Coffee & Chocolate

When It Alteration Finds

2011-11-30T20:55:00.001-08:00

Let me not to the marriage of true minds

Admit impediments. Love is not love

Which alters when it alteration finds,

Or bends with the remover to remove.

A few weeks ago, I got a message on Facebook from one of my high school friends. He had some good news about leaving a corporate job for which he had no love and returning to school for a teaching certification. He told me some sad news about the end of his marriage. But, he noted, the marriage hadn't been a "real" marriage for five years and I shouldn't worry about it.

This got me thinking about marriage. About the marriage of two lives--whether they're two women, two men, a man and a woman--and what that means. I think I know what he's getting at when he says his marriage hasn't been a "real" one. But is that all that makes a marriage?

With children, multiple jobs, financial worries and just the daily task of keeping body and soul together, some of us might actually choose a good night's sleep, a concept that would have made my twenty-something self run screaming from the room. But my perspective changed as I grew older. And my definition of "marriage" became broader.

After almost twenty years, I am grateful that Jennifer's love for me did not alter, even though I changed. And she changed. I am grateful that our friendship, which is truly the best foundation upon which to build anything, is stronger than it was. Strong enough to weather the challenges of two incredible children, the addition of another adult to our household, the redefinition of what we mean to each other. And the reaffirmation of what we have always meant to each other.

What struck me about my friend's letter was that once the marriage was not "real" anymore, it was time to leave. And perhaps I am oversimplifying the situation to think that his marriage isn't worth saving. Perhaps not as a marriage, but as a relationship where love resides. A relationship from which children have been born and raised. A relationship of decades rather than years.

O no, it is an ever-fixèd mark

That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

It is the star to every wand'ring bark,

Whose worth’s unknown, although his height be taken.

At mid-life (should I be so lucky), I look backward with honesty, with pride, with regret. I look backward and see how paths diverged and crossed and converged to bring me to this point. I see how choices I made thirty years ago, which seemed small at the time, have become foundations for behaviors and opinions--both good and bad--that inform the person I am at this moment. I analyze work habits and attitudes. I tell myself it's not too late to change.

And I believe it.

I have to. Otherwise, I wouldn't be able to get up in the morning.

But given the choice, I would not willingly walk away from what my life is right now, though it's not what I expected it would be ten or twenty or thirty years ago. I realize that my expectations were based on my parents' values, the culture and class I was raised in, the opportunities I had, the opportunities I wasted. The friends I made or didn't make.

Love’s not time’s fool, though rosy lips and cheeks

Within his bending sickle’s compass come:

Love alters not with his brief hours and weeks,

But bears it out even to the edge of doom.

Love is not time's fool. We are foolish if we believe that everything will stay the same forever. For some, the changes that occur over decades, the dissonance of what we wanted to happen and what has actually happened, is too hard to bear. It's easier, then, to tear it down in our self-defeating ways and thus justify the end with the means. It's easier to cast the blame on what is missing from the relationship.

In a perfect world, we would flow seamlessly from one state of being into another. From one state of conscious acceptance into another. We'd be able to take the long view and see how the changes benefit us and how they free us and how we are empowered by the steadfast love of a true friend and confidant and partner. But we don't do that willingly. Because it isn't what we expected. It isn't what we thought we wanted. It isn't what our friends say is "normal." It isn't what we see around us.

At some point, I just had to take the blinders off. And accept that love, once given, can be a constant, "ever-fixèd mark/ That looks on tempests and is never shaken." Or, I could have walked away and convinced myself it was justified.

But I knew I would be wrong. As for my friend, he didn't elaborate and I didn't ask, and so it is impossible for me to know his truth. As for myself...

If this be error and upon me proved,

I never writ, nor no man ever loved.

We Train Them to Be Killers ...

2011-04-21T23:24:00.000-07:00

... but what happens when they come home?

Clay Hunt. Quintessential Texas boy. Hunted. Fished. Joined the Marines. Lost his friend and bunk mate within two weeks after arriving in Fallujah in 2007. Four weeks later, while riding in a Humvee talking his friend walking alongside the vehicle, his fellow soldier was shot in the throat. He died in the Medivac. Pinned down by sniper fire, Hunt couldn't even get out of the vehicle to help his buddy.

Shortly after this, he was short through the wrist, two inches from his face. He suffered from depression. He was diagnosed with PTSD. He accepted the diagnosis without shame, took his meds and went on to train as a sniper and was sent to Afghanistan. He finished his tour and was honorably discharged.

Now, he's dead. He shot himself in his apartment outside Houston earlier this week.

His parents were not surprised. His PTSD symptoms were "unrelenting." Knowing that other soldiers were suffering as he was, he was an outspoken advocate for IAVA, Iraq and Afghan Veterans of America.

He was a young man with enormous potential. He went willingly into combat. And even though he wasn't killed in combat, it was combat that killed him.

How long are we going to let our veterans suffer? How long are we going to pretend that you don't have to take just as much time teaching men and women how to be civilians again after training them to be soldiers?

How long are we going to ignore the crushing emotional impact of modern warfare?

When our soldiers came home from Vietnam, they were spit on, ignored and worse. Now, some forty years later are we just going to do the same?

