or i should.

that’s what i decided this morning, staring out at the bright, brassy day through windows streaked with dirt, rain, cobwebs, and something i like to think of as guano.  This was on the outside, mind you.  On the inside:  only the fingerprints of my family, and the paw and tongue prints of our whippet, Honor, who has this summer established himself as Grimm’s Valiant Little Tailor, charmed or cursed (depending on your perspective) into a sight hound’s lithe, lean, whip-it-good form, capturing as he has, with his intent gaze and then—flick!—a lick of his tongue, innumerable flies.  Honor’s profound, carnivorous instinct—look, protein on the wing!—has become our entertainment.  it’s gripping, really, watching the dog work.  un-saint francis-like, we cheer him on to victory.

but, oh, look what he’s left on the glass.  that’s what i thought this morning.

and then my own instinct (nice word for compulsion?) kicked in.  never mind the heat index—high nineties, if not low hundreds.

i’ve done this before, undertaken the right chore on what many would consider the wrong day.  at our previous house—not a traditional ranch built in 1957 (we painted our rooms fiesta wear colors, just because), but an American Four Square, built in 1917  (with walls that benefited from multiple color washes, to disguise the bulging plaster)—i broke ground and laid a garden bed on a long weekend in early August when the Chicago Bears were dropping like . . . well, not like flies beneath the lash of Honor’s tongue.  More like, well, you can imagine.

at any rate, once in a while when i get a project under my skin i feel all itchy until it’s completely done.  this morning, no matter how i tried, i could not get comfortable looking up and out.  good grief, i thought, standing at the sink, gazing glumly through various spatterings at the neighbor’s house while i rinsed french toast batter from a bowl.  ick, i decided, watching Greg shuttle Teo off to play with a friend—or not Greg and Teo, so much, but all the layers on the glass that got in the way.

finally, i walked honor, just to get out instead of looking out.  it wasn’t so bad in the shade, really.  not really.  and then i saw our elderly neighbor, Tom, walking his elderly dog, Chauncy (who moves and looks very much like a four-legged muppet).  Tom confided that his air-conditioning was broken.  i asked Tom to please consider our house his own personal cooling station.  Tom said he was fine.  ”I’m busy with household projects,” he said.  ”Fixing air-conditioners.  Cleaning up.  That kind of thing.  It’s a beautiful day!”

Well, i thought, leading panting, sun-subdued Honor up the driveway.  If Tom can do household projects on a hot day in July and still think the world more beautiful for it, so can i.

so i got a wet rag, a roll of paper towels, a bottle of cleanser, another bottle of drinking water.  i lugged the ladder from the garage.  already i was sweating.  i put on a pair of smelly gardening gloves, which were not designed to breathe.  i am designed to breathe, though.  so  i set up the ladder beneath a window.  the ladder is old, spattered with all our many color washes and fiesta wear colors.  the ladder is rickety.  my stance precarious, i began to wash the storms.

soon enough, i realized that Tom was a saint.

i tried various mental tricks.  the one that worked best was:  you like heat yoga?  look at you, stretching, bending, sweating!  the world is your bikram studio, only it’s free!

that helped for a little bit.  then i got stuck in the yews.  pushed in a storm.  sat down by a spider and almost stayed there.

honor was watching me from inside the kitchen, paws on the windowsill, nose to the glass.

why clean anything up if it’s only going to get dirty again? i found myself wondering.

then i saw Tom’s wife, Annette, patiently watering their tiger lilies.  they have an abundance of the flowers lining their driveway, the bright orange blaring like so many trumpets.

roused, not so much by the loud color but by Annette, gently sweeping a spray of water back and forth, back and forth, i got to my feet again and finished the job.

it’s not perfect.  (i think i neglected to mention:  i washed windows for a summer in college with a whole crew of malcontents.  we used razors to scrape back paint.  we used newspaper to wipe the glass clean; supposedly that works best.  we read a lot of kurt vonnegut, which we discussed through mists of vinegar and ire.)  yes, i missed a few places.  but i can see clearer now, as the old song goes.  in a sweaty way, i feel a little cleaner, too.

look, there’s Honor’s nose to the glass.  he loves looking out so.  maybe he can see clearer too—not just the flies buzzing and bumbling right in front of him, but what lies beyond, beckoning.

