Newspaper Column for March 20: "To ma'am or not to ma'am?"

Hi, all! Here’s the link to my newest column in The Greenville News, “To ma’am or not to ma’am.” I’m interested in how y’all were raised. Did you say “ma’am” and “sir” growing up? Did or do you teach your kids to? Is this a cultural thing? Oh, the trials of teaching manners to preschoolers…. Hope you enjoy, and if you do, please share!

Thursday Newspaper Column - Feb. 27, 2014

Hi, all!

Here's the link to my newest column at The Greenville News. Hope you enjoy!

Also: The Greenville News is asking folks to tag them on Twitter (@GreenvilleNews) and Facebook and Instagram with your own memories and photos of The Big Snow of 1988.

Newest Newspaper Column

Hi, all. Here’s the link to the online version of my newest column at The Greenville News:

“Olympic TV ads hit home with moms and dads”

It’s got Winter Olympics, parenting, commercials and dogs. Hope you enjoy!

I've Been Whupped

Folks, I’ve been whupped: by two wonderful but needy children, by a week of no preschool due to snow–during which my 4 year-old and I both had the flu–by a job I love but is a lot of work (yes, husband: I hear you. I know I shouldn’t assign so many papers, ’cause then I wouldn’t have to grade them).

Whupped by my final semester of graduate school (where I want and hope and try to stay engaged and productive), by this wonderful new weekly writing deadline (i.e. my new newspaper column), by a house in which the mess multiples like Hydra’s heads, by writing the next novel in any spare (ha!) moment I have, and by always–always–wanting to be in every single place at once, so my family won’t miss anything.

But I am missing things. So I’m not signing off here, but just stepping back a little until the summer. My posting will be sporadic, but I’ll be sure to link to my weekly newspaper columns when and if they’re available online, and I’ll keep y’all posted with any other writing updates. As always, I’ll drop in if I see something too great not to share. I will also try to update my author Facebook page with news and maybe share a little on my Pinterest boards (I’ve recently posted new stuff there).  

I hope you’ll forgive me and stick with me! And please don’t be a stranger: I want to know what you’re reading and doing outside in the great big world!

First Newspaper Column is Out!

Headshot for The Greenville News
by Paula Player Photography

Hi, all!

I'm thrilled to announce that my new parenting/outdoor/general life column is now up and running in The Greenville News! Makes me very happy to have a byline in my hometown newspaper again.

To check it out, go here.

And be prepared to read about Shakespeare and refrigerator magnets.

Writing a Newspaper Column & in Need of Advice

Nielsen.com

I’m happy to announce that soon I’ll be writing a weekly column for The Greenville News in Greenville, South Carolina. Greenville is where I grew up, and The Greenville News is the place where I earned my first paycheck as a writer.

The column will focus on parenting, the outdoor life, empowering girls (especially) and anything in-between, all with a personal and regional touch. It’ll appear every Thursday starting in late February.

If y’all have any ideas for what to call the column itself, I’d love to hear them! (I’ve never been any good at titles.)

Returning to Montpelier and VCFA

Our bed. In packing mode.

This is the state of my bedroom. For my Mom, this will probably bring flashbacks (or, as I like to call them, fond memories) of the state of my teenaged bedroom.

But no: this is my bed, now, as I pack for 11 days in Montpelier, Vermont, at the Vermont College of Fine Arts. I fly out Wednesday morning for my second residency, and thus the beginning of my second semester in the MFA in Writing program.

I'm looking forward to it: 10 days of lectures, readings, workshop, and just being around writerly people. I'll get a new advisor for this new semester, and I'm curious about whom it'll be. And as much as I'm a wee bit sad (and a bit anxious) about leaving my family for that long--namely my two year-old--I'm looking forward to 10 days of just thinking about myself.

Sounds supremely selfish. But it's true. Only having to worry about me, about where I need to be and what I need to do, will be heaven. It also doesn't hurt that I'm renting a house in Montpelier with friends I'd made over the last residency. I'm envisioning wine on the front porch, exchanging of book lists, lots of talk (okay, gossip).  

My first semester as an MFA in Writing student was an interesting one. It flew by, and I never truly felt like I'd a minute to slow down. Truthfully, it was a balance act--teacher/mother/wife/writer/student--with a landing I'm afraid I didn't quite stick. I'm hoping that this coming semester will be a bit more manageable, if only because I've done it before.

Running the gauntlet
(Photo credit; en.wikipedia.org)

Even as I write that--be a bit more manageable--I cringe. Because I know that won't be true. Happily, my novel comes out September 15th, which is obviously a dream quite literally coming true. But with it comes several months of promotions, some travel, and quite a bit of work. I'm also teaching classes. And, oh yeah, back being a grad student. Trying to coordinate these roles alongside navigating family life at times feels like running the gauntlet.

