Making It Up

I love being on the inside. Doesn’t everyone? Doesn’t everyone covet a backstage pass, a private invitation, the inside scoop? That little bit of special that distinguishes you from everyone else. *sigh* Of course, we’re all on the inside of something: a best friendship with its own grab-bag of memories, a marriage, a job that uses lots of acronyms, basically an exclusionary code to distinguish the ins from the outs. It’s important to us, that to someone or at some place or in some way, we are special, distinct.

So I’m really enjoying, on a very minor scale, helping with the registration for the SCBWI Fall Phillyconference. (If you’re interested, you can find more information here.) I love the whole SCBWI (Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators) organization: it’s cheerful, well-run, respected and useful, almost a union for children’s writers, particularly the as-yet unpublished among us. Skibwee (which is how I say SCBWI) creates community when we would otherwise be struggling separately. Skibwee lets us peek into the inside of the world of writing, agents and publishing — and makes it all seem possible. It’s like the smell of coffee in the early morning — it promises good things if you get off your arse and get moving.

Which rather makes me think that I should get back to writing. Or at least get back to relaying the patio.

I’m sitting here watching my elder child practice his cursive writing, to the tune of much complaining. I don’t really have a need for him to practice but I found a one dollar place mat (write on! wipe off!) at the craft store with the upper case alphabet on one side and the lower case on the other.*

My own handwriting has deteriorated mightily since the mid-nineties when we got our first computer. Even then, I preferred to write long hand. It felt as if I were more organically in touch with the words that flowed from my hand. The pen felt like an extension of myself in a way that a keyboard did not. I even used a fountain pen, the kind that you fill from a jar of ink, which might have carried an element of pretention about it, but if it did, it’s an okay kind of pretention, the kind that leaves you with a writing callous stained blue.

Now, however, I have been absorbed by the machine and write twice as fast when I’m typing as when I’m scrawling. And I do scrawl. My once reasonably handwriting, at speed, is now illegible. And my hand aches terribly. I used to produce pages and pages of writing. The thought is somewhat worrying to me now. What? No keyboard? No computer? The horror! The horror!

Still, I think it’s a good idea that my child is being forced to learn joined-up writing, even if for no other reason than suffering builds character. But I think I might procure a calligraphy set and leave it lying around. It would be a shame if the inked word vanished altogether. There is something so raw and real about the physical process of applying ink to paper, something absent from the tap of fingertips on computer.

In fact, I think I’m going to go look for my pen.

*And since anachronistic longing is clearly the mood of the day, I adore that the terms upper and lower case refer most concretely to typesetters’ boxes, when the plugs of lead that would stamp the capital letters were in the higher case, and the smaller were in the lower.

I have to confess. I almost want this.
No, it’s not the picture. It’s really an upside-down tree. An upside down tree! Turn the holiday on its head! Make your friends and family dizzy! Give your neighbors something to gossip about! Wonder where to put the star!

(And if you want one too, you can buy it here.)

When life feels round about and twisted, you can fight it. Or embrace it. And maybe it would make the rest of my life feel almost normal.

I’m not really going to do this, of course. Daniel would flip (ha ha) and children don’t really value irony.  Not yet. When they do, you know they can safely rent their own apartments and see any movie they want.

There are times when the — or rather, my — writing life includes very (very) little writing. There are times when the louder demands of children and paid employment and housework are all I can hear. They obliterate the inner and outer silence that lets me hear the whispering of my heart: write.

I tell myself firmly, almost cruelly, that writers write and if I am not writing, I am not a writer. You can imagine how well that sits in the pit of my stomach. I tell myself firmly, almost cruelly, that if I truly were a writer, I would not be able to help writing, that the call to writing would not be a whisper easily ignored but an incredible shout that carries over whatever storm real life has whipped up.

But I also know that the part of me that writes is the part of me that exists only for myself, the bit that calls me by name at all times — never mother or friend or lover or wife or daughter — but by my own ineffable unknowable name. And somewhere along the line, I was taught (firmly, even cruelly) to keep that part quiet, keep it down, that it was less important than all the other parts, the mother-daughter-wife parts. And if I scold it for not writing, well, is that going to make it more likely to emerge, strong and cheerful and full of words? Or is it going to push it back into the sad darkness it was sent to when I was still small and hopeful?

