The Sunday Salon: The Reading Mother

My mother has many wonderful attributes and abilities: She is kind and caring, generous and considerate. She is a marvelous cook, has an elegant eye for fashion and interior design, and can grow any flowering plant. She is all these things and more. 

But one thing my mother is not is a reader. 

Oh, she reads the newspaper, which she continues to subscribe to mostly in order to read Mitch Albom’s weekly column. “Did you read Mitch today?” she’ll ask on Sundays.  “He really tells it like it is.” And she always enjoys her Southern Living magazine. She loves to thumb through cookbooks, sussing out new recipes to try. She once enjoyed fashion magazines, but says the styles are “too far out” these days to be of any interest to her.

But I’ve never seen her read a book. 

That is not until I gave her a copy of mine. 

You see, it came as a total surprise to her that I had even written a book in the first place. I think she knew I wrote things on the internet, but her understanding of the internet is similar to that of many octogenarians - sparse to nonexistent. 

When she unwrapped her copy of  Life In General last Christmas, she was confused at first. Then she saw my name at the bottom and looked at me with a mixture of disbelief and - I have to say - a little awe.

“Did YOU write this?” she asked.

“I did,” I answered, trying to retain my humility. After all, we never completely lose the desire to impress our mothers.

There was a suitable amount of ooohing and aaahing, some tears at the inscription I had written on the flyleaf, and some lengthy explaining on my part about how the book came to be. When I left later that day, she was still holding it on her lap, unwilling to part with it for a second.

The next day she told me she had read the entire book that night. “And I’m going to turn around and read it all over again,” she said. “It’s the most wonderful thing I’ve every read in my life."

Well, of course. She’s my mother. She thinks everything I write - from the gobbledygook typing on that first old typewriter I played with to my high school term papers - is the best thing she’s ever read. (And remember, she doesn’t read much.)

But then she said something that I would hear from a lot of readers in the days and weeks ahead. “I think every woman who has had a family, or a home, or been married, or gone through losing parents could relate to this book. I feel like you connect with all the things I’ve thought about and felt over the years."

Every year when Mother’s Day approaches, I realize once again how fortunate I am that  (1) my mother is still with me and still functioning independently; and (2) she has been so supportive of me and my family every step of the way as I’ve gone through all the experiences of Life In General. Although I’m not nearly the cook she is, nor is my thumb anywhere close to being as green, I hope I’ve inherited at least some of her ability to love unconditionally, to listen without judgment, and to give of her time, energy, and love without measure.

In the end, it didn’t matter that my mother wasn’t much of a reader. She completely supported my obsession with books, making sure I always had plenty of them around, getting me to the library whenever I wanted to go, and always encouraging me to read widely and often. She nourished my love for reading just as she did my love of music and dogs and cars and pretty dresses. 

Since December, Life In General has had pride of place on the coffee table in my mom’s living room. She says she picks it up and reads from it every so often. “Sometimes I laugh,” she commented, “and sometimes I cry.” It has prompted her to share many stories of her own with me, stories I’d never heard before about her life as a young wife and mother.

“Did you know,” she said the other day, “when I was young I used to like making up stories. I’d tell them to all the cousins, and they loved to hear them."

Well then. That explains a lot.

 

A Mother’s Day Offer

Perhaps your mother (or grandmother, or daughter, sister, aunt or friend!) would enjoy reading Life In General too. In honor of Mother’s Day, if you purchase a copy of Life In General, I will beautifully gift wrap it, sign or inscribe it, and mail it to anywhere in the United States.

I will also donate 25% of all Mother’s Day book sales to Church World Service Blanket Sunday, which my own church supports each year on Mother’s Day. Donations are used to provide blankets, tents, food, and shelter to those affected by disasters worldwide. Read more about the project here.

To order a book as a Mother’s Day gift, use the order form on the Life In General page. In the notes section, indicate if you would like a special inscription inside the book, and where you wish the book to be sent. Books must be ordered by May 5, 2015.

The Thing With Feathers

Yesterday I wrote a long post in this space, a post in which I laid bare some of the pain of these past months. I revealed that I was going through a “valley time,” a time of anxiety, sadness, discontent. When I had finished it, I thought immediately that I should delete it, should not dare to reveal this weakness, should not indulge myself in such blatant self-pity.

But I changed my mind. Let it go. Released it to the eyes of others.

And then. Then you responded. In comments. E-mails. Private messages. “Yes, me too,” you said. “I’ve been there. I understand."

Once again a connection was made through writing, words were shared that shed some light on my darkness, much the way the morning sun just this minute broke through pewter colored clouds still laden with cold. That brief flash of sunlight directly outside the window reminds me, as your words did yesterday, that warmth and brightness are still there, even if they are sometimes obscured by the heaviness of clouds around us.

I had thought I was alone, and you reminded me I was not. You listened, you heard, you recognized. 

