Happy Thanksgiving. Again. In case you haven’t stopped by this week, I’ve been posting all sorts of gratitudes — here, and here, and here.
And today being the real, genuine day, I planned on posting about school holidays… about the cold front that moved in last night… about the Turkey Trot I’m running this morning… and about the group of 22 beloved kids & grown-ups we’ll be celebrating with this afternoon.
Utter goodness.
But then my nine-year-old trumped me. Here’s what she wrote yesterday:
I Am Thankful
Are you wondering what being thakful is? Well I think being thankful is being grateful for something. Maybe likeing it. Maybe you are looking forward to something so you are thankful for being able to do that. Here is what I’m thankful for: I’m thankful for family. My sister, my mama, my daddy and my other relitives. I am also thankful for playing. Playing with friends, cusins and pets. Those two things I just said have to do with people. I am also thankful for Joy. Joy and Happyness. Those come out of the heart. I am thankful for vision and strength. Those two things have to do with my body. I am thankful for school and creativity. Art, sewing. I am creative. And last but not least LOVE. Love is a great thing. It’s one of the things that holds family and friends together. I think I am lucky because others don’t have as mutch as me. I will help them.
This week, my brother-in-law’s grandmother slipped away.
She was 99.
From her home on farm land in central Illinois, she lived through two world wars (and an unfortunate number of other ones), a great depression, the birth of two daughters, the death of both daughters, the death of her husband and a lifetime of other things, a third of which might’ve brought any of us to our knees but didn’t her.
As Grandma Kitty died, one of my many beloved cousins went into labor with her second baby. By last night, her daughter had been born.
Looking back, I think that I’ve never experienced a birth or a death without being aware, sometimes keenly, of the counterbalance. I used to think it was some kind of wild coincidence, but now I realize life just works this way.
It is not that a new baby’s birth means Grandma Kitty will be missed any less, or that the universal cycle of life makes Alexandra’s new baby any less a singular miracle. It is just that the consciousness of both makes life as a whole not just survivable but exquisite, and somehow more sensical than it oftentimes appears to be.
So today, in keeping with my theme of gratitude this week, I’m feeling thankful for:
extended family and countless cousins…
the blessings of babies…
my grandmothers, who both had strong and vivid voices ahead of their time…
and my grandfathers, who both had love beyond measure for their wives and families.
I’m feeling thankful for rituals and ceremonies…
for photo albums and family stories…
for letters and emails and phone calls…
for planes, trains and automobiles.
I’m feeling thankful for my mom and dad and sister, my husband’s mom and dad and sisters and brother, my neice and nephews, my daughters.
I’m feeling thankful for the paths forged for me and the ones I’ve gotten to bush-whack through on my own.
If you read my post yesterday you know that I’m having a full-on week of gratitude here at Liz in Ink.
Y’know how the retail establishments stretch-out Christmas over about 8 weeks? Well, I’m taking Thanksgiving into my own hands and stretching it out over seven days. Not the food part (we had split pea soup and toast for dinner last night) but the “This is what I’m thankful for…” part.
As an aside, today just happens to be my OneYear Blogiversary. I penned my first words on November 20, 2006 and, 165 posts later, here I am.
It seems appropriate, then, that today’s gratitudes be writing related. So without further ado, here goes:
I’m thankful that I’ve found the work I love to do.
I’m thankful that I’ve got a husband who loves the work I do and loves me and doesn’t seem to mind or even notice that I’m not getting us rich.
I’m thankful that I’ve published my first book and I’m thankful that it’s being read — at bedtime and naptime and storytime — to open, eager, curious, inspired children.
I’m thankful that I’ve sold my next two books and that they will be read — at bedtime and naptime and storytime — to open, eager, curious, inspired children.
I’m thankful for the chance to revise my work, even when the process feels like blood-letting, so that it can be the best that it can be.
I’m thankful for the amazing collaborative process I’m experiencing with my editor and illustrator. I’m thankful that I don’t feel alone at my desk.
I’m thankful that my daughters inspire rather than hamper or compete with my work.
