SIMPLY WAIT

A NEW BLOG

2012-01-17T22:32:00.000-08:00

I'm still here. At least, I think I am. But I'm also here. Join me.

WHAT WE INHERIT: Dealing with the loss of a parent

2011-05-23T11:43:00.001-07:00

dad's watch, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

My mother never wanted to sell the house, though it sat unoccupied for nearly three years. Mold etched yellow flower-like splotches on the roof, a wilderness encroached in the back yard, vines loosened the shingles as they pressed their feral invasion.

But inside, the house was as it always had been: my father's workshop in the basement in fastidious order, his swivel chair turned toward the slider where he often contemplated his garden or the birds that nested in a bush outside the door, the cupboards and china cabinets overflowing as if the couple who had found such joy in entertaining might return for one more party. Even Louis Armstrong waited on the CD player, poised to belt out Wonderful World on command

It was foolish to keep the place, everyone said, foolish to allow my mother, whose judgment was impaired by her disease, to make the decision, as the prices of homes plummeted and the neighbors complained about the high grass.

But she wept whenever I brought up the subject. "We were so happy there," she said. "Maybe someday I will go back."

I never had the heart to tell her there was no chance of that.

It wasn't until her final illness that I put the house on the market. She died on April 7th and her home sold just a few days later. In the end, the house was emptied in one frenetic weekend. My kids took what they wanted before various local charities came to pick over what remained; clothes, unworn for a decade, were finally bundled up for the Goodwill.

It pained me to see anything go: my father’s old work shirt, his name stitched on the pocket which my mother had worn for weeks after his death--the only thing that kept her warm, she said--a lone piece of speckled plastic dishware from my childhood, a smudged pair of the reading glasses my parents shared. I tried them on, surprised how I had grown into them.

I knew I had to be merciless with the past or it would consume my house just as it threatened to do with my psyche. Some of what I chose to keep was obvious: the objects that had come down through the generations, my mother’s beautiful rugs. While the ruthless trash bags trailed me through the house, I grabbed stacks of photo albums, including a book of crumbling black paper put together by a great-great aunt nearly a century ago. I had no idea who most of the faces were, but I couldn’t throw away their mugging grins for the camera, the photos sent home from World War I, the solemn love of an unknown mother and child.

When I got home, I found I had also grabbed a disproportionate number of time pieces. clocks that marked birthdays and anniversaries, watches that reflected the fashion of the decades in which they were worn. All of them had stopped at different hours, leaving me to wonder what had been going on when they finally wore down. Common moments then. Forever irretrievable now.

After I gathered my clocks and watches together, I took a look at my inheritance: time of an indeterminate amount. The truth is that the living know only two things about the time that remains: 1) It feels endless, long enough to squander on a thousand vanities, useless arguments and distractions and 2) It is not.

If death teaches anything, and I believe it instructs us in far more than we can ever absorb, one of its lessons is that time is not just an esoteric marker that is ticked away on clocks, numbered in heartbeats. It is also a hard, immutable wall that falls when it will. On this side of the wall, you can embrace, tell, forgive, ask for forgiveness, touch, share ice-cream, argue and cede the argument---as if forever. And on the other side, there is only a room full of old clocks and watches, silent and frozen. And a question. What does it mean?

When I lost my father, i set his watch at the hour of his death and hung it in my office. Ten years later it became like so much else--something I looked at, but had stopped seeing.

Only when I took it out to place with the other pieces of time I had collected did I realize that my parents had both died at the same moment: 6:07 p.m..

MALICE: THE DARK VALENTINE

2011-02-15T13:03:00.000-08:00

The other day my weekly newsletter from the always luminous and thought-provoking Fiona Robyn arrived in my in-box. A Confession, Fiona called this week’s message. After sharing some particularly candid insights on the subject of malice, she left her readers with this question:

What kinds of malice and cunning do you use? How does it feel to admit them to yourself or to others?

I immeiately wrote back to say that I planned to blog the answer. But then, I plan to do a lot of things. Fiona wished me luck.

As I’ve said before, procrastination is bad, but it isn’t ALL bad--particularly for a writer. While I put off writing about the forms malice takes in my life, I had a few days to observe them.

Sunday, in the happy aisles of Trader Joe’s, I had an unlikely encounter with my own meanness. The store is always crowded on weekends, but this week, the small space was clotted with an army of desperate lovers seeking pink gerber daisies, scentless roses and Belgian chocolate. Access to the few food items I wanted, not to mention movement, was blocked at every turn by a crush of carts, organic food lovers, and miserable valentines who were obviously infuriated that everyone else was in THEIR way.

Me, too. Infuriated--particularly at the guy who pushed his way in front of me repeatedly and then gave me a scornful look for his trouble. Oh, I know all about people like you, I thought, huffily. People who think they have a divine right to be FIRST wherever they go.

So I glared and I grumbled and I thought a lot of crappy thoughts about how arrogant and selfish the rest of the human race was. And then I stopped. Right there in the frozen food aisle where I’d been jockeying for position near the veggie burritos. I brought my cart to a halt ( I know, almost a crime against humanity in that situation) and took a look at myself.

What was I doing? What kind of thoughts had I invited into my brain? When someone gave me a not so gentle nudge, I moved along--but in an entirely different direction of mind. I made a conscious effort to smile at my fellow grumblers, to compliment them on the flowers spilling from their cart, or their brightly colored scarves. A couple of them shared some satisfying complaints about the madness in the aisles. I couldn’t believe how congenial they all were, how like me! I even smiled at the man with the Divine Right--though that seemed to annoy him even more than my desire to get to the avodcados.

Nice story, right? Particularly the latter part where I come off sounding pretty wise and cool. A regular yogini. But Fiona’s question deserves a more honest response, and the truth is I don’t stop and pivot nearly enough. In fact, the first part of the story probably tells a deeper truth. When I feel malice, I do a lot of talking, both internally and externally. If someone does something I don’t like, I tell them about it--otherwise known as complaining and criticizing. And if that doesn’t work (which it almost ever does) I escalate the volume or the meanness--or both (even less effective.)

And then, when the world refuses to change at my behest, I make my head into an echo chamber. I walk through the house or the hours of my life, carrying on a running monologue about my grievances. I treat my life like the overcrowded aisle of a supermarket where lots of (mostly imaginary) people and things are in my way.

Pretty futile, I admit. I mean, would the man with the Divine Right to be First have changed if I rammed my cart into his posterior and pointed out that he was an arrogant jerk? Or if I walked around thinking about it for a week? Or if I told all of YOU? No, he wouldn’t and he wouldn’t suffer either. Not a whit. But I would--which is what I do with most of my malice. I turn it on myself. Or on those who love me enough to listen.

Which brings me to the second part of Fiona’s question: How does it feel to admit that?

Well, the honest answer is not good. Not good at all. But it also feels just a little bit hopeful. Because if I can say it out loud. If I can write it on the bleeping internet, then maybe I can alter it.

Today one of my Facebook friends posted this quote:

I once had a garden filled with flowers that grew only on dark thoughts but they needed constant attention & one day I decided I had better things to do. ~ Story People

I love the quote, but I also recognize that it’s not so simple. I personally have decided I had better thing to do countless times, but the dark garden continued to create new shoots. When I was younger, maybe even last year when I made Goodwill toward all! my simple little New Years resolution, I believed I could eradicate them for good. Now I suspect that short of achieving Nirvana, the black flowers never entirely go away. They're part of that miserable, wondrous, entirely mysterious thing we call the human condition. But that doesn’t mean you need to water them. Or take them in the house and put them in a vase. Or walk around holding them in your hands like a bride.

Maybe that’s why this year my resolutions were more modest: smile more. And laugh even more often. Notice the color of people’s scarves, and the flowers they buy for people they love.

It won’t make you a saint or eradicate every trace of malice in your heart, but I can tell you one thing I’ve learned since January first: It’s almost impossible to hold a crappy thought in your head when you’re smiling.

DID YOU THINK I WAS YOUR MOTHER?

2011-01-18T13:40:00.000-08:00

When I was growing up, I went to bed every night clutching the pink, child-sized rosary I’d been given for First Communion, and prayed for a sibling. I secretly hoped for a girl like my cousin Alison whose sparkle was so bright that it lingered among the dust motes for days after she packed her dolls into their patent leather case and went home. My phantom sister would play jump rope with me in the basement on rainy days, sing along with the Beatles in the car, and let me paint her nails tangerine. But believing it wasn’t a good idea to tell God what to do, I was quick to add that a brother would be fine, too.

Most of all, I yearned for another voice in the dark on the many nights when my parents’ marriage erupted into confusing accusations and teary counter-attacks , when my father’s ancient hurts rocked our five room ranch until I was sure it would explode. As a small child, I envisioned my imaginary sibling holding my hand when I impulsively rushed out to defend my mother--invariably, ratcheting up the conflict. As teenagers, my sister or brother and I would roll our eyes with uncanny synchronicity and turn up the radio. Why don’t they just get a divorce? we’d say.

Only later when I'd grown up and taken up the challenge of my own relationships would I understand that my parents' union was more complex than I understood, that there were no clear villains, and as in most quarrels, both parties played thier roles. By then I understand that our parents hadn’t so much battled each other, as they’d waged a long and valiant war against my father’s demons. And what’s more, they’d won. The arguments would fade to a silent pantomime. Their love--fierce and affectionate till the end--would leave mw in awe.

Despite my endless Hail Marys, I remained an only child. My father, a classic extrovert, had a thousand friends “who were like brothers to him, ” but he was frequently moody and morose at home, especially when my mother was at work. I listened avidly for the sound of a car crunching gravel, signaling that she was home. The wisest and most loving of parents, she was also the sister to whom I could tell everything, and the friend who listened seriously to my music when adolescence blew through our shaky walls like a tornado. . I remember her taking particular exception to Bob Dylan, especially the line in The Times they are a Changin that exhorted parents to “get out of the new world if you can’t lend a hand.” So what does he want us to do--just go die somewhere? she said, standing, hands on hips, in the doorway of my room. But the next day I heard her singing Blowing in the Wind. Now that’s a beautiful song, she said.

In one of our most memorable games from my younger years, she would emerge in an impromptu costume, her voice comically altered, and ask, “Did you think I was your mother?” Sometimes she played a character from my beloved books; she was Jo in Little Women, Nancy Drew’s boyish best friend, George, or Amelia Aerheart. But it was her villains who made me shriek with delight. She played the wicked witch in the Wizard of Oz, or one of Cinderella’s harpy stepsisters; she pulled the covers up to her chin and cackled like the wolf who’d stolen Grandma. I loved the game, but the best part was when she pulled off her disguise, and returned my mother to me: wide smile, lilting voice, the Elizabeth Arden scented hug that made everything all right.

Now that my mother has Alzheimer’s and I have become her caregiver, it seems as if we play a cruel variation of that game every day. I hear her asking, "Did you think I was your mother?" when she curses her aides with words I never thought she knew or tells them that they’re “fired,” when she accuses me of stealing a coat she hasn’t owned in thirty years. She eyes me warily--the thief who hijacked not only a long forgotten items of clothing, but her life--as if to make sure I don’t make off with anything else. She’s supposed to be the mother, and I the child, she grumbles, as she begrudgingly accepts my help to the bathroom, or a meal I prepared. She’s the one who supposed to be in charge of home, car, job, family. What kind of a usurper do I think I am? The answer, of course, is that I am the very worst kind. I am the next generation, and I’m followed closely by another one that is already prepared to succeed me in tending the house that is our mysterious life on earth.

I admit there have been moments when I’ve returned spite for spite, childishness for childishness. (In this disease, there are stages for family members, too.) I have looked at the tiny, broken, confused woman in her wheelchair, and seen nothing but the impostor who replaced my mother in my childhood game. Once she had performed such a convincing act that I’d been genuinely scared by the role she created. When she announced that she was not my mother, I felt my lip quiver. “Well, where is she then?” I asked before I burst into tears. It's an impulse I've felt more than once in the last couple of years.

And then I catch a glimpse of our shared past--a flash of chrome yellow that recalls the old Volkswagen Beetle she drove in my childhood or a photograph of her vamping in a bathing suit, a reference to the sixties' protests. When the first demonstration against the Vietnam war was held in our working class city, she and my Aunt Kally, marched down Main Street with the disaffected college students who’d organized it on their school break. She marched not because she was politically outspoken--she wasn’t-- but because she had been singed when a boy from our neighborhood was killed there. She would never forget--not to this day--the way his mother wailed throughout the wake. For her early and unpopular stand, my mother had been criticized by a supervisor at work, a conservative priest in our parish--and worst of all, my father. But she had refused to be cowed. If they’d heard that mother’s keening, they would understand, she said, as always, giving those who disagreed with her the benefit of the doubt.

That ability to reflect back the best in others is probably what I miss most. Now I struggle to do the same for her as we navigate the fluid terrain of identity. One of the most most appalling aspects of this disease is that it doesn’t matter what you’ve accomplished in your life or how far you’ve evolved. You could achieve sainthood or Zen mastery, and still end your days in a fugue of petty angers and turmoil. In many ways, dementia is more humbling than death.

Strangely, what keeps me going is my memory of the game we played so many years ago. I am solaced by the countless times my mother returned to me, whole and smiling. And having already lost one parent, I know she will this time, too. When my father was alive, I was often unable to see past the mood changes he could not control. But death silenced his furies and returned the funloving, unfailingly generous, affectionate man who had fought them all his life. Now I wonder how I can ever live up to the kindnesses he did for the multitude he embraced as “friends as close as brothers,” or for our family.

I hate my mother’s suffering and fear her loss--almost in equal measure. In the meantime, I’m grateful for her presence in whatever form. I cannot return her former place in the world to her or eradicate her pain and fear, but I do what I can to make small moments pleasurable. I kiss her face and tell her she’s beautiful every morning. (She is.) I stroke her hand and feed her chocolate. I fill our house with the music she loves: Frank Sinatra, Nat King Cole, and yes, sometimes even that beautiful song Blowing in the Wind.

TAKE A FOLDING CHAIR AND GO TO THE CEMETERY...

2010-12-09T09:37:00.001-08:00

The other day over lunch, a friend recalled an old Irish priest who often gave the above advice to troubled parishioners. That would put their problems in perspective, he said. Everyone at the table laughed, but I found myself gazing out the window of the restaurant at the brisk December day. I shivered imperceptibly as I imagined a harsh wind cutting across the open field of stones, and the relentlessness of a grey sky.

Maybe it’s my Irish blood, but the idea has its appeal for me. In fact, a couple of my fictional characters spend an inordinate amount of time doing just that. The first is a child who worries that his dead mother is out alone in the cold and rain. He goes to the cemetery, not so much to reflect or even to mourn, but to feel the chill and storm, the life that can no longer touch her. The second character, who broods over the love she lost decades earlier, probably has more in common with those the priest dispensed to the grave yard with an Old Testament style flourish. It might be--and probably was--a heartless prescription for many. But my character finds a heightened awareness, freedom from the non-stop lies the ego tells, and yes, a kind of courage there; and I'm sure that some of the priest's parishioners did, too.

I have also been rereading Montaigne’s essays, and one of his great questions--arguably his only question-- is how to deal with the fear of death. Montaigne found his version of the folding chair in the written pieces he first named “essays, or essais in French.” I suspect he called them “tries” that because he wasn’t expecting to get them right the first time, or perhaps ever. Montaigne accepted the limitations of seeing through a glass darkly, though it never stopped him from taking out his pen and writing toward the light. One of the most dogged revisers in history, he worked on the same collection for the rest of his life, adding to the essays as he expanded his knowledge of the world and more particularly, himself.

Then on Saturday, an unlikely person entered the discussion I was having with Montaigne and the priest. Someone in my household turned on a televised biography about Adam Lambert and as always, I was drawn to his voice. During the few minutes I watched, the narrator was saying that one of the the singer’s great gifts is that he doesn’t fear the stage. It’s something all of his fans know, but this time I heard it differently.

This time it seemed like the kind of secret you might hear if you sat on a folding chair in the cemetery long enough, or if you spent a significant portion your days in your writing tower trying to expand your knowledge and skill at life: Your time is brief. Give it. Risk it. And do it now. Don’t fear death; don’t fear the stage.

RISE UP SINGING: 9 Ways to Subtly Change Your Consciousness

2010-11-02T20:46:00.001-07:00

DSCN1915, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

This is something I've experimented with for a while. For it to work, you have to do all nine in the first hour after you wake up. If that sounds onerous, it's not. Most of these can be accomplished in a minute or less, and I personally guarantee that if you practice them, they will change the quality of your day.

1. Express gratitude. Whether to God or to the universe, to the person waking up beside you in the bed, or to the sun that has graciously agreed to light another day, let your first words be "Thank you." And if things haven't exactly been going your way, and gratitude feels strained, say it twice. Say it louder.

2. Don't just avoid toxic people who diminish and deplete. Be the antidote. Say something honestly affirming to everyone you encounter in your first waking hour.

3. Organize something. It doesn't have to be much. This morning, I picked up the shoes that had been scattered in the family room and made my bed. My "random act of order" took about three minutes, but it made me feel like an organized person. The sub-conscious mind took note, and looked for little ways to create order all day.

4. Do a one minute workout. Set a kitchen timer and do one minute of crunches or pushups or bicep curls. Will it change your body significantly? Probably not. But it will change it a little. And like the organization thing, it communicates to your sub-conscious that you are a person who is committed to fitness.

5. Make a promise to yourself. Vow not to say a single unkind thing all day, or to do a good deed without taking credit for it, or to keep working on something you care about for fifteen minutes after you want to quit or to avoid your favorite junk food. The only rule is you have to change the promise every day. Otherwise, it quickly turns into an empty "resolution," and we all know what happens to those.

6. Beautify something. Put a table cloth on your table or a pick some flowers and fill a vase. Get out of your sweats (if you work at home like me) and dress like you're about to have a very important day. And if you can't think of anything else, you can always smile. Voila! Instant beauty.

7. Be awed by something. Take in the florid sunrise if you get up early enough, or the shape of the cumulus clouds overhead or the chirping happy sound of a child's voice. The truth is there aren't seven wonders in the world; there are an infinite number of them. If you can live through a single hour without feeling amazed, you're only half awake.

8. Practice Mountain Pose for thirty seconds. Or as your mother used to say, stand up straight--preferably before a mirror. Get your body into perfect, regal alignment for a minute, and experience how balanced and sleek and wonderful it feels. You will probably forget and fall into your habitual slouch later, and that's okay. Slowly, slyly, you just may teach your body a new way to be.

9. Take one small step toward a long term goal. Maybe you have to go to work, or you need to get seven children dressed for school, or the dog ate your homework, but if you ever want to run that marathon, or write that novel, learn to fly a plane or speak Chinese, you need to set yourself on course by doing one small thing toward that goal every single day. First thing. Take out your running shoes and set them by the door for later. Look over what you wrote the day before while you're having your coffee...practice your aria in the shower.

TWO TEACHERS

2010-10-17T12:05:00.001-07:00

any kind of day, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

I was walking on a quiet road yesterday when a van barreled out of nowhere and came within inches of hitting me. The driver tossed me an obscenity and sped on his way.

How easily my habit of walking and thinking about a thousand different things, combined with the obscuring noise of a lawnmower might have put me more directly in his path.

He reminded me that I need to pay attention, that the ordinary world is never as benign or familiar as it seems, and that others, too, are distracted by many things.

I turned a corner and met a stooped old man, bleached white with age, carrying a step ladder across the street. When I offered to help, he thanked me, but declined, saying that it was important for him to do what he can for himself.

Worried that the angry person in the van might return, I watched the old man until he'd safely navigated the street.

"Nice day!" I said, exhaling relief when he reached the other side.

He stopped deliberately, set down his ladder with satisfaction, and looked up in the sky as if to check.

"Yes, it is, but I'm happy to take any kind of day," he said, smiling broadly. "How about you?"

"Me, too," I said, touching my face where the gravel kicked up by the van had grazed my skin. Me, too.

*Meanwhile, has anyone seen my blogroll? It disappeared mysteriously a few weeks back. I hope to get an updated version up soon.

UP FROM THE BLUE DAY

2010-09-21T13:57:00.001-07:00

73504902.JPG, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

Imagine you had the power to name a holiday, one that celebrated rising, tenacity, the resilience and generosity of the human spirit.

What might you call it?

How about Up From the Blue Day? On that day, just for one twenty-four hour period, everyone would rise out of whatever blue mood, or blue music or blue funk that might engulf them and celebrate. The next day, if you want to go back to being miserable, or if you need to--well, I understand. But just for one day, the blues of all kinds would be banished.

People would sing. And shimmy. Maybe drink blue martinis in cool bars in New York. Or wine in blue glasses on their decks on Cape Cod. Or wherever they might be. On Up from the Blue Day, no one would listen to the scary old news, or give in to envy or utter a single mean word about anyone.

I know it sounds tough, but come on. It's a holiday! Get into the spirit.

As it turns out, three lovely friends beat me to it. Jessica Keener, Tish Cohen, and Robin Slick already named this day in honor of Susan Henderson's debut novel of the same title.

I haven't had the pleasure of reading it yet, but I've seen the reviews, and people I trust have been raving about UP FROM THE BLUE since the early drafts.

But what really makes me eager to read this novel is my belief that wise, generous people produce wise generous work. It just a law of nature. And I've read enough of Susan's short fiction, to know she proves the law.

If you've been here before, you might remember a couple of years when I blogged about little besides IV poles, and johnnies, and endless waits for lab results. Two ugly words that seemed flash constantly in red neon before my eyes, no matter how hard I tried to escape them: aggressive cancer.

It was the most difficult time in my life, but right there in the middle of it, someone created a holiday just for me. It was a day when I wept almost all day--not from fear, not from grief, not even from happiness, but from sheer awe at the goodness of people. The kindness of my fellow writers and bloggers. A lot of amazing friends were involved and I will always be grateful to each and every one of them, but Sue was the driving force behind The Liar's Diary blog day.

So you know I don't often sell stuff here. I don't even push my own work (much to the chagrin of publishers and agent.) But if you like good fiction, today would be a great day to buy Up From the Blue.

And if not, then go out and something for someone else. It's what Susan would want you to do.

That's just the kind of person she is.

P.S. Since the procrastinator is getting this up kind of late in the day, we just might have to extend the holiday into tomorrow.

CAN PROCRASTINATION BE PRODUCTIVE?

2010-09-15T14:36:00.001-07:00

6th annual literary blues pie, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

Take a good look at this pie. This is what procrastination looks like. My friend Susan Messer and I planned to bake our annual pie in honor of the muse back in July. Wasting no time, Susan produced her usual superb pie and an equally superb blog post about the process. I promised to do the same, and of course, I meant it! I even planned to do it right this time--just like Susan does--with organic locally grown blueberries and a buttery home made crust. This particular promise/delusion and its inevitable failure has been repeated so many times that it's become part of the tradition.

It was mid-August before I found myself staring guiltily at the chemically laced blueberries at Stop and Shop, and I didn't actually bake the pie until a week later, when around 1 a.m., I looked at the slightly shriveled berries and realized it was now or never. Now, sigh, it's September--okay, late September, and I'm completing the process. (A photograph of the pie posted on Facebook, however, did bring Diana Guerrero and her amazing writing group, and Karen DeGroot Carter on board.)

(The judges decided it was still good.)

So yes, I admit it. My name is Patry and I am a procrastinator. Big time. In my defense, let me say two things:

1. I was born this way.

2. I'm beginning to think it works for me. See, while I'm putting off what I should do, I'm sometimes dreaming, percolating, or just allowing the muse to do her mysterious subconscious work.

Or maybe that's just an excuse. I don't know. These days most writers tend to name their muse Hard Work. The airy fairy in her gossamer gown who provides inspiration when she will has been kicked to the curb and replaced by the goddess of self-discipline by most productive writers. I admire them more than I can say. But as hard as I try, I'm not one of them.

Sure, I can put on my work boots, pack my lunch and write every day. Same place. Same time. I can set page quotas, word quotas and time quotas, and yeah, I can produce. But if the airy fairy hasn't spoken, if the story isn't ready to tell itself through me, or whatever the process is, then one morning, I wake up and realize, I've run a hundred mile marathon--in the wrong direction. Sometimes that's good. It gives you something to work with, as the conventional wisdom goes. But other times, it's just a long way back, there's a whole lot of mud on my shoes, and I'm exhausted.

Meanwhile, as I've put off making pies and writing about them and countless other things, a group of characters have been whispering to me, and then speaking loudly and finally shouting: This way! This way! Sometimes I think they are the muse, these mysterious "people" who appear from nowhere and demand to be heard, demand to be felt. Other times, it seems that time itself is the muse, and that the procrastination and endless daydreaming I've been fighting all my life just might serve a productive purpose.

So yes, I believe that hard work may be the muse's best friend, but at least for me, it's not the thing itself. For that reason, I will continue to bake my imperfect, belated pies, and sing the praises of capricious fairies everywhere.

SAYING THE WORDS

2010-05-23T20:16:00.001-07:00

Gulf Oil Spill, originally uploaded by Trog1.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.
Martin Luther King, Jr.

Outraged. Frustrated. Saddened beyond measure.

It isn't much, but today all I can think to do is to say the words, acknowledge the ongoing catastrophic loss, express the anger.

I don't know how to organize marches or inspire crowds or change an increasingly intractable system that values profits over people, animals, ecosystems, the small blue marble we all live on. But I don't think I could write another word or kiss a child or sit in my backyard enjoying the sound of birds chanting to each other at dusk without bearing witness to this tragedy. Without saying the words.

Outraged. Frustrated. Saddened beyond measure.

MY WALK ACROSS THE WORLD

2010-03-14T13:16:00.001-07:00

JADE, guarding the house on the last day of her life 8/24/09, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

With all my responsibilities here, I don't get very far from home these days, but that doesn't mean I don't travel. The other day I set my timer and went for a walk.

I saw an overweight man on a too-small bike, dressed in floral shorts and a tank top. He looked at me darkly as he passed. Did he know it was forty degrees outside? Did he know I was wondering if he might be dangerous? Feeling ashamed, I looked away.

I saw the white faced golden retriever who always stumbles off her stoop to warn us off when we pass. This time the owner came out to apologize. “No, no!” I said, stopping her. “I love that dog! He reminds me of the old dogs who have passed through my life, proud protectors to the end." Then I told her about Jade who protected us until she couldn't walk. No, longer. By the time I walked away, we both had tears in our eyes--me for what was, her for what was to come.

I saw the tallest pine tree in the neighborhood standing against a grey sky, and I heard Sebastian’s voice. “Big tree!” he says and points when he rolls by it in his stroller. Before Sebastian, I passed that tree hundreds of times but never really looked at it. Now I marvel. Big tree!

I saw empty houses, dressed up to create the impression they were still occupied. Shades closed, a telltale light in the window that never goes out. I wonder if they’re foreclosures; I wonder where the occupants went; and I wonder who will come to live in them.

I saw a cool pattern made by pine cones and needles and curly beach grass on the gournd. I studied it for a while until I spotted someone behind the shades watching me. She was looking at me the way I looked at the heavy man on the little bike. I waved and moved along.

I passed the house where a man committed suicide a decade ago. Though I don’t know the family, we heard that he hung himself in the garden shed when his wife filed for divorce. As I passed, I looked at the shed--an innocuous structure like so many in the neibhorhood. Like my own. There was a man raking leaves in the front yard. He smiled and said hello, And then a woman called out to him from the side porch where she was smoking a cigarette. She greeted me, too, though somewhat warily.

