Category Archives: seasons

I hath a dream (about hecklers)

30 Wednesday Nov 2011

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Posted November, 2011.

“30 days hath September…”

I get that far with the old rhyme, then have to stop and think what comes next.  November rhymes with September so it hath 30… right?

Hmmm. A quick online perusal yields a website with 89 versions of the rhyme = not helpful when trying to unscrew a memory aid that I can’t remember!  This is what I can recall: November is NaNo is 50,000 words written in 30 days.  Got it.

November. In 2009 and 2010, November meant NaNoWriMo for me, an exhilarating ride of literary abandon, a seemingly impossible goal of verbal output.  What lovely irony that attempting the impossible is so freeing of fear of failure.  Liberating really, to be forced into writing for speed, which by necessity turns off the Inner Critic.  If the Heckler is on duty, there simply are not enough hours in the day, even if you feed your kids Eggo Waffles for dinner and forgo luxuries like sleeping.

But, alas, no NaNo for me this year, for a variety of reasons.  I have missed the experience off and on all month, but not more acutely than today, November 30th, when I can almost feel the exhilaration of rounding third, banging out 5000 words on the last day before skidding into home, face first, mouth full of dirt, submitting the manuscript by 11:07pm for the midnight deadline and holding my breath until the website confirmed that it indeed caught what I had just birthed as it hurdled through the ether.  (I always get that visual when I hit the send button on my work, which I am guessing would be disturbing for the recipients if they knew.)

In my memory of prior years, NaNo is perfect. It provides the deadline I require for adrenaline driven output. Any arbitrary nature of that deadline is inconsequential when I am in the middle of it.  It feels so good to just write without censorship, not bothered by little details like whether each paragraph actually makes sense.  That is all sorted out later, because in November each day is just words on the page, pushing harder to squeeze them out of some small place inside that I did not even know was full of ideas because I was too busy thinking.  Yes, 2012 NaNo?  I’ll be back.  (Luckily, the pain of NaNo is harder to remember…)

For now, I will embrace one aspect of the November NaNoWriMo experience into December and beyond:  gagging that Heckler.  You know the Heckler — the one that likes to curl up in a lumpy LazyBoy recliner in my mind, drooling with anticipation at each days’ spoils as she chews yesterday’s ideas, dribbling doubt onto every string of alphabet letters I dare to scrabble into sentences.

Yes, that Heckler.

Maybe you have met her brother or sister?

Yep, working my little word magic in peace without the sound of her breathing in the background — that is the dream for the days that come after the 30 days that November hath. Has. Whatever.

growth

17 Thursday Mar 2011

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Growth

I write of my garden as it grows through the years

The experience of life, the joys and the tears

I write to keep track of the planning and sowing

I write, unabashed, of my passion for growing

I write for myself, and so loved ones can see

The earth, the breeze, my garden and me.

N. Platto

I found this stanza of a longer poem, source long forgotten, circa 1997.  I didn’t know the name N. Platto then, and a quick search now does not provide any further illumination. Actually the SearchEngine was quite adamant that what I really meant to type was Plato, but I insisted it wasn’t.   I am no expert in Ancient Greek philosophers, but N. Platto is clearly not to be confused with Plato, who does not sound like a big fan of flowery poetry in general, and probably did not compose anything with this cadence.  Growth is a simple poem, and I am embarrassed how much I like it since I am pretty sure cool poems are not supposed to rhyme.

I rediscovered this poem today when I found an old garden journal I started while we still lived in Minneapolis, during the chapter when my life was slowly turning full circle from career to creator.  I still have this journal of the Minneapolis gardens, of course, because I find it difficult to part with nostalgia, and it was such a shiny, new, happy time in my life.  I wanted to remember.

As an “enthusiastic” Rememberer, I have been labeled a pack rat, too sentimental, and at worst, a borderline hoarder.  Let me be clear – I do not have stacks of newspapers from the 1980’s towering around me, no mountains of old yellowed margarine tubs filled with flotsom, no crates of oranges rotting on the porch.  I do not have a room full of dead cats that I can’t bear to part with.  I do however feel the need to hold onto some/quite a few boxes of memorabilia, just until I don’t need them anymore.  Admittedly, this process takes me a smidge longer than your average crazy-ish person.

Yes, things are just things and they are not what life is about and if I lost it all my nostalgia in one fell swoop it would be what was meant to be and I would live.  I could be anywhere with nothing and as long as my guys were with me it would be enough.  Stuff is just stuff and material possessions do not bring happiness and I know all that already.  Society values someone with truly excellent disposal skills that are measured by uncluttered rooms and closets and basements and garages.  And guest rooms.  I get it.  I value the peace that comes with simplicity, and strive for that state of zen.