Whether or not you agree with the fact that we have troops in Iraq, Afghanistan and other parts of the world is really beside the point. What's more important than honoring, and actually helping, the men and women who put their lives on the line when they come home? Whether we're talking about getting help for soldiers with head injuries (which are increasingly common and incredibly debilitating) or getting the emotional support they need to deal with what they've seen--which is worse than any of us can possibly imagine--we're not doing enough.

It's time to do something. Let your voice be heard on this issue. Lend a hand. Start a conversation. Call your representatives. Clay Hunt is gone. But thousands of others need our help. So get busy.

Support Your Vet

IAVA

Stigma of PTSD is Costing U.S. Lives

Tabula Rasa

2011-03-21T22:46:00.000-07:00

Three kids. Two years apart. Maybe. Parents drag kids into my place of work. I don't like this couple. Their children always look miserable and Mom and/or Dad always looked pissed. Mostly at their kids.

Today, though, both Mom and Dad are there. They order the largest size drinks available with the largest amount of sugar possible. Just two. The kids aren't asked if they want anything. 'Cause what could you possibly want here? Right? I mean we don't have anything for kids.

Youngest girl is crying. After I take the parents' order, I say, "What's the matter, honey? You having a bad day?"

"She's just tired," Mom says sharply. You're not her parent, her tone says. In fact, I'm sure that you're a les-bi-an. What would you know about kids, huh?

"I'm hungry!" the girl blurts out, looking right at me. "I'm not tired. I'm hungry."

Since Dad is too busy being angry to have offered me a form of payment, the drama continues to play out in front of me. Mom leans down and whispers fiercely, "You're not hungry."

"That's $11.15," I repeat, trying to catch Dad's eye. There's a line to the door. I can feel myself getting angry. It's building inside me and making my fist curl and my blood boil. I can feel myself flush. I want to pop this C U Next Tuesday right in the face. I want to give the kid a freaking sandwich.

Dad finally hands me a credit card. They move away from the counter and now both parents are bent over whispering fiercely to this kid. Don't embarrass us, you little brat.

You know what, folks. If you're not going to buy you kids something, then leave them in the car. There's two of you idiots. I'm sure one can come in and order two drinks or is that just a bit too much for your tiny little minds to handle? Because, it's Sunday, right? And you've had to spend all day with your progeny who probably just wanted to stay home and lie on the couch and not be dragged all over the place on your stupid errands and then have to watch while you down your tasty beverages while they get nothing.

Hey, for all I know, they bought her a hamburger from the finest fast food joint in town and she didn't eat it. I don't know. She could be a total brat. But you know what I think? It's tabula rasa, baby. Your kids are what you make them. You don't want your kid to embarrass you in public--see to her needs. Parenting is about putting your own needs aside, not just once in a while, but all the time. You don't want to do that, don't have kids. Next time, do us all a favor: Skip the mochas and use the money to buy a box of condoms instead.

Stop Me if You've Heard This One

2011-03-20T22:22:00.000-07:00

A man walks into a coffee shop. He asks for my name. I tell him. He says, "I'm Jackson." (Not his real name, though he is named after a president). "I've seen you a few times now, so I guess you're a regular."

No, Jackson, actually you've got that backward. You are the regular. I am the employee. But whatever...

"It's nice to see some maturity here."

Maturity. Are you calling me old, Jackson, or are you just trying to wedge your foot further into that gap between your teeth?

He orders. Then he turns to his wife who is as washed out as an old sheet and is pretending she didn't just hear her dimwit husband comment on a woman's age. Luckily for me, I'm not sensitive about my age so I just smile at said dimwit, turn to his wife and ask her what she'd like to drink. She mumbles something and makes a beeline for the restroom.

"Well," says Jackson. "I guess she didn't want anything after all.... I'll see you around then." He drifts toward the bar to pick up his drink. My eyes follow him. I despise men like you, Jackson. Coming in here and pretending like you actually have something of value to say to me and thinking that since I the one behind the register that I must not be smart enough to do anything "useful" with my life. I mean ... I am old after all.

Jackson, I hate to break this to you, but I've your number from the moment you walked in weeks ago, all bright and cheery, so pleased with yourself to be having coffee with "Pastor" Gus (also not his real name) who blushed bright red when Jackson announced this to his wife via cell phone loud enough for everyone in the shop to hear. Gee, Pastor Gus, what're you preaching down there in that little church that makes you want to hide your little light under a bushel. I know you, Jackson. And I know you, too Pastor Gus. But today, this blog is not about you.

You're the first to extol your own virtues. The first to talk about your commitment to The Lord. The first to look for the easy road. The first to talk to your kids like they're stupid. The first to try and work the system so you get something for nothing. Your body language says, I'm important. I'm having coffee with Pastor Gus. But Jackson, you're nothing but a hypocrite with a red state haircut and a redneck truck. Yeah, Jackson, in all those "extra" years that have lead to my so-called maturity, I've seen a thousand jerks like you. Cling to your high and mighty ideals and bang that Bible until your fist aches. And I'll just smile my secret smile and take your money. 'Cause as the saying goes, The road to hell....

