Point of View

Perspective is everything, isn’t it? As a writer I ought to remember that. While I was crying in my soup…well, garden, really, others are trying to save their homes and farms. Calls for volunteers has gone out for today. The rain, the snowpack has been unbelievable and the reservoirs are predicted to spill over tomorrow to add even more water to the waterlogged downstream.

Me, I’m on high ground, my garden and flowers and vegetables small potatoes. We took a drive to look at the river last night. There are two days to prepare for the run-off due to the high temperatures from today and tomorrow. Yesterday, it struggled to reach 50°, there was frost and today it will near 80°. Spring here.

I lost way less than I feared and so many aren’t so lucky. Family farms underwater, homes flooded. I feel ashamed and very blessed. And in the writing lessons of life, I see clearly today what point of view truly means.

A point of view can be a dangerous luxury when substituted for insight and understanding. -Marshall McLuhan

Heart Breaks

“Honey, the two things you love to do most will break your heart,” my husband once said. And he’s right. Last night’s devastation to my garden has cracked my heart, it is true. Snow covers impatiens, tomato plants, weighs down my snowball bush, tree peonies and Japanese maples and I’m left wondering what will survive and why didn’t the weather man warns us.

There’s nothing really left to do, but step back, regroup, replace the tomatoes and hope the rest of the vegetables will survive. The garden money has been spent—what is, is. And right now, I wished I had simple replaced the fall pansies with new, younger ones and have done with it. I appreciate pansies when the spring has been like this year’s.

Pansies are brave-faced, sturdy, beautiful and colorful. What more can I ask for? Pansies remind me of my grandma. She depended on them, too, and planted them beneath the fir trees in her front yard in the fall. Some winters they would bloom in the shelter of the branches even at Christmas. Remembering that, I started planting pansies every fall like hope.

Still, there is heartbreak in gardening. I fling myself into it every year, much as I do my writing.

I stood looking over the flower beds blanketed with the slushy white snow and thought how I’d just quit, stop garden plans and hopes, stop getting my heart broke, but I know that’s all frustration and lie. I’ll make do, make changes to those winter garden plans. I’ll edit out the dead; fill in with poppies or nasturtiums. Lo, and behold, come summer the garden will be no worse for the spring struggle and maybe, just maybe, something accidentally wonderful will happen.

This morning I can’t help but think how much in common writing and gardening have. There is the planning and the hope, the research and time put in. There is fitting the plants with the climate, sun and personal taste. There is the work, worry and tears, the back-pedaling, editing out what just doesn’t work or dies a slow death. There is the just perfect, most often from serendipity and there are the failures. Failures teach and break hearts. We start over, redo, rethink and …that is a better thing than one thinks.

A failure establishes only this, that our determination to succeed was not strong enough. —Bovee

No Regrets

Accept the pain, cherish the joys, resolve the regrets; then can come the best benedictions—“If I had my life to live over again, I’d do it all the same.”

The last few weeks, actually, the whole of May had been a series of missteps, oops, weather and disappointments…oh, and doctor appointments, which is kind of like all of those rolled into one. I don’t do doctor appointments well. You’d think I would be so use to them, what with my mother’s long list of appointments and my own while I was sick that I’d take them in stride. You’d think, but, no.

And the weather/gardening has just plain been frustrating, but finally, I have the vegetable garden in and my lettuce, chard and spinach sprouting. That makes me smile and gets me anxious for some fresh produce. Not that I’ve been without completely. I’ve been enjoying my chives and parsley for about a month. The asparagus has been a big disappointment. Only about two feet of my twelve foot row of the vegetable has come up. But then, the weather hasn’t really been very sunny or warm.

I did finally get my annuals planted. I had to do it in bits and pieces, between rain storms and cold. Frankly, not exactly the way I enjoy planting. No marathon day of planting tons of flowers. I’ve had to scale back over the last few years, eliminating many flower beds and pots. While scaling back there was a huge sense of loss and sorrow, but that loss has turned out to be the best thing for me. I think, sometimes, a forced hand is actually wisdom catching up with you.

It seems this month had been particularly difficult in the caregiving area, too. My cold turned everything so topsy-turvy that my poor mother is a bit out of step. I feel bad about it, but I’m doing the best I can and thank goodness, for my husband. There’s road construction near her house and it is bringing another challenge into the mix, for both of us.

