Letters to my agent

June 5, 2012 By

Dear Literary Agent,

I wrote a lovely novel, and I have no doubt you’ll clamor over your desk and spill your morning coffee just to reach the phone to hear all about it.  It’s about anonymous letters and love and friendship – tantalizing themes that have never before surfaced in the history of fiction.  I just know you’ll say yes.  I’m at the gym, so if I don’t pick up my phone just rattle off a message.

Love and kisses,

Me

Two months later. . .

Dear Literary Agent,

It’s the strangest thing, because I didn’t hear back from you.  That’s odd.  Did you get the World’s Greatest Manuscript as an attachment to the email I sent? Oh, wait.  Maybe it’s because I work on a mac and it didn’t convert.  And if you’re like all those other fancy-pants agents, you’re probably just on an extended vacation to Italy.  I’ll await your reply, about how much you love my writing and want to meet up for tea.

Best,

Me

Six months later. . .

Dear Literary Agent,

It’s me again!  I never so much as received an out-of-office message, or a rejection, or a kind brush-off from you, so I don’t know if you received my novel or it landed in some spam slush pile, never to be revived.  I can’t possibly imagine that four years of my life were wasted, and that you read it but didn’t actually like it. That’s so absurd I’m cracking myself up!  See how good I am at humor?  Well here’s to perseverance.  I’ll try and track down your personal cell phone number and pretend I’m you at the dog groomer to get your home address.  Toodles!

Me

Two years later. . .

Dear Literary Agent,

You didn’t have to get a restraining order, for goodness sakes.  That was a bit extreme.   I was only papering your front lawn with the pages of my manuscript so you’d notice me.  So you’d read my words.  So I wouldn’t be invisible. I love what you did with your spare bathroom, by the way.  White subway tile is really a good choice regardless of your personal style.  And the towels were so nice and thick. Were they Ralph Lauren?  I know I wasn’t technically invited in, but I just really needed to pee so I found an open window.  But we’re old friends, right?  So why in the world did you find it necessary to send me all those strange legal documents about keeping fifty feet back?  What’s that all about?

Me

Well into the future . . .

Dear Literary Agent,

As it turns out I did need all those medications you suggested.  Thanks to your referral to the police, the mental hospital, moving, and for changing your identity.  Finally, I sought the help I needed.  I’ll never again send you a manuscript, because I clearly see now that you don’t appreciate my writing style.  I know it’s not me, really, but it’s just my genre’s really not your thing.  That being said, I do have a project in mind that I’d love to tell you about sometime, if you’re willing. I can tell from your silence that you’re dying to hear more.

You know what’s odd?  This email bounced back the first time I tried to send it, like the address doesn’t work anymore.  What’s up with that?  No worries.  I’ll figure something out.  You know, I might just try another agent.

Filed Under: Humor, Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: , , ,

The Zoo

June 3, 2012 By

I apologize in advance for such a long post, but on this one I was a horrid self-editor and just couldn’t bring myself to cut out any details.   Please forgive me!

—

It all started out so simple.  My husband had a board meeting in Dallas on a Saturday.  We figured it made good sense to drive up together, meet a girlfriend and her children, and we’d all hit the zoo while my husband was trapped in a long, boring meeting. A well-crafted plan!  So we packed our sunscreen and juice boxes and hit the road in high spirits.  In no time flat we’d be feeding the giraffes.  We’d be looking with awe as elephants fanned themselves with muddy water and giggling at those darn flamingos standing precariously on their tall, spindly legs.

I should have seen it coming when we stopped for lunch and a bag of food fell over, tumbling French fries this way and that in random places between my seats.  But this was a fun day with friends and cheetahs.  What could possibly go wrong?

My husband’s meeting was deep in the barrio somewhere, which meant I was weaving about unfamiliar territory amidst unfamiliar people.  My children were singing Wheels on the Bus as I gripped our own steering wheel, my blond hair tied back in a bun and my eyes squinting to find the right turn.  Finally, after delivering my husband safely, I took off for the zoo, which is literally two exits north. This is when things started to go south.  And west.  And east again.  Despite the zoo being a stone’s throw away, I still managed to miss the exit and I went on a fun-filled ride through pawn-shop, bail-bond, check-cashing and cheap-auto-insurance heaven.  I turned around and weaved over and tried to look at the map on my phone while not hurling my children into the taillights of the car in front of us.  We finally made it an hour late, but who cares?  We have all afternoon! And how long does it take to see gorillas anyway?

I drove up to the parking attendant to pay and she informed me that today of all days was their annual special event that required them to close early.  In three hours, specifically.  They’d shut the doors and shoo all the zoo-goers to their SUVs promptly at 4 pm and “we aren’t kidding,” the man says.  What were the odds?

