Back In Spring

It's spring and the ants are invading, lining the windows, zagging the floors. I wash the counters with vinegar and sprinkle cinnamon like pixie dust. All at once the pear blossoms bend their branches to form a canopy over Columbia street and, now, Little O and I are no longer caught indoors, wishing the cold away, instead we circuit playgrounds in a wide loop around our corner of Brooklyn.

Some playgrounds are crowded with rows of nannies rocking strollers, shushing infants to sleep in a back and forth, push and pull, while their siblings streak and tear through the narrow spaces of play. Others sit tucked beside the various entrance to the BQE, invaded only after school. The children come in waves of screams and O doesn't understand why he can't toddle with his tentative, bumbling, Frankenstein walk when they come through.

The playground I like best is on the waterfront and it's for the smallest of the littles. Even O, who only began walking a few weeks ago, can climb the broad steps of the slide and make his way down alone. Sometimes I overestimate his capabilities and he's tumbling across the blue ground, arms up and wondering and waiting for love while he pouts.

This spring finds us in the swimming pool at the YMCA in Manhattan, navigating subway stairs and stroller wheels through clogged streets to get there. Sam is the bare-chested, gold-chain wearing swim instructor, who sings nursery rhymes like he's sauntering the stage of a cabaret, while we swirl the babies on our hips, and it reminds me of my childhood in our above ground pool that always looked vaguely green with its dented walls. My friends and I used to churn water to make a soft, singing whirlpool.

But now I am the mother carrying childhood memories, reciting Humpty Dumpty over and over, from 'wall' to the 'fall', from the tile to the water and back again. O was the only child to cry for twenty-five of the thirty minutes. But he smiled through chlorine and tears and kicked his way through the last five.

As if he recognized the thrill of his experience, too late, he wailed as we exited the pool, wanting only to go back in.

More writing. Less dwelling.

Since Little O's been born, time feels like a series of pockets. Zipped up most of the day, then flung open in hour increments when he naps. When he finally (finally) rests his bright red hair on the alphabet sheet and ends his day, it feels like my work day begins. It's in the evenings and late into the night that I sit down to work or write. 

This is no different from when I worked full time at a day job. In some ways, there's more time because the day isn't spent drowning in corporate stress and pressures. I may be physically exhausted, hauling Little O through our world, wrangling him upon changing tables or inside cribs and high chairs and strollers and carriers. I may be emotionally exhausted trying to understand what a mini-human who can not speak actually wants, tested by someone who knows more about wrongdoing than he pretends (but how can I scold that innocent face, those pleading up at me big-brown mirrored eyes?) But my mind is active and engaged with life and the world in a way it hadn't been inside a gray cubicle. And, for this reason, it feels like these very small pockets of time are more productive.

I'm not going to pretend I'm accomplishing loads of freelance work or knocking out novels and essays and stories in mere weeks. I can't say that I'm writing at some new level of quality. But my writing has become more focused. I thought, for a while, it was because of the time constraint alone but I realize it may be that active and alert mind throughout the rest of the day.

I used to use writing time for both writing and dwelling on what I would write or say and how I would say it. Now I dwell on words in some kind of secret passageway in my mind throughout the day, during the quick shower, the stroller walk to the park, at the sink washing dishes, or while feeding O yogurt from a spoon. And my writing time is, for the most part, writing time. Tapping out words. Playing around with them. And if words aren't coming, I move on to the next task on a very, very long list of to-do.

Of course, next week, it all could change. If motherhood has taught me anything, it's that nothing is static, everything is in motion, just a phase of the moon.

But for now. Today. More writing. Less dwelling. It's been interesting. 

Currently

I'd like to blog more. I don't know if I will. I feel a quiet in the blogging world that makes me sad. It feels like a place of nostalgia rather than a place that screams now, now. So, I figured I'd plant myself here, find my way back in, as urgently as I can, with a currently post. 

