nine lives

The sun is finally shining here and yesterday was gorgeous, mid-sixties—almost unheard of weather for this time of year in Minnesota. It’s amazing what this does to the way I see the world. Hopefulness bubbles to the surface, escapes through my pours. I start imagining long walks and bike rides and loping, solitary runs during which my mind is free to wander, to come up with ideas for essays I won’t have time to write.

I took the girls to my dad’s this morning for a visit, and I noticed that the first of his crocuses have poked through the dark earth, purple buds ready to burst open at the sun’s coaxing. Soon his whole yard will be covered with dark purple Siberian Squill, and he will ask me to come over to take a picture, as he does every year.

Now I’m sitting in my little office. Zoë is sleeping and has recovered from her fever of a few days ago. (Though, unfortunately, she’s also fully embraced the Terrible Twos.) Stella’s bus will rumble past the house in less than ten minutes, and then she’ll come bursting through the door, her eyes wide. She will say, as she so often says, “Mama, I have to tell you something…” And I will listen to the report of her few hours at kindergarten, nodding my head and saying “Oh really?” over and over to keep her talking.

When Zoë wakes, I’ll strap her into the Burley, which she pronounces “Booooley,” and the three of us will head out on bikes to visit my grandpa, who, miraculously, is much improved. Many of you posted kind and hopeful comments about him a couple of months ago. I so appreciated these, but frankly, I didn’t think my grandpa would live to see spring. But now he has gained some weight back and his skin as lost its sallowness. He’s ready to step outdoors. How is it possible that 101 he still is not ready to give up on life?

After my piece came out in Brevity a couple of months ago, I took my laptop down to his apartment in the basement of my mom’s house so he could read it. (He doesn’t really understand what I do, doesn’t ever seem to believe me when I tell him how busy I am, so I wanted to prove something to him with that piece.) He read it slowly, nodding his head. And then when I closed the computer, he said, “You know, I should have died about nine times.”

And as if he were composing his own piece for Brevity, he proceeded to list the times he should have kicked it. But he only got to eight. “Hmmupft,” he said then, shaking his head. “Maybe there are only eight.”

His swelling is down, his breathing normal—he’s on his ninth life now. At 101, he’s not ready to go.

I’m still struggling with what it means to be a writer (or maybe I'm struggling with what it means to be a struggling writer). I swing between feeling hopeful—on the cusp of something big—to despondent, all in the same day, sometimes multiple times a day. Still, I’m not ready to give up. I can’t imagine doing that, just as my grandpa can’t imagine giving up on life.

So instead, I'll keep doing what I'm doing and wait and hope. And in a few weeks, I'll go to my dad's house, stand at the edge of his lawn, and take comfort in the reliability of his Siberian Squill.

i swear i can fly!

I'm sorry I've been quiet this week. Zoë has been home sick the last two days with a fever, which means very little work time for me. And of course she's sleeping next to me because I'm deadly afraid she'll have another seizure.

You probably wish you could hang out with me in person right now, don't you? I'm super cheerful and well-rested and ready for the world. Well, maybe not.

But I am excited about this performance I'm going to see tomorrow with my friend, Diane:

I Swear I Can Fly! is a collection of tall tales about flight, birth, parenthood, and strange encounters of everyday life in the first year of becoming a parent. Written and performed by Francine Conley-Scott.

Friday March 12, 7:30 pm
Saturday, March 13, 2pm
Saturday, March 13, 7:30pm

WHERE: Dreamland Arts, 677 Hamline Avenue, St Paul, MN - (651) 645-5506

writing parenthood - one-day workshop

Thanks to everyone for the birthday wishes for Zoë. I think she had a wonderful birthday (and she’s very excited about the new wagon from her grandparents!)

I wanted to let you know about my upcoming Writing Parenthood class at The Loft -- it's a super-condensed version of Mother Words (and dads are welcome, too!)

Here are the details:

Writing Parenthood - One-day Workshop

Saturday, March 20 - 9:30 am - 1:30 pm

The Loft Literary Center, Open Book, Minneapolis

Parenthood offers endless fodder for writing. In this one-day class you’ll learn how to capture your funny and heartbreaking parenting anecdotes on paper and bring them to life with sensory details and strong characters. In addition to in-class writing, we will spend time discussing how and where to pitch your parenthood stories and how to fit writing into your busy life. You will leave the workshop with a start on two essays and a page of exercises to try at home.

