Gulf Island :: Cantubury Style

Dear Emily,

Greetings from Gulf Island National Seashore. We are camping along the sandy white shore with the sparkling gulf to our south and a foamy bay to our north. The days are a bit chilly but there’s plenty of sunshine so we are doing just fine. 

Here’s your postcard:

  
What we did not realize is that we were assigned a camping spot in the Cantubury Tales section of the park. We are not in the tent section of course, with the tiny walk in spots. Nor are we in the large RV area. Those Giants could swallow our vehicle whole, I suspect and then us get digested on their big screen TV’s. Ewwww.

Instead we are nestled happily amongst the misfit toys- some proper camping vans, a few tents, smaller trailers, and us. Our hammock swings freely between two live oak trees and the kids happily ride their bikes everywhere. 

Our next door neighbor is Charles. He is the sort of neighbor who you can’t help but be friendly toward. Warily and resignedly you exchange introductions, aiming for just the right amount of kindness, lest he spend all day hovering. 

Charles speaks with a slight delay and slur that makes me suspect brain damage though he has no problem recalling details. With bright blue eyes and a friendly smile he explains that he has been cycling for the past decade. Ryan is currently giving his bike a tune up, because well that’s the way he rolls. 

Last night Charles invited us to his evening fire. I intended to decline but as I walked to the bath house I noticed Charles was already gathering chairs, anticipating our arrival. Somewhere he had managed to procure three pallets to burn. 

Across the bay, as taps was being played at a naval base, I cooked our dinner, knowing we would end up at our neighbor’s fire. Less than an hour later, we were all assembled. Charles had also invited three neighbors from our section. 

Jackie Ray hales from Texas. With a friendly drawl we learn that he is a triplet, born 14 minutes after his nearly identical sisters. Their mom was 22 and thought she was carrying just her first baby; a single  baby. 

With white hair and a fisherman’s outfit, he pulls his birth certificate out of his vest. Who carries around his birth certificate, folded carefully in a plastic baggie? Well Jackie Ray does for one. I notice that he and my Dad share the exact same birth date. He shows me where they wrote “still born” on his official paper, then crossed it out and changed it to “live birth.” I wonder what that would do to a man’s psyche, walking around knowing you were an unexpected miracle. I ponder this as Jack pulls out a coin to show us. He found it while scuba diving with his metal detector off the coast of Honduras last fall. 

Charlotte and Lloyd have clearly been getting to know Jack and Charles because Carlotte chimes in with details when they are skipped over in stories. 

Tell about how the newspapers covered your life events through high school, Jack. 

Oh and Charles was the state photographer for Illinois back in the day. 

Charlotte just turned 80 so she has plenty of back in the day sort of days.  It would be difficult to tell her age by firelight. She wears her hair long and her gentle smiling face is accentuated by long deep wrinkles that make me suspect she’s been busy living these last 80 years. 

She and Lloyd met at Yellowstone National Park in the early 1980’s. Between the two of them they have children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren spread across the country. They just downsized from a bigger rig to a more medium sized motor home and retired from camp hosting. They both hold pilot liscenses though their flying days are over, so they say. They sold their home on land and are making good use of this home on wheels. Next week they’re visiting the New Orleans branch of their family but this week they’re doting on my kids. 

I have not seen Lloyd or Charlotte yet today. I suspect they’ll come outside when it’s a bit warmer. 

Jackie is off with his metal detector, participating in an officially sanctioned archeological dig. 

As trailers leave, Charles busily shovels their discarded ice into his cooler and collects wood. There will be a fire again tonight and I eagerly await the characters and stories we are sure to meet. 

  

Sent: December 31, 2014

 

I’m trying not to dwell on the last letter not making it to you.

Maybe just maybe the winds will bring it back to one of us sometime.

For now, another try.

December 15, sent (finally!)

Barely under a two month turn-around.

I shall try to get better at this.

October 28, received

A sunny, mild afternoon.

I hide in the laundry room,

Reading in peace, not folding towels.

Twenty-two thousand and counting.

I have 22 thousand words written on my book.

