Tag Archives: Writing

Fast Month

01 Friday Jun 2012

Posted by in Life at Home, Writing

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My young father and me – Albany, I think…

It wasn’t my intention to fast from the blog for a month, though a few weeks ago, I did decide to skinny-down life to better prepare for the Iowa Summer Writing Festival.

It wasn’t difficult.   One early in May morning I woke up and drew a few lines in the sand to make my sandbox a little smaller.  Inside was everyday life and my father’s story.  Outside the box was everything else — including my beloved home and garden restoration projects — no matter how many fabulous mid-summer plant sales that are bound to come up to tempt.

It’s a case of doing first things first.  Focusing on what I would be most sad to leave undone in this world, in the event I die sooner than later.   Because who would write Dad’s story if not me?  Who knows it or cares to know it in its scattered and torn state?  Who would give it their all and then some?  And really now — as much as I adore home restoration projects, none of them have quite made my heart sing like working on my father’s and aunt’s childhood story.

The fast month of May taught me much.  Not only my growing knowledge of my young father and aunt and their life — but much about me and my life — why the more I cozy up to my young father, the more I see how Mother was right, when she’d so often say, by way of explanation to others — was it with a slight disparaging note? — yes, I think so:  ” Well.  What can you expect? … She’s just like her father.”  Today I respond by saying this state of ‘two peas in a pod’ being, between Dad and I, may become my trump card to taking on this most seemingly impossible task of my life.