I like to keep old things.  I always have.  And those certain objects that I was pressured into parting with before I was ready?  I still mourn those items.  They haunt me.  I don’t know how else to explain it, other than I was not yet done absorbing and understanding what those objects were trying to tell me. About who I am and who I was and where I came from.

I kept the Minnesota garden journal, pages full of photos of the same garden beds taken in spring, summer, fall and winter over a five-year period.  I liked watching the progression of growth, and the pages helped me remember where certain plants did well and where they failed.  We moved from that garden 11 years ago, and, as is now painfully obvious to anyone paying attention, I still have the journal. I rationalized holding on to it so I could look back and cross-reference certain flora complete with their Latin names, as this information would be surely be useful in the future and therefore it was OK that I kept it.  I don’t have to feel guilty about wanting to keep something if it is potentially useful.  For reference purposes.  Of course, I haven’t really looked at this volume for 10 ½ years, but, see?  I knew I wasn’t done with it yet.

I now know I was meant to find this journal, this spring, so I could revisit a feeling that has laid dormant for a long time.  I still have this journal because I was meant to find that poem again, and now I have.  Now I can write about the time and the place and the feeling of warm dirt on my hands when the long Minnesota winter finally ended and the plants nearly sprained themselves they were so ready to reach the sunlight.  I can write about it now, and I can remember.  Now, finally, it is time for that item to go, to be recycled.

*

Spring

Cool moist earth, ready to turn,

Peonies pushing, unfurling ferns,

These welcome, familiar, early spring urgings

Find me tools in hand, adrenaline surging.

As the first robin lights on my pond and tree

The earth, the breeze, my garden and me.

N. Platto

the Gift

24 Monday Jan 2011

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Posted 2011.

I was given an unexpected gift.  I was able to turn back the clock, on a snowy day in January.  I was able to live an experience that I’ve regretted missing the first time, and thought was gone forever.  A writer can rewrite chapters, but who has that luxury in life?

I often feel a bittersweet-ness as my kids grow up — the wonder of seeing both boys become functioning future citizens, and the simultaneous mourning of the little boy days left behind.  The days of toys and picture books.  The days of trains.

The Professor was the one who lived and breathed trains, from age two until what we can now refer to as the Unfortunate Nascar Years.  Trains, every day– the first thing he talked about in the morning and last thing discussed at night.  When he first learned his dad was an engineer, his excitement surely stemmed from the belief that Dad drove the trains.

The Little One’s interest in trains seemed to stem more from the need to do whatever his older brother did, and then the thrill of systematically destroying his brother’s meticulously crafted layouts.  I remember little of the days we can now refer to as the The Dark Years, when each day seemingly ended in wailing and gnashing of teeth in biblical proportions.  Granted, this only lasted from approximately 2001 – 2006, which if you do the math is… well, many, many days where I knew I should feel grateful for the priceless opportunity to be a full-time mom, but I often didn’t.  I wished many of those days away.  If I published a memoir of journal entries from that time, the volume would serve as an excellent form of birth control.

It is entirely possible that I never played trains with The Little One for more than 10 minutes in all those years.  He was such a Pocket Nazi during his formative train-playing days that I would lose my temper with him often, and have to remove myself from the situation before I went all out and lost my mind.  I loved that kid fiercely, but let’s just say I frequently needed to count backwards from 100.  Thousand.  I’ll leave it at that.

I thought about the trains, and many of their old toys, just last week when we cleaned the entire house in preparation for guests.  As we piled toys onto basement shelves and closets, it became clear that a thorough sweep of the Basement Land of Misfit Toys is long overdue.  He kept saying “Ooooh, I remember THAT!” and wanting to take things out while I was putting them in.  He’s a tween, half demanding to be grown-up NOW, and half still a little boy.  Someday soon we will purge the toys that they have not played with in years, I thought to myself, with a twinge of… something, undefined.

Then, during yet another snow day home from school, The Little Man unexpectedly carried the impossibly heavy bin of wooden trains upstairs — the old, well-worn Thomas trains and bridges and tracks – and he looked at me.  Without a word, we went together into the den and we played trains on the floor.  Together.  I had so much fun, and he did too. We took a picture of the final creation.  I think I’ll frame it in a double frame, with an old picture I have of him, “Colezilla”, stomping through a huge train layout with a look of devilish glee.

In those old days, I never had the patience.  I was always too busy trying to find time to be me.  Now I was given the incredible gift of a do-over.  A mulligan of motherhood.  And I treasured every minute.

