wading through the week

Something I learned from good friends when I became so suddenly single in 2000 was that grief takes its time. It has a season. And best to honor that season instead of pushing it away or trying to shove it into clothes it's not meant to wear.
So I didn't write this week. Way back in September, I set myself a goal of writing every day in October, and I did that until Norma died... and then I stopped.

Well, that's not entirely true. I did write a remembrance to represent her many students, and that piece will run soon in Hunger Mountain, the Vermont College literary journal.
But I stopped working on the novel, and that felt right. Instead of trying to make my mind parse sentences and construct plot and feel its way through characterization, I let my mind rest a bit this past week, and I allowed my heart to grieve.

Sometimes you just need to do that, and you are better for it afterward. I thought of a line I love from Delta Wedding, from a scene where India, Dabney, and Laura visit their old aunts: "They all sat down on the two facing sofas and had a plate of banana ice cream and some hot fresh cake and felt better." Yes.
In the soft grieving time of last week, I stayed connected to family, I did domestic things that ground me, and I attended to administrative tasks that, when I'm writing, I can't find time for.
We had steady rain for two days, and that felt appropriate. Then the rain moved on and the days bloomed crisp and beautiful. We moved the kitchen table to the front porch, started a wee fire, and carved pumpkins. Then I roasted the seeds. I've been munching them all week.
We delighted in an overnight with Jason's puppy Elvis-Andy-Bebop (my how he has grown!) and didn't even mind when he romped through the fall garden. The fall garden needs so much work! But I didn't feel like putting it to bed for the year yet, so that's something I'll do when I have more energy.
I made sure my staff approved of the jack-0-lanterns in progress. "Please stand by."

I baked a quiche with what I had on hand: cauliflower, red onion, mozzerella, walnuts, and apple slices. It was good, and filling.
We ate it around the first fire of the season indoors. Then we sat around the fire while picking on banjo and guitar, and singing the songs we're working on. I'm improving! Playing an instrument uses an entirely different part of the brain, I think -- I can feel it stretching.
So that was the handiwork of the week. Food prepared with presence, music played with enthusiasm, a puppy loved with abandon, family nurtured and nurturing, pumpkins transformed* into jack-o-lanterns, and hearts patted into some sort of functional shape again.
Grief wounds the heart. Love heals it. So does art. The art of taking care of one another, the art of creating something new. Y'all take care of one another. Create something new.

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*the fabulous Nikki McClure created the jack-o-lantern pattern above and Hannah carved it. You can find the pattern here, or at apartment therapy, if you want to take a crack at creating it yourself.

norma

I'm going to write about my biggest fear with Hang The Moon, the second book in the Sixties Trilogy, but I can't do it today. My friend and mentor died on Friday, and she is part of this Hang The Moon story, so first I want to tell you about her.

But I can't. I'm bereft and don't yet have the right words. So let me direct you to her website and her obituary, and let me say farewell in a most clumsy manner to Norma Fox Mazer today. I loved her and love her still. Her book When She Was Good knocked my socks off and was part of the reason I went to Vermont College to get my MFA in writing. Norma was my advisor for two semesters and became my friend. She loved me, too, with a fierce devotion that always surprised me. She demanded the best from me, and often I failed her miserably. And more than that, I cannot find the words to say.

I'll leave you instead with a piece I read this morning about a student and a teacher. It's Good Writing -- that phenomenon I love. Good Writing elevates the mind, and even life. And today I need a little elevating.

This piece is by novelist Alexander Chee, about his time studying with Annie Dillard. It will appear in the book Mentors, Muses & Monsters, edited by Elizabeth Benedict and published by Free Press/Simon & Schuster later this month.

Here's a tiny excerpt:

In that first class, she wore the pearls and a tab collar peeped over her sweater, but she looked as if she would punch you if you didn't behave. She walked with a cowgirl's stride into the classroom, and from her bag withdrew her legal pad covered in notes, a thermos of coffee and a bag of Brach's singly wrapped caramels, and then sat down. She undid the top of the thermos with a swift twist, poured a cup of coffee into the cup that was also the thermos top, and sipped at it as she gave us a big smile and looked around the room.

Hi, she said, sort of through the smile.

