Apple Pickin', Autumn in the Air, the Muse Emerging

Autumn, or "Fall" as we like to say in the South, has come in wet to Western North Carolina. After a series of rainy weeks the colors have begun to change seemingly overnight, and up in Pisgah National Forest and out on the Blue Ridge Parkway the reds are brightening, and soon it will be peak season. When it is clear, the atmosphere changes, and the sky crystallizes with an October blue unlike any other. I am so ready for fires in the fireplace, hot cider, and hiking that I can barely stand it. Now, if it will only stop raining....

Lately I've been feeling as if I woke up and suddenly it was October. Indeed, I've lived in a sort of postpartum cave the past couple of months, and it's been warm and cozy and inhabited by the cutest creature on the planet, and I haven't been too proactive about crawling out of it. But my Wylie is only days away from turning 11 weeks old, my favorite of all the seasons has appeared in golds and oranges and reds, and I'm ansty with wanting to be outside and soaking up all of it. My greatest fear is that time is passing too quickly--that I'll miss it. And I don't want to miss anything.

If I can conquer this new-baby thing, I can rule the world... of that I am convinced. Anyone who can take care of an infant, get everything done in their day needed, and continue to produce interesting and entertaining art deserves to lauded as a superhero--or at least be given a big, fat ice cream cone. I am in awe of those writers, like Nora Roberts (yes, I am a Nora Roberts fan, and I don't care if she's the queen of romance: she writes like a dream) who pen bestselling novels at the breakfast table while their kids scarf down cereal or nap in the playpen. Mayhap I will get to that point. I sure as hell hope so. I want so.

Currently, it has been over a year since my novel has been "out" with editors at the major publishing houses, and so far nothing. I do not have my hopes up at this point, but I am ready to be writing again, and perhaps my current project can one day find a home... once it gets written, of course.

I dream about writing at night; about my novels and their plotlines and protagonists and crux moments. I woke up at 3 a.m. a couple of weeks ago yearning to write, with ideas twinkling across my brain like faulty Christmas lights, only to have them fizzle and disappear as soon as I lay my head. And I would've gotten up and padded to my desk and my laptop--I would've!--if it weren't for the fact that a crying, hungry infant would be waking me up only an hour or so later. And yes, that is a darn good excuse for avoiding inspiration... at least for now.

As October, that most glorious of months in the Southern Appalachians, slips towards bare, chilly November with a relentless swiftness, I'm trying to live in the moment. I'm walking my daughter and my dog down leaf-lined streets, admiring harvest decorations in Brevard's downtown, apple picking at the gorgeous Stepp Family Orchard in Edneyville, N.C. with great friends, wishing for cooler weather--and the ability to fit back into my pre-pregnancy sweaters--and being thankful, or at least trying to, every day, for this life. It is unbearingly sweet and terrifyingly short, and there is so much to be done.

Welcome to the World, Baby Girl

She arrived: Wylie Skye Crawford Dodson, weighing in at 7 lbs, 12 oz, and at a length of 20 3/4 inches at 3:53 p.m. on July 29, 2009. We are ecstatic, exhausted, and forever changed.

Missing Lawdy Mercy

In thirty-one years, I have missed our annual beach week at the Lawdy Mercy beachhouse only twice. This summer, I’ll add another miss to that count, and it’s making me feel like the one girl who didn’t get asked to prom—or, the first-semester college freshman far from home and as yet friendless, stuck inside a claustrophobic dorm room on a Friday night. Closer to the truth: I feel like a young woman heartsick, remembering with great pain every action, every moment spent with a lost love… replaying every second just to torture myself.

If this sounds like a close-to-petulant, “poor me” routine, that’s because it is. This summer, I’m forced to miss my family’s annual beach week—a vacation week at Garden City Beach, South Carolina, to which I look forward all year—because I happen to be 37 weeks pregnant. Three weeks: that’s all that’s left between me and D-Day, and the doctors have advised I stay as close to home as possible. The logical part of my brain knows this is a reasonable request meant to cater to my well-being, but the illogical part (the part that is right now imagining the feel of sand beneath my bare feet, watching myself toss a dummy into cool green waves and my black lab bounding after it, remembering the smell of the salt marsh and the eye-sting of a burning Lowcountry sunset—a sting because it’s just so damn beautiful) is just plain sad.

And torturing myself doesn’t make much sense, because as any woman—or partner of said woman—who has been this pregnant can tell you: nothing is much fun at 37 weeks. Certainly the car ride from our home in the mountains of Western North Carolina to the South Carolina coast, a good five and a half-hour drive even without rest stops, would be an exercise in torture for me. Add that to the fact that it’s bound to be a sweltering week outside, and inside the beachhouse the air conditioning is usually kept close to 80 degrees (my parents and my “second-parents,” owners of the Lawdy Mercy, all grew up without air conditioning and don’t see too much use in blasting it), and it would most likely be an uncomfortable week for me. Especially seeing as how, at this point, I’m annoyingly uncomfortable even in my own home and in my own bed. Argh. Scratch that: double ARGH.

