Just writing and writing and writing.....

I've been (re,re,re)writing my children's book and am nearly done, so it can go on to the illustrator, and I've also been generating pages like a fury for my Young Adult novel. Thus, no writing for the sad, lonely blog. So, funny story: the children's book is about a little girl and a walrus and various adventures they have, while the YA novel is about a girl who runs away from home to Castro Street (aka gay sodom by the sea). I was talking to a friend today who thought that all the above characters were in the same book. She asked me a little uncertainly, "What exactly is the Walrus doing on Castro Street?" I got a good laugh out of that and now I think I'm stuck forever with the image of my merry walrus lumbering down Castro Street wearing assless chaps.

What the @#$%...? (Or, You Should be Dancin' yeah!)

Been writing the YA novel for the last fourteen hours. Should go to bed, but I just have to pose a few unanswerable questions before I can get to sleep.

So the teens went to a dance tonight. Before they went we were talking and the conversation went like this:

Scene:
A shabby kitchen in the midst of a never-finished remodel.

Cast:
Mom - middle class, middle-aged, bleeding-heart-liberal white woman
Twin2 - brown-skinned daughter of Mom. Twin1 and Twin2 attend public school, in part because their parents are broke, and in part because their parents wanted a racially diverse environment for them.

Mom: So, are you looking forward to the dance?
Twin2: (mumbling) I don't know.....
Mom: Oh. How come?
Twin2: I don't know
Mom: (In an aside to readers: It's amazing how little they do know lately....)
Mom: (to teen): So what do you do at the dances?
Twin2: We stand around and talk.
Mom: So you don't dance?
Twin2: (shakes head)
Mom: Does anyone dance?
Twin2: Yeah, the black kids, and it's nasty!
mom: You mean like dirty?
Twin2: yeah. I don't like it.
Mom digests this for a moment.
Mom: Does ????? (their biracial friend) dance?
Twin2: No.
Mom: Does she talk to the black kids?
Twin2: No. They're mean.
Mom: Just to her, or to everyone?
Twin2: To everyone. They're all just mean.
Twin2 exits (stage left) to get ready for (not)dancing.
Mom stands alone and bewildered in the always unfinished kitchen of her American dreams, pondering the strange fault lines of race and class in this country and the deeply @#$%ed-up nature of the nation's public schools. Curtain closes.

Backstory: When Twin1 and Twin2 were in Kindergarden they had regular play dates with, among others, a little african-American girl named Jaquoiya. In first grade, a little (African American) boy named Promise was in love with Twin2. One day, to show his love, he gave her a special present - a brand new perfectly pointed Crayola crayon whose color name was the same as Twin2's name. Awwww. In second grade, more of same (but not as adorable as the crayon gift) and in third grade more of same.

Now here it is, a mere five years later, and these same children have become stratified, calcified, into seemingly irreconcileable groups. What happened to Twin2 and the others like her? What happened to Promise and the other boys like him? What is it in this system we pour them all into, that makes these kids feel they have to draw battle lines and choose sides?

Also, a question about a much less serious, but seriously ridiculous subject. When did white (and white-identified) kids stop dancing at dances? (In my day, said Ancient Mariner Mom, black kids and white kids ALL danced. OK, maybe not with each other that much, because if a white girl danced with a black boy the black girls usually threatened to beat the shit out of her. But Hey, at least we were all in the same room engaged in the same activity.)

So, as the bard said, if any of you have any thoughts about any of these things, share.

Busy writin'

Not posting much these days because I'm desperately trying to complete the first draft of my young-adult novel before school ends and the children begin their summer swarming. The first sentence is, "When Dorrie ran away from home she thought it was mere flailing chance that brought her to Castro Street." it's about a fourteen year-old girl in 1979 who runs away from home. Supernatural (and geopolitical) adventures ensue. Leave it to me to come up with such an incredibly commercial idea! An adolescent girl finding safe harbor with gay men in pre-aids San Francisco. I'll send a review copy to Pat Robertson!

Anyway, wish me luck in finishing it before the bored hoards descend. And then wish me even more luck on finding a publisher willing to take a chance on it.

Breakfast with the zombies

Spending time over breakfast with my two teenagers (think: me keeping up a one-sided stream of chirpy, cheerful conversation; them chewing and looking off into the distance as if entirely alone) I found myself wondering what I could have done differently with them. Should I have been reading shakespeare to them instead of Harry Potter? Should I have instituted chore charts earlier? Should I have taken them to soup kitchens on christmas to help serve dinner to the needy? In other words, what could/should I have done to make them not like they are now? I know the answer is, probably nothing. They're teen zombies; walking, talking, shopping beings in total thrall to their hormones. But the interesting thing here is that I, who was once a terrifying teen zombie myself, still believe in my heart that, with my kids, I should have done something, anything, better.

I was talking to a friend the other day who was telling me what she wished she'd done differently, raising her now fully grown child. "I should have made her do more around the house," she said. "I should have taught her more about duty and responsibility. But I just wanted her to be happy and I thought she'd learn from our example." I told her not to worry, that being in the adult world would teach her all those things. In a job, if you don't show up when you say you're going to, if you don't clean up your own messes, you get fired.

