Nervous Girl

Writing for Ponies

A friend of mine recently asked if I would be willing to be a resident writer on her website.  I was thrilled, because I think this woman and her writing are inspiring, and I'm honored that she'd want to affiliate herself with me in any way. I was also thrilled because I love to write.

For me, writing is fun.  But it wasn't always.

Once, I spent a couple of hours writing an essay, then  fired it off for submission to a national magazine's first-person true story essay column. Then I kind of forgot about it, because the chances of it being selected for publication were so remote. But it was. The only reason I knew the woman calling to tell me so wasn't a friend pranking me was because I hadn't told anybody of the submission. Well, that, and the Caller ID.

It was awesome. The first thing I'd ever submitted for publication was being published in a national magazine. They edited maybe two sentences.  It was a great feeling. But it was a lousy precedent. Because then I felt like everything that flowed from the tip of my pen, so to speak, had to be good enough for publication in a national magazine. As you might imagine, this kind of internal pressure did not lead to me becoming a gushing fountain of prose.

Then a couple of months ago, I opened a catalog with a picture of this t-shirt. And the realization hit me like a ton of bricks, or, more accurately, like a ton of crap:  Nobody writes perfectly all the time.  Even really good writers have to write their way through a lot of junk to find the gems. And even then, the gems need polishing. I don't have to be perfect all the time. I don't even have to be good most of the time. I just have to write. I may never write anything great, even if I write every day. But I'll never write anything good if I don't write at all.

If this sounds suspiciously like the advice I gave my son, this little  epiphany is where it came from. And now I get to write for fun, and let the crap pile up around me while I look for treasures. (I speak figuratively here, but it does occur to me that the more time I spend writing, the less time I spend cleaning.)

It reminds me a little of the story  of the parents who were worried because their son seemed to be an incurable optimist. Fearful that he wouldn't be able to deal with the disappointments of the real world, they took him to a psychologist, who promised to cure him  if they would leave the boy with him for several hours. They agreed, and when they returned, the psychologist explained that he had locked the boy in a room filled waist-deep with horse manure. After a few hours of that, no one could possibly be cheerful.

But when the door was unlocked, instead of seeing the boy subdued, the parents and psychologist found him shoveling with great energy. The psychologist sputtered, "What's wrong with you? How can you possibly be happy in the middle of such a disgusting scene?" The little boy looked up and exclaimed, "With all this horse sh*t, there's GOT to be a pony in here somewhere!"

So that's it. I'm making my way through the piles of crap, trying not to get discouraged, and believing in the pony.

Aunt Najla

I can barely remember a time when I wasn’t taller than Aunt Najla, and the last couple of times we visited, she was a willing yardstick against which we measured my son’s growth. By eleven he was approaching her height, a little under five feet; by twelve he had shot up past the perpetually auburn hair on top of her head.

She kept pictures of most of her nephews and nieces under the glass that topped the end tables in her living room. The children frozen in time under glass grew up in the real world, and returned with pictures of their own children, and then the eldest of those children brought her pictures of their babies. She never married, never had children of her own, so she belonged to all of us, and we to her.

She managed to be both loving and firm, devout in her faith and up for an adventure. When she was in her seventies, we flew together with another of my cousins to a wedding in Chicago. I was worried I'd have to look after her. I should have worried about keeping up with her.

When my cousins and I were kids, we had all sat on the sofa between those end tables and played on the floor in front of it. We had studied the pictures under the glass, and fingered the large bunch of glass grapes that sat on top of them. We had peered at the treasures in the curved china cabinet in the dining room, and had ginger ale and cookies in the little kitchen.  We had climbed the steep, curving stairs to the second floor and slid down again on our bottoms (at least, I did).  As we got older, we would drink the tea she offered us in place of ginger ale, but still with the delicate Lebanese pastries she made every year. We eyed those steep, narrow stairs suspiciously—how much longer could a woman in her late eighties, then early nineties, manage them?

Eventually, those stairs proved too much for her, and she  moved with her glass-topped tables and a few furnishings to a tiny apartment in a senior residence.  There she continued to hold court with the nieces and nephews, great-nieces and great-nephews who came to visit. She always managed to produce some candy or a tin of cookies, and ginger ale from her tiny refrigerator.

