I love you, Newt Gingrich

About 15 years ago, just after officially becoming a Christian with a Capital C, I tried an experiment for Lent - my first official Lent as a baptized Christian. I decided to give up saying mean things about people. This happened to coincide with starting a new job at Talbots World Headquarters - that's a story in and of itself - with a bunch of people who didn't know me from Eve. And so a curious thing happened. In refraining from being a snarky, gossipy bitch around this new group of colleagues, everyone at work started to assume that I was a really nice person. And not really nice in the way that I already am (and was) really nice. Really nice in that almost saintly way. The "oh she wouldn't say a bad word about anybody" way. And it was WEIRD. I didn't even say mean things about Newt Gingrich. At first I had to bite my tongue so hard I'm surprised there is anything left of it. Of course, eventually, the practice became a habit and then the habit became just a natural way of being, and I got really good at refraining from joining in when the conversation got gossipy or mean. I was highly skilled at steering the topic in a different direction, or finding a way to excuse myself. The unintended consequence of my Lenten Practice was that people I worked with were forming opinions about me - and my true self - that weren't exactly true. I felt like an impostor, and that left me feeling at times uncomfortable. But overall I really enjoyed not talking shit about people. It was - liberating.

And of course, just as easily as that all started to come to me, when Lent was over, I slowly slipped back into my bitchy ways. I have no idea what my new friends at Talbots thought about my transformation - or if they even noticed it. I must have told some of my new friends what I was doing, over-sharer that I am, but I don't really remember. What I do remember are those six sort of magical weeks when I refrained from unkindnesses. And what I've wondered ever since is why I didn't just keep going.

This year I'm taking that same practice but stepping it up a notch. Honestly, I'm not exactly sure how it will work, or what it will look like on a daily basis, but here's the basic concept which I will probably have to write down and post everywhere around me to keep myself on course:

"But I say to you, Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you"

- Matthew 5:44

I don't know what this looks like exactly, but I do know it's more active than passive. It's not refraining, it's loving. It's not withholding, it's praying for. And I like that. We'll see how it goes.

I'm also giving up meat.

Ash Wednesday

“Tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” 

- Mary Oliver

Every year, as spring is just barely announcing itself, I get up early and head to church. I step into the aisle between the pews. I walk up to the priest. She dips her finger in the ashes, makes the mark of the cross on my forehead, and says to me, with a smile, “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

Remember. Not learn. Not understand. Remember. Because the knowledge of our own mortality is embedded. It’s part of being human. It’s a remembrance. We push it away, but we know it to be true: Life is ridiculously, beautifully, painfully short.

I mean, I forget that all the time. Don’t you?

My inner voice is a total asshole

biscochitos

"Why are you even bothering? You have nothing new or interesting to say. What are you, a mommy blogger? That's so extra lame. Stick to your day job, you're a shitty writer. If you MUST blog or whatever, you should at least have a niche. What's your niche? Life? Single parenthood? The Internet? SOCIAL MEDIA? Your hair looks horrible and you have bags under your eyes. You're old and ugly! And a hack! And you're just looking for attention. Stop bothering. You won't succeed at this anyway."

I actually spent about three years in therapy talking - not exclusively, but a whole lot - about this asshole who lives in my head and says hateful things to me all day long. By the end of three years I had learned how to talk back to the asshole, and the asshole got a lot quieter. It turns out that the asshole in my head mostly just wants a hug and a cookie, and needs to be reminded that assholes should be quiet and sit down and let the grown ups handle things. I'm just out of practice, and the asshole has been slowly taking advantage and moving into more and more rooms in my head.

The asshole is just scared, that's all.

Have a cookie, asshole.

Unplugged

See? Flowers!