The way I have things formatted, that’s about eighty pages, though a normal configuration has me at about fifty. Fifty pages in seven months. That doesn’t seem like enough to me, but then I look at my word count and try to remember twenty-two thousand words from zero is not nothing. The fact that I will go back over it in a year or so and cut out large swaths doesn’t matter. I have written a small novellette of words, and created four giant posters that outline my plot. I know what I want to write, and that is not nothing.

Nevertheless, today I am in a deep fog. I have found out how easy it is to have everyday roadblocks keep me from my work. The immediate tasks of my last seven years have not gone away, and though I have gotten better at scheduling them, it seems easy to get stuck sacrificing my writing time before many other things that are less important but more insistant. I would say at least one writing day per week gets eaten up with someone’s doctor’s appointment, or a school kid with lice, or HOLY HELL THE TAXES, RIGHT NOW, THE TAXES. There’s no boss over here in my in-law’s spare room, getting pissed off if I miss another day. I’m beginning to toy with the idea of trying to get some freelance work as a translator, just so that I would have more pressure to get my ass over here, sit down in front of my laptop, and get to typing. My own inner boss is too wussy to yell at me. She’s much too understanding of all the circumstances, all of which are unavoidable. Naturally.

The problem – and I think anyone who writes can back me up here – is that the more often you miss a day of writing, the less you feel like a writer. The last few weeks, Thay has been ill more ofen than she has been well. She has stress of her own: her next round of exams come mid-June, and that will take it out of you if you’re also working a part-time job on the side. In any case, lately I’ve only written about once a week, for just a few hours. By now, I sit down and look at the last few sentences I’ve written, and feel about as strongly about it as I would about lukewarm cauliflower soup.

My biggest struggle is with dialogue, but without communication between your characters, you’ve got nothing. I can write the hell out of the play of sunlight in the lacy boughs of a beech forest, but making people talk is still hell. Just three weeks ago, I created a new character that I love: Stavros the gorgeous, gay Greek. I made him talk immediately, and now, when I look back at his conversation with my main character, it’s all, dear LORD, why did I make him GREEK? How the hell does one do GREEK dialect? And for the love of Pete, could I make him any more flaming? I am not writing for ‘Will and Grace’ here. I made him sound like ‘rote gay guy Nr. 3, the especially flamboyant one.’ NUANCE, Emily. Being gay doesn’t mean you have to have “theatrical hands” and talk incessantly. OY to the nth.

The cursor blinked at me for thirty minutes today. My fingers itched to fly over the keyboard and write paragraph after paragraph, but all I could manage was to pick at the keys like a chicken searching in the dust. That’s pretty much why I am here, after such a long hiatus. It’s not that I have anything of particular merit to write – I just wanted that feeling. I wanted the keyboard to make that satisfying sound again, without all the fretting and deleting and rewriting and deleting again. In a nutshell, I’m using you to give my fingers a workout, Linnea. Fascinating stuff, I know.

I know I’ll get back to the thrill. I always do. When I wrote about my main character getting attacked, my heart hammered and my ears got all hot. I just needed to come here, rattle it out of my fingertips, and remind myself of that moment.

Hey. Thanks for listening.

We Are…

Playing outdoors, trying to soak up as much of the non-rainy bits as we can before it gets much colder.

Harvesting the last bits of frost-sensitive plants.

Attempting to integrate this gorgeous hen into our less than friendly flock.

Observing around us the contrast that is Autumn. Cold nights with darkness coming early, sunny afternoons with brilliantly bright leaves. Bike rides and playgrounds, cozy inside corners and library visits. Cooking with wholesome garden goodness and the onslaught of a Halloween sugar. Hours spent deep in play and others working out math concepts. Making rooted winter plans and dreaming up ways to travel. (Not that we have ever needed reasons!)

Life is full and good. The days continue on as we settle into their patterns.

plum lucky

Sunny skies + drawing notebooks + a big bowl of popcorn + a bunch of audio books and we are on our way !

This time it’s two drivers and two kids in a roomy car. We are headed to a wedding in Philly (friend reunion!) with special sister/aunt time and a brief fall color tour /camping time in New York.
(You know Autumn in New York…)

My brother asked J&A what they are most excited about: visiting the zoo? Seeing friends? Favorite parks? Restaurants? Camping?