I read an article in the Reader’s Digest, My Daughter, Myself, about caring for a disabled child. There was a lot of information about the caregiver. Though this article addressed caring for a disabled adult child, it really doesn’t matter who you are caring for, so much of the difficulty is the same. The writer, Sallie Tisdale, writes that caregiving is not just another job. I tend to look at it that way, as another item in my long list of to dos.

But there is objective burden—the physical labor— and subjective burden—emotional burden (often negative) like stress, tension, worry, guilt.

I’ve written all my life. I let so much of that go when my kids were small. You lose words, plots, ideas in the minefield of motherhood. Interruptions are a way of life and you simply pray you do not lose too much. When the kids grow and leave home you think you can devote yourself to this work of yours that does not let you go. You don’t expect to be faced with another, different role as caregiver.

It’s not as if I didn’t know there was an emotional cost, but seeing the words, reading about this mother struggling to care for her adult child, does put my situation in perspective. There is much to be grateful for.

Sometimes I’ve thought that this is what I should be writing about, though my heart wasn’t in that. This…my life as a writer, and wife, and mother, and daughter, this journey that I’ve found myself on. I wished I kept notes, thoughts, writings about each detail of this journey. It might help someone else going through this. It might help me. To see the struggles, the heartache, the decisions I’ve made that have impacted my writing. All of it.

Because now, if I was to write a memoir, I’m afraid I’d leave out the best and worst and yet….This was much the same decision I made when I was a young mother. I didn’t write my novel waiting in the bleachers while my oldest son played soccer, I didn’t craft poems while my youngest took drum lessons. I didn’t write essays while my middle son added to his insect collection. I helped catch bugs and know how to spread a Monarch’s wings for display. I saw when my oldest son made a goal or lost the game. I know just how long it took my youngest to learn paradiddles.

So, while we sit in the waiting room for another doctor appointment, my mother and I talk. There are hundreds of words I haven’t written, the book I’ve just finished took longer than it should have, I’ve written fewer poems, to be sure. And I pray I’m making the best life and writing life I can, with the fewest regrets.

I’ve written about this before, but when I have a month like May has been I need reminders of why I do what and how I do. I need hope that I’m not going to lose too much.

Hopefully: There is something in us that is wiser than our heads. —Arthur Schopenhauer

Lilacs and Lilies-Of-The-Valleys

My office is filled with the scent of lilacs. I couldn’t resist bringing in the dark purple and snowy white pinnacles even though it’s a mite too soon and they’re not fully open. Lilacs and my mother seem intertwined. I can’t think of one without the other. There has always been a lilac bouquet on my mother’s kitchen table in May.

It’s nice to remember my mother in earlier days. Remember she has not always been confused, confusing, frustrating or distracted. Nice to remember I haven’t always been balanced on this delicate, sharp edge of wife/caregiver/writer/daughter/grandma/mother. Remember a time when I didn’t have to consider how to spend those few spare moments.

Nice to remember a time when the idea of pursuing my dream did not involve so much juggling of time and mind. ‘Mothering’ my mother is…uncomfortable, complicated, taxing. Finding the boundaries of caring-giving has been challenging and I do so many things wrong. And all the while I’m caring for her there is my writing nagging me, as well as my responsibilities as a wife, mother and grandmother.

In all that mix, I have to find a way to take care of myself. That’s hard. For me, writing and the garden is my best source of caring for myself, bringing peace and calm to my mind, but both comes with their own stress.

What I do in all these cases is ask myself who I am. I often wonder if I can continue to write while caring for my mother and all these other pulls. And it always comes down to this: I am a writer. Always have been, always will be. When I was sick and I couldn’t write…that was the biggest ache, the one that made me question who I was, if I could no longer write. That is not to say it didn’t hurt to let my mother down. It is to say, you are who you are. You cannot fight that and I don’t think you should.

Hummm…I’ll pick a big mug of lilies-of-the-valleys too. I don’t think it would be too much. Would it?

Plan B and School Bells

Disappointment, changed plans, frustration. That about describes the last several years. You’d think I would get used to it. It really is the norm, isn’t it? I’ve said it before, life is plan B.