I'm doing this Apartment Therapy "January Cure," where you let them boss you around for a month, and then on February 1st you open your eyes and go OH MY GOD IS THIS MY HOUSE? WHAT HAPPENED?!?!! Or so I'm led to believe. There's all kinds of nifty projects with cute names like Landing Strip and Outbox. You clean your kitchen and bring in flowers. There are corners and closets to investigate, decluttering to do, keys to organize, pictures to be framed and hung. At the end of the month, your space is miraculously transformed into a home plucked straight from the pages of Architectural Digest. I don't mean to sound snarky, it's actually lots of fun. Also, they told me to go out and buy flowers. I love flowers!

Today the challenge was "try a media fast." Turn off all of your devices. Maybe read a book? Take a nap? Make eye contact? Just be there in your house, and let the rest of the world fade away for a while. I felt a creeping panic from the minute I skimmed the email this morning, because once dinner is over and the dishes are taken care of, I typically plug myself into a Hulu marathon or I do a deep dive into Failblog or I spend way too much time chasing Internet rabbits down holes because distraction is my calling, and that's what I do until I sleep. I am an expert at self-distraction. It's a gift.

Yet I'm committed to this daily Apartment Therapy deal, whatever the cost. I WILL ENDURE THE EVENING WITHOUT THE PLEASURE OF MEME-BASED GIFS! I say to myself.

At about 8 pm I read the assignment to Jack, my oldest, who seemed skeptical but intrigued. And I figured, okay, I'll give it an hour. What will you do? He asked. Maybe I'll read a book, I said, knowing I will not read a book. Maybe I'll get out my sketch book and draw those lilies, I said, knowing that any attempts at drawing will just leave me feeling like a really bad artist. I didn't know what to do, is the truth. I felt this crazy pressure to do something creative or intellectual with my free time, as though just sitting still and talking were somehow not worthwhile. But also? I'm tired. And maybe even partly tired of people telling me to unplug, for the good of my health, and the good of society. Even though I know they're right, and civility matters, and blah blah blah, brainwaves. It's a tiresome theme.

Jack, who would usually retreat to his room at this point in the day, stayed in the living room with me. Coincidentally enough, his phone was at about 7%, his charger was lost, and he was about to go through an involuntary media fast of his own. There we were, marooned on a media-free island. And guess what happened?

My soon-to-be 16-year-old kid (HOLY FUCK, that's just not possible) and I spent two and a half hours talking about sex, and drugs, and religion, and politics, and navigating high school friendships, and surviving crazy families, and college, and career choices, and anxiety.

Two. And a half. Hours.

I'd go into the details of the conversation, but that would embarrass the hell out of my kid, and violate his privacy, and I know better. But I honestly feel closer to that boy tonight than I have ever felt in 16 years. Which is pretty astonishing.

So thanks, Apartment Therapy, for that. Thanks for that, and for the flowers.

Buckets, Lists, Resolutions and Cowboys

My bucket list, such as it is, written well over a year ago, includes "blog every day for 365 days." Which in retrospect seems like both a really dumb and really brilliant idea, and I'm not sure what it's doing there. I'm even more shocked that it's number four on the list, since you'd think the top 10 or so would be reserved for Very Important Items (like buying a house, my number one goal), not for the dead and pointless realm of blogging.

So this being the 14th of January, and resolutions still hanging in the air like so much pollen from a cedar tree, I think I'll give it a shot.

The cowboy is from just outside the Roswell UFO Museum, a strange and sort of sad place devoted to the one day in 1945 when a weather balloon crashed on a ranch in New Mexico. Inside is a compilation of newspaper clippings, bad art, alien statues, and misleading quotes from dignitaries implying their belief in the existence of extra terrestrials among us. Plainly obvious, although not stated anywhere, is the severe dropoff in reports of aliens, UFO sightings, and abductions, after about 1979. It was around that time that I think we moved on to Satanic Cults and past life regression. Let's all have a collective shudder about that.

Anyway, Roswell was the first stop on our recent grand tour of New Mexico and Southern Colorado - just me and the kids - which by the way allowed me to cross out #19 on the list. I still want to take everyone on an even longer trip, but I have a feeling the older boys will object to ever getting in a car with me again for more than 30 minutes. We shall see.

