Spilling Ink

Hello again. It’s been a year and a half since I’ve blogged. One could wonder why I’m paying the fees to maintain this website — I know I have.

Since I last posted about the high school musical that moved me so profoundly, I’ve done some things and become some things. No more than some — I do not wish to exaggerate my experiences or profess to be someone beyond what I am.

I traveled with my family to Ireland and Scotland. We botched the schedule — we aren’t good planners — and our airline participated in our folly by eliminating a day of our already-short trip. But I got a taste of this part of the world where at least part of my soul belongs, and I can’t wait to go back.

I’ve turned 50 years old. This has precipitated a great deal of life analysis and goal-setting with only vague ideas about how to accomplish these. (Carefully steering away from the word “crisis” here, because it’s not…exactly.)

I’ve gone through a mid-range evaluative process to determine whether I have ADHD (I do, “inattentive type”). I now take medicine that has mildly improved my symptoms, enough to make me feel like I’m not a failure every single day. This medicine, should you question the need for pharmaceuticals (not that I owe you an explanation), has not, in fact, made all my attention issues disappear, but has subtly mitigated them so that I can concentrate and follow through on tasks that I would normally delay or neglect completely — delightfully and miraculously without side effects. It’s really weird to notice that when picking up a piece of mail I don’t set it down in another place where I will “deal with it later”, but rather put it where it belongs (much of the time). Or think through my day ahead and anticipate what food I’ll need to stave off attention-stealing trouble later. I’m so very, very grateful, and believe it makes me feel like I probably should have my whole life. Projects still go unfinished, but my patience about this aspect of my existence has increased and my anxiety around not getting things done has decreased.

I’ve picked up a persistent and occasionally all-consuming fervor for listening to audiobooks. Hundreds in a couple of years. I’ve returned quite a few to the library after just a few minutes of listening because the narrator was hard to listen to and diminished the written story. These books have fed all corners of my personality and interests, so I can offer you recommendations but I will absolutely not tell you about every book, for reasons I’ll keep to myself for now.

I’ve been the primary parent accompanying my kid through a 6-month DBT program (dialectical behavioral therapy). She participated under duress, but it was good for all of us, including my spouse who was supportive and grew along with us.

I’ve asked for — and received — a sabbatical from my work. For two months this past summer I set down all work responsibilities and all of the extra stuff I carry around in my head and did other things. This is not a gift everyone receives from their place of employment, which I know, and I’m reluctant to flaunt it if it’s something you need but is out of reach. My church (and employer) is full of rock stars who care about people — they have always been good to me. Sabbatical was life-giving in the way that boring things can allow space for rest and growth. I didn’t go on radically amazing excursions or travel widely or accomplish anything huge beyond refurbishing our kitchen cabinets. But I did have space to host a longtime, far-flung friend and her daughter, which was a gift in itself, and to reconnect with high school friends that remind me of who I used to be and how much that links with who I still am. A sliver of sabbatical that I have carried with me is the permission to rest when I need it — that would be my wish for you, too.

And when I had exhausted all other realistic plans and came to the end of excuses during sabbatical, I started a novel. As one kid is out there in the college world figuring out his studies and career and relationships and living on his own, another is here at home figuring out how to get herself out of bed and hold a job and finish homework and generally make sudden gigantic strides in maturity. It’s so lovely and unsettling. Now what do I do with myself, without being so completely wrapped up in every bit of these kids’ lives? I guess I write a novel. I could not let myself dream about this forever because even starting it felt so out of reach. I didn’t even whisper this to my soul until now. It’s RIDICULOUS that this writer who began, but didn’t finish (yay ADHD!) so, so, so many stories in my youth, this college English writing major, took so long to listen to my heart. An idea finally stuck, and I’ve begun to develop processes for taking notes, purchased both a laptop and software that is helping me move forward and will carry me through, taken a novel-writing class through the Loft that I completely adored, and have signed up to participate in NANOWRIMO, though with my own goal rather than the completely absurd 50,000 words that’s the typical goal. I’ve invested. I bought the T-shirt. And if the universe cooperates, in a dozen or so years I may actually have a book released from this head and these hands into the great white somewhere where occasionally someone will stumble upon it and pick it up and maybe even laugh or think “I never thought about it like this before”.