Watching

Tina Fey's latest, The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. I am trying to pace myself when it comes to this show. Even though I don't want to pace myself. I want to watch it all in one wonderful, hyper-color, fluorescent sitting. In the words of my own pithy twitter status, this show is everything. To elaborate: smart, charming, optimistic, positive, and, above all, hilarious. It makes me smile. It improves my mood. The world needs Kimmy Schmidt. We are lucky to have her.

Reading

We Are Not Ourselves by Matthew Thomas. After last year's mishap with my reading list, I decided to participate on Goodreads. If you want to know what I'm reading, I hope you'll join me there, here.  

Listening

To Sia. Podcasts, podcasts, and more podcasts. Death, Sex, & Money, The Longest Shortest Time, This American Life, Pop Culture Happy Hour... the list goes on and on. Little O's babble, a steady dadadada, tatatata, bababa chant. Long ago it was mamamama but, sigh, he's moved on. 

Making

Cakes. Novels (I finished a first draft of a new book last week.) Essays. 

Feeling

Restless. Ready. As I'll ever be. As I've been.

Planning

My revisions. And a weekend trip with one of my favorite friends, away from the little ones. 

Loving

Green things pushing through the dirt, past the winter we've had, letting themselves be known. Time with family and warm weather down South, where I spent the past few days among even more green, like the live oaks above, finally feeling, not cold. The moments when I'm alone, sitting, thinking, staring out a window or in the dark or tucked in bed and I think of Little O and something runs through me, from my toes to my chest. A love surge. 

A reminder that stories matter

With Little O napping, a cup of tea at my side, and a deluge of sun at my window, I find myself with a few moments to sit here with words. Usually, I'd use the time to work on my novel or plug away at essays and articles I try to pitch for publication or for the rare freelance work or to find some work or any work or more work but there's an exhaustion that comes with spending every spare minute working toward something, instead of just being with the time we have.

These past few months, I've written a lot of blog posts and emails in my head. Some, I've even sat down and started, then deleted before pressing publish or send. There are a lot of days when I just don't feel confident in my words, even in a silly email to a friend. Most days, I don't want to share anything I write at all.

I've been journaling. On the computer. In secret. Paper journals have never quite worked for me. There's something about paper and pen that feels very permanent. Unforgivable. The typed word feels transient, fleeting and, therefore, comfortable. There are some ideas and thoughts that don't need to be etched in the stones of history.

Journaling has helped me remember and understand what I think and care about. It's helped me find a lot of joy in sitting down to think, which, for me, is a bit more active, since writing is how I think my everything.

Irony of all ironies, the secret journaling has helped me understand that sharing some of the work is important to me. I've spent my entire life engaged in the stories of others, entangled in a rich dialogue with writers I've never talked to or met, and I'd like some of my words to get tied up in the same imaginary dialogue someday.

Once I was asked for writing advice, or maybe I was asked in my head, that's definitely possible since I don't engage in much real conversation anymore, but I thought the best advice I could give was to always remember that stories matter and that the work is important.

For the past few months, in the imaginary lines of an online journal, in the actual words, and real thoughts, I've questioned validity.  I've thought about writers and writing and the way our world sees the profession. I've wondered if the work still matters if it isn't shared or seen. I've wondered when it is seen, if becomes more or less valid. Or if, all of it, is part of a disappearing act. I've questioned the importance, the mattering of writing at all.

I guess I discovered, in secret, what I already knew. It is important. It does matter. Seen or unseen. Secret or exposed. It's all part of a rich dialogue, some of it imagined, some of it real. So I'm here to remind myself, novice nobody writer that I am, that it is and it does.

Snow Day

They closed schools, shut the subways down, the BQE became a ghost tunnel, and we prepared for the blustering, dumping, blizzard they said it would be.

Instead, the storm surged East and North and we had a slushy few inches. 

A let-down, in some ways. I expected a wonderland when I woke up. And, for me, I thought how much better a snow day would be if I didn't have to wake up and be ​present​. If I could read all day in my pajamas, watch a dumb movie on tv. 