Actual resolutions for 2014:

• Nourish my inner creative 
• Save more than I spend 
• Spend more individual time with each of my children
• Make the dog's life happier

I see my record for # of posts in a single year is 134, so 365 is probably more than a stretch. But it's not really about that. It's about finding my voice. Again. Let's get to it, then.

So Far, So Vegan

Four days down, 36 to go on this vegan diet plus not eating during daylight thing. Hello, Lent!

Sundays are Feast days/free days, and I thought for sure I'd be all WHERE IS THE BACON GET IT IN MY FACE come Sunday morning but actually? No. The one thing I wanted, and had, this morning was milk in my coffee. I sprinkled some parmesan on my pasta at dinner. Otherwise, I have no desire for meat, and little desire for dairy. 

Interesting.

The hardest part is not the food restriction, but the fasting during the day. I start to go downhill around 2:30 or 3 pm.

Nothing is sweeter than the taste of a date to break my fast at sunset.

I'm appreciating food. Appreciating knowing exactly what my food is and where it comes from. 

Is fasting making space in my heart to welcome God? I'm not sure. It's making space in my heart to welcome vegetables and fruit and whole grains. That much I know.

the list.

1. Own a house
2. Own a horse
3. Speak fluent Spanish
4. Blog every day for 365 days
5. Write a memoir
6. Publish it
7. Travel to New Zealand
8. Spend a week in an exotic, tropical resort – preferably in the South Pacific. Maldives or Tahiti would be nice.
9. Run a 5K
10. run a 10K
11. run a half marathon
12. Learn Hebrew
13. Fly in a helicopter
14. Learn how to drive a stick
15. Keep chickens
16. Take voice lessons (again)
17. Put on a bikini, look in the mirror, and like what I see
18. Visit New Orleans, but not during Mardi Gras
19. Shoot a handgun
20. Buy a handgun
21. Extended family road trip around the Western U.S.
22. Extended family road trip to New England and back
23. Fast for Lent
24. Go to Oaxaca for Christmas
25. Pay off all my debts, every single one.
26. Live completely within my means
27. Visit all 50 states
28. Go to Peru
29. Visit Egypt with my sister
30. Read the Quran
31. Make a video interview of my dad
32. Watch The Wizard of Oz while playing Dark Side of the Moon
33. Pray daily for 365 days
34. Meditate daily for 365 days
35. Have dinner in a 1 star restaurant in Paris with my boyfriend.
36. Take improv comedy classes
37. Have my teeth whitened
38. Live somewhere where I can at least smell, if not see, the ocean
39. Have a nice, big kitchen, with awesome cookware and a really great set of knives
40. Sing in a band
41. Have a credit score greater than 700
42. write a book of poems
43. publish it

Wednesday

Pontotoc, Texas

Once I passed the turnoff to 281, just south of Marble Falls, I had officially gone as far west from Austin as I had ever gone, in the 10 years I've lived in Texas. Things were feeling unchartered. Well, they were plenty chartered, thanks to Google Maps and road signs, but the sense of adventure kicked in anyway. It was good to be alone, good to be on the road, good to be heading away from the familiar. The hills melted away into plains. Highway 71 stretched ever on.

I gassed up in Llano and checked my tire, which had been leaking air for months but seemed to be holding steady. Bought some bottled water and Pringles. I only ever eat Pringles on road trips. That morning I'd printed out sections of the trip from Austin to Santa Fe - 5 pages, 5 legs. It was 9 hours or so to Roswell, and I was worried that I would get tired before then, or bored, or restless, but none of those things happened. The more I drove the happier I felt.

In Pontotoc the earth was sandy and soft. I stopped at the Historic marker and took a picture of the abandoned school, and a stretch of the town. The whole town looked deserted and sad. There were signs posted saying "Stop the Mine" on a couple of ranch fences. I tried listening to my own music but my speakers were no match for the pavement, so I gave up and turned to the radio. Country Western and Golden Oldies would carry me through to New Mexico.