So between now and mid-July, I’ve advance work to finish and submit — partly because it’s assigned and partly because I wish to get the most I can from this writing experience my husband is giving me.  And though I don’t intend to absent myself from the blog the entire month of June — I’m here today, aren’t I? — I just wanted you to know what’s up in my not so everyday life at the moment — in case you’re interested.

~~~~~~~

Ten years ago, I asked God to give me a story.  As prayer goes, it was childlike:  Short in words — tall in dreams.  And as best as I can now recall, it went something like this:  God, if you give me a story to write, I promise to write it.”

I’m not sure Dad’s story is IT but I think it is.  Because it would be just the kind of answer to prayer that would fit a Godly sense of humor — since the story has been as close as my father’s hip pocket all my life.  I only wish I’d realized it sooner.  I wish I’d realized it before Daddy lost his voice to tell it.  But since wishes don’t always rise to the level of prayer in my life, here’s praying I can become Daddy’s voice.  One more time.  Because life goes fast and some stories were lived to last longer than a lifetime.

Time for Midnight’s Children

31 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Good Reads, Life at Home

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I’m not sure why I said yes.  I’m no good at book clubs and reading groups.   But in spite of past failings, and because I fell in love at first sight with the novel’s opening paragraphs, I signed on to read Salman Rushdie’s award-winning Midnight’s Children.

Rushdie birthed this masterpiece while I was in the midst of mastering the pieces of my busy young life  — marriage, career and motherhood without apple pie but plenty of midnight feedings to compensate.

Older, if not wiser, I’m still busy.  It’s the way I keep time.  But not too overextended for this travel piece —  this story in a story that I believe, once I’ve arrived to the final word and period, may point to some greater truth that lives just off the page.

Why do I think this?  Well, because this story moves. Though not always in chronological order.  Like a pendulum, the story grants peeks into the future, speaking of events and characters without proper introductions — then swings back to make sure we’re still hanging on to the story line.  In a fictional world where time is elastic — stretching forward, snapping back, keeping readers at attention — it’s good that Rushdie never loses control.

We are safe, following the trail of words left by expert hands, even while “traveling” such strange lines across India, even as we careen through the countdown of time to reach the end of British colonial rule.  Strange, as in, where are these sentences leading me?  And where will they take the three generations of family the author introduces in Book One, whose lives intersect with the wilds of three great world religions?

Hinduism, Islam and Christianity are all present and accounted for — while the story’s patriarchal grandfather, poor soul, loses his faith in God before we’re barely out of the gate.  It happens — on page two of the story — in such a humiliating, unforgettable way: Nose first, Aadam Aziz dives to prayer mat and, rather than encountering God, crashes into the earth.  Three drops of blood fall.  A hole in his soul opens up.  And his faith in God leaks out so fast he becomes “caught in a strange middle ground, trapped between belief and disbelief…”  Readers are left with a holey hero, who lives a young life into an old one, stuffing his hole to the brim with marriage and career and children.

Hmmm.

I’m thankful to the wise organizers of this reading experience who built in plenty of time for spacious reading. The schedule has not only granted breathing room for life but allowed me to fly back to the beginning to re-read Book One with “traveled eyes.”  Once was simply not enough for me, since I missed too much, even traveling slow.  I was getting the gist of the story but leaving too many fine details and scenery behind.

I don’t want to miss anything along the way, if I can help it.  Every word, every image, every potential connection that bridges one idea to another feels important.  Of course, I am missing details.  How can I not?  There is just too much to take in.  And the author knows it.  He has written a novel made to read over and over again; he implies as much when he writes, toward the end of Book One,

“To understand just one life, you have to swallow the world.  I told you that.”

Since I’m just a “tourist” traveling in a foreign land and time, I cannot hope to swallow Rushdie’s world.  But like any tourist, I hope to carry away sweet memories of my visit.   And, since I do not armchair-travel alone, I look forward to enlarging my perspective by reading other reactions to Rushdie’s story at today’s first of four meeting stops.

Maybe others will mention why they said ‘yes’.

Link to other reviews...

Everyday Frittering

17 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by in Home Restoration, In the Garden, Life at Home, Writing

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“How was your day?”

This question my husband asks is the most everyday part of my everyday.  With it, he invites me to punctuate the hours with a label.  Good or bad.  Busy or lazy.  Sometimes with an exclamation point or two.

But last Monday, rather than responding with the usual ‘good’ and almost always, ‘busy,’ I allowed frustration to have its say.   For surely it was frustration and a series of sleepless nights which made me respond that I was frittering my life away.  You know, a little time here.  A little there.  With nothing much to show for it.

Because everything inches along in my everyday life, in stacks of varying states of “to do,”  without anything ever getting done.

First, the garden.  Never ending.  As I like it.

Then, my home improvement du jour.  Never ending.  As I like it.

Ta-da, my work on Dad’s story. Never ending.  Not at all as I like it.

In truth, I am overwhelmed by that story of my father’s growing up years.  And as much as I wish to work on it, —  or wish to wish —  I fear it’s too much.  And I wonder if Dad’s story isn’t the biggest time-fritter of all —  what with research and re-reading of notes and just THINKING about all those stories floating around without a timeline and gleaning perspectives from others.  It’s exhausting without being exhaustive.  Black holes.  Galore.  My ghostly subjects move all across the map like they are running from the law.  Or from me.

Of course, sometimes they did.  Run from the law, that is.  At least, my grandfather did.  It was part of his ‘get rich-quick-and-easy scheme’  that didn’t pan out.  You know that phrase — crime doesn’t pay — well, it could have been coined by all of my grandfather’s hard-working Greek cousins and uncles who got rich the hardworking way — when talking about my grandfather behind his back.

Have I mentioned — somewhere along the way — that my grandfather did a little moonlighting for the Mafia in the twenties and thirties?  Probably not.  It doesn’t come up too often in conversation.

Anyway, since last Monday, I’ve put Dad’s story on the back burner — to get a few things done.  I guess I had need to point to a few dead and done bodies.  I began by laying my first ever flagstone path … which I’ve thought about all the warm winter long — and found it to be much like putting together puzzle pieces of a different kind.

Then, I got my hands dirty in my new herb garden that once, not so long ago, was the concrete pad of the previous owner’s jacuzzi.  Then, since I’m a gambling gardener —

rather than one who plays in the dirt safe — I planted five tomato plants three weeks before the official planting date — my shy way of living on the edge.  I think they’ll be okay.  Especially since my sister said that our mother said that Granny always said that the danger of frost is over once the Elm trees leaf out — which mine did earlier this week. (Sis shared this bit of gardening wisdom with me while we were painting her bedroom a lovely Carribean blue yesterday and today.)

So here’s the crazy thing.  Six years ago, I would never have imagined that I could have done any of these things I did so handily this week.  Flagstone paths?  Garden designs that required the breaking out of a six inch concrete pad?  Painting crisp, clean lines free-hand at the request of others?

So maybe, if I keep frittering away at Daddy’s story… a little time here, a little there, with a whole lot of living on the edge, it will all come together.  Somehow.  Someday.  So help me God.

Yep.  It could happen.