Author: Grant

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Small Talk

A couple of posts ago, my nephew IM’d me on Facebook:

“Hi Uncle, nice story today! But I have a request? I love the stories that I know a little about soooo how about a gramma nobutt and gramps story, maybe one about Xmas eve, God I miss that more then anything! Thanks! Hope everything is looking up in the job hunting 😉;), love ya”

I replied, “Can do.” And left it at that. The gramma nobutt he is referring to is, of course, his grandmother (my mother … who had a working butt, but it was flat as a pancake). He called her gramma nobutt but around the house we generally referred to her as pancake ass.

It was an endearment.

The gramps he is referring to is his grandfather (my father). Both of whom have been featured in many, many posts. So, not wanting to completely disappoint my nephew, who is actually more like a younger brother to me than a nephew … I’m only six years his senior … I turned my thoughts this morning to my grandmother. Emma. Who would have been 124 today. She’s been gone for 22 years, and though this little snippet I wrote awhile back wouldn’t prove it, I miss her dearly. So … Nephew … this is for all of us.

Small Talk

My grandmother wasn’t much for sharing. Born in 1888 and raised in northern Minnesota, she lived in a sod house as a child, yet her family came to be one of the wealthiest families in the Red River Valley. As a young girl she worked at a milliner’s in Duluth. Once, when she was at work, a neighbor who worked for the railroad came into the store and asked her what her name was.

“Emma,” she said.

“Well, Emma, I’m Walt,” he said. “And I was just strolling down the other side of the street and I looked over here and saw you in the window. I told my friend out there—his name is Shorty—I told him that you were the girl I was going to marry,” Walt said.

“Well, it’s a good thing you introduced yourself,” she said.

When Grandma went home and told her folks that she was marrying Walt they disowned her. At her 100th birthday party her 96-year-old sister showed up with her 75-year-old nephew. This was the first time we’d seen anyone from Grandma’s side of the family. She and her sister had seen each other in 80 years. They didn’t say much to each other. We could tell they were rich and we weren’t. All because of Walt. But Grandma never talked about that.

Grandma never talked about anything.

As kids, we always thought we’d done something wrong. Everyone’s grandmothers would smother them with attention. Tell them stories. As teenagers, my sister and I thought Grandma was sweet, but still a little scary. My mom and dad would make us visit with her. They called it ‘small talk.’ After a few minutes of remarkably forced conversation, we were excused, and Grandma would sit and watch television, or read. Sometimes she’d knit. She was like that. But she didn’t mean to be. She thought she was talking. She lived to be 102 or 103, and I’ll bet that now, at the age of 39, I’ve said more than she did her entire life.

I used to spend Tuesday afternoons with her when she and I lived in the same town. I was encouraged by my family to spend time with her because—according to them—she liked me. She talked to me, they said. So, I’d leave work at around eleven in the morning and stay with her a couple of hours in her apartment in what my friends called the “Old Folks High Rise,” which, in Missoula, Montana was a retirement home that was five stories tall.

A typical conversation went something like this:

“Grandma, what was it like growing up?” I’d ask.

“Cold,” she’d say.

“What did you do for fun?” I’d ask.

“Worked,” she’d say.

“What was Grandpa like?”

“Funny,” she’d say after a few seconds hesitation.

“What was the best thing that ever happened to you?”

“I got a new car once.”

“What was the worst thing that ever happened to you?”

“Your Aunt Lola hit a cow and ruined my new car.”

This, my family considered to be small talk. One Tuesday afternoon I simply had a breakdown in her apartment. It had been a tough afternoon for me. Both of my parents had died within months of each other and I had just survived Hepatitis B, which had kept me quarantined for six weeks. I was 26 years old. Grandma didn’t say anything for quite a while that afternoon, she just sat there and handed me Kleenex. We’d been through some pretty tough patches together, what with me wanting her to talk and she not talking, but this afternoon I was about at the end of my rope. I think I was just about ready to give up trying to get her to talk to me. I could still visit her and sit silently. It would have been a bit of a stand-off, but I was fed up.

