Monday, November 22

Just a few minutes ago I was walking through my in-laws' laundry room and I thought to myself How odd is it that you are here, of all places?

Now I didn't mean the laundry room, per se. You see ten years ago I didn't imagine a life that included things like in-laws (or their laundry rooms). I certainly didn't allow room for dreams about daughters. I had myself well trained, actually. A constant habit of reminding myself about what I would never have had taken root. I was steeled for a life alone.

And then I'll be damned if I didn't meet Rob, my opposite in just about every way. I know that his presence in my life bewildered my parents and if you want to know the truth there are some days that it's still bewildering to me. But here we are, the two of us and a crazy little miracle we call Sara, kicking around this world like we were meant to be. And I think we were.

Ten years ago I had a mother and a father. I was more or less defined by this and arranged much of my life around the script of daughter. I didn't mind, really; I didn't know anything else. Eventually Rob came along and my character changed to daughter and wife, but my relationships with Mom and Dad were always more or less the same. But then life reared it's ugly head and, without any input from me, the roles changed. I became daughter and wife and caregiver and when Mom died I also became mediator, then advocate and nurse and lady-of-the-house. I did the shopping and cooking and forged my mother's signature. I carried a warm bottle to Sara and a handful of pills to Dad every night before I went to sleep. I took away his keys and at the same time, I suspect, his dignity. God help me, I learned to take care of an ostomy and then how to change his bedsheets when Dad couldn't get out of bed. I put reason aside and begged a hospice nurse to keep her real identity from my father -- and she did. I watched as another nurse came out to turn off my father's pacemaker, only a few hours before he died. And just like Mom almost two years earlier, I watched as Dad took his last breath. I can still feel the raw cold air of that late February day as it rattled the ice-covered windows, and see my father's mother standing in his room expressionless, seemingly numb by the death of her first born child.

Those five years of sickness and death were game-changers. I am now no longer daughter and even though I forfeited that title almost four years ago I am still struggling to understand what my new role really is. Certainly I am wife and mother, despite all those promises I made to myself before. But there is more to it than that, isn't there? Friend. Colleague. Neighbor. Sister. I am all of those things to be sure, but in looking at this abbreviated list it seems that each role is defined by someone else; none of them allows for the fullness of only me. So this is where I find myself, as I run head-long into my forth decade: Pulling on the uniform of each of these roles while simultaneously peeling off the layers to find out who is really in there.

Good Lord, talk like this is making my fifteen-year-old self gag me with a spoon, and twenty-year-old me thinks I need to just get over myself already. Thirty-year-old me is slightly more sympathetic as she has finally realized that she's not twenty anymore, and thiry-five-year-old me is too tired to care because she's trying to work, manage a newborn, and take care of her dying father.

Something tells me that thirty-five-year-old me would understand, though.

What's all of this have to do with the laundry room? Not a damn thing, I guess. Except that as I walked through there tonight it occurred to me that being right here, right now, is just about as far removed from all of my roles as I have ever been. I feel almost invisible. There was a strange freedom in that moment, and I never would have imagined that I would have such and experience in the laundry room of a Philadelphia suburb.

Twenty-year-old me is bored already and has asked me to wrap this up because, come on -- how complicated can life be?

Oh, sister. You have no idea.

Tuesday November 16

I'm not exactly a "lemons into lemonade" kinda gal. Generally speaking I prefer to stomp the hell out of those bad boys then bitch about the mess I've got left to clean up.

So that's why it's surprising that I was kinda thankful for the bad traffic on the way home from work tonight. I left the hospital a little later than usual, surfacing from my cell in the basement to find a much chillier, much rainier day than I left eight hours earlier. And I was OK with that, actually. I sort of enjoy a seasonally appropriate, dreary fall day every now and then. That's a good thing, too, because the weather coupled with a mass exodus from campus left me sitting through several traffic lights on my way to pick up the interstate.

It was while I was sitting at one of those lights that my eye caught a flock of birds. There's something about these flitting and fluttering clouds that's so... magical, for lack of a more original term. I honestly think I could watch them for hours. It's a struggle to compare them to much of anything, except maybe a school of fish that took a remarkably wrong turn, darting from tree to tree to tree looking for that coral reef that it could have sworn was here just a minute ago. I love how that wild pack wings around the sky, charging at who knows what in a wonky swoop that levitates and careens and turns on a dime, a crazy game of follow the leader where every bird, apparently, gets a turn to be The Leader. Then, in some kind of avian turn at musical chairs, they all find a seat on the telephone wires. Hundreds of tiny birds all lined up like little feathered soldiers.

I have no idea why all of this is so appealing to me but I found myself completely content through two traffic lights, and a little bit bummed when I had to drive on by.

So this evening, after an extra long day and during the rush hour crawl, I made lemonade and I have to say it was pretty sweet. And a lot less messy.

Monday November 1

Chiaroscuro.