The Nature of Time

2011-03-19T15:06:00.000-07:00

My friend, Danielle, said to me recently, "I told my daughter to stay away from her right now. Just stay away. She is a very negative influence and I don't want you to read what she's writing anymore."

The words sank in through my skin and a hand closed around my heart. While I heard myself saying, "I agree. I don't know what's up with her," I felt an incredible sadness. I thought about the long shared history I have with the person Danielle was referring to and thought about all those small moments when I might have made a different decision, taken a different path. What might the outcome have been then?

Imagine that you have a doppleganger in a parallel universe or a parallel time line. Imagine that that person is ten or twenty years ahead of you. And you can talk to her whenever you'd like. What would you ask if you asked anything at all? While I believe that "fate" and "destiny" do play a part in my life, I understand that every moment presents a myriad of choices. In each moment, the choice I make closes off all other options. And this happens again and again every single moment of our lives.

Most of us don't think much about this, I suspect. But I do. In fact, I think about this all the time.

In a metaphysical, theoretical scenario, let's say I learn that my doppleganger made a very different choice in one particular situation that profoundly changed the course of her life. Coming to know her as I have, I see a hardness in her. An edge that I can't quite imagine how I would acquire. There is a sense of her being closed off and incredibly in control of everything all the time.

And I choose to make a different choice in that moment. And then I watch how my choice affects her and what changes.

The great time travel conundrum that a lot of scientists and science fiction writers grapple with is the fact that changing the past will change the future. That you really can't dip your finger into the slipstream of time and be foolish enough to believe that nothing will change.

In Harlan Ellison's famous original Star Trek episode "The City of the Edge of Forever," an accidental stumble through an active time portal changes the course of history so profoundly that Kirk's reality ceases to exist. He has to go back and find the event and "fix" the moment so that his history is restored. Of course, Ellison's story had to be presented on a stage so profound that the entire course of history was changed. But the idea is the same in our own lives, in our own small moments.

I do a lot of self-examination. And I do tend to dwell on the moments that didn't work. Where I lost my temper or allowed someone to get under my skin and push my buttons. Where I didn't recognize in time that this particular jerk reminds me enough of my jerk of a father that I automatically respond in a way that completely undermines the years of experience and clarity that have passed since I lived under his brutal hand.

Danielle reminded me of all those small moments where I made a decision to focus on something other than what I could have, perhaps what I should have. And I've seen the fallout of those choices permeate every aspect of my life.

I don't have a younger self that I can turn to and say, "Make this choice, not that one." I can't leap into the slipstream of time and change outcomes. Yes, once you start pulling at one thread, you risk the entire fabric of your future unraveling, but I do wish that I'd gotten out of my own way sooner. Been less defensive. Been more respectful of the ones who had my best interests at heart. Been more of who I am now... then.

The last time I saw this woman there was still something between us. Something I believed at the time was powerful and profound and could withstand anything. It had already weathered so much. She was visiting. We'd agreed to spend some time together later, after the kids were asleep. I waited for three hours--until four in the morning--for her. When I finally went in to ask if she thought she might be done soon, she said, "I thought this was going to be different. But it's just like it was before."

I had convinced myself that it was an honor to be in her presence, that I would--of course--do whatever it took to make her happy, keep her moving forward and that I should be contented with whatever crumb fell my way. So I backed down, backed away and retreated. In the darkness of my own room, I realized that it would never be different. That in spite of and because of all that had happened, it had slipped away. Or maybe it had never been there in the first place.

It's been more than a year since that night. We haven't spoken since then. And not for the reasons one might think. I simply found that I have nothing more to say. All of those small decisions made during the time when she was a constant presence in my life brought us to this place. It's not necessarily a bad place. But it is not where I would choose us to be. The emotional closeness that we had, the trust we'd built ... a lot of that has ebbed away.

Danielle's comment brought my grief full circle. I wasn't the only one who had been hurt and confused. But as an adult, I understood what had happened. Her daughter did not. Nor would it have been an appropriate conversation to have. I realized that the "fate" of what was begun, what we had all created together was now in our hands. And I knew in that moment that I would not fail this child. That she wouldn't suffer for choices I had made.

What can be salvaged from this is ultimately what is important, because the project we created together is not only still viable, but also intact. The individual who brought us all together may not continue this journey with us, but that doesn't mean that the journey itself should not continue. I had taken a lot of responsibility for things falling apart and carried a lot of guilt. Letting it fall away was like letting wings unfurl. I can't make her happy. Once I thought it was my responsibility. But I see now it never was.

OMG... It's almost FRIDAY!!!

2010-11-11T20:21:00.000-08:00

What Kind of a Writer are You?

2010-11-04T00:44:00.001-07:00

I think there are two kinds of writers in the world. Those who plan and those who do not. Neither is better than the other, just different.

Jennifer, for example, never begins a new piece until she has a title for it. She is a planner and knows very clearly where the story is going and where the emotional beats will fall before she begins. She is a gifted writer and this month will be the first time in a long time that she is also writing every day.

I am not a planner. As a matter of fact, that is exactly why I could not write Angelus. The idea of planning a novel out so carefully has the same amount of appeal as dental work. Without Novocain.

