Here and Now....Finding the Words to Write

I have my topics. They feel right. Tomorrow on the train, further fleshing out of this trail I have decided/agreed to take. "Jumping Off a Cliff with My Mother" is telling me what to write and finally, finally I am listening.

I saw "Hereafter" with Leila tonight in Manhattan. What a subtle, sublime movie.

Good one, Clint.

Slow Start

Distractions, but a good day. I danced around my tea date with writing, but finally sat down. More tomorrow.

Following My Bliss off the Cliff

I nearly fell asleep forgetting to post! But today, I discovered my format for "Jumping Off a Cliff with My Mother." It is strong and flexible. I know it is kin to Joseph Campbell's Hero's Journey. I traced the points he so wisely makes and knew, knew my mother's and my story touches each point.

On Friday, I will write, jog, see "Hereafter" and bask in the happiness of my journey.

I see the horizon, and it is okay. I have a lap or twenty to go before touching it. I, finally understand, how truly to enjoy the journey.

"The big question is whether you are going to be able to say a hearty yes to your adventure."  -- Joseph Campbell

Ready

Today, I knew I was ready to write "Jumping Off a Cliff with my Mother"...to write more. I have my workshop tomorrow and the rest of the day is mine. Mine to write.

 I am ready.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g4ekwTd6Ig

A Stabbing Pain in the Solar Plexus

Collage cards by Rhonda Dore.

She made my first Halloween costume. Things were hurried and she had a new baby, and my costume became black tights and orange streamers made into a skirt. Brilliant. We laughed for years over the boys who tugged off those streamers, and I must have gone home with about three still holding to my makeshift waistband. A year later, she'd sew a clown costume for me that doubled as pajamas.

On Valentine's Day our teachers got the biggest most beautiful cards from us, made by our mother.

She carved two lamps from diamondwood found in the forests of Alaska.

She did paint by numbers exquisitely and precise.

She could be cranky, stubborn, religiously narrow minded, and stingy.

But she also made two hotdog sandwiches for me so that I could give one to the boy in my first grade class who I'd noticed came to school without a lunch.

She sewed a red gown for my Barbie, even a bathing suit. She loved to hike, picnic, and to swim.
And today on her birthday, I know how much she is, was, and always will be. And I miss her in a desperate, maddening way.

 My father has been gone for 12 years. I was trying to remember tonight if his first birthday away from us was as painful? I understand why they say our mother comes to guide us from this life to the next.

It hurts too much to write tonight. This is the best I can do.

"Sorrows to be Healed"

My mother, Nancy Lee, on the far right, my father, Frederick Reed, 
center, my daughter, Sarah, and me, soon after her birth.

Tomorrow would have been my mother's 81st birthday. This time last year we were celebrating her 80th. My sister and I saw it in her eyes; the oncoming exit. There is a haze that comes over, a sign of departure. It was a hard day, her actual birthday. I had to force her to see how she needed to move into an assisted living facility; she'd refused hired help and my sister was exhausted from her full time teaching job and rushing back and forth to check on her. So on her birthday, I had gotten my mother to agree to move, and as we sat at my sister's house, around the dining table, I noticed my mother was singing softly, purposefully, as we sang, too. I could not remember a single time we'd done that. It had always been a chattering of topics, idle tit for tat. Now, there was music, songs, quiet resolve. We ate pizza and cake, and I just felt the waves of heartache. And yet, when she had been at the facility for a few weeks, she said she liked it, made a few friends, had a college type dorm life experience, and until the Stroke came on the last day of February, four months later, she really had been coping and finding her way.

Two days ago, I saw her in my Mind's Eye. She was sitting in a big school-type auditorium with red theater curtains. She sat in the first row and turned to me, smiled, waved, and I saw her honey brown hair, short at the nape of her neck. Happy and free. She had left that sad last birthday party and was letting me know, it was all for the best.

I love you, Mother. The longing that I feel is as red and nostalgic as those curtains. The brown wood of the stage was showing me energy and grounding. Only you and I know why our story must be written. And I will finish it, Mother. Happy Birthday. Vaya con Dios.

To Nancy and Me

Let it be Written: I have it ALL

On our way to Outhouse Orchards.

Oops, I missed Saturday. Two days into my new regiment, and I messed up....but hear me out! I went apple picking with my beautiful grown daughters! We went up into Westchester County to Croton Falls or as Leila described it, "Crouton Falls." We got on an 11 am train and we started out fussing with each other, and then it became me just staring out, looking for autumn wherever I could find it. And I found it.

