More Bloody Days and Other Craziness

trying to relax this way

Here is what I know today.

First, I need wound care. This surgical incision–still bleeding after two weeks–isn’t healing properly. I’m looking forward to getting that out of the way.

After this wound clears up, my future holds a few more medical adventures.

I’ll be tested for Marfan Syndrome. I’ve been suspected before of having this, but now I’ll be properly tested. My mother died at 45 of an aortic aneurysm, and I’m 44. So. Seems I should have my heart checked. If I do test positive, my son will have to be tested as well. That’s the most worrisome thing of this whole mess. And we will both have a lifetime of echocardiograms.

And I’ve got this stage one invasive cancer that apparently is fairly common in women over 60. Women my age aren’t supposed to have it. Because of my, ahem, unusually dense breasts, regular mammograms won’t detect future cancerous growths. I’ve got a lot of MRIs to add to this lifetime.

More immediately, I’ll be having five to six weeks of daily radiation. I’m sure some of you out there have experienced that. I’ll find out what that’s like.

With luck and penny-pinching, we’ll be able to afford all this.

On one of the medical forms I filled out this morning, there was a question about my activities. I wrote that I taught and that I wrote. The oncologist asked me what I wrote. I told her I had a novel coming out this year. She asked me a bit about it and said congratulations. A little while later, she was speaking about my case in a dictaphone type thing, and she said, “The patient is a teacher and a novelist.”

My heart did a little squee. The oncologist said I’m a novelist!

It must be true.

Funny how so many of us–maybe not you though–need to hear someone else say it to make it feel true.

Speaking of mug shots…

a book cover

Do you ever google people from your past?

Hmmm?

Well, okay. So.

I set my novel in 1985 because that’s when I was a teen and because I didn’t want to deal with cell phones and google.

I used my hometown as a starting point for my novel. But then my fictional town of Lake Belle became something more than where I grew up. The connections between the two are now almost nonexistent.

The novel isn’t autobiographical, but writing a particular scene did bring my former step-sister to mind. So, I googled her name. It was late and I haven’t seen her in 25 years. My dad ran into once while she was working as a cashier. He didn’t recognize her. My dad is like that.

Anyway. I google this girl of my past. She is forever that girl in my head. That young teenager who hit be with a baton and protected me from an aggressive boy. She’s the girl who when I found a way out of the crazy house we were living in said, “How can you leave me here?”

Saving myself.

She was such a tough girl. She could fight and shout, while I just sat quietly with my head down. I thought–she is so strong. She’ll take care of herself.

Googling her, I found her mug shot. For battery. It was a random search and I didn’t expect to find anything. But there you go.

I’m not entirely sure how I feel about learning this information. Seems wrong for people’s mug shots to be online, doesn’t it? Feels wrong to search for people too–but also tempting. I’m as curious as anyone else, especially when I’m putting off the really hard work of editing my novel.

She isn’t in my novel, but some of her spirit is in an odd roundabout way.

So. Have you/would you google someone form your past? I don’t know if I’d recommend it.

The Past–there’s always more of it.

me a very long time ago

A couple years ago I took to writing small bits of memoir in this space. I didn’t set out to. Those life stories just fell into place–though I’d never had a desire to write a memoir. It was a writing memoir, every story connecting to the writing.

I stopped. Maybe I was repeating myself. Maybe I didn’t have anything interesting left to tell. But I want to revisit those stories and see if their meanings have changed.

I listened to a story on memory research. The researchers concluded that the more you think about a memory, the less accurate it becomes. The only way to have an accurate memory is not to think about the memory.

I sense a paradox.

Or is a conundrum?

You know if you handle something too much, it wears away. Why should memory be any different?

Do you ever find yourself in an argument with someone about what happened int he past? You’re certain you are correct, aren’t you? Sometimes though, just once in a blue moon, I notice something in the memory is out of place. Something has fallen into the memory that shouldn’t have. And I wonder–how did that get there?

Like a memory I have of my mother angry and throwing silverware into a cardboard box. I believed this memory for a long time until I realized that the silverware had never been kept in that particular drawer–even though the memory is quite clear. Well, I would’ve three or four then. And it is a small detail. Perhaps is doesn’t matter.

How accurate do you think your memories are?

The Wish Gods

Sometimes I feel like this guy.

I was nine when I understood what people meant by, “Be careful what you wish for.”

I’d wish for my dad to get married. Well, okay. Maybe the expression should be, “Be careful what you wish for unless you’re very, very specific.”

If I’d known that at nine, I’d have wished for my dad to marry someone nice who won’t cause me to leave home and to steal my own stuff.

Perhaps the wish gods are the most wicked of all the gods. The wish gods work in tandem. The first one plants the wish in your mind. For example, you might suddenly realize you wish to be a writer.

The wish grows. The wish roots itself deep in your mind and your soul. By the time you realize you might have been had by a wish god, the roots are so deep, you can’t rip it out without ripping yourself apart.

And then perhaps comes the other wish god who gives you what you want.

Oh. In the meantime, other wishes have been planted, and you are a big wishing mess. And no god has created a big enough wish weed whacker to get this under control.

Okay, enough of that.

I’ve gotten my wish, and that is a great thing. I just hope I know what I’m doing.

And don’t get me started on the hope god.

Women Are Awesome. How about if We Stop Murdering Them?

I don’t remember when I started to care about women. (And I’m not going to say women’s issues because it’s not a self-contained status sort of thing. We’re half the population—-nothing special interest about that.)