I saw a teenaged boy in a Volkswagen who waved and gave me a smile that can only be described as sweet. Repaying the debt, I waved enthusiastically at the next two cars that passed. One waved back--returning my ebullience in kind. The other driver looked as if I’d caught him off guard. Maybe he waved at the next person.

I thought about not taking the wooded path Star loves on the way home. Maybe I’d encounter the man on the bike again. I wondered how loud I’d have to scream to be heard. I took the path anyway, silently apologizing to the man in the floral shorts for my assumptions.

Emerging from the woods, I passed the house where a good friend once lived. Several years before he developed pancreatic cancer, I saw an ambulance approaching his house, and I raced down the street, heart thumping. A moment later, my friend emerged to redirect the ambulance and to reassure me. Wrong address! We both laughed as if it were a great joke. As if it would always be so.

The school bus pulled and a girl who used to stop to talk and pet the dog when she was younger decamped. I remembered the time she came to the door and asked if she could make a chalk hopscotch in front of our house. I went outside and played with her, recovering my old joy in the game. Now fourteen, weighed down with her heavy backpack and the even more burdensome weight of the self in adolescence, she looked down when she passed me and Star. We did not intrude on her private brooding.

I came home and checked my timer: All that in twenty-six minutes and 29 seconds.

THE DOORWAY... or 10 RULES FOR LIFE

2010-03-07T15:40:00.001-08:00

doorway, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

If you're a writer and you haven't read the 10 Rules for Writing Fiction series on the Guardian, then get yourself over there and suck up a powerful dose of inspiration, practical advice and writerly wisdom.

Since the masters covered that subject quite thoroughly, I decided to post my ten rules for life:

1. Develop a healthy respect for everything you don't know. It's a lot.

2. Don't allow yourself to be bored. It's an insult to life, and rumor has it, life doesn't tolerate insults. As Elmore Leonard's famously advised writers, "Leave out the part that people skip."

3. Don't sit down too much. That could increase your mortality, too. If you're not moving, mentally, spiritually, or physically, your body just might think you're already dead.

4. Who was the guy who limited his rules to 3: KINDNESS, KINDNESS, KINDNESS? Whoever he was, he was right. And the guy who said, "Be kind because everyone you meet is fighting a great battle?" He was pretty smart, too.

5. Do the work that's in front of you every day as if it mattered--whether it's painting a picture or washing the floor, or caring for a difficult elderly person. It does.

6. If you were lazy or unkind, dishonest or impatient--don't languish in guilt, but don't accept it as the best you can do either. Find creative ways to make amends to whomever endured your lesser self (even if it's yourself.)

7. Remind the people around you and the trees and your own cells that life is good: sing, dance, praise, and laugh as often as you can. And when you can't, be silent.

8. This is something my grandfather's generation knew well: get some fresh air every day. Open windows, breathe deep, and stand up straight while you're at it.

9. Mind your own business. It's more profound than you think.

10. Follow your own rules. Ah, now that's the hard one, isn't it?

MY DENTIST DIAGNOSES THE PROBLEM WITH MY LIFE

2010-03-02T19:18:00.001-08:00

beach chairs in winter, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

It all started when a tooth was broken nearly to the root by an anesthesia tube during surgery. Since I'd been avoiding my dentist for something like five years, I considered us officially broken-up and chose a new one from the phone book. He insisted on a full set of X-rays.

After studying them, my new dentist regarded me grimly. "What we have here is a pattern of neglect," he said, and paused dramatically. "If something doesn't change, you're going to face some serious consequences."

While I was pondering the profundity of that, he added the clincher: "Problems don't fix themselves, you know. Something has to be done."

"A pattern of neglect?" I repeated. "Really?" Suddenly I felt as if I were talking to a therapist instead of a dentist. It was as if he'd peered into my disorganized closets, passed the house with the neglected garden, and the trim that needs painting. Then he looked deeper and saw my unfinished algebra assignments from eighth grade, the college papers cranked out during frenzied all-nighters the day after they were due, the sinful number of cantaloupes and grapefruits I bought at the supermarket, and forgot to eat. And what about all the mounted of good intentions I never quite acted upon? Clearly, the pattern of neglect stretched back to elementary school and probably beyond. In diapers, I was probably vowing to quit the pacifier and be more outgoing...tomorrow. .

Of course, I had all kinds of sound reasons why I've avoided the dentist: no dental insurance...serious health issues that took precedence...the daunting cost of all the root canals and crowns my ex- dentist told me I needed all those years ago...genetically bad teeth from my father's side of the family... And did I mention my lack of dental insurance?

"It's up to you," he said. Then he shrugged and left the room. Apparently, he'd seen my type before.

But I left the office with a commitment to do something this time, and a phrase buzzing in my ear: pattern of neglect, pattern of neglect, pattern of neglect.

I raced home and called my best friend, and then my cousin and my daughter, and told them excitedly that my dentist had just diagnosed what's wrong with my life: It's a chronic condition called Pattern of Neglect. And what's more, there's a cure: Give up the delusional concept that problems solve themselves and do something!

Since none of the people I called happen to suffer from my condition this revelation didn't have the same impact on them as it did on me.

In spite of my friends' and family's doubts, I insisted there was hope for me. I could stop thinking, pondering and dreaming so much and become a master of problem solving, however belatedly. A woman of action!

Well, that was six months ago, and this week, I finally have an appointment to see an oral surgeon about an implant to replace my broken tooth. The twenty thousand dollar treatment plan outlined by the dentist has still not been implemented, and my closet still needs to be cleaned, but not one cantaloupe has died in my crisper in months, the revisions to my new novel are just about complete....and so far nothing hurts in my mouth. Who knows? Maybe problems do solve themselves.

JUST ONE RESOLUTION

2010-01-01T20:07:00.001-08:00

welcome, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

Most of the resolutions I've made in the past haven't mattered much. While it's good to work out or eat well, to write a certain amount of words or meditate daily, and it's salutary to get up early in the morning (a resolution I've made repeatedly, but never mastered) none of those are essential to a successful life as a human being.

Good will is something else. If I sold a zillion books or ran marathons till I was ninety-five, what would it matter if I failed at good will? It seems to come naturally to a few effortlessly benevolent souls I've known. The rest of us have to rise to it, wake up to it, to realize all the stuff that blocks it--envy, fear, ego--is a lie, plain and simple. Lately, I've begun to fear that I might be ash and cinder before I get there.

So that's my one resolution: good will.

Good will in the sense of wishing the best for others. All of them. The ones I love and the ones I don't understand, the ones who agree with my most cherished beliefs and opinions, and the ones who violently oppose them.

Good will to those who extend the same to me.

And good will to those who don't.

I also mean to work on the other kind of good will. The kind Kant described, which is more like determining to do what's right in all circumstances. He uses a word I haven't always liked, but now am inclined to embrace: DUTY.

Good will to get up and do the work that is before me that day, no matter what it may be.

Without excuses. Without grumbling. Without delay.

Happy New Year.

On Memory

2009-12-27T20:02:00.001-08:00

(The view from my daughter's rented condo)

For years, my mother has been telling us about a movie that had a great impact on her in high school. Her older sister saw it first; and when she got home, she crawled into bed with my mother and spilled the entire story, bringing it to vivid life in the darkness. Somehow it encapsulated all the fears, the fragile dreams, and the dazzling romance they must have felt coming of age in a time of war.

The older sister was gorgeous and confident; my mother was shy and unaware of her own emerging beauty. She didn't care that her sister had spoiled the ending. Mom scraped together the money for a bus ticket to Boston to see the movie the very next day.

With the advent of DVDs, my mother has often asked if anyone could find Waterloo Bridge. Every now and then I check the SAVED section of my queue on Netflix to see if it's available, but the release date always remains tantalizingly unknown. Just out of reach. Sort of like the past itself.

Then, this month for my mother's birthday, my incredibly thoughtful daughter tracked down the video. The first week Mom watched it twice a day.

However, privately she confessed disappointment. She still loved the story and Vivien Leigh; Robert Taylor was as handsome as he ever was; but the movie didn't have the same resonance it had when she'd first seen it at sixteen.

"I just don't feel things the way I used to," she said, looking stunned by the discovery.

But that didn't keep her from slipping into her room, pulling down the shades and lying on her bed to watch it one more time. And it didn't keep her from repeating the story about her sister every time she emerged from her private theatre.

Of course, I eventually realized it wasn't the movie she loved so much. It was the memory of a sister's attention; it was their shared youthful longings captured in tangible celluloid.

And I also realized how important it is to make an effort to listen with respect and interest to my mother's repetitive stories. Not just because it's the right thing to do, but because it's also the smart thing to do.

When I do, I occasionally see the forest gleaming through the trees. And sometimes I even see my own life a little more clearly. Just today I was wondering if I feel things as vividly as I used to.

The answer, of course, is no.

And yes.

And even more vividly than ever.

Just as it is for my mother.

MY LONGING MEETS YOUR LONGING

2009-09-21T10:48:00.001-07:00

berlin presiding over laura's flowers, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

This is how huge home is: it's deep enough to contain cats with shimmering eyes, a wild array of colors, invisible mountains of mistakes, and even higher peaks of grace, flowers, music, an amazingly comfortable bed (unlike my twisted plank of misery in the hospital) the laptop where I dream my crazy dreams--and yes, miracle of miracles, my family.

Two days ago, I was discharged after my seventh major surgery in two years. It seems incredible and I don't want to shout too loudly and risk offending the gods, but this time, I believe it's really over. Yep. O.V.E.R.

Looking back, I sometimes wonder how I got through it all. But then I turn to my side and the answer becomes clear. I absolutely couldn't have done it without THIS man (seen with grandson Sebastian.)

Mine was the kind of experience that tries love in myriad ways, often shattering it, sometimes strengthening it, but always altering it. In my case, well, let me offer this story: Last night when I was falling asleep in my room 9in my amazingly comfy bed) Ted slipped in beside me, and handed me one of the earbuds to his Ipod. Then he popped the other in his own ear and played this song while the darkness spun around us. For us, it wasn't so much about "taking our blue jeans off"--at least not now--but about about facing, and ultimately savoring the night.

Now I don't want to brag. (After all, I've already a risked offending the capricious gods of fate once in this post.) But tonight I'm feeling like the luckiest woman alive.

Love and blessings to all of you who have supported me through this long ordeal.

WIND AND SUN

2009-08-06T19:19:00.001-07:00

the gift, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

The other night we watched DOUBT, a movie that was far too ambiguous for my taste. Not that ambiguity doesn't have an important place in serious art, but when you're talking about the sexual abuse of a child, there's not much grey area. It either happened or it didn't. In this film, I didn't know who to believe; and worse, I didn't think the writers or the director knew either. Maybe that was the point, but if so, I wasn't buying.

Still, I found some of the sermons delivered by Philip Seymour Hoffman's character interesting--especially the one in which he resigns his position. Though life often feels static, though we imagine our world as solid and reliable, he says, there is a great wind behind us invisibly pushing us forward. Whether we know it or not, whether we like it not, our lives are all about moving, leaving, changing.

The great wind has propelled me into many startling places in the last couple of years--some that I call good, and some that I label bad. But unlike the moral quesions in Doubt, most of them are neither. They just are; and they must be met accordingly. After my sixth major surgery last August, I found recovery elusive. Cleaning the kitchen, taking a short walk exhausted me or left me in pain. My surgeon recently told me this was normal. The disease and the treatment I had were a full out assault on my body. I needed to be patient with myself and with the Great Wind. (Okay, she didn't say that exactly, but that was what I heard.)

Meanwhile, the Great Wind brought other changes, too. Babies arrived and stretched my heart in ways I never imagined. My mother experienced a precipitous mental decline and was forced to move in with us. Children came home and left and came home again. I fell in love with a group of characters in my new novel, and wept over the fates that I held in my hand, but could not change. Not if I were to tell the kind of truth that's so important in fiction.

The other day my beautiful, strong, intelligent mother leaned a fragile frame on her walker, and wept because for the first time ever, she was confused about who I was. What could I do but hug her, and cry with her, and tell her that it was okay? That we had no choice but to go with it, wherever it was leading us. So far that's what we're doing. It's a ragged journey, a hidden path, but we're trying to follow it as best we can.

And meanwhile I continue to sing badly and often. I sing in the morning, and I sing in the dark when I have insomnia (which is often.) I sing to my year-old grandson, Sebastian, who seems to regard my much maligned voice and the many melodies I've collected as some kind of miracle. In the past month, I've looked up and sung ALL the songs that you suggested--from The Log Roller's Waltz to Amazing Grace. Sebastian loves them all, but his favorite is still "The Hokey Pokey."

This week I started singing In the Sun which Chris Martin from Coldplay and Michael Stipe from R.E.M recorded for Hurricane Katrina Relief. But I prefer the original version, performed by the the man who wrote it, Joseph Arthur. "It's too religious," my kids say when they hear me belting it out as I clean the kitchen or come in from a walk (both of which I now do on a regular basis.) But to me, it's an ode to simple good will, the best and truest religion of all.

In Friend News:

Susan Hendersonn of LitPark, one of the most generous writers and human beings I've ever met, proved the power of good karma, not to mention incredible talent and tenacity, when she sold her first novel, The Ruby Cup, to Harper Perennial.

Jessica Keener recently started a fabulous and insightful blog about the meaning and power of home: Confessions of a Hermit Crab.

And last month my blueberry pie baking partner, Susan Messer, published Grand River and Joy, a powerful and timely debut novel that takes on race relations, the Detroit riots, and the landscape of the human hearth. Visit her Web site to learn more about the novel, and maybe even see a photo of this year's pie. (I'm baking mine for the family lobster bake tomorrow. More on that soon...)

Meanwhile, if anyone has any more song suggestions, Sebastian and I are listening.

ALL IS WELL

2009-06-15T12:43:00.001-07:00

erased, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

This weekend Ted and started Andrew Weil's EIGHT WEEKS TO OPTIMUM HEALTH. We've been interested in the program for a long time, but weren't inspired to actually DO till it was recommended on Tim Ferris's (always interesting) blog. Week one is pretty simple. You eat broccoli and fish once during the week (which we do anyway), walk five times (ditto) and breathe consciously, i.e. meditate, for five minutes a day (Now that's an area I need to work on). Oh, and you also buy yourself flowers. Not too onerous, even for a habitual resolution breaker like me.

Keeping with the program, we' d started off on an energetic hike through the woods when we wandered into an old cemetery. Well, that was it for the walk. How could we not be stopped by history, by the stories cut in stone, and the infinite mystery they left behind? At times, those who occupied "our" world n seem like a distant rumor, but in the cemetery, they reclaim their names, their sacred alliances and beliefs , the tragedies that swept through their lives, and their own own ultimate release from them. In the shaded serenity of the cemetery, I was reminded of something I'd recently read by Anthony de Mello: "All mystics, no matter what their theology, are unanimous on one point: that all is well, all is well."

Though the oldest "occupants" were born in the eighteenth century, the first stone we came upon was that of FLORA, AGE 3. Flora as been dead long enough that lichen and decay have begun to erode the three-word biography recorded on her stone, but not so long ago that some living person doesn't still remember her or at least her story. I paused for a minute to wonder who.

We found soldiers from the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, the graves of young women (who had presumably died in childbirth) and were buried with their infants, and far too many markers for young children. Though their lives ended long ago, my heart still clenched when I encountered JOSEPH who lived for one year, four months, and eleven days, and for the family who numbered his days. However, I was also surprised by the number of nonagenarians the cemetery contained. It seemed that those who survived the perils of youth-- war and childbearing, and lived long enough to build up an immunity to the contagious diseases that claimed so many frequently achieved a ripe old age. Then again, neither the soldier and Christian patriarch above, nor the Temperance advocate below could have imagined a time when fish were less than abundant off the coast of Cape Cod, or when concerns about mercury or other contaminants made people afraid to eat them. Natural wholesome food, a life of vigorous activity, strong community and spirituality weren't something you had to read a book or make a resolution to acquire.

In addition to walking and eating broccoli and breathing (always a plus) I've been trying to learn a new song every week. As I've said here before, my voice has been known to scare cats and startle babies, but I still think Pete Seeger was right when he emphasized the importance of singing. For everyone. Even off-key divas like me.

He said it better than I can:

"Songs are funny things. They can slip across borders. Proliferate in prisons. Penetrate hard shells. I always believed that the right song at the right moment could change history."

To that end, I have begun my quest for the right song. This week it was this one. Sing it and remember that all is well. All is well.

Any suggestions for next week?

FIRING ON ALL TWELVE CYLINDERS

2009-03-08T20:48:00.001-07:00

cotuit, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

“The world belongs to the energetic.” For several years, I had this quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson taped inside a cabinet door. It didn’t say much about the kind of person I am (the kind who plans to undertake all kinds of ambitious projects...right after I have a cup of tea and think about it.) But it spoke volumes about the kind I’ve always wanted to be. (In high school, they’re described as “vivacious.”)

Eventually the quote inside my cabinet yellowed and the tape curled and disinegrated, but my optimism remained undaunted. One of these days, I would live the Emersonian ideal. I would stop reading books about how to stop procrastinating, and become a woman of action. I would spend less time reading poetry and more time cleaning the closet! Directing my own films! Opening a soup kitchen! The dreams varied, but the battle cry remained the same. I would!

Then a couple of weeks ago, I was reading the “Vows” column in the New York Times (a wedding column that doesn’t tell doesn’t focus on the the ceremony or the accomplishments of the couple but on their story.) In this particular installment, the new husband described his wife as someone who was “firing on all twelve cylinders.” The phrase hit the same “inspiration nerve” that Emerson had touched years ago. Immediately, I leaped up from the couch and began to sprint around the house like the bride in “Vows” would have done if she suddenly found herself inhabiting my life.

“What’s wrong with Mom?” my son, Jake, wondered.

“Don’t worry; she’ll get over it soon,” Ted said confidently.

Hmmph...I snorted, attacking the closet. I’d show him. Shortly thereafter, my body reminded me of its problems (those complications from complications I wrote about earlier) and I collapsed on the couch. Time for a cup of tea to contemplate the 12 cylinder lifestyle I would soon adopt...I might be a lttle tired today, but tomorrow? I would get up at five. I would channel the vivacious girls from high school and the souped-up bride from "Vows"...I could already hear those cylinders gearing up in the distance.

If we’re limited by the past or by fate or the more mysterious aspects of our DNA, I I guess that means I’ll always a four-cylinder economy vehicle, never the muscle car that owns the road (and according to Emerson, the world.) But I haven’t quite accepted that yet.

So about a month ago, I somehow wandered into a blog called Thirty Minutes A Day on Foot in which the writer chronicles his daily walks. What inspired me was that he didn’t just walk, he explored. I leaped off the couch (yes, I do that regularly) but only after I’d left a comment, proclaiming myself his first disciple.

Now I suppose if I were firing on all 12 cylinders, the next step would have involved putting on my shoes, or something radical like that. But instead, I spent a month thinking of the places I would explore, the friends, family members and animals who might accompany me. Should I buy a pedometer first? A birding book maybe? Obviously, this wasn’t something I could jump into without some serious planning. (Cue the tea kettle.)

It took a month, but yesterday my daughter and the hint-of-spring weather, inspired me to make good on the plan. I went at my own pace, allowing my daughter and the dog to alternately walk and jog ahead of me at theirs, and I spent 32 minutes on foot exploring a new area. Like the source of my inspiration, I timed myself; also like him, I counted “stranger hellos” which strikes me as a significant thing to measure. (We got two.) And I paid attention in new ways. Though I’m not much of a naturalist, in that I don’t know the names of more than the garden variety birds or plants, I was inspired to find things out.

I discovered, for instance, that the body of water at the end of the road we followed was called Cotuit Bay, that ivy blooms in snow, and that there’s such a thing as a beer tasting. (Who says I’m not a naturalist?) Of course, if I really was one of the energetic people who own the world, I might have even come back and checked it out. But as it was, I just went home and thought about it.

A DEPRESSING SUBJECT?

2009-02-15T13:42:00.001-08:00

Great Depression Image 15, originally uploaded by Don Iannone.

A few years ago, my son Gabe gave me a book about the Great Depression by Robert Mcelvaine. I enjoy history, but there was something, well, depressing, about the photograph on the cover. Several times I put it on my bedside table, intending to read it, but inevitably it drifted to the bottom of the stack. Fiction felt more compelling, more relevant. Hah.

Then we started hearing the threats from the politicians, the talk show radio show dudes (both the reasonably sane and the completely off the rails.) If we didn't do this or that, we wouldn't just face something like that depressing photograph depicted. We'd find ourselves in midst of something far worse. Imaginations ran rampant--at least, mine did. I picked up the book with the grainy photograph on the cover and read, transfixed.

Last November, the Boston Globe ran a story about what Depression 2 might look like. In their vision of the economic apocalypse, unemployed familes would move into overcrowded houses where the unemployed multitude would spend their days huddled up behind the blue light of the TV screen eating cheap processed food. It sounded kind of like staying home from school sick in the sixties. I could almost picture the folding TV trays and taste the chicken noodle soup. It was both a comforting scenario, and well--depressing. (Couldn't they at least have envisioned us reading?) Surprisingly, lot of readers reacted with outrage: A respected newspaper openly speculating on how the economic crisis might play out? How tacky! Are they trying to ruin our day? Create panic maybe? Depress consumerism?

I, for one, think we should talk about it. In fact, there has never been a more important time to share our fears (generally they lose power when brought into the open air) to share our ideas...and especially to share our HOPE.

So here's my dos pesos:

I think President Obama is grappling seriously and thoughtfully with the problem, and I'm thankful to have such an intelligent, steady leader...but I also believe that this train left the station a long time ago. The best we can do now is to slow it down, hope the damage isn't as bad as it looks like it might be, and get as many people off the tracks as possible.

I believe the way we live our lives is going to change--maybe in small, temporary ways, but more likely, the transformation will test us in ways we've never been tried before.

I believe that almost nothing is all bad or all good and I don't say that glibly. I believe that sometimes, the deeper you have to dig to find the bliss, the stronger you grow. I believe that we'll stop being simply consumers, and start becoming citizens; that one day soon, we'll walk outside and see, really see the neighbors we've been ignoring all these years. I believe that we'll plant more vegetables and less grass. And yes, I believe that absent more expensive entertainment, people will READ more.

Don't get me wrong; I don't romanticize poverty. I've been poor myself, but I have no illusions: being poor in good times is a helluva lot different than it is in the not so good ones. The suffering that's already begun for many families and individuals is real and immense. My mother grew up in a large family in the Great Depression. Though her father always retained a job, they still lost their house, and were forced to cram into a tenement apartment, to help out unemployed relatives. My mother shared a small bedroom with three sisters; one brother slept on the couch in the winter and in a tent in the summer (with a bunch of other boys in a kind of Spanky and Our Gang atmosphere. ) Another brother was forced to sleep in a crib in his parents room till he was six because there was nowhere else to put him.

She remembers the deplorable condition of the charity hospital where her uncle was dying of diabetes in the pre-insulin days, and how her parents wept when they saw him there, surrounded by flies. But the next day her mother returned to the hospital and brought her brother-in-law back to the crowded apartment where she cared for him for the rest of his life.

She remembers how everything was used, stretched, saved to make their meals, but when a hobo came to the door to beg dinner, there was always enough to share.

However, the Depression didn't affect everyone in the same way; and it was those obvious class divisions, the shame associated with poverty, that seemed to leave the deepest scars. Some children who went to school with my mother had bicycles and new clothes and maids to clean their homes. She never forgot the humiliation of staying behind in the classroom with two other poor children because her parents didn't have a dime to give her for the field trip.

And here's the irony. My mother recalls the Depression as the "worst time ever;" but I have never heard anyone speak more fondly of their early years than my mother and her siblings. Their's wasn't just a happy childhood; it was a profoundly happy one.

Eventually, the uncle who was forced to sleep in a crib till he was six won a scholarship to Harvard and went on to become an important man in the world. At his retirement party, he spoke movingly about the foundation his life had been built on: the discipline to meet challenges head-on, humility, and the true source of that profoundly happy childhood: love.

GRATITUDE...SARDINES...AND a health update

2009-02-01T09:48:00.001-08:00

sardine bento(u), originally uploaded by chotda.

What happened to my blog? I wanted to write...I thought about writing. Almost every day I thought about writing. But instead I lurked on other blogs...I took naps...I read exalted literature and watched trashy TV shows...I told myself I would do it tomorrow...Maybe. There were so many good things to read elsewhere and I had no story to tell. I drifted back to sleep.

But in the end, or in the middle, where we are now, there was no way I could leave my blog frozen forever on the Horrible and the Miserable. After five months of looking at that dispiriting title, I figured it was about time to change the subject. I could talk about something else. Anything else. Sardines, for instance.

But before we get to that, the health update. The good news is that, nurtured by family and friends, by those of you who were kind enough to check in on me, by exalted reading and trashy TV (and sometimes the reverse) I’m still here. Since my surgery, every (Horrible Miserable) week I’ve spent waitng for a biopsy report ended in the blissful words we cancer survivors live for (often literally): benign, clean, negative. (Who ever thought negative could be such a beautiful word?)

The bad news is that even in an first-rate hospital, with a well-regarded surgeon, I suffered some egregious complications during my cancer surgery. Complications that have led to five more major operations. A year of johnnies, and IVs, and far too much jello--which I never liked, even when I was five. And in the end, or in the middle, where I am now, nothing worked. In the end, each surgery left me little more screwed-up than I was before.

The motto of my story? Stay out of hospitals... Unless they wrap up a sweet smelling baby and hand it to you when you leave...which used to be the reason I visited those institutions...Or you need them to save your life...which I did this time.

So okay, maybe there is no motto. Or maybe the motto is just BE GRATEFUL. I am. Every single day.

Now for the change of subject: sardines! Sardines in salad and sardines mixed with chili sauce. Sardines on rye with mustard or sardines mashed with avocado and garlic...I spent my life saying NO to the little bony omega 3 laden fish, only to find out that I love them.

What have you learned to love recently?

THE HORRIBLE AND THE MISERABLE

2008-08-30T12:03:00.001-07:00

I’m not a person who remembers a lot of movie quotes, but Woody Allen’s famous one from Annie Hall struck a chord with me, maybe because I shared his neurotic fear of the various abominations that could abruptly intrude on your party:

"Life is divided up into the horrible and the miserable. The horrible would be terminal cases, blind people, cripples. The miserable is everyone else. When you go through life you should be thankful that you're miserable."

When I first heard that quote, I was young enough to wake up every day feeling immortal, young enough that I understood Woody’s “misery” well. Misery was a boyfriend who didn’t call, a roommate who ate my leftover lasagna, or a B on a paper, when dammit, I deserved an A. The horrible--those unspeakable tragedies and illnesses that happened to other people--terrified me so much I tried not to think of them.

Thus, Woody’s quote made me laugh nervously and nod inwardly. Now it feels both insensitive and untrue. We're all terminal cases, and nearly every mistake we make in life, every unkindness we do, every squandered moment can be traced to the unspoken belief that we are the Great Exception.

In the first two days after my surgery, I cried more than I have in months--and not from pain. No, I had become the proverbial person who cries at the Hallmark card commercial. I felt an intense solidarity with suffering people everywhere. Their stories weren’t just sad pieces on the news; they felt visceral; they were my story. When two kids from the Cape died in Iraq and Afghanistan died within two days, I cried as if they’d been family.

