“Oh, kids books! I’ve got a couple stories I’d like to turn into books one of these days.”

“Kids books are so expensive! You must make a ton of money!”

“Writing for kids. How fun! Your life must be all rainbows and unicorns!”

Ha. Sorta puts a person in a mood. Unicorns must die. That sorta thing.

I know we’re just supposed to smile and nod and say, “Yes, I’ve been meaning to do some brain surgery when my schedule clears up, too…” but sometimes a gal wants to,y’know, express herself a little. I mean, really. Where do people get this idea that being a children’s author is both easy and lucrative?

As for the money, I’m super happy for old J.K., don’t get me wrong, but her bank account seems to have created a rather unrealistic impression about the rest of us.

And the effort — is it Herculean? No. 
We’re not delivering medicines to dying children in war torn nations. 
We’re not fighting forest fires, round the clock and past the point of exhaustion. 
We’re not teaching classfulls of 2nd graders year after faithful year. 
(Well, actually some children’s writers are doing that, too.)

But “easy”? That’d be a stretch.

There’re the usual struggles — building a titallating plot, creating a sympathetic character, revising every single bloody syllable until the seventeenth draft no longer shares the same genetic material as the first draft.

That counts for something, right? 

Plus, I know we’re an immediate gratification culture and that we could all use a little patience, but Whoa Boy, this industry takes that to an extreme. We wait months to hear back from agents and editors, and then it’s often with a form-letter no.  We wait weeks to communicate with the agents and editors who are already ‘ours’ and we wait years (school kids always think I’m kidding when I tell them this) for our books to come out, even after we’ve finished every last little touch of our work.

And how about marketing? Didja know we needed to be marketing agents of our own employ? At first I thought I just needed to order bookmarks. I could handle that. But we’re talking blogs and bookstores and press releases and holiday fairs and all flavors of things we’re not exactly trained to do. And these efforts can take over your life if you don’t watch out. I mean, it takes hours to do a mailing to all the independent booksellers or all the local librarians. It takes a good dose of courage to show up for a signing that may or may not be attended by anyone other than your children and your neighbor. And I don’t know what you need to write a confident and compelling press release about yourself without feeling like you want to die. Being your own spokesperson isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. 

Especially when you’re your own chef and cleaning lady and launderer and driver and nanny and personal shopper, too. One of the trickiest wickets we negotiate, us childrens’ writers, is the fact that our work and our lives are so entwined, right here, up close and personal. My office, my dog. My desk, my washing machine. My kids, my kids, my kids. Today, for example, no revision because of swim team, a sewing project and the garbage disposal repairman. Tomorrow, a sleepover.  And what day isn’t laundry day? Sigh. Creating boundaries and clarity? Now that’s Herculian.

But here’s the thing (and don’t tell this to the surgeon or the software designer): I think that the muddle of it all may also be the best part of my life’s work. I don’t go away for 10 or 12 hours everyday; this summer, even my teaching’s online. I work in the midst of my family. They steal my tape and stapler, but they also leave love notes on my desk. I get to go to swim team and help wind a bobbin with new yellow thread. I get to read a chapter book aloud over lunch.  

My office, my dog. My desk, my washing machine. My kids, my kids, my kids….
Not easy, not lucrative, but totally worth it.

A few weeks back, I wrote about the last lines of poems, how they ask questions, reveal problems, uncover grief and loss and hidden holes in the ground.

Ever since, I’ve been meaning to get back to first lines. 
What happens here, in the beginning, if all the grand epiphanies are saved for the end?

First lines, I think, say, “Here is how I see the world, in this moment…” 
They serve as the poet’s manifesto. They are declarations and scene setters.

Frost says that poetry “…begins with a lump in the throat.”

I think he’s right. The world at this moment is always enough to put a lump in your throat:

” From how many distances am I to arrive…”

“fortunate man it is not too late…

I like a lump like that last one. Maybe it’s never too late.

