Brick by Brick

Nothing satisfies more  than finishing a day of writing at the computer and finding a strong body of work appear on the page. But in all honesty, many days are duds, leaving me disappointed in the small amount of work created. On the unproductive days, I always walk away from a seven, eight, nine-hour stint at the computer hearing the words
“brick by brick” pass through my mind.

A building is built brick by brick, a skyscraper one cement piece at a time, a city one block at a time. Relationships are built one shared experience at a time. Lifetimes are just moments strung together until decades pass, then your younger and healthier years, then your kids’ younger years pass.
And stories are built when a few words strung together form a sentence that build a paragraph that in time form a chapter until you suddenly find you’ve written 300 pages – brick by brick. Those words often keep me from giving up and labeling the unproductive days as a waste.
Before I worked full-time, I had the luxury of wide-open space to write and the dud days didn’t seem as threatening. Now that I write while juggling a full-time job, an unproductive writing day can be a serious setback considering the limited time available to produce material (usually just Saturdays for creative stuff).  But I’ve had the welcome experience of realizing that my brief moments of writing can actually be as productive as those longer periods. Some days, only a few bricks are laid. But the next time I return to that piece of work, I find a surprising foundation formed by those mere words, and often the foundation whispered to its friends to join and cling to the other bricks, together throwing up an entire structure.
Thankfully the mind continues to write after turning off the computer. Brick by brick, details of a story piece together, come to mind after i cross from work mode into domestic life. Brick by brick, pieces fall into place as I talk with friends, overhear grocery store conversations, sit at stoplights thinking, or walk around my neighborhood. Answers to a writing problem appear. A scene materializes. Dialogue writes itself.
Over Christmas I was wrestling with a scene involving my main character who has early Alzheimer’s disease. My son and daughter-in-law were visiting and played a song for me called “An Old Shoebox Filled with Ghosts.” Suddenly I envisioned a scene where my character goes on a snooping expedition in someone else’s house and finds an old shoe box filled with details that fill in missing places in her past. The scene kindly arrived after my writing time had ended for the day and my brain fell into relaxation mode, almost a “receiving” mode. Even the undisciplined moments can be productive moments.
In nine weeks I’ll finish the first year of my MFA program. On a weekly basis I don’t feel I’m accomplishing a great amount of work. But looking back, I’ve written or rewritten roughly 150 pages. Many passages and additions to my novel appeared over these past months despite a busy work schedule and other demands on my time. Ideas grew and informed each other. Characters turned into real people with real wants, foibles and loves. And one truth has been confirmed: as long as I show up faithfully and put words on paper – small or large amounts of words  –  a novel, short story, or anything can appear – brick by brick.

Family Visits in the Techno Age

 

We’ve gathered for our annual Christmas get-together, and technology is the new guest. We’ve debated whether we should have “no-technology” moments
during our family visit as we became aware that at times all 7 people staying
at our house have our noses stuck in 7 different pieces of technology – laptops,
iPads, or smartphones. The twins send music back and forth to each other while
sitting on opposite couches. Bill reads something to everyone from his
smartphone, and everyone enjoys a running commentary with family members far
and near on Facebook.

But one use of technology silenced my call for no-techno
moments. While sitting around the fire with the fam, we asked my mother-in-law
to tell us about how they celebrated Christmas in her home during her growing
up years in St. Peters, Nova Scotia. She told us about going out to the back
field to chop down a Christmas tree with her father and how she received nothing
more than apples and oranges in her stocking. 
Their gifts included simple items, like socks and underwear. Her family
never owned a car. She walked to school and to the store, while her dad walked
to the post office where he worked, making just $2,000 a year. And she never
felt poor.

To highlight the moment, one son pulled up decades-old photos
of her family he had uploaded onto his computer from old slides. Another son
went on to Google maps and found her childhood home.   With the street view, he
was able to show my mother-in-law her old house, complete with changes made by
the new owners who turned it into apartments. Another son pulled up a picture
of one of her family members taken in the 50’s that he used as a CD cover for
his band because he liked the vintage look. While I write this post, they are
looking up the MacKillop tartan, celebrating their Scottish heritage. In a minute
I’ll post this on Facebook and my sons will notice. They might “like” it or
not, but either way, we’ll have a continuing conversation. A different kind of
conversation, but we are talking nevertheless. And the times they are a changin’.

