Short Fiction

Today I've been working on some short fiction experiments and I'm enjoying that form so much. Some journals take only 500 or less words and others will take pieces with up to 1000 words. It's such a rewarding exercise--I love boundaries that push me to write better, to choose words carefully.

And then I get on this blog and try not to be too sloppy.

The sky is darkening outside. In about five minutes I will see the bus drive up and flash its lights as Merry climbs off--she always waits for just a moment and then she shoots down the road, backpack bobbing behind, all the way down our greening side yard, and through our gate where she slows down, giving me enough time to rush down the stairs to welcome her. In winter she'd pause at the bottom of the porch steps to stuff as much snow as possible into her mouth, furtively because I don't like them eating too much snow. I'd stand there in the shadows of the hallway, watching her shovel mittenfulls past her lips.

Our yearly ten trees are leaning against the shed, waiting for a dry, warmish day--only one fruit this year as we have as many as we can handle.

Oh, there's Merry now, turning a little twirl by the fire hydrant, so I'd better hurry!

Chickadees

A dear friend of mine who is going through a very hard time right now told me about a chickadee who sings to her every morning. (The very sad rendering above, scribbled on Paintbrush, is for her with love.)

I've been thinking about the chickadee, about the way it perches outside my friend's room and awakens her to a new morning with its repetitive, insistent call.

So I looked it up and listened to it here and felt as though I was in my own garden. How many bird calls I hear every day, especially in spring time--a whole chorus of avian voices that form the background of my seeing and movement outside.

This lent I keep on coming around corners and hearing bird calls. In winter I followed the birds, bright feathers of hope and promises of spring, and now that spring is here I delight in the absolute noise they make outside. I'm tempted to write that the bird songs are full of joy and gladness, but I don't really think that's true. A bird sings the way she sings because she is a specific type of bird. Of course, in the case of the chickadee, there are aggressive calls and mating calls but the chickadee still sings in a chickadee's voice, not a blue-jay's voice or a robin's voice. A chickadee is perfectly content being a chickadee.

This lent I have been reminded by bird calls and other voices to be content to be who I am. I wish this were as simple for me as it is for the chickadee. Most of us have to struggle to find our voices in the first place, and when we finally do it is hard to sing our calls contentedly and loudly all the time. It is easiest for me to sing when others are appreciating my voice, but it is hardest to sing when I feel slighted or alone, and it is near impossible to sing when my voice sounds ugly or ordinary.

The other day at our Mennonite Church I came into the little room filled with four-year-olds and I was in a bit of a huff. Why did I have to be here with kids when I am with kids all week? I thought. Why doesn't anyone else volunteer to do this job? Do they think that because I chose to be with my girls more or less full-time that I love being with kids more than anything else? Well, they are completely deluded. Etc. You get the drift.

I was rather surprised and encouraged when the four-year olds seemed to love the story I was telling--Samuel, almost asleep, has to push back his covers and plod down the hallway to ask Eli again and again why in the world he keeps calling him out of his bed. They ate it up, especially the part at the end where Samuel sits up in his covers and says, "Here I am! I'm listening!"

In the end I was shaken by the story myself. Here I was, in that warm room with three four-year-olds who were hanging on the words of the story, and I was so full of complaints and noise that I couldn't listen myself.

And now I've got my metaphors crossed. So I'm supposed to be still and listen and also sing like a maniac in my own voice, whether others are irritated or happy or bored or could care less when they hear it. Or maybe I listen to receive the grace and direction to sing like a chickadee.

It all has something to do with my daily life, which is sometimes misunderstood and brushed over by professionals, though it is as much based on my own choices as their lives are. Here's the other thing I realize as I flip through journal after journal of stories and poems: my voice is my own voice. It does not change whether or not I am rejected or accepted by editors. It has, I hope, with practice and discomfort, become stronger, but it is still particularly mine, and I have it for a reason, and I have to keep on keeping on.

Through the years I have found that it is a grave mistake to find my sense of worth from any one source, whether that be from parents, my spouse, my children, editors, colleagues, or friends. I must not look to others to solely define whether I am worthy my singing is any good. My mother always said, "Never apologize for your voice before you sing," which proves to be one of the best pieces of advice she ever gave me. A chickadee is a chickadee, designed especially to sing like a chickadee. A chickadee has innate worth because it is a chickadee, and that's it.

