Day 7

For each day of November, I am going to post an excerpt of the novel I'm working on for the next 30 days through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. And, go!

We lived in a small college town, and my mom always had the best parties. She had a group of misfit friends: professors at the university, a pastor, lonely neighbors, co-workers, parents from her after school childcare. We didn't have much, but she opened her home to everyone. 

My mom would prepare elaborate dinners parties that would last late into the night. My favorite parties were the annual Christmas Eve party she threw. The day before Christmas, trees were discounted to almost nothing. My mom would bring home a tree shortly before the party, and guests would bring an ornament to trim the tree. 

One year a few weeks before the party, my mom made dough to make our own ornaments. We rolled out the dough and used cookie cutters to make holiday shapes. One of my favorite ornaments was an angel that my mom made. She had painstakingly rolled out small, oblong beads that she formed from the dough and then pressed each one onto the wings to make individual feathers. It was beautiful.

After that, it was on; we found that making our own ornaments instead of using a cookie cutter was more creative and looked better. I made a  Christmas tree that was decorated with the most elaborate miniature ornaments. It’s a wonder they didn't burn off when it was baked in the oven.

I decided to try rolling out letters. I was going to make an ornament that said Merry Xmas - but it really bothered my mom on the principal of defiling the English language. She took exception with businesses that changed letters in words for their own evil purposes, such as Krispy Kreme doughnuts. 

So we ended up compromising, and I decided to roll out a phrase instead. I tried to roll out letters to form the phrase, HO HO HO - but it was too long and wouldn't stick together right.  So I shortened it to two letters: H, O.

My mom was in fits over it, but never let on what was so humorous about an ornament that spelled ‘Ho’. I felt very clever about the whole thing. I can’t remember if we baked them in the oven first or before when they were still soft – but I painted it orange, just to be contrary. To this day, it’s one of my mom’s most prized ornaments.

Day 6

For each day of November, I am going to post an excerpt of the novel I'm working on for the next 30 days through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. And, go!

There was an afternoon where I was having a disagreement in the playground with one of the other girls. I came home to complain about it to my mom (“I’m going to tell my mom on you!”), but my mom wasn't interested in resolving my sandbox problems. She absentmindedly told me to dump sand on the girl’s head.

It was all the confidence I needed. I stomped back out and shoveled sand as fast as I could into a bucket, the girl taunting me all the while, “What are you going to do now, huh? Huh?”  

She was shocked when I poured the entire bucket over her head. There was sand everywhere – in her hair, down her shirt, in her mouth and eyes. This time, she was the one to run home and cry to her mom. 

When she came back, she had a cup of water that she threw at me, literally; but instead of holding onto the cup and letting the water splash me, she'd let go and clocked me in the forehead with it.

Christine and I kept her cup and spent the rest of our playground time making an elaborate drink of nasty berries, sand and water. We were convinced we could get her to drink it.

Day 5

For each day of November, I am going to post an excerpt of the novel I'm working on for the next 30 days through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. And, go!

When my mom moved back to her hometown, she rented a little room on the same property owned by her friends. I loved it there. It was a little bohemian enclave. They had fruit trees and it was there that I learned to love loquats, which are a little fruit similar in flavor to a peach. There was more seed than there was fruit, but that didn't keep me from repeatedly eating so many that I made myself sick. 

Pat went to high school with my mom, and he and his wife, Jenny lived in the main house. I remember Jen was particularly excited because she had just bought a blender. She couldn't seem to stop talking about it, and offered to make us all kinds of delicious beverages and smoothies. 

I decided the only way she’d stop driving us all crazy over the fucking blender was to steal the blade out of it. I buried it in the garden underneath the steps of our bungalow.   

It turned out I was wrong; stealing the only part that made the blender operable only made Jen talk about the blender more. 

Day 4

For each day of November, I am going to post an excerpt of the novel I'm working on for the next 30 days through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. And, go!

While I waited at the counter of the veterinarian’s office for our older dog’s medicine, I quietly cried. I had taken her in because she has been coughing. 

And while I worried that she might have pneumonia, I was completely unprepared for our vet to call me into the back office. 

Her expression was very serious and our dog is kind of sketchy - so I expected a lecture about how they couldn't x-ray her lungs because she wouldn't let them. And by the way… it’s going to cost an additional $400 to put her under general anesthesia to get the images of our dog’s lungs.

It wasn't any of those things. Our dog has tumors in her left lung; two large one’s for sure, plus a couple of questionable areas that are likely tumors as well. She has The Cancer.

Grief is a strange phenomenon. My daughter once said that if she is crying about something and is sad, it makes her think of all the things that make her sad, too. Maybe because she’s my daughter and I think she is brilliant – but out of the mouths of babes, right? I find this observation very poignant and very true. So I got to thinking about what makes me sad: the disappointments in my life, the struggles that I've had with addiction/alcoholism, the frustrations of being a parent and the major life upheavals. 

I heard a man remark about a 13-year old boy that he went through rehab for addiction with, who had one of the craziest lives he’d ever heard about. The 13-year old told him that “everyone has a story. The thing is not to fall in love with it.” I heard that line over 10 years ago and it has stayed with me. It’s one of those ideas that get me where I live: Everyone has hard times. This is where resilience and the ability to let the past go come in.

I've told the women I help with addiction and my own children that our experiences are like currency. They are what make us appreciate the goodness in our lives - and hopefully the hardships we endure can be a way to be of service to others. It runs along the lines of ‘better to comfort than be comforted’.

Day 3

For each day of November, I am going to post an excerpt of the novel I'm working on for the next 30 days through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. And, go!