Eden marked the end of my first leg, and soon after I was driving past San Angelo -- a much bigger town than I expected, although I saw very little of it since I stayed on the loop. It was after that I first saw the wind farms. I wanted to stop and take a picture, but I don't think I could have captured it adequately on film anyway. The more I drove, the more these giant white towers seemed to appear on hillsides and ridges. Hundreds and hundreds of them. Silent and huge, blindingly white, and turning so methodically. I wondered what the locals thought of this disruption to their landscape. I wondered if they at least profited from it. They were everywhere. Whenever I thought maybe I'd left them behind, more would appear in the distance.

Gassed up again in Big Spring, at the intersection of US 20, which cuts across the state from Odessa to Shreveport. This is Bush territory. Ranches and oil drills, everywhere you look. The sun was slowly going down. Cattle slowly gave way to crops. It took me a while to figure out what "gin" meant, and what the puffs of white by the side of the road represented. Was this leftover snow on the ground? No, cotton. Flocks of birds swooped, descended, and rose again from the cotton fields. Geese in v-formations flew overhead. I was headed towards Brownfield, so named, presumably, for the brown fields of cotton surrounding it. This must have been cotton country for a long time.

I watched the sun with anxiety, because I thought I'd left my glasses at home (turns out I had them the whole time). I can drive at night without them, in a pinch, but I prefer not to, especially in unfamiliar territory.

Goodbye, sun

I pushed on in the dark. Someone had told me that the stars would be amazing when I got to the Texas/New Mexico border. There wasn't a moon and I kept looking for starlight, but it wasn't as spectacular as I had hoped. I had 100 miles to go in the dark, before stopping in Roswell.

It's true what they say about Texas being a very very big state. I gave a silent cheer when I crossed over the border. It was one lane from here all the way to town, and despite occasionally passing, and being passed, I had the road nearly to myself. About 10 miles outside of town I called Charles and had him book me a room at the La Quinta.

Roswell was bigger than I expected as well. It's home to the New Mexico Military Institute, which may partly account for its size. I don't know. Maybe it's the aliens. The McDonalds is shaped like a UFO, the Wendy's sign says "Aliens Welcome!" But I imagine all this alien crap gets a little old for the people who actually have to live here. I got out of the car after 500 miles and 9 hours of driving feeling a little wobbly but mostly alright. Foursquare and Yelp directed me to Big D's Downtown Dive, where I ate an enormous green chile cheeseburger. I headed back to the hotel, flipped aimlessly through the channels for an hour or so, and fell happily asleep, eager to see what New Mexico looked like in the morning.

My enemy is my teacher

The thing that gets me lately, the top of the list of things, is that as a Christian I am tasked with not just loving my neighbor, but loving my enemy. This is the teaching of Christ, the greatest teaching, the most demanding one. And I signed up for it as an adult (I was baptized and confirmed at the age of 31), so it's not like I didn't know the drill already. I can't play dumb and pretend to not have read the fine print on this one. But I'm happy to gloss over that section of the contract every Sunday, because it's HARD FREAKING WORK. Hell, it's hard enough loving my miserable, alcoholic neighbors, but I give it a shot. My enemy? No thanks.

So, it's fair to say that I've been doing a pretty shitty job of the whole "love your enemy" thing, despite 18 years of devoted religious practice, prayer, meditation, and whatnot. I've prayed for my enemy. I've examined my resentments toward my enemy. I've searched for ways in which I played a part in creating the enmity between us. I've sought forgiveness and redemption there. But I would still mostly like my enemy to be run over by a truck, thankyouverymuch, and I feel awful about that truth.

Anyway. Imagine my surprise when I got it right today, for at least an hour, maybe more. I did this little mental trick, when I felt the usual "oh God not him again" thought trying to worm its way into my brain, and I quickly did a mental gymnastic trick and gifted my brain with a different thought entirely. That thought was, "oh good, my teacher is here."