After a few moments of listening to me weep, she said:

“When Walt and I were about twenty years into it—around 1928 or so—Walt decided he was going to stop working for the railroad and start a farm. We sold everything we had and bought this farm outside of East Grand Forks. It was a bad spot. We didn’t know it at the time, and we spent a good deal making a go of it. We had to borrow furniture from the neighbors and grow our own food. One day the bank came and took the farm from us. They told us we had a few weeks to make what we could at auction and leave the rest. It was the middle of winter, and we had three or four kids by then. The morning we were about to set off, your dad pulled me over to the chest of drawers and opened up the bottom drawer. A mother mouse had just had babies. He and I watched this mouse make a nest that would keep her babies warm. She would run from one side of the drawer to the other with wood chips she’d pulled from the drawer. Your dad and I tore up newspaper and dropped it in her path to help her.”

Apparently this process took several hours. When I asked Grandma why she took the time to do this, she said “I admired her courage.”

The morning my Aunt Betty called and told me that Grandma had passed away in her sleep, I didn’t think at all about what Grandma had said—or not said—during her life. I did, however, think about that mouse.

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5 reasons I love Judge Judy

Since I’ve been laid off, I’ve been trying to catch JJ (I call her JJ … it’s an endearment … really!) whenever the opportunity arises. If I’m home from an interview or writing a cover letter, some of what she says floats into my head. She is the queen of the slow-burn, that one. About a week ago, she said “This story is so old I can’t even hear myself when I tell it.”

Brilliant.

Don’t get me wrong, the idea of folks abandoning our legal system to be shouted at by a retired family court judge makes my teeth hurt just as much as yours. But JJ is more than a guilty pleasure. She’s what Richard Hugo would call a Triggering Town. She’s the spark. She sets stuff in motion. Stuff like this:

1. “We all get what we deserve.”

Being a tour actor with the Missoula Children’s Theatre is fairly grueling. You drive into a small town with a tour partner, audition local kids on Monday night, cast 50 of them, rehearse after school for a couple of hours throughout the week, and at the end of the week you and those 50 kids perform a full-fledged musical, come hell or highwater. In every town, you work with a different accompanist. One of the last things you do in dress rehearsal is to teach the kids (and the accompanist) the curtain call. Very simple: the chorus bows, the leads bow, you (and your tour partner) throw a bow to the accompanist who bows. You (and your as-exhasted-as-you-are partner) don’t bow. You bow with the company. Usually, the accompanist would demur in some way. Accompanists are generally shy people. Especially in small towns. But one of my wiser tour partners would always say, “No! You bow! You must bow! We all get what we deserve.” I struggle with this one a bit, frankly. Recently that same man had brain surgery. He’s okay now, but he certainly didn’t deserve that.

2. “I’m not stupid.”

Working at Brush Ranch Camp was one of those magical jobs. Every day I woke up not knowing what type of day I was going to have. I was constantly surprised. Most of the surprises were delightful. In my late twenties I found myself snuggled in the middle of some of the most breathtaking country, breathing really fresh air, being fed three meals a day (and a snack) and every six days I spent a day in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Sign me up, right? My various duties included being a designated driver for the entire outfit. Thanks to my spotless record, and my extensive experience with MCT, I was one of the few staff members who drove the campers, the trucks, the vans and the buses. I also co-ordinated the airport trips. The camp was two hours from the Albuquerque Airport, so every term we’d have a day where we met kids at the airport, packed their bags onto a flatbed truck and transported the campers, sans baggage, to the camp. Their luggage would usually arrive a half-hour later, just in time for them to swim and unpack and settle down for their first night away from home. I usually drove the campers, my friend Mikey usually drove the luggage truck. Except for the time I left the airport with about 20 kids and didn’t realize the key to the luggage truck was in my pocket until I was almost home. This was before the days of cell phones. Two hours back to the airport, two hours back to the camp. The campers were really cool about it. But when I saw my boss, I said, “I feel so stupid, and I hate that.” She said, “If you don’t want to feel stupid, you should stop doing stupid things.” Whenever my self-esteem takes a hit, “I’m not stupid,” becomes a bit of a mantra.