I was never the one who had to come to her with the news that another of her sisters or cousins had passed away.  I can only imagine how hard it was for the ones who had to knock on her door and tell her.  She had outlived both of her parents, two brothers, four sisters, countless cousins and friends and even some nephews and nieces. She wasn’t given to complaining or bitterness, but every time I visited with my kids, she said the same thing: “I think God forgot me.” We assured her that he had done no such thing, but that we needed her, the eldest of her sisters, the matriarch of our family.  My sister teased her that she had to beat the record of another cousin’s grandfather, who had lived to 108.

She fell a little short. (No pun intended, my darling aunt who stood 4’11”!) She was just 96 last night when her heart finally failed her. I knew, in my head, that the day had to come, but I never really believed it, because in all those years her heart never failed anyone else.

Memory eternal, Aunt Naj.

Some Reflections on Pascha

To my Orthodox Christian friends:  Christ is risen! To my non-Orthodox Christian friends: Christ is risen, sorry I'm a little late with the greetings.  To my non-Christian friends: come on over for some jelly beans. I promise I won't try to convert you.  I believe in Jesus with all my heart, but I also believe He doesn't especially want me to beat people over the head with Him.

Last night was my first Pascha (what Orthodox people call Easter) at an Orthodox parish other than the one in which I grew up. I say "last night," because the evening service started at 11:30 p.m. and lasted almost three hours, followed by a massive fast-breaking feast. We got home about 4:00 a.m., at which time I had to prepare Easter baskets (spoiler alert, kids, bunnies don't have opposable thumbs and can't carry baskets or pick locks). So apologies if my reflections this morning aren't entirely coherent; I just had a few thoughts I wanted to get down on plastic and other materials assembled in China paper.

1. My home parish is made up largely of people of Lebanese descent, which means that I was frequently greeted with "Al Masih Qam!" which is "Christ is Risen!" in Arabic. The problem is that the response, "Haqqan Qam! ("Indeed He is Risen!") is difficult to pronounce and sounds, how you say in English, like you're about to hock a loogie. I hated saying it. But last night, when the priest was calling out "Christ is Risen!" in various languages, including Arabic, I was shouting the response back, because I was about the only Arab in the house, and I had to represent. And also because no one would know if I was mispronouncing it.

2. Along about 1:00 a.m., when I'm really tired and making the sign of the cross, I tend to misjudge the distance to my face and wind up whacking myself in the forehead with my hand. Repeatedly.

3. One of my favorite parts of the very beautiful service is when the church is darkened completely, and the priest lights a candle (or three) and holds it up, proclaiming, "Come ye, take light from the Light that is never overtaken by night." Then people come up and begin lighting candles and passing the flame to other people's candles, so that the church gradually becomes aglow with candlelight. Then the congregation moves outside for a procession and then comes back into the church, which has been transformed in the meantime into a place of brightness.

It was a little windy last night, and of course it's difficult to keep a candle lit anyway when you're moving at any decent pace. So people's candles kept going out, and other people would stop and re-light them, and then a few minutes later the person whose candle had been re-lit would stop and help someone else.  All the stopping and lighting made the procession sort of halting and bunchy. But that's exactly why I love this part of the service, and why I love worshipping in community: just when everything seems darkest, you get the light you need. And if you lose it along the way, there is always someone to help you bring it back. Sometimes you get to be the one who helps. If you have to stop, someone stops with you, but then you start moving forward together again. And while the journey is never as smooth as you might hope, it always brings you, eventually, right back to where you need to be.

What I Want

Most of the time, the acquisition of stuff doesn't appeal to me, because I'm blessed with everything I need and almost everything I want. Still, there is one material thing that I would love to have, that I have coveted for years, and that I have resisted buying: a KitchenAid Mixer. I love to cook, I cook well, and people are stunned to find out I get along without a stand mixer.

At first I didn't buy one because my husband pointed out that we had his grandmother's old stand mixer. It was probably a great, sturdy, well made mixer. But I didn't want to use it because it had caked-on layers of grime and hardened cake batter from 1948. Also,  I wanted a KitchenAid, because they are the best, and I didn't want to settle. I buy my clothes at discount stores, I get my hair cut at the walk-in place, I choose generic ketchup at the grocery store. But I wanted the stand mixer of my dreams.