I don't even know where that came from*, but it made me smile. My teacher? Of course. And what does he teach me? Patience, with myself, with him, with God, for allowing things to unfold in His time and not in mine. Forgiveness for my own mistakes, for his. Love for everyone, including my teacher, all of us children of God. And selflessness -- stepping outside of myself and my own self-centered view of the world, and seeing everyone, all of us, as equal, and equally loved. My teacher is a gift, my teacher is grace itself.

“When we see others as the enemy, we risk becoming what we hate. When we oppress others, we end up oppressing ourselves. All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.” 
-Desmond Tutu

A therapist once told me that the time would come when I would be grateful not just for the experience, but grateful to him. I think -- maybe -- I'm getting closer to that time.

*(God, duh)

Empty Sky

I stood in my mother's Woods Hole kitchen, watching the reports trickling in on the morning news show. I remember all that initial confusion, before the pieces fell together. What kind of plane? Was it an accident? On purpose? And then that sickening moment, that second-plane-shot.

I don't really know how to deal with this 10th Anniversary. It all feels far away and yet very very fresh. Extremely personal but writ large. Self indulgent to relive it, to write about it, but important, too. My memories are the same as your memories, but different, and it's all tied in with where I was then and where I am now and all that happened during, and just before, and in between then and now.

Remember that moment before you knew it was possible for that great big tower to collapse? And then remember that moment when it came down? And then the realization that the other one would, inevitably, too? And how you couldn't help but think of all the people trapped inside? Of course you do. On the Cape it was glorious early autumn, the air was crisp, birds were singing, and on the television -- Hell on earth.

I remember those eerie, empty skies above Cape Cod over the days that followed. And reflexively watching for con trails, for signs of danger. It was blue, beautiful, rainless, and cool, and I felt hollowed out and spent.

I want a kiss from your lips
I want an eye for an eye
I woke up this morning
To an empty sky

People I knew died that day going into the towers. No one near and dear to me, but people I knew by name, who knew me by name. Brothers of friends. Other people I knew decided to take a later flight out of Logan and were miraculously, mysteriously spared. I was already in mourning for my stepmother who had died suddenly and young, just four months before. A friend from college died two years later from complications from AIDS -- specifically, a respiratory illness. He lived near the World Trade Center. I blamed Bin Laden.

My three-year-old pointed at our crushed oyster shell driveway just a few days after and said "Look, mama! Debris!" He had seen a lot of television by then. I cried a lot. He patted me on the head. My husband had already left for Texas to start his new job and our new life, to buy our new house. We talked on the phone maybe that day, maybe a day later. My panic and sense of urgency were met by his coolness and political analysis.

That life was already cracking for me, but September 11th didn't help. The gap between my experience and his was jarring and unresolvable. A few weeks later I flew with the boys to Austin, a stranger in a strange land, surrounded on the highway by pickup trucks with that same Jingoistic bumper sticker on them, purchased at Wal-Mart. I don't even remember what it said now. "These Colors Don't Run," maybe, or "Never Forget."

As if.

this could be the place

Hello, original blogging platform. I wish to reclaim you.

4

songs that make me weepy:



Bermuda Highway - My Morning Jacket
Casimir Pulaski Day - Sufjan Stevens
Landed - Ben Folds
Two - Ryan Adams

poems that sustain me:




Free Flight - June Jordan
Pied Beauty - Gerald Manley Hopkins
Logos - Mary Oliver
This be the Verse - Philip Larkin

works of art that teach me to see better:




Henri Matisse - Music Lesson
Henri Cartier Bresson - Seville, Spain
Gustav Klimt - Judith
Georgia O'Keefe - Summer Days


books that help me live:



Operating Instructions - Anne Lamott
The Gift - Lewis Hyde
Elements of Style - Strunk and White
The Corrections - Jonathan Franzen

Summer

I think it's safe to say that this is my happy little family's last summer without at least some sort of camp. This is the thing, you see, with working from home. In theory you can do it with kids around. In practice, not so much.