But then I saw that my friend Amy Timberlake bravely posted:  ”yeah, I miss my dad today,” and my heart got heavy with all that I haven’t acknowledged.

There are so many reasons not to acknowledge.

Reasons not to acknowledge.  Parts I, II, III.

Part I:

I have another father to celebrate, my husband, and the way he parents our kids, which is wonderfully most of the time, or humbly, I think he would agree, at other times.

Greg is one of my parenting inspirations.

We got up and got going today.  Greg made pancakes for us all, because he likes to.  We went to the Arboretum, and walked the Joy Path down through the willows, around Lake Marmo—Pooh sticks on the bridge!—and back up to picnic under a shelter, not because of the rain, which we’d feared there would be, but because of the bright, hot sun that made us sweat, but not too much.  We talked about our favorite (in this order):  fruits, vegetables, drinks, junk food, ice cream—which is a whole other category than junk food, we agreed.  We extolled the surprising virtues of those newer, better, dippin’ Fritos, and I remembered, all in a flash, what I’d forgotten:  my mother loved dipping Fritos in Green Goddess dressing.  I remembered sitting on the kitchen counter of my second house and watching her do just this, down to the veins rising bluely on the backs of her pale hands.  I remembered the creamy cucumber shade of the Green Goddess dressing, so refreshing, exactly the kind of dressing titian-haired, crisply dressed Nancy Drew might have liked on her lettuce leaf.  I remembered Dr. Pepper—my  mother preferred that soda above all others, just like my daughter!  My father preferred Coke.

My father.

Then we went to a relentlessly sunny park and played Track Ball until we were sweating too much.  Then we went home and had iced tea and popsicles.  We played SORRY, until we had to leave for—guess what?—Shrek the 4th in High D 3D!, because, well, because of Greg’s last name, also now all of ours, as Halvorsen, my original last name, is now the glue that holds us all together in the middle.

Halvorsen.  Clayton E.  Halvorsen.

Shrek, Forever After in HIGH D 3D! was worth it—just to see everyone in the glasses.  (Though having said that, I don’t care if I never see another movie in High D 3D!.  Give me a Tilt-A-Whirl or an upside down roller coaster over Shrek and Donkey swinging on a pretty ball through the air any day.  This last made me uncomfortably queasy—or was it the popcorn?)  Then, home again, home again, jiggedy jog.  Pesto (I made it).  Gifts of books (including The Hunger Games, and a thin volume of Neruda, and a hot pink remaindered exposé on The Clash), and then dance upon dance performance by the kids, all in honor of their dad, who smiled and smiled.

(Is Part I boring?  I think Part I may be boring.  I’m making nothing more than a list of what kept me occupied today, so I wasn’t really able to acknowledge what I am now, almost, now that the kids are in bed.)

Part II:  After the sadness—and what’s the word? rupture?—I experienced last fall after my dad’s death on Labor Day, I have been letting myself go lightly, at least when it comes to my dad.  (When it came to him?  Which now, in his regard?  Present or past tense?  Unsure.)  I have been saying since about New Year’s Day:  let go, and go lightly there.  it’s okay now.  it’s done.

I should have known better.

Part III:  Mother’s Days have been complex enough for so many years.  So many layers, like potent onions and luscious cakes.  Now Father’s Days, too?

What went missing today, even with so much, so fully, accounted for?

A phone call.  A card.  A small token.  A big person.  The music.  Those jokes.  That laughter.  The way he held his little dog.  The way he looked at my kids.  A glimpse of the past.  The buffer between all that’s inevitable.

Tip of the iceberg.

In the last few weeks I’ve been seeing a healer who values the body over the mind for wisdom.  It’s been revelatory.  I’m going to carry this Father’s Day to her this week.  I’m going to consider it there, not in words so much, because she doesn’t really work in words.  But in presence.  In being present with it, even though the day is officially done.  For this year.

