Collaboration!

I am fortunate to come from a family with members possessed of various and significant talents. I could ennumerate the accomplishments of my six siblings, but then I would risk bragging while simultaneously making apparent my own lack of skill. The wonderful perk of being a member of such a family is that, someone is bound to be talented in an area where I lack. If nothing else, I am skilled at employing my siblings' gifts to compensate where my own fall short. My sisters, generous by nature, are at particular risk to be roped into my latest scheme. So my message to you, dear family, is; if ever you need a paper proofread or the insertion of a snide, sideways remark, I am your woman. I owe you, big time.


The above is a collaboration between me and my graphic design artist sister, Laura Barlow. It is true to my life. Many thanks to Laura for helping me laugh at a time when all I wanted to do was pound my head on the nearest wall.

Mother Colors

Rumor has it that I have given up on my blog altogether. OK that's just me being optomistic. No one is actually talking about this blog at all. Anyhow, I have written a few odd things that I am going to indulge myself by sharing with you here.

The following is a satirical piece I wrote and actually submitted to one of my favorite magazines Brain, Child. I was solidly rejected, however, those who can get published. Those who can't self publish. OK so I'm not Erma Bombeck, but here it is:

What’s Your Mother Color?

Have you ever wondered what your mommy style is? With this simple quiz, you can determine the color that fits your unique parenting profile. Circle one for each item.
1. When describing my children to my friends, the word one would most often hear me say would be
a. “cute”
b. “genius”
c. “brats”
d. “gin and tonic”

2. The meal most likely to be served at my house would be:
a. vegetarian stir fry with organic tofu and bok choy served on a bed of brown rice.
b. a tasty, original casserole pulled together from last night’s meat loaf and Tuesday’s mashed potatoes.
c. only the touch of a button away. I have the number for the nearest pizza joint programmed on speed dial.
d. mostly comprised of condiments.

3. My underwear drawer contains:
a. hot lingerie for alone-time with daddy.
b. hot lingerie with maternity panels and nursing accessible cups for “alone-time” with daddy.
c. only items marketed as “control top”.
d. nothing. I usually get my panties direct from the dryer.

4. The reading material I provide for my children is:
a. the “Wall-Street Journal.” After all, you can never start them too soon.
b. Harry Potter or The Chronicles of Narnia. Nothing feeds young minds like fantasy books in a series.
c. the closed captioning option during “Dora the Explorer”: entertaining and literarily bilingual!
d. the back of the cereal box. Whose first words weren’t “free toy inside” and “high fructose corn syrup?”

5. The contents of my vacuum dust bag are usually:
a. non-existent. I promptly empty my vacuum after each use.
b. pony beads, silly bands, and crayon pieces.
c. cheese puffs mingled with dirt and pet hair.
d. non-existent. Let’s hear it for free-range dust bunnies!

6. My greatest consideration when planning a family vacation is
a. its potential to be simultaneously entertaining and educational.
b. maximizing family togetherness (i.e. small tents, single bed hotel rooms, compact cars).
c. affordability.
d. the availability of convenience stores between “point A” and “point B.”


7. My favorite disciplinary threats
a. are seldom employed. I rarely have to resort to them with my little darlings.
b. often lead to the confiscation of one or more video game consoles.
c. usually result in me turning the car around and/or pulling over.
d. involve hypothetical clones of the offending child.

8. My biggest fear as a mother is that:
a. phenylketonurics are, in fact, carcinogenic.
b. that my mother’s curse will come true and I will have a child exactly like myself.
c. that some children never will potty train.
d.
that my grandmother’s curse on my mother has come true and that my mother did have a child exactly like herself.


9. When seeking parenting advice, my best resource is:
a. the experts. I study up on what published psychologists and doctors have said.
b. people I know. I like to consult my friends and family first.
c. my mystical eight-ball. It always gives me a clear and immediate answer.
d. Oprah.


10. I usually cope with day-to-day stress by:
a. taking time out to relax and enjoy the company of my children.
b. exercising or doing yoga, especially focusing on deep breathing techniques.
c. smiling. It’s amazing how perfectly natural I look even while gritting my teeth.
d. gin and tonic.