A Peaceful Hush

In my growing up years, we children often fell asleep to the
sounds of parental battles downstairs, someone screeching tires out of the
driveway in a fit of rage, glasses crashing against walls and voices shouting
to be heard.

But at Christmas time, the most amazing thing would happen.
For some reason, my parents called a truce, allowing a peaceful hush to descend
on our home. I’m not sure why the holy hush when we weren’t terribly religious,
but nevertheless some sort of reverence inspired by the season calmed spirits.
We had happy family moments, sitting around the fireplace in pajamas by the dim
light of our Christmas tree decorated with strings of popcorn and cranberries,
laughing and conversing, eating pinwheel cookies, drinking eggnog. We would
discuss the little fat man who miraculously managed to bring toys to every
child in the world in one night, unaware that his behavior rang of omnipresence,
showing that even folks unable to grasp the real meaning of Christmas bumped up
against its truth.

If only we could’ve really loved each other year round the
way we loved each other during Christmas.  I think my parents would’ve chosen to live
everyday in that calm but didn’t know how to bottle the peace and use it
another day. Unfortunately the truce broke soon after the holiday, and our
family eventually shattered.
While raising my sons, a holy hush descended on our home too,
but unlike my family of origin, we understood the meaning of the celebration
that caused people all over the world, the broken and battered world, to hope
and believe in reconciliation with God. We celebrated with many of the same
traditions as my parents, but with a sense of significance. 
In this Christmas season, I think of how all the world glimmers
and burns bright with lights for a God so many don’t even believe in, many
chuckling at the ridiculousness of the faith story, even considering it
offensive. To some, it’s a fairytale that weak folks believe, this idea that a powerful
creator entered into his creation in the form of a helpless baby, born to an
unwed teenage mother in a building shared with farm animals. He could’ve lived
in a palace and commanded armies to protect him and demand obedience. Instead
he lived simply and humbly, cared for the marginalized, and submitted to a
horrendous death.
The nineteenth century author George MacDonald talks about
basing his life on this seemingly far-fetched storyline in his book Thomas Wingfold:  “Even
if there be no hereafter, I would live my time believing in a grand thing that ought to be true if it is not…Let
me hold by the better than the actual, and fall into nothingness off the same
precipice with Jesus and John and Paul and a thousand more, who were lovely in
their lives, and with their deaths make even the nothingness into which they
have passed like the garden of the Lord.”
May a holy hush descend on us all this Christmas as we celebrate this story. God knows
we need it.   

 

Love in the Latter Years

 My husband and I leave
pre-dawn for a 3-hour journey to visit one of our sons. Road trips and travel
invite thoughts to wander and memories to stir, forming narrative and
reflection that instruct. We fill up with coffee before merging onto a nearly
deserted highway, music serenading us from the CD player, the top down on the
convertible as Indiana farmland zooms past, the backseat empty of car seats or
wrestling boys. Those days are behind us now. Thirty years into this marital
journey, we’re back where we started, just the two of us; but the two of us are
very different people now. Life and love and have transformed us both.   

We ride mostly in silence, indicative of the comfort we feel
with each other after all these years. Eva Cassidy serenades with a jazzy
version of “I love you, I love you, I love you, like never before.” Bill gives
my hand a squeeze. I notice the lines engraved on his face and think of the Psalmist’s words, “The lines have fallen to me in pleasant places.” The smile and
laugh lines etched deeply around his eyes tell of his life’s pleasant places.
Despite ups and downs in our relationship and life’s challenges, he has
traveled this road with levity, and it shows.
 One of my favorite Bill
stories took place when our sons were young and we struggled to support them on
his single salary while I stayed home. He drove a car with an exhaust system
that blew inside our vehicle rather
than outside, arriving home in the evening smelling like carbon monoxide. A
long-awaited raise and promotion at work allowed us to purchase a newer car with
exhaust blowing in the right direction. One of his coworkers ribbed him about
his new and spiffy Ford Taurus station wagon saying, “Now that you’re making
the big bucks, Bill, you had to go buy a new car?” First of all, the bucks
weren’t all that big. Second of all, I
would’ve sassed the man over his sarcastic comment. But my husband handled him
with customary humor by saying, “You know Steve, making the big bucks hasn’t
changed me a bit. Why, I was just saying to my house boy, Hop Sing, this
morning….”
Bill has handled me with the same good-natured personality. During
rough spots in our marriage, he always brought winsomeness to our struggles.
During years when we both failed to constructively express and communicate our
disappointments and frustrations to each other (he became withdrawn and I
became mouthy), he learned over time to model to me the art of telling the
truth in love. Coming from a broken, unhealthy famiIy, I needed
someone to try a different tactic to build a marriage with me; my husband
succeeded.