I’m thankful that my students inspire rather than hamper or compete with my work.
I’m thankful for the writers’ communities I’m a part of — the children’s writers and the poets and the bloggers. I’m thankful for the people who read my evolving work and who share their evolving work with me. I’m thankful for the high bar you all set. I’m thankful for the professional contacts and advice and sanity checks and good wishes. I’m thankful for the laughs, the heart tugs, the great ideas.
I’m thankful for my Goodness group, which started out as an art-and-business support group but has become a life support group and without which I’d be less productive, less inspired, less gutsy and less happy.
I’m thankful for intuition. I’m thankful for craft.
I’m thankful for libraries. I’m thankful for books and journals and magazines and blogs. I’m thankful I was read to pretty much every night as a little girl.
Here’s what I think is sort of insufficient: ONE day a year devoted to gratitude.
It should be some sort of a crime that Thanksgiving doesn’t come around monthly or so.
And I don’t mean because of the long, lit-up table and bottles of beaujolais and pumpkin pie, although those things are truly fine.
The part that really slays me is when you go around the table and everyone says what they’re thankful for. Hardly anyone can keep it to one thing and when the person next to you speaks, you nod and nod and say, “Yep, me too. I’m grateful for that, too.”
The kids say things like, “I’m grateful for my family — even for my brother,” and the grown-ups say things like, “I’m grateful for our health, and this food, and the amazing, beautiful light outside,” and everyone turns to look out the window together.
And by the end, each of us sort of floats a couple of inches above our chair, feeling like the luckiest dog on the planet.
The thing is, the rest of the year we kind of get caught up in the other stuff. The not-quite-enough-or-too-much stuff that makes us want to nap or cry or complain. Yesterday it was too much laundry, today it’s too much traffic, tomorrow it’s not enough money, the next day it’s not enough space. What if, instead, we thought, “I’m grateful that I have a washing machine and all these comfy cottony clothes. I’m grateful that we live close enough to the school to bike instead of drive. I’m thankful that everyone we know loves homemade gifts. And I’m thankful for our teeny, cozy, cuddley little home.” What about that? That’d be crazy, wouldn’t it?
So, I’m really not into lobbying Congress for a monthly Thanksgiving holiday because I think they should be, y’know, getting busy doing stuff that the rest of us can feel thankful for. But what I can do is declare this a week for giving thanks. Not just Thursday, although I plan to truly relish that family trip around the table, with a glass of beaujolais in hand. But starting today. And carrying on.
Here goes.
I’m grateful that I got away this weekend to a little cabin in the hills, where I found snake skins and skulls and spiders and stars. Where I napped and read and played Mexican Train dominoes. Where I talked politics, religion, bikini waxes and books with women of the brightest and most delightful sensibilities.
And I’m grateful that, in the meantime, my girls and my husband and my old white dog were camping out themselves — canoeing and cooking s’mores and playing cards in the tent as the rain picked up. I’m grateful that when one of my daughters sat on a cactus, her dad was there to administer first aid and love her up.
I’m grateful that the car we’re trying to sell hasn’t sold yet, since the battery on the minivan is dead. I’m grateful that the Aesop’s Fables performance at the girl’s school this morning was bilingual. I’m grateful for the pumpkin cheesecake recipe on my kitchen counter. I’m grateful that Thanksgiving’s not at my house. I’m grateful for email, and Horizon half-and-half, and tamari sesame seeds. I’m grateful for short weeks and dry leaves and construction paper. I’m grateful for unlimited long distance. I’m grateful for you and you and you and you and you….
For those of you who don’t, a Crown of Sonnets is a series of seven complete sonnets, linked thematically and through the repetition of certain lines.
That’s 98 lines of poetry for you math majors… in rhyme… and iambic pentameter.
It’s like an extreme sport — snowboarding in the half-pipe when everyone else is cross-country skiing.
Anyway, because I have this diagnosable condition called “flattered to be asked,” I agreed to write the seventh of seven sonnets in a beautiful crown some poet-friends of mine were putting together.
All well and good until they gave me the first six and I had to start.