That's a great word, don't you think? Because even if you don't know what it means I think it's so much fun, the way it sort of unfolds in your mouth when you say it -- the first half gone just as your voice rises in your throat, racing to land on the long, pure "ooo" and then finishing with a flip of the tongue and a barely-there "roh."

Oh, Italian! You're so much lovelier than French, if only because your phonetic rules actually make sense.

So it was love at first sight for chiaroscuro & me. Or maybe love at first say? Either way, this is a word absorbed equally into my lexicon and into my life. After learning it's meaning - the variation of light and shade in a picture - I fell even deeper because, as anyone who takes even a passing interest in photography can tell you, a great picture is all about light and contrast. And I have more than a passing interest, to be sure. I'm no Annie Leibovitz or Ann Geddes (two ladies who, I am quite sure, have nothing more in common than this very paragraph) but I do love to see life through a lens. There's a thrill in capturing the perfect scene at the perfect time with the perfect light, and when it can be transformed into an image that transcends the time and place to speak something meaningful and true to the viewer, well... that's pretty fantastic.

I tend to view most things as pictures in one way or another. I make lists and diagrams to process what I need to do. I scanned my visual memory during those grad school exams in neuroanatomy to recall the afferent and efferent functions of the cranial nerves (and just now again to recall the terms "afferent" and "efferent."). Most recently I've created mental snapshots of the walls in my house, now blank except for a coat of fresh paint. But in my mind they are filled with beloved photos telling the story of our family, stretching across time and place but always capturing the light and shadow of each season and face. Beautiful, transcending chiaroscuro.

My only living grandmother is 96. Every year for as long as I can remember she has made, from scratch, noodles for our family's holiday meals. Until recently she would make these noodles entirely on her own, mixing flour and egg and water and salt until the dough was just right, then rolling them out and cutting them into long, thin strips with a paring knife. Batch after batch was kneaded and rolled and cut, then dried in her kitchen over the weeks the led up to Thanksgiving and Christmas until finally! The blessed day came and the stock pots came out, and all the women took turns at the stove, stirring the noodles so they wouldn't stick and sampling now and then, just to be sure they were OK. And they were always, always, OK. As I got older I'm not so sure it was the recipe as it was the time and care and effort that went into making them that made those noodles so delicious. They are precious to us, at least as much as a humble noodle can be.

Last year she found herself unable to undertake the Great Noodle Project and so my aunts, cousins and I joined my grandmother in the making of the noodles. Her 95 years of experience was parceled out to us as each required: Molly needed more egg. Beth needed a thinner round. I needed more flour on the board. Throughout the day my grandmother sat there, bewildered by our love for the process and amused with our delight in success. She pitched in, too, her gnarled hands working in the flour so we could know the right feel of the dough. And as I watched her work my mind saw the shot: 95 years of kneading, rolling, and cutting captured in her flour-dusted, arthritic hands.

This is not a prize-winning photograph. I can, but won't, point out a half-dozen flaws that an objective viewer would recognize in an instant. But to me this image summarizes so much about my grandmother and the family she raised up. There is history reflected in the light and shadows here, and I know every time I see it I will remember all the things about her that I love and honor.

That's why I took it, to always remember. I didn't need these 819 words to recall her story because to me this image says it all.

Pictures and words. They are so fun to play with, each one saturated with meaning and life. There is such joy in remembering, sharing and connecting through them. Honestly, there are few things I would rather do. It's just the shezizzle.

And I'll bet you know exactly what I mean.

Wednesday October 27

I think maybe I need to back pedal just a little.

It might be a bit much to say "I love to write." I'm not sure that's really true. I write because, short of talking to myself, it's the best way I have of taking my mind's constant feed of thought and worry and revelation (sometimes all in the same moment!) and giving it a place to live. This works for me in a couple of ways: First, because I've learned from experience that putting my pain, stress, anxiety and fears on paper (or in pixels) actually does give it a lot less power. Episodes that have given me nightmares -- actual nightmares - were tamed through the exercise of writing it out. When my daughter, at the age of not quite two, was bitten in the face by a dog (and not just any dog, mind you, my mother-in-law's dog) I reeled for days about what could have happened. Despite all assurances that the animal would "never" turn on her I knew, absolutely knew in the marrow of my bones, that it was coming. But for a lot of very regrettable reasons I pushed that maternal certainty aside and watched in horror as it happened. It was one of the single worst moments of her young life and thinking about it still causes me to feel terrible, even two years later.

For almost a week after the bite my mind wandered to thoughts about what could have happened, how the dog could have mauled her, destroyed her, killed her. (And indeed it could have, because a two year old doesn't stand a chance against an 80 pound Akita with a point to make.) It didn't matter that she was fine, still unafraid of that animal or any other... the inner dialogue continued to spin, spin, spin until I was either in tears or physically ill.