And in the middle of it, we relaxed and let the strangulation of life ride away on the hayride we decided not to go on. But we did laugh over the fact that I couldn't hoist myself onto a bale of hay or snatch an apple out of the tree without a few tries. I watched Sarah who is 6'1" pick up her sister to better pluck down an apple with the pole. I chased the roosters and chickens even though I wasn't supposed to, and Leila insisted we take a picture of her plunked down in the middle of the pumpkins. And we drank apple cider while sitting on the Metro North platform waiting for the train back to the City, as we listened to Drake from Leila's ipod. It was a good day.

 A bouquet of love

"I miss you guys," texted Leila an hour later. "We miss you, too," I texted back.

I will return to the writing tomorrow as today I've got a cold and am still visiting with Sarah who will leave for Boston tomorrow.

So I know you'll  forgive me. I'll double up tomorrow. Today, I'm way ahead.

Onward Birthday Girl

Yesterday was my birthday. It was a good one in that I spent it with my daughters and friends. Today, I'm sluggish. I drank quite a few glasses of wine before eating, but boy did I have fun! I have to say, though, I agree with what Raymond Carver once said about how it is impossible to write with a hangover. I'm pleading the Fifth.

The hangover saved me as I haven't written anything today, but this blog post and I assure it won't be very long. I won't lie; I miss my mother and yesterday's birthday was my first without a call from her or a card with a check. We spoke in obligatory ways; and tried to help (better definition would be "change") each other. She tried to save me, and I tried to free her.

My precious daughters.

I'm not being sentimental to say I wished I could have turned 55 with my mother still alive. I know our problems, but I also know our resolve at the end. So I am glad to be posting every day on my progress as a writer.

As a 55 year old woman, I am going to write about my mother and me. But not tonight. Right now, I'm going to be a slug and watch a rerun of "Everybody Loves Raymond." And I'm going to eat some birthday cake. This slice is for my Mom.

Many Rivers to Cross

It is 12:41 EST and I'm 55. This is my first day to post what will be a year of postings about my writing schedule, experiences, etc. I am going to post every day for an entire year, until I turn 56. I should be very deep into a memoir I am writing about my mother and me, and I'm not. At 55, I should be published many times over, and I'm not. And I don't care because I'm doing it now. This idea struck me - posting for a year - a few nights ago and a stream of fire ran through me. No mistakes, no mistakes, no mistakes my heart said.

So many days have gone by and I haven't written a single sentence. I've worked in public relations, education, banking, retail, development, and more, but I've shied away from jumping into writing with both feet. Tonight when I got off the Q train in Queens, I knew something had shifted. I watched the way the woman carried a very heavy bag in front of me. I felt the air on my face at the open platform. I saw the black, dirty and dark stairs of the station; how one man skipped down them, and I wondered how he did it without falling?

Tonight two boys from a private high school got on the train, their navy blue jackets smug against their pelting red ties. But it was the click of their shoes that I noticed. The way they kept moving to side to side of the car; their khakis wrinkled at the back of their knees; the red, gripping fingers of one of the boys on the rail next to my face.

It is time to write, my being says to me. We've been patient long enough with your fears, insecurities, laziness, and distractions.  Now, you write. Now, you take it seriously, and pay some attention. Now, you breathe a different air; taste a different texture; drink a different elixir; hear a different tune; see a different vision. Now, you give it your all.

So I'm 55. The same number as my birth year. I've been fascinated with 55 for years now, and now I know why. This year I strike. No more time.  Nothing else to do, but this. I've got some living to get on with and this first day of it, now 51 minutes in, smells sweet.

Happy Birthday to me.

Dedicated to Nancy Lee Powell-Hastings

Crossroads always tell the tale.

My writing coordinator at the college where I tutor took me to lunch two Sundays ago. We went to the Caridad Restaurant in the Bronx. When I wasn't seriously wolfing my yellow rice, beans, and roasted pork, I was talking and listening to her. I value her ideas and thoughts on writing. She is a several times published playwright with produced plays. This past summer, I attended a reading of one of her works, and I left flabbergasted at the array, tightness, synchronized simplicity and exorbitant ability of her words. So when she mentioned the writing group she is a member of I quickly choked down my forkful of rice and asked if I could be a member, too?

She looked at me, swallowed her own mouthful of rice and said, "No. This is a serious group. We are all published writers with produced plays." Now, you might have read that as an insult to me, but I heard the Universe loud and clear saying, "Girl, it's time to step up your game!"