Bill never compounded my past hurts by revisiting and
mimicking them. Despite meltdowns on my part,
my husband refused to stop loving me. He never attempted to control me with
verbal tirades. He never put me in my place, gave up, listed my faults
though many, lashed out, said an unkind word, or left. His very calming presence
formed the perfect recipe for healing a troubled past. His behavior spoke to
the steady and loving gift he has been in my life.

Today he never pats himself on the back for his altruistic
behavior. I’ve calmed and healed, and he’s learned to express himself – some
might say a little too much. He doesn’t take credit for his contribution to our
marriage although that contribution is massive. He pretends (almost) that he
never noticed I was a challenge. And that is love. 
Serenaded, comforted and healed, we continue on down the
road, a shared loved-one ahead waiting for us. 
Bill’s smile lines appear as he squints against the morning light that showers
over us in the early hours of dawn.

 

Why am I Talking?

I heard an Anne Lamott interview recently where the well-known author shared her thoughts about the role of being a mother-in-law. My ears perked up as I’ve now been a mother-in-law for two years and hope to always have a respectful, loving relationship with my daughter-in-law and any future daughter-in-laws.

In her characteristic humor, Lamott says that when she is speaking with her children and their spouses, she recites the acronym WAIT to herself, which stands for Why Am I Talking? At one point in the relationship she realized they didn’t want her advice, critiques, or thoughts on how to do certain things.

I need to zip my lip at times, too, not just with my daughter-in-law but with grown sons as well. I need to WAIT until I’m asked before I offer a mouthful. All those times I find myself commenting on job applications, travels, financial choices, etc. I now hear myself asking Why am I Talking? My job at this point
is to be a cheerleader on the sidelines, a listening ear, an encourager, and an advisor when asked.

In my writing life, there are times I need to learn to zip my lip, too. Writing often informs life and life informs writing, and WAIT applies here as well. I have a commentary problem when I write. Surely there’s a 12-step program for those of us who divulge too much.  I place my characters in a situation, give
them some actions and behavior, cause other characters to react or not react to their behavior, and then I make the mistake too often of commenting on everyone’s behaviors. Readers can see for themselves what just happened and its affects. They might draw a different conclusion then my intended one, but all the better. So Why Am I Talking? I need to be on a “commentary diet” instead.

I find author Elizabeth Strout to be a master at the understated. Here’s a mother-in-law example from her Pulitzer Prize winning novel Olive
Kitteridge. How would you describe this character from this brief interaction with her soon-to-be daughter-in-law?
“Do you mind if I call you mom?” asked the girl, stepping back but holding Olive by her elbows. “I’m so dying to call
you Mom.”
 “Call me anything you want,” Olive replied. “I guess I’ll call you Ann.”

 A lack of commentary, in other words silence, often speaks loudly in literature and loudly in life as well. Have you ever been falsely accused? Lied about? Met a person who describes themselves one way and lives another? A lack of commentary comes in handy in these situations, as well as when you’ve lost your opportunity to defend yourself, argue your point, convince someone of your goodness or respectability. In other words, if we can’t use words to explain who we are, who are we? Sometimes it’s frightening to be known only by what we do or don’t do.

I’ll withhold any further commentary.

Fearless

When I think of people living well into their older years, my
friend Kathi comes to mind immediately. At a season when most
people are clearing out their desks and giving away their teaching supplies, she
continues to be a teacher and a student of life. For years, she raised her kids
as a single mom and adopted three kids along the way. Today, only her middle-aged
Down’s Syndrome son lives with her, and together they’ve made a major life
move.

Kathi recently took the courageous step of selling her house in a
comfortable Richmond suburb and moving into the inner city onto a street
surrounded by abandoned houses in a neighborhood residents would know from
newscasts because of its constant crime and violence.

Did I mention alone as a single mom?

In fact, her next door neighbor came over to introduce himself on
her move-in day saying, “The drug dealers are on that corner down there, and
the prostitutes hang out on the other end. I know them all, so they’ll leave
you alone. But listen to me when I tell you that you should NEVER, EVER, EVER
open your door at night to anyone. Do you hear me?”