To register, please visit The Loft. Please contact me with questions.

two

It’s my little Zoë’s birthday today. How can she already be two years old?

I remember the day she was born, the thick wet snowflakes falling outside as I tried not to think about being sliced open. I remember the terrible cold I had that day (as I do now). I remember that Donny took Stella out for breakfast so I could try to sleep a little more. I remember that I didn’t sleep. I remember the moment the doctor pulled her from me and held her up for me to touch. I remember, later, in the recovering room, when Donny placed her in my arms and she latched on immediately, gazing up at me.

This morning, she woke at four a.m. after Stella barreled out of their room riding the tails of a nightmare. Both girls were then in our bed, but that doesn’t work for Zoë. She was up and down, saying, “Downtairs. Downtairs now.”

At 5:15, I kicked D in the shin and he took both girls downstairs for breakfast. “Don’t open the present without me, though,” I called after them.

Yesterday, Stella and I had gone to pick out a doll for Zoë. Stella has the Target version of an American Girl Doll, one she calls Charmy Running Girl. (I don’t remember what her box name was.) And because Charmy is Stella’s doll, Zoë can’t get enough of her. “Runny Gool. Where Runny Gool?”

It was Stella’s idea to get Zoë a doll of her own. She thought this would keep Zoë from pulling Charmy’s hair and dropping her on her head. She thought if Zoë had a doll of her own, she’d back off poor Charmy.

When I got up at 6:30, we all sat on the floor as Zoë opened her present. She was ecstatic. “My Charmy Runny Gool! My Charmy Runny Gool!”

Stella pursed her lips, holding dear Charmy in her arms. “Zoë, you can’t name her that. They’re cousins so she needs a different name.”

Zoë eventually settled on Sofia. (Named after my friend’s baby.) But Sofia turned into Charmy Sofia and then Sofia Running Girl. And after twelve minutes, Sofia lay abandoned on the floor, and Zoë was weeping to hold Charmy, the real Charmy, as I was trying to finish packing lunches and get both girls—the live ones—ready for school. Ah well.

This afternoon, Stella and I will take cupcakes to share with Zoë’s toddler friends. And tomorrow we’ll have a party with our families.

Today, I am thankful for my Zoë, thankful for the way she says, “’Kay, Mama? ‘Kay?” I’m thankful for her devilish laugh, for the way she lines the baby dolls up on the couch, covering each one with a tiny blanket. I'm thankful for the way she says, "Tay too yo welcome" when I pass her a bowl of orange slices. I’m thankful for her red hair, which is a mat of dreadlocks at the back of her head because she will not let me brush it. (And I just let it be. I let her go to school like this.)

I’m even thankful for her gremlin ways—the way her teeth grit in a crazed smile when she’s about to pinch me or when her “gentle touches” become a lot less gentle or when she has grabbed my favorite mug from the dishwasher and run into the other room, poised to smash it to pieces. Okay, it was a little hard to love her the moment the mug exploded into a gazillon ceramic shards on the floor. But then I was over it.

And I do love every bit of you, Zoë! Happy day!

a few photos

Here are a few photos from the Mother Words Retreat.

The view.

The Great Room.

The sunny meeting room on the very top floor.

The evening ritual.

Reading some of our favorite poems and essays by the bonfire. (Yes, there were s'mores.)

What's not to love?

retreat recap

I wrote about arriving at Faith’s Lodge on Friday, about the feeling of that place, the incredible energy there. This energy only intensified, crystallized, as the weekend progressed.

The weather was perfect—in the 40s, bright sun, blue sky. (Don’t be afraid of Wisconsin in February!) As we sat in the top floor meeting room, sun streamed in the windows, melting snow dripped from the roof.

Of course, it wasn’t just the weather that filled us up. I have never been in a room full of women with such powerful stories; women who were willing to share these stories, grapple with them, write to the heart of them.

We talked about craft, about writing and publishing. We wrote. We listened to each other read what we’d written. We cried—a lot. We laughed—a lot. We drank a lot of wine. And by Sunday afternoon, everyone had made major breakthroughs with their writing: rethinking structure, making discoveries, focusing in on scene, reframing.