Becoming a writer was just a dream back then.  I saw many women were able to combine motherhood and writing very successfully;  I had not yet reached that chapter, in those years.  Today I have the space to write, and play, on a magical, snowglobe-y day.

bloom

28 Thursday Oct 2010

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I did not plant the bright pink petunias that I found growing out of a pot of climbing mandevilla late this summer.  Yes, I had noticed some unplanned greenery starting to sprout up in that pot on my deck.  I assumed they were weeds and being only 3-4 inches tall, they fell low on my weed removal priority list, somewhere behind the thistles bigger than the dog, and the mystery weeds that were taller than me and had already gone to seed.  Why would I crawl on my deck on my hands and knees to tweek out some little green shoots when I clearly had much bigger horticultural projects to tackle?

So I forgot about those little shoots and was surprised to discover some weeks later these petunias that were thriving unlike any I had ever planted before, tumbling over the edge of the deck in a riot of ridiculous pinkness.   It took a minute to stop congratulating myself on the improvement in my container gardening skills when I remembered that I had never planted those petunias.

They were a spontaneous eruption for which I take no credit, unless you count not keeping my containers tidy as an accomplishment.  I am left to just enjoy their bright color and envy their gumption and wonder how many things I pull out actually have so much potential and how many things I keep are weeds in disguise.

I have often heard and seen the phrase ‘bloom where you are planted,”  on greeting cards and magnets and notepads.  Mary Englebreit tells us that this is a good idea, and it is.   Of course, she also tells us that life is a chair of bowlies, so we take her advice with a grain of salt.

Yes, I can keep working to bloom where I am planted.  Or I can make like a petunia and plant myself where I want to bloom.