I wept for my cousin’s husband who has been in a hospital in Kuwait for three months suffering from multiple myeloma. Once a marathon runner who kept himself in perfect shape, he has wasted to nothing, but still possesses an epic will to live. Unable to get comfortable on my bed no matter what position I assumed, I thought of his bed sores and the ache that never leaves his bones, and I wept. I had to turn off a television special about the suffering of Afghan women because their lives invaded my heart, and spilled into my restless dreams that night. But what troubled me most of all was a report about a local injured soldier. I thought of the surgeries, the weeks in hospital beds. Though the reports of poor care at Walter Reed had enraged me when I first heard them, when I thought of them in my post-surgical state, they left me shaking and sobbing.

Are you okay? my nurse said, standing in the doorway.

How could I explain that yes, I was okay, but some crucial filter had broken down? That I had gone over to the side of Woody’s “horrible” category and I couldn’t escape the view?

At around three in the morning, when it was obvious we were both awake, the roommate I hadn’t felt well enough to speak to yet pushed open the curtain that separated us and appraised me. “So who are you over there?”

I told her my name.

“You sure cry a lot,” she said, with the humor and honesty that would go far to transform my hospital stay.

“I guess I do,” I said. I loved that she didn’t ask why. Nor did I feel a need to explain myself.

In the next few days, we would talk a lot and joke even more, especially deep in the endless hospital nights. She had already been in the hospital for twelve days when I arrived and during that time, she’d missed her daughter’s wedding and the birth of her son’s first child. When the nurse checked in on us, she asked her to pass me some photographs from both events; and I couldn’t help noticing how she smiled as I looked at each one.

She'd suffered a lot of complications, but this hadn’t been her worst hospitalization. Twelve years earlier she’d had a frightening bout of myocarditis. While in the hospital, she suffered a stroke that left her short term memory impaired, and then a serious blood clot that necessitated the amputation of her leg. She was thirty-eight years old, and had two young teenagers at home. Her daughter, a freshman in college majoring in accounting, had been so devastated, she dropped out and came home to care for her mother. (Later, she would become a nurse.)

My first reaction was disbelief that so many bad things could happen to one person in a short period of time, but my roommate told her story with an utter lack of self-pity. When she’d gotten home from the hospital, she’d gotten a small dog that was easier to walk with her prosthesis; and as she depended on her husband to help with her memory lapses, their relationship had become something deep and rare. Their religious faith had also grown. In Woody's world, her life would undoubtedly fall in the horrible category, but she clearly didn't see it that way--and neither do I.

Before I left the hospital, the crying that alarmed my family and left me almost unable to watch TV, stopped. My doctor attributed it to the physical, mental, and emotional trauma from such long surgery, but I think it was something else. I think that I had endured a new level of suffering this time, and that it had made me see everyhing and everyone differently. The good news--if there is indeed something possible that comes from this kind of experience-- is that after you've survived horrible , you're far less likely to allow miserable to contaminate a single hour. My roommate, who left the day before I did, grinning with delight at the prospect of meeting her new grandchild and complaining about nothing, proved that.

WHEN DO YOU COMPLAIN?

2008-08-25T07:18:00.001-07:00

Happy!, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

No one particularly likes a sponge bath, but at the hospital where I underwent my first five surgeries, they made it as pleasant as possible. There was a sweet smelling foamy basin, a soothing back rub with baby lotion, and if I wanted it, that ultimate luxury: a shampoo. A the end of the process, I felt pampered and refreshed.

Thus, I was shocked when an unsmiling aide I’ll call S. showed up to administer my “bath” at my new hospital (a first class institution.) The curtain surrounding my bed still open, she tossed me a wet face cloth, and ordered: “Wash!” A request that she pull the curtain clearly annoyed her, and when that asked for still more, it put her over the edge.

“Soap?” she repeated, as if it were a new concept in bathing. She shuffled out of the room, shaking her head.

I tried to engage S. in conversation, to somehow remind her we were both human, that I understood she hated her job. I, in fact, wasn’t thrilled with my role either. Couldn’t we maybe just be kind to one another?

But S. answered my questions with a grunt, and refused eye contact. After I used her profferred towel, she disappeared without a word.

When Ted came in, he noticed how shoddy her care was even before I mentioned it. She emptied the contents of the foley catheter on top of the bed, and neglected to wear gloves as she moved from one patient to another. The simplest request was met with a glower.

Still, S. and I might have survived each other if I didn’t develop a problem with my pain pump on my second day. When it ceased working, the pain level was intolerable. I pressed my call light, but that wasn’t working either, and my roommmate was out of the room. When S. ambled into the room with her usual scowl, I was thrilled at the sight of her.

However, when I told her about my pain and asked her to get my nurse, S. continued to go about her business as if she hadn’t heard me. “Use your call light,” she said at last, turning her back.

I explained that it wasn’t working, and S. gave it a hasty look. “Try again,” she said, and again turned her back.

As S. moved in and out of the room, I continued to plead my case: the call light wasn’t working; and my pain was nearly unbearable. Could she PLEASE go to the desk and alert my nurse?

The woman, however, was resolute. “There’s nothing wrong with your call light,” she said, as she begrudingly shuffled through the tasks tasks she clearly abhorred.

When my roommate and her nurse returned, S. slithered out of the room before the nurse saw my distress, and confirmed that the light and pain pump were not functioning. She quickly volunteered to get my nurse--but first, she stormed after S.

Though I didn’t tell anyone what had happened with my callous aide., no one seemed surprised the next day when I requested another caregiver. S. was never assigned to me again.

However, I did encounter her in the hallway--and this time, she was the one eager to make eye contact. Now I’m usually a pretty forgiving person, but I wasn’t about to let a woman who’d knowingly left me in pain for over an hour off the hook so easily. Now it was my turn to look away, to refuse to relieve her anxiety. Obviously, she was worried that a complaint that might lead to her termination.

A couple of days later, Ted and I ran into her in the solarium. My first thought was that she was dogging work again, probably avoiding another patient who needed her care. Again, I refused to look her in the eye.

But as we sat there, for a while, I watched her furtively, a heavy woman in her late fifties with deep cut dark circles under her eyes and swollen feet. She clearly had no business working in health care, but she probably didn’t have a lot of choices either.When Ted looked in her direction, she seized on the opportunity. “Beautiful day out there, isn’t it?”

Then she turned to me with an almost touching temerity, exhibiting the broken-toothed smile she'd denied me before, “And how are you feeling? Better, I hope.”

Cynically, I suspected she was only being friendly because she feared receiving what was probably not her first complaint. Maybe her job was even on the line.

I intended to ignore her, but then I thought of the quote from Plato, which had never felt more true: “Be kind because everyone you meet is fighting a hard battle. I hesitated only a moment before I smiled back. “Yes, a little better every day. Thank you.”

And yet even in my moment of amity, I hadn’t entirely ruled out filing a complaint. Though I wasn’t personally angry with S. anymore, I felt a certain responsibility the the next occupants of my bed. Should anyone else be subjected to this kind of care? Was remaining quiet a kindness, or just another example of my greatest flaw: excessive passivity.

I thought it over for the next two days while I was in the hospital, but neither road felt particularly clear or right. In the end, however, I couldn’t forget my moment of empathy for S. as I watched her in the solarium. I thought of her stubby fingernails with their peeling polish, and her tired eyes. In my mind, I stared down at her swollen ankles, and the shoes that were clearly in need of replacement. I remembered that wily, but somehow heartbroken smile. What would happen to her if she really lost her job? Perhaps, I thought, she’d really learned something from her failure with me. Perhaps she wouldn’t treat the next patient the same way. Given the weaknesses of nature she’d exhibited, that might be unlikely, but given my own, I had no choice but to hold out hope.

THE PIE PRODUCES ANOTHER MIRACLE

2008-08-23T08:14:00.001-07:00

the right way to make a pie crust, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

By now, most of you know the story. You know how my friend, Susan Messer, and I bonded over a pie one August. But for those who don't, here's the short version: I'd written about a particularly wonderful blueberry affair I'd been served by no less the writer Marilyn Robinson. Susan contacted me to say she was sure she had the recipe.

Through e-mail, we came to know each other, two aspiring novelists who had placed short stories in literary publications, and won contests who worried that our dream of a novel would forever be elusive. We knew how fierce the competition was. We packed up our queries and our manuscripts hopefully. Agents wrote back to say they were sorry; but they just didn't love it. (Writers, you know how those lines ...you've memorized them, and probably taken them more personally than you should have. Not lovable? ME?...I knew it! Editors, already facing daunting stacks of agented work, would not even take a look.

It seemed a vicious spiral. So did Susan and I despair? Well, maybe for the odd day or two. But stop writing? Never. Every August, no matter what, we resolved we would bake the magical blueberry pie for our muse. And we would believe! (We would also have happy palates and famileis because this is a particularly delicious pie.)

This year, however, when blueberry season rolled around, Susan was worried. My health wasn't good and I was spending most of my days on the couch: how could I ever bake a pie?

I WOULD, I insisted. This, after all was a very important year, and I was going to recognize the muses if it killed me! This was the year when Susan had sold her novel!

I spotted the announcement in Publishers' Marketplace even before Susan did, and quickly zapped her an e-mail.

"Susan Messer's REMNANTS, Like Dust in Pocket Seams, exploring the human face of class, race, and ethnic frictions taking place in Detroit in 1967, the summer of the riots, to Christopher Hebert at the University of Michigan Press, for publication in Spring 2009, by Colleen Mohyde at the Doe Coover Agency (World)."

I'll always remember her response. "Wow, that sounds like a very serious book."

And it is. Serious and beautiful and filled with characters you will never forget.

I bought berries and cream, then urged my family to eat them before they went bad. I wasn't up to making a pie. Then I bought some more, and did the same thing.

But the third time, the blueberries (organics from Vermont) were particularly plump and sweet, and I was scheduled for surgery the next day. It was now or never! My son Theo dragged a stool into the kitchen so I could sit as I cooked...and behold, the muse was pleased. The pie was my best effort ever.

I asked Susan if she wanted to share something about our joint effort here, and she wrote back:

"I guess the main thing I want to say is what a pleasure it's been to share this tradition with you for lo these many years. And as for writing metaphors . . . something I noticed this year . . . there's a point in the process when (regardless of past success) I'm filled with doubts. It's that step when you put the berries in a pot with the sugar and corn starch and lemon juice. You turn on the heat, and the instructions say to cook until the liquid thickens and the berries soften. But it just looks so . . . dry . . . for a few minutes there. It is dry. It's impossible to imagine that it's going to turn into something juicy. And I kind of push the mess around with my wooden spoon wondering. Until, without fail, the magic occurs. A complete transformation into something deep and blue and beautiful and bubbling. I have my crust anxieties, too, of course. Whether it will hold together and so forth. But that dry mix in the pot. I'm telling you."

(I agree that it's a great metaphor for writing, but I've got to add it's helped me a lot in dealing with my illness.)

If you're a writer, you have to know how difficult it is for two novelists to dream and sweat and polish their novels into creation, and then to achieve publication. But that's what happened to Susan and me. Was it the pie that created the magic? I don't know, but I'm not taking any chances. Every August, for as long as I'm able (and sometimes, like this year when I'm not quite) I'm going to be buying organic blueberries; I'm going to be standing or sitting at the stove; and I'm going to be begging the muse for a story that will change hearts, and leave readers craving more.

POLLYANNA LOSES THE GLAD GAME--well, almost....

2008-08-20T07:33:00.001-07:00

Pollyanna - The Glad Game, originally uploaded by Mamluke.

You probably know why some of my friends call me Pollyanna--and not always in admiration. I understand; I really do. Sometimes optimism can be grating. When you're in the middle of a divorce or a twenty-four hour flu, you don't need your friend to tell you to take two ounces of bliss and call her in the morning. Or that even even the most dire circumstances might contain a secret gift. Sometimes, you just need someone to give you a huge hug and say, "You're right. This sucks."

Two days post-surgical and stilll unable to get my pain under control
(I still think that my pump apparatus wasn't working though no one believed me) I learned something revelatory about the human condition: suffering isn't fun. I also learned something about myself: I'm not very good at it. I'm not good at being lying in a bed in an uncomfortable positiion, unable to sleep or eat or enjoy the presence of my family because pain owns me.

I didn't want flowers. I didn't want to talk to anyone. It was a beautiful day outside. Really? Close the curtains, please.

I counteracted it with prayer, meditation, two ounces of bliss, but I gotta tell you, physical suffering is a pretty daunting opponent. If I looked in the mirror and saw my old Pollyanna self, I would have pitied her. Poor naive fool; she just didn't know...

Then, determined to exacerbate my misery, my nurse announced I had to walk to the solarium at the end of the hall. I steadied myself on my IV pole, and went, trying to smile at my nurse, but inwardly I was walking to the "this sucks" beat. Cha-cha-cha.

I thought about my old friend, Marie, who while suffering from stomach cancer, a broken hip, and a stroke, gave me her usual luminous smile and promised it wasn't so bad. She lied, I thought.

"I'll leave you here for a while to enjoy the view," the nurse said, settling me in what looked like a giant highchair. (The indignities never end.)

Of course, I wasn't happy with that either. I wanted to get back to my personal torture wrack where I could moan and twist with abandon. But being the people pleaser to the end, I agreed.

The view from the solarium was indeed a lovely portrait of Boston on a late summer day. It looked directly on Simmons College, where they were working on the soccer fields to get them ready for the fall. There was a cosp of trees in the background, and that intangible excitement of people walking through the city, students heading for the hospital to study medicine, skateboarders flipping dangerously between sidewalk and street, business people walking with the high purpose of Napoleon.

I wasn't a bit interested. I felt bad, lousy, miserable...well, you get the idea.

A woman sitting in a similar highchair greeted me. "How you doin?"
she asked.

"Good!" chirped the automatic Pollyanna. (Well, nobody wants to hear the bad, lousy,miserable line anyway...) Especially not one who could have surely spouted her own litany.

Then we started to talk.

She'd had some extensive surgery the same day I did, came from one of the city's poorer neighborhood, and appeared to be quite alone. But she radiated the kind of happiness Pollyanna would have recognized.

When she heard I came from the Cape, she glowed. "I go down there a few times every summer," she said. And she soon proved that she had the seaside in her veins in a way that I, a local resident never did. She didn't visit the Cape for the usual tourist outing. She came to do some serious fishing.

"I'm like a squirrel storing my nuts up for winter." She listed all the fish she caught; striped bass, scup, and a bunch I'd never heard of, though they were all pulled from my friendly neighborhood ocean.

Hmm. I could actually smell the air by the harbor. "But what do you do with them when you catch them? How do you get them home and turn those giant fish with eyes and heads into something that looks like food on a plate?"

"Well, I got myself a big cooler," she said, probably thinking I was an idiot. "And I clean them right out on my porch. When my neighbors who pass by, they all stop and ask when I'm gonna cook them up. 'You'll know,' I tell them, 'you'll know.'

And they do, too. Soon as I start cooking that fish, people are knocking on the door."

"I should try that," I thought already imagining another adventure for the consultants, their grandfather and myself. Maybe the whole family would go, and we'd eat fish all winter...Maybe we, too, would learn to store up our nuts!

"Fishing on Cape Cod, huh? That sounds like fun," I said, as if it were new to me, and in a way it was. I'd gotten so used to driving past the fishing boats as if they were furniture, I never actually thought about boarding them. But now, seventy miles away, I SAW them.

"Maybe I should try that."

"You should," she said, nodding her head. "But don't wait; life is short. You and I know that." It was her first reference to our common trials. She paused and looked out the window.

"You've got to appreciate the good days," I agreed, looking out at the people on the sidewalk.

"That's for sure," my new friend said. "But I'm grateful for days like this, too." She laughed. "We're here, right? And look at how green those trees are."

Everyone seemed determined to make me see those damn trees. By then, however, I WAS seeing them. And I was thinking about fishing next summer, and eating in the greasy, fish fry places near the harbor that I usually avoided, and sitting on my deck and cleaning fish...well, okay, I probably won't go that far. How about, sitting on my deck, drinking Chianti, and watching Ted clean the fish?

And once again, I was back in the game again. Glad, glad, glad.

P.S. Much gratitude and love to all of you: Even when I didn't feel like doing anything, I still loved it when Ted read the blog responses out loud, and I imagined each of your faces. (I know I haven't seen a lot of you yet, but you still have faces for me.)

And thanks, too, to those who never leave comments, but who have followed along and contacted me in other ways. (Theresa G: If you're reading this, please know your beautiful, courageous letter left a particular mark.)

RED SHOES...and other news

2008-08-14T18:31:00.000-07:00

The Fashionistas with their grandfather

I'm not much of a footwear person, but about a month ago, I got an irresistible urge for a new pair of shoes. Not just any shoes either. I wanted some tall razzle dazzle hot heels. After a lifetime of flat shoes, I was done with the laid back life. I wanted the kind of shoes that would inspire me to walk somewhere I've never been before. But since I don't shop much, I called my two favorite fashion consultants (aka granddaughters). They were all over this mission.

Together, the three of us clunked and strutted around every shoe department in town, doing our best not to sprain an ankle as we feigned sophistication. I felt like we were walking through the eras as we tried on slingbacks and platforms, skinny pointed stilettos and sexy oxfords like my grandmother wore, but with five inch killer heels. I couln't help admire the consultants' aplomb as they crossed their legs and requested another pair of shoes from an annoyed sales clerk

"Yes, I realize those shoes aren't for children," the oldest and official spokesgirl said, "But could you please bring out two pairs in the smallest size." (I'm telling you, if I only had half this girl's poise and confidence...)

When the clerks glared at me, I just threw up my hands, and winced apologetically."Do you think they could just try a couple more pairs?" With my own children, I never would have allowed such shenanigans, but with the consultants, I'm putty.

And then I found them. They were wine red. Open toed. Retro. And oh so high. After I buckled them, I stood up, put my hands on my hips and looked my 6'1" tall husband square in the eyes. "How do you like me now, baby?"

The consultants gasped in unison. "Those are the ones!"

"The Ones"

So where have I gone in my wine red, mile high hot shoes? Well, nowhere. Instead, I've spent most of my time barefoot and on the couch. It's a life that would drive any normal person mad, but is usually quite fine with me. It's a comfortable couch for one thing, with lots of bright light, my animals around me, and a lovely family coming and going.

My magic carpet

But mainly my enforced exile from life has been fine because I've been working on a new novel. And while I've been sitting on the couch, my characters have been doing things like falling in love and traveling to Portugal and performing surgery, not to mention dealing with unbelievable treachery. And I've been doing it with them. How could I ever be bored?

But sometimes when I'm tired or not feeling well, I go to the closet and take out my glamourous shoes. And I think that anyone who owns a pair of shoes like that must have some fabulous destinations in her future. I imagine how the consultants will smile when they see me wearing them. Then they'll claim credit for making the woman I've become. And of course, they (along with the rest of my family) will be right.

***************************************************************************************************************************

IN OTHER NEWS:

* I haven't forgotten blueberry season. My friend Susan Messer and I have both baked our Literary Blues Pies, as has Diana Guerero and the Fawnskin Writers. I'll be posting on that soon, as well as on Susan's marvelous news. (Hint: the muse clearly rewards those who honor her with perfect blue pies.)

*And speaking of writers with brilliant muses, two people who I'm privileged to call friends saw new novels published this week. Tish Cohen's INSIDE OUT GIRL and Amy McKinnon's debut, TETHERED were both released on the twelfth. Though they are very different kinds of stories, they are both gorgeously written, and in their own ways, they both speak to the ultimate goodness of the human spirit. (Yes, I know that TETHERED deals with child murder, but trust me, this is a beautiful book.) (As for INISIDE OUT GIRL, you can check out my review on Amazon. I will say more later when I have the time and concentration to do them justice. But don't wait for me. Both these novels are undoubtedly right up front in your local book store. Check them out!

*As for me, I'm scheduled for another major surgery in the morning. So what am I doing up at nearly midnight blogging about shoes when I have to leave my house at 4:30 a.m.? Um, good question, but I never claimed to be logical. I guess I will try to get some sleep now, and the next time you hear from me, I'll probably be blogging about my hospital roommates.

P.S. Thanks to all who have continued to check in on me over the last two quiet months. I may not have written much, but you've all been in my heart.

HOW DO YOU STAND HER?

2008-06-02T20:58:00.000-07:00

We all have them. Stories from our childhood that others like to tell about us. Stories we don't remember, and that don't seem to be connected to us and our self-concept. Stories we may not particularly like...

Here's one my mother began to tell in recent years: I was four or five, and sick with the flu so she stayed home from work. An extra day off was rare for her and she planned to take advantage of it by getting some things done. There was also a carpenter working on the house that day. But as they attempted to go about their productive business, I moaned theatrically from my room. Moaned and called for my mother every five minutes.

"Mama, take my temperature."

"Mama, bring me a glass of water."

"Mama, come and sit with me."

"Maaamaa!"

Finally, the carpenter packed up his tools in frustration, and said, "I can't work in this house." (If you ask me, he sounds like a constipated primadonna. But of course, when this story is told, no one asks me.)

My mother was immediately embarrassed for her house. It was old, a fixer-upper they'd bought for five thousand dollars in the fifties. Was he saying it was too far gone?

But when she asked what was wrong, the haughty carpenter only snorted. "It's not your house, lady. It's your kid. How do you stand her?"

So no, this is not my favorite story. And what makes me even less fond of it is my family's reaction to it. They never seem to get tired of hearing it; and no matter how time my mother retells it, they hoot at the punchline as if it were the first.

"But Ma, you always said how good I was," I say petulantly, hoping for some kind of retraction. "I was your little angel, remember?"

"Of course, you were good, honey," my mother says, patting my hand. But there is something in her eyes...(In the background, the hooting goes on.)

"The poor kid was sick!" I say irritably. "Was it too much for her to ask for a damn glass of water?"

But once again, no one seems to hear me. They're too busy laughing.

Anyway, I've come a long way from that whiney five-year-old. Or so I thought until this weekend. I'd had a low grade fever and hadn't been feeling too well all week, but on Saturday morning, things took a dramatic downturn. I woke up with the highest temperature I've ever had, heart racing, and a debilitating pain in my side. When I tried to get out of bed, dizziness knocked me back down.

It turned out to be a kidney infection, which is not usually greeted as good news, but my doctor was jubilant. The alternative, "what they were afraid of," would have required an ambulance trip to Boston, and probably a "procedure." An innocuous enough word, I suppose, but these days it's become one of the most dreaded ones in my lexicon.

So the good news was that I didn't have to be admitted. I could go home and rest on my own couch, drink tea (or in this case, cranberry juice) from my own blue cup, sleep in my own bed. The bad news was that I still felt like hell.

I settled myself on the couch, but the pain made it difficult to get comfortable; and my feverish head was too addled to read.

"Ted," I called. "Maybe you should take my temperature."

"Ted, I need a glass of water."

"Ted, come and sit with me; I'm lonely."

Ted, of course, had things to do, and he'd just spent five hours in the emergency room. "I can't just sit with you all day," he tried to explain. And I understood. Well, sort of...

Later in the evening, he was tired when he joined me so he tuned into a podcast on his IPod.

"Aren't you going to talk to me?" I said.

"Huh?" he said.

Then, reading my face, he took out his headphones and tried. The conversation wasn't exactly flowing though. See whining is essentially a monologue. The whiner has all the good lines: I'm hot; I'm cold; my stomach is killing me; my head hurts; you know, I just feel awful; in fact I feel like I'm gonna die right here...But the only line the other person gets is a variation on "Gee, I'm sorry."

When I realized I was getting nowhere, I escaped to the bathroom--internationally known as the best place to throw oneself a pity party. I tried my best to work up a good one.

Why has all this happened to me? I asked. Why do I keep getting sick? And how much can I take?

The only problem was it didn't work. I hadn't really felt sorry for myself since I got my diagnosis in October, and now when I was ready for a good wallow, I just couldn't do it. I looked in the mirror and answered my own question:

Why has all this happened to me? It just did. Deal with it, chump.

Why has my health become such a soap opera with constant histrionics? Think of all the years of good health you had. Were you asking why then? And if not, how dare you start questioning it now?

How much can I take? As much as I have to--and not because I'm particularly strong or brave, but just because there are no alternatives--except suicide and giving in to a case of terminal whining. I wasn't ready for the former; and the latter wasn't working too well for me.

And if my pity party wasn't enough of a bust, by the time I should have been shedding some pretty good crocodile tears, I burst out laughing.

Why?

Because at that moment, I remembered my mother's story. And maybe I remembered being that five-year-old with the flu, too. She was miserable and feverish, and even though her mother appeared every time she cried for attention, it didn't help; she still felt lousy. She was too young to know that even the most loving mother or husband, child or friend, cannot protect us from the pain and loneliness that is part of our life on this planet. And if we think they can, or demand they try, we only push them away--as I proved with the carpenter those many years ago.

************************************************************************************

I don't talk about books and writing all that much here, even though they're my life, but after this story, I figured you could use some good news that's better than a kidney infection:

The Liar's Diary sold in the UK last week, to a very enthusiastic publisher who plan to make it their lead title in spring, 2009, and reissue it in mass market paperback the following year. They say they're committed to doing everything they can to bring me a "huge" readership in the UK. Is life good or what?

TEN YEARS AGO

2008-05-24T10:29:00.001-07:00

, originally uploaded by *davidsαngle.

Writer Lisa Alber recently tagged me for a meme. The rules and questions are posted on Lisa's blog, so if anyone would like to pick up the baton, please do! In any case, her answers were fun to read.

But since my life is largely internal, and anyone who visits here often probably knows too much about me already, I chose one question that felt significant:

What were you doing ten years ago?

Ten years ago, I was in love with my husband.

I still am. But now I know more about what that means, what it demands, and above all what it gives. I understand how love holds you up when you are weak, propels you forward when you don't think you can take another step, bears the unbearable.

Ten years ago two of my chidren were young enough to sink onto my lap when they needed comfort, young enough to be oblivious to my flaws, but my two oldest sons had already left the house. They were avid athletes and the rhythmic pounding of basketballs on the next street haunted me. It was the sound I'd always listened for when I wanted to call them home, but it didn't work any more. Why didn't anyone warn me this could happen?

Now I know that kids never leave home, not entirely. Now I smile when I hear basketballs on the street, or see bikes whizzing by in the spring, or walk through a street game of soccer or softball or hockey. Now they don't remind me of loss; they bring back my blessings.

Ten years ago I was a banquet waitress. Sometimes in the "season" I went to work at work at five a.m. to set up for breakfast, and didn't leave until the cocktail party ended at one the following morning. I remember being so tired that between functions, my friend Gina and I used to go outside and fall asleep on the grass or in our cars. I remember being shocked by the cruelty of the alarm clock that woke me after only four hours of sleep and demanded I do it over again. I remember feeling certain that I couldn't. Absolutely could not. But once I was in the car, driving through a clean new morning, my spirit leaped to life. And when I left the hotel late that night, the stars were never brighter.

Ten years ago, my co-workers and I worried and argued and gossiped about who got the best shifts, who claimed more than her share of power in our largely powerless world, who slacked off, and let others carry her weight. Since then, a couple of my co-workers have died; others have moved away; and many remain enduring friends. Now I wonder what we were arguing about, and why we ever thought those things were so important.

