snapshot from a year ago: some things different, some the same

Culling files on my computer, I found this abandoned post from last May.

Every few minutes I get up to restart the clothes dryer or answer the phone, to restart the music and try to figure out who turned it off? I’m the only one home—it must’ve been me. Where did the coffee go? I must’ve finished it earlier.

I’d like to be slightly unconscious because I am writing but in truth I am fussing, futzing, worrying, fretting over this thing and that thing. It seems like a month since I’ve started a new story, too busy revising my thesis to consider much else with my writing time. And the writing time shrinks in this month of May, full of school events and little league evenings and a precious few beach days, a few walks to keep me from becoming stiff, a few trips, blessed ones.

In July I will read a portion of my thesis aloud, on the day of my graduation, and I’ve known for six months what I will wear (a perfect dress, waiting in my closet), where I will stand, what I will read. The afternoon will be hot and rainy, as all August days in Santa Fe’s monsoon season. I was thinking yesterday, how I entered this masters program shaking and feeling certain I didn’t belong with these amazing writers. I was thinking how I leave shaking in a different way, knowing I belong but now I will need to live up to this masters program, to live up to the hope others invest in me.

And of course I am also shaking because I’d hoped to teach part-time at the college level, and the nearby colleges are eliminating adjunct professors just now, trimming budgets. I will need to work, but how? What?

I can’t worry because my thesis needs a little polish, and I have five more books to read, and kids will be home from school in two weeks. I must worry because we need a bigger place to live.

Meanwhile I found an ad on Craigslist: a woman is seeking a yarn-spinner to make two pounds of fiber into yarn. Two pounds of fiber fills two grocery bags, and might be enough fiber for a sweater. The fiber is dog fur, and several web-based companies offer to process “chiengora” dog fur at $10 per ounce—I might be able to do it for less, I can’t say yet. If processed at $10 per ounce, or $160 per pound… what grief brings a pet owner to this level of commitment?

I miss my mother. It’s her birthday next week and I miss her hard and furiously.


Funny, the teaching job worked out like a charm. The thesis was fine, as such things go. I've since edited half of those pages, cutting one essay by a third, and adding to another by a third, so those 100 pages offered good work-in-progress. And the dog yarn? I've spun two batches of it, and I hope to spin some more soon. The woman knit fur-mittens and felted them in my washer, thick firm mittens with a gorgeous tan haze like mohair. 

spring schedule

I chaperoned the middle school dance and the 4th grade trip to the wildlife sanctuary. (Wildlife sanctuary/Middle school dance= synonyms?) Wowed 3rd graders with my looms and spindles. Nurtured a toddler through a crisis over a puzzle piece. Introduced kids to chicken biryani and cheered when my kid snagged a grounder at second base.Taking my other kid to a wool festival to pet sheep. BRING ON MOTHER'S DAY!

Also: Edited a story and will submit it by 9 a.m. Wrote a fan letter to a writer who is new to me (read Valerie Weaver-Zercher's Philo-Lilac in Orion, this month, swoon! I'm sure some of you know her in person, but you really must read her.) Decided that I can start the new job next week, because a day off is okay, today. Really.

Have I mentioned this is the most beautiful spring I can remember? Early, warm, and such an embarrassment of green.

patience, dear readers

I started to post a story last week, from my graduate thesis-- then I realized the thing was too intense and involved too many people I haven't checked with. (Sorry.)

I've been asked to finish an essay for an anthology of food writing, and I'm revising like crazy. I print a big stack of pages of all the ways I've rewritten this story, and I cut and tape and color code; then I rearrange, cut a lot of subplots, ask myself what's really important in there, and generally obsess, at length. That's what I've been doing in my writing life, besides filling spiral journals.

Will post some smaller snippets of writing, soon!

Lilacs are starting to bloom, and the sun is hot today, so off I go to the beach. Meet me there? It is surely time to soak up some sun.

Denise

view from the floor

Some days the ease of my former life is almost impossible to remember, from my place on the living room floor. Once I hiked 200 miles in a summer, when I lived in the Rockies. I’ve never truly been an outdoorswoman, not like some people, but I hiked twice a week after work that summer, and I kept a log—it was easy. I curled up in bus seats in Colorado, in Indiana. I stretched out on airport floors and slept the sleep of the innocent, my head propped on my bag. I slept in the back seats of cars hurtling across the continent, happy with the funny curves and indentations and a bundled up sweatshirt as a pillow.

Another summer I climbed in caves with children and swung from ropes in the trees. I grew lithe that summer, unburdened by a desk life. Even when I nursed babies in my late-thirties, I preferred to sit cross-legged on the floor, because I loved the floor, loved being near the floor. I could settle anywhere. I propped my knees to one side in a cushioned chair at Starbucks, then shifted my knees to the other side, later, or dangled my feet over the arm of the chair, close to the fireplace.

Three years ago I broke a bone in my foot, a stress fracture, while walking. When I was working to recover, I damaged a tendon in the other foot, causing a nasty bump called a ganglion. I climbed trees, still, with my children. I played Frisbee at the beach, using the waves for resistance training. Then a year ago I slipped on a ledge of granite while hiking, slamming my hip against the stone and my face against a tree. I’m afraid as I write this that you will see me as an old woman—I am not. I have never been an athlete, but I’ve been the kind of person who could rise to an occasion. I’m learning to throw a football, for my son. I’d hoped to coach a softball team, someday.

