scribbling

Mothering

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My daughter had her very first Mother’s Day yesterday, and it was powerful. I watched her all day basking in new motherhood, remembering the instant when he was pulled from her under all that sterile white surgery light, and looking forward to the mysterious string of years ahead with her son.

Her son. She spent every waking moment yesterday delighting in the gift of him and wondering how, years and years from now when he’s all hairy and mannish and wearing his cap backwards, how she’ll ever be able to let him go into his life without her. She talked about first days at school and terrible girls gathering, and how the hugs will be fewer.

He is a baby. Levi cruises around testing his periphery, his abilities, his almost-walking-alone freedom, and he falls down. A lot. As a spectator yesterday I watched my own daughter mothering, and what she didn’t know – what it’s so hard to explain – is that it happens by degrees. Levi took three fast steps yesterday, tottering and grinning and breathing hard, his fat fists in the air balancing like an infant tightrope walker. Three fast steps away from Mom and toward a footstool. That’s how it begins.

It’s easier to see the milestones when you’re not the mother and that is not your child. There he goes, I wanted to tell her, and he’ll never come back to you exactly the same boy who left. That’s the whole delight and ache of mothering, because at the same time there is my own baby, the one pulled from me in the white light of another room almost 22 years ago, and she’s having her turn now. A woman.

As a grandmother and a mother, I’m hoarding these moments.

Consignment Shop (NaFloScribMo)

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The mother/daughter team drags a torn black trashbag full of baby items and I suspect nothing in there ever belonged to either of them. Mama has an odor, wheezes, gave her front teeth to meth and is still high enough to think she’s pulling off normal. Mama’s insistent, though, hand on hips she wants top dollar, many dollars, any dollars.

No one else in the store. Just Mama, Daughter, store owner, me.

The daughter is a youngish thing, belly slack from teen pregnancies, sporting an unapologetic black eye. A catfight, a man, a door, something. Lots of reasons to have a shiner and no real reason to cover it up. While I wait in line she steals a toy and sees me watching as she sticks it under her shirt. She doesn’t care. This is what we do. So what.

The store owner lady takes a step back from Mama and toward her cash register. She’s got Christmas light earrings shaking slightly below permed hair and her sweatshirt has a Jesus fish pinned next to silver baby feet. They both float just above her heart. This isn’t the kind of customer she thought about when she dreamed the baby consignment shop with its plush infant baubles and tiny Easter dresses hanging just so on the racks. Like a year-round church-basement baby shower. Not today.

Mama’s tired of waiting so she heaves the lawn-and-leaf bag on the counter and dumps it out fast. A small mountain of dusty baby clothes, and from the middle an unopened can of powdered baby formula falls out and rolls against the daughter’s foot. When the girl and her black eye bend down to get it, she pulls the stolen baby toy out of her pocket and places both on top of the clothes. Here, mama. These fell out.

Mama is tweaking and and scratching her arms and looks ready to get loud when the bell over the shop door tinkles a bit. They all turn and look at me, but I’m still there.

Redecorating and National Floating Scribble Month (NaFloScribMo)

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The grades are in, my hair and nails are freshly done, the storms are on haitus, I scribbled at the coffee shop with my friend Steph, and a delightful colleague gave me a gloriously old typewriter. All is right with the world.

I’ve done a little blog redecorating as well, and the end result is that I’m just a little less HTML-stupid than I was before. I found scads of free XML blog templates out there and have had the best time learning how to tweak them. For those of you using Blogger, there are some great sites out there with lots of layout choices. Bloggerbuster, BlogU, Suckmylolly (it’s not a porn site, I promise), and Blogcrowds. there are literally hundreds more, but these are enough fun for now. None of this is too hard, really. Keep in mind that I’m a gal who’d rather use a manual typewriter than a computer, so this stuff had to be easy. Most of those sites tell you how to do it anyway. It’s best if you create a playing-around blog that’s hidden just to goof off with the templates. Big fun and a fabulous time waster that – unlike Ebay – doesn’t cost a cent.

