On Writing and the Silent Treatment

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, I wrote my first story, a ten-page epic in neat printing about a romance between Tom Thumb and Thumbelina. I received a Certificate of Achievement from Miss Brittingham, my third-grade teacher, for Writing Stories and I won first place.

Fast-forward a bit to my college years. While I was a fierce and loyal correspondent (the kind who writes letters, not the kind who reports from the Middle East), I didn’t consider myself a Writer. But I wrote, mostly in a daily journal. And then somehow, (I can’t remember how now brown cow), I joined the staff of the campus newspaper.

I was supposed to write a column about the music department, but I never actually did. Instead, I wrote essays about whatever happened to flutter through my brain. And the newspaper published them.

I wasn’t very impressed with myself, though, because the newspaper was a rinky-dink operation at a rinky-dink school and big-whoop-de-doo. Then someone from the publishing department of the Assemblies of God (my denomination at the time) contacted me and asked permission to reprint one of my articles, a piece called, “Life Without Elbows.” And they paid me.

I was a published writer, much to my shock.

Fast-forward a few more years. Having viewed my byline and tasted the satisfaction of publication, I longed to Be A Writer. I bought a Writer’s Market. While we waited for a birth-mother to choose us, to make us parents, I puttered around at the computer and sent off queries. I went to a writer’s conference in Oregon. I submitted stuff. I received rejections. I sent out more queries. And got more rejections.

Birth-mothers? Rejecting me.
Publishers? Rejecting me.
I took it personally.

I chronicled all of this in my journals, painstakingly recording in ballpoint ink my anguish and the failures and angst, the wholehearted brand of angst requiring extra time and devotion. I picked up a couple of assignments for very small publications, received checks for minuscule amounts, accumulated more rejections, both professionally and personally, kicked myself for being a failure, sobbed on the bathroom floor, and then became a mother to twin baby boys.

I still wrote, but only in letters and journals. It turned out that as a mother, I had no time to nourish my angst about writing, no idle moments to worry about whether I’d ever Be A Writer. Once or twice a year, I’d receive an assignment, send back my work and get a check for $90. Sometimes, I’d read a terrible novel and think, I could do better than that. And then I’d read something fantastic and I’d think, I could never write like that. I was equal parts optimism and despair.

Eventually, I gave away my Writer’s Market. I stopped querying magazines. I set aside the whole writing thing. I had no time, no clear thoughts beyond, “Will they ever stop waking up at 5:45 a.m.?”

The years rushed by in fits and starts and then, lo and behold, my last baby stopped being a baby. I began to ask myself, Self, what should I be when I grow up? I settled on earning money, imagined having a Real Career, an identity beyond being someone’s wife and someone’s mother. And I hatched a plan to become a nurse.

I made my list and checked it twice. I realized it would be wise to wait another year before beginning this venture. And as weeks slipped by, I realized I didn’t really want to go to school. I didn’t really want to go to work. I didn’t really want a boss, a schedule . . . but I wanted a handy answer to the question, “So, what do you do?” I wanted health benefits and dental insurance and a decent paycheck with my name on it.

But at what price? What would I have to give up to become Nurse Mel? Time with my young daughter and growing sons? Schooling my kids at home? Being available to help my husband during times when his schedule is erratic and demanding? The flexibility to play on sunny afternoons and to spend weekends with my family?

Just as my youngest child grows more independent, would I close the door on those long-coveted hours of solitude and blocks of time in which to write? Would I exchange my chance to write (with no guaranteed of success) for employment as a nurse with its steady paycheck?

I’m pragmatic and the silly idea of turning away from a sure thing to pursue what will most likely turn out to be an unsure thing pinches at my brain. I am sensible, low-maintenance, with an abundance of common sense. And it doesn’t make any sense to pursue a far-fetched dream.

(Especially when you are me and you respond to arguments and adversity with the silent treatment. Try it. Make me mad and I’ll stop speaking to you. Maybe forever. I know! It’s a terrible character flaw and, being aware, I fight against it. But now I realize that when the universe argued with me through all those rejection slips, I decided to give it–the universe, writing, dreaming,the whole kit and caboodle–the silent treatment. Fine! Reject me? I’ll reject you!)

I should become a nurse. Clearly. But when would I write? And could I abandon the idea of focusing on writing entirely? Should I cut loose the dream of writing like child releases a party balloon into the far blue sky?

One night, my husband and I chatted. I told him I worried about schooling and scheduling and working. He listened to me fret. And then he said, “You know, I’m a pastor. Sometimes, I think about going to school and becoming something else, but the truth is, I’m a pastor. You are a writer. You could go to school and become a nurse–and I would support you in that–but you are a writer. Even if it means we never have a new car, you should not make a decision based on the money.”