Gulp.
Sonnets are hard to write. But also sort of puzzley fun, and since I don’t play Suduko I thought this exercise might keep my mind nimble. Plus, it just so happens that this past week was the one week in the entire semester that I require my students to write a poem in form. They went off with the look of startled bush babies in their eyes, terrified to face the rigors of sonnet or sestina, vilanelle or pantoum. And I went skulking toward my own. Is that poetic justice, or what?
The upshot is, I did it. And I thought I’d share it with you. I don’t have permission to share the previous 92 lines but suffice it to say that they were about water and butterfly migration and luck and risk and hope and jazz and Amelia Earhart, and they were really, really good.
Here’s my contribution. And may I suggest giving this a whirl? Maybe not even a whole crown. Just a plain old garden variety sonnet. They are fun. And pretty…
7.
Your last indigenous gods will gather,
burning wood and salt-weed in your name.
The rite of rising water’s just a game
you make a habit of; today’s another
chance for us to wax and reach together –
the tide goes out and now the chances wane.
Oh, sirens on the half shell, who’s to blame
for hopes that dash against the rocks or rather
crack the husks that we have all outgrown?
What if it’s luck that pulled us up from crawling,
I took my little dog & pony show on the road this morning since it’s Children’s Book Week and also because I was afraid of turning into my chair if I sat here working on this revision for even a millisecond more.
So I found myself talking about books and reading and writing with a very perky pack of kindergartners.
I really like school visits. I really, really like the kids. The hand raisers and the ones who forget to raise their hands. The wigglers and the rapt. The shy and the chatty.
To me, they are the ultimate reminder of why I need to get back home and turn into my chair. Seriously. Because there are kids out there just dying to be read to. And dying to read. Y’know that? And it wouldn’t hurt if we kept filling up their bookshelves with books that spoke to them… inspired them… made them laugh… and made them want to keep a flashlight under their pillows.
My favorite moment today was during question & answer time at the end. This is always a bit of a gamble because you never know what the kids’ll say.
“I don’t know how to read,” said this little guy, “but I really want to.” (That about melted me right there, but then he continued…) “How long have you been reading, ma’am?”
I said that I think I learned to read in 1st grade but that I’ve been read to my whole long life. He seemed relieved to know that that counts…
After long talks this weekend with editor, illustrator and self, I’ve stepped back onto that particular carnival ride that is revision. Let’s hope it doesn’t make me queasy like the Tilt-a-whirl.
Here’s the thing about revising a picture book. I need to be both fresh and inspired but also obsessively detailed. Kinda sorta two halves of the brain, don’t you think?
(Let’s not even mention the fact that there’s already a rhyme scheme in place that needs attending to. And, we’re kind of in a hurry if we hope to eventually turn this into a book that actually hits the shelves.)
So, here goes.
Deep breath.
Deep swig. (Relax, folks, it’s tea…)
Dig deep…
This week marks the grand finale of the winter wonderland that has been oft-referred to as Blogging for a Cure. But folks, don’t forget that the real snowstorm begins when the blogging ends. Starting November 19th, the Robert’s Snow online auction will accept your bids for these amazing flakes. (You can view all of the 2007 snowflakes here).
It could go unsaid but it shouldn’t, that the biggest snowforts in the snowstorm go to Grace Lin for not only launching this project with her husband Robert a few years back, but for having the, well, grace, to carry on without him, in his honor, this year. And to Jules and Eisha from Seven Impossible Things Before Breakfast for organizing this powerful media blitz with such care and pizzazz. And, naturally, to the illustrators who are all crazy-talented and generous and doing their own little part to save the world.
Here’s the schedule for Week 5, which starts Monday. This schedule links to the participating blogs, instead of to the individual posts. You can find links to the posts themselves, and any last-minute updates, each morning at 7-Imp as well as a special page containing a comprehensive list of links to the all profiles so far.
This week I’ve been thinking about illness and health.
I guess there’s something about my age that makes my awareness of it keener than its been before.
