Why I write ...

I recently sat down to think about why it is, exactly, that I write. The way I figure it, if I didn't feel compelled to write, and spend anywhere from ten minutes a day to ten hours a day (no kidding, yeah, I've done that ... .) I'd have more time in my day. To clean house. To watch The West Wing with my politically-oriented son. To make my husband a homemade pie. You get the picture. I've had dry periods, where no writing came forth, but then I got cranky and had to pick up a pen to right/write my way out of the funk.
Why is it, exactly, that I write?
This is what I've come up with: I can't seem to NOT write. (So what I've split an infinitive.)
I started writing even before I knew how to write. What was I ... three or four years old? I distinctly remember "writing" stories under Mom's scalloped-trimmed coffee table ... using a skinny felt-tipped marker, or one of Mom's fountain pens. (She always called them "fountain pens," which to this day makes me feel tender about her.)
In second grade I wrote a story about a dog with a 100-foot tail. Won the teacher's seal of approval. My mom saved the story for years, and then it just up and disappeared. I'd really like to see it again. I remember the illustrations, but the words are out of my head.
In seventh grade I joined the school newspaper. Wrote a "Dear Somebody" column, offering advice. "My boyfriend skated with another girl. What do I do?" sort of stuff.
In tenth grade I was named Features Editor of my high school newspaper, which meant something because The Criterion won numerous state awards. Senior year? I was Editor in Chief. I wore business suits to school, high-heeled pumps. Aspired to be the next Jessica Savitch.
In college, I got distracted (Read: pregnant) and then, because I was a mother, left journalism to pursue a career I thought would be family friendly: teaching!
Taught high school English for five years, got burned out, left the field. While teaching, I dabbled in poetry and playwrighting. Wrote, produced and directed a two-act comedy, Trail Mix. Aspired to be the female Neil Simon.
Too much month at the end of the money. Had to get a job. A local newspaper was hiring a receptionist/typist (this dates me, doesn't it?). I typed up press releases and obituaries. Got brave one day and asked the editor if I could write a story. He said yes. Pretty soon I was writing more and more.
Missed teaching. Went back. Went for one year only.
Missed writing for publication. Got hired at a different newspaper. Did obits, press releases, feature stories, covered three local school districts. The paper hired a new managing editor: he gave me a column. Tales from the (mother)hood was born. It ran weekly, was my pride and joy.
Feeling civic duty, I ran for a school board seat and was elected. Could no longer work for the local paper. Missed teaching. Went back to it.
Two years in, I missed writing. Put myself on a deadline to write a novel, the summer of 2006. Wrote from 8 a.m. until 5 p.m. six days a week; took an hour for lunch and to stretch out my neck and shoulders. Ever typed nine hours a day? I lost 28 pounds that summer and by the time mid-August rolled around I'd done it: written a 130,000 word literary novel called The Hour of Lead. Solicited two agents. Struck down twice. School started. Teaching sucks my energy; I quit marketing my book.
Winter of 2006-07, my dad was diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer. I took six weeks off from school to take care of him while my mom was doing her own dying in a local hospital.
He died in front of me on a muggy, rainy Saturday night. June 30, 2007.
I didn't write for nine months. A pregnancy of drought.
And I missed it.
So I started this blog.
Why is it you write, dear reader?

Rest in peace, Farrah

My favorite Charlie's Angel died this morning in a California hospital. Just 62, Farrah Fawcett succumbed to a three-year battle with cancer.
Stupid cancer.
I hate cancer.
I hate cancer.
I hate cancer.
Along with nine million viewers on May 15, I watched Farrah's Story, an excellent docudrama chronicling Farrah's medical visits and hospital stays. The television special showed the needles and the blood and the vomiting; nothing was sugar-coated. At times it was painful to watch, as doing so brought back painful memories of watching cancer steal my dad's health.
Did I mention how much I hate cancer?
It pangs me to know that Farrah was not the recipient of the miracle she'd fervently prayed for.
Rest in peace, dearest Farrah.