In grad school I complained about a professor who told the class his favorite bar was called “The Silent Woman” and out front it had a picture of a woman with her head chopped off. I was told he had tenure and to go away.

In college I complained about a physics professor who said, “You ladies with your pressure cookers will understand this…” I was given extra points on my grade and told to go away.

In 10th grade a male classmate who sat next to me in the computer class told me repeatedly how he was going to find out where I lived, force his way in, and show me how he was “a real man.” I complained to the office. They told me to avoid him and try not to provoke him. (Even by sexist standards, I failed to understand this. I was a flat-chested, make-up-less bookworm. Short of not existing, I didn’t see how I wasn’t going to provoke him.)

In 7th grade I was sent to the office for slapping a boy. He had me pinned to a wall and was about to punch me. He wasn’t sent to the office. I didn’t get into trouble because, as the guidance counselor said, everyone knew I was “really a nice girl.”

In 5th grade I had a button on my person that read, “A woman’s place is every place.” I’d found the button in a bowling alley parking lot. I think it had already been run over. But I pinned it to my purse.

In 3rd grade I complained to teachers about a boy because, “He shouldn’t be talking to girls that way.” He had looked up my skirt and asked me to kiss him. I kicked him really hard. I was told to play nice. He got in no trouble at all.

And those are only the moments I’m going to share.

Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of about violence against women around the world and in school shootings. And today I read a piece riffing on the famous quote, “Well-behaved women seldom make history”.

And another piece about having The Right Reader.

It’s funny how everyone agrees with the saying, “You can’t please everyone,” until they’re the one not pleased.

Recently a male facebook friend made disparaging comments about the Duchess of Cornwall–Camilla Parker Bowles. His main complaint wasn’t that Charles had cheated on his wife. Sure that was bad. But the bigger sin was to cheat on his wife with someone ugly, and he hoped the if William ever cheated on Kate, it would be with someone pretty.

I am insecure about my looks, and I had to ask my friend if he really thought that women judge unattractive were underserving of loving relationships. Really? Honestly, while I think Charles is a cad, I reluctantly admire his ability to devote himself to a woman whose looks are constantly insulted in the media. Here is a man who ignored his pretty, young wife for an older, dowdy woman. How cliche breaking is that?

In most places a woman is only as valuable as she is pretty. And virtuous.

I think one reason I had trouble killing a character in a short story recently was because that character was a teenage girl. Before her death, she had not been virtuous… Gosh, now I’m rethinking the ending again. Don’t we have enough violence against women and girls? Then again, because it happens, shouldn’t we write about it?

So, I realize that my “right reader” would be someone who cares about women too.

Do you ever consider how your characters reflect the culture or an issue that matters to you? And I don’t mean being didactic about it. Just, do you consider such things?

Show!

Emily's art and mine!

More art or more writing?

I had an art show today, and it went well. People I didn’t even know bought my art! A few friends bought art too. And friends may tell you they like your art to be polite. But few people part with their money to be polite.

And I give people this blog address (see! look! over there in the side bar is a link to some of the art!), but it doesn’t feel very all that it should be.

But a proper website? Really?

The odd thing is that I feel the best part of this blog is done. I spent those months writing something of a memoir, and now what do I have to say?

I must be crazy to be a writer and an artist and a mother and a teacher… I am not made out of energy and time.

But the show today was good. I’m thankful for every person who came.

The New Year and the Old Years Long Ago

a Florida childhood

New Year’s Eve I finished reading Girls of a Tender Age, a compelling and disturbing memoir.

Mary-Ann Tirone-Smith writes about her childhood and the murder of a childhood friend. The story would’ve caught me even if a classmate of mine* hadn’t been murdered back when I was in the eighth grade. She was not my friend, but her death helped shape my childhood.**

Reading this memoir about death and arriving at the end of the year, brought this past to mind, and all the death that edged my narrow world in central Florida.

My mother’s grief at the death of her favorite brother, our dog shot by a passing motorcyclist, my mother’s attempted suicide, my mother’s boyfriend who taught classes on death and dying and who punched holes in the wall, the classmate murdered, the man at my window in the very early morning dark, the step-mother who kept a folder of dead-girl news stories, the best friend whose aunt was murdered, and the steady stream of stories of serial killers in Florida (an orange grove is a great place to leave a body), and a fascination of murder mysteries.

And the shooting at the grocery store my dad goes to, the destruction of hurricanes and sinkholes, the alligators…

All turns the writer’s imagination.

And now I’m finally reading Alias Grace–more murder for the New Year.

And why, by the way, is Margaret Atwood such a brilliant writer?

Well, in this year I think I’ll be posting much less. At least until something worthwhile comes to mind.

Enjoy the New Year and the stories it brings.

—-

*I thought about not linking to the page about my classmate’s murder. Seemed morbid to do so. But at the same time, her death mattered. In a recent episode of Doctor Who (a show that deals a lot with death), the Doctor said, “900 years of time and space and I’ve never met anyone who wasn’t important.”

**I’ve written here before about when I woke up to a man at my window, which was level with my bed, the bed pushed against the low window so that I could get a breeze in the heat, and that the man stood with his hand near my face and watched me. This was four months before Tina was murdered. And now it was an uneasy feeling to read that her suspected killer used to break into homes and stand over girls’ beds. Tina lived to the south of me at that time and her body was found to the north. It is foolhardy to jump to conclusions, but hard not to.