There is great strength in that. Today there is a crack of light in the darkness. I feel empowered to start the climb upwards, away from the recesses of that darker place where I’ve been dwelling. With that feeling comes hope..."the thing with feathers," as Emily Dickinson described it. A gentle, fragile, feeling, but one with the amazing power of lifting our hearts and taking wing against the darkness.

Although I mostly dwell in this land of sensing and feeling (my Myers Briggs profile is Introvert Sensing Feeling Judging) I am a practical person, a person who needs concrete things to do. So this week I have been putting only good food in my body - no sugar, no processed foods, no alcohol, and no caffeine (well, just a tiny bit in the morning). I’ve walked every day because walking for me is “moving meditation” and gets the blood flowing through my heart and to my brain. I’m planning my days so I can accomplish what I need to, and trying not to let myself be sidetracked by the time killers that so often disable me... especially the Internet. I’m looking at the world around me with brighter eyes, remembering how to savor the small moments of beauty -  like my pretty coffee cup, the call of ducks in flight over the ponds, the smooth pages of a brand new book, the warmth of my little dog as he snuggles next to me in bed.

I’m trying to get myself back on the track, the trail that leads out of the valley and into a brighter place. 

 I’m grateful. For the connections we shared, for the hands held out to my as I opened my heart on this page. 

And I’m hopeful. That thing with feathers is perched in my soul this morning.

Write On Wednesday: Listening to My Heart

It’s been quiet here in this online space, this place where we connect about books and writing and family and...life in general.

But it hasn’t been quiet in my head or in my heart. No, there is a veritable beehive of activity going on in both places. Like the angry buzzing of a disturbed hive, these thoughts swarm and sting, painfully disturbing the equilibrium I need in order to thrive.

As spring continues to drag it’s feet here in Michigan, my spirits drag along with it. For months now, I’ve been in a valley emotionally and creatively- not the lush, verdant kind that peppers the landscape in southern England, but the gloomy lowland that comes with feeling unsatisfied, uneasy, unfulfilled.  I wake in the night, restless and painful, and move into the second bedroom where I read for hours before falling back into a fitful sleep just before the alarm sounds. I drink more caffeine and alcohol than I should, because they give me the illusion of feeling better for a moment. I disdain the image I see in the mirror, wear the same jeans and sweaters because it’s easy and I look terrible anyway. 

We’ve all spent time in that valley. But for most of us with families, homes, jobs, and all the other responsibilities of day to day living, we keep plowing through the dark times, doing all those things that have to be done, keeping our sadnesses to ourselves. We need to preserve our image of strength and capability. We don’t want the people we love to see our weakness. We’re afraid they’ll misunderstand our sadness. 

So we wrap it up tightly and tuck it inside a corner of our hearts. Sometimes I can physically feel it, like another pulsing beat, trapped in that corner where I’ve forced it to go, out of sight and sound of the rest of my life. I let it peek out only in the pages of my journal, my poor notebook taking a beating these days as I write and write and write, pouring my heart out on that page. It’s as if my pen is linked directly to that hurting place, that wondering, aching, worried place that I so carefully keep hidden from the light of day.

There is a healing power in writing. It helps every morning to take that time and listen to my heart, to write those private words.

But lately my heart has felt full to overflowing. It’s needed to spill out these anxieties and fears elsewhere, to share its burdens with someone else. It needs to let go of just a little bit of that tightly held control over my image. 

So today, I open it to you.

One of my favorite movies of all time is The Way We Were, starring Barbara Streisand and Robert Redford. There is a scene in the movie when Streisand’s character opens her heart. “I want, I want...” she says, her heart’s desires written plainly on her face.

I want to feel better, to feel lighter and brighter and more focused. I want my heart to be lifted, like the branches of our trees in a warm gentle breeze. I want to find new focus for my creative work, I want to have the courage to take forward steps in my life in general.

I want not only to listen to my heart, but to answer it, to respond to what it needs. 

This morning while waiting for the coffee to brew, I picked up the copy of Life In General sitting on my kitchen desk. I turned to the end, to those “Guiding Principles” and realize how far I’ve come from every one of them. When I wrote that section of the book, I was happier than I’d been in many years. My situation hasn’t changed that much since those days. But I’ve drifted away from those things I know to be true about myself and what fulfills me. And - to paraphrase an old song - I’ve been looking for happiness in all the wrong places. It’s not going to come from writing, or playing music, or relationships with other, or even the weather, even though all of those things will be factors in lightening the burdens I’ve been stockpiling. 

I know real happiness has to start inside me. 

In my heart.

It’s a lot easier to sit back and let life do all the happiness work - to expect people and events and possessions to make us feel fulfilled and satisfied. But all too often, life falls down on the job, and we’re left in the lurch. We descend into the valley, and sometimes we just wallow there. 

That’s what I’ve been doing this winter. It’s time to start climbing out.

And I’m letting my heart lead the way.

