A Valentine Story . . . or Not

This is my mother on her wedding day. Those of you who have read my short stories and novels have probably figured out that my relationship with her was contentious. I shouldn't put that in the past, because she is still alive, more or less, as she approaches her ninth year in a nursing home. Alzheimer's has taken its extortionist toll on her, so that I feel pity even as I spend far more time on her now than she ever spent caring for me. In the past few months, I've finally begun to accept her by realizing that if she had been a friend, rather than my parent, I would have seen her in a different light.

As a child, she loved to draw. When she was seventeen, she left her home in Layfayette, Indiana, and came to Chicago to put her talent to use. She managed to land a job in the art department of J. Walter Thompson, the venerable ad agency. No small task in those days. Kudos, Mom. Her version of bedtime stories were tales of illustrating the big ads of the late 1940s--rushing to meet deadlines, carrying huge storyboards down a windy Michigan Avenue, coping with the harassment from the "boys" that women dealt with in those days and, my favorite, "How I Met Your Father." My dad also worked for J.W.T. (Little did I know that those bedtime stories were watered-down versions of Mad Men episodes. In too many ways, my parents were scarily similar to Don and Betty Draper.)
 
But I digress from the Valentine theme of this post. I recently learned that there was a component to "How I Met Your Father" that I'd never known. This past December, a few days before Mom's 89th birthday, I got a phone call from a gentleman who identified himself as an old friend of my parents. He'd heard from mutual friends that my mother was still "with us" but that my father had passed away. He remembered that mom's birthday was December 11, and wondered if it would it be all right to send her a birthday card. As we talked, I learned that he had dated my mom for a while, and still thought of her as "the cutest little thing." He was clearly quite smitten. As he told it, one weekend back in 1950, she talked him into throwing a party for a new fellow at the office. Turns out that new fellow would be Mom's next boyfriend, and eventually, her husband and my father.

That is such typical behavior for my mother. (Listen and learn, Betty Draper.)

My parents were married for over fifty years, weathering the trials of life together, partying and fighting in a manner befitting the Greatest Generation. Their battles could be ferocious; I often wondered why they stayed together, but each of them must have had their reasons. The dynamics of love and marriage are known only to the two people involved. My mother, for all her faults, knew how to capture the hearts of two men for more than half a century. Kudos, Mom.

A New Year

Liminalesque--of or relating to a threshold. What better time to consider the crossing of thresholds than at the beginning of a new year?
Periodically, I feel the need to justify this awkward title. Choosing Liminalesque for a blog title is a bit like choosing the Isle of Elba for a vacation spot: the charms are there, but they are not immediately obvious.
Liminalesque is a name I concocted from the word liminal. My husband was the first, but not the last, to point out that this flies in the face of common blog-sense. Even the root word of Liminalesque isn't in most people's vocabulary, and it is just plain stupid to have a blog title that no one can spell, remember, or pronounce.
Yet I am fixed on it, as attached to it as I am to my short, square hands. In my dreams, I may have long, tapered fingers, elegantly tipped with perfect, oval nails, but the truth is harsher. My ugly mitts and my cumbersome blog moniker are part of who I am. 
As we roll into 2015, I want to thank all of you who read my blog, and I encourage you to please leave comments. May the thresholds you cross lead to marvelous and exciting new places.

Christmas Gift

I just received this email, forwarded by my husband. It was from one of his friends whose girlfriend had been reading their copy of The World Undone:

Now I got a story for you, but even more so for Mary.  Cheryl had some work done on her car, and being disorganized she found Mary's book which had been at the shop since August. (I didn't know it was lost).  The mechanic didn't know where it came from but was happy that it found its owner.  He said it was the most popular reading item in the shop competing with a wide variety of periodicals.  One lady asked if she could stay even though her car was finished, so that she could keep reading the book.  She stayed there for over 3 hours.  Numerous people commented to the effect that "That's a really good book."  I believe a mechanic also found the book, for it's a bit oily now on the cover and dog eared.  Merry Christmas to both of you.  Pete

Merry Christmas to all!!
 