In the morning, each morning, it seems I’ve grown into a hard pickle of a woman, or perhaps a turtle with a knotted shell on my back. I lumber to the living room and carefully lower myself to the floor with a book behind my head, like the therapist showed me. Then I loosen each clenched muscle group, starting with my neck, lowering vertebra by vertebra to my one hip, then the other. Sometimes I feel a vertebra untwist, loosening all the muscles with it, and it reminds me of pregnancy, of the occasional movement of a baby heel or elbow across the expanse of my abdomen—not only is the movement amazing, but the muscle release feels profound and I find myself once again at ease for a moment. When I rise to walk again, I wiggle my neck and shoulders, relieved. Sometimes the tension has returned by the time I sit down for my cup of coffee. Sometimes the bones of my spinal column continue to shift pleasantly throughout the day, letting go in ripples as I’m driving the car down the highway.

I am trying to take long walks again. What feels like a good walk may require days of recovery. All of me feels heavy, slack, bittersweet. I am learning again how to sit, how to walk, how to stand without stiffness. I will never again sleep in the backseat, it seems, or fold myself up into a chair with a book. I will need to pay attention. It is not much—some people suffer so much more than this. Still I want to listen to the cravings of my youth: I wish I could sit on the floor. I wish I could sleep on the ground. I wish I could move without worry.

When I am resting my back on the floor, I concentrate on breathing, and I pray, sometimes for an hour, sometimes more, the strangest and most urgent prayers. My eyes water when a muscle lets go, and tears fall into my ears, or tickle down my neck. I unpickle, unturtle, and pray to be more yielding from head to toe. Beloved floor, I wish I could sit here, cross-legged in the sun. Maybe someday.

one for pussy willows, another for forsythia

One vase for pussy willows, and another for forsythia branches.

Sun streams in over the living-room-turned-infirmary, Lincoln Logs, board games, adventure books propped open and blankets, handkerchiefs, half-finished cups of tea. The boy agrees to a bath, if the water is hot enough, if he can use the eucalyptus suds, if, if, and all the requests are granted. I leave the half-emptied dishwasher, the sink full of dishes, the table a wreck of medicines. My first hour alone in days, and while I’m not truly alone, this is as close as I will get, this week.

I am on day seven of antibiotics, myself.

“Can I come out?” he shouts. I tell him to soak another five minutes. I just sat down. As close as I will get.


So, a quick note: I’ve been working to establish a writing routine, and jumping into a hundred fresh starts of writing. I’ve also been struggling and moping, adapting to the questions raised by freelancing, and I’ve been researching houses to buy or rent. I’ve secured a teaching job for the fall semester. I still need to dig out from the housekeeping neglect of the past two years, and I’m working at that bit by bit. I’m caring for the world’s most delightful two-year-old, two days a week, and she reminds me how good it is to live in the present tense, to shake off worry, to play when the weather is fine.

The five minutes has passed and soon the boy will emerge from the bath, breathing better I hope. I’ll check in with the doctor and I’m sure we will need to make an appointment, which will mean leaving the sunny house. I’ll finish unloading the dishwasher and with some luck we can both settle into some reading.

At least we have sun and pussy willows. The forsythia will bloom tomorrow, I’m guessing.

provision and grilled cheese

Note from a few weeks ago. 

I arrive home from a day of childcare. I call him from home, and he tells me our daughter’s team is neck-and-neck right now, so he can’t talk long. I hear the crowd sounds subside as he walks from the gymnasium.

“Can you please pick up one Chinese entrée?” He hesitates. We are short on funds this month, since my job ended in December. “Teething. My gal howled for 45 minutes straight. I am covered with snot and I smell like a diaper. My head hurts like I’m teething.”

He laughs and says yes I deserve Chinese food, yes, one entrée.

“It’s been a long time since teething,” he says, “She’s on the court now, and we are up by six points.” He tells me he doesn’t have the phone number for the Chinese place—I remind him Madeleine added the number to his cell phone. He’ll need to ask her to find it when the game is over. I agree to cook our own rice, to save a few dollars. Because every few dollars is a few dollars, right now.

I enrolled in a masters program three years ago, to pursue my love of literature and writing. I didn’t foresee any problems paying off my student loans—I’d graduate with a degree, I thought, and the parenting gap on my resume would look less glaring. I’d work, finally, in an area I love. When I completed my degree in August, I found adjunct work at a terrific college, a few minutes from my children’s elementary school. I taught two classes, my introduction to grading papers and teaching eighteen-year-olds in a classroom. I loved the work, and it took all my time until it ended at Christmastime.

And now I am free to do the thing I studied: I’m free to write. But I’m not free, as long as we struggle to pay bills. In some ways I am lucky: I knew my job would last four months. I haven’t checked in on my friend Dave’s job search. He thought he had his high-paying job as long as he wanted it. I haven’t checked in on Pete, who used to commute halfway down the coast for his work week. Lauren is happy to work on a consultant basis for awhile. These are people who earned serious money, and my adjunct work is small potatoes in comparison.

Are we all struggling? I assume most of us are.

I step into the shower to return to my own scents, to comb the toddler-gunk out of my hair. When I emerge from the shower, the family arrives. He doesn’t bring me Chinese food, not even one entrée. Kids needed to be home, he says, and I can see it’s true. He starts the grilled cheese sandwiches without asking. I eat mine with a bowl of tomato soup, then go to bed at 7 pm to sleep for eleven hours. It’s been a long time since teething.

Now they’ve gone to school for the day, and I have no childcare duties. Time to write.