He gave me permission to be what I am. And then I gave myself permission, too. I set aside the thought of going to nursing school and let myself think of pursuing writing professionally. I never mentioned it here because, really, how embarrassing is it to say, “I changed my mind. I’m abandoning my plans. I’m insane,” when you were all so nice and encouraging and supportive?

And what if I fail? I suffer periods of self-doubt and eye-rolling. I comfort myself in those moments of massive anxiety with the assurance that I could still go to school–the door is ajar–starting next year, and work out the details and weave together a life that wouldn’t leave too many strings dangling. Maybe. I could.

Meanwhile, I write here. Blogging has been a directional sign for me, a way to keep on the road towards writing professionally. The daily discipline of writing, the practice of choosing words, the craft of stringing them together brings me great satisfaction. I’ve been surprised by the joy of this medium.

Not long ago, I had a tiff with a good friend. I responded with my typical, “Fine! You are dead to me!” maturity, which was working for me, sort of. Then she emailed me and said, “Hey, what’s up?” and I said nothing. The words were too big to fit into my mouth and I couldn’t speak them.

She asked again. I spit out a tiny word. I might have never responded and missed out on the pleasure of a repaired friendship. The silent treatment could have been the demise of that pocket of my heart. (I am indebted to her.)

Meanwhile, an opportunity arose to blog for money. Knowing that twenty-eight million blogs exist, I snorted into my Diet Coke with Lime and closed that email. As if! Me! I’ve been stamped “REJECT,” remember? I gave it the old silent treatment. But the suggestion spoke again. And a snippet of a voice inside my head said, “Why not you? Remember, you are a writer. You admitted it.”

So I gathered my wits, wrote some samples, sent my application and waited for a response with the expectation one has playing the Lotto. One week passed. Another week. An email arrived: “We received a particularly strong batch of applications for this position and our choice was a difficult one . . . ” That’s right. It was not me.

(Boo, hiss, climb under the desk and weep.)

But it went on, “Your application stood out as one of the very best and we think your voice would be a great addition . . .”

SAY WHAT? From a Snoopy Certification of Achievement to this . . . and maybe more. I’m stunned. I am now a professional blogger. (The universe and I are on speaking terms again.)

Details to follow.

(This blog will remain the same. Have no fear. I’m guessing it’ll be a few more weeks before I have more information.)

Four Paragraphs = Nothing

I’ve been sitting here for a good three or four minutes, half-listening to “American Idol” and half-pondering what to say. I thought about writing about divorce and how my parents’ divorce affected me. I considered discussing how my viewpoints about prisons has shifted over the years. I racked my brain for some amusing anecdote about my children. I scratched my head, bounced my knee, chewed the inside of my cheek and came to no conclusions.

I might have told you that my husband will be out of town this weekend and most of next week . . . and that I volunteered to babysit my 11-year old niece and 8-year old nephew for three or four days. I could have rambled on and on about how I intend to survive these days alone, with no adult backup (movies and novels and 94% fat-free popcorn, mostly).

(Oh, and there goes cute Ace, booted off American Idol. I have never voted, not once, nor do I ever plan to vote. But he is a cute boy.)

But I can’t really think of anything to say.

Two for the Price of One, Lucky Me

First, an admission. I’m not big on Easter baskets and I’ve never mentioned the mythical Easter bunny to my children, not even to blackmail them into behaving better. A couple of years ago, I forgot to give the children their chocolate Easter bunnies and over a year passed before I removed the stale chocolates and threw them in the trash. No one noticed or remarked.

This year, I prepared ahead of time. I gathered four baskets, suspended small stuffed bunnies in plush eggs from each handle, nestled paper Easter grass into the baskets and place a chocolate bunny and some lollipops in each one. Then I stashed them in the front closet, right behind the vacuum cleaner.

And that’s where they remain.

They children never noticed on Sunday–which could be because the younger children had candy from the church Easter egg hunt and one of the twins was ill. Today, two days after Easter, my daughter remembered the chocolate Easter bunny one of the baby’s moms gave her. First, I gave her the dismembered bunny head (she nibbled one bite) and later, handed over the whole bunny body which rests in peace on the coffee table, looking like a cadaver picked over by a vulture.

My son noticed and said, “HEY! You didn’t give us our chocolate Easter bunnies!” His indignant attitude annoyed me, so I just said, “Huh.” And he carried on a little, but I thought, I can’t, I won’t present Easter baskets now because then she will have two chocolate bunnies and really, now is a bad time. Maybe later. Plus, I won’t reward his stinky behavior.

Tomorrow, maybe, I’ll get out those baskets, but please, Son, don’t ask me again or I’ll have to leave them in the closet.

* * *

My daughter has had an uneasy relationship with nap time. When she was a year old, she boycotted nap time for four straight months. Oh, she might doze in my arms while I nursed her, but if I shifted in my chair or placed her in her crib, she screamed as if a swarm of bees flew into her diaper. She’d be awake for twelve hours and sleep for twelve hours.