Write On Wednesday: Change of Venue

 I am a creature of habit. I count on my morning coffee (in my favorite mug) and my evening glass of wine. I do morning pages in the comfy chair upstairs, and read my book on the sofa in the den. I like a walk before lunch and one after dinner, a hot bath before bed, and a few minutes of quiet time with my book before turning out the light.

I write at my computer, which sits in the center of a large walnut writing table underneath the upstairs corner casement windows in the guest bedroom on the second floor. On nice days, I crank open each window and listen to the finches and cardinals serenade me while I ponder and peck away at the keyboard. I prefer to write in the mornings (after the walk) but sometimes an hour or two between 7 and 9 in the evening works well too.

This week I had some time to myself on Monday, a hour or so in the afternoon between places to be when it wasn’t convenient to go home. Before I left for rehearsal that morning, I packed up my notebook and pen and thought I might spend that time in a coffee shop doing some writing.

Because I had some other errands to do, the most convenient coffee shop was a Starbucks, located in the midst of a small downtown area in a neighboring suburb.

I’ll tell you a secret.  I don’t really like Starbucks - not the taste of the coffee, not the ambience in the stores, and certainly not the prices. 

But I went in, because it was raining and chilly and I needed somewhere to be.

Inside this very dimly lit Starbucks were four comfy leather armchairs nestled in the corner by the window. All occupied of course. Two college students with piles of spiral notebooks and fat soft covered textbooks were sprawled comfortably in two of them, while two young girls sat in the other two, their legs tucked beneath them, busy texting or tweeting on their iPhones and sipping frothy coffee drinks.

There were about a dozen tiny dark tables with hard, short backed chairs clustered around them. Many of these were occupied by people working on laptop computers, most of them wearing headphones attached to their cell phones, listening to music I assume, because they weren’t talking to anyone. 

I ordered tea (because remember I don’t like the coffee) and chose one of the empty tables by the wall, rather than one in the middle of the room. I tried to get comfortable in a chair that reminded me a lot of the chairs we’d been forced to sit in at elementary school. I dunked my teabag a few times into the cup of (scalding!) hot water and stirred four packets of sugar into the tall paper cup.

I opened my notebook and tried to write.

It should have been a perfect writing atmosphere. With the exception of the one middle aged woman sitting across from me with a book, noisily licking her fingers after each bite of a sticky pastry, every other person was completely in their own private zone, plugged in, tuned out of the rest of the room. Even the baristas were quiet. There was background music, but it was subdued and generic. No one new came in, there were no hisses or spurts of foaming espresso makers. 

I’d like to say I felt prolific and creative, that the various people in the coffee shop inspired interesting character sketches. Mostly, I felt self-conscious, pretentious, and even a little silly. 

There is a mystique among writers about writing in coffee shops and cafes. We all think of the romance of Hemingway and his companions on the Left Bank in Paris, scribbling away all day, holding court with tiny cups of espresso in the morning, giving way to goblets of wine in the afternoon. 

Certainly I’m no Hemingway. I’m just a woman who likes putting words on paper, who thinks better when she has a pencil in her hand or her fingers on a keyboard. It was an interesting experiment, changing up my writing venue, tiptoeing for a moment into a different atmosphere. But probably not one I’ll repeat any time soon.

I am definitely still a creature of habit, and it seems I’ll be keeping my writing habits intact for the time being. 

Blown Away

The wind is fierce this morning. From my second story “office” I can not only see it, the tall treetops behind the houses across the street and swaying and shifting in a elegant dance, but I can hear it too, a none-too-gentle moaning sound that sweeps around the corner of the house and across the front yard.

While popular usage of the term “blown away” refers to being extremely impressed by something, I can’t say I feel that way about this spring’s weather. In fact, I’d say the many chilly, gray, rainy and windy spring days are knocking my off my moorings in a more literal way. It manifests itself in physically, with headaches, sinus pressure, poor appetite. But also in an emotional way with a longing, an ache to feel warmth and sun. For the heaviness in the atmosphere to lift, for the energy of spring to, well - spring.

My mother and grandmother both were very attuned to weather. Both of them were terrified of storms - thunder and snow storms alike.  Coming from a long line of farmers, I suppose it was in their blood: after all, weather was totally related to one’s livelihood, and could make all the difference between having food to sell and eat and ending up with nothing. My mom suffers in the winter - not only with her arthritis pain, but with being trapped inside. As soon as spring arrives and she’s able to putter around in her yard, her blood pressure comes down, she moves more confidently and quickly, and her appetite improves. The past two years have been particularly difficult for her, and I’m as eager for spring to arrive for her benefit as I am for mine.

I know it will get here, it always does. I think I felt entitled to an early spring, after the long and punishing winter cold. This week (spring break!) I’ve woken every morning to gunmetal gray skies, cold, and sometimes icy rain. My inner child is stamping her foot and pouting in protest.

But all I can do is stand my ground and wait. 

And try not to get blown away in the process.