So we all pile out of the car, get the stroller in zoo-read shape, and head inside to meet my dear girlfriend and her family.  To the giraffes we go!  Time’s a wastin! So we all schlep it over to pay $5 for a few lettuce leaves so that the overfed animals can get their daily intake of salad.  My two-year-old is frightened by the whole concept and just pitches the leaves over the fence.  They float to the ground like parachutes.

Next up is the monorail.  The kids are ecstatic about the train ride, so we all sit in a pressure cooker of sweat and trapped air for a good half hour, desperately pouring water down our children’s throats to prevent heatstroke and pointing out various animals down below.  “Deer!” my son says at every single animal. I start to correct him, but what’s the point?  We’ll never see that particular antelope again in real life.  “Yes! Deer!” I say in return.

After the train, we all head to splashdown so the kids could cool off in a manufactured river that’s only a few inches deep and smells very strongly of urine.  I watched my daughter and her friend lay their entire bodies in it, waving their hands around and pretending they’re mermaids.  I’m slightly horrified that there’s a kid in front of me with a sagging poopy diaper laughing and dancing around in the water my son just traipsed through. But it looked quite fun and maybe I need to back off on the germ focus.  After all, what are immune systems for?  What’s a few diluted pints of pee amongst friends?

So we dry off the children, change their clothes, and head to see the monkeys.  But before we get there, we are stopped by a zoo employee and told that the north end of the zoo is actually closed. Only for today, you see, because of the special event going on. So no monkeys.  But back by the entrance, there’s a bird show going on.  “See how things have a way of working out?” I tell my friend as we laugh and do a stroller u-turn in the walkway.  I grab the hands of my daughter and her dear friend, walk down three flights of stairs by the little zoo theatre, sit on the front row right in front of the tuxedo-outfitted penguins, and wait.  But people are leaving.  The penguins are walking off the stage, their little feet waddling out of sight.

“So sorry,” the penguin handler tells me.  “But the show ended about five minutes ago.”  Just our luck.  Yes, yes.  That figures.

We finally just hauled the kids to the carousal and let them ride the pretend horses around and around.  They were thrilled.  My two-year-old clutched his horse as if he might get bucked off and giggled with glee.  It was just in time for the zoo to close, whereby we were being asked to leave through the front gates. “Come again!” the zoo worker said.

The incredible mother that I am, I managed to pack seventeen juice boxes but no real bottles of water, and neglected to bring any hand sanitizer. So my children were covered with animal and train-rail and carousal germs of all sorts as we finally headed back to the car.  We hugged our dear friends, changed my kids’ clothes in the parking lot so they could pass out with sheer exhaustion in something clean on the way home, did my best to wipe them down with generic-brand wet wipes, and called the day a success.  Despite the fact that we were only at the zoo for a short time and had a four-hour drive back home.  And despite the fact that we would all likely die of a strange, urine-transported disease and didn’t see one single monkey.

The kids and I headed back to the barrio to get my husband, who was wrapping up the board meeting that very moment.  On the way, I hear my daughter say something disturbing in the back seat. Something like “what’s that all over you?”  She was speaking to her brother.  I was filled with terror.

I pulled over in a dollar store parking lot, taking up several spaces, and forced myself to turn around.  I had given my son a squeezable fruit, which is great for travel and presumably less messy for young children. Unless it happened to be a blend of apples and spinach, and is the color of grass cuttings.  In this case my son believed it appropriate to simply squirt the crap all over his body and then mash it into the car seat and his clothing like finger paint.

I’m trying not to curse as some man walks up to me to either ask for money or mug me, but I give him dirty looks and shake my head because I have better things to do, like strip my kid down to his diaper and wipe the green goo off every crevice of his body.  It’s crammed into the straps of his car seat like glue.  Great.

“Did we stop for a Frosty?” my daughter says as she notices there’s a Wendy’s nearby.  I look over at her, my hands covered in green mashed ick, after just shooing away a homeless person and glancing around to make sure no one’s going to car-jack us, cursing under my breath when I realize I don’t have any extra clean clothes and wiping my son’s body down with wet wipes while in a parking lot in a rough part of town.  Yes, my love.  We stopped for ice cream. The homeless dude that was asking for money just walked off, like Nu-uh. I don’t want any part of that craziness. 

My kids never did sleep on the way home. They decided to sing seventeen renditions of Happy Birthday and slung barbeque sandwich all over the backseat.  My son had not one, but two large poops that he so happily declared to us as my husband gripped the wheel and just hoped to the dear heavens that there was justice in the world and we’d get home already.  The kids got louder and louder on the way, possibly fueled by a mid-trip ice cream, and it at the end it was like a grand finale at a firework display.  My son wanted a cup of ice in the front seat and kept screaming “LEMME HAVE IT!” at the top of his lungs.  My daughter applied some of my lip gloss, which she said did NOT smell like cocoa or butter and kept saying “It reeks in here!  Open the window!  I can’t take this smell!”  Finally my husband and I just started laughing at how ridiculous it all was.