It is amazing to me how many ways I have of being unkind to myself. The writer in me has survived enough punishment and so really, what am I thinking to be shouting at it so unkindly? It will not unfurl if it is being thumped, but only to a loving hand, outstretched. I know this is so. I wish that I did not forget.

Yet I trace the endless circle of learning that lesson over and over again and hope that the circle is in fact a spiral, that each time I tune out the writer and then learn to tune back in again — that perhaps the time between tuning out and tuning in will get shorter and shorter — and maybe even, someday, disappear.

I feel like a Weeble. You remember those, right?

Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.
Except that was a lie, as every curious, bloody-minded child of the seventies knows. Weebles wobble, yes. And that’s fine for a while. Give ‘em a flick, wibble-wobble, wibble-wobble, wibwibwib and they’re upright again, looking smug, self-satisfied and unpeturbable.

But how much can a Weeble take? This much? How about this much? And then, the truth. Push them hard enough, and they DO fall down. Then they just lie on their sides, woobling around sadly and wondering what their purpose in life is after all.

Yup. That’s me.

We’re having a little heat wave to celebrate the yes-it’s-really-here arrival of spring. So those bits of the garden that aren’t covered in ivy or weeds are finally really springing up. Ferns, hyacinths, late daffodils, lily of the valley. The crocuses are making way for the bleeding hearts and the sharp, furled points of hostas are pushing up through the clumps of earth. I love to see the plants shouldering aside the dirt and crawling back to the surface like so many little undead creatures, except happy, pretty ones that don’t feast on your flesh or suck your blood.

Tonight, I did a quick run through the garden and noticed buds on the trumpet vine and the almost invisibly tiny flowers on the ginger. Something my aunt planted which I forget the name of has little green buds and the hydrangeas are beginning to green over. I clapped for them all, cheering them on, even whispering “well done!” to a few of them. It’s silly, but I do think they deserve a little round of applause, so bravely coming back year after year. And I am so very happy to see them.

I am as crabby as the next person (if that person is about as crabby as I am). I can get seriously bent out of shape about some relatively minor things, mostly stuff Ed does or doesn’t do (sorry, Ed). Also, I get crabby when cars don’t know how to merge, when people vote Republican and when I have to work at night.

But one thing I never get crabby about is other people having fun. The way I see it, the world needs as much joy as we can cram into it so if people are laughing and making music, if they’re dancing and singing and telling stories and being happy, go to it. And I don’t care one tiny bit how much noise they make. Sing out, oh happy people! Play those drums, teenager! Make that clarinet wheeze, turn the volume up, yell at each other. If you’re happy, so am I.

I can think of only one instance when other people’s noise even registered on my consciousness. I was eight months pregnant in August in Philadelphia and we had no air-conditioning so closing the window was not an option. In fact, right before I went to bed, I used to shower and put a nightdress on instead of drying myself off and let the slow evaporation of water get me cool enough so I could get to sleep. But in general, sleep was a pretty rare commodity that month. Then, this one night, a house nearby had a party outside. And they played guitars and talked and the music floated up through the window and woke me up. I lay in bed, listening to their party, completely awake. In the end, I got up and sat by the window, watching the party. Listening. After a long while, I was sleepy enough to go back to bed and I did. But it didn’t bother me.

So last night when our next door neighbor roared in to the middle of our party/jam session and told us off for making noise and being un-neighborly without even bothering to be polite about it (forget nice), it confused me. I mean, I get that you wouldn’t want someone honking their horn for two hours outside your door. But this was people having fun. Making music. And it made him crabby. And just for the record, our own two children were upstairs sleeping through it. So I don’t reckon it could have been awful.

I get that some people don’t like noise. At least, I observe that this is true without really understanding it. I like the rumble created by a thousand people (or a hundred thousand) all living cheek by jowl. I like to hear other people’s parties. I can’t sleep without some ambient noise. A siren. A conversation in the street. A car zipping by with its base turned way up. These are the breathing of the world to me.