A better, more industrious young wife would have lovingly cleaned and polished the heirloom mixer and placed it proudly on the kitchen counter. I resented it for three years before donating it to Goodwill.

Then we had a kid, and then another kid, and those kids kept requiring an astonishing amount of equipment like cribs and playpens and food. It didn't seem prudent to spend money on something I wanted when there was so much they needed.

Of course, the bigger they got, the more they needed. And while we had money in savings, it never seemed wise to part ways with it just for something that, after all, I had already gotten along for years without.

And then it was 2008, and the economy absolutely tanked, and people were losing their jobs left and right,  and it seemed really stupid to spend the money on a mixer, even a really dreamy mixer with a pasta attachment and a dough hook.  It wasn't that we were living hand to mouth; thank God, we weren't. But even though we had a little discretionary cash, it seemed really wicked to spend it on just myself with the near-daily appeals from children's hospitals and food banks and soup kitchens showing up in the mailbox.

From time to time, I tell myself: that's it. I'm just going to go out and buy one.  Once I have it at home, it will be just another thing we've bought. And I would make the family a big batch of cookies with it, and they would be glad I had it.

No sooner do I think these thoughts than someone makes a trip to the ER or I need root canal. And I think to myself, well, next month. And next month. And next month.

There are two problems here. First, I can't spend the money on the mixer because I'm worried that the moment I do, we'll plunge into financial ruin because of my profligacy. The second problem is, I can't quite bring myself to believe I deserve to spend money on something that I simply want. Hell, I even feel guilty about the things I don't want, like the root canal. 

Let's stipulate that the mixer costs about $300.  I didn't have a problem with my husband spending that amount on a basketball hoop for my son. I wouldn't have a problem with him spending that amount on, say, a golf club or two for himself.  But I would absolutely break out in hives if he bought me the mixer I've wanted for over ten years.  Or if anybody else did. Because of the guilt, of feeling like I don't deserve it, like I can't repay it.

I should speak to a therapist about my issues. But two or three sessions would cost about the same as a really badass KitchenAid mixer. And therapists don't make cookies.

Possibly the Best Advice I've Ever Given

And I gave it to my son, who is exactly but EXACTLY like me.  Except for the freckles and the penis from his father. I wish someone had told me this thirty years ago. I wish I had believed them if they did:

"Sometimes in life you are going to rock, and sometimes you are going to suck. If you want to rock more than you suck, you have to be able to tolerate sucking at things until you rock at them.  Otherwise you will have just sucked, briefly, at a wide variety of things, and rocked at very, very few."

He actually seemed to consider the advice. And told me that even though we're not allowed to say "suck," he was going to allow it this one time. (I told you he was exactly like me.)

What's the best advice you've ever gotten? What's the best advice you've ever given?

 

It's not his fault. His mom bought the kind in the green bottle.

So, the other day my neighbor needed some lemon juice for a recipe and she sent her husband over to borrow some.

I wasn't home, so my husband gamely dove into the pantry and the fridge, but could not find lemon juice, and sent our neighbor home empty-handed.

When I came home, my husband said, "Mike came over to borrow some lemon juice, but I couldn't find any.  I know you have some--where do you keep it?"

Um, honey? It's in those little yellow football-shaped things in the crisper.

Show up. Try. Wait.

Last night I tried out to be on Jeopardy. It was a fluke, really. Several days ago somebody turned on the TV after dinner and Jeopardy was on. I sat down to watch it and remembered how much I used to enjoy the show. My daughter sat down to watch it with me and I had fun impressing her with the answers I got right, even when the contestants got them wrong (It's a lot easier to be right in the no-pressure atmosphere of one's own living room, I suspect).

I started deliberately turning on the TV at 7:30. It was a little bit of a departure for me; I don't consider myself a big TV watcher. But I found something soothing about watching the questions come up and getting several right in a row. Just when I would start to get self-congratulatory, I'd have a streak where I'd either get questions wrong, or have no clue as to the right answer. It took me down a peg, but not in any bad sense; just a knowing little reminder not to get too big for my britches.