Ten years ago, waking or sleeping, I dreamed of the stories I would write, the novels and poems and plays I would produce. I searched frantically for time and space, for discipline and quiet to write them down. Sometimes I found it.

Now I 've written a book, but I'm still haunted by stories and visions and dreams, still search for uncluttered time to write them down. But now, every day, (well, almost) no matter what else is happening, I make sure I find it.

Ten years ago, I was a vegetarian; I worked out every day. I ran instead of walked, danced whenever I could, hoisted trays stacked high with ten dinners, and amazed my fellow gym rats by the number of heavy squats I could do. I never imagined a time when I would spend whole days on the couch or count pain pills, afraid I might run out.

Now I know that the only thing that's promised us is the chance to choose our attitude about what comes.

Ten years ago, my father sometimes stopped by unexpectedly. Though he'd retired a few years earlier, he still wore his work clothes--the shirt with his name stitched on the pocket, the navy blue pants, his cap. The hands that were always fixing things seemed uncomfortably idle. I listened as he retold the old stories, but he could tell I was "busy" and impatient to get back to my computer. He always apologized for bothering me when he left.

Now when I visit his grave on Memorial Day, I will think about what a miracle those afternoons were; and I will promise him and myself I will be different. I will take the time for everyone around me. I will understand that those who feel like permanent fixtures in our lives are already vanishing, as are we. I will be more patient, more willing to listen, to understand, to give the benefit of the doubt. I will think about a quote my grandfather taped to his mirror that went something like this:

"Any good that I can do, or any kindness I can show, let me do it now because I will not pass this way again."

Ten years ago, I thought I owned the future, but now I know the only thing that's ever belonged to me is today. Somehow it seems like enough.

.

UNREASONABLE HAPPINESS: The Existential Question of the Week

2008-05-04T10:03:00.001-07:00

1st birthday, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

The other night around one a.m., I was lying in bed reading, as I usually am at that hour, when I felt so overwhelmed by happiness that I had to put my book aside. I could no longer concentrate on the words. I wanted to go outside and run down the street with my arms wide open. I wanted to lift my creaky voice and sing an aria. But since my health wouldn't allow for the former, and my sleeping family didn't deserve the latter, I just sat in bed and smiled.

Exultant was the word that came to mine. "Perfect joy" was how Ted described it when the energy I was giving off woke him up--in spite of my best intentions. And yes, it was that--indescribably perfect joy--for absolutely no reason. Happiness as free gift. No one had called me at one a.m. to tell me I'd won the lottery, or hit the bestsellers list; I hadn't recently fallen in love. Or maybe I had--though not in the way the term is usually used. Maybe I'd left the shallow, mundane world I usually occupy and fallen through a trap door to the place where being in love is quite simply our natural state.

So what triggered this crazy intemperate fit of happiness? It seemed to be a confluence of circumstances: the peace of the house late at night, the cool wind that was blowing through the window, and the presence of Ted beside me. But most of all it was a passage in the book I'd been reading-- a yet to be pubished novel called THE GARGOYLE by Andrew Davidson which the publisher sent me for review. In that passage, a young debut author had managed to accomplish the highest thing a writer can hope to do, at least for this reader: open the trap door, and reveal the goodness and the love we are meant for.

The next day I went back and re-read the passage, wondering why it affected me as it did, but I couldn't recreate the way I felt the night before. I couldn't feel the cool, dark wind that came through my window, couldn't see the way my reading light illuminated my messy, imperfect bed, or my equally messy, imperfect life. I could remember it and I could smile about it, but I couldn't have it back--not exactly. I guess that's the way it is with free gifts. Still, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a little disappointed.

In my late night hour of perfect joy, I thought that this time I might remain exultant forever. This time I "had it." But the next day, the trap door quickly shut behind me. I allowed myself to be offended when a friend commented rather unkindly on my weight loss; and I repeated my petty complaint to everyone I encountered--spreading the negativity. "How insensitive can she be?" I raged. "Would you say that to your worst enemy?" I ranted. But as usual, nourishing my outrage only left me feeling drained and sick of myself. Eventually, I realized all I had to do was shut-up and let it go, and poof! It was over.

So no, I don't yet "have it." I haven't trapped bliss under a hat or captured it in a jar. I haven't moved permanently into the country behind the secret door. But for some reason, I seem to visit with increasing frequency. For some reason, I find myself startled, accosted, flooded by happiness in the damnedest places, at the most unpredictable times more and more often. It comes in hospital beds, and in the bed where I've slept for more than twenty years; it's there when I'm tired and on the wonderful days when I feel a surge of my old energy. I don't know where it comes from, but I can only hold out my humble cup, and say, "yes, please" when it arrives, and "thank you" when it passes by.

So here it is--the existential question of the week (remember those?): When was the last time you felt incredibly happy for no particular reason?

*And speaking of perfect joy, all photos were taken at my grandson Hank's first birthday party.

FLOWERS THAT LAST

2008-04-20T11:43:00.000-07:00

I started this post twelve days ago, but I was too tired to finish it. In fact, "too tired" has pretty much defined my life for the past two weeks. Too tired to fix my own tea, or to answer a comment on the blog, or to talk longer than three minutes on the phone. A flight of stairs was a mountain; and a shower a days work. I listened; I read; I enjoyed and appreciated, but I had nothing to give back. It was as if the effects of five major surgeries in three months descended all at once. My blood pressure plummeted. Blood tests and my ghostly pallor confirmed I was anemic and dehydrated.

The past two days have been a bit better. I walked a half block--today one house further than I did yesterday. I didn't realize how slow I was until I noticed that that my lame twelve-year old dog was yards ahead of me. But I'm not complaining. I was all dressed up in a pair of old gym pants, and I was outside.

When I passed the grumpy neighbor who never responds to my greetings, I felt a tinge of old resentment. No matter what, I wasn't saying hello to that guy again! I stared straight ahead, determined to ignore him. But he was working so close to the street, I couldn't quite pull it off. I called out a listless, head-down, "How you doin?" Then I kept going, prepared for another snub. But to my surprise, my taciturn neighbor looked up, put down his spade, and asked me where I'd been. Excuse me?

"I haven't seen you in months," he said. I didn't know he'd ever seen me AT ALL, but I didn't say so. Instead, I complimented him on his neat flower beds. He leaned on his fence and told me about the trouble he's been having with his underground sprinkler system. I'm not much interested in sprinkler systems, nor do I understand their workings, but it felt good to be talking to another human, and even better to realize my resentment had been unfounded. People are always more complex than we think. Damn. Shouldn't I know that by now?

But this post, the one I began a couple of weeks ago, wasn't supposed to be about my health problems, or my snail walk around half a block, or my neighbor's sprinkler system. It was supposed to be about flowers! Yellow and orange tulips to be specific.

Wilma, a student in the nurse practitioner program delivered them in their citron yellow bucket a few hours before I left the hospital. Wilma wasn't one of the wonderful nurses who'd been responsible for my direct care, but she'd come in to take my blood pressure a couple of times and I'd met her in the hallway during my daily walks. I liked her gentle manner, and the soft whispery voice that seemed to draw her listener closer.

During the three weeks I'd spent on her floor, Wilma and I had talked a few times. I learned she was the single mother of two adolescents, that she often worried about the neighborhood where her boys were growing up, and the many hours they spent alone while she worked and studied. These were concerns I understood well.

After I admired the gorgeous flowers Wilma had placed in my window, I wondered out loud who had sent them. "There doesn't seem to be a card..."

Wilma smiled shyly. "They're from me," she said. "I know you've been through a lot and I just wanted to give you a goodbye gift."

I was stunned. I knew how exhorbitant the prices in the gift shop were, and I also knew enough about Wilma's life to guess they weren't in her budget. Undoubtedly, I embarrassed her with my hugs, and my insistence that everyone on the floor come in to admire my tulips--and the extraordinary kindness they represented.

The flowers only lasted a few days, but Wilma's gift is still with me. So often we tell stories about other people's mistakes and failings. "I never would have done that..." we say, attempting to prove to our ego and our listeners that we are better, stronger, more compassionate. But in the end, those judgmental stories we love to tell (the kind I once told about my unfriendly neighbor!) only prove the opposite.

I might not ignore a neighbor on the street, but I wouldn't have done what Wilma did either--at least, not in the past. If the idea of buying flowers for a passing acquaintance arose, I would have quickly quashed it. I'd fall back on the beliefs that govern my life more than they should, beliefs like "You can't afford that!" or "Gift shop flowers are only for close friends and family." Well, who says?

I hope Wilma's radical generosity taught me another way. I hope it reminded me that life is too short NOT to give more than we think we have, too short to miss out on the joy of bringing tulips to strangers.

MY TRIP AROUND THE WORLD

2008-03-31T17:33:00.001-07:00

World N Hands, originally uploaded by bambino333.

It wasn't a trip I wanted to take; there were no beaches or cocktail hours; and the only souvenirs I brought home are carved into my abdomen. And yet, I traveled far, saw things I'd never seen before. I learned more about the internal and external world than I have on any other trip I've ever taken. My love for friends and family has deepened and changed.

If I could go back and refuse the journey, I'm not entirely sure that I would. I'm not the same person I was when I entered the hospital for the first time on November 28th, and I don't think I will be her again. Her preoccupations are not mine. Her sense of time and priorities are different, too.

If you asked her why she wanted to live, her answers would have been theoretical, and would not always have been borne out by the way she spent her time, or the words that flowed from her mouth all too easily.

There's nothing theoretical about my reason for living now. I think before I speak or act now. Do those words, that way of thinking represent who I want to become? Is a given activity really worth doing or am I doing it because it feeds my ego or alleviates my fears?

In the past four months, I've spent a total of five weeks in the hospital. I shared both a room and many intense hours with unknown roommates from the U.S., China, Equador, Monseurrat, Cambodia, and Panama. I found some more congenial than others, but I learned from all of them.

If I had a choice, I would have opted for a private room, but these "strangers," each enduring their own hour of crisis, blessed me with their lives, their stories, their friendship--and above all their courage. They proved again and again that what we think we want--solitude and a chance to control our environment, is good; but rising out of ourselves and the narrowness of our lives is better.

"My" hospital was a teaching hospital, and I came to love the atmosphere of wild learning that pervaded the place. As one resident told me, everyone there was mentoring someone else. It was an atmosphere where no one knew so much that they couldn't learn from someone else; and no one knew so little that they didn't have something to teach.

That's the kind of world where I want to live; it's also the place within myself where I returned to at the end of my trip. If I have something to give, I want to give it--and without reservation. At the same time, I want to keep my eyes, my ears and my heart open to all that I clearly have to learn from the mentors who startle me at every turn.

ONE MORE SONG

2008-03-29T13:09:00.001-07:00

Pete_Seeger, originally uploaded by guano.

Last night, I couldn't sleep. Maybe I'd been spoiled by three nights in my own bed. Or maybe as Lisa Kenney once wrote to me, night is just a particularly vulnerable time for people in the hospital.

Around eleven, my roommate, a young woman from Panama, got a call. It seemed her three year old son was having trouble sleeping, too. He needed his mother to sing to him to sleep, just like she always did.

And so she did. It turned out to be a long concert, as the boy continued to beg for one more song, not wanting to let go of the connection to his mother's voice.

I'm not sure how long it took for him to fall asleep, but I slipped off to the sound of her voice after about the third song.

Today, as I was watching the "Power of Song" a documentary about Pete Seeger on PBS, I smiled as I remembered the night before.

At the end of the documentary, Pete said we don't sing enough any more and it's a huge loss. People used to sing when they walked and when they built roads and bridges and when they cleaned their houses; and subtly they lifted up the world around them with their song--or comforted it, as a sick woman, singing to her child stilled and illuminated my hospital room last night.

I've never had a voice as strong as the man I heard singing "Good Morning Heartache" last week, or as light and high as my roommate's, and I can't play the banjo like Pete Seeger. But I can tell you one thing; I will leave this hospital (hopefully
tomorrow) determined to sing my song and to sing it with all the force I have in me.

CALL MY BOYFRIEND

2008-03-25T12:19:00.001-07:00

Romantic July, originally uploaded by Meloses (Ladida).

During my twelve days in the hospital, I outlasted five roommates. The last one had attempted suicide in a particularly violent manner, and ended up with abdominal surgery.

Through the curtains, I heard the doctors say it was a miracle she'd missed any major organs. It was a miracle she was alive.

Through the curtains, I heard her awaken, surprisingly greedy for life. She wanted a turkey sandwich. She wanted the 18 karat gold chain that had been taken from her neck in the ER. She wanted the clothes that had been cut from her body. Maybe they could be repaired.

But most of all she wanted her boyfriend. It was a fairly complicated process, but the nurse dialed the long distance number she provided. No answer. They tried the woman's sister, her "best friend," but there were no answers at those numbers either.

The woman slept fitfully, guarded by a paid suicide watch, but she opened her eyes every hour, always with the same words: Call my boyfriend. Please! I need someone to call my boyfriend.

The paid watcher was a young nursing student who busied herself with homework. The only time she spoke to the woman in the bed was to report that there had been no answer. Again. Not from her boyfriend, or her sister either. The friend had apparently taken the phone off the hook.

Had anyone called the hospital to see if she was all right? the patient wanted to know.

No one, the nursing student said and went back to her homework, looking slightly troubled. When her shift was over, she was replaced by a middle-aged woman who liked to watch cartoons--at a loud voiume.

Call my boyfriend, the patient said to her middle-aged watcher--as if it was a new request.

By the time the fourth shift arrived (another college student) I knew that the the boyfriend would never take her calls. Nor would her sister. I also knew she would keep trying.

When the nurses came in, the watcher told them that he wouldn't take these shifts again. They were too boring.

Slowly the patient and I began to talk. She told a story about children born and vaguely "lost"--like a misplaced passport or a wallet. About a life that began in a distant country and had wended its way through many exotic locales, leaving little but chaos and loss in its wake. About the boyfriend who drank too much and couldn't work because he was haunted by the ghost of his dead mother.

Her suicide attempt was "a stupid mistake," she said. But it was "over" now. Besides, she needed to get home. If she didn't get to work on Monday, she might lose her job.

The watcher, who was being paid to care about her life continued to underline his text book in yellow marker. I wondered if he was listening, and what he thought about this turbulent life so different from his own. I wondered what I thought. It was a story I couldn't completely understand, and certainly could not judge.

How had she ended up so alone? Why didn't one person care if she was alive or dead? But one thing I understood was her desperate need for connection.

Do you have a cell phone? she asked me. Because you know, I really need to call my boyfriend.

I knew that once I gave her the phone, she'd use it incessantly. And of course, I also knew her quest was futile, but I tossed her the phone anyway. As she clutched it to her ear, I felt the endless ringing in my brain, in the pit of my stomach, in my heart.

No, her boyfriend said to her. No, her family.

She left at the same time I did. Left in an oversized sweat suit that had been given to her by the hospital and a pair of padded socks on her feet. Left in a cab she couldn't pay for that would take her to the place where the phone had continued to ring in emptiness. Despite her violent effort to hurt herself, she seemed remarkably resilient--both to the psychiatrist who released her back to her old life and to me.

People have told me I've been courageous in dealing with my ordeal, but I haven't been. Not particularly. All of you would do the same. You would hear the most challenging news, as some of my roommates did, and then an hour later, you would be on the phone finding a way to explain it to your family and to yourself, looking for the bliss. You WOULD.

But I wonder if I would have the kind of courage my abandoned roommate had. I wondered if I would comb my hair, and put on my make-up, wanting to be attractive even in the sweatsuit that didn't fit, in an impervious world. I wonder if I would have waved as cheerily as she did when she left.

Good luck to ya, I told her. It was what my grandfather used to say in place of goodbye; and he always managed to imbue the words with such deep sincerity it makes me cry to think on it now. I tried to do the same.

You, she said, almost like an accusation. You already have good luck. After two surgeries in a week--the last one tenuous at best-- and twelve days in the hospital, I wasn't feeling particularly fortunate at that moment. My smile was probably pretty weak.

She glanced at Ted before looking back at me pointedly. Your kids come to see you and your boyfriend is here night and day. You think there's better luck in the world than that?

No, I suppose there's not. How could I have forgotten?

WRITER IN RESIDENCE

2008-03-22T07:25:00.001-07:00

The Letter Writer, originally uploaded by rita banerji.

This morning, after ten days in the hospital, my nurse told me I had become the official mayor of the floor. But if f they're going to hang a sign outside my room, I would prefer it say "Writer in Residence." . I never was much for politics. As a writer, I tend to grow empathy for even the darkest of characters. Clearly, I'm unfit to govern--even among my own creations.

So. After days of sipping clear liquids, watching TV, surfing the net, reading books and emails ( which I can't answer from the hospital for some reason) a strange urge came over me. It was the urge that has dominated my life. Stories bubbled up; a poem began to form. I thought of the novel I would begin after the one I'm working on was finished, and behind that, I glimped the shadow of another.

How strange, how marvelous that it should follow me here! Even when my brain is still thick with anesthesia! Even when I ignored it in favor of TV and magazines! Still it follows. Still it comes.

As for my medical status, I'm well enough to walk to the kitchen and make tea, well enough to joke with the staff, and to get excited about the new "surgical soft" diet that's been ordered for lunch. (It's been a long ten days on jello and broth.) Now it's pretty much a waiting game. Waiting to learn if the surgery will hold. Waiting to eat normally again. Waiting, waiting to see the imperfect incredible place known as home.

Thanks to all who have continued to check in on me, who have left such wise, caring comments, who have kept up the "hope watch" with me. I send smiles and hugs to each of you.

GOOD MORNING HEARTACHE

2008-03-18T09:07:00.001-07:00

Billie-holiday.jpg, originally uploaded by poirpom.

Well, it's a good thing I didn't worry before my surgery. It's a good thing that I reveled in every moment of being at home, rather than spoiling it by mentally leaping into "what might happen." Because as it turns out what might happen arrived all on its own.

My recovery was on track until Sunday when I became serioiusly ill. Doctors were summoned (one even racing down the hallway), tests were taken, conferences were had. The consensus was even more desperate than the way I felt. My surgery had failed, and would need to be repeated (today at 1:30.)

Fortunately, by yesterday, I was feeling much better. A young Vietnamese man arrived to take me by wheelchair to radiology. It felt like a real outing. Running 3 and a half minutes late, and obsessively punctual, my high spirited driver gave me the kind of thrill ride I haven't had in years. We practically did wheelies around the corners.
Wheee!

Once I got off the ward, I marveled at the healthy people I saw, and all the incredible things they could do without a second thought. They walked fast, carrying backpacks or heavy satchels, while nattering on their cell phones about what they were doing that night.
A woman enjoyed a bagel and coffee at her desk. Then around the next turn, a frustrated young mother, chased a toddler, while balancing a baby on her hip. A man, talking in the hallway complained that his supervisor was compelled "to micro-manage everything."

In another time, I have done all these things, I have been all these people (though I don't think I've ever used the word micro-manage.")
(Remind me to try it.)

My popular driver was greeted enthusiastically by co-workers everywhere. "How ya doin?" they asked.

"Same old. Same old," he responded the first three times.

That was when I spoke up. "Look at you. You're racing. You're whistling. You're calling out to your friends. You're not Same Old anything. You're WONDERFUL."

He laughed out loud. When he met the next friend, he didn't even wait to be asked how he was.

"You know how I am today? I'm WONDERFUL."

My destination was a spot in an empty hallway where I was to wait for the radiologist. I was sitting there thinking of everything I'd seen on my ride when unexpectedly, someone behind me belted out the old Billie Holiday classic, Good Morning Heartache. It was a damn good rendition.

I turned around and saw an old man in a wheel chair, waiting as I was. He continued to sing, and when he was finished, I clapped.

"Do you know that song?" he asked.

Oh yes, I know that song. All too well.

But then I thought about all the people I'd seen that day. I thought about how blessed they were. All of them. And how blessed I was, too. Blessed to be loved by my family and friends, to be cared for by an amazing team of doctors and nurses. Blessed to meet my buoyant young wheel chair driver, and to be able to see the world around me as I traveled. And especially blessed by an old man, sitting alone in a hallway, who had the fortitude to turn his troubles into a song.

**********************************************************************

Thanks to all of you who have left such beautiful messages of support in this past week. Some days, though you may not have known it, you have held me up.

WORRY BEADS

2008-03-11T19:39:00.001-07:00

Worry Beads, originally uploaded by pfong.

Surgery is scheduled for tomorrow at 8 a.m. so the other night, lying in bed, I started to relive my recent experiences. It was easier not to contemplate what was about to happen to me before my first operation. These days I know too much.

My heart did a jumpy thing. Was it palpitations? A sign of undetected heart disease? Was I really fit for surgery? After all, I've done nothing but much but hang out on my couch the last couple of months--not very good training for another marathon in the OR.

Then I realized that I was worrying, and that worrying is optional. Phew! I turned out the light, put the worry beads under my pillow and slept like a child.

See you all in a few days.

GABE'S HAIRCUT

2008-03-08T20:30:00.001-08:00

"We're Open", originally uploaded by Digital Agent.

When he was growing up, my son, Gabe, always requested the same dinner on his birthday: lasagna and mashed potatoes. These days we skip the mashed potatoes, but still honor the tradition.Forget the gifts; don't worry about the cake. The only thing Gabe really wants for his birthday is a meal worth remembering. An Italian meal.

And since he lives in Rhode Island, we have a lot of choices. If there's anywhere outside Bologna that has more or better Italian restaurants than they do in Rhode Island, I'd like to hear about it. This year, a small, unpretentious place in Smithfield served up the most awesome bruschetta with cannellini beans and eggplant rollatini I've ever had.

But the best part of the meal was fervent conversation we always have. We are the kind of family who talks so much, each excitedly waiting for a turn to speak, that when we finally look up, there's no one left in the restaurant but the employees. (As a waitress, I hated people like us, but we at least, we always tip well.)

Right now Gabe and Nicola are hard at work promoting their new business, RentProv. That means going out and getting to know the communities they want to serve. It means walking the streets of various towns and neighborhoods, talking to people about what they do, and what they hope to do. Or just talking to people, which has always been Gabe's favorite activity.

In the smallest state in the country, are still a lot ofof small family-run coffee shops and bakeries, sub shops and delis; and Gabe is determined to sample the food and meet the regulars in all of them. He's also learned that it's those small businesses, the heart of any community, who are willing to post his flyers, to take an interest in his dream, and offer to spread the word.

Last week he was walking through a somewhat downtrodden, but friendly neighborhood in Providence when he noticed a barber shop. The windows looked as if they hadn't been washed in a decade, and there were no lights on, but when Gabe tried the door, it was open.

The first thing he noticed in the empty shop was the overwhelming scent of urine. The second thing was the barber snoozing in chair, with a very large, tabby in his lap, one mistrustful eye open. Gabe estimated the barber's age at somewhere between eighty-five and ninety.

A lot of people would have slipped out before the man woke up, but Gabe decided on the spot that what he needed most in the world was a haircut from an octogenarian barber.

He had to poke the poor man three times before the barber leaped off the chair, blinking in bewilderment. "A haircut? What? Well, sure!"

So for six bucks, Gabe got himself a haircut that was reminiscent of the ones I used to give him when I bought my first set of crazy clippers, and an hour of talk about the history of the neighborhood where the barber had done business for over fifty years.

It's the kind of deal that is becoming all too rare.

ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER

2008-02-12T21:06:00.001-08:00

Sunrise on my wild path!
Originally uploaded by denis collette

There are millions of blogs out there, and in my fascination with diaries of all kinds, I've probably visited hundreds of them. Many are worthwhile and artfully done though I only stop by once or twice. But a couple dozen captured my attention sufficiently that I eventually listed them on my sidebar. Some I checked on weekly, and others just a few times a year, but I always came back.

It's as difficult to explain why one blogger speaks to us in a particular way as it is to describe the mystery of any friendship. Maybe I returned to certain sites because they were asking the same questions I was. Or maybe it was because their answers were better than mine. More beautiful. Truer. Deeper.

One such blogger was Michael who posted photographs and poetry at One Foot in Front of the Other. Michael had been living with a rare cancer for six years, and occasionally he mentioned the anxiety of an upcoming blood test,or another health issue, but that was never the focus of his blog. Mostly, he chronicled his love for all things Japanese, for New York City, and the chess players he photographed in Washington Square Park, for his work at a New Jersey newspaper.

He was frequently wise, and always honest.

Michael visited here, too, but the only time I heard from him directly was in early December after he'd learned of my illness. He offered encouragement and wished me well, but didn't mention his own deteriorating health.

Only after I visited his blog did I discover that that while he was sending me his good thoughts, Michael himself was dying.

In his last month, he wrote about his pain and his fears, about saying goodbye to friends and giving up his cats, but also about the simple joy of a cup of tea. And as always, he wrote about the kindness and the love--the great and incredible goodness he saw in the world around him. He cited his faults and claimed he didn't deserve it, but there it was--"sunrise on his wild path" as photographer Denis Collette aptly titled the photo above.

Michael's last entry was on January 3rd. It was a poem about looking in the mirror and encountering death. But it ended with a personal triumph, a sense of blessedness.

After that, I was almost afraid to return, and when I did, there were no new posts. The poem, I believed, was his final message to us.

I was wrong.

Yesterday I went back and found that his sister had posted two photographs of Michael. She'd also written eloquently about his final weeks, and his death on January 15th. How can I describe my sorrow for this stranger, this friend I never met? Late at night, I sat up in my room in the dark, and pondered it.

But Michael left more behind than sorrow. In a photograph taken after a religious ceremony that was held shortly before his death, he is wasted, but beautiful.

"This picture," he said, "shows all the good and all the evil I've ever done in my life."

They are interesting words from a man whose best photographs were always portraits.

People speak about cancer victims winning or losing their battles with the disease, but I don't see it that way. I think that all of us, both the healthy and the sick, do as the name of Michael's blog describes.

We put one foot in front of the other and keep going. We try to love the world as we find it; and in the end, when we encounter death in the mirror as Michael did, we hope the good overcomes the evil.

Look at one of the last pictures of him shown in the post called Daiku, and tell me you don't see compassion. Tell me you don't see peace.

THANK YOU!

2008-01-31T21:42:00.000-08:00

valentines day, originally uploaded by omnia.

The day before my first surgery I took a walk on the beach where I found a red stone like the one in the photo, and knew I had to have it. Stones, shells, I'm always bringing something home--to the chagrin of my family--who often ask, "What's so special about THIS one?" and "Can't you leave a few on the beach?"

Of course, they're right. The house is cluttered enough with my natural collectibles. And as any child with a pail or adult with pocket can tell you, the wet stone glittering in the sun often turns into something quite ordinary when you try to bring it home.

Not all of them though. Some grow even more extraordinary the longer you look at them. "The Liar's Diary Blog Day" which was planned and organized by a few amazing writer friends--and participated in by literally hundreds of others--including some of my very first blog friends, and others, who had never heard of me, my book or my blog, but who jumped in and said "I want to help'" is like the latter. The longer I look on it and the more I think about it, the more it shines.

Among the wonderful souls were authors who are like gods to me, and those who never aspire to publish beyond their blogs, many people I've met, but far more who I will never know. There were also agents and editors and publishers who defied the cynics by proving it's not all about the bottom line. The real reason they got into this business is because they love books and people, and because they really believe in their heart of hearts that stories can change the world.