Father’s Day.  Like Mother’s Day, it’s the stuff of Hallmark and marketplace, I know.  I know.  But for all kinds of reasons—light and heavy—perhaps such days are also essential to becoming more fully human?

And Vinita shared a bit from her own writing life.  She revealed that it took her five years to write Dwelling Places.  At the time, she believed it probably would never be published.  She thought of it as five years of practice.

I took comfort in this.

It took me about four years to write my first novel, Dream Journal, and I have several novels tucked away on shelves and in drawers–practice, all, and years spent writing, now gathering dust, it would seem at first glance.  And I just finished a novel, Gold Star Girl, that I’m hoping will see the light of day.  But if it doesn’t?  Will they be worth it–those three years I spent working on Gold Star Girl, researching the most recent war in Iraq and deciphering what I believe is my story to tell about that, and about forgiveness.

I have to, have to, believe that yes, the process is all, the process is everything.  I am a stronger writer, a stronger person for having spent so much time and energy and emotion and, yes, sleep (dear, sweet, allusive sleep) on a project like this book.  Practice, practice, practice, my parents always said to me about the piano.  And I DIDN’T, and now I DON’T really play the piano.  I miss it, the playing.  It’s like a little death.  But writing–that I will keep alive, and the only way I will keep it alive is to keep up the practice.  Keep the faith.

But, in light of everything I just wrote, I want to add:  the pent up energy of all those months of putting one word in front of the other, of plugging along, left me pretty tightly wound this spring.  I didn’t want to practice so much, as make a mess–and maybe that’s a kind of practice, too?  Forget the perfect scales and triads?  Improvise!  So . . . in late March I started a new book, a middle-grade novel.  I ripped through a first draft and am left with a royal mess.  I practiced imperfection.  There are ghosts.  There is a seer.  There is the potential for more magic than a rabbit in a hat.  I have been so bound to getting the real world exactly right—getting an experience of war right—it’s been feeling great to careen about in the great unknown of fantasy.

So here I am with a 152 page mess tentatively called Echo Lake.  Starting a second draft, putting one word in front of another, practicing it all again.

I first heard Collins read this poem, driving through a blizzard in Michigan with my family.  In a moment of raging, windy, white-out desperation, we turned on the radio, hoping for hope and a change in the weather, just over that hill, or that bend in the road that we could not see.  Instead, we came across another kind of hope:  A Prairie Home Companion, and Collins, reading this, his poem, “The Lanyard.”  The kids were dozing, fretful, in the back seat.  Greg was white-knuckled at the wheel.  I was thinking, as I’m prone to do, that this was it, the end, and why oh why didn’t we pack the safety kit, the woolen blankets, the flashlight and thermos and nuts and berries and power bars?

What kind of mother was I, driving my kids into oblivion?

Then I heard Collins’ laconic voice, reading this, and I thought:  a good enough mother.  That’s what I am.  Good enough.  Human.

So here it is, in all its glory, still carrying me through to the next break in the weather.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/poetryeverywhere/collins.html

Here is one from a friend who is an inspiration to me as an artist, writer, traveller, mother, woman—Janice Sorensen.

(One of her presents to me for my wedding:  a tamborine from Mexico, with flattened coke bottle caps for jangles.  We jangle it still.)

Check out Janice’s blog when you have a chance:

http://magpiefarm.wordpress.com/

And here is some deliciousness from her for today:

This trip was made even more wonderful because I was able to spend a little more time with my writers’ group.  (A shout out to group members Shayne Moore, Caryn Rivadeneira, and Tracey Bianchi for giving a wonderful presentation on . . . writers’ groups!)

Koilia at Calvin

I was also able to chat with, and learn from, Chad Allen, Editorial Director at Baker Books, and Lil Copan, Senior Editor at Paraclete Press.  And then there was a long longed-for lunch with my friend, the amazing writer, Amy Timberlake.  Plus, an all-around lovely time with my comrade in car and on foot and through talks, Pastor Sherrie Lowly.