I know some things about the story — who some of the people are, where it takes place, some things that happen — but I’m not going to tell you what it’s about yet. I’m kind of scared to. Like all of my writing, I have this intense proclivity for holding my project unhelpfully close until I feel really, really ready for it to be examined by others. I’m working on this, the “letting go and letting it be what it will” thing. I will tell you out loud right here and now that being connected in various loose ways to others who have had novels published is incredibly inspiring, the realization of which was likely the catalyst that finally tipped me into action. Normal, extraordinary, lovely, busy people write novels. I hope to be one of them. It’s completely terrifying to put down in print imaginative situations and people that have come straight from my brain. It might not be good, in all seriousness. But it might be. We don’t know yet, do we?

One of the questions in my Loft class, “Pantsing” Your Novel (verses “plotting” it), was “how do you want readers to respond?” Well, I want you to see yourself in it. I want you to realize you feel the same way, or the opposite way, or have completely mixed feelings about what’s going on. I want you to laugh and cry and experience a particular perspective for a little bit. And I want it to be a best-seller. Duh. Nobody admits it, but it’s true. Meanwhile, I’ve started it. I’m living with it. If all I do between now and forever is have some parts of it drafted and eventually a descendant discovers my long-lost unfinished manuscript, it’s OK. I’m trying to lean into the unknown and begin worthy endeavors without a clue how they’ll unfold. I’m trying to trust myself and the future.

So that’s what’s going on over here. Day by day just living and parenting and working and doing the dishes and enjoying “Sprucey” painted cupboards and sitting on the deck with neighbors and occasionally going for a walk in the neighborhood. And writing a novel.

I have lots of excuses. I’m too busy (lie…but I’m busy enough). I don’t have large chunks of time to sit down and write out, work out in fine detail, in one fell swoop, the issues I’m puzzling around in my head (truth…but I don’t HAVE to operate like this, it’s just my preferred method). I already spend a lot of time at my laptop for my paying gig, and then additional time frittered away “doom scrolling” (a friend used that term lately and it’s JUST SO APPROPRIATE) and playing Scrabble and Rummikub and just filling my time (not all wasted…some critical connections for my sanity are part of that). Also, recently my brother-in-law Joel (shout out!) introduced the magic of a Chromecast device into our lives, so now our large screen TV-without-service (free, given to us by a neighbor, because we are the people who will receive your TV if you are giving one away, until we have too many, limit is 2) is a smart TV and I can view my favorite programming in real style, right in my face, enveloping all my senses instead of just a 10-inch span of my vision. So I’m not so anxious to sit down and spend more time in front of a computer. Except I don’t do much else, so why should I object? Ah. Now I know why.

I have wanted my words to do too much. So I don’t let them come out at all. I don’t let them do what they are meant to do, are born to do. I can’t control what happens to them once they are published, I can’t make them make anybody think anything, feel anything. I want that, but I can’t control it. I have let this simple truth become a barrier to my blogging. So I should probably learn to live with it and release the words I need to write into the universe and allow them do what they will.

In fact, I am not going to go back and read this before publishing it. I’m just not going to. There are mistakes in it. I don’t care. I’m going to own my distractedness, the way my brain works that takes me away from things I should be doing to things I probably shouldn’t but that also allows me to noodle and noodle on whatever it needs to work out. 

I lied. I read it. It’s good enough.

Since I started this blog and have posted a grand total of twice in four months, I have begun a dozen posts, sitting in draft form here in the matrix (please don’t contact me about Matrix movie references…I cannot muse about the metaphorical significance of Neo nor can I bend backward to avoid slow-motion bullets). I have lots of ideas, you see, which take time to take shape. This post I started 8 days ago. And in that 8 days, the world has been shaken by the shoulders. Seismologically, there is no way to reverse this course, as Superman did in 1978, saving Lois Lane from the asphyxiating gravel that swallowed her and her tomato red Ford Custom. Today’s shifting sand has not yet sunk us, but it could if we don’t get over ourselves and take action. (For the benefit of historians, decades from now pouring over my revered blog posts for clues about life in 2020, I’m referring to the spread of the coronavirus, COVID-19 to be precise, resulting in officials shuttering schools, restaurants, malls, libraries, and any public space that might draw in people who breathe on each other, for an as-yet undetermined amount of time into the future.)