I have a great deal of writing to do and finally the time I need to do it. This is the time of year they should have NaNoWriMo instead of in November. November is truly the cruelest month, especially for academics and students and such. I’ve decided to have my own Scribble Month, beginning today. Who gives a damn that it’s not May 1st – my Scribble Month, my rules. It’ll be kind of like a Guys and Dolls floating crap-came, only legal. And without Brando, dammit. I’ll change it every year. This year it starts on May 9th, and ends on June 9th at midnight – NaFloScribMo. If you’d like to play along, here are the rules:

1. Write something every day that’s complete. A story, a poem, a chapter, a memory, an anonymous letter, a scene, a rant, an essay, a manifesto – form doesn’t matter. What does matter is that it’s complete. That way there’s an ahhhhhhh sense of accomplishment at the end of the day.

2. Forgive yourself for Shitty First Drafts, because that’s what these will all be. I plan to have a Rewrite Month sometime later, so save your OCD perfectionist tendencies for another time.

That’s it. Just two rules. If you want to join and find yourself at a loss, try my prompt site or hang on until Sunday for the restart of the No Tellin’ Weekly Scribble Challenge, which has not been forgotten – just on a finals-induced break. I’ll come up with a trendy blog badge for anyone who wants to participate in NaFloScribMo, and you can all slap it on your blogs and such.

I have to go scribble now.

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UPDATE! NaFloScribMo now has a nifty blog badge. Join in and display this one proudly!

By the numbers…

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This particular funnel cloud ravaged parts of Conway County four days ago and killed two people. When the worst was over, Arkansas counted between 11 and 13 tornadoes on May 2nd that took a total of seven lives.

A lot of numbers. There is YouTube footage of several tornadoes taken by some storm chasers from out of state. I’m not including a link here because the running commentary on the video proves a startling disconnect between viewing storm-as-art and the reality of people – children – dying as a consequence of the storm. It’s in extremely poor taste.

I can’t stop thinking of Ed Buckner, KTHV meteorologist. After the storms moved east and all those numbers started rising, he looked like a man who’d been hit by one of the uprooted trees. Clearly, Ed hoped he could transmit safety and people died anyway. I imagine it’s a terrible thing to predict acts of God for a living, and even worse when the predictions are accurate, the warnings go out, and things still turn out badly. There are limits.

There aren’t any hard numbers for how many people were saved, and that’s a shame. There are near-miss stories everywhere, though, and some of them are too difficult for me to think about.

Let’s hope this is the end of the worst of it, at least for this year. I’m not sure our hearts can take any more just now.

Bill and Hillary: Family Album

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In the middle of all the verbal fisticuffs and political mayhem, I keep returning to this picture. I found it some time ago and planned to use it for something snarky, but I just can’t. Look at them. A million years ago before the campaigns and the bad press and the blue dress and the winning. Back before they ate from the tree.

And it strikes me that all this history they carry on each other’s backs, all this accumulated striving and aching for more and less, all of it is in the seed of this picture. In this moment they have no Secret Service detail, no publicized broken hearts or policies. They aren’t yet parents or Presidents.

Everything we know of them is after this photograph. He never inhaled and she never exhales. There’s always a race they’re both running. I honestly can’t see either of them on CNN now without thinking of the innocence in this picture.

Weekly No Tellin’ Scribble Challenge, and last week’s winner…

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Last week’s scribble challenge asked you to write a “Dear John” letter in fifty words or less – much like poor Carrie’s infamous Sex in the City post-it note break-up. The entries just poured in. Four in all. The momentum is building.

While all of the entries were heartbreakingly sweet, Candace is the winner with her delicate “Stick a Fork in Me, I’m Done” break-up note. If you haven’t checked out her blog Crazy Texas Mommy, you must do so immediately before the Feds shut her down. Congratulations, Candace! Copy/paste the coveted No Tellin’ Scribble Challenge Winner blog badge over at your place so the Feds will know you’re no flower to be trampled underfoot!