Maybe because I’ve got my own higglety-pigglety little cricks and creaks these days. Maybe because my parents are older and my grandparents are gone. Maybe because my children are vigorous, tall, rosy and robust — and I cannot fathom what life would be like if it were otherwise.
Health is one of those things that I used to take for granted and now I’m busy taking tinctures and doling out vitamins and knocking on wood every chance I get.
So this morning I found myself with Jane Kenyon, a poet I go to for beauty and comfort and emotional resonance over and over and over again. Every so often I post about Books I Wish I’d Written, and I mean it as a form of flattery rather than greed or jealousy. There is a lot of poetry I wish I’d written, but Jane Kenyon’s is pretty high up on the stack.
There is a poignancy to nearly every word she ever wrote — whether describing love or long grass, shopping or melancholy. There is a specificity that’s exquisite and yet, a simplicity that’s intimate and almost relaxed. There is an honesty that is both brutal and tender.
The surface story of Kenyon’s life looked charmed. She lived as a poet on a farm in New Hampshire with the love of her life, another poet. Is that the writer’s dream, or what? But illness haunted Kenyon like a needy dog. She saw her husband through numerous rounds in the ring with cancer. She suffered an often crippling depression. And in the end, she died in her 40’s of leukemia.
I remember when she did. I’d plucked my copy of The New Yorker out of the mailbox and begun to read, from back to front, and kept encountering poems by Kenyon. I was delighted. Until I got to the very first one that included a note of her passing. That my reading had been elegiac I had no idea…
Kenyon wrote about all of this — about being a worried wife, about depression, about dying. She is how I’m thinking about illness and health and happiness today.
Happiness There’s just no accounting for happiness, or the way it turns up like a prodigal who comes back to the dust at your feet having squandered a fortune far away.
And how can you not forgive? You make a feast in honor of what was lost, and take from its place the finest garment, which you saved for an occasion you could not imagine, and you weep night and day to know that you were not abandoned, that happiness saved its most extreme form for you alone.
This morning I met with a writer pal of mine. We try to get together once a month — sometimes to critique each other’s work, sometimes to celebrate, sometimes to brainstorm, sometimes to cry.
Today I showed up with the nightmare previously known as my filing system. Not my whoooole filing system. Oh, no. I left the taxes and report cards and committee minutes and freelance folders at home to molder.
Today I targeted my revision and submission folders, and if you’re rolling your eyes thinking, “Why doesn’t that nutbar get a clean, efficient Excel spreadsheet like the rest of us” can you kindly hold that thought for now? It’d make me feel better.
I don’t know how I let things accumulate like this, but let me tell you that it was a pile to behold. Notes and revisions from various manuscripts, assorted editorial rejections — opened but still in envelopes, my most recent book contract, three different submission logs (not one of them up-to-date), emails from friends about their agents. You get the idea. I think there was probably a gum wrapper or two in there, too.
So if you can believe it, I plowed through most of the stuff right then and there. All that’s left to do is integrate and update the logs so that I can feel good about putting my work out there in the world again. When you don’t know what’s where it’s hard to know what’s next. Y’know?
I have a feeling that the ‘assorted editorial rejections’ were why I’d neglected this teeming mass for as long as I did. Like if I didn’t record and file them, they hadn’t really happened? When did I stop looking at rejections as an opportunity for revision or a nudge to submit to someone else? Did a rock actually roll onto my head or did I crawl under it of my own volition?
Sigh.
Here’s the thing. In each manuscript’s folder are numerous rejections, which for sure means I’ve been productive in the sending ’em out department. So there’s that. And many of those rejections include invitations to submit more work. I used to just jump on that sort of response but I’ve apparently gotten a little lazy, so I’m back on task there. Plus, a few stories need to be revised unless they want their share of rejections to grow, so I’ve added revisions to the to-do list, too.
And then there are the folders for the books that’ve sold. Two out of three of them have their own little pile of no-thankyou notes. That’s what spurs me on, really. Knowing that we don’t usually make the bell at our first rodeo. Still, there’s always another bull and I’m polishing up my boots. After I put these damn logs into Excel….