We St. Paul families with school-aged children are one week ahead of the rest of Minnesota with our “stay home” practice. Nearly two weeks ago, the biggest thing on our minds in this family was whether my husband, a kindergarten teacher, was going to be on strike the following Tuesday, and by default, whether our kids would be in class. The SPFE (St. Paul Federation of Educators) strike in early March 2020 was an opportunity to advocate for the value of our education system, the professionals who comprise it’s structure, and the students the system is designed to serve. This action was for St. Paul specifically, but in essence it cast a spotlight on the challenges schools across our nation are enduring: the harsh repercussions of crafting a society bent on the ideals of constant growth in pursuit of wealth and power.

Four days of strike strangely prepared us for the next round of normal-life disruption, exponentially larger in scope: the coronavirus surfacing here in Minnesota, also an opportunity to consider the repercussions of crafting a society bent on the ideals of constant growth in pursuit of wealth and power.

By design and by fate, we have met with forces that betray our sustainabilty.

The teachers on the picket line were/are not petulant, demanding huge bonuses and three-day work weeks. If that were the case, they would have been alone…but instead they were joined by a sea of chanting citizens wearing red in solidarity, children offering bagels and teenagers doing aerial cartwheels and parents shoving cups of hot coffee into their hands. Basic respect was their agenda, their plea a re-allotment of existing resources so the district could support the conditions within which children can do what we expect them to do and what our society depends upon for survival, which is to learn how to operate in the world as community citizens, also in the community as world citizens. It takes a cosmos of qualified individuals to make this happen, to pass the torch of knowledge and ignite imaginations. Unrealistic expectations on staff and too much chaos result in reasonable conditions not being met. Those who suffer most are the “product” (what a gross word for children) of the system, and consequently our society as a whole.

I don’t want to nominate teachers for sainthood. I’m not interested in pitting the value of those who choose to educate children against those who feel called to other vocations, to sell insurance or clean office buildings or advocate for the homeless or write code or preach or nurse or sing for their supper. Yet I can’t help but ceaselessly philosophize about the scales we use to assign value to absolutely everything — professions, objects, experiences, nature, people.

The coronavirus craze has vaulted these scales into another dimension, one where we don’t even have to ask ourselves how much to tip the server because we don’t have one. How now do we measure physicians against professional athletes, lawyers against chemical engineers? Those in hazmat suits cleaning up hospital rooms against the journalists? The elderly and vulnerable against the young and healthy? And why, oh my stars why, is possessing a bazillion rolls of toilet paper and hundreds of N95 face masks even a thing, to the detriment of our efforts to combat this virus?

Why have we made this a competition in the first place?

What if, instead of lopsidedly fixating on the perceived value of each vocation and every slice of humanity, we shifted toward curiosity about how we each fit into the picture? We are here, and we have purpose…so how do we use our imagination to live into that, and help others live into their purpose? What if we allowed ourselves to not solve every person, and just accepted their presence, did our part to help them live their best life?

Now I realize I’m starting to sound like one of those kooky late-night tv infomercials (if you act now and call this 1-900 number, you’ll receive a free consultation). Yes, I’m an idealist, but I do think it’s time we understand the extreme peripheral view can help us focus on the center, the basic, that which is critical even if it’s ordinary, a given. We can ask: who are our systems designed to serve?

We debate all the time about the role of government in our corporate and individual lives, what the Constitution says, what our human rights are and what our rights as citizens are (oddly not the same thing). What would it look like if we were guided by principles that didn’t rely on the law to implore us to seek the innate value of every person? (This is NOT, I repeat, NOT a manifesto against government involvement in our lives…it has a role, of course, to be explored in another time and place separate from this post.)

We’re now embedded in a lesson about the worldwide network of community being taught to us at breakneck speed in the virus crisis: if people can’t or don’t show up to do what they are called to do, we lose function. If we don’t honor the bonds of interconnectedness, we collapse.

Put another way, when we discount the purpose of anyone, that’s our first mistake — strike one. We are already on our way out. When individuals or cultures or vocations or ecosystems are stripped of their worth by superficial misjudgment and ignorance, or just a lack of imagination or will preventing us from doing the basic right thing, we all lose.

Let’s stay in the game. Let’s figure this out, even if we trip and fall (daily dose of humility for me), even if we must be shaken until the world spins and we get dizzy. As the horizon settles, we might find ourselves in a whole new place, with steady vision.