The first lines I used here are from the poems:
Emergence, W.S. Merwin
9/30, William Carlos Williams
A Nosty Fright, May Swenson
The Embrace, Mark Doty
The Waiting, li-young lee
Old Sound, W.S. Merwin
A Day Like Rousseau’s Dream, May Swenson
The Woodthrush, William Carlos Williams

I ran out of gas today. 
On the highway.
With the kids in the car.

Yes, the warning light was on.
Yes, I had my wallet with me.
Yes, I had passed numerous gas stations without stopping.

I know. Duh. 
You barely have to get out of your car anymore, what with Pay-at-the-Pump and all.
So. I have no excuse.

The upside was a kindly roadside angel — a car salesman on his way to work — who shoved his recycling bins into the trunk, made room for my girls and me, drove us to a gas station, waited while I bought and filled a little red gas can, drove us back to my abandoned vehicle, and risked his rump pouring the gas in while I acted as a flag girl directing traffic. 

All’s well that ends well.

But it got me to thinking about what kind of folk drive around on fumes with the warning light on. I mean, are we risk-takers or responsibility-avoiders or hope-mongers or cheap-skates or day-dreamers or what? 

And I don’t know about you, but I do this empty tank thing metaphorically, too. I keep on trucking when the engine’s thumping. Take on more miles than I’m up for. Space out on the nitty gritty because I’m busy looking at the scenery. Or thinking through a plot. Or eavesdropping on the funny conversation in the back seat. 

I did not love having to ditch my van, hazard lights blinking, on the side of the road this morning. But mostly I sort of enjoy the flow of a life without the latest maps and tool kits. Keeps me on my toes — and think of all the material I’d miss!

In my mother’s day card, my older daughter described me as “flexible”. 
“In yoga, and the other way, too,” she said. 
And now she and her sister are on that path, thanks in part to today’s adventure.

(Next year she’ll probably describe me as Spin Doctor, but I can live with that…)

I love summer vacation. 

I love what kids’ll do when they’ve got no explicit assignments, 
a bookshelf full-to-bursting, and a dress-up box under the bed.

The house? Messier.
The snacks? Constant.
My work? Suffering.

But I swear that this morning’s production of Little Red Riding Hood made up for any trouble. To set the scene, picture both daughters and a friend, some hysterical costumes and a good amount of face paint. Move the coffee table aside and call it a stage. I was the sole audience member and I couldn’t find my camera. They didn’t even care.

Most of the play unfolded pretty much as expected, except that Little Red sounded slightly Valley Girlesque and the wolf  resembled an anteater. Other than that, it was the usual cape, basket, skipping through the woods routine.

But then arrived the last few scenes. 

First of all, the woodsman slay the wolf with a broken sprinkler. 
Apparently this was as close as they could come to a weapon around here.

Next, Little Red and the woodsman sang a rousing version of “Ding, Dong, The Wolf is dead, Mean Old Wolf, the Wicked Wolf…” What a delicious take on fractured fairy tales.

And finally, right when I was expecting to see the final bow, two actors returned to stage wearing cardboard signs:
Wolf’s Mom and Wolf’s Dad.

Wolf lay still as a stone on the living room rug.

The grieving parents moaned and sobbed and decorated Wolf’s final resting place with a paper cross reading:
The Big Bad Wolf
He Was Good

Sigh.
Now they’re hula hooping.
I’m really hoping September doesn’t come too soon.

Here I am, your trusty trend-o-meter, on the job again.

Remember awhile back when I undertook a study of why every book we picked up seemed to feature the venerable game of dodge ball? 

Well, here’s the latest, similar puzzler:

Why’s everyone in every book we pick up named Bean?

To note: 
The imaginative trickster in Annie Barrows’ Ivy and Bean
Alexander McCall Smith’s clever sleuth Harriet Bean
Lauren Child’s utterly beanish dreamer Clarice Bean

 I don’t recollect ever actually meeting anyone named Bean. You? 

So what’s the deal? 