You know the gauntlet, right? It can be as fierce as the picture to the right--all medieval and brutal and sharp--or as ridiculous as one of those Japanese reality shows where the contestants are knocked by enormous rubber waterwheels into foaming florescent water. My life seems more like the latter--really, really funny at times. With an ouch.

It's been an exceptionally busy few weeks. Good weeks, but crazy ones. My daughter is out of school. My husband took a new job that has him traveling and working from home. (More on the two-people-in-the-house-working-from-home hootenanny in a later post.) We celebrated his birthday and our 8th anniversary with our first date in months, which was wonderful. We went to an early movie and dinner in Asheville, N.C.

My husband and me, celebrating our 8th anniversary

(The movie, Snow White and the Huntsman, which I thought I'd be ambivalent about but which I really, really enjoyed. Charlize Theron is fantastic as the evil queen, Chris Hemsworth brings surprising dimension and even tenderness to the Hunstman, and Kristin Stewart makes a darn good bad-ass. Plus, the abundance of Golden Globe, Emmy and Oscar-winning actors is a win: Ian McShane, Theron, and more.)

I've yet to figure out how to successfully navigate life as a fully-functioning (read successful) workingwritingMomwifefriend. I've read dozens of books and blogs on the subject, hoping that one would hold the magic key. Most say the same thing: get organized, schedule, enlist help, make time for yourself.  

Time for yourself. Bah ha ha ha ha.

Kidding, kidding. It is possible. It can be done. Just maybe not this week....



* I may post while at VCFA, I may not. I hope you all have a wonderful end of June!

Poetry as Prayer and Parenting on the Fly

This week has been a doozy.

On top of the normal--you know, all those things I signed up to do because I imagine myself Lynda Carter in shiny red go-go boots: teach classes, be a grad student, write a new novel--my husband and I have had a shake-up in our work worlds. And to top it off, our 2 and 3/4s year-old has decided that life would be much more fun if she did the following:

From lasplash.com

1. Wake up every morning at 4 or 5 a.m., bright-eyed and bushy-tailed (I love that metaphor--it makes me think of Big Bird), shouting our names and being sure to enunciate every syllable.

Ma-Ma? Ma-Ma! Da-Dee! I. want. out.
I. want. some. orange. juice.
Ma-Ma? Da-Dee! I'm. thirsty!
Can you tell me a story? How about Wylie and Winnie the Pooh and Christopher Robin and Piglet and Eeyore and Kanga and Baby Roo and Rabbit and Owl go to the PLAYGROUND! And swing on the bouncy swings?
Ma-Ma? Dah-dee?

2. Shorten her naps to about 30 - 45 minutes, when only last week she was taking two to (sometimes) three hour naps. This is not cool to do to the Mama. Not when the Mama is in the midst of final exams.

Portrait of Cate the Great taken from Goodreads

3. Channel her favorite alternate ego: the Russian despot. You've probably heard of her, if you've been reading here. Well, she and the Orlov Trotters she rode in on are back.

This week alone, the Czarina resorted to physical violence with her sainted mother and father, shrieked at her loyal dog, mopped the floor with her flailing body, practiced her ninja skills (okay, so moving away from the Russian metaphor) on various objects around the house--including the sofa, her books, and her loyal stuffed animal subjects--and screamed, "No! Off with his head!" when offered her usual favored blueberry yogurt.

In addition to the Czarina's royal moodiness, our faithful family dog has decided that anything making a noise outside the family compound is a threat, and must be eliminated. This includes the mailman, the small dog in the yard behind ours, the screened door, the neighbors having a conversation outside in their own driveway, the recycling truck, joggers, road bikers, planes flying overhead, the wind, the birds, etc.

I make light. But it has been stressful. All of it. And I've lost my temper. Of which I am not proud.

Some people, in situations like these, find solace in prayer. Or talking on the phone to their friends. I certainly pray, and I sometimes talk on the phone to my friends... when I can find my phone. And when I've remembered to charge it.

And though I'm no poet, I have always found solace, relief, inspiration, peace... in poetry. Through the years I've come to think of poetry as prayer--of poets as writers winging out their best hopes, their most gorgeously realized dreams to the universe, and hoping somebody picks up on it. Mostly, I get my poems from my daily dose of The Writer's Almanac. This morning did not disappoint.