So . . . a good, rich time.

Then I came home and had surgery for my deviated septum.  ”Good” and “rich” are not exactly words I would apply to this experience.  I’ll spare you the gory details; suffice it to say:  I’m flat on my back with splints up my nose.  I keep thinking of Proust . . . didn’t he write on his back and bed? I keep wishing for madeleines dipped in tea, but there are only rice cakes, and somehow, with my throat so sore, these just don’t do the trick.  Nor does the Vicaden.  The books aren’t working either; nor are the dvds I checked out from the library.

What I have instead is the little red book I took to the Conference–the inside and cover all scrawled with notes.  I may not feel inspired personally right now—where is a madeleine when you need one—but I can, with my limited focus, remember that others are inspired and inspiring, or were, last weekend, and some day soon will be again.

And so, in honor of this blogging community, here’s my memory of what the poet Scott Cairns said, speaking on recovering the body, and the Body, as writers, as community, as Christians (in fact Scott suggested that the major danger lurking in our culture is that there are so many “severed members,” isolated from the Body, and until we are all reconnected, the whole Body suffers):

“Writers write to see what they had not apprehended before . . . our vocation is a way of knowing, of glimpsing the enormity of what we had not understood.”

And then there was this gem on writing from the essayist Scott Russell Sanders:  ”Take away the confusion (on the level of craft), so readers can focus on the mystery (of the piece).”

And finally, though there was so more, this from Parker Palmer, who talked about the value of being simply curious:  ”What lies around the next bend of words . . writing is a way of thinking and feeling my way into what baffles me.”

And, oh, look!  I found this, too, in my little red book–the quote Parker Palmer shared, from Thomas Mann:  ”A writer is someone for whom it [writing] is more difficult than it is for others.”

We are all rewriters, Parker Palmer and Mary Karr both said.

If not a madeleine, a little bit of protein, to keep me healing on this day.

Since December, the sheltered corner by our garage has been a vacant place—literally (except for the litter of leaves and dirt, and bags set out for recycling, and, in deeper cold, the heap of snow and ice, so quickly flecked with grit and grime.)  But also, figuratively, in terms of the space that space takes up in my mind.  Which is to say, not much—unless it’s raining.  Then my kids and I call that little corner “the shady copse,” a phrase picked up from William Steig’s Shrek (the original book, not the movie).  On rainy days, Teo and Magdalena like to dodge beneath the shady copse, aka the sheltered corner by our garage, and in this way stay relatively dry on the way to our side door.

Sometimes I dodge, too.  ”Shady copse” makes us all smile in the rain.

Once upon a time there was a big, old, messy tree, a maple, that also sheltered the corner by my garage; last spring we had to cut the maple down—disease.  Now just the eves do the shady trick.  Less shelter, but still enough to fend off rain, and as the season changes, the heat of high noon.

As of today, the sheltered corner by my garage has taken up more space in my mind.  It happens to be gloomy out—rain may be in the offing—but the kids and I won’t be able to dodge beneath the shady copse if the clouds open.  The corner itself is a space taken up.  Look.

For the last five years, our house has been a drop site for a local, organic farmer.  Her name is Vicki Westerhoff, and her farm, called Genesis Growers, is located in St. Anne, Illinois, about an hour and a half from our house.  (Here’s the link, in case you’d like to see the place and the people who work it:  genesis growers st anne il ).

I am so glad Vicki’s growing season has begun again.  Here is one reason why:

I am no food photographer, but maybe you get the idea?  My kitchen is happier.  I am happier.  For the last few weeks, I have been more aware (and annoyed) by the fact that I am often sprayed by the “singing in the rain” system that so unpredictably tries to keep the produce crispy fresh at our local grocery store.  I am very glad to sacrifice our shady copse for a dousing by some actual raindrops between garage and side door.  I am glad for food from Vicki’s farm.