So that's been my Lenten lesson this year, and I have almost made myself nauseous with this entry; it so borders on being didactic I can hardly keep typing. I hate lessons. I suppose it is good to think on them occasionally though not so often that we become unbearable, and that is one reason why I love fiction and poetry and not devotional books.

I had a dream the other night that I was standing in the back of our church singing at the top of my lungs. And my voice as I let it sail up out of my lungs felt like freedom; it felt like I was standing on the edge of a pier with a salty wind full in my face. When I'm not plodding through the morass of a story but I'm near a peak, I get the same feeling: this sense that I'm wide open. Maybe it is the same for birds in spring, diving into trees like crazy things and spanning their wings and waking people with their loud voices.

Day for Ducks, or Ducky Day

Martin spent blissful hours in the front beds planting tons of sugarsnap peas; then this morning we had a rain and now the sun is out again. I think the peas are terribly giddy.

This morning we were grumpy in the grey, late to drop Elspea at preschool and Martin and I were stressed and alternately snappy and apologetic. I listened to a Polish pianist talking about Chopin as I drove to Giant Eagle, where I strapped Bea into a filthy car and we went gliding around the aisles. In the tea aisle "God Bless USA" played over the speakers and then in the ice-cream aisle, Paul Simon's Graceland came on, which was sadly interrupted for a banal announcement about Giant Eagle caring about the safety of children. . .and then we trundled off to the check-out where the woman weighed my sherbet and ice cream just out of curiosity to see which was heavier--"I knew it," she said. "I just thought the sherbet weighed more!"

Then home we drove in the blue Subaru across the railroad tracks; we sat in the driveway listening to Bach and staring at clearing skies as the ice-cream melted in the back of the car. . . .

And it's all sun again and I remember that winter is truly ending, that a gray morning does not mean an inevitable slip into a week of melancholy, and the peas are stirring and the crocus on fire and the lilacs about to open a thousand purple eyes. . .and I am about to be late again for Elspea. One should not have to be on time in spring; it is against the spirit of the season, and for that matter against the spirit of every season.

Hmmm

So Martin and I are downstairs with a huge pile of pancakes and coffee. The girls are watching Madeline for Treat Day. Martin and I are talking about stories and publishers and so pleased that we're alone to talk, right?

And then it dawns on me: Bea is not here. She's upstairs--we hear rattling and banging. How is it that she has kept herself so busy up there?

Martin comes down with a report: Bea has stripped her clothes and diaper. She has started a bath for herself, pulled down the bath toys, and is squatting in the tub. On the landing: a perfectly laid turd.

Happy Saturday, everybody!

Today: Martin plants sugarsnap peas, the kids play outside in the garden and under the tree that split in The Snow (here with our friends the T. children), and I frost two dozen cupcakes for a violin recital.

Right Now: Six robins and a squirrel beckoning us to leave the pancake dishes and run outside!

poetry vs prose

Martin is a pencil point
I'm a stack of scrawling scribbling ink blots

This is Martin writing poetry: 24 lines
Here am I writing a short story: 24 pages
And I have a sneaking suspicion his story is better

It's nice to hold one sheet of paper
with a body and soul on it
I've got a fan of characters
and plot shimmies and blasts
If I let it go in the wind
it would be lost forever
on hedges and in gutters
and in pedestrian faces
if Martin let his go
we'd pin it down
easy as one foot stomping
one short laugh as he bends
folds it in four
sticks it in his pocket

____________________________________________
ps. the picture above is actually a photo of when Martin and I organized his book of poetry for submission: we used the entire living room floor and crawled around among the pages, rearranging--what a good feeling, to be with poems in such a tactile, physical way.

O-O-O-O-Being ALONE

There are fireworks of crocus in our front bed by the brick path: deep purple with golden centers. . .the tulips are pushing up strong and thick and the daffodils are wisps of green in the front garden. The forsythia bush, though bent and bed-headed from the drifts of snow, is covered with buds.