There it was, "Eagle Poem," by Joy Harjo. And in its first lines I found my relief: "To pray you open your whole self/ To sky, to earth, to sun, to moon/ To one whole voice that is you./ And know there is more/ That you can't see, can't hear/ Can't know except in moments/ Steadily growing, and in languages/ That aren't always sound but other/ Circles of motion."

Because isn't that the very definition of our daily lives as we stride--sometimes muddle along--through the universe? We are constantly moving in "circles of motion," and it is so very easy to close. To put up our personal blinders, our make-it-through-the-day sunglasses that shade the side roads, the inessentials. But isn't part of prayer, prayer to whomever and whatever we choose, to release, to "open your whole self"?

My Grandmama Jean was convinced by the power of prayer. That, in itself, would be enough for me. But I've always been certain that words have power, and that by putting those words out into the universe we are pleading for our own release, hoping in our darkest places that the Mystery will answer back, in one way or another.

My parental prayers change on a daily basis. They move along the lines of, "Let the world be kind to my daughter," to "Let my daughter be kind to the world." Mostly they sound more like, "Grant me patience."

And sometimes I pray simply that there is blueberry yogurt in the refrigerator.

Searching for Wonder Woman

Wonder Woman. My hero (ine).

I have been not-so-secretly obsessed with Wonder Woman since I was four years old, when I got to be her for Halloween. It remains my favorite of many wildly creative Halloween costumes (man, my Mom could sew), and included red rainboots, stars-and-stripes Underoos, and aluminum foil magic bracelets. I felt powerful. At four years old. I never wanted to take it off.

It didn't matter that I was a tiny towhead better suited for a Heidi costume: Wonder Woman was my girl. I loved her.

Wonder Woman has followed me throughout my life, and once lived on a huge poster on the screened-in porch of a cabin in the North Carolina mountains that I shared with six other 20s-ish women. We were outdoor educators (basically a fancy way of saying camp counselors and trip leaders), most just out of college, working through the Fall and early Winter on group programs for middle and high schoolers--in hiking, biking, team-building, paddling, climbing, you name it. The cabin wasn't insulated (in fact, the windows were covered with screens, which is interesting in October in the mountains), and we slept in our sleeping bags in a row of bunkbeds, tobaggons on our (sometimes wet) heads and double layers of socks on our feet. On the other side of the cabin lived the male counselors, and though they were a bit smellier than we were (only a bit), we were a big, happy family, silly and raucous and entirely invested in working with kids and teenagers and living an outdoor life.

I have to pause a moment. Man, I loved that life.

Okay. So, Wonder Woman. One of my buddies in the cabin stuck the poster up on our screened porch, so we could see it every time we left and entered the cabin. Wonder Woman began to feel like a welcoming committee, after sometimes days of being out with 6th or 7th graders, or high schoolers, trekking through the Appalachian backcountry. I started imaginging that she smiled at me, that she'd give me imaginary high-fives when I'd return sweaty and dirty and happily exhausted.

Today, as a 30s-ish woman, I've got Wonder Woman magnets on my fridge, and a ridiculously cool Wonder Woman mug (I'm actually drinking out of it as I write this). It says, in bold, slanting black letters, that "This Amazon Princess Will Not Bow to Any Man!" Awesome.

I'm even teaching my two year-old daughter to say "WONder WOman!" with the same inflection as the '70s TV show theme song. And if you ask her who her favorite superhero is, she'll tell you, just like that.

I am so proud.

But lately, I find myself reaching for my Wonder Woman mug far more often (I used to just drink from her on Friday mornings, when I was feeling especially sassy). I need her magic bracelets, her gold headband, and certainly her invisible plane, now more than ever.

Every modern woman, I think, attempts to be Wonder Woman. Most of us have jobs, families, avocations, homes, and some of us have kids. Though the balancing act of being a modern woman has become a sort of cliche, especially in modern media, we're juggling all these aspects of our lives like a Ringling Brothers' clown riding a unicycle center stage and tossing up tomatoes. The spotlights are blaring and hot, and beyond the ring of light the bleachers are filled with the faces of our family members and friends. We don't want to drop anything.

I don't have a solution for this. If I did I'd sell it on t-shirts. At the moment I'm caught up in my own wonderful but bone-tiring roles of writer, teacher, mother, wife, student--and I don't feel that I'm doing anything well.

And so, for the thousandth time in my life--including senior year of college, when in order to graduate, I desperately needed to pass a math test that looked like hieroglyphics; or, for that matter, when I was in labor with my daughter for 20 hours--I am calling on Wonder Woman. I need her back in my life, go-go boots, booty shorts, bustier and all.

Because she's my favorite superhero. Because she deflects bullets with her wrists. Because, I think, she gets me.