Hey, Don't I Know You?

I've just had a revelation. No angels or skies opening up. (That would have been cool, though.) Just a regular ordinary revelation.  A recognition.  Yeah, I like that word-- recognition.  Like you've met somewhere before, and you realize, oh, that's right.  That's what I've been waiting for. This is the beginning of week 2 of NaNoWriMo-- National Novel Writing Month.  I started out amazingly well, for me.  I am a slow writer.  I dally. I dilly. I dilly-dally around  words, around thoughts, around characters.  That's okay.  All writers have their own style and pace.

All last week while I was trying to get my daily production of about 1700 words a day on-screen, I realized that no matter how I tried to steer the work, I kept coming back to the same themes and characters I've been working on in my novel-in-progress.  I have about 23,000 words that I'm relatively pleased with (countless words of notes and trial and error and scenes that went nowhere), so, I thought, I'll cheat.

NaNoWriMo is supposed to be 50,000 new words churned out with the internal editor away on vacation, too far away to interfere with the writer who's hiding behind the censor.  My editor/censor doesn't take vacations. My censor like to work. What a pain.

But, that's where I am.  So be it.  I can still try to shake up my censor and get one over on her once in a while.  Like, this morning.  I was so sure I had my first chapter written and the novel would proceed from the themes I set up in that chapter.  But, I was stuck.  Which is one of the reasons I started the NaNo process.  I want to become unstuck.  Free those words and ideas that the censor has cowering in the corner with the threat of being sent to the principal's office if they squawk.

They squawked.  The principal was kinder than the censor.  HaHa!

Here's how the revelation/recognition happened.  Gene transferred my NANo words to Scrivener.  Scrivener is this fairly new tool for writers that is supposed to be easier and more intuitive. This morning I was looking at this new creature and I could not find the last chapter I had written.  So I summoned it from my Word files.  I re-read it.  I liked it.  And then, (drum roll, please) I recognized that this chapter should be the first chapter because it introduces themes and characters that play out in the rest of the work.

So, thank you NaNoWriMo, for jiggling loose some thoughts that might have stayed in the wrong place if I hadn't taken your challenge, and then modified your challenge to my own purposes. It's good to recognize a friend you've met for the first time.

All Hallow's

Of all the articles of faith of the Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints is one of my favorite. Forgiveness of sins rates pretty high, too, but since we are in this season of remembering I'll spend a moment on those who've gone before us. My mother had a deep ache in her life . Her father died when she was eleven. Quite suddenly. Her mother, my grandmother, never recovered. She spent years 'crying into the potatoes' as my mother put it.

Her father's death was the pall that hung over her life. When she married my father, a wounded war vet, she was sure she would be widowed any minute now. She instructed us not to upset him because he was likely to have a heart attack and die.  He's now 91.

My mother, who lived in a state of precipitant loss, carried her grief as a trusted friend. In the years before she died, suffering from Alzheimer's, she often spoke of her mother and father and Aunt Jule.  She wanted to go home. Home was the house where she grew up, the house where her father died. Not the house where she raised her own six children.

The seasons I was pregnant with my four children, my mother warned against baby showers or anticipating the joy of the children I carried..  Her mother's first child was stillborn.  They had a crib and layette ready for the child who would never use them. Therefore,the lesson was, do not anticipate joy or life.  It can be taken without notice. And break your heart.  Broken hearts do not recover.

But they can. They will be changed. They won't be smooth or innocent. The hope is a broken heart will be bigger, stronger, wiser and more compassionate. Within a broken heart there can be space to tender life, not live always in anticipation of its loss. Growing up I wanted to tell her to stop living in the past. Stop living in a state of suspended grief. There is life. There is joy. But I couldn't tell her that.  Her grief was too precious.

Here we are at All Hallow's Eve, All Soul's Day and All Saint's Day.  We face our fears and we face our grief. We acknowledge death.  We confront death. By dressing up and handing out sweets we steal its bitterness. We tell Death is does not win. We will not allow it the power it demands. Life is stronger than Death. Life continues.  Altered, of course, but eternal.

I miss my mother.  I wish I could sit with her and play with my grandson Jude. I wish we could shop for pretty pink things for Sophia Ann who is due Christmas Day.

We do sit together, though.  She is with me here, in my home far from where I was raised. She is with me when I call my children and grandchildren 'Lovey"-- a name she called us in her joyful moments when she put down the burden of grief.  She is present in the thick wavy hair and clear skin of my children and our family wide affection for words and story and whatever inherent dignity we carry.  She is with us in our graces.  I am so very glad she is my mother. And so very glad she is in good company.

Red Suede Shoes

There's a pair of red suede flats I've got my eye on.  I have a pair of its sister shoes, in a grey suede, heels. Over the years I've almost stopped wearing heels, claiming I'd rather be comfortable, which generally, yes, I'd rather be comfortable.  But.  Ah, there's the rub (pun intended).  These red suedes are so cute, my heart actually beats a little faster just looking at a picture of them. Okay, confession time.  I was raised to not want 'things'.  One of six kids of parents who got through the Depression and World War II with a minimum of things, we kids wore uniforms (twelve years in plaid!) and had school shoes, play shoes and one pair of Sunday shoes.  Not so much a problem when everyone you knew was in the same sartorial situation.