I just wrote a letter to my mother--here's a very brief portion that explains how wonderful life felt this morning:

The babysitter came after a long time away and I felt almost giddy as I stood in the sunlight in my own room, alone to write for four blissful hours!!!! Hallelujah, there is nothing so good perhaps as that feeling--even when I'm most happy over the girls it is a more complicated happiness, a happiness that includes still being responsible for them and concerned for their welfare and one that is mixed with a little sadness that they are growing up so fast. . .but the bliss of being alone for the first time in a long time with sunshine and a computer and your own room--oh, it's so uncomplicated and so good.

Currently there are three girls in the bath; it is almost eight and Merry has a spelling test tomorrow. Elspeth has been screaming because Merry is threatening to put her in the dungeon and the floor is flooded with discarded clothes--so I'd better go.

"Martin" Lookalike Stars in "Mentos Commercial"

Click here:
MARTIN LOOKALIKE APPEARS IN KNOCK-OFF MENTOS COMMERCIAL

But, Honestly. . . .

The blast of light caught us all by surprise--after a month with three documented days of sunshine. The hands that had held us so tightly in their dark palms finally opened and we found there was a world outside!

Today is grey again, and I resigned myself to the fact that the sun was sleeping again (as Bea says). I slogged through the puddles in the supermarket lot this morning, shopped in the florescent glow, and urged myself to be patient and enjoy myself as the shopper in front of me chatted at great leisure with the check-out woman. It is one of the charms of a small town, after all, and when my turn came the checker greeted me with similar ease and asked how old Bea was now, and then we had the conversation I've had one-thousand times since the birth of my first daughter: how time flies, how you turn your head and your first child is twenty-four, and how you can't keep your eyes off them or you'll miss it, it's so fast.

And the air was cold and wet and heavy with the smells of snow-melt and exhaust and mud.

Tomorrow, my friend Sally tells me, sunshine will return. I looked up with a jolt: really? I had forgotten sunshine comes back faster in March!

So with my children: so much of life, like last night when Bea broke eight eggs all over the freshly mopped floor and Elspeth fell of her chair and then down three stairs, and Merry was full of a sense of injustice--so much seems endless, a long winter of enduring. And then there are these bright, blinding flashes of light--small hands on your face, the down of a child's head under your palm--and you realize that life is a privilege that you are given. Turn your head, as the checker said, and you miss it. And the realization of the gift socks you in the stomach and you think, I will never forget this feeling of gratitude; I will remember to treasure every moment. But then a long grey day comes and the cuffs of your pants are all muddy and wet and you wish you were on the other end of it.

The trick is, I guess, to somehow embrace all that as well. This is the hardest discipline I have to master: embracing and living with all things, whether easy or hard, happy or miserable, anticipated or unexpected. Sometimes I come across someone I think has that gift, and I am always disarmed by their shrug and the smile that spreads across their face, their admission that they only have it down some days and not others. Some days are diamonds, as Kenny Rogers says, some days are stones. I add: some days are winter, some days are spring.

Though honestly, folks, let's be honest: aren't we ready for spring, now? For the season of waiting to end? Who doesn't want the sun-blast? ME! ME! I want it and I want it now! Lent, finish! Easter, come!

Rites of Spring

Last Week
This Week

Snow Eaters and Sun

A much-spotted, red Snow-Eater at Wazoo Farm:


Now--
Sun for two days straight! Is it to be believed? March, I adore you! There is nothing, nothing, like awakening to sunshine on your pillow.

Coming

I wanted to grab a robin
bury my nose in his feathers
take his head between my fingers
search his serious black eyes

Now don't fool with me mister
You do know about spring
how it is coming down from those snowy hills
about to steal over sidewalks and redbuds

Instead I watched as he burst into the sky
all warm feathers and claws

Pick up a bird

Pick up a bird by its bony head and ring it like a bell until it's springtime!

There are such things as exploding birds. As we drive into the hollows of our snowy county, a bush KABOOM sends a cloud of cardinals rising into the air. So maybe it is the bushes exploding with birds!

I noticed while I was in my bird-obsession not so long ago, that EVERYBODY writes about birds. But nobody loves birds the way I do. Nobody, no sirree.