And then I wrote it out. Took the 26 letters of my language and strung them together into words and phrases and paragraphs detailing the worst of my fears and the brutality of my anger. It was awful, really. Giving those thoughts a place to live was a little like giving birth, metaphoically speaking, because I had to push the emotion out with a force I didn't know I had until I needed it, and the only thing that would make the uncontrollable pain go away was the deliberate pain of putting the nightmares into words. And when I was done, just like that, so was the anxiety. Poof. The power was gone.

Of course not every writing exercise is meant to cleanse my mind from harmful or burdensome thoughts. Sometimes it is to remember, like the writing I do about my parents, and sometimes it is to process, like the writing I do about mothering, and sometimes... well sometimes, it is just to make room for more thoughts. A little mental "spring cleaning," if you will: Out with last year's themes and in with the new! (My closets would do well with similar attention, but it ain't gonna happen, I'm sure.)

So writing for me is an exercise, and a helpful one, but it is an effort to be sure. Writing, in and of itself, is essentially just squiggles on a page generated by strokes of a pen (or, in my case, clicks on a keyboard). What makes the exercise worthwhile though, are the things that give writing life: The power and nuance of words, the cadence and rhythm of sentences, the structure and progression of paragraphs, and finally, in the end, the journey of the story that was told. Memoir, fiction, editorial -- it doesn't really matter. They all rely on the beauty and truth of language, and language somehow, magically, transcends time and circumstance to connect us. Whether it's with one or millions of readers, the writer creates a union based on an amazing, timeless, mysterious, intangible thing called language.

And that, to be completely honest, is what I love. Writing is just the train I hop to take me there.

Monday October 25

On Writing Well. A book with which I should become acquainted. A book I had never heard of until I stumbled across it (how, again?) during some late-night web crawl at the NPR website, of all places.

So now you know two things about me: I am a writer* but I'm not familiar with the seminal work on "writing well," and I'm not an intellectual with a bent toward government-sponsored talk radio. Continue at your own risk.

William Zinsser, I learned that fateful night, is the author of this classic guide for writers. Narcissist that I am my curiosity was piqued by the mention of a new chapter discussing memoirs. Zinsser is also the author of a book entitled Writing About Your Life, which I suspect would also be a smart addition to the ever-growing list of titles in my queue.

Two things I know about William Zinsser: He's a writer and he's right up my alley, because the titles of his two books leave little doubt about the subject matter. And I don't like surprises when it comes to subject matter. (Seriously, I don't.)

Tonight as I write this I turn (far too often) to Google. I like to have my facts straight, get the real scoop before I lay on my witticisms or profound truths. I think there is a comfort in knowing things, knowing what someone has proven before you without going through the effort of the risk of discovering it yourself. I am a master at collecting these facts and synthesizing them, creating something "new" without truly creating anything new at all. And so in the last five minutes I've learned that Mr. Zinsser has his own website (williamzinsserwriter.com), has actually authored eight books, is a non-fiction writer and part-time jazz pianist, and might've been a hottie back in the 40's while he served in the Army (hubba hubba). I've also learned that boy, howdy -- do I have a lot to learn about this whole writing business.

And here are two more things you now know about me: I am a compulsive Googler and WWII-era, bookish Army sergeants incite me to utter things like "hubba hubba."

But what's more important to know about me is this: I have a lot to learn about this whole writing business. And that fact, true as it may be, is the one thing that will paralyze me for sure. I can -- no, I will -- guarantee my failure right here, right now, on this Monday evening in October by suffering under the weight of what I don't know. Every unknown has been for me an ending, often before there was ever hope of a beginning. With few exceptions (only two that I can think of) my life has been one sure bet after another. One boring, safe, tepid sure bet after another, very much like the facts I crave and that are brought to me nightly courtesy of Google (copyright 2010, all rights reserved).

Lately I've started to wonder what I've been missing, though I don't travel too far down this path because it's not particularly helpful. Reminiscing over opportunities that never were is even more pathetic than missing the opportunity in the first place, wouldn't you say? But I do spend time now wondering about the chances still left to take. Is writing one of them? Who's to say. There's a great likelihood that these words will be seen by no one but me and those trusted few whose opinions, feedback, and insights I value. Most people, even those who count themselves as Writers (capitalized for authority!) on their tax returns (a sacred testament indeed!), never know such great success as Anne Lamott, Haven Kimmel, Elizabeth Gilbert or, yes, William Zinsser.

What I believe about these successful writers is that they must have done at least these two things: At some point they took a risk, and in taking that risk they turned away from the safety of facts and the comfort of someone else's thoughts, and they created something new.

Tonight at my desk, surrounded by a half-finished Tinkerbell costume, a recipe for falafel, a stack of expired coupons and countless preschool art projects, I don't have aspirations of retiring on the royalties from my Great American Memoir. Tonight at my desk I am happy to have carved out these thirty minutes to think and write and dream, and I'm happy that the Tinkerbell costume, which yesterday nearly cost me my sanity and my four-year-old her life, is almost finished.

And now you know: I keep a messy desk. I am a very impatient seamstress.

Oh, and this: I like to write.

*We'll see about that, now won't we?