Weird day

What an odd, odd day.
First, drove to school in a torrential downpour. Lots of water on the interstate. Feared I would die. Did not die. (Fortunately.) Got to school a wee bit early. Forgot magical plastic card that allows me entrance into the building. Waited five minutes for a colleague to show. Followed him in. Managed to get poorly constructed but pretty umbrella through the door but dropped important papers. Muddy wet.
Nice.
Got to classroom but forgot key (attached to magical plastic entry card); had to hunt down a custodian to gain entrance to my own classroom. While waiting, I pass a woman in the wall who looks vaguely familiar, like I knew her once, maybe ten years ago. "Kathleen," she asks. "Is that you?" Why yes, yes it is, I respond, looking at her like a dog might look in the direction of an odd sound. "It's Betsy," she tells me, her Southern accent reminding me of our collegiate relationship. As I am thinking, Why do you look so much older than you should? the answer is provided. "I'm a breast cancer survivor," she says, smiling shyly. She points to her short, curly hair. (Didn't it used to be a different color?). She doesn't explain the wrinkles and tired face. Doesn't have to. Stupid cancer. Stupid, stupid, stupid cancer. Robs a person of vitality and youth. "So that's why you weren't subbing last year," I say. I reach to hug her. "I'm so glad you're well." Betsy, dear, dear Betsy, was my longterm sub the spring my dad was dying from lung cancer. How could any of us have known that she'd be fighting for her own life just a few months later?
I walk back to my classroom, thinking about my dead father.
While the rain beats a steady thumpthumpthump, I set about getting organized. Suddenly, I feel ill. Lower unit failure! Ugh. Stomach cramps. Bowel issues. Bathroom emergency. I either have an intestinal worm or should never eat chili again. Now I'm depressed and sick.
Homeroom children file in. I sell precisely three suckers. Not good for the fundraising effort. (We're raising money to support our team account. For field trips and ice cream socials, that sort of thing.) Do agenda checks but only three students have managed to write in their boardwork.
First hour begins. Time to collect homework. Five students have done so.
Small lecture begins. "If you're going to come to school, then doesn't it make sense to do the work? It's a simple worksheet, really, about setting. You know, time and place. (Blank looks.)
Where was 'The Highwayman' set? (Answer: Texas (wrong). New York (wrong). England? Dingdingding.)
The phone rings in my classroom. I am annoyed. Why on earth does the school allow incoming calls when I am teaching? Oh, wait .... It's the school nurse at my daughter's high school. Your daughter is ill, she tells me. Migraine. Visual disturbances. You need to come get her, please.
In addition to managing a class of 26 12-year-olds, I now must contact the school secretary to find out What to Do Next. It is a crappy part of the job, needing to leave suddenly. Just can't get up, grab the purse, and head out. You've got to find someone to take over the class. Really, trying to be absent on a school day is ALWAYS a difficult task.
But here comes the instructional assistant in charge of in-school suspension. She will be with my class. (Relief!) I head out into the pouring rain to retrieve my ill child. More thoughts of highway death. Again, I survive. (Thank God.)
The nurse is an angel and says wonderful things to me about coming to get Elizabeth. "I knew she was having a migraine when she walked in," the nurse says, making a sad face. "The migraine kids, you can always tell just by looking at their eyes." I look at my child, who squints to see me, as the lights are too bright in the nurse's room. I have a sudden thought to pick her up, to carry her out of the nurse's station. Mama to the rescue!
The two of us get home and I make her a comfortable pallet on the couch. Put on "Peanuts Christmas" album, one of her faves. Sit beside her, stroking her hair until sleep comes. Remember all the headaches she's had. Praying there is nothing SERIOUSLY wrong with her.
I am now reminded of Being Home During the Day, which happened with great frequency when I was a stay-at-home mom. Ran two loads of laundry. Made coffee. Read the paper. The obituaries. Saw that one of my favorite newspaper writer's wife had died. Cancer. STUPID CANCER. Sherri Eberhart, only 47 years old. Died Monday, Oct. 13. Forty-seven! She had no children, her husband John (my fave KC STAR books columnist) now a widower. About a year ago he wrote openly about his wife's illness, and about a year ago I remember thinking, Dear God, she's going to die.
And now she has.
So I think of setting as I type this entry. It is a gray day. The kind of gray, rainy day that makes death seem sadder somehow. I think of W.H. Auden's poem "Funeral Blues."

"... The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good."