A long time ago, when I lived at home and used to watch the show with my mom, I thought idly about trying to get on the show, but never with enough energy to figure out how. Then a couple of nights ago, Alex Trebek reminded the TV audience that the Jeopardy online test was being given the next night. Apparently it's only administered once every few months, and you have to register and be ready to take it when it's being given. Who knows what I would have done (or not) had any great effort was required, but my computer was a scant few steps from the TV, so I registered and was given a confirmation number to log in for the test.

Last night, I logged in carefully. The test window popped open, with a countdown clock until the actual test began. I loomed near the computer, jiggling the mouse so the screen wouldn't go dark. My kids were warned, in the nicest possible way, to stay clear until at least 9:15. The test started at 9:00, with fifty questions and fifteen seconds apiece to read and answer each one.

I was nervous until the test started. Isn't that always the way? Waiting is so much more stressful than acting. I got most of the questions right, I think. I left a fair number blank because I had no clue, and took a wild guess at a couple of others. But most of those I answered, I felt confident of.

But here's the thing: You can't find out your score. That is so hard for me, a person addicted to feedback. If you fail the test, you just won't hear anything. If you pass the test, you might not hear anything. So many people pass that the Jeopardy people just randomly pick some for further testing. They don't even tell you what "passing" is. Just that if you did, you might get called to audition. Sometime within the next year. Maybe one week from now, maybe fifty. Then it's another 50 question written test, and a mock Jeopardy game, and a personality interview. Then, if you pass all that, you'll be placed in the contestant pool. For up to eighteen months. And you might get called to be on the show--but you might not.

When my daughter came home from school today, the first thing she asked was if I'd heard from the Jeopardy people. When I told her I hadn't, and that I might never, she looked at me like I had just told her I'd donated her allowance to the Hare Krishnas. Why bother trying something if you might never know how it turns out?

I felt that way initially. And then, suddenly, it felt like a gift: all I had to do was show up at the appointed hour, do my best, and step away. No need to worry about my habit of being attached to the outcome (did I get a good score?). No comparing my outcome to other people's outcomes (did I get a better score than that guy?). I had no less control over the outcome of this situation than any other situation--my kids' health, whether I get a job I apply for, whether somebody likes me. The only difference is that I knew to be detached from the outcome right from the start.

Show up. Do your best. Wait. What will be, will be. Good rules--for Jeopardy tryouts, gardening, parenting, and life.

Blooming where I'm planted--or not

A blog, gentle readers, is like a garden. Thoughts, like seeds, carefully planted and tended, gradually burst into the light of day and shimmer in the sunlight.

Well. Maybe YOUR blog is.

My blog actually is like my garden. A venue through which I intend to show the world how artful, how hip, and how together I am. And which in reality gets neglected because I'm tired, or my back hurts, or there's something good on TV, or something bad on my mind. So the things I want to plant wither, and the weeds I want to pull proliferate.

So blog and garden both show the world the truth about me: I have good intentions, and poor follow-through. I'm disorganized and lazy. I worry that this is a metaphor for my life, as well: good things require work, and I haven't put it forth. I'm easily distracted. I don't have faith in my own visions or abilities. There's a part of me that believes there is no point in blogging, much less trying to write a book, because I just can't make it happen. Writing is what I know I do best. And if I can't do that, consistently and well, what can I do? 

Why I still blog

I attended a great live talk this week on the state of the Mom Blogosphere 2012 that made me think a lot about why I blog. I have had this blog for several years--six? seven? And although it lay dormant for a few, I always had intentions of coming back.

Apparently there is some money to be made by blogging. I have no idea how much. That's never really been my focus. I'd like to say that's because I am a purist, that I blog to lay bare my innermost soul to the world, to touch the hearts and minds of my readers. But that's not quite true; I could probably count on one hand the number of hearts I've touched, and as for touching minds? Highly unlikely.

The main reason I haven't been blogging for dollars is that I haven't figured out how to do it in a way that seems genuine to me. I have friends who have blogs on which they review or promote products. Their blogs are well written and informative. They don't feel fake or forced. I've had a few offers to review products. Most of them I've turned down, because it's just not something that felt right to me. I know in my heart that I would not turn pirouettes in real life over the virtues of tungsten wedding bands. So I'm not going to do it on my blog for a few bucks. Or a tungsten wedding band. (And just what would I do with that band, anyway? Say to my beloved, "Oh, sweetheart, I'd marry you all over again...with this inexpensive yet highly durable ring that I got for free!")