(Perhaps this is a good place to note that the petunias I did plant this summer, a proper and rather conservative white variety, all shriveled in the heat in a matter of days, even though I watered them.  Hmmm.)

~~~

Tonight is a hard freeze, so these beauties will be gone.  I am glad they stopped by for a visit.

greetings and salutations

26 Tuesday Oct 2010

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Every fall, a new spider sets up her last camp on our deck.  Every year, I name her Charlotte and watch her go about her business with fascination.

Here is Charlotte 10.

She is not as large, nor did she last as long as some of her predecessors.  But she kept a tidy web and was a good companion for a while.  (Outside spiders = good companions when viewed through window.  Inside spiders, not so much.  Not at all, really.)

One morning before school, as the Little One and I were marveling at the intricacies and symmetry of her web, a bug flew into it and mild-mannered Charlotte transformed instantly into a killing machine.  I think the swift and violent death of the bug was of more interest to the boy than the beauty of the web in the morning dew, but that is just a hunch.

And then, the next morning, she was gone.  I felt a little lonely until I saw one of my Walking Stick buddies on the kitchen screen, so I said good morning to her instead.

This, my friends, is one of the primo benefits of calling myself a writer.  Writers can talk to insects, or plants, or seasons, or themselves, and it is considered normal behavior, creative and charmingly eccentric.  Before?  Not so much normal.  Not at all, really.

I like my job.

keeping my cool

25 Monday Oct 2010

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Well, I did not burst into flames, the weather did cool down, autumn did arrive… although I suspect that Summer’s reluctant departure was only because she is required to follow the rules, and if it had been up to Summer alone, I would still be facing an imminent threat of internal combustion.

So, here we are and all is well.

(If you don’t count that I am personifying a season and harboring resentment against it.  Other than that, it’s all good.)

My Life as a Frog

24 Friday Sep 2010

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I spend too much time thinking about just how flippin’ hot it is here, an unhealthy amount of time really, time I could choose to use in much more constructive ways.  I ruminate about The Heat, working it over and over in my head like I will eventually figure out how to make heat and me get along.  I have held off writing this post, for months, because I felt whining about the weather is hardly a candid thought worth sharing.  Boo sweaty hoo.

Today, however, I sense I am close to my boiling point.  It’s hot as hell, and I don’t want to take it anymore.

Yes, 2010 has been hot, as have many other places this year.  We have not faced some biblical plague, nor catastrophic storms, just some ungodly number of Days Over 90 Degrees.  Strung together.  All in a long, long row.  I try to count my blessings that we have not had destructive weather events wreaking havoc around here.

Days Over 90 Degrees is a popular statistic here, one that the local meteorologists banter around like their Minnesota counterparts tout the snowfall totals.  They are also very fond of the concept called “Heat Index”, where some mysterious formula of factors tells you how incredibly uncomfortable you will really feel if you actually go outside when it is 97 in Cincinnati.  I have my own personal “Heat Janendex”, which, for my own safety and the safety of others, I calculate myself before I consider stepping outside in the summer months.

The Heat Janedex can be calculated with this simple formula:

(HUM% + CLOUDY% + WV + UV + SAS + STBFHL) / (OZCAFF x GODIMHOT)

Which, if you do not know me, represents the sum of:  % Humidity, % Cloud Cover, wind velocity, UV index, Smog Alert Severity and Smokey the Bear’s Fire Hazard Level, divided by the Ounces of Latte Consumed X Hot-Flash status.

(Now, who says you never use algebra again once you graduate?)

Roughly speaking, if it is 98 degrees in my driveway, my body will automatically calibrate to the conditions and make it feel like it is 103 thousand degrees.  And I will turn around and walk back into the air-conditioned house.

After 10 years here, I have come to the conclusion that July in Cincinnati is my February in Minneapolis — a time for cabin fever, cooped up days inside, staring out the window at the poor fools who venture out “for fun.”  I would rather be out in the yard in a raging snowstorm than when it is blaring sun and 99 degrees.  I have Reverse Seasonal Affective Disorder.  I diagnosed myself, by the way.

CinciAugust is my MinneMarch — there are no delusions that the end is near,  but with a couple of months under the belt, a reasonable person can buckle down for the long haul.  The Dog Days.  Still, there may be occasional glimmers of hope, a Minneapolis thaw, a Cinci day or two in the low 80’s, so easy to be lured into complacency…

Which brings us to CinciSeptember, my personal MinneApril — you know the month — where expectations run high for the next season to glide into place on schedule, with all due respect to the calendar…  it is almost over… all is happy… I buy into the back-to-school ads showing smiling children mommies with sweaters draped jauntily around their shoulders, waving goodbye;  the mums filling the garden stores, ready to be placed on front porches next to the pumpkins and corn stalks in a festive autumn display.  Most years, CinciSeptember is the light at the end of the hot, weedy tunnel.

But alas, like MinneApril, it is that wave of expectations that blinds a person to the possibility of a soul-crushing return of unseasonable weather that is only supposed to happen once a century, but somehow it is the second time in four years that it happened again.  It is that freak late season snowstorm that dumps four inches of snow on the tulips.  It is the week of 90+ degrees that spans the official first days of fall.  The days when the only use for a jaunty sweater would be to strangle a weatherman. (Metaphorically, of course.)

Here we are, several days into autumn, and the high today is once again predicted to be 90 degrees.  Sigh.  I am left feeling like the frog sitting in a pot of water.  If the frog is dropped into a pot of boiling water, the frog will immediately jump out.  If the frog is set in a pot of cool water, say in May, and then you slowly turn up the heat, and leave the heat on high for, say, 92 days, the frog will slowly boil to death and never realize what hit her.

Ribbbbettttt.  Soup, anyone?

Apparently I am a northern girl at heart, and my current location just north of the Mason-Dixon line is my southern threshold for heat and humidity. And on that thought, I am done.  I have said my peace with the heat.  I can stop thinking about it now, no more whining, or ruminating.  (This looks like a good place to note that I do not, ever, complain about the winter here, ever.  I don’t want you to think I am a big whiny weather wimp.  I don’t mind the dreary, it is the hot that makes me teary…)