Is Bean just a natural term of endearment? Starting from when newborns curl up in their sleep sacks and fall asleep in the crook of your neck? Those little beanareenos…

Does Bean just rhyme with too many cute words to resist? 
The Bean Machine… Lean Bean… Sweetest Bean I’ve Ever Seen…

Is it that Bean conjures up both brains (way to use the ol’ bean, kiddo) and whimsy (you’re full of beans, rascal), or that beans are healthy, hearty growers, which is what we want our kids to be?

My daughter thinks it’s a good, simple, practical name that goes well with frillier first names like Clarice and Harriet.
OK, but whatever happened to Smith and Jones?

This just beats the heck outta me, but here are a few little pearls o’ wisdom for you:

1. Do name your children Bean — they’re sure to be both lovable and famous.
2. Don’t name your characters Bean — it’s been done.
3. Do host a Bean’s Bookclub for kids — and serve beans, ofcourse! (Baked, black or string should suffice)
4. Don’t make a lot of jokes about BeanTown and “Beans, beans, the musical fruit…” Those’ll date you…
5. Do try selling a screenplay about a bean playing dodge ball, and send me 5 dollars if you make it big.
6. Don’t tell your editor, agent or financial advisor that a bean playing dodge ball was my idea.

Trailing off….

So my daughter wrote a very operatic new song about a herd of Appaloosas.
In Trinidad.
Whose favorite meal was lamb.
And it’s told from the perspective of a little lamb.

Hunh.

“The weird part of the song, Mama,” she explained to me, “is that horses are vegetarian.”

Right. 

I don’t even know where to begin deconstructing this baby.

I kind of thought I should give you a run at the lyrics, but I’ll bet you get the idea.
So instead, a couple of poems about horses and lambs:

Spring Song, Meirionydd
— John Dressel

I love that phrase, drunk with lambs. Don’t you?
It’s so lush and surprising.
I’m gonna figure out a way to slide that into my conversation this weekend, to be sure…

No. 6
–Charles Bukowski

I’ll settle for the 6 horse
on a rainy afternoon
a paper cup of coffee
in my hand
a little way to go,
the wind twirling out
small wrens from 
the upper grandstand roof,
the jocks coming out
for a middle race
silent
and the easy rain making
everything
at once
almost alike,
the horses at peace with
each other
before the drunken war
and I am under the grandstand
feeling for
cigarettes
settling for coffee,
then the horses walk by
taking their little men
away —
it is funeral and graceful
and glad
like the opening
of flowers.

Sometimes I’m stunned at what a poet’s allowed to do, 
the language and images he or she’s allowed to put together — slap, bang — 
all in one little poem. 
The oddest things, made to seem inevitable.
Cigarette and flowers, horses and lambs…

Are you girl, woman or crone?
Can you walk, talk and chew gum at the same time?
Do you live anywhere near Orlando, L.A., Austin, Chicago, Denver, New England, Seattle or NYC?
Couldja get there?
Do you like material that wicks and watches that get wet?
Do you look fine in muscles?
Do you wish you did?
Do you have girlfriends?
Wouldja do anything with ’em?
Wouldja do anything for ’em?
Do you like challenge?
Do you like fun?
Wouldja like to see breast cancer get beat?
Are you healthy?
Do you wish you were?
Do you have a mother or daughter?
Wouldja like to see them strong and smiling?
Wouldja like them to see you that way? 
Have you ever crossed a finish line?
Do you wanna?

I just finished my sixth Danskin Triathlon in nine years and the only ones I regret are those three I missed. 

YOU should do the Danskin next year. You and your mom, sisters, girlfriends, daughters, friends or neighbors. Find a swimsuit that still has some elastic in it, pump up the ol’ bike tires and hit the trail. Women from 14 to 84 are doing it — I’ve seen ’em. And you should, too. 