No, I write when inspired--by an idea or a character or a situation. Characters come first and slowly they reveal themselves to me. I don't converse with them or write them letters as Gloria Naylor did while writing Linden Hills. I get to know them over time, slowly. Sometimes it takes several years. It is not unusual for me to think about a book for three years or more before I actually begin to write it.

On Monday, I confessed to being afraid of failure. It has been so long that I've actually written something longer than a short story, something that wasn't written as part of a larger project for the Mardi Gras 3000 universe, that I wasn't sure I could do it. I mean, Angelus really messed with my head. The biggest problem was that I kept finding other stories within that one I wanted to tell and well ... that's not what I was "hired" to do.

But so far, I've averaged about 1500 words a day, a bit short of the 1700 I'll need if I'm to make it to 50,000 by the end of the month. However, I realized that I'm not writing a draft. I'm writing the story. Slowly, carefully, crafting each moment. And each night, when I'm finished, I read it to Jennifer, who gives me honest feedback (and always has) on everything from pacing to character development to word choice.

We've always worked well together this way. I think that even though our approaches are quite different, when we actually put words on paper it's very similar. She chooses carefully and doesn't do much rewriting.

Having lived with the characters for so long, it's not difficult to write about them. Their stories are there, waiting to be told and when I sit down each night to listen, I can hardly wait to see what will happen next.

Cris

Use it Or Lose it: The Politics of the Vote

2010-11-02T22:33:00.000-07:00

I hope you all voted. If I were a political person, that is someone with actual time on her hands, I would institute an initiative called "Use it or Lose it." If you don't vote in 2 elections, you lose your right to do so. Period. Oh, and if you don't have a valid driver's license--e.g. if you can't manage to have enough self-control not to drive while intoxicated, yeah, you should lose the right to vote as well.

In Washington state, voter turnout was expected at 66%. That is pathetic. And what's worse is that the far right is extremely well funded and well organized. Simple deductive reasoning that even Watson could understand would therefore lead to the conclusion that if we don't vote, we're screwed. Two years ago, I felt extremely hopeful. I didn't lose my state-funded health care this past year and I managed to keep my house.

Tonight... I'm not as hopeful. The midterm elections are just as critical as the ones that occur in a presidential year, but very few people realize that all those hard-earned gains can now be stalled, blocked or even undone should the base of power shift significantly to the right. Everyone seems to want to blame Obama. He's the easiest target, but not actually the true one. The two party system with all its checks and balances has become increasingly cumbersome as our population grew. Yeah, it worked great when there were fewer than 20 states, but now... well let's just say that America is not exactly the melting pot everyone believes it is. And it's damned hard to get anyone to see what's best for the many because they're too caught up with what's good for the few.

Did you know, for example, that Abraham Lincoln, when considering the slave question, thought the best idea might be to send them back to Africa. Why? Because he felt Americans were too racist to ever live in a multi-racial society. And sadly, I think he may have been right. But it's not just people of color who are singled out. It's anyone who doesn't fall into the incredibly narrow strip of our society that is white, heterosexual, church going (read that in the least positive way) and conservative. If you add wealth to that, you've got the people who are willing to throw millions into a campaign to overturn gay/lesbian marriage in California or who are so convinced that a gay soldier in the foxhole next to you is going to be watching your butt instead of your back that they're proof positive the intolerance apple doesn't fall any farther from the tree than it did in Lincoln's time.

The rest of us are trying to live our lives without getting spit on, beaten up, asked to leave certain establishments, picked up by the cops for how we look, asked if we're men because our hair is short (haha, like I've never heard that one before) and called everything offensive under the sun. Today, I had a man stare at me as I walked from the post office to my truck. Just stand there and stare. It didn't creep me out as much as it pissed me off. Take a picture, dude. It lasts longer.

So I hope you all turned in your ballots and remembered what a privilege it is to have this right to choose our leaders, to choose the people who will speak for us. The system might be behemoth and in need of a drastic overhaul, but it's still a democratic society in more than name only.

Cris

Day 1

2010-11-01T22:52:00.001-07:00

It's November 1st.

Yeah, so what, you say. I have a calendar for that kind of pertinent information.

It's time for that annual event "Write a Novel in a Month." To say that I've been procrastinating a bit would be an understatement considering it's 10:45 pm and theoretically, I've only got another hour to get my first day's work done.

The reason is pretty simple. I'm afraid I'll fail. I haven't written anything longer than a short story in years. I'm older and I have more to say, sure, but where's the freaking time?

So to spare myself the public humiliation I decided I would force myself to keep a public record of my ... success. This will require somewhere in the neighborhood of ten pounds of coffee, six pounds of David's Chili and Lime Sunflower Seeds and a lot of that good old seat of the pants to the seat of the chair application.

At least I already know what I'm going to work on. I agonized over that last month, tossing ideas back and forth with Jennifer until I finally decided on a piece I started maybe two or three years ago during a short stay in La Push. That was the trip I decided to try a handwriting recognition program on a tablet computer. What I got bore absolutely no resemblance to what I'd written, but it did make us laugh to the point of tears. I guess my handwriting is has yet to bridge the hardware/wetware gap.