I spent the day wandering from blog to blog, but still haven't hit half of them. (I will though!) I cried a lot, but I smiled far more. I had been told not to attempt to comment, and for the most part I didn't. I let friends like the wonderful Robin Slick, who visited so many on my behalf, say my thank yous for me. Know that I realize it's a debt that I can't possibly repay--but hopefully, karma can.

I also know that this goes far beyond me and my illness, and the book you all promoted for me when I couldn't do it myself. Once again, it all goes back to defying the cynicsim that has become so much a part of our world. A cynicism I've frequently indulged in myself.

Others have said it better, but the very best part of blog day has been the amazing show of goodwill. It's out there. If it can send a just-released novel shooting up in the Amazon numbers, and can make writers and cancer survivors and bloggers everywhere feel just a little bit closer, a little bit more united than we were before, imagine what else it can do?

And so back to that red shiny rock I found on the beach the day before my surgery. I didn't know why I was picking it up and bringing it home, but now I do. It's for YOU. For all of you.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention a few of the people who worked incredibly hard, and dreamed incredibly large to make this happen: Laura Benedict, who started all this with an idea and worked hard to carry it though, Susan Henderson of Litpark and Karen Dionne of Backspace both of whom have an amazing gift for bringing people together, and who frequently put their own work aside to promote others, Jessica Keener and Tish Cohen who shared their knowledge and ability to get the word out, also sacrificing hours of precious writerly time, my fabulous literary agent and even more fabulous friend, Alice Tasman, who cried with me when we first learned of this effort, and has done more behind the scenes to help than I'll ever know, Dan Conaway, who is NOT my agent, but still put valuable hours and enthusiasm and heart into getting this off the ground, all my good friends at Gather, Huntington Sharpe from Red Room, who designed a terrifc author page for me, and who mobilized the site to get dozen of authors involved, Sheila English and Victoria Fraasa at Circle of Seven Productions who made a Liar's Diary book trailer that made it to #7 on Google Videos last night, the delightful Eileen Hutton at Brilliance Audio who offered audio clips, MJ Rose who got out the troops at ITW, my fellow writers from Killer Year, several of whom were out promoting our anthology of the same name, but who took time to get involved in blog day, and two outstanding and generous bestselling authors, who took the time to read and support THE LIAR'S DIARY from the start. Both Jackie Mitchard and Tess Gerritsen once again, stepped up, and shared their thoughts on the novel. And I can't forget my wonderfully supportive editor, Julie Doughty at Dutton, my publicist, Laurie Connors, and all the people at Plume/Penguin, without whom there wouldn't be a book to promote.

A huge thank you--and much bliss to them--and to all of YOU--who made this day a small miracle.

RATE YOUR BLISS

2008-01-25T21:52:00.001-08:00

The Invisible City of Perseidius/Invisible Cities, originally uploaded by magic fly paula.

I promise to stop wriitng about "my trip to the hospital" soon. Very soon! But apparently, I'm a classic case of a writer who doesn't get out much. It's not that I don't see lots of people every day. Family, friends, and friends of the kids flow in and out in a wonderful stream. They bless my life--all of them--even when I bellow, (most often internally) "Hey, I'm trying to get some work done here!"

But what I've missed from my waitressing days, and what the hospital provided was interaction with the wider world. People I didn't know. Stories I hadn't heard. Catalysts to insights and thoughts that stretched far beyond myself and my beloved few. The stream that becomes a vast, transformative river. In the hospital, I walked into that river again.

For my second surgery, I only had one request: I wanted to go back to the same floor, White 7, where I already knew the nurses and the aides, the dietary and housekeeping staff. I loved them all. But it was probably the intimacy of sharing a room with various strangers, all enduring their own crises, that affected me most.

I've written before about the Chinese roommate who had been hit by a car while crossing a street. I've written about how we banished our night terrors and pain by speaking them out loud in the dark. What I haven't written about is the other kind of pain we discussed late in the night. The pain of injustice and invisibility.

Though she had several broken bones, a badly shattered ankle and a dislocated shoulder, what seemed to bother my roommate most was that other kind of pain. After we'd gone through the list of our physical suffering, she would re-tell the story of the woman who'd hit her with a BMW. The woman whose only concern seemed to have been spinning the story to avoid responsibity...

"I was in the crosswalk, but she told the police I walked in front of her car..She never looked at me....I was lying in the street, my whole life changed, and she never even asked if I was all right..."

It seemed incredible to me that anyone could be so callous, so blind. But of course, every day in our world, people make decisions about who we will look at deeply and who we will refuse to see. Every day, we turn away and deny responsibility just like the woman in the BMW did.

"They won't believe her," I said in the dark.

But my roommate's experience caused her to doubt. "She was rich, and I'm an office worker...my English, it's not so good...maybe they believe me and maybe they don't."

As our week together went on, our families got to know each other, and a genuine bond formed. One of her nephews wanted to become a writer, but the family worried that it wasn't a practical choice. (I couldn't disagree, but I also couldn't help telling him to keep writing!) A niece was a talented artist. I admired the caring and closeness of her extended family, and envied the wonderfully fragrant home cooked dinners they brought to her every evening.

One of the more baffling (and entirely subjective) questions a hospital patient is asked regularly is to rate your pain from one to ten. In my reference point, ten was childbirth, and seven was a throbbing tooth in need of a root canal. I wondered where the pain of invisibility fell on the scale.

No one ever asked me to rate my bliss, but I did anyway. Bliss was the gorgeous, concerned faces of my roommate's nieces and nephews and my children as they entered our room in the evening, their coats glistening with snow, cheeks bright with the cold. Bliss was seeing and being seen by the people in front of us, and by each other.

Though we talked about our suffering in the night, during the day, we joked with the aides, and told stories about our very different childhoods. In a cramped hospital room, looking out on the snow, I traveled far. We sipped our tea together, and talked about how good, how very good, it tasted. My roommate had a wonderful, tinkling laugh, which I'd heard--amazingly--on the first night when they brought her in on a stretcher.

That laughter is still with me. On the bliss scale, it's a ten.

LONGEVITY, Part 1

2008-01-21T22:39:00.001-08:00

Rev Martin Luther King Jr, originally uploaded by Buddy Stone.

I've never really had the urge to write a special post commemorating a federal holiday, but today (which by some mysterious process turned into yesterday about forty-five minutes ago) I did.

It's probably because recently I've been thinking a lot about Martin Luther King. In fact, I've thought about him so much I couldn't fit all the things I wanted to say about him into one post. I've thought about him in a personal way; and I've thought about him for the work that consumed his life. His life long war against invisibility--not for himself, because he was likely to be seen no matter what--but for others.

But as I just proved, a day can turn into a yesterday so quickly that you never get a chance to write the things you want to write, or say the things you intend to say--or damn, even do the laundry.

It was a good day though--so good that when I went to the pharmacy to pick up my prescriptions, I decided to saunter around the mall a little. I was just going to go to one store, but before I knew it, I had walked through the entire marketplace.

I bought myself some new underwear in rainbow colors, and a pair of fake Uggs for twenty-five dollars. I ran into some people I knew and stopped to talk.

They seemed surprised to see me out walking around, but they were too polite to say so, and I was too polite to tell them to stop looking at me like a ghost. After a while, we all forgot how wondrous it was to be alive and walking around the mall shopping for underwear on a federal holiday, and just talked.

Then, as I used to do when going to the mall was not a noteworthy accomplishment, I stopped at B & N for a mocha latte. I got tired before I finished it, but it still tasted good.

At the front of the store was a whole table of books about longevity. Foods to eat. Exercises to do. Thoughts to think. I used to love books like that, and I don't doubt they're full of marvelous advice. But today I walked past them, feeling kind of wistful for my old self. The self that believed those books could somehow save me.

The trouble is I ate the secret foods, did the work-outs, thought the thoughts, took the cleansing breaths, and I still got sick.

Maybe I put too much faith in those things before. Maybe I saw those books as talismans. Maybe I believed that if I just found the right one, I could live forever--or for a hundred years, which felt like forever when I first started reading about eating seeds and breathing deeply and living with gratitude.

Don't get me wrong; I'm still for healthy living and yoga and running for miles along the beach, and saying thank you whenever you get the chance. I just don't think of longevity as something I can buy at B & N anymore. Nor is it quite such a preoccupation.

Even though I have every longing--and these days, every hope--of writing more books and celebrating more anniversaries and seeing my grandchildren grow to be sturdy adults, I see things differently now.

Now, like MLK, I just want to do the work I have in me to do, and give whatever I have in me to give, however small and humble it might be.

More tomorrow...or is it today?

THE WRITER'S VIEW

2008-01-15T12:16:00.003-08:00

The Writer's View, originally uploaded by Flemming Gade.

For most of my life, my view as a writer was similar to the one from Hans Christian Anderson's window--not without its magic, but distinctly lacking in human warmth.

As a professional waitress and mom living in a small seaside town, I didn't know a single novelist or poet, published or un. I was strictly a closet writer No one but my family and a few close friends knew about my crazy dream to write a novel, and through some mysterious process that involved query letters and agents and secret meetings in New York, to actually get it published. I lived for the slow season when I could upplug the phone, shut the door to my room, and lose myself in my private passion: words and the world I created from them. If the winter months spent in that room were lonely, I accepted that as an occupational hazard.

That hasn't changed. As a full time writer (though I don't feel much like one lately) I still spend way too much time alone, fighting my simultaneous fear of failure and success, battling characters who won't cooperate with my plans, and those who force me to wade (or sometimes jump headlong) into the kind of experiences and emotions I try to avoid in real life.

But in spite of my isolation, through the internet, I now have what writers had to move to Paris to find in the twenties, or enter a costly MFA program in the nineties to encounter--friends! Real ones! In fact, I'd be willing to bet this solitary writer now has more friends than Hemingway did!

A whole community of writers and bloggers who believe that stories can change the world, a community who believe that the fate of fictional characters, or the meticulous or messy arrangement of words and motion, and feeling into a poem or an essay is worth whatever sacrifice it takes.

The other night I was listening to Philip Pullman being interviewed by Charlie Rose. I found myself nodding when he said (and I'm paraphrasing badly here; he was far more eloquent) that he wrote because we live in such a fabulous, miraculous world and he wanted to remind his readers how precious it is.

In other words, he writes not because he's a mad ego-maniac, as we writers are often reputed to be, but because he feels he has something to give and he wants to give it.

When you come right down to it, is there another reason to begin this epic struggle with self, with words, with blank pages and empty screens? If we truly wrote "for ourselves" as so many writers say with understandable defensiveness, why move beyond the safety of our private journals? Why post on a blog, or god forbid, seek publication--subjecting ourselves to the crazy-making mix of rejection, elation, despair, intoxicating praise and bitter criticism ? Why invest so much time and hope if we didn't believe we had a story to tell that someone--maybe just one person--really needed to hear? Why do it, if not to share, as Pullman said, our love for this startling and wondrous world we find ourselves in, and the even more startling goodness that the people in it often rise to exhibit?

Though my novel deals with murder, betrayal, and the even more lethal crimes of the heart, the real subjects of THE LIAR'S DIARY are music, love, friendship, self-sacrifice and courage. The darkness is only there for contrast; it's only there to make us realize how bright the light can be. I'm sure that most writers whose work does not flinch from the exploration of evil feel the same.

When I worked conventions and conferences as a waitress, we used to say that all the professional group, clubs and religious organizations we served had a character. In fact, I was so convinced that invisible servers like my co-workers and me had a unique insight into the identity of "the best people on earth" that I once wrote a blog post revealing our secret.

Since my illness, however, I've begun to change my mind. The kindness, generosity, and yes, the love, that's been shown to me my fellow writers, bloggers, Gather members and others from the literary community has been overwhelming, healing, and incredibly inspiring. To learn more about what a group of writers with the hearts of lions have planned for me, visit Susan Henderson's Litpark, or Laura Benedict's blog. Then tell me, honestly tell me, that these aren't the best people on earth.

***After my last post, the wonderful Amy McKinnon of The Writer's Group Blog asked me to post a photo of Hank. It's a request no grandmother has ever been known to refuse.

WAITING ROOM

2008-01-04T21:25:00.001-08:00

Inutili preghiere, originally uploaded by Gianni D..

Yesterday, for the first time in weeks, I got dressed in real clothes: my too-big jeans and a sweater. I put on boots and make-up. I found out what the weather was like by feeling it against my skin, instead of asking my family as they swept in from their busy lives. (It was COLD, wonderfully, slap in the face cold.)

I was out in the world and life was good--even if my only destination was the doctor's office in Boston.

I enjoyed traveling through the snow squalls on the Cape. Even when my daughter-in-law, Nicola, took the wrong exit, we celebrated being lost--pointing out the architecture, and imagining how exciting it would be to live in some of the neighborhoods we passed.

"Someday, when everyone's on their own, I'd like to move to the city," I said, daring to imagine the future.

When we passed the river, Nicola said she particularly loved Boston because the Charles reminded her of the river that cut through her native Melbourne.

We also acknowledged that if we'd been with our spouses, we would have been enjoying the scenery less and blaming each other for screwing up the directions more...

We got there on time, but even if we hadn't, it would have been okay. Some days, I've sat in the waiting room for more than two hours before I heard my name called. It turned out yesterday was one of those days.

"Simply waiting" in the Cancer Center wasn't easy. The fifteen or twenty people who sat in chairs along the periphery all looked scared and tense. No one spoke. Furtively, I checked out them out, wondering what form of the disease they had, what their prognoses might be. Were they among the statistical numbers who would beat the disease? Was I?

The first day I visited, most of the patients were a generation older than I was. What was I doing there? I wondered. It wasn't fair. Then I spotted a woman who appeared to be about the age of my oldest son. Damn. Cancer WASN'T fair. It wasn't democratic. It just was.
I looked down and pretended to read People magazine.

This time, however, Nicola and I had eight month old Hank with us. How would an active, squirmy baby ever endure the kind of wait that drove adults to distraction? But it turned out that Hank found the spacious waiting room perfect for exploring on hands and knees, the coffee tables just the right height to walk around, and the seats filled with people he was eager to meet.

He started with those closest to us, and then, slowly (followed by his mum, of course) he extended his reach to everyone in the waiting room, transforming the atmosphere as he crawled around, babbling and smiling.

Strangers smiled back and called to him, "Over here, buddy." When he toppled over, people leaped up to make sure he was all right. Suddenly, Nicola and I weren't the only ones watching to make sure he didn't put anything in his mouth. Everyone in the room had his back.

Soon people were sharing stories about their children and grandchildren. When someone said that babies who don't crawl before they walk often have developmental delays later, a vigorous debate broke out.

Eventually, the conversation expanded. People discussed how far they'd traveled to get there, and worried that they'd get on the road before rush hour. A couple of men started to talk about sports.

We stopped being a bunch of solitary, anxious cancer patients, and became a room full of human beings. I forgot to think about how many paients had come in after me and heard their names called before me, or to look at my watch. What remained was the goodwill in that room, the outstretched hands, and the encouraging words to Hank when he took a couple of tentative steps between table and chair.

"Look! You're doing great. You can do it!"

On the way home, exhausted, but strangely elated, I wondered why it took a baby to release us from our fear and reveal our common humanity....

And why it took a life-threatening illness to make me realize that nothing is promised to me or to anyone else--not a single breath--that it's all a gift and I'd better savor every bit of it--even the missed exits, and the unexpected detours.

**********************************************************************
Two more things:

1. To all those who have sent healing vibes, prayers and good thoughts, many thanks. All my recent pathology reports have been clean, and my current prognosis is GOOD. Alleluia.

And 2. Some amazingly generous writers and bloggers have done something so incredible for me that it could restore the faith of the most hardened cynic. I will write more about that soon. But for now, I just want to say to Laura Benedict, Susan Henderson, Jessica Keener, Backspace's inexhaustible Karen Dionne, and my good friend, Tish Cohen who have spearheaded the effort, and to the many people who've agreed to help: I thank you and I love you.

The Woman Who Said No

2007-12-30T18:49:00.001-08:00

defense wound, originally uploaded by lapinfille.

When I was admitted to the hospital for my second surgery, my middle-aged roommate immediately turned her face from me. "Pull the curtain!" she instructed my nurse in a surly tone.

I quickly decided that the closed curtain was fine with me. I had no need to admit such an unpleasant person into a life that felt, at that moment, difficult enough.

However, after Ted left, it became harder to ignore the woman behind the curtain. She argued noisily with her boyfriend on the phone, then slammed down the receiver. When she refused to answer his repeated calls, her angry, self-satisfied refusal--and the constantly ringing phone--jangled in the space between us.

"Get me something to eat!" she bellowed to the front desk, after ringing her call light.

However, when the aide appeared with the liquid diet I knew all too well, she was infuriated.

"I said I wanted something to eat--not this shit."

"It's what your doctor ordered," the aide explained, politely setting down the tray.

"Then get the order changed, and bring me a goddamn turkey sandwich--on white bread!" my roommate railed. I expected the unnaturally green jello and the broth to hit the wall at any moment.

But to my amazement, within a half hour," the woman who said no" had been served another meal--including a turkey sandwich on white--just like she ordered it.

"What idiot brings a turkey sandwich without mayo?" she said, in place of thank you. The aide and I exchanged a look

But a moment later, the mayo appeared.

In the course of the day, I heard my roommate say no to the boots that stimulate circulation after surgery. "They're effing hot. You wear them if they're so great," she yelled at the nurse.

She also refused to get up and walk, though the nurses repeatedly and patiently explained how important it was for her healing. Eventually they stopped asking.

I pretended the curtain between us was as thick as the Berlin Wall. On my side, I read, talked with my family on the phone or with the nurses I'd come to know in my first visit to the floor, and tried not to think too much about what would happen the next day.

But at three in the morning, I broke.

My roommate had called for pain medication in her own imitable way. But once again, she was unhappy with what her doctor had ordered.

"No Percocet!" she shouted. "I want Dilautid!"

Assuming, as I often do, that "orders" are unimpeachable, I figured we both were in for a long night after she refused the Percs. She had already begun to moan with theatrical gusto.

A short time later, the nurse returned with her drug of choice.

Well, that did it. It was three in the morning, and my roommate obviously had no desire to speak to me, but I couldn't remain silent.

"I have to admire your ability to say no," I said--and in many ways, I meant it. "I thought the only possible answer around here was 'okay.'"

"Yeah, I been listening to you," she snorted. "I bet you've been walked on your whole life."

Hmmm...I contemplated that.

Then she asked me about my upcoming surgery. Apparently, our lives had permeated the curtain more than either of us cared to admit.

"I'm cancer free for over a year," she said. "I beat it and you can, too--if you stop being such a wimp."

I contemplated some more...

The next morning, just before my surgery, the nurse came in and said she was being discharged.

"What if I'm not ready to go?" she asked.

"I'm sorry," the nurse said. "Do you have clothes to wear home?"

"No, I came to the hospital naked," my roommate snapped and turned her back.

Only after the nurse left did she begin to cry. She was still in a lot of pain, she said; and there was no one at home to take care of her.

She rang the call bell repeatedly, complaining about pain, an inability to stand or make it to the bathroom. She couldn't possibly go home; she wouldn't.

A short time later, the orderlies came to wheel me to surgery. Since her back was to the wall, I assumed my roommate was sleeping.

But just as I reached the door, she called out to me. "Hey, good luck, okay?"

I thanked her and told her I would see her when I got back.

However, when I came in from the recovery room, her bed was made up and empty as if she'd never been there.

I continued to think about her though--about the power and limitation of the "no" she used so frequently. I wondered what her life was like, and if she really had no one at all to help her out.

And though I did not envy her life, I learned something from her. On my last day in the hospital, the nurse came to give me one of the painful heparin shots I'd been receiving twice a day.

Their purpose is to prevent blood clots. And since I was taking long, frequent walks in the halls (wanting to see the Charles River!) I didn't really think I needed them.

"What if I said I didn't want it?" I asked the nurse, covering my arm with my sleeve. "What if I just said 'no?'"

"You could do that, I suppose," the nurse said, withdrawing the dreaded needle. "I'll mark you down as non-compliant."

Non-compliant. It's something I've rarely been called, but on that morning, it felt like an unexpected victory.

THE VIEW FROM MY WINDOW (Hospital Thoughts 3.)

2007-12-26T11:41:00.001-08:00

Mass General Hospital, originally uploaded by Huihua Ding.

This was the view from my room during the second week I spent in the hospital. To the left, I could also see the Tobin Bridge. When I walked the long hall to the other side of the building, which I did as soon as I was able, I could see the Charles River, slowed by glittering ice floes, and beyond it Boston's gritty, elegant skyline. Since I was a child, the sight of that skyline has always excited me, and it still did. But this time it had become a kind of moving picture--one I could see, but could not enter. I looked on it--and on my own recent active, happy life--with nostalgia and awe.

In the moving picture outside the hospital, people navigated the badly plowed streets and sidewalks on their way to work. They went through the motions of holiday shopping with the usual joy and frustration. They ducked into Starbucks across the street for a respite from the cold, or grabbed a drink at the Harvard Gardens. Ted and I had stopped there one afternoon after a particularly grueling appointment. The french fries were deliciously crispy and there was jazz on the stereo.

Inside the hospital, a different kind of life went on. The second night I was there, they wheeled in a new roommate. She had been hit by a car in the crosswalk of a city street, and had several broken bones. It took thirty-six hours before an operating room was available to repair her badly shattered ankle.

Though she was Chinese, and there was something of a language barrier between us, we became a great consolation to one another. Late at night, when they finally turned out the lights, we would share our litany of suffering, taking turns in the dark. We didn't so much complain of our pain, as speak of it with wonder.

Weren't we supposed to be outside, among the crowd in the street? Weren't we part of the moving picture that is life? How had we landed here? Surely, there was some mistake.

Every night ended with the same question. "Why are we suffering?" my roommate would ask.

"I don't know," I'd say. "But we just have to accept it."

The last night I was there I was almost asleep when she asked her question. I was too tired to respond, but she no longer needed to hear my voice. I had begun to coast into a dream when I heard her answer herself three times.

Don't know; just have to accept.
Don't know; just have to accept.
Don't know; just have to accept.

In her voice, the words sounded like a kind of poem, the limited human answer to so much of the mystery that is life.

Outside, the snow continued to fall, and people continued to travel through the moving picture in the street, eager to get where they were going. My friend and I, temporarily stopped by pain and indignity and tedium, were them. And they, whether they knew it or not, were us.

It's something I hope I don't forget.

UPDATE

2007-12-20T18:08:00.000-08:00

Just wanted to let my friends know that a setback landed me back in the hospital on Monday night, and left me staring up at those huge lights the OR again on Tuesday morning. I didn't want to bring my laptop to the hospital, fearing it might be lost, unfinished masterpieces and all, but mad boredom (and excesive TV watching) made me change my policy.

Many thanks and much love to everyone who has sent good wishes, cards, prayers, and gifts. I hope to be home and up to writing more on Saturday afternoon.

BLISS to all as you celebrate the holidays!

2. On Homesickness

2007-12-09T09:36:00.001-08:00

Candelaria Complementaria, originally uploaded by diegomccormick.

Every night in the hospital, a member of the housekeeping crew would stop in my doorway to chat. His subject was homesickness, a topic that was particularly resonant for me, since I, too, was longing for the familiar clang and clatter of home.

My friend was from Colombia. He'd been in the U.S. for twenty-two years and his children had been born here. Still, when he went to sleep every night, he dreamed of his old home in Medellin, a place he could only afford to visit every few years.

"Every night for twenty-two years!' he emphasized.

But wasn't Medellin home of the drug cartels? One of the most violent cities on earth?

"No!" he insisted, the violence had abated in recent years; and besides, that had never been his Medellin. His city was the city of eternal spring where the weather is always magnificent. His city was the place where neighbors sat on their stoops and laughed together at night, a place where street festivals lasted all night, and everyone--young and old--came out to dance.

His Medellin was a place where colors were brighter, where food had more taste, and you couldn't walk through the neighborhood without hearing the sound of music.

He spoke so passionately about his lost home that for three nights I dreamed I was there, dancing all night at a street festival, wandering through neighborhoods transformed by vivid color and music.

But on the fourth night, when he stopped to talk about how much he missed his family, how a brother had died while he was away, and he'd never had an opportunity to attend the funeral, my own homesick dreams also took a turn.

That night I dreamed of my first home, of the trees outside the closet-sized room with the pink rose wallpaper where I spent my childhood, and the scent of lilac in the spring. In the next room my parents argued and loved, dreamed and worried. Our lives there, now vanished, seemed as solid and indestructible as those tall oaks and catalpas outside my window. When I woke up, the feeling of being in that house were so real that it seemed impossible that I could never return. That it had become a lost kingdom.

My last night in the hospital I watched for my friend from Colombia, but he didn't appear. Apparently, it was his night off. He was probably spending it at home with his wife, and with the daughters who considered the U.S. home--the oldest one a nursing student, the younger one earning straight As in private school. For them, my friend said, he had given up his home.

Still my homesick dreams continued. But this time they were filled with the sounds and colors of the life I live now: my daughter coming in from her student teaching every day, tired but full of stories, my son's inexhaustible guitar, ordinary days spent writing, and hanging laundry, and having dinner with Ted. My own version of the "place of eternal spring"--even in New England winter.

The next day I was released to that old life, but with a new sense and appreciation for its precariousness, its preciousness, with a new sense that even this beloved time and place will one day be a house where the door is locked to me forever.

TEN THOUGHTS FROM THE HOSPITAL

2007-12-06T08:25:00.001-08:00

The Garden of Shimmering Peace, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

1. THE RELEASE FORM

As I went through a series of tests after my diagnosis, I promised myself I would not fear surgery. Surgery meant bright yellow, high flying hope. "No surgery" on the other hand (at least, in my case) meant "no point." And truthfully, I didn't fear the operation. Though I was given valium and told that no one sleeps the night before surgery, this lifelong insomniac slept deeply and well. I rode to the hospital in a state of calm anticipation

In pre-op, I was prayed over by the chaplain; and when Ted came in to say goodbye to me, there was something I can't describe-- a depth in his eyes--that I'd never seen before in twenty-six years. Something had changed between us because of this crisis; something had grown.

But it wasn't until my bed had been parked outside the OR and someone realized I hadn't signed a release form that I really contemplated what was about to happen to me--and my own vulnerability before it. As the anesthesiologist read the lists of risks--beginning with a dislodged cap in a tooth when the breathing tube was inserted and culminating in death, I hesitated, pen in hand.

"Well, are you going to sign?" the anesthesiologist asked.

"I'm thinking about it," I said. Then we both laughed. As if I had an option...

But the truth was I really did think about the possibility that when I went under, I would never wake up. It may have been remote: I was relatively fit, the hospital was world class, and I had full confidence in my surgeon. Still, it was there.

And in that moment of hesitation, I decided that if it happened, I was ready. I don't mean that in a negative, defeatist way. No, I desperately wished for more days and minutes and years--and what's more, I believed I would have them. But if I were to die that day, I was prepared. What that meant for me was quite simple: I was at peace with everyone in my life (not always possible, I know, and not always true for me.) In the previous week I had given my "I love you" to everyone in my world freely and often. I'd also spent a lot of time in contemplation.

The moment of hesitation passed. I signed my name. Then the door to the operating room swung open and I encountered the huge probing lights, the sterile atmosphere, the masked surgical team. It might have been the last thing I remembered, but it wasn't...