At nine o’clock when we arrived home, I threw my son in a warm bath and covered him with soapy bubbles.  In deference to the day we had, he stood up in the bath and peed for a long, solid minute. Somehow, I wasn’t at all surprised.

All in all, it was glorious. Any chance to see one of my best friends is worth it, and now we have even more stories to add to our long, thick book of friendship. The fact is that I’d do it all over again in a second.  One day, when the kids are grown and gone, my car will be clean and things will work out the way they’re planned.  But I’ll burn with longing for the loud, messy, insane world that I now wallowing in, green goo and all. These glorious little people make me laugh and smile despite having to get my car detailed on a regular basis. They might fill my car with stale French fries, but they fill my soul with happiness as I pick up their tired, sticky bodies, their mouths covered with the sweet residue of ice cream and their hair matted together with dried sweat.

They fell asleep so happy, and the next morning all we heard about was the carousal and the zebras.  The “geewaffs” and the choo-choo and all those deer.  And that makes it all worth it, monkeys or no monkeys, bacteria and all.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Humor, Love, Motherhood, My life Tagged With: , , , , ,

dancing queen

May 29, 2012 By

It’s been three years in the waiting.  Three long years of dance practice, ballet shoes, various pairs of tights, and teachers.  Finally, our daughter of almost six years had her first dance recital.

And it was miserable.

It all started a few weeks back.  “You know, mom,” she said.  I was squatting down on the floor trying to get tights around her thighs and making a mental run around the house with my mind wondering where her tap shoes were.  “Dance just isn’t one of my talents.”  She said it so earnestly, like she put a great deal of forethought into it.  I chuckled a little, because what does a kindergartener know of such things? She said she was a bit behind the step.  It was hard to keep up. I lifted up her chin until her eyes were level with mine.   I told her she never had to do dance again in her whole life.  But the recital was in two weeks, so Lord-willing she’d finish what she started.  We Hills always finish what we start.

The first year she took dance she was only three.  She was so excited and bubbly, her little pink tutu hanging below her chunky little tummy.  She smiled at me and waved as she threw scarves in the air. The next year I was working and had a baby and it was all too overwhelming to keep track of.  She had pre-school, which kept her consumed with art projects and new friends.  Dance was always an afterthought.

But this year she’s almost six, and I was determined to not miss the much-touted recital.  I watched her practice from outside the window at the studio, her body standing in first position, her arms at a graceful arch down at her sides.  She dipped into a plie and swept her arms up in a semicircle above her head.  I caught her watching herself at the barre to make sure her shoulders were back.  Her neck tall.  Her toes pointed.  She looked just like a bird, slender and curious, standing on the edge of the water.  Just like that, she was learning how to be a dancer.  And yet her thoughts were elsewhere.  Her steps delayed.  It’s hard for a girl to dwell in the present when there are four more beats to attend to.  There’s no room for reflection.  The music keeps on plodding forward like a military march, relentless in its precision.

The day of the recital, I tried to make it exciting.  I curled her hair and let her wear pink lipstick.  I pressed blush into young cheeks that were too pretty to decorate and told her how special it would be that I would see her on stage.  The curtain.  The dancing.  The thrill!

I waited with what seemed like thousands of other parents in the auditorium to see my little girl prance around in the lights.  It was inordinately hot and I ended up on the third row behind a woman who was breastfeeding and next to a lady with a child in her lap.  They couldn’t start the show until every last person was seated due to some fire safety issue, so we all sat glaring at the late-comers, our heads sinking in our hands, while people bumped and squeezed their way into random empty seats in the crowd.

Finally, the show started.  I had no idea there were so many numbers. Little girls tapped and turned in glitter and sequins with big, beaming smiles.  Like freshly-picked apples they bobbed around, red and sweet and buoyant.

Finally, it was time.  The curtain opened and I saw my daughter  – the tallest one in the class, stand there in a flowing ballet outfit covered in pink flowers.  But unlike most of the dancers, who were smiling and waving and acting like they had a slight interest in being there, mine looked as if she was auditioning for the Olympics.  As if each step held great importance. She was a bit behind the beat, but in one pivotal moment all the other girls hugged the person next to them and my daughter got to stand in the middle and bring her arms up in a sweeping circle above her head.  I cheered out loud and my heart welled up with pride.  That’s my girl!  That one right there in the middle who is perfect and wonderful in every way!