I’m a day late posting results and a new scribble challenge. Forgive me. The dreadful tornadic weather and too much rain did something funky to my buried DSL line. Communication with anything but the neighbors has been spotty at best. The AT&T repairmen are cute though, and they can come on over any time they want to.

This week’s scribble challenge is a retrospective sort of shindig. There’s a special place in my heart for angsty, finger-snapping Beat Poetry, man. Dig? That’s the form, cats, and the subjects to choose from are the political race and Dolly Parton. You can even combine the two – sort of a country-music-meets-Wolf-Blitzer. With a goatee, man. To inspire you, I’ve got a little beat poetry from High School Confidential below. So go write something and post it in the comments or give us a link so we can find the poem on yours. Groovy.

Weekly No Tellin’ Scribble Challenge, and last week’s winner

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Stand back, ladies and gentlemen. We had three – count ’em three – entries in this week’s challenge! This is a real contest now. While the Viagra-ku entries were all equally stunning and sexually empowering, there can only be one winner.

Last week’s No Tellin’ Scribble Challenge winner is Tim author of the three-part Viagra-ku, ” A 70-year-old Man Attempts a Seduction.” Completely enchanting, Tim, and only a little disgusting. Congratulations! Copy/paste the award badge to your blog and let everyone know you’ve arrived.

This week’s challenge should be interesting because it has narrow parameters. This week, I challenge all of you to write a “Dear John” letter in fifty words or less. These can be cold or impassioned, handwritten or text-messaged, post-it noted or slung through a window tied around a rock. Give us a little scenario if it helps – the letter itself should not be over fifty words, but the scenario can be as long as you want.
Post your entry in the comments section or post a link to it from your own site. After last week’s 300% increase in entries, I’m understandably excited about this one.
Ready? Break!

Dippity-Do and the Sacred Rituals of Beauty

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I’ve spent an entire, glorious week just goofing off. I’ve written scads of good and not-so-good pieces, travelled to a typewriter shop in North Little Rock, sang “You Are My Sunshine” endlessly to The Perfect Grandson, and read whatever the hell I felt like reading. I watched old movies – Gaslight, Toys in the Attic, Adam’s Rib, and anything I could find to stay away from CNN’s election coverage. If we’ve entered into a new war, please don’t tell me until Monday morning. I’ve still got two more days of this mindless bliss.

It’s only fitting that I rounded out the spring break week by making a leisurely trip to the salon. Now, I go to the salon for hair and nails regularly, but those trips are squeezed between very busy hours of very busy days during godawful busy weeks. It’s a delicacy to stroll into a salon, grab a cup of coffee, and just hang out until I’m transformed. That’s what I did today. No clock-watching. No knee-bouncing hurry. And I just basked in the glow of not needing to be anywhere else but Athena’s Salon.

When I was a little girl, women performed the beauty parlor ritual at least once a week. My mother did. Every Wednesday she had a standing appointment at the Jo-La-Ru Beauty Parlor, a sacred place where women shouted gossip from under noisy hood dryers. The objective, as I remember it, was to come in looking fairly haggard and leave with a beehive so manicured, so voluminous, that it was difficult to sit upright in the Plymouth without harming the teased masterpiece.

It took a long time to achieve such hair, especially before blow dryers and hot rollers. And there were hair products then that I never see now like Dippity-Do and that pink tape for bangs. It was all brush rollers and Aquanet at Jo-La-Ru on Wednesdays.

And the talk! Well, I honestly never heard much of it, no matter how loudly Mom’s womenfriends shouted from under those hair dryers. Mom was an expert at distraction and always managed to Find Something For Me To Do. I was only in it for the sweaty-cold Coca-Colas in squatty bottles from the ten-cent machine. But over my head I could hear the hoarse whispers of ruined lives and substandard medical care. I wish I could remember the particulars, but I was too busy coloring and drinking Cokes.