You’ll be strong, happy,  inspired, giddy, proud, and all choked up. You’ll be a part of something very energized, very woman-power and very big. Even in this day and age, there is something really moving about seeing whole crowds of men — husbands, dads, brothers — cheering on 3,200 woman athletes. In front of our daughters and sons.

As they like to say on the Danskin circuit, You Go, Girl.

Sheesh, I’ve missed you all something fierce. 
I just spent an hour reading back blogs. What a fine fix.

My excused absence, as you’ll remember from my post on the 1st, is that my sister and family were cozied up with us in our bungalow for more than a week. (Insert countless exclamation points right here…)

The only moments not filled up with my talking were filled up with hers. 

Here’s the thing. She and her family live in Tanzania. That’d be in Africa. So even when we do plan to phone or instant message, we’re talking about a 9-hour time difference. One of us with a cup of coffee at our elbow, the other with a beer. 

This is the same sister with whom I shared a room for 10 years. Shared clothes in high school. Shared tent adventures and political rallies and babies’ births.  Shared grandparents and the back seat of the Subaru on roadtrips and a mom and a dad.

As you might imagine, our current time/space disconnect can conjure up some serious grief, so when we get together we don’t fool around. Or rather, we do. In a big way.

This time we celebrated my recent birthday at a spa (I actually felt too noodley to walk down the steps after my lavendar oil massage), took the kids to SeaWorld (now would be the time to admit that I cried a little at the Shamu show), picked pounds of peaches, ran the Danskin (registered as twins so that we could start and finish together), and swam in no less than six pools, lakes or swimmin’ holes (it is summer in Texas after all). 

But the most vivid part of the week was seeing our children (her two and my two) falling deeper and deeper into each other. We call them matchies because BOTH times, our pregnancies overlapped. When my neice celebrates her birthday tomorrow, we’ll have two 8- and two 6-year-olds between us. 

When they were wee, we brainwashed them with photos and phone calls so they’d know and love each other. But honest-to-pete, other than buying the airline tickets, our persuasion program is now officially over. They’re enraptured. 

The younger set dressed alike and slept in the same bed and made up a secret language. All in a week’s work. The elders are a boy and a girl and have less in common, but the myriad ways they work around that are so moving to me. If they create a “culture magazine” at my daughter’s whim, the center spread will be about Tae Kwan Do to please my sister’s son.  If the water in the swimming pool is too chilly for my nephew, my girl will push him about in an inflatable tube. If they can’t agree on a puzzle or a game or a book, they’ll get on their scooters and race to the stop sign and back. About 45 times. 

I grew up at a distance from most of my cousins, too, but our summers together — kick-the-can and rag-tag, Jolly Good soda and Mackinack fudge — taught me to support and tease and admire and defend and have a hoot with the folks I love. And they taught me to expect the same in return. As a grown-up, I’ve had all of this, in spades. My cousins are on my speed dial, if you know what I mean.

Nothing matters to me more than knowing my little ones are building (and are built of) the same strong stuff.

Somehow this makes it okay that my sister and her husband and my children’s cousins drove away at 5 a.m. yesterday.
I’m all wrung out, but in a good way. 
Tired, pink and satisfied. 

“We danced on the drums of jubilation
Hot with the blood that made us one….”  — Abdulkadir Noormohamed

Today’s chosen poem is in honor of my sister who is arriving at my house tomorrow for NINE (count ’em) NINE days, with my beloved brother-in-law, niece and nephew. Rapture.

And did I mention that they live on the other side of the world?

This is a daily ache for me. 
I often wish we were sharing one big stock pot of soup, but instead here am I and there she is. 
Way over there. 

Sigh.

Fortunately, these days, there is email and airmail and Skype. 
But still, nothing counts like gettin’ up-close-and-personal. 

I think Lucille Clifton gets it. Don’t you?

sisters

me and you be sisters.
we be the same.

(Read the whole poem.)

So, I go away to Seattle for a coupla days and I just get clobbered on the playground. First, I been tagged by the witty women at A Year of Reading.