After her number, I ran backstage to greet her.  I wanted to hug her neck and tell her I was so proud of her excellent arm-sweeping and toe-pointing.  She didn’t look excited to see me.  She begrudgingly took my hand until we left the dressing room, and then shook me loose.  She moved her shoulders when I tried to put my arm on her back to guide her forward.  “What in the world’s wrong?” I asked. “We were supposed to do a group bow,” she said, like I should have known.  But I was already there, and waiting another hour for a bow on stage amongst seventy other girls was downright silly.  Right then, my daughter caught the loving eye of her grandmother, who said she was the best dancer in the world and told her she’d have driven a thousand miles to see the show. My daughter smiled feebly as we walked over to the trophy table, and as we picked it up and left she tugged at my hand.  “It isn’t even real gold,” she said as she looked down at her prize.  “No,” I said.  “They never are.”

On the way home, my father stopped and got my daughter a lemon slush.  Her face lit up and she smiled the first true, authentic one I’d seen all day.  “Can I get a large one?” she asked.  She clapped her hands together and began to hum in the backseat of the car.  Funny what makes a little girl happy. Not the lights or the stage.  Not the makeup or the attention.  Just a slush, on the way home, with cool air blowing in her face.  She wiped at her lipstick and gave me another sweet smile. As if to say it’s over.  Finally. 

Our daughter likes to live within her own space. Where you can move as slow as you feel.  I’ll miss seeing her arms above her head and the look of her little body in a leotard standing at the barre.  But I cannot force her to be someone she is not.  For she is growing into her own kind of swan, gliding along the top of the water, learning to dwell within the swollen drops of her own rain.

That’s a kind of dance, I suppose.  But it is set to her own music, where there is real gold at the end of the rainbow.

Filed Under: Love, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , ,

Role Play

May 23, 2012 By

It’s no surprise that I went into health law. Being a natural control freak, it has been nice over the past dozen years to be the one in charge. To say to a surgeon, who is so incredibly skilled and calm under pressure, it’s okay. Let me explain how this works. Even though inside, I’m probably laughing a bit, like “this is only a deposition!  If it ends badly, what’s a half-day mediation among friends?” And yet I’m a lawyer, and this is what I know. Surgeons tell me colonoscopies are easy, but you stick me in front of some sleeping guy with a probe, I’d faint on his anesthesia-filled abdomen like a Victorian bride.

I think I’ve worked with doctors long enough to know how to relate to them. They know how to deduce and diagnose and empirically treat.  We lawyers know how to protect and defend and watch over them.  We each play an important role.  And, if my legal knowledge fails to impress a physician, I simply need to sit for an hour listening to their drug-seeking patients explain how they flushed their Norco pills down the toilet by accident while the doctor gets back on schedule.  That wins them over every time.

If you are a drug-seeking patient, by the way, let’s all just agree to come up with more creative stories.  How many times does one actually lean over and inadvertently dump an entire bottle of pills into the toilet?  Pills that are allegedly so vital to your daily survival as a human being?  If this really does happen, you should (1) create some other story that sounds more plausible, maybe one involving aliens; (2) “I left them in my friend’s car in Las Vegas” is never an acceptable substitute; and (3) try to go without your pain medication for a day so you won’t fall asleep or feely loopy while you are learning basic life skills like “hand stability” and “how to open child-safety locks without spraying pills all about the dang place.”   

But whether you’re a doctor or lawyer or rocket scientist, it’s never fun looking at life from the vantage point of a patient.   When I was lying there in a hospital bed in a paper-thin gown so many times, staring at water-stained ceiling tiles, I felt helpless. I hung onto my physician’s every word.  I tried to understand the things they were all collectively telling me, but it all sounded so strange.  You have a detached retina.  You have an unexplainable infection.  Your heart stopped. You have cancer. Those statements were harsh and foreign to my ears.  I wasn’t trained at this.  I was out of my comfort zone. All I saw was a doctor’s mouth moving, throwing my entire world around like balls in the air.  Cataracts and cancer.   Bleeding incisions and scars.  Bouncing up and down, up and down, up and down.  Crazy words I couldn’t control.

Then I realized we are most scared of what we don’t understand. I understand how to be a lawyer.  Pediatricians understand why children get sick.  Surgeons know how to cut. But put a doctor on the witness stand, or try to explain a complex Rule 11 agreement, or why a counter-claim is necessary, and a doctor looks more like a patient who has been told they have a tumor.  What?  Come again?  I’ve not researched that.  I’m not trained in this area.  For this, I am not prepared.  And that’s terrifying.

We all want to feel comfortable.  Some are experts at making an Americano with two raw sugars and a dash of steamed milk.  Others can peel cysts off an ovary with their bare hands.  Others still can argue a case in front of a Federal Judge and an impaneled jury.  But put any one of them in different shoes, and there would be mass hysteria.  Vascular surgeons building houses?  Internists writing contracts? Lawyers fixing air conditioning units?  Unacceptable.  Type A people like us need to be in control.  That’s why we chose a career that only some can attain.  Multiple degrees somehow shield us from failure.   From attack.  From fear.