But my heart just won’t give in to my head when it comes to being at the Lawdy Mercy. I can see them now, my family and friends, heading up from the beach at the end of a decadent day to drink cocktails on the back porch, the rhythmic creak of rocking chairs and the ceiling fans competing with the background beach music (who will they be listening to? Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs? Otis Redding? The Four Tops?). If it’s low tide, they’ll watch the sun descend into the trees across the marsh over Murrell’s Inlet, steeping the land and water and sky in a blaze of color that begins in fire and ends in a more sensual version of Easter pastel. If it’s high tide, they’ll quickly pack a cooler and take to the boat for a sunset cruise down the creek and out into the inlet. They’ll turn up the radio to one of the local stations, drink wine and watch egrets loop their graceful necks from the sanctuary of summer green marsh grass. As a kid, I used to sit on the front of the boat, let my toes drag the water and suck in the view and the smell of salt and pluff mud and boat exhaust as if it were the aroma of heaven.

I’ve always been like this about the beach. My parents have an old photograph of me as a toddler that never fails to crack them up: it was taken on the last day of one of our Lawdy Mercy weeks, when they’d just finished packing up the car to go home. In it, I’m standing in the driveway in a blue bathing suit—feet spread, hair white-blonde, my little hand pushed against the car door as if I can make it go away—and my sweet face is scrunched in misery, my little mouth open on a full-on wail, tears streaming down my face. Apparently, this wasn’t an unusual occurrence on packing-up day.

“You never did like leaving the beach,” my Mom says.

I still get this way, minus the crying, even though I am now officially an adult. Whenever we leave the Lawdy Mercy in July, my melancholy follows me up the state like Pig Pen’s dark cloud, somewhat dissipating around Columbia. My husband pretends not to notice, but usually buys me a chocolate milkshake.

I wonder if the little girl to-be who is currently shoving her miniature tootsies up into my rib cage and hiccupping disconcertingly down in my lower belly will feel the same way about her time at the beach?

It’s funny, but the further along I got into this pregnancy—when it started to truly feel real and lasting to both me and my husband—the more I began to think about just how much fun I’d have with my little girl, at the beach. I began to picture it in my mind, all of us—me, my husband, my family and friends, our dog—playing with an ephemeral, blonde-haired tyke in the shallows, in the sand, on the back dock. The day I truly let myself dream of this it was as if someone had jolted me with a live wire: the sheer thrill of imagining having a child and the stunning knowledge of how much I wanted it, wanted the pregnancy to go well and for everything to be “okay,” was more terrifying than anything I’d faced yet in my life.

So, what am I doing this week while my family is down at the beach, soaking up paradise, Southern-style, and I’m in my non air-conditioned house, grading papers and teaching composition to a group of ambivalent adult students, suffering through heartburn so nasty that it makes me want to funnel an entire bottle of mouthwash? I’m handling it like the mature adult that I am: I’m pretending like it’s not really the third week of July—that none of it is really real. Heck, it could still be June! And I’m the grand mistress of avoidance, the empress of ignorance.

I think I’ll get my husband to pick me up a chocolate milkshake on his way home.

Vive La Liberte!

How I love the Fourth of July! I just can't help it--I'm an unabashed patriot, lover of history, appreciator of those who came and saw and founded, who had dreams much bigger than mine. And in honor of this Independence Day, I offer the following thoughts (these folks say it much better than I, anyhow):

"You have to love a nation that celebrates its independence every July 4, not with a parade of guns, tanks, and soldiers who file by the White House in a show of strength and muscle, but with family picnics where kids throw Frisbees, the potato salad gets iffy, and the flies die from happiness. You may think you have overeaten, but it is patriotism."
~ Erma Bombeck

"Freedom is nothing but a chance to be better."
~ Albert Camus

"Where liberty dwells, there is my country."
~ Benjamin Franklin

"We must be free not because we claim freedom, but because we practice it."
~ William Faulkner

"There is nothing wrong with America that cannot be cured by what is right with America."
~ William J. Clinton

"My God! How little do my countrymen know what precious blessings they are in possession of, and which no other people on earth enjoy!"
~ Thomas Jefferson

"Freedom is the oxygen of the soul."
~ Moshe Dayan

"The real democratic idea is, not that every man shall be on a level with every other, but that every one shall have liberty, without hindrance, to be what God made him."
~ Henry Ward Beecher

"A patriot is he whose public conduct is regulated by one single motive, the love of his country; who, as an agent in parliament, has, for himself, neither hope nor fear, neither kindness nor resentment, but refers every thing to the common interest."
~ Samuel Johnson