A Guest Writer

On one of our morning walks a week or so ago, Woki and I spotted this basket of apples on the ground. All alone at the edge of the sidewalk, it looked poetically abandoned and forlorn. I was reminded of a poem my grandmother wrote many years ago. She was quite a proficient poet, with far more publishing credentials than I have. Her work appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, and New Yorker Magazine to name just a few.

SONG OF APPLES

On your doorstep, dear, at dewfall

I will leave an offering:

Apples, yellow, russet, crimson

From the topmost boughs I'll bring.

Country apples, all unpolished,

Bright as the Hesperides'

Golden globes by dragon guarded,

These from harvest-heavy trees.

With them is my love, a windfall,

Far from perfect, at your feet--

All too easy to be gathered,

Will you have it? Will you eat?

                                                      --Mary Adams Winter

Chill Out

This photo was taken last week at the nearby wetlands when the air was a balmy 75 degrees. On a whim, I took the morning off writing, leashed up the dog, and set out for a lovely long walk. Good decision. Ideas for revisions and character development danced along the path with the late-season butterflies. My spirits rose inversely with my falling stress levels. A good walk is a great way to re-calibrate self-induced pressure (e.g. writer frenzy), with an added benefit of being the #1 way to figure out how to fix those sticky issues with character, plot, and . . . uh, real life.
After an unusually sticky week--broken appliances, a wad of rejected manuscripts, a three-hour dental procedure, setting up hospice care for my mother, quelling my fury with politicians, insurance companies and petty bureaucrats--I'm not focusing well on writing. Re-calibration required.
The air temp has plummeted to 40 degrees, but  instead of agonizing over the two vastly different ideas I had for this post, I will put those ideas on hold, suit up for the chilly weather, and head back to the wetlands.

Sometimes A Bad Movie Is A Good Thing

Last Friday, we rented a movie from the library (not one of the ones pictured above). The opening scenes were great: compelling, dramatic, full of promise for an intriguing tale. Two hours later, my husband and I wondered why we'd wasted our time watching a movie that fell flatter than three-day-old beer. After all the writing seminars I've been to in the past few years, I wanted to analyze exactly what it was that had failed. It wasn't the acting; it wasn't the cinematography; it wasn't even the basic story line.
It finally dawned on me that the element that had tanked this movie was just what has been so often criticized in my short stories: the main character was so shut down she didn't connect with anyone, including the audience. Bingo. Finally, the light shone on the biggest mistake I've been making over the last six or seven stories. Writing about people who have been traumatized is tough because they usually are shut down emotionally. By watching this movie, I could see how playing that angle too closely can keep the character from connecting with reader/audience, which means we either don't care or don't believe what happens next.
It's always so easy to see what's wrong with other people's work. Clearly, the author should have shown us the internal feelings of our heroine, her relationship with her mother, her desire to absolve herself of guilt associated with the tragedy of her youth. So obvious. But not to the author who is intimately familiar with every detail of a character's life.
"Dig deeper." "Crack open your character's motivations.""Give us more to connect with." And figure out how to do it without "telling" instead of "showing".
No wonder so many authors end up bat-shit crazy.

This Is Not My Garden

Today is the last day of August, and if I am to maintain my goal of at least one post a month, I need to write. Now.
Not long ago, I did a search of excellent authors with reputations for equally excellent blogs. Guess what? Most of them hadn't posted in months. Too busy writing "real" stuff, no doubt. And while I agree that blogs are useful for connecting with readers and strengthening online presence, they take away writing time.
This summer, the Muse has been good to me: I finished one novel, made notes for another, and whipped up (very) rough drafts for six short stories. I didn't have time for much blogging, and even less time for gardening. But therein lies the great thing about an active imagination. Ensconced in my office, I can pretend the lovely garden in the above photo is just outside my door.