Oh, I can do some things, but any task which requires concentration, research, slinging words together, or otherwise using a hefty portion of my brain: no.

And while my kids, I think, would be quite content to spend the entire summer watching episodes of SpongeBob SquarePants, or commanding armies on Halo, something tells me this is not the healthiest set-up for any of us.

So, yes, next summer, camp.

Meanwhile, I'll be looking around for a babysitter to take them at least part time for a couple of weeks in August so I can get something done. The cost of the sitter may or may not be covered by the billable hours, which is the catch of course. But at least I'll feel productive, and they'll go to the pool, and we all won't be quite so sick of each other.

Thank God I never ended up having to homeschool them.

family reunion vid.

vacationizing

What I'm learning this trip, so far (or how to vacation with little ones and not completely lose your shit):

1. Plan only one thing every day.
2. Be willing to throw that plan out the window at a moment's notice.
3. Pay attention to what your kids are having fun doing. Do more of that.
4. It's okay to eat gelato before dinner, stay up late, and go swimming in the hotel pool at 9 o' clock at night.
5. Actually, it's practically mandatory.
6. Little kids don't want to hear about the history of Harvard Yard. They want to play hide-and-go-seek in Harvard Yard. Let them.
7. It's more fun if you play too.
8. The azalea bush by the Widener Library steps is a great hiding place.
9. Let them carry their own load. Give them backpacks with toys, disposable cameras, coloring books, and magic markers in them.
10. Slow down.

My kids have more fun riding the T than riding the sightseeing trolley. They prefer a $3 carousel ride in the park to a $25 Harbor Cruise. They're perfectly content to just sit by the edge of a fountain in Copley Square and splash with their feet for an hour.

The point is, of course, they're getting some time away from the ordinary, and they're getting precious long stretches of time with me.

This vacation is killing me, but it's worth it.

Doctor, not Mister

Back in the day, the Boston Children's Museum was located in the Boston neighborhood of Jamaica Plain, in a big old house if I recall. There was a giant replica of a rotary telephone outside that you could climb on. Somewhere there must exist a Kodak of me doing just that. My parents were friends with Michael Spock, then the director of the place. Mike's dad was the famous Dr. Spock, your go-to guy for parenting in the 1960s. His daughter and I grew up in the same town, went to the same school, and were good friends for many years. She had very long dark hair and a fondness for all varieties of monkeys. She also had a kick-ass dress-up collection, a house decorated in orange and purple, and a pair of exceptionally obnoxious songbirds who lived in the kitchen.

(Just pause to imagine for a moment being the granddaughter of the most famous pediatrician in the world, and the daughter of the director of the best known children's museum. That's pretty heavy duty.

But I digress.)

Since then the museum has moved to (and played a part in revitalizing) the Fort Point Channel neighborhood of South Boston. It's in a lovely three-story brick building overlooking the harbor. The famous, larger-than-life Hood milk bottle stands outside the entrance.It's also about 10 blocks from our hotel, so we headed over there this afternoon for some fun.

Funny how time slips away, right? Today it was my turn to be the parent, and my kids' to be the kids. I loved watching them climb, explore, play, and negotiate all over the place. It's still a great museum, although man is the politically correct force ever strong with those people. I don't think there's an exhibit that doesn't in some way or other reflect gender equality, ecological soundness, or respect for other cultures, if not all three at once. That and especially the commercialism (Arthur and D.W. are major players over at BCM) left something of a bad taste in my mouth. But still, good times had by all.

Incidentally, I love the museum's tips for parenting in public.

walk of life

It's 10:32 pm, Boston time. I'm on the 15th floor of a waterfront hotel, listening to my three youngest kids squirm and giggle and generally avoid sleeping. I'm a little bit irritated, and pretending to be stern and grumpy, but I'll cut them some slack. It's been a long day. As we got off the plane at Logan the flight attendant said to me, "they win the award for best-behaved kids." And it was true: they were quiet, stayed in their seats, ate their snacks, drank their Sprites, didn't fuss. Of course it was JetBlue so all they had to do was plug into their headphone jacks and watch CartoonNetwork for three hours (holy crap do I ever love that airline). Easy. But my kids get this comment a lot.