"This, then, is the state of the union: free and restless, growing and full of hope. So it was in the beginning. So it shall always be, while God is willing, and we are strong enough to keep the faith."
~ Lyndon B. Johnson

"I must study politics and war that my sons may have liberty to study mathematics and philosophy. My sons ought to study mathematics and philosophy, geography, natural history and naval architecture, navigation, commerce and agriculture, in order to give their children a right to study painting, poetry, music, architecture, statuary, tapestry, and porcelain."
~ John Adams

"I know not what course others may take; but as for me, give me liberty or give me death."
~ Patrick Henry

"The preservation of the sacred fire of liberty, and the destiny of the republican government, are justly considered as deeply, perhaps as finally stacked, on the experiment entrusted to the hands of the American people."
~ George Washington

"Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it."
~ George Bernard Shaw

"Patriotism is the last refuge of scoundrels."
~ Mark Twain

"There, I guess King George will be able to read that."
~ John Hancock, after signing the Declaration of Independence

"Abandon your animosities and make your sons Americans!"
~ Robert E. Lee

"America is another name for opportunity. Our whole history appears like a last effort of divine providence on behalf of the human race."
~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

"America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves."
~ Abraham Lincoln

"It is from numberless diverse acts of courage and belief that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands up for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope."
~ Robert Kennedy

"May I never wake up from the American dream."
~ Carrie Latet

A Change is Gonna Come

There is a nursery in our house.

Each time I walk past the doorway and peer in--which I've been doing quite a lot these days--I have to blink: where once was my husband's office, filled with computers, file cabinets, papers scattered, MBA and other business books, and a couple of Johnny Cash and Alfred Hitchcock prints is now a clean, crisp room painted a sweet blue. There's a mission-style crib (donated to us by fabulous friends), an 1830s Federal style dresser we bought from an antique store downtown, a corner cabinet filled with stuffed animals, baby books, toys--and a lovely rocking chair, courtesy of my parents. I still can't get over the crib. I can't get over that most likely in the next 5 weeks there will be a tiny being habitating there.

My mother and my aunt camped out at our house for several days earlier this month, and took to the room with can-do gusto. They cleaned, primed and prepped, and painted the entire thing: walls, ceiling, trim. They helped me sort through the piles of baby clothes, blankets of different sizes, hats, shoes--all shower gifts--in an attempt to figure out what needed to be washed and ready before the baby gets here. Without them, I would be still staring at those piles, wondering what in the world to do with all those tiny little blankets. Heck, I still don't know what to do with the big ones.

Being eight months pregnant is a constant exercise in humility. I've certainly left the "honeymoon" stage of the second trimester and am now well into the intensely fatigued, awkward, hormonal, I-am-as-big-as-a-whale-no-lie throes of the third. Strangers everywhere--at the community college where I teach, on the street, in Subway--have abandoned the shy glimpses and sweet, knowing smiles and are now full-on staring at my tremendous stomach. Lately I've had to squelch the urge to smack them across the face for it; all that holds me back is the South Carolina in me, urging me to act the lady and stay calm. I don't know how long I'll be able to heed that magnolia-laced voice. It sounds remarkably like my grandmother.

My experience has been utterly Janus-faced, which I suppose is not unlike the rest of my existence before pregnancy. On one hand, I am struck dumb by a mix of fear and doubt and anxiety that my life is changing in ways I'll never be able to gain control over again: that I'll miss out somehow on the traveling and the writing and experiencing I treasured so as an unencumbered woman. That I'll never really be "me" again. This is an unnerving prospect, one that keeps me awake at night, unable to write about it in my journal or even in an essay for fear that putting it there makes it all real, happening. On the other hand, I am terrifically excited at the promise of this alien being turning somersaults in my belly, at the tiny clothes, the prospect of a new adventure, at watching my husband become Daddy, at the challenge of being me as a mother. The only hope for this two-sided sort of internal battle, I suppose, is that I've been this schizophrenic for 31 years--surely my brain is used to it by now.

Every semester I ask my college students to write under the header: "What do I want to do with my time on the planet?" Now, I find myself composing my own internal essay. Only I know, unlike many of my students, exactly what I want to do; my answers are more selfish than I'd like. And I wonder that I'll ever be able to fit everything in, the traveling and writing and exploring and making a difference and leading a noble life. I live in the constant knowledge that there's a chance I'll wake up one day having discovered I've walked the same path as everyone else, that I've "given in" to the conventional. And regret is a pisser.