So, okay. Here I am. I have a half-finished can of coke. Maybe Jenn will bring me coffee. But if she does, will she find me writing or see that the window I just minimized is the next episode of Californication? Hard to say.

For the past four of five years I have been trying to write this novel called Angelus. It's the backstory of one of the main MG3K characters. He's complex and a musician and a man. I think I have finally admitted to myself that I'm just not that connected to him. I realized that I can guide this project, but I can't write his entire story. And realizing that has been incredibly freeing. I wanted so badly to be able to do it. But I'm wise enough to know I can't.

Soooo.

I am not going to tell you much about what I'm working on. I know. I can be a mean little.... well you know. It's a story about people, a place and the past. There. That's a clear as mud, as my biology teacher used to say, but it covers.

I gave myself 15 minutes to write this and my time is now officially up. Tomorrow, if a miracle occurs tonight, I might actually post a word count.

Tune in tomorrow... same bat time...same bat channel.

Cris

Don't Tax the Rich!

2010-10-20T19:56:00.000-07:00

There is only one thing on my mind these days: Money. How much do we have? How can we make more? Has the mortgage been paid? What about the electric bill? Has our Internet been turned off? Right now, I spend every waking moment either working or thinking about how I can make ends meet this month. I watch bills roll over into the next month. I know how many months behind I can be with each of our utilities until we get cut off. I know who will take a partial payment or offer a payment plan and who won't.

These aren't the kind of details I'd like to be paying attention to. I'd rather be remembering how to beat the boss in my son's newest game at Sploder. I'd rather be helping my daughter learn how to read.

But I'm not. I am obsessed. Consumed. Stressed out. By money.

In Washington state, there's an initiative on the ballot next month that will increase the amount of income tax the wealthy pay. Right now, according to KPLU, one of the two public radio stations in this area, people in the lower income brackets pay more tax, proportionately, than the wealthy. And yet, no one wants to tax the rich. Um, why the heck not?

You know what the rich want? To use their money for bettering the human condition you say? Hahahahaha. Um, no. They want to get richer. No matter how much money they make, they still want more. You see where this kind of greed has led us. Or are you living under a rock these days?

No, let's not tax the rich, because they've worked soooo hard for their million dollar paychecks. They've certainly worked harder than the rest of us because God created an extra hour in every day just for rich people to work. And the rich are so incredibly generous with their wealth, aren't they? Why, just the other day, a rich person came up to me and said, "Hey, what can I do to help. I'm rich, you see, and I pay less in taxes than you do. I can see you're struggling. Would it help if I paid your mortgage? What if I pulled some strings with your lender to get you a lower payment? I have a lawyer who can help you go after that collection agency that scammed you and kept all the money they collected from all of your past due accounts. I know people. Because, well, I'm rich."

Oh, right. That was just a dream I had the other night.

I have yet to have a rich person in my life who wasn't self-involved, self-centered and miserly. In my experience, the only thing rich people love more than money is themselves.

But let's define what "rich" actually means. President Obama thinks if you make over $250,000.00 you're "doing well." But when John McCain was asked the same question during the last presidential campaign, you know what he said? If you make over two million. Two million! Leave it to a Republican to really have his finger on the pulse of the working class.

So, I guess I shouldn't vote to tax the rich because they've done so much for me. Yes, I have them to thank for selling the American Dream right out from under my feet with their fast and dirty mortgage scams. Which, in turn, caused a economic downturn that will, in time, be seen as more drastic than the Great Depression. Yeah, I'm totally indebted to them (pun intended). I mean, I should be completely willing to carry their burden, right?

Choosing not to tax the rich is the most idiotic idea I've ever heard.

And when I hear working class people saying that they don't think it's fair to tax the rich I keep waiting for that whirring sound that will confirm that we've been invaded by pod people. Otherwise, I am at a complete loss to explain this sudden absence of intelligence and plain old common sense.

If you don't want the pod people to invade your town, get your butt out of the house on election day. And make sure you vote to tax the rich. They deserve it in oh-so-many ways.

Now, I will get down off my soapbox and go clean the toilets. Because unlike the rich, I don't have hired help to clean up after me.

Cris

But With a Whimper

2010-06-01T20:03:00.000-07:00

It was raining the first day I saw the playground with the bright yellow tether ball and the jaunty scarecrows protecting the little patch of planted ground behind. A couple of white plastic tables, a couple of rounded benches. I walked through the yard to meet Jace.

He glanced up at me sideways. And we walked down to the lodge together.

That first day he scooted stones across the table top, refusing to sit still. At the end of the hour he ran off to join the other boys.

The next time he greeted me with a hug and an "I love you." We worked for a few minutes on the materials the company had sent, quickly abandoning them for books and My Adventure stories and sight words written on cards. He confiscated all the ones he knew, stuffing them into his pocket. "These are mine," he said.

One week he gave me a white stone. I put it in my wallet. It's there still.

It was raining the day he told me he was sad because they'd had to move. Dad broke up with another girlfriend and she'd kicked them out. "I liked that house," he said.

"I'm sorry you had to move," I said. "Moving is hard."

"Yeah. Moving is hard."