My first meeting with Norma Mazer was very different. I'm writing about it for publication right now (I will post the link when it publishes) and I'm trying to get the words just-right. I want the tone, the detail, the feeling of it to come across... and -- once again -- I'm failing miserably. But I will continue to try.

This is what Norma would tell me to do -- write. Keep working. Try. I may be gone, but that is not an excuse for you not to do your job, not to meet your deadline. I know she is right. And I know I will find the words.

Norma was ever the teacher. So, in her honor, I will put on my teaching hat today, too:

Try. Open your notebook and sketch a scene about meeting one of your teachers -- a mentor, a muse, a monster. What was it like? Notice what works about the Alexander Chee paragraph above, and why it works. Take it apart and see how you can do the same in your own short piece about a teacher whose presence has stayed with you.

My wise husband says that some people leave a part of themselves within you when they die. I think he's right. Norma is still right here, right with me, in my mind and heart, as I write Hang The Moon. What a gift that is.

Thank you, Norma. Thank you for all you gave to your friends and family, to the world of children's literature, and to those of us who came to learn at your feet. How strange the world is without you. How lucky we are to have our memories... and your stories.

home in october

I've been breathless this week with beautiful autumn at my fingertips and a new novel to dig into. After eight years of traveling for work through most of October, I've spent this week in awe of "home in autumn" and what it brings me.

Some of what it brings me is this apple-cake-in-an-iron-skillet made by Hannah:
It brings me Mississippi family and brunch in Irene:
It brings me a big family dinner in Irene, with my mother's pot roast recipe dusted off, and the introduction of family and friends in a convivial atmosphere:
...especially when we got to singing "Hey, Jude." Some of us had been to the Rain concert that day -- the Beatles tribute band -- and it was so much fun we couldn't contain ourselves:October brings some serious, heartfelt conversation as night falls:
And it brings some celebration. The real Miss Eula -- Ruby Lavender's Miss Eula -- would have been 112 years old on Monday, October 12, so we celebrated her birthday that Sunday night. My cousin Carol and I are both Miss Eula's grandchildren. We bought coconut cupcakes in her honor.

Miss Eula (whom we called Mamaw) always made a coconut cake when we visited, and put it on her glass cake pedestal. It was regal, up high and covered with a glass cake cover... glorious... sort of like these bakery cupcakes and candles, and the singing of Happy Birthday to a funny, nutty, frustrating, loving, amazing and wholly-worthy-of-Ruby-Lavender woman who had meant so much to us growing up.

Thank you for coming, family. Happy Birthday, Miss Eula.I'm glad I could slow down long enough to savor October. I'm out again in a month, to Midland, Michigan, and then to the D.C. area for almost a week, where I'll work in schools and visit with Maryland kin.

Until then, I'll breathe deep and gather fall into my open arms, and I'll keep plugging away at this book two of the Sixties Trilogy. I haven't forgotten my intention to write every day, and I have done that... even if it has only been for fifteen minutes.
And truth: I can't really write for fifteen minutes. I can visit my story, that's what I can do. I can jot down notes. I can do some good thinking. I can brush up passages. But that's writing, too. And it is enough on those days when I'm embracing fall... mainly because my deadline isn't staring me in the face! ha!

No, no, it's enough because the thing I'm striving to find in these months off the road is balance. I want to find a balance to my days.
"Good luck!" say most folks I talk with about this. But I persist. And I persist with this story as well. Next week I want to write about my biggest fear with this novel. It has been my biggest fear for years, and I can no longer put off facing it. I started to face it this week, as I put in long days at my desk, to move forward with the narrative. What I want to figure out (and will write about next week) is..

Well... next week. Have a good weekend, all. I'm going in search of pumpkins. And story. Long hours with autumn, with family, and with this novel. A nice balance.

how mighty is the pen!

Ain't it the truth. After three days of splashing with this story, too scared to plunge in, trying to be content with dabbling, wading, and finally letting the water lap at my hips, I think finally I'm ready to dive in.
Why are we so scared of starting? What is it that keeps us from snapping on that bathing cap, flinging off the bathrobe that covers our snazzy new suit, and stepping onto the high dive, deep breath, shoulders back, and head held high?