Immediately Amelia shouted: a whole week with MY Papa. And Jack agreed excitedly. :::heart:melt:::

You will also be glad to know that I managed to finish taking care of the more than 2 bushel of plums we got in Northport. I canned jam and straight plums (for us & grandparents) plus Chinese plum sauce & ketchup. I gave a bunch away, we are (too ) many, made plum cakes, muffins, fruit leather, and of course, a large vat of Japanese boozy plums. Finally, I pitted and froze the last three gallons and called it good. Phew!

I have six canning jars left to my name, a filthy stove top, a sticky floor, and two nice blisters of pride.

Ry seems relieved to see the bottom of the last basket (he can make coffee in peace again).

Ry: strawberries, blueberries, cucumbers, peaches, plums…all done preserving?
Me: you bet. Well except apples are next… and I’ll pickle the rest of the peppers…plus kraut… Oh and we have a quarter of a cow coming so we I will have to do something with that…

But I tell you- come November, we’ll have a full larder and lots of ready meals for the winter. And then we’ll be done…until we make Swedish korv at holiday time.

Oh boy, I think we had better hurry up and invest in an extra freezer…

But that (and the stove) can be dealt with next week. For now it’s blue skies and open roads!

Monkeys

There are months when things happen – a noteworthy change or two, some distressing news, a joyous occasion – and then, there are months when THINGS JUST WON’T STOP HAPPENING. Good and bad, fascinating or just stressful – the last few months have been full, no stasis in sight. At the first whiff of fall, our controls seem to have become stuck on “fast forward” “whirlwind” “tornado monsoon explosion.”

In August, Joshua started school. He decided to cut his hair short and got glasses. Suddenly, I could see his grown-up face. Isn’t it funny? You snap their picture for the millionth time, and there, in between the pirate snarls and the goofy, forced, six-year-old grin is one shot in which they may as well just throw their army knapsack and a hasty “bye, ma!” over their shoulder.

Then, later that month, he broke his arm. Yes, he went flying off the trampoline, which has a NET all around it. Was the net closed, five minutes after I had closed it? No it was not.

+++

All summer and on into fall, we have been watching this beauty be transformed back to what it should be. It’s almost done. Next year in summer, we will sit in it, play cards, and sip our cold drinks. It has been so much work, but so worth it.

+ + +

At the beginning of September, our au pair, Thay (pronounced “tie”), arrived from Spain. Germany greeted her with gray, cold rain for three weeks, because that seems to be Germany’s MO when anybody comes to stay with us. The first two weeks, I stayed mostly at home to get her acclimated and try to give Béla as smooth a start as possible – but she fit so well in our little world, that I was able to organize the house from top to bottom. All of the pockets of chaos that were festering in our house were thoroughly sorted, packaged, labeled in plastic tubs or thrown into a big pile in the garage. Since we bought this house from Martin’s parents, we inherited a lot of old toys, camping equipment, bedding, assorted unwanted holiday decorations… even four bags of old, dried-out clay… You name it, we had it, usually carbon dated to about 1970-1989. Well, now – thanks to Thay – I can walk all the way into both my attic and my basement storage space, and all my cupboards actually fit the things that are supposed to be stored there. Suddenly I have more space than I know what to do with.

The fact that my longest paragraph is about getting my house all ship-shape is making me feel embarassed. Ah well. Onward!

Thay is here so I can write. I finally sat down and started work again, after almost three years of solumn dust had settled on that forlorn computer file. What I’m saying is, I spent a lot of time coughing on that first day.

Also: hemming and hawing.

Also? Seeing giant holes in my plot.

And Also the Third, King of the Mole men: seeing the major thematic problems I’ve got going.

Also to the nth: I realized how much research is going to need to be done before I can write large chunks without feeling like I’m just stabbing in the dark at butterflies.

((but I wrote anyway. I wrote in the MORNING and for multiple hours. It was trippy.))

+++

Béla jump-hop-skips like a little pony wherever he goes. Either that, or he is sprinting – in any case, he is the living incarnation of forward momentum. So I suppose it should have come as no surprise to me that on one such occasion, he would stumble, fall, and bite one of his teeth out on the sideboard of our bed.