Once we checked in, I dragged them on a hike to the Union Oyster House. We took the long way, almost two miles, meandering through Downtown Crossing and down Tremont Street. They bitched a tiny bit on the way there, but mostly they were good spirited about it. After dinner we walked directly back, about a mile, and they were cheerful. Playful, even.

Here's the thing: these kids are five, and five, and six. They're little. That's a lot of travel and a lot of walking. But I knew they could handle it. And furthermore, maybe I'm some kind of weird, old fashioned mother, but I think walking a little bit farther than you want to, being asked to do a little bit more than you were expecting to do, I think these things are character building.

I don't push my kids so hard that they break, but I push them hard enough so they feel the bend, and stretch a little. I let them be uncomfortable. It's what my parents did for me when they sent me away to summer camp when I was eight. I learned to walk a long, long trail with a heavy weight on my back. I learned that blisters hurt, but they healed. I learned how to carry myself, and my own weight.

Plus, it was a nice evening. Why take a cab?

Friday Books: Slaughter-House Five by Kurt Vonnegut

I think I was about 12 or 13 years old when I discovered Kurt Vonnegut. I read every book of his in rapid succession, like so many chocolate truffles. Last month my book group, which I hardly ever attend, chose Slaughterhouse Five to read. They've been working through some classic twentieth century American novels, I believe this month it's Updike. Anyway, I wasn't able to make it to the meeting (which is typical), but I did pick up the book from the local library.

Hang on, let me just interject here that I've fallen back in love with public libraries. One of the many great things about my fabulous new house is that I'm just a few blocks away from a branch of the Austin Public Library. The whole internet-meets-public library combination is so spectacular, you know? I love ordering up a book, telling it to come and meet me at my local branch, and then snatching it off the shelf a day or two late. And then I can take it home and read it for free. LOVE THAT. I'm a card-carrying member now. I even have a little mini keychain card.

So, back to Vonnegut. I read it (again) in about three sittings, which reminded me of why I loved Vonnegut so much as a kid - readable! I love how the story is his story, but not his story. How you know (because he tells you) that much of the fiction is shot through with threads of fact from his own experiences. I love how you still can't be quite sure which is which; where fiction ends and fact begins. I love that it's an anti-war novel, but also a time-travel novel, and also an American novel. I love how it's written in plain English, because I hate it when writers feel the need to clutter up complex ideas with complex prose. I love how, ultimately, it's a song about impermanence. Yours, mine, ours, Dresden's. The earth's.

My favorite part is when the hero, Billy Pilgrim, is watching a documentary about the war, only in reverse. The American planes fly backwards over Dresden, scooping up bombs into their holds, returning them eventually to American soil, where they are disassembled by women and their parts are carefully separated out and the minerals are buried in the earth where they cannot harm anyone. That passage made me cry.

What are you reading?

cave girl

Some people show stress by eating less and staying up all night worrying about stuff. I'm one of the lucky ones who eats a lot and takes plenty of naps. But a couple of months ago when my children started playing with my arm fat, "Cool! look at it wiggle!" and my daughter told me it looked like I had a new baby growing in my tummy (we call it "Six"), I freaked out. This led to signing up on impulse for CrossFit bootcamp, which meets three mornings a week at the crack of dawn and totally kicks my butt.

The CrossFit folks, as it turns out, have a lot to say about what you eat. I've started something called the zone/paleo diet, which makes me want to wear loin cloths and carry a big club everywhere. I am soooo paleolithic. Seriously, paleo is based on some idea of what the hunter/gatherers ate, which just sort of cracks me up. Because, you know, those people were so healthy and had such great life spans and everything. And the Zone is all about portions (turns out, no big surprise here, that I was eating a. too little food and b. all the wrong stuff). It reminds me a little of that fad diet based on your blood type, which I just know is total bunk. People swear by it, but let's be honest, people will swear by anything. People are idiots. I'm an idiot.