3. “Don’t talk when I’m talking.”

For seven years I taught English at Thomas A. Edison High School—another amazing job. Edison is a small, private school devoted to teaching students with learning differences. Many of the students have auditory processing issues. Some have Attention Deficit Disorder. Edison was the first place I ever encountered Asperger’s Syndrome. I spent hours with kids that had been hit with the double whammy of adolescence and autism. It was one of the more inspirational things I’ve done in my life. The first few days of every school year were the hardest. There’s that awkward first day thing hanging in the air. There’s that awkward “Gee you’ve grown so much I didn’t recognize you,” thing with returning students. But mostly, there’s a lot of ground rule making and breaking. In retrospect, I wish I had a dollar for every time I explained to someone that, if they were talking when I was talking, neither of us would be able to hear the other person.

4. “Don’t lie to me. You’re changing the story.”

Every person who appears on JJ has to write something. She frequently refers to it as the “statement” or “answer.” She’ll say, “That’s not what you wrote in your answer.” She does this when she is trying to trap people in what she calls a lie. And she’s a pretty good lie detector. In fact, she frequently calls herself a “truth machine.” But in these cases, I find myself empathising with the litigants. For the past dozen or so years, my primary challenge in crafting creative non-fiction is to try to justify the story I have in my head with the story I see on the page. Sometimes I get it right. But sometimes I have to change the story. I understand I’m given license to do that. It’s an agreement I enter into with anyone that reads my work. They want a story. I want … well, I want a good story. One that won’t bore them. The problem with the litigants on Judge Judy (and frankly, this gets JJ a little hot under her lacey collar) is that the untruths they tell are patently transparent. And most of them are harmful to either their case or their defense. They are so wrapped up in their story that they can’t see the harm it’s causing. My first rule of thumb … do no harm. We’ve covered this before.

5. “You want this to be fair. Let me tell you something: life’s not fair.”

I’ve been dealing with fairness for a long time—this recent flirtation with unemployment not withstanding. Working in the theater is not conducive to the notion of fairness. Neither is writing, in my humble opinion. And neither is being laid off. No matter how you slice it, being on the receiving end of rejection is just unfair. There is no easy place to lay any blame. It’s just there. It is, in effect, what it is. For the past six weeks I’ve been dealing with a lot of folks who want to tell me how wrong my situation is. How angry they are. How they (they!) feel betrayed. And I suppose if I was a vindictive person I’d be inclined to agree. I’d be angry. I’d be looking for justice. But there isn’t any justice to be found here in rejectionville. It’s just … well, it is what it is. I’m okay with that.

But I have my moments. Even a relatively calm person is allowed a few of those.

The week before I was laid off I had the honor of taking a rather long car trip with an actress friend of mine who also happens to be a marriage counselor. I told her about my fascination with JJ. She was amused, but not enough to watch the show. At any rate, she told me that a very wise colleague has told her that the majority of a counselor’s clients are really looking for judgement of some kind. And her number one job was to not provide any judgement whatsoever. But to listen, offer suggestions, and get the couple (or the person) to move on.

I try not to wallow. I try not to blame. I take the information that is given to me, however slight it may be, and I move on. I think that’s what’s important, actually. To move on. No matter how hard it is.

And I think Judge Judy would agree.

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CHANGE NOW

A couple of years ago, I took advantage of a depressed economy and went to eBay, looking for one of those fancy push-button espresso machines. You know the ones, they hold a tank of water, a hopper of beans and have steam at the ready. All you have to do is care and feed them, and you get a great cup of coffee just by pushing a button. Having one of these machines is an extravagance. An indulgence. When you see them in the Sur La Table catalog, you think “Oh no! Not for me! I’m never going to need such a thing. Way too fancy. Who needs a cup of coffee at the push of a button?!” Then, of course, you experience it … you see one at a friend’s house, or an employer installs one, and you think “Huh. Gotta have me one of these!”

