Flux is publishing started as a manuscript called The Fáistine, which became The Last Daykeeper when I was agent hunting. Then when my agent submitted to editors she renamed it Prophecy of Days, and the working title my editor has given it is Prophecy of Days, Book One: The Daykeeper’s Grimoire. In a couple of months it will go through the marketing/titling process and come out with an ISBN and a final title. Let’s just hope it doesn’t get me the Odd Title Prize.

Yesterday the Oddest Book Title of the Year was announced. The winner? The 2009-2014 World Outlook for 60-miligram Containers of Fromage Frais. That title edged out other front runners, including Baboon Metaphysics, Curbside Consultation of the Colon, Strip and Knit with Style, Techniques for Corrosion Monitoring, and—my personal favorite—The Large Sieve and its Applications.

I’d love to see some other working titles. Care to share your titles and/or title evolution?

Writing Prompts-Forward Thinking--Marcia

Ahh, sweet relief, the bowling season is finished, the choir just had their end of year celebration, and there are just a scant few weeks left of school. Tuesday nights should be getting a lot easier. We'll still have piano Monday, batting practice and t-ball games, Tuesday, drop-in and Draw, Hockey, and Writers group on Wednesday, more baseball Thursday, Singles practice for me Friday night, Saturday baseball and hockey games, and Sunday Mixed Doubles practice for Dan. Wow. We do love sports.

I need to be unemployed just so I can keep our gym bags appropriately packed.

Here is a list of a few of the subjects I have been backlogging and hope I can get to soon: My fabulous fiasco of a Spring Break; my wounded chicken, discovered mutilated and broken-legged one morning when I came home from school: an estate sale at a deceased neighbor's (it's unbelievable what lurks behind bad stucco walls); Andrew my ADD kid from the choir who spent most of the year turning his eyelids inside out and falling out of his chair; the realization that my Hub IS a good father; finally winning a tennis match, and of course foreclosures.

I should get better at Wednesday morning posting now that the only thing left to do on Tuesdays is baseball. I'll start writing a few of these up now. I know by next week I'll have thirteen more things that urgently need my writerly attention. We'll see what comes up.