So, I'm not blogging for fortune, and I'm clearly not blogging for fame, since this blog has a readership of approximately two. Of which I am one. Mark you: I would love to be one of those bloggers that everyone knows and adores, to have all eyes follow me as I walk around BlogHer and to have all the cool bloggers want to be my friend. I would like to be in a cool blogger posse. I suspect the fact that I can even imagine a cool blogger posse marks me as terminally unhip. I am completely cognizant of the fact that when all eyes are following me around the room, I should check to make sure the back of my skirt isn't tucked into my pantyhose. Again. Dammit.

Why blog, then? For the same reason now as six or seven years ago. This blog is like off-site storage for the clutter in my brain. I suppose I could keep a diary to the same end. That would be more private, but would eliminate the other advantage of a blog: the chance that on any given day, I might write something that would connect with someone. That there might be that moment of recognition, that spark, that, "Oh my God, me too!" It's okay if there's not; those things can't be manufactured. In fact, I think it's what happens when you stop playing to the gallery and start speaking your truths. Whether or not anyone hears or agrees, those things are still true. And when that truth resonates with someone else, it glows, and you get a glimpse of what is true for them.

It's a little like looking out of your window in the dark and seeing a light on in a neighbor's kitchen, and someone reading or laughing or pouring coffee. And suddenly you can picture yourself there too, and you know somehow you'd be welcome.

And that, I guess, is why I still blog.

Happy Slightly-Used-But-Still-in-Excellent-Condition Year!

And let us pretend that I didn't resolve to blog every single day I had access to a computer, shall we?

Actually, I didn't make any resolutions, per se, in the sense of writing down a list of habits I hope to break or acquire or accomplishments I hope to log. Instead, I'm looking to continue to advance on the goals I identified late last year, before my husband's hardware issue and the holidays derailed me: write, and hopefully earn my bread that way; feed my body good food and exercise it so it will be healthy; and have my home clean and organized enough so that I can welcome guests at any moment without embarrassment. But I am not resolving to do these things.

I dislike resolutions, because once they're broken, they're broken. You can patch them back together again, but I can see every time I look at them where I've clumsily taped them together. They start to seem not worth it: if I can't do it perfectly, why bother? And it's only taken me forty-something years to realize that I can't do it perfectly. I'll never do it perfectly. But I have to do something. It makes me too unhappy not to.

So I'll continue, I hope, to lurch forward: writing most days, eating mostly healthfully and exercising more than I used to, cleaning enough to make my house welcoming but not enough to feel like a drudge. I'll forgive myself in advance for the inevitable slip-ups. I'll not worry if I can't see every step of the way to the goal I hope to reach. I won't even worry if I can't completely identify the goal, as long as I can identify a generally correct direction in which to lurch. I'll do things that make sense to me. I will remember that I have sense, even if someone tries to convince me otherwise.

I'll make a lot of soup. Not because it necessarily advances any goals, but because I really like soup. I'll pray for people I dislike, because it really does seem to help unclench the tight little fist of my heart--and who knows but that it helps them become more likable? I'll stop saving my good underwear for an important occasion. I am reasonably sure I'll be able to buy more "good" underwear if needed. Also, I struggle to imagine the occasion for which I would be saving that good underwear. My husband sees my drawers almost every day. And any situation in which a wider audience sees me in my panties will probably have overriding components that render the condition of my underwear irrelevant: a public mental breakdown in which I strip down in the mall fountain, for example, or a nuclear attack in which my outer clothes are vaporized.

I will not attempt to eat collard greens ever again. I hate collard greens. Every several months I try them because they are good for me, or someone tells me I would love collard greens the way their grandmother prepares them. No. I am here to tell you that God's grandmother could prepare collard greens and I would not like them. Life is too short to waste shoveling collard greens past my lips. (I have not given up on kale, however).

All of which is a way of saying I'm hoping to be kinder to myself, and hopefully to others, too. And if I manage to accomplish that most of the time, it will be a very good year indeed. I wish the same for you. Let me know if you want some soup.