They are outrageously expensive. (Unless you go on eBay and find a lovely little retailer in, let’s say, Las Vegas, who bought a bunch of them and then went belly up. I think this poor soul had a garage full of the machines, because he let me have it for … well … a song.) At any rate, there you are with your fancy machine and you come to realize it needs to be cared for. There’s an occasional bean restock. There’s a more-than-occasional water tank refresh, and tray dump of grounds (and collected caffeinated sludge). And … if you live where I do … there’s a need to change a water filter after every 250 cups of coffee.

My machine has an LED screen that tells you what the machine is up to or what you need to do. You know, short phrases like — 2 coffees xstrong. 1 coffee powder. Press rinse. Draw steam. Fill beans. Fill tank. Empty tray. Clean machine. Change filter.

If you’re like me (and I know you are) you probably read the Change filter warning, but wait until you’ve gotten every bit of life out of that filter. (The little fucker is expensive. And hard to find.) The machine knows you. It can sense you are this type of person. The machine probably knows you ignore the low-ink alert on your printer, or leave for the coast with a quarter tank of gas. Because the machine knows you so well. (It’s seen you at your best and your worst, after all), this clever little machine … this kitchen marvel … this what-would-I-do-without-it device … has the audacity to switch it’s message from the kindly Change filter to the more demanding Change Now. (Note the use of capitalization.)

Change Now, it tells you. It beeps three times for the next several cups of coffee. Change Now it reads, instead of the time of day, or the ever-comforting 2 coffees xstrong. It then beeps five times and changes to all caps:

CHANGE NOW

It means business this time. It’s not fooling around. Eventually, it withholds your cup of coffee. Bastard machine.

There you are in your favorite comfy t-shirt and boxers. Hugging off the bleary cold of the morning. Waiting as patiently as you can for your 2 coffees xstrong. Surprised. Shocked. Dismayed. Crestfallen.

So, being this type of guy (and I just know you are exactly like me) you get over the initial shock of not having your wishes fulfilled and you … make the change. You CHANGE NOW. And, regardless of how comfortable you are with your own insecurities, you admonish yourself for becoming reliant on something that is inherently unreliable. Something you have endowed with the ability to make decisions on your behalf, even if they are decisions which do not work in your favor.

You get over yourself. You soldier on. You learn a little something about loyalty and trust. And, after a brief period of uncomfortability, you get your reward. But, in the future, when the universe is sending you messages so strong that even your coffee machine is offering advice and counsel, well … you Change filter. I mean, why wait?

So, since we are so alike, you and I, you can imagine my surprise when … almost a month ago … I was laid off from my (really great) job of eleven years. Despite the warnings. The capitalization. The beeps. You find me (or return to me) in the process of CHANGE NOW. And no matter how much I cross my fingers, cross my toes, pull on my ears or wiggle my nose, I approach the simple act of pushing the buttons of opportunity with caution.

I’m a little shocky. I’m a little bleary. But I’m still pretty grateful the coffee has been so good for more than a decade.

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But if you try sometimes, you might find

You get what you need.

Rejection. So, I was having a conversation with someone yesterday who was in the process of rejecting me. It was obvious to me that the situation was much more awkward for him as it was for me. This guy actually felt bad about not being able to give me what I wanted. In the moment I said, “I’m completely comfortable being rejected.”

Since then, I’ve given that statement much more thought than I did at the time. And today I stand by what I said. I’m fine being rejected. In fact, I think I handle that whole thing pretty well. I have a fairly long track record with it.

There’s always a sting of disappointment. I’ll give any agent/publisher/director/employer that. I am, in the moment disappointed. But I’m self-aware enough to know how fleeting that feeling can be. I’m not a sulker. I’m a move-on-er. (Now, I also know there have been times in my life when I haven’t moved-on. And I think I can safely say nothing good has ever come from behaving badly in those moments. And for that, I’m truly regretful.)

Here’s the point: I know enough about myself to understand that if I put my manuscript out into the world, if I audition, if I apply for the job, if I venture into the unknown, I’m strong enough to absorb the message that the decider in these circumstances can always choose to go another way.