I accepted what she said. Totally understood. And if I had a body of work, I'd try to weasel my way in to her group, but I don't. Lots of unfinished work is what would be written on my tombstone if I were to exit stage left today. So I understand.

But I am looking for a writer's group and will find one or gather up my own. And everyone will be let in. All they need is a thick skin and something of paper quality in their meager, non-published hands. It's never too late. Because while I've been spending my life with a brother and sister to babysit, foolish times to be had, daughters to raise, ill parents to tend, careers to pursue, and lots of TV time burnt out on the couch, I've still had time to write. And the truth is that for all the milestones and occurrences in my life, these were always experiences to partner with writing.

Time to wake up from the dream and to live it. Two days ago, I saw a spot in my bedroom that I envisioned where a desk could be placed  to write, a room away from the TV, and my Verizon card for Internet in the other room, too. I asked the Universe to help me find a great table to go there. Last night,  while walking home from the train, two doors from me was a card table, put out for anyone who wanted it. I lugged it upstairs, the metal of the its edges clanking against our marble stairs, bringing one tenant out into the stairwell to see who was creating such a horrible noise in the early evening? It was me.

The card table is a bit wide and takes up the entire space, and I am glad as I will today put all my books on it that I study and use for reference and this table will hold all my notebooks and projects. And I will sit here and work, rearrange the bedroom furniture if need be, and I will find a way to sit there for hours everyday and write, dream, think, and produce.

And I will take my coordinator/writer friend to lunch and we will swim in yellow rice; choke on flan and gulp coffee with sweet, thick milk. And I will smile and fling beans at the Universe. "Take that!" I will say, my heart as full as my stomach.

Why I love My Grandmother Hastings

Mildred Wyland-Hastings, a woman way
ahead of her time.

Today is my grandmother's birthday. She left this dimension when she was 82, so she'd be well over 110 now, so I want you to know I am not mourning her as much as bringing honor to a woman who discovered very late in life who she was and my, how happy that made her. When my grandfather died, I think Mildred was in her 60s. When my father, her son, moved his family to El Paso, Texas in 1965, we moved in order to be near her. And so for the next couple of decades, I was able to get to know this sensational woman.

Her father, was a country doctor in Iowa. He was someone who literally went to his patient's homes. Milly and my father and aunt lived with her parents during big parts of the Great Depression. Since my father was in the Air Force, we lived for six short months in Bellevue, Nebraska, just miles from the border of Iowa where our roots lie deep in beautiful cornfields and green pastures.

Once reunited with my grandfather, Mildred and Albert retired in El Paso for its incredible weather. My father and mother loved it, too. Milly went on to live on her meager Social Security check, and I didn't realize it as a teenager, but she learned to make due with very little, yet, she had the broadest smile, and it is etched in my mind still today. I'd pick her up in my orange Volkswagen and off we'd go, her listening to my views on how important Women's Liberation was. And that's what I love most about my grandmother. She let me talk. I had so much to say and during the 70s couldn't find many women in my community to listen. But she did. "Absotutely!" she'd say over my latest rant. "Absotutely!"

Inside the grocery store where I'd take her once every few weeks, she'd carefully look over the produce, and select what she could, gather up the meats she needed, and then we'd go to the gardening section and she'd "pinch" a leaf or two, slide them in her pocketbook, take them home and root them into green glory. And she'd have us over for Sunday dinner twice a month, and now I know how much of her budget she spent on us. The meal was extensive and delicious and when we took a nap, my parents in her bedroom, and we kids spread out on her couch or in front of the sliding door of her small apartment, she'd sit and read National Geographic.

She read all the time. Now I understand, living alone, myself. She'd read for hours. Today I have some of her books and I read her notes made in the margins. Near the end of her life, my grandmother embraced Science of Mind. And what I mean by this is she grasped the idea that we create our reality with our thoughts. Louise L. Hay, founder of Hay House could have been best friends with Milly.

My grandmother died from Pancreatic cancer. She loved sweets (so do I). When we cleaned her apartment after her death, I found Twix bars stashed in the corners of her kitchen, and I had to grin. What fun she must have had knoshing on them as she read her books.

She blossomed in the end. She'd wear brightly colored scarves and pins, but it was her smile, her clucking happiness that I remember the most.

Happy Birthday, Mildred. Thank you for listening to me. I am listening to you now.

Te amo.