What I did learn was invaluable. I discovered beauty and exactly what it took for a woman to chase it down and own it. I earned my diploma in proper lipstick application and using a teasing comb. More importantly, I learned that these women – when away from their menfolk and gathered together with heads full of brush rollers – these women became themselves. It was like someone told them all to collectively exhale and they did it. They smoked Bel-Airs and sat with their ankles apart and laughed out loud. They tore casserole recipes out of magazines and told stories I wasn’t supposed to hear. They went without girdles. All afternoon.

These country club women let loose on Wednesdays at the Jo-La-Ru Beauty Salon, and it was a sight to behold.

What I did today at Athena’s Salon wasn’t quite that shocking. We live in different times and there’s a woman running for President, for God’s sake. I sat there getting my nails done anyway, continuing at least some part of the beauty ritual my mama taught me. Tina (Athena) and I laughed and gossiped a bit and I left manicured, rejuvenated.

Just so you know, there was a good five or six inches of clearance between my hair and the moon roof of the Avalon when I left.

Weekly No Tellin’ Scribble Challenge, and last week’s winner

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Let me tell you a little story. A long time ago when my father was coaching track at Hendrix College and I was just a wee thing, there was a summer track and field program called the Cinder Kids. The name came from the red-dog cinder dust used on the track, back before there were painted lanes and such.

As the coach’s kid, I had to participate. At five, hopscotch was my event, and they mysteriously didn’t include it. I was a terrible runner. Really, really terrible. Daddy didn’t let that stop him from entering me in every single event that day. I ran. I perspired. I lost. Over and over and over. My knobby legs ached and I was covered to the waist in a thin film of red-dog cinder dust.

Because the officials gave out swanky medals to all first, second, and third place finishers in every event, there were a lot of kids out there swaggering around with highly decorated t-shirts. Everyone had at least one medal, but not me.

Then I heard my name over the PA system. “Monda Strange, please report to the officials’ tent immediately.” I dragged my dusty, losing self to the tent and there was Daddy, smiling like a crazy man.

“Hun, you go on over to the long jump pit. They’re just about to start. Hurry on, now.” And he winked.

I did what I was told, but I sure didn’t want to. I slogged my five year-old, no-medal, red-dog dusty self to a long jump pit made for grown people and got in line to lose. Somewhere out in the middle of the field I heard Daddy’s ear-piercing whistle, the kind coaches can do without even using their fingers because they’re all good like that. I saw him from far away point at me, then hold up three fingers. He whistled again.

It took me a minute, but I realized I was standing in the long jump line behind two other people. I was the third one entered. Shiny medals for first, second, and third place, and there were only three of us.

Needless to say, I took the bronze that day.

I’m telling this long-winded story to illustrate the nature of competition as it relates to the First Ever No Tellin‘ Scribble Challenge. One entry, one winner. In all probability, Cruelanimal scared off the competition with his stunning poem. It’s difficult to stand in the shadow of such fine literature.

Way to clear a room, Cruelanimal, and congratulations! Don’t forget to pick up your award by right clicking on the picture, and copy/pasting it onto your own blog as proof of your creative superiority! Add it to your vita!

You’d think that such a slim turnout on the first No Tellin‘ Scribble Challenge would deter me from continuing. Hell no. I’m a hopeful kind of gal and this is Spring Break. So sharpen your pencils and find some scratch paper.

This week’s scribble challenge is inspired by a favorite site of mine, The Spam Haiku Archive. Go ahead, click on the link. The next time you look up, you’ll have lost three hours reading Spamku. It’s fun, it’s easy, it’s 19,000 haiku about potted meat.

Writing a haiku is simple – one five-syllable line, one seven-syllable line, and another five syllable line. Three rhymeless lines. With a nod to Spamku, I challenge you all to write a haiku about Viagra. I’m serious.

Write a Viagraku.

This week’s winner will, of course, earn the right to sport the No Tellin‘ Scribble Challenge badge on their blog. So enter often and don’t be too disgusting. The challenge ends Friday night, and I’ll announce the winner on Saturday.

Tally ho, poets!