There are other reasons I’m glad growing season has begun again, of course.  They include the families who come to our house to collect their boxes.  And Vicki herself.  More on all this soon–but for now, I’m going to go spend some time in my kitchen, putting greens, radishes, turnips, carrots, and apples away, folding up my waxed box, and setting it back in the sheltered corner by our garage, for Vicky to pick up next week, spring growing season, growing on.

catch up with other Illinois authors, like my good friend, Carmela Martino, author of Rosa, Sola, and blogger at Teaching Authors.Com.

Here Carmela and I are at the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators Booth.  Viva SCBWI!

I also got to hear other authors, like Andrew Clements, Pam Muñoz Ryan, and Cynthia and Greg Leitich-Smith talk about their life and work.

And there was a great Reader’s Theater Performance by Avi, Sarah Weeks, Pam Muñoz Ryan, and Brian Selznick.  What a quartet.  They write contemporary classics!  Interpret their work!  Sing!  And make incredible sound effects!  Plus, they clearly have a blast, doing all that they do.

I also presented.  (No sound effects, though.  Note to self:  work on sound effects).  My talk was called Genre As Genesis—Inspiring Kids to Write, Working With the Books They Love.

I spoke a little bit about finding Are You There God, It’s Me, Margaret

way down on the bottom shelf of Krochs & Brentano’s at the Yorktown Shopping Mall, and how basically Judy Blume wrote exactly the right books for me at the right time—my middle school years—and helped me keep on keeping on.

My thought is:  if kids can begin to pinpoint HOW the books they love tick, and WHY those books make them tick, they can write out of their passion and understanding.  Of course, this is a familiar goal for teachers; I just put the author’s twist on it.  (Try the author’s twist.  It’s right up there with the Electric Slide.)  I talked about the Clique books, Captain Underpants, The Golden Compass, Feed, Sold, and Speak.  I got all jazzed up about books and writing.  I shared some writing exercises, related to elements of Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and Contemporary Realistic Fiction.

Fun—and I learned more about what I’d like to learn more about, if you know what I mean.

(Oh, and this is the exact cover of the book I so loved.  Saturday, cleaning out bookshelves in my ongoing effort to integrate my inheritance and recuperate after the Floods of 2009-2010, I found my copy, tattered, but intact.  You can bet I’ll be rereading, or reading it to my daughter—or giving it to her to read on her own.  How will it seem now, compared to then?  Can’t wait to find out.)

Only child that I am, I inherited a fair amount of fragile things when my father made his final move to Florida.  There they all are, the lot of them, piled high on our dining room table:  my Aunt Julia’s hand-painted, Czechoslovakian china set, the weighty platter from Finland, the hot chocolate set from Denmark.  There are all the teacups from China, the saki cups from Japan, and the pretty teapots.  The lesser set of sterling in its wooden box.  The vases.  All those vases, too many of them chipped because I, in a not-my-parents’-daughter-moment, stuck them in the dishwasher.  The figurines and random creamers, at least two of these shaped like cows.  And by this, I mean the creamers—the creamers are shaped like cows.  The figurines are shaped like me, in my mother’s eyes.  When I was little, she collected china girls, reading china books because at the time I collected books, not inordinate amounts of china.

I’d rather be reading now, staring at that leaning tower, and beside it, all the crocheted linens, and, good grief, my mother’s many aprons.  She was wearing them, most likely, about the time the house I live in now was built.  Once in a while, I will put one of them on, and mimic June Cleaver, though my mother had many more dimensions than that character.  Mostly, though, the aprons hide in a tangled ball, shoved back in the dark of the china cabinet.

I am thinking I want someone to sew my mother’s aprons into a quilt.

I am feeling great empathy for Dido, teetering on her burning pile.

I am getting a grip, and focusing on the other humbler things, tucked between all the floral patterned pieces—the clumsy clay projects made by my children over the years.  My family now.

My father died last fall, and this past Christmas, my husband and I went to his house in Florida, and while our kids watched TV until their eyes glazed over, we packed up more of my inheritance.  These things are still lurking in plastic and cardboard boxes in our basement.  Wedgewood.  Lladro. The better sterling in its wooden box. And other, more, more, more fragile things, too many to name.