But even in the ridiculously banal land of "preparing for baby"--and it is banal, with its pink and blue-ness, its bevy of unneeded things, its websites with asinine titles like "The Bump" (really--the bump? Come ON.)--I've found myself feeling new things and thinking in new ways I'd not expected. Despite my reticence and the stress circus going on my head, I feel a layer of confidence and surety that all will work itself out in the end. I don't know if this is my innate optimism or simply sheer insanity, but it's there, and it's welcome. It keeps me from crossing the line. Makes me smile in the oddest of moments. Relieves me that at least one thing about myself hasn't changed.

Summertime's Calling Me

In less than a week, it'll be June. As my split personality would say (who is younger, less literate and much more immature than I am), "holy freakin' moly!" The days and weeks are beginning their long, weighted slide into heady and humid summer, and everything in our house is turning towards preparing for a baby. "To Do" lists are mounted on my desk, the fridge, our bathroom mirror, my husband's desk, and there has been a sad lack of crossing things off... which should, hopefully, change soon as we slow our travel schedule and settle back into life in the mountains.

May has been a whirlwind of work, parties--for friends and for us, with baby showers--doctors' appointments, and travel. We just returned from a Memorial Day Weekend at Litchfield Beach and Debordieu Colony on the South Carolina coast. Our time was fabulously lazy and decadent, filled with yummy, fattening food, fannies planted in beach chairs, friend visiting, ocean and people-watching, and beach walks with our black lab, who takes to the sea and sand with infectuous joy. She literally does back-flips and doggie cartwheels (no lie) down the beach every time we're there.

I've started teaching an expository writing course at our local community college, and after a semester away from higher education am finding that I'm enjoying doffing my professor cap once again. The work is good and hard, but it's nice having something to occupy my mind in these final 10 weeks of pregnancy. Now, if I can only spur the creative process, set a schedule that includes teaching, writing, cleaning and preparing the house and yard, and still managing to soak in the magic that is summer, I will consider myself successful.

I hope that wherever you are, summer brings time outside with the ones you dig, sweet tea and grilled food, fireworks, and possibilities.

Spring

The azaleas in our front yard are blooming fuschia and white, despite the fact that I hacked them back last year in an attempt at "trimming." Just goes to show me that despite my mistakes, there is a resilience in my life that is continual, has held firm. Thank goodness!

I haven't posted here in a while, partly out of forgetfulness, laziness, and a dire, long-term case of unoriginality. My creative pulse is still very hard to hear. I don't want to blame it entirely on the little girl growing in my belly--causing me to resemble a blonde Oompa Loompa, or the Michelin Man--but I do think my brain cells are operating elsewhere, and in a completely different way. Artist and writer friends of mine, who are also mothers, have revealed to me (in differences of opinion) that my brain will never be the same again; or, on the other hand, that when this is all said and done I'll be more creative than ever. We shall see.

Lately it seems that life has been about the extreme, and specifically when I crave simplicity. The news is focused on pirates, ravaged economies, political parties are bashing their opposites over the head with pompousness, anti-abortionists are accusing pro-lifers of murder (as usual), hunters are gassing wolf dens, anyone on television under the age of 40 is dressing like an idiot, etc, etc, etc. Personally, I'm convinced that all this would resolve itself if folks would just be nice to one another. That and stop stop STOP drinking the ignorance Kool-Ade. But what do I know?My only inclination at this point is to hope and pray that my eventual little girl can grow up in a world where ignorance, extremism and arrogance are the exception, not the rule. Where people actually listen to each other.

Enough of my ranting. Too many of these blogs are people spewing opinions and everyday minutia no one really wants to hear, and so I'll relent at least for now, and apologize.

My little town, like so many others, is literally in bloom. The buds of trees are red, orange, pink--and that incredible, life-affirming new green that's almost impossible to capture in a photograph. It's a new kind of leaf-changing that has taken over the mountainsides, and the light hits the ridgelines in a new, hopeful way. Gorgeous. On my way to work two mornings a week, I get to witness deer grazing in fog-filled meadows, wild turkeys crossing from forest to field to creek. I'm thankful.

In this quiet, sometimes lovely, and often boring time of gestation I find my brain whirring from issue to issue--so quickly and confoundingly that all I can think to do is to shut down before I implode. I consider our house, which I love, but which must be cleaned, thinned-out, and organized before we bring a new life into it; our yard, which needs also to be picked up, managed, planted, tended; my career, floundering for a while now, which must be shored, strengthened, revitalized; my friendships, which I've let slide during this time of forgetfulness and question; my relationship with my husband, which I want to enjoy and celebrate before everything changes in both little and big ways; my faith, always moving and shifting like a mountain river; my family, these mountains where we live, hopes for the future, life. Now the fact that a huge change is coming--in August, no less--has me wondering whether I'm ready. I want to change and I don't all at the same time.

For now, here's to a happy Spring for all--to the hope that our country can heal, that the pompous blowhards will humble, that we can all get out and celebrate Earth Day, that life will renew and continue again better than ever. I know it will!