But to be a child of God, we must strip off the titles.  It doesn’t really matter whether you pour coffee or set broken bones.  God doesn’t give you more points for writing contracts than for fixing sewer lines.  We all simply have a role to play in this world.  Trust me – if a thoracic surgeon is diagnosed with a terminal illness, he is no better off than a gardener or a street sweeper.   Titles nor residency nor a thousand letters of reference matter.  They all just float like dead leaves to the ground.  People crunch atop them on the way to their office buildings and news stands and subway stops.  Student loans and years of education are useless, ready to be bagged up and thrown away, never to be thought of again.

Self-importance has no role to play in a Christian’s life.  We aren’t meant to find our worth in a material world.  Through our titles or careers.   Through our lineage or trust or years of service.  We are simply designed to serve.  To seek God’s truth and wisdom as vigorously as we pursue our degrees, and when we feel that we know enough, realize that we have so much left to learn.  After all – we all have scars, and bleeding incisions, and cancer that invades our purest intentions.  We are all drug-seekers of some kind, although our drug is power and control and feeling too comfortable rather than something we abuse in pill form.

Someday, in the blink of an eye, it will all be over.  On that day, we walk in tandem. The drug seekers.  The doctors.  The lawyers.  The latte makers.  We are all on the same level field, playing a role until the curtain comes down.

Filed Under: Career, Eye, Health, Inspirational, Religion Tagged With: , , , , ,

one liners, part III

May 19, 2012 By

Right now, my two-year-old son is speaking in short and very direct sentences like “me eat” and “I do it.”  There is also the ever-so-popular “MINE” and “No night night, mama.  Applesauce.” Although my son’s extreme narcissism and obsession with slapping my face while saying “no hit” at the same time are great fun, for now I’m focusing on what my daughter has said in the last few weeks that bears repeating.  Here goes:

  • “Can you read to my imaginary friends?  I read to them all the time, and they want to hear from someone new.”
  • “So it’s murder to kill someone else but solders can do it in battle and that’s okay?” “Honey!” I yell.  My husband was changing clothes after work. “Your daughter’s got a question for you!” That’ll teach him to come home late.
  • “Charlie said that Texas Tech smells like pee pee, and then William said the University of Texas smells like roses,” she said.  “What did you say to all that?” I asked. “I told him roses stink.” Then she paused for a few moments.  “Well, roses don’t really stink, I know, but some might.  And at least they are very strong smelling.”
  • “For (my brother’s) birthday, I’m going to make him a pretend laptop out of construction paper. But it’s only going to have ten buttons and no mouse.”
  •  “I read the entire book about Davy Crocket and I don’t see why he’s such a hero. But I skipped some parts.”
  • “I have a bug bite on my back and it itches like crazy.  If only it were on my elbow. That would be so much better.”
  • “Did I fail to mention I hate strawberries?  Because right here on my plate I see strawberries.”
  • “It’s just regular milk, I know, but I’m pretending that it’s chocolate.”
  • “I don’t understand why you’re so snappy,” my daughter tells me one morning. It involved me telling her to put on her shoes seventeen-thousand times.  But whatever.
  •  “Guess what? My teacher is having a boy and she is going to name him either Truman or Moses.”  “Really?” I asked.  “Well I don’t really know,” she tells me.  “But that’s what I think she should name him.”
  • “I always want mac-and-cheese.  If you ever wonder, that’s what I want.”

To live in a five-year-old’s world for a day, I swear.

Filed Under: Humor, Love, Motherhood Tagged With: , , ,

brown paper stories

May 16, 2012 By

I hate to use the word artist to describe myself.  I’m not covered in tattoos and don’t work a night shift at IHOP.  I’m not struggling to make ends meet, recovering from a drug habit, or walking around with paint on my elbows.  I’m a lawyer, for goodness sakes.  The amount of artistry it takes to craft a well-rounded, persuasive argument is only appreciated by a select few.  To everyone else, lawyers are just suits whose mouths open and shut and money comes funneling into their pockets every time they answer the phone.  As if.

But even now that I’ve made a conscience decision to walk away from practicing law, it’s hard.  Hard to call myself a writer.  Hard to create things simply for the pleasure of creating them.  I feel a need to aim that ambition, the same one that fueled me through honors classes and bar exam courses and clerkships, directly into the heart of the creative process.  It’s not good enough just to write.  Any fool with a laptop can do that. I need to be validated.  I need to be paid.  I need for this to mean something.

But art is subjective.  What makes one person laugh or cry or want to call their mother might be pure drivel to another.   My husband read a blog post once that I found particularly emotional and decided to point out an inverted quotation mark.   Thanks, dude.  Glad that hit you right there in the ticker.