Our basement flooded five times last year, and we are a little concerned that now that it is spring, even if it is just an illusion, our basement may flood again.  I am working to put our basement back together, putting things away and off the floor in a methodical way.  I am working to bring what’s in the basement to the light of day, if only for a little while.

Thus the china cabinet.  The dining room table.  The dust motes of my childhood in the late afternoon light.

I am a grownup, I remind myself.

A few weeks ago, a very grownup and dear friend came over to help me jump start this process.  She picked up a decoupage plaque of a little blond boy in a blue romper praying.  She said, “Donate?”  I said, “My mother made that!”  My friend said something along the lines of: “Your mother was probably just going through a phase.  She probably would have donated it by now.”

I froze in our cold basement.  Then I laughed.

How liberating.

So I’m remembering my friend now, staring at the tower of fragile things, thinking of the fragile things down below where the water might rise.  Some I will shift onto  shelves where the water can’t reach.  Some I will keep up here behind the china cabinet’s glass doors.  And some I will simply have to donate.

But not my kids clay pieces, marked with their fingerprints.  These I’m taking out.  I’m lining them up on the mantlepiece.  They are a colorful, clumsy crew, creatures and vessels on parade.  It looks like some kind of carnival up there, even as the sun goes down, and the dust motes fade, and I think about all I still have to do, if I’ll ever be done.

children’s literature, independent bookstores, and teachers and librarians who love the same, and who long, in spite of budget cuts, standardized testing, and technology fever, to expand the bound offerings (by this I mean books, of course) on their classroom shelves.

a fourth thing I love:  Anderson Bookshop’s Children’s Literature Breakfast, which always seems to come just after Valentine’s Day and before first thaw, when I, at least, need it the most.

Yesterday morning approximately 500 of us teachers, librarians, and writers gathered at the chandelier-festooned Abbington Banquet Facility to, yes, eat scrambled eggs and diced potatoes, but also to talk books, kids, and culture.  As always, Anderson’s put on an incredible show, with book-connoisseurs Jan Dundon & Kathleen March giving their top picks for 2009, and then guest speakers Pam Allyn, Jordan Sonnenblick, Francoise Mouly, Patricia McKissak, Henry Cole, and Richard Peck sharing their thoughts and experiences.

I took notes.

Here are just a few that I’ve been reflecting on today:

“For children in transition, books matter so much . . . for anchoring.”

This came from Pam Allyn, author of What To Read When:  The Books and Stories to Read With Your Child and all the Best Times to Read Them.

I loved that, the idea that I’d never had put into words before, but understood immediately based on my own experience–books as life-lines and live-preservers, securing us against harsh winds or stormy seas.  (We all get that, right?)  Later in the morning, when Francoise Mouly, art editor of the New Yorker and publisher and editorial director of TOON book (and also founder, publisher and designer, along with her husband, cartoonist Art Spiegelman, of RAW), said in a great French accent, “You can’t click on a book.  It’s engraved,” that idea became even more “anchored” for me.  We can, as Mouly pointed out, go back again and again to the mess of Eloise’s room.  Because Eloise NEVER cleans her mess up, we can over time evaluate our own evolving mess and order against hers.

Not so in the shifting virtual world.

Mouly also said this:  ”What interesting about images is that they have an artist’s voice.”  I love this.  What is Giotto’s voice, I’ve been wondering all day.  What is Gerhardt Richter’s tone and inflection?  I’ll keep thinking on this.

There were so many other wonderful moments yesterday–to0 many to recount now, because we’ve got a fire going, and, yes, I’m going to sit in front of it  and have left-over pizza with Teo and read.  BUT.

I have to quote Richard Peck, I do, who said:  ”Find the rough poetry in real speech,” and also “A book unites what the computer divides,”
and “nobody a writer ever loved is dead,” and just all around gives us an example of a man who possesses his age and transforms the world through words.

He’s mighty elegant, too.