And yet, my moment spent contemplating the risks of surgery remained with me. I wonder: if each of us had to sign a release form every day before we left the house, enumerating the dangers we might encounter, beginning with missed opportuntunities to love, extend kindness, smile at a stranger, or pursue our goals, and ending with death--all very real possibilities we face every day, would we be ready? Would we change the way we lived?

TWO OUNCES OF BLISS

2007-11-25T15:09:00.001-08:00

1/2 full, originally uploaded by *davidsαngle.

Three weeks ago I was diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. Then the news got worse: a cat scan revealed spots on my liver, a possible metastasis.

So how does a lifelong neurotic and avowed hypochondriac deal with that kind of news? Initially, not too well. The day I got the scan results I went home, drank too much wine, cried, yelled at the wonderful husband who was as anxious as I was, and avoided calls from friends and family members. I preferred to sit in the dark and drink my misery to the last drop; thank you very much.

But the next morning I woke up in a different frame of mind. It was a bright November morning; I had work I love to do; and after only twelve hours, I was already tired of my own despair and fear. I couldn't change the fact that I was ill; I couldn't make the road ahead pain or anxiety free, but I could get out of bed and take the dogs to the beach. I could pick up a common, translucent shell and hold it up to the light until it revealed just how uncommon it was. Then I could put it in my pocket and take it home to remind me--just in case I forgot.

Fortunately, last week an MRI revealed no sign of metastasis; and I'm optimistic about my surgery next Thursday. Still, it's been a difficult time. The other night I was watching a British movie called Greenfingers. In it, a character says, "You have to learn to make adversity your ally." I knew exactly what he was talking about. I may not be ready to call adversity my ally yet, but it is certainly my teacher.

One thing I learned was that for every ounce of trouble I was forced to drink, I would counter it with two ounces of bliss. Not the cheap bliss I attempted to find in a wine bottle, but the real thing. The kind I saw in that thin shell when I held it up to the light. The kind we all have inside us if we choose to draw on it.

I really think this is where we so often go wrong . When bad things happen--whether it's disease, rejection, mistreatment, percieved or otherwise--we allow it to control us. In other words, we pour ourselves another glass of poison when what we really need is the antidote--a double shot of BLISS!

My grandfather, who I called John, said it more succinctly: "No kick." (Translation: No complaints.) I've written about his two word exhortation here and elsewhere, but it has never meant more to me than it does right now. When asked to expand on his philosophy, he said, "Once you give in to complaining, you're all done."

Well, John, I'm not done yet.

Peace and love to all--

*The luminous photograph entitled "1/2 Full" was done by a particularly talented photographer named David Michael. I spent a good hour this afternoon enjoying his innovative images on Flickr, and hope others will do the same.

THIRD ANNUAL LITERARY BLUES PIE

2007-09-12T21:06:00.001-07:00

Susan's pie, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

It's that time of year when my friend, Susan Messer and I bake a pie for our muses. Well, actually, it's past time. But after all these years of hanging out with writers, the muse must be used to procrastination...and good intentions...and well, flakiness.

Susan, who baked her gorgeous pie early wrote this about her efforts and her current literary state:

"This is the second blueberry pie I've made this summer, as I'm especially anxious to be in touch with my muse and have her, in turn, cast any literary spells she can. My first novel is currently on submission. I dreamed last week that my agent called me to say she had an offer from Home Depot. "Home Depot?" I responded. "I didn't even know they published books." While it was nice to have an offer, it wasn't exactly what I'd had in mind."

I was particularly excited when Diana Guerrero and the Fawnskin Authors baked their pies even before I realized the season was upon us or noticed that blueberries were suddenly everywhere.

The muse and I have struggled mightily this summer. In the spring, things were looking great! I wrote up a synopsis to a new novel and sent it around to a few friends. All agreed: it was brilliant, complete with rich characters, a dazzling plot, and a couple of intriguing subplots to keep things going. This one was practically going to write itself.

All I planned to do was sit in my summer office and take dictation. I'd even bought myself a new instrument, as the astute Sally Crawford called it here in the comment section. And it really felt like that: something unique and fine, something that if handled with the respect it deserved would produce the music I heard in my head--a simmering tale that would make readers everywhere--or at least one or two of them--see a little corner of the world in more vivid colors.

I wrote 80 pages. It was good, I told my agent. I was humming, I told my husband, my kids, my writing friends. I could hardly wait to show them the brilliant manuscript that grew daily under my clattering fingers.

And then abruptly, I came to a particularly lonely spot in the road, well known to all writers. There's only one sign on that road, but instead of offering direction, that sign is emblazoned with a huge, taunting question mark. I didn't know where I was going. Even more fatal, I had no idea why I'd ever set out on this particular journey.

But not to worry. This happens in the writing life, right? I started again. This time I got to page 103. I was so excited by my progress I couldn't wait to finish. I had to share it with my agent right now. I e-mailed what I optimistically called "the first third of my novel" to her on a Friday, and by Sunday, I was in despair. Not because I hadn't heard from her, but because I already knew what she was going to say. I knew because in my truest heart, I thought the same thing. On Monday, she called and said it.

On Tuesday, darkness descended. I mooned around in my pajamas, shades down, living on chocolate and wine. Even the house plants wilted. I watched dreary afternoon TV, and scanned the paper for waitressing jobs. There weren't even any of those. I wasn't sure how I'd ever written a coherent blog post, or a slightly witty e-mail, never mind an entire novel. Only one thing was clear: I couldn't do it again. I drank more wine, and refused to turn on the lights when night came.

But on Wednesday, I leaped out of bed, filled with irrational enthusiasm, and new certainty. While I'd been mooning, the subconscious mind (rumored to be a close friend of the muse) had been working on the problem. What's more, she was fired up with a new idea. Before I'd even buttered a piece of toast, I was back in my summer office, birds singing, dogs at my feet, ready to play my instrument as it had never been played before. I knew exactly what was wrong with my wimpy character, my flaccid plot, and what's more, I knew how to fix them.

In the coming weeks, I wrote another 126 pages before I saw it wavering in the distance. No, it can't be! I said, trudging on for two more pages. I refused to look. But by then, the sign with the huge question mark in the center was the only clear thing on my horizon. I was on page 128 and I was lost. Utterly and hopelessly lost. Again.

So what do you do when you've written a total of 316 pages (a whole novel!), when you've spent your entire summer sitting on the deck trying to play an instrument that remains resolutely tuneless? What do you do when you're out of ideas, and you seriously don't know if you'll ever write again, when the bills need to be paid, and your waitress shoes are hanging in your garden, bloated with a season's worth of rain and a lifetime of dreams?

Well, if it's August, you make a pie, of course! Not just any pie, but a pie that has it's own history of literary magic. That's right, you make a Literary Blues Pie. (Recipe here)

As you can see from the photo above, my friend and pie-baking cohort, Susan, baked a pie of rare perfection--from the crisp pate brisee to the lovely presentation.

The two pies I made, on the other hand, were as messy and flawed as my life, my summer, my attempt to write a new novel. The oven doesn't work right so the crust burned; and I decided to experiment with the cream layer, only to realize the old adage about not messing with perfection. But since they don't get too many homemade pies around here, my family gobbled up the first pie. And when I shared the second one one night at Veteran's Beach with my friends, Laura and Jake (who brought a good bottle of Pinot Noir to further tempt the muse) they even asked for the recipe.

(Pie and Pinot Noir at the beach)

Then, I took a week or two off, and called my son, Josh. Josh isn't a writer; nor does he read much fiction, but he's an excellent listener. He asked me how the novel was going, so I told him.

"Sounds like you're over-thinking it, Mom."

A few days later, I began again, this time with Josh's words in mind. Instead of going back to polish my words on a daily basis, I began to write the way I had made my pie. I didn't worry that the temperature might be off, or that my corn starch was lumpy or that I might be a quarter cup short of blueberries. I just worked with what I had, and did my best. I didn't overthink.

So far I've got 30 new pages and no road signs in sight. But I'm such an optimist, I've even installed a meter:

11 / 120
(9.2%)

THE DIVINE MADELEINE L'ENGLE

2007-09-08T10:13:00.001-07:00

awrinkleintime, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

“Why does anybody tell a story? It has something to do with faith, faith that the universe has meaning, that our little human lives are not irrelevant, that what we choose or say or do matters, matters cosmically.”

And when the Divine Madeleine told a story, it did. What better epitaph could a writer--or indeed any human being-- ever have?

MAX ROACH, LEGENDARY JAZZ DRUMMER...and my teacher: January 10,

2007-08-17T19:55:00.001-07:00

Max Roach was Cool...and he used smiley faces., originally uploaded by bsmif.

One reason it took me such a long time to finish college--or for college to be finished with me--was that I couldn't seem to focus on my requirements. I was supposed to be a "Communication Studies" major(my idea of a practical use for my writing obsession). But every semester, the listings in the English department called my name. What choice did I have but to answer, to follow, to extend my stay at the university just a little longer?

Then there were the dance classes--at least one each semester. I must have been the klutziest student in ballet. Invariably, when the class moved one way, I drifted in the opposite direction. (A metaphor for my life, maybe?) But that didn't keep me from taking the beginner's class again and again, enjoying the feeling of being regal, disciplined, graceful--if only in my mind.

I was also drawn to languages. Each felt like a personal invitation to travel in a way that even I could afford. I immersed myself in Italian and French, and even tried Chinese--though it rapidly proved too demanding for an uncommitted dilettante who was looking for a trap door to the culture. Eventually, I found that door, as well as many interesting friendships, in the Asian Studies department. Meanwhile, my adviser wanted to know if I had satisfied my science requirement yet. Um, maybe next semester? I said sheepishly.

However, when I heard that music giant, Max Roach was teaching his first course in "The History of Jazz," I scratched Zoology 101 from my schedule. Honestly, I didn't expect to be admitted. I figured the class would be overrun by music majors, and I'd still have time to sneak into Botany or Astronomy at the last minute.

But to my surprise, only twenty students signed up to spend a semester with a legend; and to my eternal good fortune, I was one of them. The class turned out to be one of the most memorable experiences of my excessively varied and academically checkered college career.

Every Tuesday and Thursday afternoon at 2:20, we sat in a little room and listened to Max talk about jazz. He also talked about his life, which it turned out, was pretty much the same thing. Nearly every one of the musicians whose music streamed into the hallway, cajoling us inside with the wild notes from their saxophones or the rhythms of Max's drums, and altering the atmosphere of the University in subtle and not so subtle ways was someone he knew, someone he'd played with or learned from, or watched come up.

I can see him now--a trim man in his fifties, always in a well-tailored suit--leaning against the desk, as he turned the history of America's original art form into a personal story, one filled with humor and excitement and vibrant life--but also great tragedy. When he talked about the death of Charlie Parker, there were not only tears in his eyes, they glistened in the eyes of every student in the class.

But Max's class was not just a History of Jazz; it was a history of African Americans in the twentieth century. He told us about playing in hotels where he wasn't allowed to stay; and of the many composers who'd sold their music for almost nothing, only to see white musicians become wealthy by recording it. There was no bitterness in Max's telling of the past he'd lived, but there was no sugarcoating it either. Change had come, but there had been a long, hard price for it. It needed to be spoken about. It needed to be remembered.

An iconoclastic musician, Max was a rule-breaker in the classroom as well. He failed to show up for class if he had something else to do--though he usually sent another musician in his place. When mid-terms came around, he announced the first exam. Immediately, the class was seized with the usual anxiety. What would be covered? Would we have to identify the music we heard? We didn't even have a text book; nor had most of us taken notes. How could we prepare?

After the third question, Max held up his hand like a stop sign. "Have any of you heard a word I said all semester?"

We must have presented a uniform face to him--stunned and perplexed. Was he about to reveal something that was going to be on the exam? Something we'd obviously missed?

He shook his head sadly. "What I've been trying to teach you is just one thing: you don't have time to worry about stuff like that. None of us have time."

He seemed disappointed with us in some way and dismissed the class early that day. The next time it met, he announced that he'd changed his mind. There would be no exams that semester. There was some vague talk about assigning a paper, but that never materialized either. In the end, I got an A in the class, and I suspect everyone else did, too. Like the music he played for us weekly, and the stories he shared, the grade was Max's free gift.

This week, when I heard my former teacher had died at eighty-three in Manhattan, I thought about the hours I spent in his classroom, and remembered his exhortation about the limits of time. Of course, he was right. Both teacher and students have been buffeted and exalted by the years that separated us. The A has disappeared on a meaningless yellowed transcript. But the music he played for us, those old recordings that snaked under the door and down the hallway, drawing us deep into a world he inhabited and helped to create--that is with me still.

Thank you, Max.

8 Things About Me

2007-07-28T18:57:00.001-07:00

tiffany's, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

1. I recently went to New York and posed in front of Tiffany's.

2. I did it for Audrey Hepburn and Truman Capote. Jewelry has never held much allure for me.

3. I did it because sometimes a character in a novel can really change your life--especially if you read it at a pivotal time.

4. I read Breakfast at Tiffany's and Gone With the Wind when I was thirteen, Pride and Prejudice and Madame Bovary when I was eighteen, Les Miserables and The Autobiography of a Soul when I was thirty. All of them spoke to me and continue to speak to me in different ways.

5. As a writer, I want to entertain, inspire, and yes, I dream of creating a character who is capable of reaching into your world and changing your life.

6. Did I really say that? Who do I think I am?

7. A writer, a dreamer, a petty goddess (and occasional tyrant) in a very small universe of my own creation.

8. It seems I've exhausted all the interesting revelations about me at 7, but wait...Look at the photo: I also love the New York Times. Does that count?

Thanks so much to Ellen Meister, who tagged me for this meme. Sorry it took me so long to respond, but summer is a season to slow down, to sleep late and eat fresh tomatoes and make up stories in my head.

If anyone else would like to carry the meme forward and reveal eight startling or mundane secrets about themself, leave a comment...I'm looking for new material for upcoming novels. (Kidding, kidding....)

THE SUMMER OFFICE

2007-07-09T20:01:00.000-07:00

For weeks, I have been thinking of putting up a post, explaining to anyone who might be interested that I was on a summer hiatus, that for a long and wonderful time, I saw the world in blog posts. Everything and everyone around me was part of a grand and unpredictable tale that might be written about, turned to poetry, photographed, or when I was feeling particularly intrepid, even sketched--and then amazingly--incredibly really--shared with whatever kindred spirits might find it.

But then summer came and something happened. I took up residence in a new novel. My mind, once focused on the glittering outer world, grew utterly consumed with the citizens of this shadowy inner landscape.

I stopped seeing friends, both real and on-line. I didn't go to the gym. Trips to the beach or the movies held no interest. I know this sounds unhealthy, but it feels--marvelous! It's a feeling you can only have when you're doing what you were born to do.

Soon I opened the summer office. Now every morning when I wake up, I put one foot on the floor, and I say thank you. Then I put the other foot on the floor and say thank you again. Thank you for the day. Thank you for the story that hums inside me. Thank you for a chance to be a crazy hermit and write, write, write.

I pour a cup of coffee; if I'm feeling ambitious, I might even comb my hair, then I call the dogs: "Come on girls, it's time to go to work." (Fortunately, my yard is screened by trees on all sides so I don't frighten the neighbors in my pajamas.) Laboriously, my old shepherd-lab rises from her mat and heads for the back door; and the Jack Russell, who is snuggling with the last person still in bed, begrudgingly follows. They take their places on the deck; and I open my laptop.

Life, my friends, is good. Thank you. And thank you again.

One of my co-workers

Another co-worker, tamed by the nuts I leave on the rail, who joins me on a regular basis

My particular paradise

ONE QUESTION: Welcome Guest Blogger, Beryl Singleton Bissell

2007-06-03T19:21:00.001-07:00

berylsbissel-140-New_bissell, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

I have sat here for about an hour trying to write one simple sentence that describes Beryl Singleton Bissell's memoir, The Scent of God. But Beryl's unsparing honesty with herself, with her Church, with the people in her life, and even with her God, refuse to allow me a glib or easy description.

The Scent of God is the story of a young woman so filled with passion and yearning that she enters a cloister at age eighteen. It is also the story of the human desire that challenges, but ultimately enriches that love. It is a rich, sensual, and marvelously told tale by a woman who leaves the religious life, but never stops embodying its virtues: humility, faith, and above all, joy.

I do not have the perfect sentence to describe The Scent of God, but when I looked on the book cover , I found that Ann Patchett captured its spirit with extraordinary precision:

"A terrifying, passionate, and exalted examination of what it means to love with your whole heart..."

Yes, that's it exactly. And is there any more important quest?

This is the first time I’ve been asked to blog on someone else’s blog – Patry’s no less. I’d feel like an intruder save that Patry invited me and as you love her and I love her, we most likely have things in common and I’m excited to be here and thank you for staying to visit.

When we discussed this book blog tour event, Patry suggested that I talk a bit about how life in the cloister” prepared me “for the solitary life of a writer.” Although I’ve been asked many questions about my book, and how I wrote it I’ve never fielded this question before. I’ve been mulling it over for several days now, wondering how best to answer as its complexity surprised me and I was stumped. In cases of “stump” I go do something else like take a walk or attempt to finish the hat I’ve been trying to knit for two years or I head to the kitchen (a place I normally avoid because I’d much rather write than cook). Yesterday, as it was the first warm and sunny day we’ve had here on the North Shore of Lake Superior where I live, I decided to garden and had such a grand time grubbing around in the earth planting bright annuals and weeding out dandelions that I stayed outside until the black flies appeared in search of supper.

As I gardened I mulled over Patry’s question of how cloistered life prepared me for the solitary life of a writer and realized that I was having difficulty because the cloister had both positive and negative qualities and the negative contained modifiers.

The first “how” that comes to mind is the way we lived in the monastery. For those of you who might not know much about cloistered or monastic existence one of its underlying tenets is the importance of silence. Silence provides the monk or nun with a “place” to live in the presence of God. The cloister walls provide the seclusion, the rule of silence provides the atmosphere, and the quieting of the mind creates the actuality. So here, in this one word “silence,” as practiced in monastic life, we have several factors at work: structure, solitude, silence (what I refer to as the 3 S’s)

I believe that good writers need all three S’s to turn out good pieces of work. I didn’t realize the 3 S’s importance as a writer until I had the opportunity to go away for two weeks to a writing retreat for women. There, separate from my daily life, living in silence, and having structured writing time, I wrote more in two weeks than I had during the two prior years.

Many writers will tell you the same thing. Like the monk or nun who leave the world to seek a place apart in which to find God, writers do their best work in a place away from or separate from their homes (a room of one’s own). In that room they are not distracted by the daily (dog, duty, diapers, dianthus, disasters etc). Alone they confront the empty sheet of paper, silent they listen to their muse, structured they work at their writing. I have a writing shed next to the garage with no access to phone or internet. It is there that I write what I cannot write elsewhere.

So what about the negative impact of cloistered life on me as a writer? Here it is in all its brazen contempt. In the cloister I lost my voice. By voice I mean not the use of tongue and vocal chords but the loss of the ability to think things through. To have opinions that might differ from those of others. To express doubt. To challenge belief. To search for one’s own truth.

This loss of voice should not exist in cloistered life. It does not belong in a place dedicated to the God of truth. So, here is where I must insert those modifiers that I mentioned earlier. I didn’t lose my voice because of the cloister but because I was a cloistered nun in the 60s when thinking for oneself was not permitted. Our superior did all our thinking for us and in obeying her we were obeying God and because I was a woman in a pre Vatican II Catholic Church which placed little value on women’s role save as “servant of.”

I didn’t realize how much I missed having a voice of my own until I returned to the world and had to start thinking for myself, where I was frightened and hesitant to express myself. I maintained silence, was timorous and obedient and docile -- and I was angry and I didn’t know why.

During the process of learning how to write, I discovered that a very strong voice of my own lay tucked deep within me. It took a long time-- 20 years apprenticeship learning to express myself -- to summon that voice. And now that I’ve found my voice again and have learned to use it, I nourish and encourage it through the practice of the 3 S’s of Silence, solitude, and structure.

Thank you Patry for inviting me to do this guest blog with you, and thank you Patry fans for your willingness to welcome me today. I shall check back here throughout the day to comment and reply.
**********
The Minneapolis Star Tribune named Beryl as a "Best of 2006 Minnesota Authors." Her book The Scent of God was a “Notable” Book Sense selection for April 2006 and has been nominated by booksellers for a Midwest Booksellers Book Award. Visit her Website.

TOMORROW NIGHT

2007-05-28T21:18:00.001-07:00

Town House, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

They call it a reading; and yeah, when we get together in New York tomorrow night, Tish Cohen and I are probably going to do some of that. But mostly, we're going to talk informally about life, writing, and friendship.

Lies (the downfall of my characters) and phobias (the torment of hers) may also come up.

If you've ever read anything Tish has written--from her fabulous new novel, Town House, to a blog post over at The Debutante Ball or even a laundry list, you have some idea just how funny and wise and all round wonderful she is.

When: May 29th, 7 p.m.

Where: Borders, Park Avenue, New York

Why: Talking to each other is fun, but tomorrow night Tish and I want to talk with you.

THE LAST LETTER: A Short True Story

2007-05-26T21:41:00.001-07:00

Signs of Human 4, originally uploaded by zachstern.

When I entered high school, there was a war going on. Every night the local paper printed the addresses of soldiers who wanted to get mail. I wrote to every name on the list, and used my babysitting money to send them small gifts.

In most cases, I only sent one letter or package, but one Marine and I became close friends. We wrote sporadically, then weekly, and finally almost daily. I sent him a photograph, which he taped inside his helmet. He told people I was his girlfriend, though we both knew I would never be that. He was twenty-one and serving a second tour; I was fifteen and had never been away from my home or parents for more than a week.

He told me things that people who knew and loved him could not bear to hear. I related the small stories that arose in the life of a bookish high schooler, and he seemed to draw comfort from their dailiness. We shared jokes, and filled sheets of pale blue airmail stationery with the lyrics of songs that we loved. I can still remember sitting at the kitchen table as I transcribed the words to "Blowin in the Wind." When he wrote back to say that the song had come on the radio as he read my letter, I learned the meaning of serendipity.

He believed the war was for a "just cause." I was already participating in local protests,
but our differeing viewpoints never effected our friendship.

My father was drinking coffee in the kitchen and I was in my bedroom getting ready for school when my grandfather came in with the paper. The screen door slammed behind him.

"Patry's friend is on the front page--" he announced. "Killed in action."

Even now, I can hear the sound of the door that door slamming, a kind of punctuation mark to my grandfather's statement. I can feel the claustrophobia of my tiny bedroom with the roses on the wallpaper, and see my open bureau before me, my shirts piled in neat stacks. The one on top was as pink as those wallpaper roses.

The mail from that distant country was sometimes slow and unreliable. My friend had been dead for six months when the last letter arrived. I kept it for many years, but eventually, during one of life's transitions, it was lost.

No matter. I not only remember every word, I remember how they looked on the page. Small, and slanted downward, all huddled at the top, the rest of the paper filled with emptiness. An odd phrase, I suppose, but the only way I can describe it.

The letter was totally unlike any I had received from him before. There was no date or salutation, no stories or song lyrics, no noting the number of days till he'd be home. Just a question:

Did you ever think that maybe you were just a figment of your own imagination?

It was so many years ago now. My grandfather is dead-- my father, who jumped up from the kitchen table when he heard the news--dead, too. And the room with the pink flowered wallpaper where I spent my childhood is a kingdom I can never re-enter, except through memory.

Only the question--cryptic, strangely prescient, and still utterly mysterious-- remains.

TALKING TO NEWBORNS

2007-05-13T13:58:00.001-07:00

"Hank", originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

It's mother's day, and it seems, I have a grandson. His name is Hank David Richard Francis after various family members, but you can just call him Hank.

I was nineteen when my first son was born, and so inexperienced that I didn't dare remove his sweater when I brought him home for fear that I'd break one of those twig-like arms. Sometimes it seems like a miracle that we both survived.

But one of my most closely guarded secrets is that even after four children, I still feel like that when I handle an infant. I can't resist a baby once they have weight and solidity and can laugh and play, but a fragile newborn? Were my own really THAT small?

I can no longer remember how to wrap a baby in a receiving blanket, and I was a total failure at getting Hank to burp, but I absolutly love talking to newly born humans. And for at least an hour, that's what I did. I talked to Hank.

I told him about all the things I hoped he and I would do together someday. I resurrected the old stories I'd made up for the other beloved children in my life. I pointed out the open fields and the the light came through the trees behind us, and the sound of the children whose play he would soon share, mingling with the river that runs behind his Uncle Josh's house.

And I wished for him a world that would always be as good and abundant and full of love as the one in which he found himself yesterday, blinking and beset with new hungers, but already listening. Already eager to hear and learn and know.

BLOGGER'S BLOCK

2007-05-06T19:53:00.001-07:00

a concrete block, originally uploaded by Ozyman.

I'd like to say I've been suffering from Blogger's Block, a real and serious condition worthy of capitalization, and maybe even a listing in Wiki. But unfortunately, I don't believe it exists.

Even its more famed and deadly cousin, Writer's Block, seems to me like a dressed-up name for fear. Or laziness. Or procrastination.

Or maybe it just means you really don't want to write at all. You want to think about writing--a much less taxing activity, that has never taken the life of a tree, or bored a single reader.

So no, I haven't had Blogger's Block. Instead, I've been conducting an unplanned (and highly successful!) experiment on the principle of Inertia.

So much of what I learned in grade school is lost forever, as I first learned when I tried to help my kids with their third grade math homework. Division of fractions? Huh? Did I ever do that? And how about diagramming a sentence? I'm sure there's a good reason to learn to do it, but I never knew what it was.

But I can still remember the morose Mrs. M. (who tippled in the paper closet,) teaching us that:
A body in motion remains in motion,
while a body at rest remains at rest
until acted upon by an outside force.

It has the kind of sing-song rhythm that made it memorable for those of us more inclined to poetry than science. If, say, the theory of relativity could have been encapsulated in a similarly catchy phrase, I might actually understand it.

But back to the scientific principle of Inertia. In life, it means something like 'if you don't begin your diet or your novel or your exercise program today, you're even less likely to begin it tomorrow...' And if you ignore your blog for five days or more, it soon becomes "a body at rest," stuck indefinitely on a poem about a bad mood.

Very interesting, no? I think it was Picasso who said that he painted every day because if he took a day off, he might never do it again.

There's a lesson in that, and now that I'm in motion again (I think), I just might take it.

Tomorrow: Changing Light

3 Posts in 1 Day? Am I losing it?

2007-04-13T18:19:00.000-07:00

No, it's just Poetry Thursday. And since Blogger has prevented anyone else from talking here, by cutting off the comments, it looks like I better keep the conversation flowing all by myself. So here it is: a poem I wrote when I was in Oregon for the first and only time:

BAD MOOD IN OREGON

The March trees
are different here
on the other coast.
Along Route 5,
they point upward
like intractable feathers.
Only the internal weather
travels with us
wherever we go--
layer after layer
of illusory greys.
Look deeper, the sky says.
Wake up!
If you knew
you would die today,
would these clouds
be your final vison?

P.S. I didn't turn my comments off...but they seem to have disappeared. Sigh.