When I was writing my novel, I stayed up into wee hours of the night pouring my heart into the story.  I went away for writing weekends.  I traveled to Upstate New York and rode cabs alone in Manhattan and hired babysitters in the stale Texas heat just to finish.  It took almost four years of painstaking rewrites and hundreds of deleted pages.  An editor helped me comb out the background narrative and useless rookie mistakes.  But then, I expected my hard work to pay off.  I would find an agent.  I would get published.  My words would matter.  

And yet here I sit, after putting two children to bed and wiping off kitchen counters and throwing in yet another load of whites.  I don’t have the look of an artist, sitting here in black-rimmed glasses and an oversized t-shirt, with a box of triscuits and a jar of peanut butter by my side.  I instead resemble a slightly-crazy person, ignoring reality and doing what I didn’t think possible:  I’m giving in to my instincts. I’m not published.  I don’t have tangible validation.  And yet I keep on going because I simply cannot imagine a world in which I have to stop.  I put my hands over my ears when that small little voice starts screaming in my head.  No one cares.  Quit while you’re ahead.  You’ll never make it as a writer.  Damn you, little voice.  You are meaningless.

I thought perhaps I’ve not been praying enough, or listening enough, or being present enough in this writing process.  I stopped myself tonight, standing right in front of the microwave, and prayed that God would reveal to me the best path.  How I should be reaching people.  Or perhaps learning not to care so much about what those people think.  After all, I can’t move mountains.  My name might not be in marquee lights. But I can certainly speak with passion – words driven straight from the heart that was formed and blessed by God in my mother’s womb.  My heart is ravenous with emotion.  My soul is aching to be heard.  My hands tremble at the thought of writing about sadness and joy in a way that has never been done before.

And then it comes to me: God’s listening.  I create simply for the joy of creating.  My words are an offering and a sacrifice, and I can imagine no other audience that matters more.

I am an artist. I offer up these small gifts, my brown-paper stories filled with sparkling words.  And that matters, even if no one else is paying attention.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Religion, Uncategorized, Writing Tagged With: , , , , ,

Give bran a chance

May 16, 2012 By

I’m not a huge fan of blogs that are only about cooking.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love to bake, and there’s nothing quite so enchanting as seeing a Nikon zoom into a bowl of flour and watching frame-by-frame as the butter is mixed in.  There goes the sugar.  Is that unbaked dough?  Are those hands molding it into the shape of bread? Riveting. But sometimes food is just so important that you need to talk about it.  Like bran muffins.  Let’s discuss.

Bran muffins are usually reserved for the advanced-in-age-crowd with intestinal blockages.  That little raisin-dotted hockey puck acts like a snowplow, dragging its cardboard-tasting self through your colon for a thorough Spring cleaning.  It’s the muffin that’s left at Starbucks after the others have gone. It’s the muffin at a conference room breakfast buffet that you pass up for the crappy plain bagel.  It’s unloved.

But fiber is good for all ages, and I just knew there was a bran muffin recipe out there that didn’t taste like wood shavings.  So I searched online and baked and adapted, and came up with the following.  I decided to rename these muffins “really tasty blueberry banana muffins,” considering the negative PR associated with bran.  It’s our little secret.

So in essence, you mix the ingredients below in a large bowl in no specific order, in between warming up your lukewarm coffee and changing diapers, and then spoon the chunky mess into muffin tins and bake at 375 degrees until they seem done. I promise – no pictures of my grungy hands dripping the batter into my beat-up muffin pans.  You can imagine.

Really Tasty Blueberry Banana Muffins

(Not bran.  Don’t call them bran or your family will rush out for donuts.  Stress the really tasty part.  Enunciate blueberry)

1 1/2 cups All-Bran buds (it looks like dog food, but it’s actually not)

1 cup buttermilk (this gives it a wonderful flavor)

1/3 cup vegetable oil (please don’t sub in applesauce. You’re making healthy bran muffins for crying out loud.  Live a little)

1 egg

2/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I just pour a splash in.  Use your judgment)

A few shakes of cinnamon

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 banana – all mashed up with a fork

1 cup frozen or fresh blueberries

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

You will be surprised at the looks on your family’s face when they eat them.  No one throws up.  No one says “I’ll have that cheese danish instead, thanks.”  There actually is no cheese danish offered, which makes that last part work out so well.

Finally – a bran muffin that’s worthy of love. You might eat so many you’ll send your husband to the grocery store for more toilet paper.  But whatever you do, don’t give up on healthy food.  Just tweak it and re-make it and rediscover ways to make boring things taste wonderful. Even if that means changing the name. Even if it means an extra tablespoon of sugar or nuts or berries.  Even if it means telling your kids it’s really tasty. Because it is. Trust me on this. Even your colon will thank you.