Out of concern, I asked her if she would be safe moving there,
she replied, “Well, who’s really safe anywhere?”

 I think her answer
meant “no” or “it doesn’t really matter.”

She works with an
organization called CHAT (Church Hill Activities and Tutoring) whose staff members also live in the neighborhood. Not only
do they live among marginalized people, but they’ve chosen to put their kids in
failing public schools to share in that experience with their neighbors.  A scripture on Kathi’s newsletter sent out to
family and friends aptly describes their actions:  “The Word became flesh and blood, and moved into the neighborhood.”

I realize her choice is
more radical than most of us will make in our lifetime, me included. And I
realize some people will feel this post is guilt producing. But the point in
sharing Kathi’s life is to say that we all have fears to step into and
challenges to face in our own lives that may not resemble Kathi’s choice in the
least, some on a much smaller scale but important for our sphere
of influence.

 Kathi’s choice made me consider what fears
keep me from taking risks and following my own calling and passions. Just stepping
into those fears can be transformative – for us and for others. The interesting
part of fear is how it sort of moves out of our way and evaporates when we push
into it.

I salute this woman, this
aging lifestyle, this desire to live fully and adventurously – and a little bit
dangerously – right to the end. Speaking of the end, the back of Kathi’s house
abuts a senior citizen home. She jokingly says she won’t have far to move when
she “gets old.”

Life in the Latter Years

I’m late to the blogging world, as I’ve been late to many
things in life, but part of my reason for the delay can be blamed on my
inability to name my blog. I thought of Late
Bloomer, but apparently the world is full of late bloomers and many already
named their blogs as such. They may have been late, but they beat me.  Same with my second choice for a title that
highlighted an empty nester’s quest for purpose –  Life: Part Two. Already
taken. Then I considered A Try Again Life
since I’m returning to school in my later-than-middle-age years. But I nixed
that idea because of the connotation that the earlier parts of my life somehow
failed, requiring a second chance.

One day my blog name appeared when a friend shared a new
word with me – opsimath. I love this word because it describes my
stage of life so much better than simply being late to the game and trying
again. You see, the word means “a person who begins, or continues, to study or
learn late in life.” I may not know how to pronounce it or use it smoothly in a
sentence, but I like the concept! And I’m always interested in learning –
formally and informally, via books, other people, life experiences, on the job,
etc.

For the formal part,  I’m making up for my early school years when I
didn’t study much, being the dreamy student in middle and high school who
stared out classrooms window, creating scenarios in my head that never had to
do with algebra or American history. Unfortunately my chronic disinterest and inability
to pay attention had long-term consequences as I missed so much of the
information other curious people collected at an earlier age. I’m attempting to
make up for lost time by returning yet again to school at the Rainier Writer’s Workshop to pursue something from my bucket list in these latter years: a Master
of Fine Arts degree in creative writing.  

I debated long and hard about returning one more time to
school – especially at my age. After all, my grandfather was retired by the
time he reached his mid-fifties, spending his days on the golf course and on his
deck overlooking a Cape Cod bay where cocktails started in late afternoon. I
have no desire to wind down in the same manner, so I surveyed friends for their
opinion about my return to school. Surely someone would provide a good reason
to talk me out of my pursuit by citing the impracticality, the expense, my age,
and the uselessness of a writing degree. But to a person, everyone’s response
was, “Why wouldn’t you do something
you love? Go for it!”

Another encouragement came after a recent celebration of my company’s
50th anniversary. A coworker pointed out the founder’s wife was
nearly 50 years old when her husband started our publishing house, meaning that
much happened in her later years. Is it too much to hope that something
interesting might take place in the latter half of our lives too, after the
kids are grown, moving on to challenging pursuits of their own? Is
there any reason to slow down and wait as life rolls to a close?

A few years back as I talked to my sons about my approaching
stage of empty nest, I mentioned feeling that my most important job was
finished and jokingly said I could just move on to the great beyond. One of my
sons responded: “You’re not an insect, Mom. You don’t mate and die.” So I’d
like to pursue adventure, and see what life holds when you’ve passed the half
century mark. I choose to be an opsimath – someone who not only learns late in
life, but also lives life fully right up until the end. I plan to blog about
the experience with the hopes something curiously fun might happen along the
way. And I’m on the lookout for others doing the same. So cue the music and let
the new journey begin.