They moved in with Jace's grandmother--Dad's mother. She came to pick him up one day and I told her how much Jace liked the Frog and Toad stories we were reading. "He sits still for that?" she asked.

"He'll sit still for as long as you read to him," I said.

"Mostly," she said, "he's like that." She gestured to Jace who was exploring the room, writing on the chalk board, touching the front of the TV screen because when he did that it made a funny noise.

"He's seven," I said. And I wanted to say, He's seven and the world is mysterious and cool and unexplored. He's seven and he's starved for ideas, for stories, for imaginative play. He's seven and he doesn't want to sit still because he's not beaten down by the world yet and you have a beautiful, precious gift in your hands and how can you not see it?

"Are there any books at home?" I asked at one point.

"Only grown up books," he said.

"You don't have any books at all?"

"No."

Once, he tried to write in one of the storybooks. I guided the marker away. "We don't write in books, Jace. They're precious." He never tried to do it again.

The last time I saw Jace was three weeks ago. He made me pinkie promise that the next time I saw him, I'd bring him a Coke. Then he disappeared. The workers at the child care center said that his father is unemployed now. No money for childcare. Which means that Jace is at home all day with his grandmother, his father and ... no books.

It was raining today when I saw my last student of the semester. I walked across the abandoned playground, past the wet, white tables glowing in the dusk. Past the yellow tether ball and the garden. Into the building, up the stairs and into the office to return the key for the last time and to leave a package for Jace: A warm cap, a can of Coke, and six books of his very own.

Of all the students I worked with this year, he is the one who broke my heart, who always said "I love you," whose sidelong glances turned into full-on smiles, who ran outside to see if spring was around the corner after we'd finished reading the Frog and Toad story called "The Corner." and the one I will miss for the rest of my life.

This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but with a whimper.
--T.S. Eliot, "The Hollow Men" (1925)

Cris

Don't Ask Me to Care

2010-05-26T16:40:00.000-07:00

... unless you really want to do something about it.

In January, I took what was, for me, an important first step away from the darkness--both internal and external. I landed a tutoring job after a single interview. A good resume didn't hurt, nor did the fact that I interview well. That being said, I was pretty psyched to start.

The company I work for uses Title I money to provide group tutoring sessions for students. Title I money must be used by the schools during the school year or they lose it. So there's something akin to a job fair where tutoring companies hawk their wares and get parents to sign their kids up for tutoring. Since it's free to parents, it seems like a win-win situation. Until you actually factor in the kids.

Because, once again, it's the kids who get screwed.

Tutoring in a group situation can be great. But it really only works if the kids in the group are all in relatively the same place. My first group of kids had two second graders, who were twin brothers; their half-brother, who is in fourth grade and another fourth grade boy. The twins, who have been assigned to separate school classrooms because they're extremely disruptive together, made it impossible to tutor. They were out of their chairs, out of the door and into the quiet main room of the senior retirement home nice enough to host us. They were under the chairs, hiding in the bathroom, etc. Of course the other two boys joined in. It was play time, right?

I had two choices: Let them run wild and spend all my time disciplining, or actually try and teach them. I had to request the twins be split up because apparently this company doesn't do any kind of information gathering at the school. They simply administer the CAT (California Achievement Test) for the "appropriate" grade level and send a set of workbooks which reflect the results of the test.

The workbooks are ... well ... they're workbooks. There is no effort made to connect real world math (or reading), to what they're doing in the classroom, to what they'll do when their five weeks with me is finished. It's only until I'm more than half-way through the first session that I'm told the kids only get their "final prize" (which is $150, a Nintendo DS or an iPod) if they improve on the CAT, which they take again at the end of our sessions.

And so I am faced with the age-old question: Teach the concepts or teach to the test. Well, since President Bush's "No Child Left Behind" plan is a complete joke, and was destined to fail from the beginning (you can't implement something like that without a massive overhaul of your education system, but hey it *sounded* impressive, right?) I decide to hold to my ideals and teach the concepts. In theory, this should allow them to improve.

Meanwhile, a second group of students has been put together at a different elementary school. In this group, I have a fourth grader, a fifth grader and an emotionally disturbed second grader who is incapable of sitting still for more than 30 seconds. I am unable to administer his assessment, so my supervisor comes in to do it. She can't do it either. But she's told the boy's guardian (he's in foster care--don't get me started) that we can handle this. I realize for the first time, I've been hired by an idiot. We can't handle this. We are not equipped for this.

I tell her no, I cannot "handle" this. I can't tutor two other students and manage a boy who is this challenged. He's smart; he's angry and he's completely willing to work the system to get what he wants. 'Nuff said. There is no "handling" this. Finally, after a couple of wasted sessions in which nothing gets done, she meets with the foster parent and says she'll make other arrangements. The only thing I can say is "Quota, much?"

So now, I have two sets of boys, all doing math, four days a week. We chug along. Sometimes they show up and sometimes they don't. When the don't I am not paid. Nor am I compensated for my gas, even though some of the locations are 30 minutes away.

The first set of boys falls into disarray and only one finishes. He improves by two grade levels. I feel so proud of him. Has he received his prize since he finished in late March? If he has, no one has told me about it. I asked my supervisor more than five times about when the prize would be given out and whether I could be there. She has yet to answer my question. So who loses? I think that answer is obvious.