Martin and I have been sending piles of poetry and short stories and essays off to journals and yesterday was a record day: four rejections between us; three of them were mine; two out of four were fairly stock rejections; Martin's had a note he described first as 'snarky' and then as jolly good because it referred to his poetry as "high energy" much as a tired parent might refer to their toddler. I got a great rejection from the Missouri Review asking to see more of my stories, so now I just need to write more. And I stayed up almost until midnight getting two more submissions ready, so as to make up somewhat for the rejections. It's a rewarding process :).

I have to say, it's much more fun to be rejected with someone else than by oneself. We almost bought dinner out to celebrate but we thought we'd wait: as Martin says, if we keep buying ourselves dinner every time we're rejected, we're going to be broke (between the two of us we've got, say, about 100 plus things out). Maybe we'll wait for an acceptance. There was that bright week when we both got accepted to two diffferent publications. It is a nice memory and we're swimming in our rejections with humor and comraderie. So far today neither one of us has been rejected, except by our children, which makes us feel all is right with the world.

Warmed Me After Yet Another Snow

Here is a story that warmed me after yet another snow yesterday. My father sent me this BBC story about a woman who gave birth in the flood in Mozambique in March 2000. I have a personal connection to this flood, since my mother and I were painting a basement room in their house in Wheaton, IL, when we received a call from my father's organization, telling us that Meredith Long was missing in one of the worst floods Mozambique had ever seen.

The water rose with incredible rapidity, they told us, and apparently Meredith decided not to evacuate. Someone reported that as she fled the flood, she saw a tall white man with white hair who was not running away. I looked at my mother and said, "Well, what do we do now?"

"I guess we keep painting," she said, and so we did. As we rolled the walls with blue I thought, Maybe this is it. Maybe this is what finally happens to Daddy.

Later we heard he had spent the night helping people evacuate. From the tops of roofs he helped mothers and children climb into hovering helicopters, and then finally he jumped into one himself. My father tells this story with the sort of reining calm that characterizes all his stories, his stories of the tsunami aftermath, for instance. Matter-of-factly, in his quiet, unassuming way, he tells me details that kick me in the gut. Sometimes we have to pull details from him, and sometimes when we get him talking he tells us more than we expected, things that are hard to hear.

He's travelled my entire life. My childhood is filled with the smell of his suitcase, the way he unzipped it at the foot of the bed, swung open the flap, and dug around in his well-folded clothes to find a treat he'd brought us.

Both my parents possess this immense calm--I'll never forget my mother's even answer to my question when my father--her love and best friend--was missing, the way she prayed and just went on painting. Now I am a mother myself, I struggle to find that same peace my mother and father always gave us: the world might be exploding around you, but everything will somehow be okay, even if it's not immediately okay. Meanwhile, you keep on helping people. . .or painting a room.

Anyway, listen to the story--I thought it was wonderful.

Update: More Snow, Etc.

Merry wails from her room, where I sent her because Elspeth will not play her game. Her game consists mainly of telling Elspeth what to do. It is called "School" and when Merry started it today, fresh in from the blowing snow, Elspeth was a bad, bad student. According to Merry she stuck out her tongue, made other assorted faces, and then tore around the house like a banshee instead of staying politely in her seat in rapt attention and completing worksheets.

I believe Beatrix is knocking things off the piano.

Elspeth came to the supper table yesterday and drank huge quantities of water. We thought she was surreptitiously pouring water somewhere but she was drinking it down, demanding more, guzzling and quaffing. Today Merry brought me a big bowl of salt from a hidden shadow of the library table. She informed me Elspeth has been eating her way through it, like a buffalo in the African Wild.

There is a great deal of noise on the stairs, as if someone is dragging a huge, heavy object. It almost drowns out Merry's whimpering. It is Beatrix who is carrying the partial contents of my purse up the stairs. And. . .here. . .she. . .is. She has seized the mouse. Anything can happen.

Merry is panting, silent on my bed. Waiting for me to turn around, crush my face into sympathy and say, "Oh, dahlin. . ." I am waiting too.

Now Bea's abandoned the mouse. She grabs a permanent marker, a small post-it. She sits on the ground, uncaps the Sharpie, and says "Draw!"

Better go.