I’m fine with that.

I’m even better if there’s something I can learn along the way.

So, all you potential rejectors out there … give yourselves a break.

I’m a big boy. I can take it.

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Something of worth, part two

It was a common problem between the two of us. Neither of us were good at deciding what to do for birthdays, special occasions, or holidays involving gifts. Our first foray into Christmas resulted in what I call “The Misadventures of Green Leather.” On a lark, I purchased a large, green, Dooney and Bourke bag as my first real Christmas present to her, and she purchased a pair of green Birkenstock loafers for me. When the unwrapping was finished, we agreed never to stress about the activity of gift-giving. Both of us returned the gifts for cash, and we used the pooled funds to buy a vacuum cleaner. For the past twenty years, we’ve rarely surprised each other with gifts, but we do manage to be generous.

So when she said, “I know what you can do for my birthday,” my guard went up. “There’s a ring there on the counter,” she said. “My grandmother gave it to me when I was a girl. I had to have it cut off my finger. Can you take it to the jeweler and see if it is valuable, and if it is, maybe have it reset in a larger size?”

There, on the counter (as she said) was a tiny little diamond chip in a princess setting. Well, a broken princess setting. The pieces of the ring had been taped together with a piece of cellophane tape. From the days when tape was cellophane. It looked exactly like the kind of ring an ordinary grandmother would give to an ordinary granddaughter.

But I knew immediately, nothing about any of these players — grandmother, granddaughter, ring — was ordinary.

I never knew the grandmother, Rachel (pronounced RUCK-hull, which sounds more beautiful than it looks, and even more beautiful when someone says it with a Yiddish accent). She was a gifted storyteller. Her oral history, recorded for the ages and transcribed with loving care by her daughter, is as rich in detail as it is in plot. Born a poor peasant in pre-Soviet Russia, the resourceful, mother-praising Rachel would find clever ways to feed her eight siblings, keep their spirits up, and somehow rise about these meager means to land a job with a big, wealthy family in the city.

It was there that she caught the eye of an awkward, aging heir who would lavish her with jewels she would sell to buy material to make clothes for her family, so they didn’t look poor at her wedding.

The gifts would continue.

Rachel was shunned by her husband’s rich relatives, never really fitting in, yet somehow raising above the fray to be the only gracious, well-bred person in the mix. During the revolution, when the family’s factory was being assimilated by the socialists, Rachel’s husband moved to America. True to her nature, Rachel held close her daughter, Chava (pronounced KH-ava, which sounds more beautiful than it looks, and even more beautiful when someone says it with a Yiddish accent). When tensions rose between Rachel and her in-laws, she would use baby Chava as leverage. In that dynamic, she held all the power by holding close to her only daughter.

Rachel used that power to convince her husband to pay for the safe passage of all her siblings. Once they were settled in America and Canada, only then did she allow her husband to pay for her and Chava’s passage to America.

The stories of her childhood were as dramatic as they get. Near-starvation during the winters, near-extermination by the Bolsheviks, near-death from sickness. Rachel makes Angela McCourt look like a self-obsessed pansy. During one particularly dramatic passage in the oral history, Rachel buries her jewelry in the courtyard of the big house, to keep it safe from the marauding bands of soldiers looking to overthrow the aristocracy.

It’s a spell-binding, page-turning, wish-you-could-have-written-it, kind of story.

Rachel settled in America and raised a large, tight-knit family. She became Rachel, the matriarch, Rachel the storyteller, Rachel the corsetiere. Her daughter became Chava, the ransomed, Chava the stage beauty, Chava the doctor. Chava’s only-born daughter, Alana, became Alana the upstart, Alana the scholar, Alana, the actor/director.

To that granddaughter, Rachel bestowed a ring. A tiny chip of a diamond in a princess setting.

Too tiny to be fake, the stone is most-likely genuine, probably of little or no value.

But the ring itself could have escaped the careful eye of the socialists, the fellow passengers in steerage, the immigration officials who quarantined both grandmother and mother upon their arrival in America.

The worth of that ring? It’s too high to even guess.