Sitting in the bleachers, ten feet above the pool deck and ten degrees warmer than a kitchen in hell, we bellow “Go! Go! Go!” at our son who can’t hear us because his ears are in the water. He is tasked with cheering for himself during the race, slicing and splashing with fervor and resilience. We’re just ineffective mood music, until he pulls himself up by the diving blocks and glances our way (or not) and we squawk out “Way to go!” awkwardly, as the rest of the cheering dissipates.

My heart thrills. A satisfaction settles into my bones during swim season. He is doing something he likes an awful lot, on a team of earnest and silly and hard-working boys, under coaching that encourages him to push through what his limits might be without inducing agony by extending too far. I’m grateful for the kind and congenial culture of the team and families. For this, I am going to show up as much as I possibly can, particularly because my son wants to show up as much as he possibly can. How he landed in this sport, on this particular team, feels like a miracle, without anything miraculous about the story, honestly. It’s the feather landing in the book during Forrest Gump. It’s just a good match.

When Charlie was six, he voiced a brand-new wish from the backseat: “Mom, I think I want to try hockey.” I responded with pity and conviction: “Oh, buddy, it’s too late for you.” It was partially true. Hockey dogma dictates you begin on the rink while still in diapers; the less zealous know you can find more relaxed alternatives through rec leagues and such. But my certainty about his inability to participate was grounded in a different reality. We are not the people who can devote all our time to one pursuit (as I presumed hockey families do), no matter how righteous or fun or perfectly geared to enhance all the very best qualities of our child. Furthermore, we are not the people with the budget to propel our children to sport stardom. If either of them were ever identified as a prodigy…well, the lottery and a team of managers comes to mind. We couldn’t endure it, for sure.

Nor are we the people who demand absolute excellence from our children. Of course, we want them to succeed, but even in our finest moments, we are merely vehemently ambiguous. “Do your best but not if you have to sacrifice your sanity but it’s important to focus and follow through but take a break when you need to and work super hard but if you don’t that’s OK we’ll still love you.” Not much tiger mom material here.

Swim team seems to hit the sweet spot: challenge that’s not overly intense, endorphins fired up but not to the point they’ve sizzled out, and a team uniform that can be the butt of at least a few jokes. We commit to what we can, and strive for balance.

This swim season, however, has introduced one tiny shim that throws us off kilter. At the pre-season info session, Coach announced she would add a morning practice to the schedule — once a week, and it is “optional”.

Suddenly, I am irritated, anxious. This should be simple. It’s only an extra hour of practice during the week. Yet my frustration mounts as I consider the consequences of such a proclamation.

Our family has been appreciating the new school start time this year — one hour later, pushed back for all public middle and high schools in our city, in response to studies about sleep for adolescents. The later start time is one factor for offering the extra practice, a cavernous hour of unscheduled moments to be stuffed with laps and turns instead of more sleep or a real breakfast, apparently. I don’t yet understand the other motivations, just a vague suggestion that the more time a swimmer puts in, the faster they’ll be. (Let me just add right here something I need to be clear about: I have great respect for Coach. She’s terrific.)

By now we know the parameters, the expectations of swim team. We relish in giving ourselves over for a few months to the sultry stands and extra trips to school, all for the fleeting joy of seeing our son work hard, have fun, and crack a giant grin when he scores a personal record from time to time. We signed up for this, and so did he.

But my trepidation swells when it requires more than I think is reasonable to give. An extra hour of swim is impractical for so many reasons. One more bag of toiletry items to carry, a soggy towel for a whole day until it’s second use. Compromised sleep schedule. More snacks to pack. For this one-car family, disrupting our newly-honed, successful morning routine (we are finally winning!!) with yet more grooves in the well-worn path between home and school. These are minor but annoying inconveniences.

The real struggle lies in how this is “optional”. With 2.5 hours of full-body and soul exercise, 6 days a week, how it is conceivable that my son’s swim performance should be enhanced by one more hour? He’s already gotten the message that as a varsity swimmer, he’s expected to attend. He gives his all at each practice, he supports his teammates, yet he’s being asked to do more. Is this what he wants? Is this what we want for him? I know small efforts make a big difference, but that math is exactly the burden: the one hour of extra practice is doomed to subtract something precious from the whole. I can’t help but recall myself at his exact age, involved in one or two too many activities at the same time, drinking Maalox straight from the bottle at my locker between classes, without the self-awareness to recognize when I’d gotten in too deep. Overcommitment is a pattern I’ve repeated enough, but less and less as I realize I don’t want to give my entire self away, that I need to keep a part of me intact. That’s my wish for Charlie: the confidence to recognize when he’s being asked to do more than he can manage without compromising the critical.