But not to my neighbor. So I’m baking him a cake and we’ll write him a note and hopefully, he’ll cheer up. And we’ll find another place to play music. But I sit here and wonder how it would feel to be crabby about other people having a good time. And I just can’t imagine it.

In like a lion out like a lamb? In like a lamb out like chops? You put your lion in, you take your lion out, you put your lion in and you shake it all about…

March is toying with us. This rambling old house holds the cold so it could be 65 outside and my feet wouldn’t know it. But it’s not 65. That was yesterday. Today apparently isn’t going to get out of the 20s. That’s not healthy, I say. We’ve managed to get through most of the winter without serious illness but this is going to give me an attack of the vapours.

There comes a moment in the blood and in the brain when I am just done with winter. Everything about me is longing to, demanding to rise and awaken. It should make writing harder, that I feel this discontented and itching to leave the house. It actually makes it easier, like everything cold and dead and fallow is about to erupt into warmth and life. So all the seeds sown in the reading days of winter are stirring and putting forth their tiny tendrils of green, searching for a hold in the damp earth.

Time to let them grow.

A fresh cup of tea is a wonderful thing — a promise of warm comfort, gentle nurturing, a little kick in the pants at the droopy part of the afternoon.The making of it is a comforting and comfortable ritual. The boiling kettle. The swelling of the teabag. The splotch of the milk.

And it’s fun to make tea for others too because it’s like cracking a code and there’s a real sense of accomplishment when you create and deliver a cuppa that makes them say “ooooh.” For example, I like my tea strong and on the milky side. Ed takes his black with sugar. Myfanwy used to just show the tea the milk and then take the milk away again before it could pollute the tea. My grandfather wanted you to really mash the bag and Clare likes the teabag out as soon as possible.

You can drink it straight away, blowing and sipping, scalding your tongue just a tiny bit and it’s worth it. Or you can wait until it’s a more swiggable temperature, ready to be downed in grateful mouthfuls. Then there’s the very last chance you have to drink it before disaster strikes: the down-it-in-one temperature. It’s still warm enough to be described as warm — but won’t be in twenty-three seconds so you tip the cup up and gulp it down and you’re tea-d up for the next little bit.

But leave it too long, miss that magic moment, you’re left holding a mugful of liquid disappointment.

Moments matter. Make sure they don’t go cold.

And then read this. Because even the smallest moments hold universes within.

Today is D.’s ninth birthday. His last (as a good friend pointed out) single digit birthday. Nine years ago minus a few hours, I was working pretty damn hard to bring this kid into the world — because he was having none of it. (No, really, I’m quite happy here in this nice dark warm placental sea. I see no reason to move.) By now, Ed was driving a surreally exhausted me and completely stunned baby home from the hospital. We had signed ourselves out rather than stay the night on the ward which in retrospect might not have been a great idea but didn’t make any material difference. And thus D. was born (minus several million details).

The first thing I think of, when I wake up on either 28 February or 22 September, is not really that I should bake a cake or to worry about whether I can remember where I hid the presents. The first thing I think of is that this was the day I gave birth. That it was a hugely monumental day in my life too, a day I achieved something, a day I changed, a tremendously significant day in my story as well as in the children’s stories. And I take a minute or two to remember what that day was like. What it was like in the morning when there was no baby. What it was like as the baby was born. What it was like calling them by name for the first time. They remember none of this. I remember it all.

This matters to me. I had this terrible, deadening feeling after child number one was born that as his story began, mine ended. That the book of Francesca had just closed and I would forever more be a minor character in other books. Years on, it is still a relief to me that my story is still being written, that I am still writing it and that my children are a huge subplot, but that the arc of my life (my lovely, selfish, individual life) stretches unbroken. So for a few moments in the quiet early morning, I celebrate how these birth days also belong to me.

Then I pull on socks and go down to set up the birthday child’s breakfast-in-bed tray, find presents, start mixing the cake and make ready to celebrate the amazing, confounding, stunning existence of my children on this earth and in my life.