_________

Happy belated birthday, my darling girl. You are the bread and the knife, the crystal goblet and the wine.

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Something of worth, part one

I’ve been carrying around a couple piece of jewelry for the past few weeks. When I cleaned out my backpack before heading out to the beach for the week, I stumbled across them, and put them in a safe place. My intent was to take them to the jeweler to be repaired. I still haven’t done that.

Funny how hard it is to recognize classic writing exercises when they are staring you in the face. (Or you are holding them in your hand.) It’s an old saw. Find an object and write a story about it. The fact is, though, these two objects have been rolling around in my mind for three weeks. Maybe my amendment to the exercise is to find an object, carry it around for three weeks, and THEN write about it.

Both the objects are rings. One belonged to my father, one belongs to my wife. Both are shrouded in stories.

My dad wore an azure-blue star sapphire, set in a manly silver setting with two diamond chips on both sides. I don’t know why my mother bought a ring like this. Nor why she gave it to my dad, but I do remember he loved it, and that was rare. My dad took delight in many things, but seldom cherished anything.

Sapphires themselves are kind of native to Montana. During one of our few family outings, the four of us went to a sapphire mine and picked over a bucket of stones. My mom threw a chunk of what she was convince was Coke-bottle glass over her shoulder and we spent a good part of the afternoon sorting through road gravel to find it. Turns out, it was a blue-green hunk of corundum, which my sister now wears as a cut stone in a setting my mom chose. Given their relationship, I’m pretty sure that ring irritates my sister from time to time.

We didn’t find my dad’s stone. Maybe my mom gave the ring to my dad one Father’s Day. She might have said something hokey about the diamond chips representing my sister and me. I really don’t remember how, or why, that ring came into the family. I do remember how the depth of the blue jumped off my dad’s chubby fingers. And the milky-gray, sparkley star inside the stone mimicked my dad’s eyes.

In doing a little research, I’ve found that real star sapphires are rare. They are most likely blue. They are cut in a way that a six-pointed star appears to be inside the stone, and that star shape will move, but continue to show up, no matter how you hold the stone. Star sapphires are also frequently replicated or faked. There are many stones in the world with the star “painted” into a less-valuable material, like agate. One of the tests for authenticity is to make sure the image of the star remains, no matter how you move the stone. But clever counterfeiters can create synthetic material that mimics the star and sell it as real. So taking the stone to a gemologist is the only way to tell.

I came across the ring when we were culling through my mom’s stuff in preparation for my eldest sister Cherie’s move into the house I grew up in. I remember that day as being busy, and filled with strongly concealed emotions. My sisters were mostly concerned with my mother’s shoes. I sat on the living room floor with my week-old neice strapped into a car seat nearby. She had recently discovered her feet, and she squealed with delight every time she managed to snatch one up and pull it to her chest. My dad’s stuff was down to a few boxes. This was stuff my mom had saved, having parceled out the rest the year before. It contained my dad’s dog tags from WWII, his discharge papers, his wedding ring, a photo of his high-school track team, a copy of the speech he gave at his graduation, and a few other things my mom couldn’t bear to part with.

I’d never wear the ring on a daily basis. I’d probably never wear it even for special occasions. I did wear it recently in a play. (I had to wrap the band with tape … my dad had huge fingers.) Not an everyday ring, but something the King of France would wear.

The stone is loose.

And I have been reluctant to take it to the jeweler for more than a handful of reasons. Practically, I don’t have any reason to wear the ring, so why pay to get it fixed? And I don’t have anyone to give the ring to, once I’m dead, or ready to give my stuff away. Emotionally, I don’t want to know if the stone is fake.

Mostly, I don’t want to let the color of the star out of my possession.

Even to get fixed.

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A month away

Those of you familiar with blogging know this. I didn’t. Tons of spam. So, in an effort to get real about the actual numbers of authentic people visiting, I stayed away for a month. My idea here is it will give me a vague notion of how many honest-to-god people in the world are reading what I’ve written.