Perhaps we realize how mighty is the pen, how powerful is our story, and know, at least subconsciously, how it will transform us as we commit to put it to paper. Or song. Or canvas. Or dance.
Every book in the Aurora County trilogy was cathartic for me to write. I didn't know they would be, when I wrote them. I just wrote a story and later discovered that Love, Ruby Lavender helped me get in touch with my childhood Mississippi summers and the sense of loss I felt as I left childhood behind.

Each Little Bird That Sings helped me come to terms with a time of great grief and loss in my adult life, and begin to laugh again. The Aurora County All-Stars allowed me to explore the idea that everything is connected, that we are all part of one another, and it gave me a chance to write about civil rights in a way that felt safe to me (Oy, a writer should be safe? This is a topic for another time!), and in doing so it served as a precursor to The Sixties Trilogy, which is decidedly not "safe" territory.
Then, I began Fallout, book one of The Sixties Trilogy. I was unprepared for how autobiographical this book would be. I didn't try to make it biographical, but the story had a mind of its own, and it mapped my interior in such a way that I felt naked writing it and, often, wrung inside out.

The story itself -- the outside story -- is total fiction. But who Franny is, and how she sees herself and the world, and what happens to her heart and mind during the course of the book -- that is an autobiography of my childhood years.

It took such courage (or idiocy) for me to stay at the page as I wrote Fallout, for I could see how mighty is the pen, and how being as honest as I could be with my writing laid me open and raw and vulnerable. But I was compelled to tell this story -- I kept going. And, just as I did with Little Bird, eventually I began laughing. And understanding.
Writing this story made me stronger. So much stronger. I am just beginning to get a glimpse of this. Just as Little Bird healed my broken heart, Fallout has given me compassionate ways to look at my childhood self, to be gentle with her, to laugh with her, and to understand... sometimes in ways I don't want to understand, but still.

It's complicated, and hard to put into words. Mostly, I just wrote a story. Really. ("Just.") The subconscious stuff that happens is just that -- subconscious. I don't really know what's going on there until I can stand back, take a breath, and take a look.

It has been hard to approach 1966, book two, with the knowledge I have of how book one turned me inside out. So I have been tip-toeing in the water, digging my toes into the sand, holding on as the tiny ripples from the big waves wash over my feet on the shore.

Soon I will wade out deeper. This first five days of October has been for paying attention and getting started. How have I gotten started?
I've revisited my first long-ago draft, and have begun to type it into a new document, revising as I go, getting insights as I go, making notes about these insights (using track changes this time -- I am in total mad love with track changes -- what a change, eh?).

I'm also tweaking a family tree. I created it almost fifteen years ago. My understanding of this family has grown in that time, so a good amount of my writing time each day has been devoted to visiting with my very large cast of characters for this book -- the largest cast I've ever assembled -- and remembering who they are and how they serve (and might come to serve) this story. This is the only book I have created a family tree for, and I may never do it again, but for this book it is perfect.
I have also downloaded a play list for the novel. With Fallout, I put together the playlist last, although I listened to songs from the late fifties and early sixties (none after 1962) as I revised. I will make an official playlist for HTM when I'm done with this novel, but I wanted the songs from 1966 to be playing in my head as I wrote, so I listen to them as I do dishes and other tasks around the house (is this writing? :>)

It also helps me, when I'm doing intense emotional work (which writing often is for me) to get out of the house and go somewhere else for even an hour. I've been walking every day. Then, yesterday Jim and I drove into the North Carolina mountains looking for inspiration.

We found it at the John C. Campbell Folk School's Fall Festival in Brasstown, N.C. We were surrounded by stories all day long and into the evening, as we met up with friends for supper at their home in the mountains.
For an entire day, the noise of 1966 and book two of The Sixties Trilogy took a distant seat in my conscious mind and instead of tending it, I basked in the beauty of a fall Georgia mountain day, my beautiful husband, our beautiful friends, and the beauty of having stories told TO me, instead of BY me.

Stories in song, dance, weaving, painting, potting, smithing, caning... there was even a beans and cornbread story yesterday. And a sousaphone! You knew I'd have to bring you a sousaphone story. That's a pretty battered sousaphone, above, eh? Wonder what's its story?
Today is for writing again. Time to wade in... maybe to my shoulders. Oh how mighty is the pen, the story. Indeed.