Exuberance deflated

Well. It was about to happen. Two red-letter days IN A ROW and then today.
First, I slept in far too long. What is it with me and all this sleeping lately?
I'm either depressed or there's something seriously wrong with me. Or maybe I'm staying up way too late. Here it is 1:40 a.m. and I'm wide awake. Posting a blog entry, for crying out loud! Ten minutes ago I was loading the dishwasher.
Another reason -- HUGE reason my day sucked -- was because my PVC's showed up around 2 p.m., and then lingered long enough for me to think: OK, is this the day I die? (PVC's are an abbreviation for premature ventricular contractions, which is a long way of saying "palpitations" or "irregular heartbeat.") I was vacuuming the stairs when they started. Immediately thought of that horrible scene in About Schmidt where the Jack Nicholson character comes home from an errand and finds his wife dead, the vacuum hose encircling her lifeless body.
Yeah, yeah, I've been checked out. My cardiologist tells me that my PVC's are the "good ones," the kind that won't cause my heart to quiver in a frenzied mess and then stop altogether, say, while I'm picking out peppers at Price Chopper. According to the doctor, my palps are probably with me for life: I just need to deal with them by, largely, ignoring them. Easier said than done, let me just say. Oh, and even though they're supposed to be "quite common" in women over 40, none of the Bunco gals has experienced them. I've polled every female at Northgate Middle School, and only the librarian can identify.
Third sucky reason to dislike today: I am down to $135 in my checking account, which means I'll have to ask Husband to deposit some money from the joint account into my little piddly expense account, which will more than likely peeve him greatly and cause a great poutage and the silent treatment for, say, oh, about ten days.
And then, I went and did something extra stupid: I watched a movie called Two Weeks, whereby Sally Field plays a 60-ish mother who is dying from cancer (stupidfreakingcancer) and hospice has come in, along with her four grown children, all of whom are there to be with her in her last days.
The movie's a Kleenex box jerker. My eyes will, most assuredly, be super puffy in the a.m.

Here’s what critics have said about TWO WEEKS ….

“Writer-director Steve Stockman is writing from experience, as the script artfully melds the honest, cold facts of dying with the awkwardness and humor that can be found in such circumstances. It’s a film to be sought out.”
Jeffrey Lyons and Alison Bailes, WNBC-TV

“Sally Field creates an agonizing portrait of Anita Bergman. Ms. Field’s tough, accurate performance is all the more compelling for its understatement. A knowing cinematic primer on what to expect when a parent dies.”
--Stephen Holden, The New York Times

“There’s an honesty to this film’s portrayal of what cancer does to family dynamics. Unsentimental, darkly funny. (Stockman’s) gifts as a writer are beyond reproach.”
--Jason Shawhan, The (Nashville) Tennessean

“Very real, very moving, and very funny. Sally Field is breathtaking.”
--Bob Rivers, CBS Radio

Too many ribs ...

,I have gained upwards of three pounds these last few days; a new fat roll has surfaced.
I blame it on the ribs. And the barbecued chicken and potato salad and beans and slaw and all the accompaniments to a Kansas City cookout.
Holyfrijoles I am a pig. Guess "you are what you eat" rings true.
Basically I've eaten the world this entire month. Memories of this time last year have surfaced and I've turned to the fridge. Last May I was taking care of the parentals, watching one wither away to cancer (stupid cancer); the other in intensive care with a multitude of coronary/pulmonary difficulties.
Mom lived; Dad didn't.
This time last year he was still sitting in his brown corduroy chair. I was feeding him pancakes dripping in butter and full-calorie syrup. Half a pound of bacon each morning. Orange juice. Five pills on his tray. "Let me break this one into two pieces, Dad," I'd say, picking up the Vicodin tablet, heavy between my thumb and forefinger.
I hate cancer. Stupid cancer.
One day, last May, maybe mid-month, I took Dad his morning coffee, only to notice (like a blaring neon sign: "I've changed! Look at me! I've changed!) a different dad sitting in the brown corduroy chair. A slighter man. Overnight, the muscles in his forearms had vanished. And that little hunk of muscle that only guys have, that half dollar sized chunk of meat above the kneebone, that had left in the night, too. Dad's bermuda shorts showcased the absence.
Stupid cancer.
The anniversary of his death approaches, and while I await it, I have eaten the world.
Salty or sweet, no matter. I've consumed it. Gumdrops, licorice, Cheetohs (what kind of a grown woman binges on Cheetohs?). Potato chips. Dip #1, Dip #2, Dip #3. Ice cream. Sorbet. Frappuccinos. That disgusting fake dairy QuikTrip "malt" you mix yourself and then pay the cashier $2.49 to consume.
Stupid cancer.