When I was a student at the University of Montana, there was a visiting choreographer in the dance department. His work was inspiring, and devoted to including spoken text in his pieces. One I remember was an evocative, slow moving piece with dancers moving through space simply saying “I’m sorry.” Sounds stupid, I know … but it was incredible. The choreographer in residence worked on a similar piece. It wasn’t as grounded, or as artistically sound. (Why would it be, it wasn’t her idea?) At any rate, her dancers kept kneading the air repeating “Dough is a living thing. Dough is a living thing.” But there was a refrain in her piece that has resonated with me for almost thirty years. Out of this repetition, one of the dancers would explode with movement and shout “When I can’t dance I’m a nasty old bitch!” It was both funny “ha ha” and funny “peculiar.”

If I were to sum up my behavior this past month, I’d have to conclude that “When I can’t write, I’m a nasty old bitch!”

There are some learnings to be had here. The good news is, there seems to be quite a few of you real, honest, readers! The bad news is, I haven’t been able to write.

And it’s made me a nasty old bitch. So, here’s a list of stuff I jotted down while I was away.

  • There’s nothing like a little bit of sunshine. Really. There’s nothing like it.
  • Taxes, in the overall scheme of things, are still a good idea.
  • Speeding is bad for the world, I’m not going to do it anymore.
  • There’s no sense in eating cheap cheese. (Or to put it another way, expensive cheese is worth it.)
  • Most people have two muscles in their calves that look almost exactly like tiny ass cheeks.
  • Having a nagging, whooping-like cough as a child doesn’t mean you are immune to it as an adult.
  • People can be challenging, but mostly they are just trying to be good.
  • A clean car runs better than a dirty car.
  • There’s really only a few things I’d like to do over, and most of them happened in Missoula.
  • When given the opportunity, I’d rather teach than perform.

So, as you can see, there’s quite a bit happening for me. As far as the book goes, my plan is to dive into the edits like a madman when I go on vacation in a couple of weeks. I did, however, send my first page to an agent. She gave me a nine out of ten. (I think that’s good, but I wanted a ten.)

But I’ll take the nine and keep working. At least I’ve got that going for me.

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My ups

My inbox is holding an edited manuscript. First time I’ve ever said that. My dear friend, despite having a new baby on top of a pukey toddler, has thrown me a big, fat, sucker pitch. Oh, she’s a great editor. She’s a sensitive and caring auditor. She’s encouraging.  She’s had her chance at bat. She connected. In fact, one might say she knocked it out of the park. And now it appears it’s my ups. Time to put on the helmet and trot back to the plate.

I love what she has to say. And here’s what she has to say: Work harder.

I can do that. It’s easy for both of us, because she sees this effort the same way I do. It’s still in a formative stage. What, exactly, is it? I keep calling it “the book” but maybe it’s not a book at all. Maybe it’s a collection of stories, loosely woven together by a common thread. If that’s the case, I still need to work harder. But it’s a different kind of work. I need to get individual stories together and start sending those out. Once I start getting buzz from those, I can then put that success in my back pocket (and in my query letters) and start marketing a collection of stories. That’s a long game, that. That means we’re only in the first inning.

If it’s truly “a book,” well then, I’m going to need to take a step back into it and start working harder. We’re in the fourth or fifth inning and … we’re losing. It means more writing about … everything. More background about the place. More physical characteristics about the characters. More work on the narrative arc.

And I’m torn. I’m truly torn. It’s not even a question of long-term gains or short-term pains. It’s a question of how much of this I want to take back. How long I want to play.

OK. Time to get crafty. Time to dive back into the belly of the beast. Today, I start by reading the whole thing (again) as if I was reading a book. Today, I start again.

Not over. Again.

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Busy bombs

I have to admit, it never really occurred to me until today.

I know for a fact, there were times when my casually distant father would come home from work with a pretty short temper. But he never told us, “Hey! I have a pretty short temper right now!” Sometimes he’d just huff a little bit, or say “Hut tut tut.” Then he’d stand up, leave the table and go sit in his chair. On more than one occasion, he went and sat in the front seat of his car, listening to the radio.

