Dream

It is Mother's Day. One good thing about living across from a small park is that you hear baseball bats connect with softballs, pucks smacked with hockey sticks, the sound of children with their parents, kids roughhousing at the ice cream truck, and on more than one occasion, and what used to shoot fear in me that now only leaves me wincing and sad for the infrequent drunk(s) or teen shoutfest.

Today I hear the crack of a metal bat (weren't those outlawed by Mayor Bloomberg) and smile. I am going outside soon, as soon as I post this and slide on some jeans.

There's a breeze coming from the East. I opened Leila's window for the changing of the room. In the summer or whenever all three of us are home, Sarah goes to her room, but we are getting ready to tell her that now with that double bed in there, she is being given notice that it has been declared an open territory and suspect to the occupation of her sister and me at various times not ruling out one at a time, anytime, and especially not on Mother's Day! Anyway, I opened the window and an enormous gust of cool, spring air flowed in as Leila blew in from the futon and I whoosed out, a can of cat food already in my hand.

And now I am panting at the thought of getting out there and walking to the Promenade. Early this morning a gameplan came to me that will not only promote my writing style, ease up on my eternal tight knotted stomach afraid the sabbatical money will run out too soon, and keep me focused on the pen and paper, Julia Cameron style ie writing first, finding a market once it's done.

Yesterday, I had a quick, dashing bite to eat with Eileen, my mentor, after school. I had waited to eat too long and another teacher was venting to me about a relationship she was in that was bombdiving and throwing her into the realization that she was a woman who was terrified not to have a man. I sat in my empty classroom, dying to go home, but I listened and felt her pain. She asked me if I was married.

Divorced.

Seeing someone?

Nope.

"You are a beautiful woman, inside and out," she said to me, and I was humbly flattered. I told her I just didn't feel it, the need to be attached with someone and that is half true. There is one I still love and always will but fate has decided that route and he's not walking up to my door and instead we meet and talk only in dreams. Maybe that's chicken shit, I don't know....but I am married to my dream, figuratively and literally. If I meet someone who wants to be my companion and both of us grow within it, we'll talk. But that is not my primary goal now. I am going pure, full force, damn the torpedos, toward my long lost love, patiently waiting all this time: Writing.

I am going to walk to the Promenade and plot it out, enjoy it, relish in the gifts of the voice of the true Self and completely and utterly stop worrying. Eileen helped me to see that. Over wonton soup and shrimp lo mein, I showed her my artists day planner, lovingly given to me by Anna, Warrior Pen, who is on her way to CUNY grad school to become a kick ass broadcast journalist, and Eileen asked suspicousy, "What is BN?"

"Barnes and Noble," I replied. "I'm going to go there on Mondays and find leads for magazine articles." She looked at me. I shifted in my chair, but not stopping the rapidfire forkfuls of noodles into my mouth. I was shaking from hunger and each bite was better than sex. I pointed to my three consecutive days of writing the novel that followed Monday.

She said, "Why don't you try a full week of novel writing right off the bat?"

I stared at her.

I had taken my first workday of freedom, June 4, and methodically - like the mind - designated it as a day to go to work to make money rather than to rejoice into doing a swandive into my patiently waiting (and vibrating) novel!

She was right. Once again, and I guess after being the provider for my daughters and me since 1990, I was quite unused to exercising my craft as the first duty and pleasure. So right then I decided to devote the entire month of June to the novel.

Thank you, Eileen.

This morning I woke up realizing how I could do that and so off to the Promenade I go to do so.

Eileen has the focus of a writer, one who can hunker down and forget the World (except for tending the kiddies) and knock children's lit out of the park.

So I have her, Stephen King, Julia Cameron, and Amy Tan in my mental camp. And the undying support of my daughters.

I am walking to the Promenade to celebrate all this before the day gets going much more and my time with Leila and Sarah continues on this anti-war holiday, culminating in us scarfing down Indian food on the Lower East Side tonight.

Happy Mother's Day to:

ALL my students who are parents. I go forward but only to spread the message. You are the "salt of the earth" and I am a better woman because of you. I am you and you are me.

My sisters, Sandra, Jo, and Mel.

My mother, the benefactor of my freedom and who has mastered more than she knows.

Eileen, my mentor and long awaited creative sister.

Anna, a writer with fire in her belly, and the best dressed woman in the room with a laugh that is healing.

Rhonda, a collage artist whose time is coming. Buy her up now while you still can.

My departed grandmothers, Violet and Milly, who the former showed up at my door in my mind's eye about three years ago and who I know is watching out for me and the latter who I adore and think leaves pennies for me.

My departed aunts, Shirley and Helen, the two sweetest women who ever walked this Earth.

And to all the new and not yet mothers. The women who will awake as I did a few weeks after conception and think they have developed leukemia when all it is, all it turns out to be, is a rousing case of love and brutal heart rendering that is to come.

And finally, to my mother of a friend, Sederwall, who I will always think of when I hear "What Might Have Been." The one I will forever miss and from this day forward remember him also on Mother's Day since he's a muther...and someone who I would not be ready to slam out book after book if not for his love and friendship. He is my dream.

Now, off to the Promenade.