Meanwhile, group 2 has a new member, a kindergarten student. So now I am expected to tutor my 4th and 5th grade math students, who are almost finished, and begin a reading program with a 6 year old. For those of you who don't know, a K curriculum is filled with activities that last between 10 and 15 minutes. Their school day is 2 1/2 hours and that includes recess. I'm adding another hour and he'll have to sit and wait for 2/3 of that hour while I'm working with the other two boys. Right. Like that's going to happen.

But, hey, we give it a go.

The post assessment is given. One boy improves. The other does not. In fact, he does worse. My supervisor wants to know why. I tell her that he finished the two-hour assessment in twenty minutes. "Did you tell him it was supposed to take 2 hours?" Yes, I assure her, I did.

They schedule him to retake the exam. Meanwhile the other boy (who is his brother) shows improvement and it's clear he'll get his prize. The other boy retakes the exam. No other arrangements have been made for a separate room. This is not my job. My job is to tutor, not arrange spaces. I am working with the 6 year old, who is a typical 6 year old. He's not quiet. He's not in his chair all the time. He's six.

The boy still does not improve. I feel terrible. I feel like I have failed this boy who showed up every single time and tried. But since he didn't show improvement on the post-test, he's SOL. Bye-bye, thank you for playing.

Since I am continuing to tutor at this school, I see these boys twice a week. A month goes by and they keep asking me about their prize. What can I say? I've asked my supervisor how the situation with the other boy will be handled. Her response, "I don't know. This has never happened before. I guess I'll have to figure something out." That was two weeks ago. The boys have stopped speaking to me. Now, they won't even make eye contact. I've explained to them how the system works, but I'm not at liberty to discuss their scores--or am I? This, along with numerous other items has never been covered with me. They have yet to receive their final prizes. They finished with the program in early April.

There are no training manuals. There is no Human Resources department. There is me and my supervisor, who sometimes takes a week to answer my emails. And then when she does bother to do so, she doesn't actually read them. She actually had the balls to go after me about a student missing two sessions during a week I'd told her I would be away. I gave her a month's notice, in writing, and then 2 reminders the week before I left. I was not amused.

So who got screwed? The kids. As far as they're concerned, it's my fault. I broke faith with them, after working for five weeks to build up trust between us. I was unable to give them a simple answer to a simple question because my supervisor is a fracking idiot.

Last Friday, I sent her an urgent message. Monday came and went. Nothing. I called and said, Please pull your mail. She pulls her mail. And then asks me a question I answered for her in the mail I sent her LAST THURSDAY. Oh, and she still has not answered my urgent questions.

So far this week, none of my students have shown up. Last night, in a last ditch attempt to get some answers, I emailed and faxed the corporate office. I got a phone call this morning saying that the person who handles this area is too busy today, but he'll look into it first thing tomorrow, and he's called my supervisor to get "her side of the story." Though he wants this to end on a "positive note." You know what, dude, I'm way beyond that.

These kids trusted me. I worked hard with them. They worked hard for me. I am proud of them. And now...? Who cares about them? Apparently only me.

At this point, I couldn't care less if this ends on a "positive note." I'm done. Gone. I tried to make this work, but I'm not a miracle worker. I can't teach a child who doesn't understand the concept of 10 to do multiplication if she doesn't show up. Why the hell is she in third grade? She doesn't understand the concept of TEN, as in what happens when you go from a single digit (0-9) to your first double digit (10).

These kids are the ones with the IEPs; the stragglers, the "failures" who will inevitably fall through the cracks and end up with a mediocre education--at best--and a true inability to function in the world--at worst. This is our future. And this is the best we can do?

I'm glad I had the opportunity to touch their lives. My heart leapt with joy when one of the younger boys sidled up to me and sat on my lap so I could read him a story. I rejoice in the "ah-ha!" moments. But when my time with them is through, they'll slip back through the cracks. These breakthroughs in understanding are only powerful if they're reinforced. None of the households these kids come from are equipped to do that. One guardian admitted to me that there are no books in the house for the child to read. No books. And she's too busy to take the child to the library.

I am, in turns, furious and heartbroken. I am furious as my stupid supervisor--is she one of these kids grown up? Maybe. because she certainly can't function in the world. I am furious as the manager who can't bothered to answer my questions. My heart breaks for these kids, who try so hard, who come to mean so much to me and who will sink back into the morass that is our fracked up system of education. It used to be that you could get by with a high school education if you were bright and hard working.

Now, of the five high school students I've hired over the past 10 years, only one had anywhere near the skill level I expect of a basic entry-level employee. The other four turned out to be completely incapable of managing even the smallest tasks on an on-going basis, of making smart decisions, even of using common sense.

So don't ask me to care anymore. Because I can't. Not when I see this much wasted potential and a bunch of money grubbing "educators" who really don't care about the kids they propose to be helping. Because if they did, I wouldn't be writing this blog.