Then, she napped again. And so it went for some time until she stopped napping again. I began laying down with her on my bed and she’d fall asleep, quite against her will. For a long stretch, I may have napped more than she did, but the day came when she started napping alone again.

Lately, though, she has stopped napping. Sometimes, she falls asleep inadvertently, but mostly, no naps.

I do, however, insist on a quiet time. The rest of the kids take naps and while they do, she lies on my bed and watches PBS. She’s allowed to come downstairs when Clifford the Big Red Dog ends.

Today she did not want to abide by our agreement. I had to insist. She shrieked and stomped and snot ran down her darling little face, but I stood firm. In fact, I plopped her into her crib and went downstairs for two minute intervals, returning upstairs to ask, “Do you want to watch The Berenstain Bears now? And when she’d shout, “I WANT TO GO DOWNSTAIRS!” I’d say, “Do you want to stay in your crib or watch t.v.?” and when she’d scream, “I WANT TO GO DOWNSTAIRS!” again, I’d close the door and return downstairs for two minutes.

This battle of wills lasted approximately twenty minutes, when she decided she did want to watch t.v. after all.

After dinner, I took her to the local park and she frolicked for almost forty-five minutes before I told her it was time to go. She walked to the van, no complaints, then climbed in and passed her car seat and sat in her brother’s seat. I pointed out that she needed to sit in her car seat. She refused.

I insisted.
She refused.
I insisted.
She refused.
I explained, then exited the van, locked the doors and walked thirty feet away where I sat on a bench for one minute exactly before returning and insisting she sit in her car seat.

She refused.
I insisted.
She refused.
I returned to the bench where I watched her pound the van windows and scream like she was being burned alive inside the van.
I waited two minutes, then returned.

At one point, I forced her into her car seat (“You may get into your seat by yourself or I will put you in your seat.”) but she unbuckled her belt and stood up, sobbing wildly.

A different parent, the kind who keeps a wooden spoon in her purse, would have beat her scrawny little butt at this point, but I don’t spank anymore. I was determined to outlast this thirty-two pound human being. Outwit, outsmart and outlast.

We did this for, oh, about thirty minutes, before she decided she wanted me to hold her. (To that point, all she’d said was, “I WANT TO SIT IN THE OTHER SEAT!”) I held her, explained where she needed to sit so we could go home and she agreed.

I put her in her seat, buckled her up and sped home while she worked herself into a lathered frenzy, yelling all the way home, “I WANT TO SIT IN THE OTHER SEAT! MOMMY! I WANT TO SIT IN THE OTHER SEAT!”

When we were within sight of our house, she unbuckled and clambered out of her car seat. Fine. When I parked, she refused to leave the van, so I carried her out. She struggled to get down, so I strode into the house, telling my husband, “She’s throwing a fit.” She trailed after me, weeping.

I put on her pajamas.
She stopped crying.
We rocked and watched Spongebob together.
And finally, bedtime.

I hope that tomorrow she remembers that she cannot win. I am a formidable foe and I cannot be beat. I am fortified with eleven vitamins and minerals and Diet Coke with Lime. Beware.

I Found Your Missing Sock

Last night, while folding laundry, I came across a sock which does not belong to anyone in my family. How can this happen? I pondered these things in my heart. I thought perhaps I had solved the age-old riddle: where do single socks go when they disappear? Perhaps they are teleported from your dryer to mine. This is not the first time a random sock has appeared in my house. [Cue ominous music.]

Teleportation. That must be it. Mystery solved.

Until this morning, when I found this. The matching sock. Which I never purchased. This pair of socks is a obviously a set of intruders, interlopers, maybe even spies. But from whence did they come?

I cannot comment further due to the ongoing investigation.

Reporting live from Washington State, this is Mel, Queen of Socks, signing out.

Viruses, French Women, Pregnant Stars, Cellulite and Diet Coke All Tied Neatly Into A Bow

I think my teenage twins are faking their illness. I am a skeptic at heart, a trait which won me a few enemies on AOL message boards, but I am trying to overcome my disbelief and play along with them. I am certain that one of my twins was ill yesterday, but today he seems okay. His brother, quick to sense an opportunity to avoid doing schoolwork, cries out, “Oh my stomach hurts!” whenever I look at him cross-eyed. So, I say nothing.

Tomorrow, they take the
Washington State Assessment of Student Learning, otherwise known as the “WASL,” and/or “A Big Waste of Time.” Testing (even for school-at-home students, because we are affiliated with the public school and not traditional homeschoolers) will take place over the course of six days, which means I have six fewer days in which to shove the knowledge they are supposed to acquire down their throats. Oh wait. That didn’t sound very educationally enlightened, did it?