Scoring: For each “A” answer score yourself 2,000 points. For every “B” answer score yourself with 500 points. For every “C” answer give yourself 100 points. For every “D” answer give yourself 2 points.


20,000-12,000 points: Your color is magenta.
Buoyant and sparkly, you are the mom everyone wants to be. Someday there will be a bronze statue erected in your honor. Not even the pigeons will dare poop on your likeness. You go, girl!

11,999-4,000 points: Your color is burgundy.
Intelligent and efficient, you can pull off anything. Your neighbors come to you for your sound advice. No one ever needs to know that you caught your son lapping rain water off the back patio during his “puppy” stage. You deserve a pat on the back for all you do. You go, girl!

3,999-300 points: Your color is vermillion.
Eclectic and energetic, you are a mother with a talent for flexibility. You know how to survive all conditions. So what if your kid had lasts night’s leftover carpet popcorn for a snack? Whether they’re admitting it or not, everyone else’s did too. You go, girl!

299-20 points: Your color is puce.
(Who has the time to add up the points for these stupid quizzes anyway?) Savvy and fun, your unique parenting style sets you apart from the rest of the crowd. Besides, your kids aren’t mismatched. They wear different colored socks on purpose and they pull it off, too. Your children are generally happy and so are you. Gin and tonic! You go, girl!

Social Awareness

Sometimes it happens: a situation or a person calls me to sudden clarity and I realize that the "daily grind" I swear off and swear about and swear by is an altered state of reality. I am guilty of being obtuse. I am dutiful and hardworking. I worry that one misstep on my part can cause the whole of my personally constructed universe to fall apart. (Can you see it now, that solar system model made out of paper Mache falling off its wire hanger? Landing on the floor, all of its interplanetary strings a tangled disaster. Saturn's rings broken off. No biggie, nothing a little Elmer's glue can't fix.) But sometimes I can look beyond and realize that there are others out there and I, unsuspecting denizen of Planet Where-Ever, never saw them there. (Maybe being "spacey" isn't such a bad thing.)



Like many busy moms, I sometimes like to unwind by getting a pedicure. One Saturday morning I was looking forward to the relaxation and hour away from my kids this would afford me. As always, I have my iPhone nearby with its ready array of novels loaded to the Kindle app. I begin to read a novel set during an insurgence in Sri Lanka. Where is Sri Lanka? I can't even recall. I read about brutal war time deaths half a world away.



I pause from my reading a moment to glance at my manicurist. I notice that she is a slight woman, but her hands are strong as she massages lotion into my heels and the balls of my feet. The thought occurs to me that if ever I am to be a good writer, I will have to do what Ondatjee, Kingsolver, and Fadiman have already done. I must step outside of my natural, childish shyness and talk to strangers. I have to be aware that they exist. I have to become an interested, therefore interesting, person. A senseless resistant insecurity warns me that I am stepping onto unfamiliar territory, but a stronger force tells me that it is time to grow up.



"Where are you from?" I ask this middle-aged woman who is now tearing at my cuticles with clippers.



She looks up a bit startled, but with a pleasant smile.



"Vietnam." Her accent is thick.



"How long have you lived in Lake Havasu?"



"One year."



"Do you like it here?"



"Yes. I come here with my daughter." She gestures to the girl with the blunt cut bangs and perfect almond eyes crouched in front of the spa chair next to mine. "She is 20."



"She is very beautiful," I reply.



"And that is my brother." She gestures to the man across the salon who is filing a woman's nails. "He's been here nine year. I come here to work for him."



She continues to talk softly in broken English. It is hard to hear over the top of the classic rock station promo truck parked outside. I think she is describing her work day. I understand "5:00 AM exercise" and "9:30 Come to shop." Other than that her words are lost somewhere between my poor audio processing skills (I said I was obtuse) and "Dust in the Wind." She looks satisfied and proud.