My junior year, I had another English teacher named Rick Mokler. He turned out to be my one of my favorite teachers in high school.  He was my English teacher for next two years - and during one semester I had him for two different classes. I adored him. One time he assigned a writing project where we all were to describe the same, common place thing: a high school locker. It was a lesson in details. “Write your piece until each word is perfect.”

I worked up some details in my mind. I wanted to include graffiti, but I also wanted it to seem accurate and not contrived. My favorite band was Van Halen - but in this case, for whatever reason, it just seemed inappropriate or unlikely, too obvious. I settled on ‘Jimi Lives’ as the graffiti on the inside of the locker door. Although I had an appreciation for Hendrix, it would have never been something I would have written. This somehow felt like a small sacrifice not to name my own favorite band, and that act made it more authentic. 

When all the assignments had been handed in and graded, Mr. Mokler chose his favorite to share with the class. And without saying it was my work, he read it aloud to everyone. There was a short pause and then one of the cool surfer guys said, “Someone in this class wrote that?” 

I was already crimson from the reading and when Mr. M announced it was my paper, the whole class turned to look at me.  I was embarrassed, and totally thrilled to be acknowledged as a writer. 

Day 2

For each day of November, I am going to post an excerpt of the novel I'm working on for the next 30 days through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. And, go!

When I got to grade school, I was asked to write a story about spring. The Easter bunny seemed a likely subject, but most of my other classmates where already writing about him. So I penned the story of the little known Easter Worm. He wanted it more and worked harder than the bunny because of his disability – what with having no limbs and all. My carefully handwritten story had the honor of being stuck to the fridge with magnets for all to see - alongside my recipe for homemade pizza dough that included detailed directions to ‘pinch the crust as high as mountains’. My mom loved both these stories so much. Although I wrote them over 35 years ago, we were talking about them as recently as 2 months ago.

When I was older, I was prone to ear infections and missed a lot of school. During one of my prolonged absences, I decided to write a story and took a legal –sized pad of paper and pencil with me everywhere I went.  The story was about a runaway girl and her pony, and they are stranded in high tide against the bluffs of a beach. Riveting, right? I guess I have a story after all.

My best friend and I were totally horse crazy, and to that end I spent hours of time playing with model horses, playing ‘horse’ at school – which involved lots of galloping around and whinnying, and endless road trips imagining a wild, black stallion running alongside our car, trying to catch a glimpse of the small girl in the back seat. I had an ongoing dialogue in my head about the fantasy horses that I owned and the wacky situations we got ourselves in, while I drove our neighbors crazy as I played hand ball against the side of their apartment for hours: ka-chung, ka-chung, ka-chung.

I’ll end my qualification with two short anecdotes from high school. I’ll elaborate in greater detail later but when I was 16, I got sober. I had an English class where we were required to keep a journal. Our teacher would scan the journals, just to ensure we were actually writing and not just repeating a single word over and over: bewbs, bewbs, bewbs, bewbs.

 

Obviously, I love writing - so this was a fun, easy requirement. I also found that journaling was very cathartic and I wrote out my beginning experiences as a sober alcoholic. I took the teacher at his word, and also figured no one would be interested in what I wrote anyway. That is, until he returned disclosed that he’d read every word. I was more than a little sketched out – but also flattered…in a creepy way. He’d been touched by my experience and told me that he was rooting for my recovery.

Day 1

For each day of November, I am going to post an excerpt of the novel I'm working on for the next 30 days through National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo). The goal is to reach 50,000 words in 30 days. And, go!

I am participating in the National November Writers Month, and I have a goal to write just under 1,700 words daily. The word goal is to help me write my first novel and the guidelines are to write anything -even if I don’t have an outline or specific idea. Something good is supposed to come out of all this.

And the other thing? I’m not supposed to edit.  Forget the number count; not editing as I write will be the bigger act of discipline.

Several of the people that I know who are participating in NaNoWriMo, as it’s fondly referred to - have a seed of an idea for a book; a general outline or a theme. I got nothin’.

It made me want to qualify somehow – why would I do this? The answer is simple: I’m an only child and I grew up without a television.  So, if I have anything going for me - it’s scads of creativity, patience and determination. I like to spend a lot of time alone, and most importantly… I love to read.  My best friend was also an only child, although she had a TV. She also had a great number of things that I never had: a lava lamp, a four-bedroom house with spiraling staircase and a dachshund.

We spent an enormous amount of our time together reading.  Beginning with the horse books: Billy & Blaze in the various hardcover adventures… I especially loved CW Anderson’s illustrations, Misty of Chincoteague, The Black Stallion series. We loved comics: Richy Rich and Archie were favorites, but we also read Ranger Rick and Mad Magazine. Much of the Mad Magazine humor was lost on me – too many references to stuff I didn’t understand. We moved onto the pre-teen and teen stories: Nancy Drew (we didn’t ready Hardy Boys, however – we saved that strictly for the TV show we watched at my friend’s house, so we could fawn over Shawn Cassidy and Parker Stevenson), Paula Danziger and Judy Blume. We read all of the VC Andrew Flowers in the Attic series, which was just brilliant and pure trash.

If I really wanted to split hairs, I’d say that my mom is partly to blame for any qualifications that I may have to write a book.  She is the most well-read person I know, literally – she is reading constantly always. Her home is filled with books, and her Kindle discovery was like giving the gift of sight to the blind, or in this case – the gift of the bookless a book. She instilled the love of reading in me and it is a tradition that continues with her appreciative and adoring grandchildren. Every visit, she takes them to the local bookstore and they each get to pick two – just two! books. It’s a wonderful tradition and a whole lot like heaven for them.