Filed Under: Cooking, Humor Tagged With: , , , ,

apple of my eye

May 14, 2012 By

I was annoyed.  Here we were on a budget and my husband was off buying random things for his computer.  Didn’t he understand I’d see the bill?  Didn’t he get it that we are trying to be frugal?  The conversation went something like this:

“I see you bought something at the apple store,” I said.  I was scrubbing food off plates after dinner.

“Huh?”  He looks up at me from his magazine, looking empty and confused.

“You don’t recall what you spent hundreds of dollars on just last week?”  I rolled my eyes.  I scraped harder.

“It must have been some kind of mistake.  Maybe they mischarged me for something I bought on itunes.”

“Not possible,” I said.  “It said apple, not itunes. You should call them.”

The following week, I emailed my husband the 1-800 number listed next to the charge on the credit card bill.

“Did you call?” I asked one morning.  “The apple store, I mean?  That’s a lot of money to be overcharged.”

“Back off,” he said in a hurry.  “I’m in meetings all morning.  But I will.”

On Saturday, I brought it up again, how crazy it was that he didn’t remember what he bought, or that apple really overcharged him that much, and reminded him that we had to cut back.  Did he not take this seriously? Why was he acting like it was no big deal?  Am I the only one around here that worries about such things?

But Sunday was Mother’s Day, so I let it go.  Early in the morning, while the sun was just peering around the horizon, my husband got out of bed and woke the children.  They all came bounding in, singing and yelling.  “Happy Mother’s Day!” my daughter shrieks, handing me a poem she had written and a box she claimed to wrap herself.  Her hair was wild and messy as she sat cross-legged in a tie-dye shirt and underwear on our king size bed. “Open it!” she yelled.

I start to unwrap it, and I see the little familiar white logo peering around the wads of tape. A brand new iphone.  From the apple store. My heart sank.  All that scolding and nagging, for goodness sakes.  I felt ashamed.  “I saved up my allowance to pay for it,” my husband says as he points to a wad of cash in the top drawer.  Just put it in the bank and use it on the card.  He had a glimmer in his eye, like he pulled one over on me.  Like he got me good. And he did.

I hugged my kids.  I read the poem with gusto.  I ripped open the box and hugged my husband for the secret he held onto for weeks.  I smiled at the gesture.  For the love and sacrifices and surprises my family has always shown me in my short stint at motherhood.  I texted my husband later, on my brand new phone.

You make it so easy to be a mother, it said.

I love apples.  You can throw them in a bag on the way to the park.  You can surround them with cinnamon and bake them in a crust. Or you can talk into them, and hear your husband’s deep voice on the other end telling you he’ll be home soon.  Kiss my boy for me.  Keep the soup warm.

My family is so fun to love.  They make my heart swell and I just want to wallow in them for the rest of my days.  It’s not the poems or expensive gifts or trips to the vegetarian place I love (that they hate) that matter.  It’s that I get to see the members of my family open their eyes every morning, one by one.  I get to wrap their sleepy bodies in my arms at night.  It’s the expressions on their faces when they are excited, and the longing need for me when they are weeping.  It’s the surge of sweetness I feel when I touch them, like a slice of warm apple pie on my tongue.

Filed Under: Embarrassing Moments, Inspirational, Motherhood Tagged With: , , , , ,

Advice for my daughter

May 9, 2012 By

My dear daughter,

You are so precious at this age.  Everything I do is right, and true, and my kisses are like pink bubble gum sparkles on your cheeks.   I am taking it all in that you love me so.   But soon, you will see the ugly and cruel side of life.  I will stop making sense to you, and you just might not like me as much.   I always hope that you’ll laugh at me and consider me wise, even into my age-induced Alzheimer’s days to come.  But in the meantime, consider this advice:

  • When in doubt on what spice to use (whether it’s in eggs or potatoes), use Herbs de Province. You can’t go wrong.
  • You will someday be tempted with many vices.  Some are minor, but others have lifetime consequences.   Please don’t experiment with drugs.  They kill.  Got it?  Are we clear on this?
  • If your clothes are too tight, it looks like you’re tying to hard.  Let your body speak for itself.
  • Embrace who you are.  If someone suggests you to change your character, find a way to distance yourself.  Such people are toxic.
  • Laugh all the time.  It’s good for your soul.
  • Find true friends, and work to keep them.  They are more precious than diamonds.
  • Pray.
  • If you are engaged and you have the tiniest shred of doubt that the man you are about to marry isn’t right for you, walk away.  It can be the day before.  It can be the day off.  I promise I won’t judge.  Just politely return all the presents and keep your head held high.
  • Kids are glorious, but don’t rush into having them.  Enjoy your freedom.
  • Don’t eat low-fat ice cream.  Go for the real stuff.
  • A meal that takes a long time to prepare, with excellent ingredients, is worth it.  It shows how much you appreciate your guests.
  • Always, always, always tell the truth.  Lies are corrosive.
  • Nothing you could ever do in this world would cause me to stop loving you. Please remember that however hard you fall, I’m here to catch you.
  • Look for character traits in a man that your father has: strength, honor, loyalty, and wit.  Because you’ll be married to him for a long time, and you need to laugh through many trials.
  • Never email thank-you notes.  I have on occasion, but I’m not proud of it.
  • Reading fiction is never a waste of time.  It cultivates a garden in your brain filled with glorious blooms of words and characters.  Speaking of, read Atlas Shrugged, and Jane Eyre.
  • Wash your hands to the tune of Happy Birthday.  Twice.
  • Please know that when I die, I’m not forever gone.
  • Live life with wild abandon.  Freely and fully, knowing you are a child of God, rich in spirit and talents.
  • Sing and play any instrument you can.  Music is the closest you’ll ever feel to heaven.
  • Cut all your hair off at least once in your life.
  • Travel to Europe.
  • When you think there’s nothing left – when life is bitter and cruel and seems like it’s suffocating you – laugh.  Then laugh some more.  Always find the funny, because it’s there like a rough-cut jewel.

In your five-year-old world, I know so much.  But soon, when I fall out of favor in your eyes, I hope you take these bits of advice to heart.  My sweet young daughter, light of my life, child of my heart. . . It’s a rough world out there, but the battle has been won long before you entered it.  Your job is just to navigate through the best you can, with your head held high, smiling in the light of the morning sun.

Be the woman I know you can be.

Mom

Filed Under: Love, Motherhood, Religion Tagged With: , , , ,

Brushstrokes

May 8, 2012 By

The artwork of Georges Seurat is ugly when you stand up close.  The compilation of colors and brushstrokes and dots make no sense when you’re staring directly at them.  You go take a look at Monet’s Water Lilies from a foot away and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. I think life is that way.  Up close, it’s messy and ugly and disorganized.  But just take a look how breathtaking it is when viewed as a whole.

CAMILLE PISSARRO: “Landscape at Pontoise”, 1874.

Just this week, I tried to capture unique, individual moments.  Globs of paint just slapped on the page.

  • I walked into my daughter’s room and my son had happily covered himself in black Sharpie marker. I mean all over. On his legs and his hands and his stomach. “What in the world have you done?”
  • “Don’t you ever swing with your brother walking behind you,” I yell to my daughter as my son lands face-down in the dirt, screaming.  “Swing! Swing!” he says to me as if I didn’t just see what happened.  Then she starts crying because she feels bad and says  he shouldn’t have been there to start with.
  • “Can you read just one more chapter?” my daughter begs.  “Just one more?” She cuddles down into the pillow with sleepy eyes.
  • “You eat that carrot,” I say.  “It’s good for you.  There’s just one more on your plate, for goodness sakes.  It’s not like I’m asking you to eat a mouthful of dirt. Why are you making that face?”
  • “Ice creeeeeeam!” my son shrieks.  “Not for breakfast, kiddo,” I say in return. He throws himself down on the floor in protest.
  • I look at my daughter, with a headband and a ruffled purple skirt and a shirt that says Girls Rock.  She’s wearing shades with Tinkerbell on them and her hair is all messy. “But why are you wearing sweat pants underneath?” I ask.  “It’s 90 degrees out.” She shrugs.
  • “Is that hail I hear?” my husband says, as he rushes outside to check the garden.
  • “Time for bath,” I said as my son took off running.  I had to chase him all over the living room while he squealed with delight.  I finally grabbed his shirt and pulled him to the floor.  “Noooooo!” he yelled.  “No bath!”
  • “Let’s move,” I say to both kids.  We are late, as usual.  My daughter’s pony tail looks horrible.  It’s all lumpy.  And is that a stain on her jumper?
  • “I’ll just have Wheaties,” my husband said.  “But I made chicken pot pie,” I whined.  “I worked so hard and made the crust and everything.”  I’m not proud to admit it, but I think I stomped my foot a little.
  • Why is there a pair of scissors lying in the bathroom?  Why is this toothpaste open?  And why, for the love of everything in this world, do you kids always run around messing things up the very moment I clean them?
  • Re-fold that towel.  Put away your shoes.  No, not in the middle of the floor, but in your closet.  Please don’t hit your sister.  No, you can’t have another juice box.  Did you get into my makeup? PICK THAT UP, for crying out loud!

But when you stand back from afar, it’s a blend of screaming and laughing and crying that somehow makes up a family.  It’s the texture and pattern of our journey.  I try and gather up all these tiny brushstrokes in my heart.  At the end, I’ll look back and think to myself –

Oh dear God.  How breathtakingly beautiful.

Filed Under: Inspirational, Love, Motherhood, My life Tagged With: , , , ,

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