Which brings me to this: Joining scares me. And also this: Being left out scares me. The mental gymnastics I put myself through over this conundrum are truly entertaining:

"Wow, my coach is incredibly fit and happy and healthy, and she swears by zone/paleo as being pretty much essential to the whole deal, there must be something to it, I mean just look at her. I want to be like that."

"This whole thing feels like a cult. She's so enthusiastic about it! Enthusiasm freaks me out. I'll never give up pasta, anyway."

Okay, the truth is I think zone/paleo is probably just what I need to break the hold that spaghetti has on my life, not to mention to get back into the clothes I was wearing a year ago (I miss you, jeans!). And sure, CrossFit is a little cult-y. For what it's worth, though, salmon and spinach are okay by me, and I haven't met a single CrossFit participant or coach who wasn't perfectly delightful.

Can I make a lifetime commitment to eating my food in blocks and banishing sugar? Maybe not so much. But for now, anyway, pass the (diet) Kool-Aid.

hearing voices

As a kid I had a few quirky habits. There was the OCD-ish counting of steps, especially going up and down stairs. There was my tendency to read. All the time. Even through recess. And there was the voiceover narration that permeated my consciousness. At seven years old, I knew it was pretty weird for me to be narrating my own life in the third person, but I did it anyway, compulsively, and during some long, ordinary stretches of life. Not much of note happens when you're walking home from school in a sleepy Boston suburb. But I can assure you I wrote it all down in my mind like I was freaking Tolstoy.

When I was eight someone gave me a diary, and the voice found the page, oh happy marriage! This continued into high school, college, and beyond, although my writing began to dwindle before I discovered blogging in the late 90s.

After my first child was born the voice got quieter and smaller, as if making room for this new creature. Then, around five years ago, the voice went suddenly, shockingly mute. Perhaps the birth of my daughters, which upped the number of small children in my care to five, finally drowned out the increasingly rare quiet spaces my head usually filled with this contemplative overview. Or maybe the writer in me just gave up trying, since I was less and less frequently committing any of these words to paper or website. In any case, it was over. My head was quiet. Writing for the blog, usually a natural flow, became an arduous task. Writing anything else, especially work-related writing, was damn near impossible. The creek bed was all dried up. The voice was gone.

I'm not sure exactly when I noticed the voice was back, but a couple of weeks ago in New York it was practically shouting in my head, concocting essays and memoir pieces that I couldn't even begin to keep up with. It narrated my subway rides, taxi adventures, walks down the street. It talked, and talked, and talked, like that annoying guy at the party you just want to squeeze by to grab another beer from the fridge. It grabbed hold of my arm and got right in my face with its stinky olive breath and talked and TALKED. But I wasn't annoyed at all. An old friend was back. I was whole. I was a writer again. Things were happening all around me, and I had something to say about it.

It's been a phenomenally difficult decade for me, most especially these last two years. I've played a starring role in wrecking two marriages (my own), I found myself suddenly and unexpectedly at the deathbeds of both my stepmother and my mother. I've moved a million times, stood at the bleeding edge of financial devastation, had a really nasty free-fall into chronic depression. I've lost very dear friends to suicide and cancer. I've been separated from my children for long stretches. There was weeping, and wailing, and gnashing of teeth.

In response, I have worked hard at being a better person, being true to myself, forgiving myself and others, finding a real, solid place to stand. I worked harder at all of those things than I honestly knew I had the strength for. I've learned to (I know it sounds horribly corny, but really) love myself. Really.

I think the voice came back because it finally had a safe place to land, and because I really do have a story to tell. I think the voice came back because it knows (I know) that it's worthy, that it's allowed to speak, that I'm done shushing myself.

I'm ready to write.