As she paints my toenails a vibrant red, I try to imagine this woman leaving her home and traveling to a world every bit as foreign to her as Vietnam is to me. I think of what her first shy days at work must have been like, hunched over working scrupulously at a new trade, trying to pick up a new language. I imagine her avoiding conversations with cutomers- so difficult to understand or to reply in a different tongue. That is as far as I can try to fill in the blanks. And I am struck to think that this woman, crouched at my feet, finishing my nails with a careful filigree has done something much more courageous than will ever be required me.

Spring Cleaning and "Hurley"

Where, may you ask have I been? I have been teaching and mothering and that is about my whole life. I decided I needed to post again because spammers are making more money off of my blog than I am. Also, I am currently teaching a high school creative writing class (which I dearly love). I wrote a short short story for them and so I actually have something to post. Here is my short story.

Hurley


Leon “Hurley” Malone was popular in his unpopularity. He had been Hurley since the 8th grade when Jamison Potter had cornered him in social studies.
“You smell so bad, you make me want to hurl,” said Jamison, he placed his meaty palm on his stomach and made retching sounds for emphasis. “Your name should be Hurley. Ya like your name, Hurley?”
The other students laughed derisively while Ms. Shumway battled with the pull down maps bolted to the wall above the white board. So Hurley became Hurley and since I was the teacher’s aide in Mrs. Boswell’s English class and saw his name “Leon” on the roles, I think I was the only one who remembered Hurley had a given name. He was even Hurley to his teachers.
Mine and Hurley’s lockers were situated near each other down the same hall for most of high school. I was, by no means popular, but I could blend. If I watched my shoes while walking down the hall, I could generally avoid eye contact and conversations with my peers. Hurley tried, but he could never get lost in the wash of the crowd. On any given day, I could hear the treble of female voices. “Eww! Nasty! Hurley touched me. Go rub your slime on someone else.” Or the lower cadences of male voices, “Hey, Hurley. Did you forget to brush this morning?” Inevitably, this would be followed by the slam of Hurley’s slender body as it was thrown into the nearest wall.
One day, while grading papers for Mrs. Boswell, my eyes ran across an entry in Hurley’s English notebook. "I can’t write about my friends. I don’t have any." I knew it was true, but actually reading it made me feel so sorry for him. Even so, I never considered offering any camaraderie or even so much as a vague smile.
Hurley and I had one, brief personal encounter. I was just finishing up my usual lunch: a peanut butter and jam sandwich smuggled into the library, daily. I was gradually making my way through an old set of World Book Encyclopedias. I had reached “M” and was just reading up on marmosets.
I heard a sound behind me. Thinking it was the librarian, I stuffed the rest of my sandwich into my mouth. I was surprised to see Hurley standing over me. It was then that the smell hit. It was not the typical B.O. but something both sweet and rotten.
“They all say I small bad.” He said. “Even the teachers complain to my mom. I don’t smell anything. Do you think I stink?”
I forced myself to swallow the one, last dry bite. I hoped my face wasn’t as hot as it felt. The words that came to mind were, “Yes, you reek of death!” But I couldn’t make my mouth form those words. All I could do was shake my head slowly side to side. I suppose I could have tried to help him at that point, but I was too slow, too faltering.
“I thought so,” he said, relieved. “I do shower, you know,” and he walked hurriedly out the back door.
Yes, Hurley stank. Over time, even his locker seemed to emanate an odor. At first, it was subtle, almost imaginary as if all of our unkind remarks had turned into an olfactory presence that clung to the hall where Hurley deposited his books. Rumors had started; at first, they stemmed from the smell. They were whispered and giggled, and passed in notes. They started blank and meaningless as white noise. “No running water. . glandular problems.”. Gradually, they took more notable shape and ranged into the absurd. On the periphery myself, I only caught fragments, “mom and dad. . . half brother and sister.” “Family of Satanists. . .”
The stories reached a roar until Hurley was more high school folklore than real person. Hurley’s increasing absences didn’t help the situation. In Coach Openshaw’s biology class, Jamison was passing around a comic strip he had just drawn. It was called, “Hurley the Human Corpse.” It showed Hurley, in caricature, walking by a potted plant that drooped and withered in the next frame as he walked by. Next it showed, in similar sequence, a tank of dead fish. . . a cafeteria of dead students. . .
“Ha! Ha! Ha” Mr Openshaw roared, “Have you all seen this?” He displayed Jamison’s artwork to the class.
Hurley came to school less and less. Even so, the funk surrounding his locker grew as did the rumors. Eventually Hurley’s attendance dwindled until the stories and the stench were all that remained. When walking by his locker, girls would theatrically cover their noses with their hands and boys would dare each other to take a whiff.
Somebody finally decided to take action and alert the faculty. Coach Openshaw lumbered down the hall followed by Jamison who pointed in the direction of Hurley’s old locker. Mr. Openshaw tried the combination lock, but when it did not give, he forced it open, bending the latch. The locker sat there open and rank. It was empty save for a plastic sandwich bag. Coach picked up the bag which contained a moldering human thumb, black and putrid.