At least, we thought, Little O could play in the snow, in a way he couldn't in his infancy last year. We bundled him in his space-suit, his hood an astronaut puff. We stepped out the door, caked snow on his mittens, touched it to his cheek, our voices knocking up a register, as always. ​Snow! Snow!  He sat in it, looked at it, had this way of looking back up at us, glum and unimpressed, wondering when we'd take him in from the cold. 

Our usually happy baby spent the rest of the day indoors crying, fussing, unhappily being plopped from one uninteresting activity to the next. The mat, his room, the bag of books, the basket of toys, the slinking dog pull-thing, the ride-on push-car with its piano keys. None of it inspiring, apparently. 

Yes, we stayed safe. Yes, all was not lost or destroyed. We are lucky. But I feel his restlessness. So much excitement over the white-stuff. Press conferences and news headlines. Empty supermarket shelves. The possibility that the world we know and everything around it could turn white and drift and slope, shake our footing, shape the ground, contour our lives, and we'd see something we'd never really seen before. 

I guess the gray and white days will slog along just the same until spring. 

First Drafts

Sometimes, when I face a first draft, the daunting, bridge-less white gaps of story, I feel overwhelmed. I think, this is the worst part of writing. This is the conjuring. Every word, every sentence, an angry miracle.

Other times, the empty spaces feel like possibilities and I marvel in them. I send strands of story as far as I can. I circle them into messy, tangled nests that I hope will one day become functional.

I often count words and days. I wonder when I'll reach an end. I make deadlines. I think if I can finish a draft before this but after that, I will be on track to get here so I can get there. Because if I don't get there I'll never be anywhere and who, in their right mind, would want that?

I add. I divide. I carry the one. I try to understand how long it will take to finish.

Finish.

Finish.

The old chant.

So much of my creative life, measured in the completion of words, rather than the actual practice of finding them.

Today, I thought, this is the best part of writing. The actual, well, writing. The wandering and wishing through a story I didn't know I knew. The waiting for words, however agonizing.

I think there's certainly something to be said for completing a work. For thumbing through the pages of a printed manuscript. For being able to say, I did it.

But, today, I feel even more satisfaction as I sit with all the words ahead of me and say, I'm doing it. 

Blue Birds by Caroline Starr Rose

This week we're celebrating Caroline Starr Rose's Blue Birds, which turned out to be my first completed book of the new year. Little O was feverish and cough-y and had fallen asleep on my chest. A rare moment for the boy who will no longer sit still. I reached for this gorgeous novel in verse and read it without ever needing a bookmark, turning pages to find out what would happen, stopping to re-read the most beautiful passages, until I reached the end.

This novel takes place in 1587 and follows the friendship of two spirited, young girls. Alis: the only English girl to arrive on the island of Roanoke. And Kimi: a member of the Roanoke tribe. 

Tensions rise between the English and the Roanoke, war is waged, and these girls find one another, call to one another, take unbelievable risks, and make room in their hearts to understand and love one another like sisters.  

The novel takes place in 1587 but it's a story for right now. Today. This minute. 

It's a story to stop and sit with, to use the rare moments of quiet amidst all the terrible noise. War wages across our world and within our hearts and we need more stories about finding empathy and compassion. We need more stories about two girls who find beauty in the mystery of one another, who look past their differences and find a shared language of friendship and love.

I loved this book. I also needed it. Since every day I listen to the noise and wish we could all find a new way of seeing. 

There are so many stunning passages in this book but I'll pull one of my favorites, a question Alis asks: 

What if a flight of birds

followed the wandering one,

joining him on a journey

entirely new?

These days, I ask a lot of what if's. This gorgeous novel answers many of them. It releases in March.

But read on to pre-order. The book is gift enough but Caroline has another beautiful gift for you too.

This post is part of a week-long celebration in honor of the book Blue Birds. Author Caroline Starr Rose is giving away a downloadable PDF of this beautiful Blue Birds quote (created by Annie Barnett of Be Small Studios) for anyone who pre-orders the book from January 12-19. Simply click through to order from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Books A Million, IndieBound, or Powell's, then email a copy of your receipt tocaroline@carolinestarrrose.com by Monday, January 19. PDFs will be sent out January 20.