I have to come up with 8 facts or habits about myself that might be appropriate to share and, at the same time, not boring. Sigh.

Here goes:

1. I can sing all the state names in alphabetical order and with a good dose of pizazz.

2. I’ve been vegetarian since college. As a kid I lived on goose, duck and venison. I remember the feeling of having a round, metal bit of bird shot stuck in my teeth. Unrelated facts? I think not.

3. When I do a seriously vigorous yoga practice, I get an itchy head. Crazy itchy. The same thing happens to my sister. Weird, hunh?

4. I have 16 first cousins, 12 of whom are female. A serious matriarchy. In the dating era, though, it was the guys who lucked out since we all brought our friends around — some of whom the boys married.

5. I can still do backward crossovers on ice skates. Once a year whether I need to or not. Ditto, getting up on a slalom ski behind a waterski boat.

6. My favorite combination of colors for a bouquet of flowers is purple and yellow. But I’ve just found out that tulips can’t be mixed with any other flowers because they put out some toxin that kills the others! Isolationists!

7. I saw the Grateful Dead perform in multiple states. I mean states like Wisconsin, Nevada, Colorado. Not altered states. Don’t get funny with me.

8. When we take roadtrips I read novels out loud to my husband until I’m hoarse, especially mystery novels, which I never read otherwise. Oh, I also buy People magazine every time I travel by plane. But don’t tell anyone. 

OK, so that’s that. Oh, and y’know how Franki said she liked Dots as movie candy? I always liked their shy cousin Drops (chewier) and I used a rhyme to remember which one I preferred: Drops are Tops, Dots are Not.

To all the rest of you, consider yourself TAGGED. (I think this one has made the rounds pretty well already).

Now, then. I also got tagged by Vivian at HipWriterMama who says I’m supposed to share four things that were new to me in the past four years, and four things I want to try in the next four years.

New in the past four years:

1. Mothering honest-to-goodness KIDS instead of babies and toddlers. Kids who can hike for miles… write, act in and direct spectacular theatrical productions… create amazing artwork… tell jokes… deliver breakfast in bed… and read! I will always feel nostaligic for my babies, but boy-oh-man do I love these kids.

2. Blogging. Very new. Very inspiring (the reading and the writing). Very immediate-gratificationist. 

3. Goodness. My women’s artist lifeline, without which I’d be limping along and slogging through. I craved this community — didn’t even really know I craved this community — and now I want it for all of you. A writing group or a mama’s club or a spiritual clan or whatever village you need in your own particular life. Create it. I can assure you that the people you ask will say YES. Everybody’s hungry.

4. Writing an historical novel. This is not just new but ongoing, and an adventure at every juncture. Serves as the perfect transition from old new to new new….

New to come in the next four years:

1. Learn to play my exquisite mountain dulcimer. And I mean well enough that if a bunch of music-y folks were over for dinner, I’d be happy to pull it out and play. In public.

2. Travel to another new country. Or a few more countries. With our kids. They are master travellers already. A good number of stamps in the old passports, and that’s not showing where they’ve been in this country. Our eldest’s leaning and inclination is cultural anthropology and comparative religions, never mind that she’s 8. I want to keep on feeding this, in her and in us. I hate to sound naaive or grandiose, but I think it may be the key to peace on earth.

3. Finish mothering “kids” and begin mothering pre-teens. I think my secret cache of weapons will include  travelling (see above), reading and discussing books, cultivating joy, and counting on my loving, steady, creative, patient and reliable husband/co-parent. We are going to relish our kids at each and every stage. Relish.

4. Celebrate the publication of my next books. Plural. 

That’s that. Let’s see. Who’ll I tag?

Shan
Kath
Chris
Cynthia

Sound good?

And finally, I have to say that we learned a new game this week from our cousins. I mean a real game. None of this virtual Tag You’re It business. It’s called Look Up, Look Down and it’s all about eye contact. Is that cool, or what? 

Eye contact. That’s something I plan on cultivating more of these next four years. How’s about you?