Penelope at the Loom

Today she will entwine red

the color of sunrise.

She pulls over and through vertical

Threads- packed hard down with the 

Shuttle leaving tight neat knots.

This is how she always spends her days

She thinks of her husband gone twenty years

Their infant son now a man.  How bitterly

Those hours spent arranged in colored weave

that shows no time, like the shore

licked nightly clean by tide.  She craves

Odysseus to float to her front door

heralded by seagull cries- a piece of driftwood

dropped, joyously, at her feet.

A freshness in the air and she recalls last night's 

buffet of rain that crushed out suitors' revels-

left olive leaves strewn over hard packed ground.

All summer gone in those leaves

all sundrench all dew.  Gaia giving

then destroying

what took eternity to grow.

Her days weave nights and nights unravel days

The tight weft of hours built up and loosed

Ceaselessly storing moments like coins.

Dawn's rosy finger streak the dark

Light has streaked her hair

By the rythm of some loom.

Fear of Flight

In the prologue to the immortal epic poem Paradise Lost, John Milton calls upon the muse. His request:

"Invoke thy aid to my adventurous song, That with no middle flight intends to soar. . .while it pursues Things unattempted yet in prose or rhyme. . ."

Did you catch that? Milton needs the help of the muse because he intends to write a poem so powerful and beautiful that it will transcend all known literature. Milton certainly started out with a lofty goal; and he lets his audience know that if they take the time to read Paradise Lost its going to knock their socks off. He's going to write the best darn thing anyone anywhere has ever [or will ever] read. But Milton was not being arrogant. If you ever have read Paradise Lost, you'll probably admit that he accomplished exactly what he set out to do. What a way to begin an artisitic endeavor! OK, Milton already had to his credit "Upon the Morning of Christ's Nativity, " "La Allegro" and "Il Penseroso" (all just Paradise Lost warm-up exercises) so he had a good idea of his own capabilities. Even so, I have always admired his gusto in those first few lines. He is the fearless, intrepid poet who pursues his art with complete and utter confidence.

My nearest and dearest know that my own grandest desire is to write; and it would be my wildest dream come true to eventually get published. I can think of nothing more satisfactory then to see my own work sitting on my own book shelf in print. My greatest fear is not being rejected by a publisher, but never even completing a novel. What if I come up with a great idea- write five good chapters, and never pick it up again? I know myself well enough. I'll have every intention of coming back to it later, but when when when does later ever come?

I have spent much of my summer reading fiction from an entirely different point of view. Instead of analysis as a reader, I have been thinking as a writer (if these were my characters and if this were my plot I would. . .) Let me tell you, if you haven't read from that angle before, you should try it. You will gain a whole new appreciation for the skill it takes to develop plot and character. You even learn to admire fine details like chapter headings and divisions. It is easy to read as the smug overweening critic, but much more daunting when one reads as a peer.

I have decided that writer's block might have more with fear than with lack of ideas. If only I could have 1/1ooth of the muse Milton did. . . Maybe it's time to put down the book and pick up the pen.