blog touring 2014…

Click on this link to go to CHOCOLATE IS A VERB and a fabulous post all about blog touring 2014…. You’ll find that JK has written all about the process of these amazing collages, or found poems (almost 700 of them!), and link you to some other great blogs. I’m still pretty overwhelmed with personal stuff, but hope I’ll be able to get organized and join the blog tour in the next week or so.

 

 

Be Kind, Work Hard, Give Thanks

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I saw this bag at the Pacific Northwest Writers Association (PNWA) conference… which I managed to attend sporadically last week despite also driving back and forth to Olympia to see my mother four times (five times!). PNWA where, incidentally, I came in second (!) in two of the fiction categories (short story and mainstream), and met several agents and editors who invited me to show them some pages.

Up and down. That was my week. Mom was better, then she was worse. Then, a little progress in physical therapy gave us hope. Seeing her grandkids from out of state gave us hope. Learning to accept a new reality gave me more hope than I expected.

Last week I felt really really brave. When my literary  agent suggested I find “fresh eyes,” I gave her up without the slightest angst (very unlike me).  The bag, by the way, belongs to an editor at Sourcebooks, who would like to see the novel. I met lots and lots of very cool writers who, like me, are throwing their hearts into the ring…

I also met some really wonderful nurses and CNAs who definitely know how to be be kind, work hard, and give thanks.

At this point, on all fronts, I am simply waiting to see what happens next.  And I’m taking notes.

 

If it’s not fun…

I saw this bumper sticker the other day as I drove to Olympia to sit at my mother’s bedside. It royally pissed me off.

My brain (which is like a hamster on a wheel these days…and nights) went to other things…like writing…as well as the big-life things like one’s mother being so ill.

It kind of sounds fun, writing a novel. Getting fit–or getting really healthy on a great diet–any of that can sound fun, at first. Then you realize that it’s work. If your intent is to have fun all the time, then I predict that you will be eating a lot of ice cream (weighing 280 pounds), entertaining yourself constantly with your iphone or tv or whatever, and NOT finishing a novel, or a short story, or a poem.

Sitting with my mom is not fun, and it made me think of when my 14 year old had her meltdown earlier this year. There is really no where else I would rather be, even in hard times, than with these very important people in my life. I want to be the kind of person who is there for the hard stuff, the kind of person who doesn’t flinch from the hard stuff.  My friend Louise, who is an Early Childhood educator, once described it to me as being on a bus ride. You can’t get off that bus, not easily (some people do get off). As she used to say to her teenaged sons, “I’ve enjoyed growing up with you.” (She says it to me, too!)

So, how is this also about writing? There is something for you — in the work, whatever the work is today — that you must learn, something you can only learn by being present with it. I wish you the strength to be present today with your most important work, even when it isn’t fun. I promise you moments of astonishing beauty, moments that you will only reach by being there.

 

 

 

Where I’ve Been

 

My mom has had a series of strokes and I’ve spent a lot of the last week in her hospital room. We thought we were losing her for a while there, but now she seems stronger and we’re just waiting to see. I’ll keep you posted. Meanwhile, a picture and a poem. (published in Jeopardy, spring 1992)

Calling a Daughter

Each spring you call me,
your word from home, some number
of new calves born on the farm,
your voice flowing

a dozen years of miles,
conjuring red and perfectly white babies stumbling
under their mothers’ bellies,
clean as Jesus, bawling “maa.”

I hear dishes clinking in a sink,
water’s fumble
as you wander your kitchen
tethered by the wall phone’s curling cord,
your kitchen where five children crept
underfoot and then abroad.

In summer dusk my name
swept the yard, curving
outward from your throat,
sound liquid as perfume spilling
from where you stood on the old porch
and I ran over the damp grass
waving my arms like wings.
One morning I found my way
down the road around that dangerous corner
to Granma’s house. She called you
on her black telephone
and you fetched me back,
tickling my legs with a switch
every step the way home.

After you hang up, I stand
on my own front porch where night air
blooms sudden and voluminous,
lavender and roses,
the scent of your powder puffs.
Memory, like a mother catches me up,
like you, lap at the upright piano,
fingers jangling ivory keys
Abundant grace you gave to me. 

How daughter looks like laughter,
sounds like water, 
always here, always going away.