I was all set to trot on over to the hospital today with my mom and get our annual breast exam. Fun times, to be sure, but I really did want it done and over. You know, that checked of the list of things to do. But I’ve been fighting a little cold that just keeps giving and giving. The cold never really put me completely under the weather. I haven’t yet felt really bad, but Saturday and Sunday night I ended up awake most of the night, coughing and sometime around Thursday I lost my voice.

Talk about frustrating. No, I’m not talking. That’s just the problem. Or one of them. I just didn’t want to get around my mom with this cold or anyone up at the hospital that had to be around me. I get into these coughing jags and…I wouldn’t be able to talk to the people helping us anyway. I sound like a sick squeak toy. I can’t help my mom know what’s going on. No, I just cancelled.

I worried about doing that. It will make later this month even crazier and I’m not looking forward to that. The weather is just plain, the pits. I’m so behind in my gardening that…, but you know what? I’m reminded of an epiphany I had many years ago.

I try to accommodate the other guy. I always have. When I was a stay-at-home mom, I adjusted my schedule for everyone else because in my head I always thought: I’m just a mom, this or that person’s time is so much more important. I devalued myself. When I started writing I had to try to learn to put myself and my writing, at least, equal to everyone else.

It has been a tough lesson. I still find myself going back to that other thinking. Only this time it goes like this: I’m just a struggling writer. It’s not like I’m making tons of money here, or anyone’s waiting for me to finish. It’s not like it’s the next greatest novel, I’m writing. It’s….

I have to give myself a good mental shake. Tell myself that what I do and my time is every bit as important as anyone’s.

Ordinarily I would have broken my neck to get me and my mom to the appointment, because I made the appointment, therefore I must drag myself there and not inconvenience anyone. There was just no excuse for being sick on the day this or that was schedule. What is wrong with me…? And on and on…But I learned, in a not so good way, that you just don’t get to schedule sick days. You can say all day long you don’t have time to be sick, but sick has other ideas. And has sway, too.

On another note: Do you know how hard it is to get along without your voice? Every cold or throat problem I have goes straight to my voice. We now have great technology that can take the place of it, but it doesn’t work for every circumstance and I’m not much of a texter. So, I’ve struggled not to talk so not to damage my voice. But…how do you get someone (or your dog and cat) to listen to you when you can’t call their name or get their attention? I’m a writer, I can write notes to my husband, but the dog is not impressed and quite frankly, the cats ignore me. Well, actually, the cats ignore me anyway.

By the way, that old school bell my husband thought I was crazy to buy at the flea market last year ( What in _ _ _ _ are you getting that for) has come in real handy. Bless my heart.

Trying

If you don’t enter the lion’s den, you will never capture the lion. Seung Sahn

Finally, a sunny day with rumors of warmth and sunshine for the whole rest of the week. It feels like a huge weight lifted from my shoulders and mood. It was a long, gray winter and spring. And truthfully, I’m not sure I should believe those rumors either, but I am going to bask in a bit of sunshine.

I’ve made huge progress on Tie-down. After the critiques from the last contest I studied the comments, decided what rang true for me and what didn’t. Then I fixed a few things and started getting it ready to send out. The query letter and synopsis are nearly finished, too, which is the hardest thing to do. I think about the journey the book and I have made and I’m very proud. If nothing else happens but that I get it to the best work I can do and if I’m proud of it, it will be so much more than I thought I could do a few years ago. Tie-down may end up in a box beneath my bed, I don’t know, but I’ll still be proud.

There have been so many times I almost gave up on this, times I actually did: packing it away for over a year, the fear or heart ache of unpacking it again and the faith I had to find to do it, all taught me more than any workshop could.

I remember how overwhelmed I felt when I opened the box with all the research, notes and the manuscript of Tie-down. I stared at the stuffed full box for a long time, searching my heart and I knew I would be overwhelmed. I had to begin with something small and concise, something that went to the heart of my writing and myself.

But I couldn’t not write and I had to finish this book to ever move on to all the other writing still in me. Somehow, I had to find a way to slip into the lion’s den. Poetry helped more than I thought it would. I’m so glad I took the chance that it would and so glad the idea came to me in that moment of despair.

If I hadn’t taken the chance on the poetry helping me write and begin again with Ella and the Tie-down Man, I wouldn’t have entered the Writer’s Digest Poetry Contest either.

Funny how that works, isn’t it?