2007-04-13T13:17:00.000-07:00

3 GOOD REASONS TO THROW MY COMPUTER INTO THE SEA...and 5 even better reasons not to

2007-04-13T10:44:00.001-07:00

complaint, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

Pros:

1. For some reason, ever since I converted to beta blogger, I haven't been able to get onto a lot of my favorite blogs. The New Dharma Bums, The Writers Group Blog, and just today Grow Wings, to name a few. Meanwhile, other Blogger sites, continue to welcome me and serve up their beautiful sights and colors. Some even offer me tea; I swear it's true!

Another strange aspect of this situation? It only happens on MY computer. On Ted's computer, I can sign in as myself and visit any blog I'd like. So who's promoting this conspiracy? Blogger? My Mac? The government, maybe? I don't know, but my seagull friend and I are getting plenty aggravated.

2. At present, I'm working very hard on my second novel. At least, I'm trying to. I mean I intend to...doesn't that count for something? Every morning I wake up and commit to writing at least 2,000 words. I write my goal in my journal. I look myself in the mirror, bravely facing my bedhead, and make a solemn promise: Today I will...I swear I don't even laugh when I say it. By noon, I've revised downward to 1,000. But do you think this blasted computer can produce even a thousand measly words on a regular basis? I tell you; it's time for a new one.

3. There are far too many interesting sites on this computer. I need one that squawks like a seagull whenever I try to visit blogs or read the 10 most emailed articles on the New York Times, or to check the obits before I get my work done. Maybe a little ruler could pop out and slap my hand. On my next computer, I definitely want a squawking seagull and a ruler.

And now for the cons, which are really pros, if you get my tangled logic. In the past week, I've been incredibly happy and grateful to receive three Thinking Blogger Awards. (I hope no one will tell these kind people that the only thing I've been thinking about much later is how I can procrastinate doing my work.)

The first was from Colleen, whose blog has made me love with Floyd, Virginia so much that I'm now telling everyone I know I want to move there. (My impudent friends and family claim that I say I'm moving to a different location every year, and I barely get out to the corner store. Hmmph, will they be surprised when I send them a postcard from Floyd.

Then the marvelous Tinker, who draws and makes things, and reviews books with The Third Day Book Club and always, always inspires me with her generous spirit, chose me, too.

And just today, I saw that a new friend, Aaron Lazar, who writes provocative essays, as well as suspense novels that are definitely on my to-be-read list, tapped me.

Thanks to all! (I was also going to say "I love you," but realized that might sound a little too overzealous, and besides, Aaron's wife might get the wrong idea.)

In turn, I'm supposed to choose 5 blogs that make me think. The trouble is that I wouldn't consider adding a site to my sidebar if it DIDN'T provoke thought and joy and maybe even a little bit of transformation. And as you can see, there are considerably more than five of you wonderful people hanging out among my links.

So instead of following the rules, I decided to choose five NEW blogs that make me think. Since I was planning to update my links anyway, this was a great opportunity.

1. eSoup: I was introducted to this inspring and informative blog through KG's fabulous weekly series for writers. It happens every Tuesday on Write Now is Good; and for anyone who's interested in increasing their writing productivity (ahem) it's a must-read. (Note to self) Just do your writing BEFORE you check out the blog.

2. The Palace at 2:00 a.m. Marly is an inspired fantasy writer and poet, and I never leave her blog without feeling a little more awake and alive than I was when I clicked on it. Seriously speaking--or maybe whimsically speaking, you need to read this blog.

3. The Happiness Project: because happiness is good, right?

4. Mardougrrl: All right, I know everyone in the blogosphere has been visiting this exceptionally well-written and insightful blog for months and years. I'm slow, okay?

5. Just Be...Connected: It's not just a blog; it's a community of people committed to the creative lifestyle who share ideas and interviews, and sometimes even STUFF. What's more Just Be has planned an amazing conference to be held right here on Cape Cod in the hotel where I used to sling hash, er, I mean serve elegant dinners. (Really, the food is good, and if you come, you will get to meet all my cool waitress friends.) If you haven't yet registered, may I remind you that October is the very best month on the Cape, and there is such a generous spirit behind this, that it has to be wonderful.

The Weekly One Line Obituaries

2007-04-02T21:19:00.001-07:00

Blue Words from The Silent World, originally uploaded by magic fly paula.

"magic fly paula," a photographer whose work draws me to it again and again, calls this "Blue Words from the Silent World." It seems to fit.

I usually like to find six obituaries before I stop my search, but these five
contain enough for one week.

As always, I will confine myself to one line about each person, but there was a story about Olive Dehn which seemed so poignant to me that I have to share it: She loved her hens so much that she never left her cottage unattended, for fear a fox might get one of them. At one point, there had been eighty hens, but in the end, only one remained. Dehn gave it away to a friend a few days before she died. I'm not sure why that story touches me so much, but it does.

The rest of these lives spoke to me in different ways. Gilly Singh Mundy, who worked tirelessly and humbly for social justice, but loved a great party, reminds me to celebrate more. And the the line about Maha Ghosananda who lost sixteen siblings in the Khmer Rouge massacre is so hopeful it sings. But enough from me; let the blue words speak.

Olive Dehn, Poet, writer, organic farmer for 40 years:

" Dehn was forever cooking, feeding, and comforting, as well as opening the house to people in need." (Or maybe it would suffice to say she loved hens?)

Don McPhee, Photojournalist:

"He found grace, courage, and dignity in unlikely places." (This is a man worth learning more about...)

Cormac Rigby, BBC Radio Announcer and Catholic Priest with a passon for ballet:

"He was in every sense a good man."

Gilly Singh Mundy, community activist, who dedicated his life to the fight against racism and injustice:

"His beautiful photographs and his love of music and food were an expression of his passion for life; he threw legendary parties."

Maha Ghosananda, Cambodian peace worker:

"For all his learning and his mastery of ten languages, he built his work on a belief in the transformative power of inner peace."

MY WHOLE LIFE CHANGED WHEN...

2007-03-28T22:32:00.001-07:00

caderno das estrelas 1/star book, originally uploaded by magic fly paula.

Those are storyteller's words, the kind of words that make you slyly tilt your head to steal the essence of someone else's conversation if you happen to overhear them in public. Or of if spoken directly to you, they are words that invite you to lean closer, to listen more deeply, to prepare to hear a secret.

The first time I heard them was in a wondrous little restaurant called The Good Harvest Cafe in Crescent City. Marilyn had recommended it, and since I was in her home town, I knew I wouldn't be disappointed. The huevos rancheros with avocado were the best ever.

But this isn't a post about food. This is about Serious Life Transformations, and the occasional necessity of eavesdropping to get them.

While Ted read the paper, I sipped my coffee and took in the scenery. The couple at the next table were middle-aged, and appeared to be on some kind of a date. Their body language was restrained, and they were telling each other their lives, as people do in that situation. Condensing. Highlighting. Perhaps embellishing a little.

Finally, the man said, "My whole life changed when I decided that every time I was tempted to complain about the state of the world, I would stop and do something instead. Even if it was something really small."

He then described how he'd moved into a subdivision where everyone drove bicycles instead of cars, and started some kind of solar company. (I'm fuzzy on the details, but being an eavesdropper, I wasn't allowed to ask questions.)

I'm not sure what his date who was eating buckwheat pancakes with no syrup and water thought about his story, but the eavesdropper who was devouring her huevos and sipping coffee from a huge mug has been thinking about it ever since. And in some small, but amazing way, my life was changed, too.

The second time I heard those mystical words was in Chicago at one of those sparsely attended readings that writers are supposed to find so humiliating. But if there had been more people present, I might never have gotten to hear Heather's story about her years in the peace corps in Bulgaria.

My whole life changed when I saw how people dealt with hardship in that country. If the power went out, which it did frequently, or they couldn't get where they wanted to go, or things didn't go their way, they didn't fume or yell at someone or wring their hands like we sometimes do. They just dealt with it. Living among them, I felt like I grew up.

Hmm...now that I think about it, her story wasn't all that different from the man in the Good Harvest Cafe.

And once again, my life changed subtly in the hearing of it.

The third time was also in Chicago (obviously a profound city) when a guest at my friend Susan's party told me her life had changed when her husband retired and decided to take a Great Books Course.

As the books he consumed altered, and excited her husband, the wife found herself growing hungry for what he had. She entered college and earned a degree in English Literature. Her only motive? A love of learning and an avid desire to open herself to the transformation truly great books offer.

So here it is, the existential question of the week: When was the last time your whole life changed?

10 thoughts about THE KITCHEN

2007-03-24T22:35:00.001-07:00

Alice In Domesticland, originally uploaded by BrittneyBush.

1. When I looked around for an interesting kitchen photo, I found a startling abundance of sexy ones. Naked people ambling across the linoleum. Women in lacy lingerie sprawling on the granite countertops. That kind of stuff. I wonder why...is the kitchen in the sexiest room in the house--or the one where sexiness is most forbidden?

2. Yellow is a very good color for kitchens. If I were queen, I would order all kitchens painted yellow at once.

3. Every kitchen should have a kitchen table, even if it's a little one where you can sit in a bathrobe with a cup of coffee and a notebook in the morning and look out at the birds.

4. My kitchen doesn't! (The queen would like that rectified at once.)

5. My favorite item in the kitchen is a little bench my father made for my kids when they were little. The only one who sits on it now is me.

6. It's good to contemplate the world from a little bench on the kitchen floor every now and then.

7. I hate the idea of having a TV in the kitchen. If I were queen, I would forbid it. If you want noise while you're cooking, the queen insists you have to sing.

8. In my grandmother's kitchen, breakfast was a three course meal: first fruit, then oatmeal (the slow cook kind), then fried eggs and toast. She always sang when she prepared it, too.

9. The best kind of floor is the black and white checked kind that I so admired in Laini's kitchen. Along with no TV, and no walking naked through the kitchen (unless it's late at night and you're really hungry) and mandatory kitchen tables for all, and singing even if your voice is really bad, the queen would order black and white checked floors for everyone. And a little bench where the cat can come up and brush against your knees. Don't forget the little bench.

10. If everyone sang while they made their oatmeal, it would not only taste better, it would lower cholesterol 22% more than it already does. Exactly 22%. If you don't believe me, the queen will commission a survey to prove it.

10 and a half: Once, just once, I want to wash dishes wearing shoes and socks like the ones in the photograph by Brittney Bush! Now that's sexiness in the kitchen. And look at the yellow!

NINE INCREDIBLE DAYS: Where to begin?

2007-03-20T19:07:00.000-07:00

Years ago, when I was expecting to become a bestselling author at any moment, I read up on book tours. I hadn't much thought about the minor details, like say, sitting down and writing a book, but I had the ten-city author tour planned in intricate detail.

And since this was important to me, I retained a lot of what I read, too. Unfortunately, just like all the advice I've absorbed about organizing your life or reaching Nirvana in ten easy steps, knowledge doesn't always translate into action.

Conventional Wisdom: Don't overpack. Bring simple, coordinating items that hold their press.

What I did: Pack absolutely everything I owned, and then mostly wore my jeans and a favorite black sweater (rumpled, of course.)

("The sweater" and me with Ed Kaufman at M is for Mystery)

Conventional Wisdom: Eat light, high protein meals that will give you an edge. Since you'll probably be eating crappy hotel food anyway, you might want to pack some trail mix.

What I did: Gorged myself in some of the best restaurants I've ever visited.

(The clock at Fuller's in Portland where the hash browns, the easy banter among patrons at the counter and the atmosphere definitely made breakfast the most nutritious meal of the day.)

Conventional Wisdom: If you're a debut author, be prepared for the humiliating experience of reading to crowds of two or three at bookstores.

What I did: Okay, a couple of times, you might say the crowds were less huge than I might have hoped. But I took that as an opportunity to really get to know the amazing few who turned out. As a result, I thoroughly enjoyed every experience.

(With Irish coffee in Chicago on St. Patrick's Day. I really should have been wearing green, but I couldn't resist the lure of the black sweater...and besides, I've got the proverbial map of Ireland on my face.)

Conventional Wisdom: Separated from your family and friends, your days on the road can be a lonely experience.

What I did: Traveled with my husband, and met up with the most wonderful, generous friends a wandering writer ever had in every place I visited. Lonely? Not for a minute.

Conventional Wisdom: A book tour is a grueling experience, but it will further your career. Keep your eyes straight ahead, and you will get through it.

What I did: Keep looking upward. Otherwise you might miss out on the wonder and amazement.

Special thanks to everyone who made my book tour the experience of a lifetime:

Sky and her wonderful husband for an amazing day in Seattle, and one of the finest dinners I've ever had.

Laini and Jim who hosted a delightful party in Portland. Unfortunately, I forgot my camera that night, but Laini has some great shots on her blog. Thanks, too, to Alexandra, Neil and Sophia, and Maggie! Leroy also made a huge impression and kept me from missing my dogs quite so much.

Marilyn who shared her hometown, acted as my personal tour guide to the wonders of California, and planned a terrific party with her friends.

Marc Lecard, the first member of Killer Year I've had the pleasure of meeting in person. Thanks to Marc and his wife Jane for coming out after a long day's work--and also for a couple of great restaurant recommendations. Both The Stinking Rose and The House of Nanking were divine.

(Holding Marc's terrific new novel, Vinnie's Head which garnered a starred review in Publishers' Weekly, and was a Booksense pick for March)

The fabulous Jordan Rosenfeld who combined a Liar's Party with a bookstore reading for a uniquely wonderful event at BookSmart in Morgan Hill. Thanks, too, to Cinda and Brad for their warm welcome and everything they did to promote the event.

(Please click to get a better look at Jordan's terrific smile. But oh-my-god, where is my black sweater?)

Heather, who inspired me with her conversation--not to mention treating me to the best cupcake I've ever had at The Book Cellar in Chicago.

And Susan Messer, who introduced me to a fascinating group of new friends at an afternoon Liar's Bash, and with her husband, Jim, brought Chicago to life for Ted and me.

(Feeding each other the special blueberry pie we bake for our muses every August. This year we expect great things.)

You almost feel like you could fly without the plane...

2007-03-07T22:07:00.001-08:00

You almost feel like you could fly without the plane..., originally uploaded by addicted Eyes.

Photo by addicted Eyes who also supplied title for this post and a quote that describes exactly how I feel. Click on the image to see more of his work (and some more great quotes, too.)

“It is the greatest shot of adrenaline to be doing what you have wanted to do so badly. You almost feel like you could fly without the plane.” -Charles Lindbergh

So this is what's happening. In a little more than twenty-four hours, I'm
leaving on my own funky book tour--a combination of readings at
some truly fantastic and unique book stores, and Liars' Parties with my amazing blog friends. (Expect lots of pictures.)

What's more I'll be visiting incredible cities that I've longed to see all my life, but never have.

I'll be looking at a different ocean and contemplating the world from an entirely different perspective. I have no doubt my soul will be rocked like a boat.

I'll also be visiting a city on a lake that's so impressive, it looks like an ocean. For the first time in my life, I'll be drinking my St. Paddy's day pint in a pub that's far from New England.

I'll be meeting some of you, who I've come to know so well here in the sphere.

Even better, Ted is going with me.

If any of you are near these areas and have a chance to come and see me, I would be thrilled to see you in person.

The where and when:

Seattle Mystery Bookshop
March 10th
Noon-2 p.m.

Book Passage
Corte Madeira, CA
(Drop by signing, but if you're in the area...)
March 14th
10 a.m.

M is for Mystery
San Mateo, California
March 14th
7-9 p.m.

Booksmart
Morgan Hill, CA
March 15th
6 p.m.

The Book Cellar
Chicago
March, 17th
Noon

On the 16h I fly to Chicago, and then home on the 18th. Till then, it will probably be pretty quiet around here.

Now maybe I better start thinking about packing...

ALL ABOUT SMOKING

2007-03-04T11:06:00.001-08:00

Smoking, originally uploaded by noamgalai.

* First of all, let me say something about the photo, which was taken by the outstanding New York photographer known as Noam Galai. I'm reasonably certain that the man in the photograph (who looks like Bob Dylan to me, but is probably--or almost definitely--NOT) is smoking nothing illegal. Just wanted to make that clear.

Now for the question which inspired this post, taken from an intriguing meme on Zhoen's blog.

Have you ever smoked heroin?

1. No.

2. I probably wouldn't be announcing it on the worldwide web if I did.
(They arrest you for that kind of stuff, don't they?) Then again, I tend to be pretty naive. If I had heroin for breakfast, I'd probably be feeling the need to confess here and now.

And 3. They smoke it? Really? I thought they just "shot" it. Hmm...If I ever was going to use heroin in any form--which would probably only occur if I was terminally ill or all my loved ones were killed in a train crash--smoking it sounds more appealing than the vein-popping method.

The truth is I've never smoked much of anything. I never got the hang of inhaling noxious stuff into my lungs, and whenever I tried, I ended up embarrassing myself by choking, sputtering and hacking in front of the friends I was trying to impress with my cool.

It wasn't from lack of trying either. Growing up in a mill town, the art of cigarette dangling was practically de riguer. By the time I was thirteen, everyone I knew was packing Marlboros in their jacket pocket. I tried to cave in to peer pressure; really I did!

Unfortunately, like the much-ridiculed ex-President, I never inhaled. I did do a hell of a good imitation though (and I'm willing to bet that Bill did, too).

The good news is that faking it is not addictive, and I never got hooked. The bad news--if there is any bad news in NOT developing a deadly habit--is that my friends quickly tired of lending me their butts.

In other words, it was a short-lived phase.

When a joint was passed in college dorm rooms an at concerts , I quickly learned that pretending was even more necessary to my image than it had been when I snuck a feigned smoke outside the middle school. Fortunately, the light was provided by a candle or otherwise dimmed--or maybe everyone else was so high they didn't notice.

A few times, despite my ability to really inhale the stuff, I actually thought I was high, too. I giggled, I got the munchies--the whole routine. Now I'm left wondering if it was more a testament to the power of imagination than the trace narcotic I got from puffing.

I'll never know. But I do know how you tell a real smoker from a faker: We may puff, but we never purchase--particularly not when cash is scarce and the objects of my real addiction--chocolate chip cookies (!)--were available at the all-night snack bar.

Interestingly enough, most of my characters are mad smokers. But then, living in one of my books, has got to be pretty stressful. They are, after all, suspense novels.

The good news: my characters are among the most resilient and determined people I know, and every one of them is trying to quit...Maybe by the time I reach book #5 or 6, it will be a smoke-free world.

THE DEAD FATHER'S CLUB

2007-03-03T22:02:00.001-08:00

0670038334.01._AA240_SCLZZZZZZZ_, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

There are books you read, and then there are books you inhabit. For me, The Dead Fathers Club was in the latter category.

In the course of reading this novel, I lived in the mind of a sensitive, funny, complicated eleven year old boy who's struggling mightily with the sudden loss of his father.

I lived over the pub his father used to own, but which was now being taken over by the dreaded Uncle Alan; and I nursed my secret suspicion that Uncle Alan was after more than the family business. When he started putting his hand on my mother's bum and buying me a Playstation, my worst fears were confirmed.

If grieving over a father who appears regularly as a highly demanding ghost, and trying to protect my mother from Uncle Alan weren't enough, I also had to worry about everything else eleven year-olds agonize over: getting picked last on the soccer team, being bullied at school, and deciding whether or not I should kiss the girl who had the most beautiful red-brown hair I'd ever seen.

At first, to be honest, I wasn't sure I wanted to live in the mind of an eleven-year-old boy, nevermind one with so many troubles. The first two or three chapters, I wondered what I'd gotten myself--and the huge membership of the Third Day Book Club--into this time. Was this a children's book I was reading? I checked the cover art skeptically.

As it turned out, it was a people's book. You could read it if you were eleven, but you could enjoy it if you were eighty, too. (And yes, it is like The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time in that sense.) The deeper I went into it, the harder I found it to emerge. And when I did? I found myself thinking in the voice of the young protagonist.

I won't say more, because I don't want to spoil the marvelous, complex and surprising conclusion for anyone who might read it. But I will say I loved this book. In fact, I enjoyed it so much that I kept talking about it at my readings this week.

A couple of times, my helpful husband had to poke me and say, "Excuse me, but aren't you supposed to be promoting The Liar's Diary?"

So, oh yes: Read The Dead Father's Club, and that other book with the punchy title? Read that, too. Rumor has it they're both fantastic.

Other reviews of Matt Haig's novel:

Amishlaw

PEOPLE CONTINUE TO DIE...

2007-03-02T21:20:00.001-08:00

obituary, originally uploaded by bryan_schuetz.

...and leave behind astonishing stories and inspiring legacies that just beg to be captured in the one-line obituaries.

While searching through Flickr for a photo to illustrate my post, I found this one, which was posted by Brian Schuetz. (Click photo to see more of his work.)

I'm not sure when Tommy Williams died or where he lived, but reading about him in the early hours of March 3, 2007, his life once again had resonance.

A few more:

Keith Kyle, historian and writer: "He was devoid of guile and incapable of envy."

Alan McDiarmid, scientist and Nobel laureate, speaking for himself: "I am a very lucky person and the harder I work, the luckier I seem to be."

Mai Ghoussob, Publisher, writer and artist: "She was without compromise, but she always cared for everyone."

Job Bwayo, renowned scientist and AIDs researcher, killed in a carjacking: "Bwayo had a towering physique, a smile for everyone, and an expression that gave hope to all."

Celia Franca, dancer, choreographer and teacher: "If I was born to anything, it was to start a ballet company and boss people around."

Howver, Thomas Williams, who made the caretaking of graves into a solemn avocation, come upon by accident on Flickr, was the one who made it hardest to choose a single line .

There was this: "He had never required the services of a physician or a dentist in his life."

And this: "Grief stricken families found in him a sympathetic listener."

Or perhaps it is the simplest line of all that says it best: "Mr. Williams was a kindly man."

THE EXISTENTIAL QUESTION OF THE WEEK

2007-02-21T21:08:00.001-08:00

There's one thing I've really missed since I've gotten kind of busy, traveling from bookstore to bookstore, and marveling that my book is here! and there! and sometimes even that other place, too!

What I've missed is the existential question. Or more specifically your responses.

I particularly missed the Existential Question when I came upon a rather strikingly named blog in which the blogger posed a question about how our parents' deepest beliefs formed--or provided a contrast to--our own.

Much as I was tempted to uproot the question and replant it here, I won't. But it did get me thinking about a lot of things. For instance:

1. How much fun it is to blame your parents for everything that's gone wrong in your life when you're young. (Did those callous people ever stop and think about how their actions were effecting your future mental health?)

And:

2. How much less fun it is when your children start doing it to you! (Don't they realize you did the best you could? After all, you're only human!)

Anyway, this question isn't about who's to blame. It's about who did something really great and why and what it is.

So here's the question: What's the one thing your parents did absolutely right in raising you?

ARE YOU AN ALI OR A JEANNE?

2007-02-19T17:32:00.002-08:00

Perhaps one of the most interesting things that has happened to me since real people started
reading my novel was that I've heard very strong reactions to my two protagonists. Though both characters are flawed in their own way, most readers felt they could forgive--or perhaps even identify with--the plight and weaknesses of one character, but rarely both. By phone, in email, in person, and even in reviews, I've found that if one character was loved, the other was almost certain to be reviled.

It made me think that in many ways, both heroine and villain are very much in the eye of the beholder. What I particularly love about all this is the very direct way readers are engaging with these characters. They filtered their childhoods, their relationships with friends, lovers, spouses, and children through the prism of the novel, seeing light here, and shadow there. And how they felt about Ali and Jeanne depended on what their experiences had taught them, and how their inborn nature had formed them.

So just for fun, I decided to devise an Ali and Jeanne quiz:

1. What is your general pattern in paying bills?

a) Pay them promptly as soon as they arrive.
b) Put them in a pile with every intention of getting to them by the end of the month.
c) Treat yourself to an expensive bottle of wine, buy a lavish gift for a friend; then see what's
left over to apply to the bills.

2. Which best describes your attitude toward music?

a) Listen to it occasionally, especially in the car.
b) Love it, but I'm not as avid a listener as I once was.
c) Couldn't live a day without it.

3) How do you deal with problems in your relationships?

a) I would do almost anything to avoid conflict.
b) I choose my battles.
c) I believe in confronting issues immediately and directly.

4) Is sexual infidelity ever justified?

a) Never
b) In certain cases, such as when partners are incompatible, and staying together out of necessity.
c) If the passion is strong enough, it's almost a duty to say yes to it.

5) If suffering from insomnia, how would you court sleep?

a) With a good novel that took me out of myself, and a prescribed sleeping pill.
b) A glass of wine, a good book, and a lavish bubble bath.
c) I would stay awake and consume the night.

The answers will be found in the comment section.

Meanwhile, the first person to guess whether I was an a, b, or c wins a signed copy of The Liar's Diary. Thanks for playing!

10 WAYS TO BE BUSY ALL DAY AND NEVER ACCOMPLISH A THING!

2007-02-12T21:29:00.001-08:00

ProcRastinator Magazine Cover, originally uploaded by Luke Robinson.

Ever since I quit my waitressing job last fall, my life has been one that takes place largely in a little room. There I pace, and think; I listen to music, eat chocolate, inhale deeply, and exhale people who may or may not exist in one long sigh.

Though my characters are not based on anyone I've ever met, no one could ever convince me they're not REAL. How does that work? I have no idea. My job is not to question why, just to get back to the little room and listen.

Then, as I've been telling you on a daily basis, publication came, and I had to leave the little room. Put on eyeliner and lipstick and two socks that matched and go out and tell my story. Such as it is. I used to be a waitress; now I'm a writer. Or I was always a writer; I just pretended to be a waitress. Or maybe I'm pretending to be both...See what sitting in the little room alone too long will do to the brain?

Anyway, today was the first day in a whole week that I got to do what I do best:stay home and WRITE. So what did I do with my marvelous day? I took out the Procrastinator's Handbook, and personally tried every strategy.

What did I discover? If you want to kill time (a tragic metaphor if I've ever heard one) it's easier than you think.

10 WAYS

1. Sit around and think about every single person who's ever been mad at you or mean to you, and mentally go through the reasons that it's so unfair. (This could not just kill a day, but it can, and HAS, annihilated entire lifetimes.)

2. Use the internet to obsess over your place in the universe. The possibilities are endless. You can google yourself, go to Technorati and check your blog rating; and if you're a writer, there's always your Amazon rank...not that I know anything personally about these narcissistic activities.

3. Before you write a single word, or do a constructive thing, make sure you have the perfect beverage at your side, and that it is maintained at the exact temperature you prefer.

4. Think frequently about the chocolate, almonds, Danish waffle cookies, and leftover burritos in the kitchen. Maybe even get up and make sure they're still where you left them, and that they're just as delicious as they were yesterday.

5. Check your e-mail at least once every fifteen minutes. You don't want to miss anything!

6. Phone messages, too!

7. Read the ten most e-mailed articles from the New York Times before you begin. After all, a writer must be well-informed.

8. Take a nap. You'll think better if you're well-rested.

9. Realize that it's 3 p.m. and you're still in your pajamas. Egads, family will be coming home soon, and will not understand how busy you've been all day.

10. Take out the self-help books, and read up on procrastination. Tomorrow you will definitely do better.

A WRITER'S MANIFESTO, THIRD DAY'S MARCH SELECTION...and a little request

2007-02-05T10:56:00.000-08:00

Underwood, originally uploaded by R80o.

Recently, Wendy, a new blog friend, tagged me for a meme called "Self-Contract for Writers." Though I haven't done many memes lately, I think this one had obvious appeal. Whether we state it or not, every writer has such a contract--not only with herself, but with her readers. The contract is unspoken, but essential: You buy my book or read my story or article or blog post, and this is what I promise in return.