It’s too soon to tell, of course, but I predict our kid whose life consists of more than swim — who plays guitar and does chores, who takes accelerated classes and does (almost all) his homework, who attends church with us and occasionally babysits, who draws and drafts clever project designs — this wickedly hilarious, smart and thoughtful kid, developing a million different life skills and talents at a maddening pace, might find it increasingly difficult to tend to all these marvelous facets of himself. That he might begin to believe he isn’t whole enough. Or that he just might grow more tired than he should be.

So I resist. I don’t want us to get swept up in the current of over-scheduling and myopic focus on singular activities I see happening in families and communities, the unreasonable stress and relentless frenzy of activity. We humans need more space than that.

For this sport, for his team, for himself, Charlie is going to keep showing up. He is going to keep working hard. We know this about him. We will be watching and cheering, searching for signs that the current is sweeping him under. He will do his best — and even if he doesn’t we will still love him (duh).

Footnote: I have been instructed by the son named above to keep in mind that Coach is still finding her way with our team, this her second season, and that my comments in any discussion with her should not be inflammatory (he used a trendy colloquialism that I refuse to write here because I have wonderful friends named Karen who might be less appreciative of this new phrase). I have assured him I will keep my cool.

Footnote #2: I have nothing against hockey, players or families, I promise. But I’ll take the swelter of the pool over freezing my toukus (how do you spell that word?) at the rink any day.

Unfortunately for you, reader, I adore metaphors. They are especially problematic when one is as indecisive a person as me. But I need them, I draw life from them, because often I cannot put into words exactly what I need to say and then a metaphor swoops in, descending from my brain or a friend or the internet or a song and it seems about right. I might cling too tightly to it. If I hold it up to the light, it might withstand my scrutiny, or it might not. But undoubtedly if I don’t scrutinize, it will hollow itself out and disintegrate right in front of my eyes in really uncomfortable ways: I’ll use it inappropriately in a social setting, casual conversation, a piece of writing that I want the world to recognize as remarkable…and then be humbled by it’s absurdity. No metaphor is perfect; I should probably be more gentle with them, let them be what they are without expecting absolute truth.

So with that, I’ll now leap into a metaphor, mixed and convoluted and fulfilling very poorly other literary devices I should have better sense than to employ at 3:59 am: this keyboard is going to help me chip away one morsel of concrete at a time until, like Andy in Shawshank Redemption, I have escaped my cell and made my way to a carefree, well-financed life on the sunny beaches of Mexico.

That was way too dramatic. Let me try again.

Tonight I gathered for food and connection, no other agenda, with the best people you can imagine, and I hope we all know these people: lovelies who make you feel at home in your skin, who listen while tuning out as many distractions as they can, who bring their whole selves, who laugh with you because life is absurd. In this particular group was one dear friend of decades, two dears that are reaching the decade mark (surpassed it?), one I had only seen but never met, and one acquaintance who I’ve spent time with but have never gotten to know very well, and apparently our kids were in French class together. This last woman described her sister-in-law — a larger-than-life character who has reinvented herself many times over, ping-ponged across the continent and stormed through marriages, nurtured her whims and considerable gifts through careers spanning almost every genre you can imagine, brushed up against celebrity and status in her whirlwind path, and, eventually we arrive at the part where we learn she’s also a really nice person. We were enraptured by this story — the subject and the skillful telling — with hearty guffaws (nobody guffaws anymore, have you noticed? yet I assure you, there was guffawing) and wide eyes.

My internal response? I am inferior. What have I been doing with my life, that nobody could tell a story about me like this woman’s story? When have I embarked on such intense adventure? What makes my life worthy, and worth sharing? Then I snapped back into focus, deciding that particular shame needed to be stuffed back down for the moment so I could pay attention to my friends, resolving to take it out when I’m good and ready to see it for what it is.

When indeed I am ready, which I guess is now, I will start to see the holes in my harsh judgment. I don’t know the shape of those openings yet — pinpricks and cracks and chasms beckoning me with their husky shadows toward whatever lies underneath — but I determined long ago that language is my tool for working away at the edges. It’s simply time to pick up this hammer and commence.

Bleary-eyed, I’m sure I haven’t properly obsessed over these words yet so as to avoid future regret, but here they are. Chip, chip.