And, this too will pass.  The forecast says 70’s tomorrow, which means good weather for soup can not be far behind.

Little Bo Meep

31 Tuesday Aug 2010

Posted by in get along like cats and dogs, seasons

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Some may think summer is the time for kicking back and relaxing… other creatures find back-to-school much more rejuvenating.

How they still wedge themselves into the bed they shared as kittens, I don’t know.  Sometimes the combined weight will cause the cat bed to careen off the edge of the Kitty Condo Tower, sending Meep’s pear-shaped butt hurtling through the air in a desperate attempt to land on her feet.  She needs the tower to be a few feet taller to master that manuever.

Because as kittens are apt to do, they turned into Cats.

This cat formerly known as Mia — the perfect cat name I had chosen 21 years ago much the way a young girl would pick her favorite baby name — this cat has turned out to be not a Mia at all, much the way the name I dreamed of for my some-day daughter would be vetoed by my husband as the name of the girl in the back of class that ate paste.  Mia just didn’t fit right.  She was soon renamed Meep, in reference to the little squeaky peep she emits instead of a common meow.  Of course from there, it was a slippery slope to Queen Meepersly Squeakersworth.  (*Meep* )

In an unfortunate series of events, and without the use of performance-enhancing kitty treats or Ben & Jerry’s Mouse Tracks, she has morphed into a cat of Rubenesque proportions, a look that is difficult for a cat, or the rest of us for that matter, to pull off without ridicule.  Yet another visit to the Vet confirmed that cats do come in all different shapes and sizes, like the rest of us for that matter, and, while unfortunate, her shape is within the scope of normal.

*

Cowboy, on the other hand, is a long, tall glass of water.  He got to keep his name, because it fits him.

*

He has Ten Gallon ears.

*

So, by contrast?  When Meep stands next to him?  She looks like she has a tiny head and is wearing a furry hoop skirt.

Poor Little Bo Meep.  Maybe kicking back will tone her abs?

letters to camp

15 Sunday Aug 2010

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This summer, The Little One went to his first-ever overnight camp, five nights in a cabin in the woods.  Swimming, archery, campfires, horseback riding, night hikes with the fireflies — this was the real deal, just as I always imagined camp would look like, based on the book settings and movie locations and my imagination.

Since he was a first time Camper, I was the corresponding first time Camper Mom.  I had a lot of questions.  I knew I could be very brave.  I read all the camper instructions on the website, packed the five t-shirts and five pairs of shorts, the bug spray and sunscreen, and labeled everything as he packed it into his stuffed duffel.

The website said no calls and no visits all week, but we could write letters to our camper if we wanted.  To have the letters delivered each day, they suggested we label each envelope with the day of week, and drop off all the letters at the camp office on Sunday.

This presented a bit of a challenge, since it is harder to write newsy, interesting accounts of family events at home that have not yet actually happened.  So I did what any self-respecting mother would do, and made everything up.

One the eve of his departure, the boy’s biggest concern was not that he knew no one there, or the scary camp mashed potatoes, or snakes, or thunderstorms — his greatest fear was that his brother would have fun at home without him.

Normally this would be the perfect setup for that special kind of torture that makes parenting worthwhile, but I was already missing the little bugger and he had not even left yet.  Plus, I knew that deep down, he was terrified of being homesick.  So instead, I sat down on that Sunday morning with the yellow notebook pad and wrote all about our week at home, the days of tedium and torture, long days that were NO FUN AT ALL without him:

Monday:  begin knitting lessons for his brother.  Lose satellite reception and have to resort to reading the dictionary out loud to pass the hours of mind-numbing boredom.  Read and read and read until we make it all the way to the letter D.  Watch the grass grow. Hope you are having more fun than we are.

Tuesday:  Continue to read the dictionary out loud, continuing late into the evening to make it to letter M.  More knitting for your brother, as he tries to finish the sleeves.  This is after he has to brush the dog’s teeth with the squirrel-flavored toothpaste.

Wednesday:  Celebrate reaching the letter R in the dictionary by eating only foods that begin with R all day: rhubarb, rutabagas, radishes — and that was just breakfast.  Your brother has resorted to cleaning the litterbox with the dog’s toothbrush just for fun because he cannot find anything else to do.

Thursday:  after many hours of knitting, the sweater your brother is making for you did not “turn out right”. Maybe we can use it as a potholder instead.  We finished the dictionary last night and we do not want to talk about how many hours it took.

Friday:  Can’t wait to see you tonight!

We picked him up Friday night.  He had the most exciting week of his life.  He looked older, more confident.  And he looked torn when we walked up, a simultaneous “I don’t ever want to leave this place”,  and “I can’t wait to get back home.”  He had been homesick, but he was brave.  And, it turns out, after the emotional roller coaster of independence and activity, the unfamiliar and the fun, he was so mentally fried that he believed all the letters I had written were real accounts of life at home, that all the newsy news I shared had indeed happened.

I felt a little guilty, but only for a moment.  The end almost certainly justifies the means, not to mention that lying to my kids has been the cornerstone of my publishing credits.  Perhaps the news of his brother’s boredom had soothed his soul during the dark hours of the night.  I think the letters did make him smile, because he saved them and brought them home, damp and crumpled much like all the possessions that made it back into the duffel.

Because I had a large pile of unopened mail on the counter for days, I found the  letter he wrote to us FROM camp long after he returned.  He did not even remember writing it.

The note was sweet, written with a stubby pencil on the writing desk of his knee, slightly self-conscious and clearly trying hard to not think about being homesick.  He wrote that the food was good and camp was fun.  Then he signed it with his full signature, in case we were confused about which kid had not been home all week.

Like I had not been sneaking into his room while he was gone and laying my head on his pillow to breathe the lingering still-sweet smell of little boy.

Oops.  Did I write that out loud?

I missed him an embarrassingly ridiculous amount, which of course made this an invaluable experience for all involved.  He had a great week.  Separation is good, and reunions are so sweet.