I always cringe when writers say they write for themselves. To me, that's a bit like saying you make love for yourself. Undoubtedly, that happens, too, but you don't hear anyone touting it in the personal ads: SM looking to please no one but myself seeks attractive SFs. (Okay, it might be a subtext in some of them, but no one is going to come out and say it.)

Writers, on the other hand, often proclaim it as a badge of honor. I don't care what critics or readers say because you see, I write for myself. How noble!

The worst part? I completely understand the impulse! Get battered with enough rejections, the dismissive review of a critic who just doesn't "get" your book, and anyone's likely to put up a wall. The problem is that the wall not only separates the writer from the pain of being misunderstood or rejected; it separates her from her own best writing: the work that is created to entertain, inspire and provoke thought.

My view, if you want to write for yourself, that's terrific. Get yourself a diary like the little locked notebooks I carried around for years. I learned a lot through the mountains of journals I filled, most of which have been blessedly trashed. I learned about myself and what's more, I learned about the craft of stringing words together. That's what writing for yourself is all about, and there's no question of its value.

However, once you ask real readers to invest their money--or even more significantly, their time in the product of your imagination, you've entered into an unspoken deal with your potential readers, and you ought to do your best to fulfill it.

Does this mean that my book or anyone else's will satisfy everyone? Absolutely not, and if I made that my aim, I'd be even crazier than I already am. What it does mean is that when I ask you to read my work, I'm making a certain commitment to you as a reader. Here it is:

1. I think a good novel should be both entertaining and illuminating. I will do my best to write one.

2. Real life is often the tedious, boring stuff which Thoreau identified when he spoke of the "lives of quiet desperation." It is also startling, dramatic, and "over the top". I will do my best to eliminate the former from my prose, and emphasize the heightened experience that changes a character or a flesh and blood human being forever.

3. I believe that when people read fiction they want to FEEL and THINK and EXPERIENCE. I will do my best to create characters who fully engage the mind and heart.

4. The ultimate drama--both in life and in fiction whether classic or pulp--is the clash of good and evil. In my work, those forces will tangle powerfully. Evil will win many significant battles--just as it does in life, but it will not take the victory. Why? Because in my deepest beliefs and visions and hopes hopes, it doesn't. And what does a writer really have to share, if not her hope?

Now for the THIRD DAY BOOK CLUB pick for March 3rd: The Dead Fathers Club by Matt Haig

Why? Because it's a Booksense Pick, and it sounds truly intriguing. And what's more, it sounds as if it has the thing that has made me most love my favorite books: a strong voice. It also sounds as if it hits the magic combination: an entertaining story and characters that resonate.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* "What happens when you die? Well, if you're murdered, you become a ghost, as 11-year-old Philip learns when he sees his dead father for the first time at the man's wake. Things start to get sticky when Dad then asks Philip to kill his killer, the boy's oily uncle, Alan, who has designs on both Mum and the family pub, the Castle and Falcon. Uncle Alan, it seems, wants to become king of the Castle in his late brother's stead. Poor bewildered, indecisive Philip. To kill or not to kill--that is the question that comes to haunt him. British author Haig's darkly witty and delightfully clever American debut (his first novel, The Last Family in England, was published in the UK in 2004) is clearly inspired by Shakespeare's Hamlet, and part of the fun for the reader is discovering the many droll and unforced parallels. But the real draw is the extraordinary voice that Haig has created for his first-person narrator. Given to panic attacks, Philip is a breathless storyteller who seldom stops for punctuation but whose honesty and innocence, which shine from every sentence, are utterly captivating and heartbreakingly poignant. The result is an absolutely irresistible read."

Meanwhile, I will be reading at an incredible bookstore" tomorrow night at 7 p.m. (and I'm not a bit scared--at least,not yet.) If anyone is near Porter Square Books in Cambridge, please stop by!

Now for my humble request: If anyone has read The Liar's Diary, and would like to put up a short review on Amazon or B & N, I would much appreciate it.

IT'S THE THIRD DAY!

2007-02-03T19:51:00.000-08:00

DSCN1887, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

Secret Smile by Nicci French deals with a couple of fascinating themes: sexual obsession, and the isolation experienced by victims.

Miranda Cotton has only been dating Brendan Block a few weeks whens she catches him reading her diary. It's an intrusion that ends the relationship for Miranda. But for Brendan, it's only the beginning.

He insinuates his way into her family, becoming (rather too quickly) engaged to her sister, and (rather too adoringly) welcomed by her parents. When he claims to have been the one who broke up with Miranda, her family takes his word against hers.

It's the beginning of a pattern that ratchets up the tension and frustration for both Miranda and for the reader. Everyone who should believe her when she expresses alarm over Brendan's increasingly disturbing actions, takes his side-- from her parents to her closest friend to the police. When she reveals her fears and concerns to her new boyfriend, he, too, turns against her, seeing them as evidence that she is the one who is obsessed.

The frustration and tension we feel on a protagonist's behalf are good things in a novel. The emotional injustices committed against Miranda kept this reader turning pages late into the night, not only horrified by the interloper's menace, but infuriated by the insensitive family, who worry endlessly about Brendan's needs and feelings, but remain utterly impervious to their daughter's.

However, after the family pays the ultimate price for their blindness, they still refuse to give Miranda--or the reader--the satisfaction of remorse or contrition. Nor do they seem to take any responsibility for the role their unconditional acceptance of Brendan may have played in the tragedy. Instead, both parents and sister disappear from the narrative, as do numerous other characters who seem as if they might be significant, only to be dispatched and never heard from again.

That kind of frustration is less good in a novel. As a reward for buying into the story and enduring the trials of the protagonist along with her, the reader wants and deserves a greater sense of vindication when the facts are revealed.

But what really was lacking in this novel for me was any real sense of who Brendan was and what motivated him. Nor do we see why he's obsessed with Miranda in the first place. Theirs is described as a casual, brief relationship set in a milieu when such relationships are common. What is it about Miranda that makes him refuse to let go? Why is he willing to risk everything, and cause the death of two people, over a brief tryst that didn't work out?

The writing was excellent, and some of the descriptions, particularly of the emotions that Miranda experiences after the tragedy were marvelously visceral. If the couple known as Nicci French had answered--or even addressed-- the pivotal question that lies at the heart of the story, this might have been a first rate novel. Instead, it was simply an entertaining read.

Other Third Day Reviews:

Sharala

Amishlaw
>Becca

Jordan

Can I do it?

2007-02-02T08:54:00.000-08:00

(Photo Ted Lukac)

It's tough to be a mother, and if you think the job is over when your pride and joy grows up and leaves the house--or even when they sprout their first grey hairs, think again.

The photo above, "Can I do it?" shows someone who has endured a crippling lifelong phobia of public speaking, as I contemplate my first reading. And in the background, my mother does the job of mothers everywhere: she worries with me.

Years of failure in speaking publicly passed through my head...the oral reports in school when the paper I held in my hand rattled in time with my banging heartbeat...my wedding, with only 30 of my nearest and dearest in attendance, Ted as cool as a summer melon, and STILL my voice quavered...the times I was invited to speak or read my poetry, when cowardice won and I cancelled at the last moment.

(Photo R. Laban)

But now with the success of my debut novel on the line, could I do it? I paced, fretted and fumed for days. While I stewed, Mom drew patterns on the floor with her own circular pacing. And also like good mothers everywhere, she encouraged: You can, you can, I know you can!

(Photo R. Laban)

And guess what? I could! To a standing room only crowd (okay, this is my hometown and they were nearly all friends and family, but STILL...) I talked OUT LOUD, I read OUT LOUD, and the most amazing part? I wasn't even nervous!

Must've been the presence of my mom smiling in the front row just like she's been all my life. Aren't mothers amazing?

THE ONE LINE OBITS OF THE WEEK: Regular Programming resumes?

2007-01-26T21:13:00.000-08:00

sixth ave., originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

I did not know these people. Aside from Art Buchwald, I never heard of them in their lifetimes. But like the others I've written about before in the one-line obits, they spoke to me in the final summary of their lives.

Robert Anton Wilson, Writer: "To Bob, everything was interesting."

Richard Boston: "The seven ages of Richard boston encompassed being a journalist, marathon runner, biographer, artist, movie extra, peacenik, and all round eccentric."

Peter Pendergrast, Artist: "He painted with an exuberance that was breathtaking, as if he was determined to reveal how the very planet was born.

Gracie Cole, Cornetist, Trumpeter and Bandleader: "She continued to play music in the nursing home until a few weeks before her death."

Art Buchwald: "Whether it's the best of times or the worst of times, it's the only time you've got."

Now can I just say how happy I'll be to open my blog tomorrow and see something other than that dismal kitchen scene?

FIRST, CLEAN YOUR SINK: One Thing I Learned from Flylady

2007-01-18T21:06:00.000-08:00

Kitchen sink drama, originally uploaded by stevacek.

A few years ago, I read about Flylady, a woman who had developed a unique home organization system. Since organization of any kind has been my lifelong quest, I was immediately intrigued. Now in case you get the wrong idea--let me defend my womanly honor here. My house is not dirty. It is, however, messy. Ditto the state of my writing files, my daily schedule, and well, my life. When Flylady promised that if you learned to organize the space around you, it would spill over into every area of your life, I was hooked.

The first thing you do as an official member (a Flybaby) is to clean your sink as you've never done before. You soak it in bleach, then move on to a greasy elbow scrub, and end with a Windex polish. I had no idea how this excessive sink cleaning routine could lead to order in the home--or my true goal, a life that worked better in every way, but I was willing to give it a try.

Intrigue quickly led to obsession, and the kind of fervor frequently seen in cult members. At work, people said I talked about nothing but Flylady for months. Someone would bring up a problem with their boyfriend, and I would soon be quoting Flylady: First, clean your sink. Credit card bills that were out of hand? You start with a bottle of bleach, and then...

After a month or two, I was forbidden to use the words "Flylady says..." in polite company. Like all my runaway enthusiasms, my Flylady phase finally exhausted itself. But some of her principles are still with me, and they really have improved my life and work.

When I started this post, I intended to write it as "Ten Things..." But my life is pretty hectic right now, and every time I thought about compiling it, I decided to wait till "tomorrow".

In the end, I realized my procrastination was the very thing that Flylady counsels against. Her method emphasizes baby steps. You don't try to transform your house in a day. In my translation, you don't try to write a novel in two weeks, or untangle the strands of a twisted relationship in one discussion.

What you do is one thing. You write a solitary page. You make tea, sit down with that person in your life, and talk. Or maybe you just clean your sink. With bleach and Windex. And slowly, you learn that one positive action slyly, magically, inexorably leads to another.

COME TO A LIARS' PARTY

2007-01-14T21:20:00.000-08:00

Tupperware Party! front, originally uploaded by compact collection.

Okay, I know I'm a couple days late, but here it is: my very own BIG IDEA. My own bit of marketing madness. The thing I'm most looking forward to as my pub date approaches.

How about if an author went out and introduced her novel through old-fashioned Tupperware-style houseparties?

How about if the author devised a fun format and starting with her own friends, got together in little gatherings to talk about books, writing, creativity and whatever else friends talk about?

Bookstore readings are great, but people are busy, and unless the writer is Orhan Pamuk or Stephen King, it's hard to get us off our couches to come out for a reading. And frequently, when we do, there's little chance to talk directly to the author we came to see--or for her to talk to us.

How would it be the author came to them? How would it be if she got together with a bunch of friends in someone's living room, sipped a little wine or tea together and chatted?

Her book (though of course, it would work for hims as well) would be availabe for sale and signing, but no one would be pressured to buy. The emphasis would be on talking about books and writing and the various ways we live the creative life.

That was the idea I presented to the fantastic publicity department at Dutton; and they responded with an amazing show of openness and enthusiasm. They also had the kind of marketing expertise and experience to turn my "big idea" into something that could really work. We now have brochures describing the parties, and printed invitations--just like Tupperware!

In addition, Dutton has offered to give anyone who hosts a party five free books as a gift, two hardcovers selected from the catalogue and three Advance Review Copies of new work that is not yet available.
where people.

Then my friends got involved. My daughter set up an e-mail address to deal specifically with the parties (liarsparty@gmail.com) and my friend, Laura, has been brainstorming with me as well as working hard to get me focussed and organized (not an easy task.) Already, eight friends and family members have offered to host their own Liars Parties.

And yes, I do know that a book is different than a set of plastic mixing bowls. When I look at my author copies, which arrived a few days ago, I see not only years of work, but a piece of my own mind and heart bound and wrapped up in a stunning blue cover.

But though the products are different, the human need to get together and share ideas and laughter in an intimate setting remains the same.

So coaches, what do you think?

5000 COACHES: A NEW WAY TO SELL BOOKS

2007-01-11T22:05:00.000-08:00

grassroots man, originally uploaded by chillhiro.

I loved a lot of things about the movie, Akeelah and the Bee, but one thing that stayed in my mind was the concept of 5000 coaches. When Akeelah's spelling coach quits on her just before the National Spelling Bee, he tells her to go home and look in her own family, her own neighborhood, her own school. There, he says, she will find 5000 coaches. And in them, she will find her victory.

Akeelah's school doesn't have the most rudimentary educational supplies; and her family is too distracted by their struggle to survive the hazards of their vibrant, but blighted neighborhood to pay much attentions to Akeelah's aspirations.

But what her coach teaches her is that sometimes all you have to do is be clear and strong about your dream--and then ask for help. The 5000 coaches, like the proverbial zen teacher, will appear. And they do.

In a lot of ways, the blogosphere has been for a lot of us, the land of 5000 coaches. Whether we're dropping in daily to support a blog friend whose son was recently in a devastating car accident, or sharing stimulus with the marvelous Melba who recently invited C.Delia Scarpitti to interview me for Create a Connection, or taking time to contemplate our magnificent planet, the energy of the ideas and passion shared in the sphere is a force to be reckoned with.

These days, book promotion has become not just the business of publishing companies or highly paid outside publicists. These days authors get to join in the fun, too. After all, who cares more about the success of our books than we do? At first, I was a little intimidated. What did I know about marketing? And did it mean I'd have to leave my little writing room?

Then I went out and looked for my 5000 coaches. The first one was MJ Rose, and her class Buzz Your Book. In that class, MJ taught that you need at least one signature idea to market your book. Like a good zen master, she couldn't tell us what it was; she could only teach us how to search for it.

Almost by accident, I stumbled upon a group of dynamic debut novelists known as Killer Year. The knowledge and encouragement, not to mention, the laugh out loud humor, they share in daily emails, has taught me more than I can say.

Since then, the coaches have proliferated. One example? This week my incredible literary agent and her family will be digging into their own rolodexes, then addressing and sending out 1,000 postcards--all to get the word out about The Liar's Diary. Needless to say, no agent contract in the world covers that kind of grassroots effort.

If I began to name my own band of 5000 coaches, I would quickly run out of space: Tess Gerritsen, Tish Cohen, Karen DeGroot Carter, Dan Wickett, Susan Henderson, Amy MacKinnon, Jacquelyn Mitchcard, Susan Messer, Jordan Rosenfeld, Myfanwy Collins, Laini Taylor DiBartolo...to name a very few. Then there are the many of YOU who pre-ordered the novel even before my mother did, or wrote about it on your blogs. Do you have any idea how great and wide my gratitude is?

More about my new way of selling books, my big, revolutionary idea tomorrow. Right now it's one a.m., and this marketing maven is going to bed.

Wonder and Amazement

2007-01-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

long beach, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

(Photo by Ted)

Yesterday, I did something I probably don't do often enough: I went to church!

Though it was a restrained Catholic Mass, I sang as loud as I could, and I even swayed a little to the music. I figure if you're going to do church, you should do it to the max.

A few people looked at me strangely, but a few others smiled and sang louder, too.

I also heard an awe-inspiring homily--about the subject of well, awe. The priest began by suggesting that everyone go out and look at the stars at least once a day.

When he said there wasn't nearly enough awe in today's world, I had to restrain myself from shouting "Amen!"

"If people don't have Wonder and Amazement in their lives, the world becomes increasingly violent," he said. I found that pretty profound.

On the way out of church, I told him I was going to quote him on my blog. Not sure he knew what a blog was, but he smiled like a man who was very familiar with the stars.

OVERWHELMED

2007-01-05T23:36:00.000-08:00

3 red peppers in winter, originally uploaded by patryfrancis.

Okay, you know me by now. In fact, you know me so well that when Amy King recently tagged me for the "Five things you don't know about me" meme, I was stumped. All I could come up with was two boring tidbits. Then when I tried to blog them, I realized, damn, I already told you those, too.

So, as I say, you know me. You know I like to hang out in my pajamas till noon and talk to my imaginary friends (aka "my characters").

I drink too much coffee in the morning, and too much tea in the afternoon. I eat a piece of dark chocolate every day, and I swear it's the reason I never get colds.

I ruminate on the existential questions, but not too seriously.

I read the obits and wonder what the distilled life means.

On spacious afternoons, I might write a poem, or take the dogs to the beach and pick up shells, or hang out at the health club, and talk to my glamourous seventy-five year old friend, Lina.

I'm neither organized, nor efficient; and in spite of owning the world's most complete collection of sweetly hokey self-help books, I remain utterly unhelped and probably unhelpable.

I love blogs, and I love the people who write them.

But now it seems, my life is changing, and I have no choice but to change with it.

It seems I have a book coming out in less than four weeks, and there's some things I need to do to make it a success.

Things that don't involve pajamas or picking up shells or passing an afternoon listening to Lina talk about all the men who were once in love with her.

I'm also in the dead middle of major revisions on the new novel, a fairly daunting task that needs to be done before February first.

And the thing is, I love this stuff. Every bit of it. I love the writing and the marketing, the networking and the planning. It's the life I've dreamed of and waited for, chased after madly and worked toward with quiet diligence--and damn, I mean to enjoy every blasted minute of it!

But just now. Just today. I'm a little overwhelmed.

Too overwhelmed to think about reading Middlesex, though I've been wanting to for a long time, and will hopefully get to it when my life goes back to normal, whatever that might be.

In fact, I'm too overwhelmed to read anything too demanding. Thus, for The Third Day Book Club, I'm going to do something unprecedented. I'm going to choose a book by an author I've never read--simply because it looks entertaining.

Nicci French, a husband and wife team write psychological suspense novels that are apparently quite popular in England, and the one I chose Secret Smile, was made into a mini-series on the BBC.

This is the review from Publishers' Weekly:

"Nobody does the dark underside of sex in the city better than the British couple who write as Nicci French, and their latest (after 2003's Land of the Living) is one of their most sustained and believable studies in terror against women. Miranda Cotton has an ideal life in London, doing work she loves (building and contracting; she always seems to have a spot of paint in her hair), with no current love interest but lots of dating opportunities. Then a short, nasty liaison with a man who calls himself Brendan Block rips her comfortable world apart. A charming and dangerous psychopath, Block worms his way into the Cotton family claiming that he dumped Miranda (when in fact it was she who tossed him out when she caught him reading her diaries); he immediately wins the trust of her flustered parents and does serious damage to her older sister, Kerry, and her mentally fragile younger brother, Troy. The trouble is that nobody believes the rather rough-edged Miranda when she tries desperately to stop Block's rampage. Studded with sharp insights into the strange compromises involved in modern relationships, this novel could be the horror version of Bridget Jones's Diary. And the authors are so subtle at bringing Brendan and Miranda to life that readers might even begin to doubt that what she's telling us is the whole truth until the stunning climax."

I hope a few of you will read along with me--just for the fun of it! (And meanwhile, if anyone has a cure for the overwhelmed flu, I'm listening.

WRITING AGAINST TIME: The Third Day Book Club Blogs Suite Francaise

2007-01-03T09:03:00.000-08:00

Irene Nemirovsky

"All the time we were in that village, I just remember mother writing, writing, writing. It was as if she knew she was writing against time. Indeed, reading between the lines, her notes show she knew full well that if ever her final work was published, it would be posthumously."

Nemirovsky's daughter, Denise Epstein, describing how Suite Francaise was written

I'm not usually fond of novels with large casts of characters. Usually I prefer the intimate view of a clear and strong protagonist. But even though the first half of Nemirovsky's epic leaped from family to family and house to house much as sinuously as the sound of the siren that cuts through the night changing everything for the city of Paris and its occupants, the story itself never loses focus or cohesion.

In many ways, the central character of the novel is disruption. The particular disruption that war causes. The images of families and individuals, suddenly detached from security and safety, fleeing with their pets and possessions, not certain where they would sleep that night or what they would eat was, in many ways, chillingly familiar. It called up images as close as Hurricane Katrina, and as far away as Darfur or Iraq. Or maybe none of it feels too far away now--which may be why reading Suite Francaise was such a disquieting experience.

A brilliant observer of human nature, Nemirovsky captures the wide range of humanity in crisis. Her characters are foolish, noble, petty, selfish, brave and exceedingly real. The novel reads like the instant classic, which I believe it is destined to become. Don't miss it.

For further reflections on Suite Francaise:

Amishlaw

Sarala

Tarakuanyin

Paris Parfait

Jordan Rosenfeld

Becca

2007, HERE WE COME!

2007-01-01T19:33:00.000-08:00

I recently wrote a scene that took place on Four Mile Beach in Wellfleet. In my novel, it was a November day, grey and desolate, but my character found a kind of solace there anyway.

I thought of her when the family walked that beach the day after Christmas. I thought of the way I had described the layers of grey that sky and water and sand make on a day like that.

It was a great walk, but no one enjoyed it more than Gabe and Nicola's dog, Bubba. He raced up and down the beach. He chased sticks into the frigid waters, and dove beneath the waves. He unearthed a weathered cinder block, and apparently mistaking it for the bone of some giant beast, tried to take it home.

But when I downloaded the photo, I saw more than a happy day that ended with a great oyster roll and a bowl of scallop stew at the Land Ho in Orleans. I saw a new year. An unwritten page. An untrammeled beach. And Wellfleet's notoriously fierce and exhilarating, absolutely unpredictable waves.

May we all be as adventurous, and playful and alive as Bubba in 2007!

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One new thing I started today was "The Daily Writing Quote" on my page at Publisher's Marketplace. I hope the writers among you--which is, of course, all of you in one way or another--will check it out.

One thing I read today was this piece by Paul Theroux about living in an overcrowded world. Actually, I read it yesterday. Then I read it aloud to Ted later. And I thought about it some more today--especially the final paragraph. If you were here, I'd undoubtedly corner you and read it aloud one more time, then ask you what you thought of it. Somehow it reminded me of the journey I took through the Northeast the other day and all the sights you shared with me.

One thing I thought about today was The Third Day Book Club. We're due to blog Suite Francaise in just two days, and I still have 200 pages left to read. It's not the book that's caused me to delay, because actually I'm enjoying it very much. It's--well, you know what it is. It's December! The whole merry, stressful, celebrating month.

At this point, I'm planning to read as much as I can in the next two days, and blog on my initial reflections, then add my reflections as I finish it. How about everyone else? Has anyone had time to read this month?

100,000 CARS, 99 RIVERS and the existential question of the week

2006-12-29T19:42:00.000-08:00

Foggy Morning.., originally uploaded by TR.iPod.

Yesterday we spent seven hours driving from Ted's family home in the mountains of Pennsylvania to Cape Cod.

I saw 100,000 cars, and one man walking down the highway.

I wondered what it would be like if we were all walking--or even half of us. How long would it take to travel from Pennsylvania? How many people would I meet along the way? How often would we travel, and what would our lives be like at home?

I saw 9 deer grazing in a field near the highway. I had never seen so many deer in one place at one time. After an hour or two, Ted had to ask me kindly if I would please stop talking about them.

I saw a blinking sign that said YOU'RE ARRESTED

I wondered what I had done, but then the sign blinked again and it said DRINKING AND DRIVING IS A SERIOUS CRIME. I wasn't arrested after all. Phew.

I saw billboards that wanted me to drink Coors Beer and have my eyes checked.

I wondered when doctors started advertising on billboards.

I saw a million winter trees, stripped and broken or standing tall like arrows announcing the clouds.

I wondered when snow would come and cover them with its glitter and light.

I saw 99 rivers, 42 mountains, 36 cities, and 356 towns.

I saw factories where no one's worked for fifty years, and the tenements where the workers used to live.

I wondered who lived in them now and what they do for work.

I saw four cars that had been stopped by the police, two fender benders, and seventeen vehicles broken down on the road.

I saw one man's soft white belly, as he lay on the ground, working on his car.

I wondered at how vulnerable we all are.

I saw one boat on the Hudson River; and I saw the sun parting the water for it.

I opened the window to feel what the boat rider must feel, and wondered why there was only one.

I saw two and a half tons of trash spread along the side of the road, and 50,000 empty pick-up trucks.

I saw 99 McDonald's, 9 Starbucks and 103 Dunkin Donuts. I saw the Hibernian Diner where they have the best lentil soup I've ever had, and Di Mare's Pastry Shop where everything looks so good that choice is almost impossible.

Guess where we stopped?

I saw docked naval ships and tugboats, and Ted says I even saw a submarine, though I didn't much notice it.

I wondered how you can drive past a submarine and fail to see it.

I saw a stack of CDs we used to entertain ourselves on our way home, and I listened to Woody Guthrie singing "This land was made for you and me."

I joined in, wondering what Woody would sing now.

I saw road signs that announced New England and then Cape Cod, then our town, our street, our animals in the window.

I saw my own fatigue in the mirror inside the door. Ted said I shouldn't be tired; I hadn't even driven.

I wondered how anyone could take in 100,000 cars, 99 rivers and a million winter trees without wanting to sleep for a week when they were done.

I went to bed early and dreamed of the highway.

What about you? What did you see? What did you wonder?

10 Things I Want for Christmas

2006-12-23T21:45:00.000-08:00

1. There's a guy who's lived down the street from us for over ten years. Though Ted always greets him when we see him in the neighborhood, he steadfastly refuses to respond. At this point, Ted has turned it into a campaign. Someday, he's sure of it, the neighbor will give in and say hello. So this year I'm putting it on my Christmas list...may grumpy neighbors everywhere crack a smile and maybe even wave.

2. Laughter and lots of it.

3. Imperfection. Let's face it; it's coming down the chimney whether we like it or not. Just because it's a holiday doesn't mean we'll be less lonely, that the mashed potatoes will be lump free, the relatives will be less annoying or that the gift inside the prettily wrapped box won't be an exact replica of the ugly sweater we got last year. So instead of fighting it or getting depressed over it, why not celebrate it? Why not set a special place at the table for life's messiness and disappointments and serve it a glass of wine? Who wants a Norman Rockwell Christmas anyway?

4. Snow!

5. Some watercolors so I can play with art in 2007

6. Time for spiritual reflection

7. A book of poetry with one line in it that transforms the way I see the world.

8. An amazing friend who died a few years ago was remembered in a eulogy as someone who said "Yes!" whenever he opened a gift--even before he saw what was inside. I want the attitude that permeated his life.

9. If peace on earth and goodwill to men seems like too much to ask this year, then at least a sincere and overwhelming desire for those things, and a renewed commitment to living them in every encounter, every thought, every action. If we tried it just for one day, who knows what we might begin?

10. Good things for all of you who have been kind enough to visit here, and to share your insights and your lives with me throughout the year.
Happiness, serenity, blessings to all.

Anyone have a number eleven?