So, this morning, I remind myself of this; anything I missed will bump up against them in the "real" world of adulthood. But when it's your own child - the child you have spent so much effort on just keeping safe (don't get in to stranger's cars), alive (look both ways when you cross the street), and out of harm's way (don't play near the stove, don't put that in your mouth, don't, don't, don't!!!!!) - it's hard to say, 'Ok, they'll just have to learn that the hard way.'

There are lots of things my mother should have done, or not done. But that list would reach deep into cyberspace and be, in the end, entirely pointless. My mother is a good, kind, imperfect person who raised a daughter that is also a good, kind, imperfect person. And that's all I really want for my kids. It's just that right now i'm not seeing much of the good, kind part and am seeing all of the imperfect part. It's hard to trust that they, without me there to hold their hands and guide their steps, will find their way safely and well.

A hysterical Mom (at last!!!)

Seventeen years ago I was having bad stomach pains so I went to the doctor who told me not to worry, it was just a urinary tract infection. That night my appendix burst.
Fifteen years ago, after years of trying to get pregnant (delayed appendectomy, scar tissue, surgery to remove the scar tissue) I had a miscarriage ("Don't worry, it's common. Won't happen again."). Then I had another miscarriage.
Nine years ago, after years of waiting for my daughter Charlotte to start talking ("Don't worry, Einstein didn't talk till he was four!") she was diagnosed as autistic.
Five years ago my husband Kirk started having stomach pain ("Don't worry. It's just acid reflux"). He ended up in the intensive care unit with doctors talking to me about the possibilty of multi-organ transplant and maybe death.
So you can understand why now, whenever a doctor tells me not to worry I start hyperventilating.

This week, all week, my youngest daughter has been sick. She started out feverish and droopy. Then she began complaining that her neck ached. I took her to the doctor who noticed that the lymph nodes were swollen all over her body. I went home, went on line and the number one hit was lymphoma. Immediately my mind fast forwarded to my baby bravely undergoing chemo with her hair coming out in fistfulls.The next day she was no better and the doctor's office was flummoxed so we took her to the ER. They checked her and her lymph nodes out and proceeded to do a full panel blood screening. They were checking for, among other things, mono and cancer. Cancer! And part of me felt 'Well, Eliza's been healthy for eight years. I've been lucky with her far too long, so I guess this was inevitable.' We waited..........and waited..........and, finally, the doctor came in and told us...........that Eliza had a cold. What a delicious and novel feeling to be, for once, among the great hoard of hysterical women that are, apparently, always pestering doctors with their silly worries. "It's just a normal virus," they said, inwardly rolling their eyes at me, the idiot mom, who had wasted their time. I wanted to hug each and every one of those annoyed doctors, bring them all home-made dinners, make them cookies. Because I and my eight-year old daughter, for once, got to be the normal ones, the ones who stroll out of the hospital back to life, instead of the ones who stay behind with their hearts twisting in fear, their lives changed forever.

Star of Panama window, next step

As many of you know, in my massive amounts of free time, when I'm not writing, editing, looking after four children, and avoiding housework, I make stained-glass mosaic windows. I make them out of salvaged glass glued (with Weldbond - it dries clear!) to discarded windows. I've been commissioned recently to make a window of the view from a friend's old-family home in Ecquador, of a Star of Panama (aka Poinsettia) tree with Mount Chimborazo in the distance. I'm sharing each step of it here, with you, for fun and for feedback. The elements I'm including in the window are: 1. The tree in the foregound 2. Snow-capped Chimborazo in the distance 3. A pink garden wall 4. Bare earth below.

For step one of this process (see my drawing in the blog archives - February, "Star of Panama") I sketched poinsettia plants to get a sense of how they branch and sprawl when they're allowed to grow free, and how the leaves shift gradually from green to red.

Step two, which you see above, is a rough mock up of the whole window so I can ponder overall composition and color. Things I'm thinking about right now are the placement of the mountain (lower? more distant?) and the shadow under the tree. I think I want a basic diagonal movement from upper right corner down to bottom left. So let me know what you think. Thanks.

"That's so gay!" part 2

I was startled out of my usual AM stupor recently by a headline in the New York Times aking, "Is your car gay?" (My answer, as a good liberal, of course is, 'Whatever my car's sexual orientation, I'll love and accept it.') Briefly, the article said that there are cars that both gay and straight people see (positively or negatively, depending on how enlightened or neanderthal they are) as shouting out, "I'm Gay!" For Gay men, it's sporty little convertibles. For Lesbians, it's the "Lesbaru Outback." I'm guessing my 81-year-old male ex-Navy-captain neighbor is going to be surprised to know he's been flaunting his lesbianism..... Anyway, the article went on to say that, according to consumer surveys, however, the car most gay people buy is the Toyota Camry. Which is also the most popular car for all Americans. This average-Americanness is borne out by my experience; my closest lesbian friend drives a minivan strewn with her three kids' junk, and a gay male friend only rides a bike (which is unamerican, but then he's Canadian). So when someone says, "That car is so gay," what they're really saying, whether they know it or not, is, 'That car is so popularly American!" I think I'm going to start trying to use "gay" as an adjective more correctly. Some examples might be, "Wow, that urban sprawl is so gay!" or, more positively, "Don't you think freedom of speech is really, really gay?"

P.S. - Thanks, everyone, for the great comments on my earlier posting.