When it happened, my mom would usually say, “Daddy’s really busy at work.” And we’d leave it at that.

So, two things … and I know this is really easy for me to question or delve into because both my folks have long since passed away … but as I get busy … (And believe me, I know what that truly means in terms of stress, lost sleep, long hours, short tempers … I’ve got that covered.) I see myself reacting the same way my father did. Just today I have started to sense the same frustration I must have felt in other people.

For example, when I’m busy, I ‘go inside’ myself. This I know. I become uncommunicative. Distant. Oft times snarky. So, first of two things … Who the hell am I to make other people guess at my present state of mind? What’s to stop me from simply stating, “You know what? I’m on a pretty short fuse right now, so I’m going to be quiet for awhile.” Okay, that sounds like a threat. Something a bully would say. But I suppose that’s where trust comes in. People have to trust me enough to know I won’t blow my stack. In fact, the only combustion that happens when I’m truly frustrated is internal. Like flinging myself on a hand grenade. Muffled. Contained. Self-inflicted damage control.

Okay. So I promise myself to tell you when I’m in a bad mood. Okay? No sense in you guessing. It won’t get you anywhere. Oh! And don’t ask. That only pisses me off. (Which is something totally different.)

Second of two things. And this one I’m just coming around to today … after years of reflection. Maybe, just maybe, my dad was smart enough to know that anything he said—or did for that matter—would be coming from an emotional, irrational, often indefensible position. Maybe not saying anything was his way of not giving in to the stress.

I can think of more than a couple of times in ‘the book’ when he and I have a standoff. Both of us were obviously very emotional. I believe I was being pretty irrational and he was being flat out stubborn. During those times, the most either of us could muster was a cold, hard stare. There were a few times, once in a police station, where Dad did manage to muster an “I’m disappointed in you.”

Whenever he said that we always agreed to talk about it the next day, which we never did.

And we never brought it up again.

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Availability

Sleep intrigues me. I have a cousin who suffers from night terrors. Growing up, whenever I visited his family, it wasn’t unusual to wake up in the middle of the night to him screaming. And I admit, once or twice a year, I do the same.

Scares the shit out of my wife Alana.

My problem with this is I don’t remember in the morning … or even if I’m fortunate enough to wake up … what I was screaming about. What does manage to linger is an odd physical sensation of having screamed. The rest is hearsay.

So last night I had this relatively horrifying dream. Many of you know I had to put a long-lived, much-loved dog to sleep this past September. That experience was one of the most devastating things I’ve done to date. But it was one of those things that had to be done. And with the help of our other dog and my dear, sweet wife, I managed my way through it.

Anyway last night … I was telling you about last night. Well … last night I had a dream about that same dog … Bucky. Not that unusual. Since he’s been gone, Bucky has been ever-present in my head. Only instead of us having a veterinarian come to the house, euthanize the dog and take him away (which is what happened in real life), I dreamt we injected Bucky ourselves. We expected him to die. We were sad. But he woke up and started walking around the house.

I know the triggers: Yesterday I got a flu shot. It was also the birthday of our other dog, and the attention we gave her most definitely put our old, dear Bucky back in my dreams. So … injection / dog / living / dying … easy connections to make.

But there was a feeling in the dream. A frustration that we hadn’t managed to fulfill our promise to “put the dog down” and an elation that we hadn’t. That feeling was so available. It was as real as anything I’ve ever felt. And I think it was the availability of that same feeling that allowed me to remember the dream today.

Which brings me back to the screaming myself (and my sleep-deprived wife) awake. There are no available, accessible details I can muster in times like that, save the sensation of having screamed. The quickened pulse. The scratch in my throat. I think I probably mumble, roll over, and drift back to sleep.

So today, in the light, after all the processing and accepting of the information. I’m left to wonder if memories and the act of remembering details isn’t strongly related to my ability to access my emotions.

Sounds basic, no? Well, I’d like to amend that idea a bit: I wonder if my ability to remember details of my life isn’t strongly dependent upon my ability to access my available emotions.

The availability is the key.