It’s amazing to be part of a writing breakthrough. There is something incredibly powerful in asking the questions, making the suggestions that help someone crack open a piece of writing and take it to the next level.

I’ve been thinking a lot about something that Kate St. Vincent Vogl mentioned in her interview a couple of weeks ago. She alluded to something I’ve heard writers—and especially writers of creative nonfiction—say before: that writing isn’t therapeutic. So many writers balk at this idea.

I think the reason they balk is because they want their work viewed as art and they think if it’s tied in any way to “therapy,” this will somehow undercut the work they’ve put into crafting their story.

I’ve talked about this with both my classes in the last weeks and I talked about it on the retreat. And this is what I think: if you are really diving in and fearlessly searching for your story in the material of your life, it’s impossible for you not to make discoveries, to gain perspective on the life you’ve lived.

I love what Philip Gerard says: “[A memoir is] not simply a scrapbook of memories to brood over or cherish, but a reckoning. That’s the reason to write a memoir: to find out what really happened in your life; to drive toward the fact behind all the other facts, and come to some understanding, however limited, of what it means—and accept that truth.”

But if you are really doing this work of “reckoning,” you will change, you will be able to make sense of the life you’ve lived in a new way. What’s not therapeutic about that?

Now, that the thing that differentiates writing for yourself—journaling—and successful memoir and essay lies in craft. Is it crafted? Has the writer been able to craft the raw material of his/her life?

But you can experience a transformation in the writing process and still end up with art.

It’s my job to help my students craft their stories into art, to find the best way to tell the stories they need to tell. And I hope—I really do hope—that in this process they make discoveries, process the material of their lives, let go of what they need to let go of.

This is the kind of thing that was happening all weekend—this kind of tremendous and important work. Maybe it was therapeutic. It was definitely the work of artists.

Now I’m home, and I’m filled with gratitude for these fine women with whom I spent the weekend, filled with gratitude for D and my girls. (Stella made me eight presents while I was gone—paper flowers and bags decorated with glitter, drawings of our family. And when I pulled the car up in front of our house on Sunday, she and Zoë were waiting on the porch, waving, smiling.)

And now I’m ready to write. I’m ready to walk bravely into words, just as I witnessed these fine writers do all weekend long.

(I’ll post photos in the next few days.)

retreat day 1 - the arrival

Yesterday morning I woke early with an oozing eye. This happens to me sometimes when I have a cold—the snot tries to exit through the tear duct of my left eye. I know. I know. I wish there was a more delicate way to say it, but there’s not.

I wasn’t too concerned about the eye during the day yesterday, but by evening, as I headed off to teach my creative nonfiction class, I realized it felt as if someone had emptied a shovel full of dirt onto my eyeball. By the end of my class, the left side of my face hurt, and it felt as though there might have been tiny shards of glass in that shovel of dirt.

Two of my students—both of whom are nurses—said that I should go to the doctor. “You need to get that looked at before you leave town.”

I sighed. Okay. But it was 9:45 and even Urgent Care was closed. I drove home. But things weren’t getting any better; by the time I walked into my house, I was convinced that my sinuses had ruptured and I was doomed—I would not be able to go to the retreat; the fluid would take over my face; my brain might explode. (Once I begin on this train of thought, it’s difficult to for me to redirect. I put my jacket back on and drove to the ER.)

The ER. What can I say? Three hours later—at 1:30 a.m.—I was finally home, a very expensive tube of antibiotic ointment in hand, my eye swollen shut.

I slept. Then this morning—was that just this morning?—I frantically got the kids ready, dropped Zoë off at toddler school, passed Stella into the hands of my sister, and wondered what I had forgotten to pack. (The whole while looking like Quasimodo.)

Maybe I forgot to pack something, but it doesn’t matter now. The sky is the pale blue of a wintery late afternoon. Outside my window are tall Aspen trees, white bark peeling. Curling like a hundred ancient scrolls.

There is an energy here at Faith’s Lodge that I’ve never felt before. It’s as if all of the families who have stayed in these rooms, stood on these balconies, and walked these trails have left a little bit of themselves here. As if they’ve left a little bit of the love they have for their children.

So now I feel myself take a deep breath, loosen my hold, uncoil. A space opens in my head, a clearing.