Yesterday at church I heard that two of the children I babysit were home (on Easter Sunday!) throwing up. The three and a half year old boy and the almost-seventeen month old boy both caught my daughter’s stomach virus. I am frustrated by this because I am so careful to wash my hands (while I sing the ABC’s) and in fact, my fingers are cracked and sore from the constant washing. But all my efforts are for naught . . . the viruses transmit as if I’ve been splashing everyone with toilet water and teaching them all to wipe their snot on their neighbor’s crackers. So, my house is empty today, courtesy of the virus that has caused working parents to stay home for a day with their sick offspring. (I only rejoice in my quiet house, not the illnesses. Really.)

I have to say that this day has been gloriously quiet, aside from my chatterbox daughter’s never-ending requests for something to eat. Today she has asked for a waffle with syrup, saltine crackers (“square crackers”), granola bar, apple with no skin, Cheez-its (“orange crackers”), Cheerios, cookies, oatmeal, fish sticks, ice cream, and grapes. She hasn’t eaten all these things, and, in fact, I’ve begun to think of her as my personal petite French woman, who eats only three bites and thus, maintains her sleek and lean thirty-two pound figure.

So, in between fetching snacks, I’ve worked on laundry, cleared out my bill basket, (that wicker holding tank for paperwork and bills), sent off the taxes (woo-hoo, a $40 tax return, whatever shall we do with our windfall?) and our estimated quarterly taxes (what fun to write a check directly to the government four times a year) and finished writing an actual letter to put in an actual envelope with a real live stamp.

And now, a random thought about famous people.

Katie Holmes and Angelina Jolie–I couldn’t care less about their pregnancies, nor their births. Do I want to see a paparazzi-stolen photograph of their post-baby bellies all jiggly like jello and criss-crossed with road-map patterned stretch marks? Uh . . . no? Okay, well, only a little so I can compare my own baby-ravaged body and feel a kinship with them. Admit it. You do, too. (You were also excited to see the headline reading “Cellulite of the Stars,” on that magazine by the check-out lane and admit it, you looked at the pictures of skinny bottoms clad in bikinis and were secretly pleased to see the tell-tale ripples of cellulite. Or perhaps I’m projecting again.)

As for newborn celebrity baby photos? I don’t care. No one does. We just want to see the postpartum mother and gasp at how good she looks while hoping she looks horrible. That’s the truth. All babies look the same three days after they are born (except for your beautiful baby).

The teens just came out to fix themselves a snack. Yeah, they’re real sick.

(And now? A true confession. I have a 2-liter bottle of Diet Coke with Lime in my refrigerator and I’m going to go drink more of it. Right now. A girl has to have a vice and that’s mine.)

Easter

Posted by Picasa Here she is right before she ate a Hershey’s kiss and dribbled chocolate down the front of her Easter dress, which, of course, I purchased for $15.99 last year at Marshall’s on clearance and fully intended to resell on eBay to finance next year’s Easter couture.

The children all looked pretty good, at least for ten minutes until the boys’ shirt came untucked and the knees of the pants became muddy during the post-church service Easter egg hunt. I couldn’t help being pleased with my savvy shopping skills–they were outfitted entirely in clothing purchased on clearance at Marshall’s, (aka My Favorite Store) and Value Village. Every item looked new and carried an satisfactory label (Ralph Lauren, Dockers, The Gap).

After church, I finished cooking dinner and my mother surprised me by bringing my grandmother (now 100-years old and counting) as a guest. We had a lovely meal, except that one of my teenagers (I have teenagers now!) has the beginning symptoms of the virus and preferred to sleep than eat. He’s headachey, lethargic and on the brink of throwing up.

And two of the little ones I watch were home on this Easter Sunday vomiting. And with uncharacteristic optimism I had thought maybe no one else would get sick.

Oh, and my daughter woke up with a stuffy nose this week. If it’s not one thing, it’s another.

Pow! Wow! How! Now! Mow!?

My daughter is learning what letters are in her name and what letters are in mine. She has the Leapfrog refrigerator magnets which recently returned to the refrigerator following a hiatus due to a spate of annoying flinging of the alphabet around the kitchen. So, an old toy becomes new and lately, we spell our names all day.

Alas, only one copy of each letter is included in the set, so while she can spell her name, I can’t really spell my name: M-O-M because there’s only one M. Being resourceful, though, I simply turned the W upside down. My daughter, being not only cute, but also bright, caught me, though, and refused to let the W lie on its back like a turtle. She flipped it back to its proper position.

And that’s how I became Mow. That’s right, Mow, rhymes with Cow. And Pow. How Now Brown Mow? Pow! Wow! If you ask her, she will tell you that my name is spelled M-O-W.

And in other news, last night, my daughter slept all night and so did I. And today? The carpet cleaner came, I taught my boys Shakespeare and I bought thirteen balloons . . . for tomorrow is the day I become the mother of teenagers. Wow, Mow, How Now?!