So he went from this, a month ago:

to this (yesterday, after two days of recovery):

I have to say, between one of my kids breaking his arm and another bashing a tooth out of his head, I’m more than just a little shaken up. Now mind you, my brain is staunchly PRO-learning hard life lessons. I don’t believe it does you or your children any favors to run around waving your arms back and forth in a bubble shape around your kids as they play. They have to fall down, they have to learn what to brush off and what really hurts, what is dangerous and when to be a daredevil anyway. What I have a problem with is that bad things can happen to them, even when they are being careful. I really dislike it that the world just reached out and bit out part of Béla’s smile. That I can zip the small hole in our trampoline, making a fairly safe situation even safer, and Joshua can still fall out of it and crack his bones in three places not five minutes later. It shakes me up. I guess what I’m saying is that I’d like my KIDS to learn their hard life lessons while I sit over here in the corner with a cup of blissful-ignorance tea.

Poor Béla. I think with a canine that size, we’re going to have to re-nick-name him Snaggle-tooth. Or Cletus.

+++

This is just a small sampling of all the things that are bombarding us at the moment. There are all kinds of other upheavals, big and small. Some friends and family are pregnant (you fall into both categories, my dear), some are trying and turning up with disappointment, cousins are getting married, good friends are getting divorced. Owning a house seems to mean that there is always, always something falling apart or in need of repair – and the hedge certainly isn’t getting any less unruly. There is an unending need to sort papers, make telephone calls and plan appointments. At five minutes until bedtime, I swear I can feel smoke pouring out of my ears while monkeys jungle-gym it all over the inside of my chest. It is a simple sum of all the things that happen in a day, and though I always find myself bobbing on the surface, I still wonder if this abiding feeling of “RED ALERT! TOO MUCH!” is ever going to disperse a bit, or if I am someday going to go under while red lights swirl and blink around my head. I’m getting the distinct impression that my life lesson might be something along the lines of This is how it is to be thirty-six and have children. Go clean the kitchen and then help with homework.

But then, I guess I’d choose turbulence over stagnation, most of the time.

I might need to start wearing a sandwich board with the words ‘MONKEYS WELCOME’ front and back. Just as a reminder. 

 

 

 

Great. A Wolf Lodge

I might possibly be crazy.

Today I loaded my kids, my over-90-year old grandparents, and my twenty-week pregnant self into the car and drove “Up North” for an overnight trip.

Three across the back seat. Two in boosters, three needed help buckling.

We would require a hotel suite, preferably near a certain relative’s house so we’d be close enough to visit before continuing on to the farm where my Grandpa was born.

As my dear Aunt Jan put it, I’m the organizer and she’s the shopper. And so, we find ourselves at Great Wolf Lodge. It’s a massive hotel complete with (way too catchy) theme music and a water park.

I’m happy to report that we’ve made it this far…so far. I asked for a suite that would require the least amount of walking for the grandparents. This put a only 1.5 miles from the lobby. Or so it felt when trying to be slow enough for the walker.

The suite is complete with a log cabin replica and bunk beds. No don’t worry, I let my Grandpa have the top bunk.

Just kidding. He’s on the pillow-top bed and my Grandma got the pull out couch. ( it was either that or I was going to go track down a step stool to get her on bed).

Happily, the hotel has wheel chairs (no really it’s for my Grandma. And they got a nice long nap while we played in the water park all afternoon. (I kind of wanted the nap myself.)

Said relatives came to the hotel for dinner and a visit. Thanks to the water park, the kids and I promptly excused ourselves to swim (still no siesta).

I’m totally worn out from lugging tubes up the two-story water slide steps but… The kids had a great time and I think my grands did too.

Tomorrow we reload and head further north. Lunch at the birth place, relatives to visit, stomping grounds to retrace, and then home to our cozy own beds.

Half-way through the adventure and I still think someone should’ve talked me out of this endeavor. But look- aren’t they just so cute? Makes it totally worth it… I think…

And now, some shut eye…

This one + That one

They have separate beds but seem to end up right next to each other.

This one is covered in temporary tattoos and five or so stuffed animals. She woke up at five, wanting to know if it was finally soccer time.

That one is shrouded in a simple cozy red blanket and not much else. He was up late, dance-fighting to DJ beats with a GR Ballet Company member.

This one and that one are so very different and yet they seem to get along rather swimmingly.

May they always be like this.