These little desires creep in, don't they?  Duh.  I was  trained in a sort of Franciscan ascetic to turn away from the lures of the world and focus on higher things.  I love focusing on higher things. I could not count how many books I've read on 'higher things' and how many conversations I've been part of on 'higher things'.  I often think I have lived 'in my head' for a whole bunch of my life. But, again, there's that but.  I don't live in my head.  My head does not have a cozy bed to snuggle in, does not cook tasty meals, does not air condition the house in summer or heat it in winter. And my head has absolutely no need for red suede shoes.

That is some other part of me that wants those red suede shoes (I'm still waiting for the right occasion to wear the grey suede heels). It's not my feet so much as it is my soul.  Yup, soul.  One of my go-to books is Thomas Moore's Care of the Soul.  He claims that our soul needs ground us in the real world, the world of things, of textures, tastes, smells, and by extension, red suede shoes.  I don't claim to know if he ever thought of his work as a justification for the desire for red suede shoes, but, there it is.

Now, I think I'd like some breakfast.  Mmm.  I've got some yummy blackberries and blueberries waiting on the counter to be smothered in creamy Greek yogurt.  There's that soul again.  Better answer its call.

Friends

You know what I’m glad for?  I’ll tell you.  I’m glad for my Tuesday morning prayer group.  Where else could I get introduced to an up and coming saint and no one thinks that is hilarious. Or childish.  Or naïve. Or superstitious. Or unsophisticated. Or un-cool. I’m glad for these wonderful women for so many reasons, but one of those reasons stood out for me this morning while I was praying.  I have a couple of saints that I have considered my friends over the years. St. Anthony has been a staple since Aunt Jule had such a devotion to him, and as a bonus, he’s in charge of finding lost things.  I lose things all the time, so I call on him almost daily.  Over the years I have assigned particular saints to my children to watch over them. Long before my daughter named her son Jude, I had often called on his intercession for her.  My oldest son also loses things often, so St. Anthony got the job of watching over him.  For the next oldest son, I asked St. Joseph to be his guardian since they are both craftsmen.  And my youngest son has always had St. Francis since it is his middle name and they share a love of animals.

I now have another saint friend. When one of the women in the group asked us to pray for the intercession of Blessed Brother Andre for the healing of her brother who had cancer, he had yet to be canonized.  We asked for his intercession when we met, and also in our own daily prayers.  As of this time, her brother’s cancer is in remission and his future looks bright.  Blessed Brother Andre is now Saint Andre, but I still call him Blessed Brother Andre, ‘cause that’s how I picture him.  He was a humble fellow in his monastery in Canada.  He had a great devotion, or friendship, with St. Joseph. In his humility, his reputation for holiness grew. He had menial assignments around the monastery—he was not a scholar or a teacher, just a humble ‘ordinary’ man who performed his tasks with great love.

Due to my near total immersion in Catholic education, I did not have pop stars for my role models when I was a kid.  I had saints.  Which has often been a hindrance, I do admit.  There they were being all holy and good in the midst of the very same temptations we live with today. They chose a different path so I knew what was expected of me: to turn away from the allure of sin and be holy.  And when I fell—oh so often-- I had them to turn back to help me get on the right track.

We all need friends to navigate our way through life.  Some of them just happen to have lived in different places and times than we find ourselves. That’s why we have the ‘communion of saints’ to call upon and ask them to pray for us.  It’s like having a whole bunch of aunts and uncles banging on the door of God pleading our case.  Who wouldn’t want that?

Stuck

I’m stuck. I don’t have my head wedged in the arms of a big iron fence. Not yet.

But the scale keeps coming up with the same number when I step on it. Stupid scale.

That doesn’t really help, now, does it? Nah, you’re right. (Stupid scale.)

Something has to change. Looking back, that initial weight loss seemed so easy.  And it was.  But now I have hit the stubborn pounds.  The pounds that declared their presence on my hips long ago. They pull out the homesteader clause that gives them the right to stay put. I have to come up with a clever and effective means of evicting them.

So when I am finished with this post I will put Frankie on his leash and go for a walk.  A longer walk than we’ve been taking, because, as I said, something has to change.

Now, being me, when I’m stuck in one aspect of my life I wander over to where thoughts hang out in my brain and pluck the idea that being stuck on the scale is a metaphor for being stuck in other aspects of my life.  I know I have to change things up a bit.  Stuck is comfortable.  Stuck is easy. Stuck is magnetic: stuck grows with each passing aspect of life and pulls it in, makes it cozy in the nice plush groove of predictable.  It whispers you don’t really want to buy clothes in a smaller size; you don’t really want to eat more fruits and veggies; you don’t really want to change the way you cook, and if those don’t work you don’t really want to change the way you live.

I do, I protest.  Really, really I do.

Now, I'm trying to come up with a clever way of closing this post.  But, you see, I'm stuck.  When my mother's brother was a little boy he managed to get his head between the posts of an iron fence. He was stuck. They twisted his head this way and that. Pulled, tugged, worried (my grandmother was an Olympic class worrier). Nothing seemed to work. Finally they had to call the fire department.  They came with crowbars to pry the little boy out.  He was un-stuck!!

The conclusion, therefore, is that all I need now is a crowbar. I'll let you know how that works.