All That Is

2010-04-21T20:11:00.000-07:00

Give your love and never count the cost
Lose your heart and never call it lost
May your love be your shelter to the ending of your days
Love is all that is, all that ever was

This is the second time I've watched you disappear into sorrow and anger. The second time someone has taken your heart and broken it in the near decade I've known you. The first time, my hands were among those that caught you. And on the night you drew a tattoo on the inside of my wrist, our lovemaking was tumultuous and tender. In the time that followed, we were both good and bad for each other.

The clock in the spare room has stopped at 4:47, which seems right somehow as that was when you would always leave for the airport. Four or five days in a row, we would find ourselves under the blankets, shivering, whispering, stealing an hour or two or three from the endless winter nights.

I didn't want to let you go. For just as you refused to listen when we told you how that second time would end, I was so sure I could make it right between us. But I know now I simply denying the truth. Maybe I needed to watch you walk away from everything to understand. Maybe I needed to be furious at you and acknowledge I'd been hurt by you and remember that I'd hurt you in return.

I needed to forgive myself, before I could forgive you.

If I had been a better friend, perhaps you wouldn't have fallen so far. If I had conquered my own demons, I might have slain yours. But I wasn't ready to stop fighting.

I have come to the end of my journey and let you go. I understand what I can be for you and what I can't. And perhaps, in time, you may return. I won't ask you to. Because we know how well that works, but if you want to find me, you know where I am.

Give your love and never count the cost
Lose your heart and never call it lost
May your love be your shelter to the ending of your days
Love is all that is, all that ever was

Cris

My Heart is Lifted

2010-04-20T19:17:00.000-07:00

I was driving west
Through mist and rainfall
The trees were heavy, the road was long
And the clouded mountains
Hidden from me
Today, beyond them, I know there's you

You woke an hour after I'd gone to bed, realizing you were already late for the airport. And yet, you write to me, three times no less, in the scant half hour between a cup of tea and the door.

And a magpie flew
Across the highway
It flashed and tumbled
Through the rain-drenched trees
I thought of you
And my heart was lifted
Floating with that magpie, on the afternoon breeze

People in my life speak of grace, of love, of caring for others all the time. But outside of my household, few actually do what they proclaim to embrace. And so I am surprised by you--surprised by joy, surprised by laughter, surprised by the gentle quality of your heart.

At the point when music becomes again a daily part of my life, you say hello. At the point when we will plant our garden for spring, you share something special of your own. At the point where I feel as cynical and jaded as worst of those I work with, you fill my inbox until it's like Christmas.

For where I go
You go with me
Your gentle hand, always on my heart

Thank you for being exactly who you are. I am honored to call you friend.

We are brief as a summer lightning
We are swift as swallow's flight
We are sparks that spiral upward in the darkness in the night
We are frost upon a window
We won't pass this way again
In the end only love remains

Cris

Centered

2010-03-13T22:21:00.000-08:00

EJ, I couldn't have said it better. Thank you.

In response to "Centered."

I think it's easy to say you're doing something for someone else because you want to, but it's much harder to admit that you may be doing it for someone else because you want to ... and ... you hope that they will do something for you in return.

I only know one person who does things for other people because she truly wants to. It's not about the recipien; it's about her.

What does it say about me if I give because that's what makes me feel good about myself? Does that mean I don't care if my gifts are acknowledged? Not necessarily, but if you have any expectations, you are bound to be disappointed. This might lead to resentment and they've you've completely destroyed the reason you did it in the first place.

What does it say about me if I continue to give to someone who doesn't deserve it? Someone who isn't a nice person? Someone who lies? Someone who manipulates? Someone who blames? Someone who is always angry? Someone who is always sad? Someone who I actually don't even like? Someone I actually despise?

The question should be what does it say about me if I don't.

It is difficult at times to love yourself. Perhaps because many of us know ourselves so well. We know our shortcomings, our failures, our secrets, our doubts. I honestly don't think you can struggle with self worth unless you have looked long and hard and honestly at yourself. When you see your failings, you wonder why anyone would love you.

Especially yourself.

When I feel particularly bad about myself and that's tangled up in family and work and friendships, I go out. I go someplace where lots of people will be. And I lend a hand. I hold open a door, help a mom load groceries into her car while she settles her little ones, I help someone find something, I buy a drink at Starbucks and thank the barista, I do something nice for someone else. For a stranger. Why? I won't lie. It's easier. There are truly no strings attached. I honestly have no expectations.

I practice. Then when I go home, I have a better chance of giving to someone else without expectation. Without resentment. Without keeping score.

I agree, EJ, that I can't love myself if I can't love someone else first. For just who he is. Without wanting to change her. Without expecting something back. Because when you do this, you lose sight of the "self" and you are part of something bigger, more important and ultimately everlasting. You're walking with Christ.

Cris

Boys

2010-02-05T00:28:00.001-08:00

Right now, my life is full of boys.

About a month ago, I was hired to tutor elementary school kids in English or Math. I ended up with Math (go figure) and all boys. Two different schools, four days a week, one small room with me and the boys.

Two days a week, I meet Darius and Devon. They're brothers. Different fathers. Darius is beautiful, with chocolate skin, a winning smile and dark brown eyes. He's tricky and mischievous and completely honest at the same time. His brother, Devon is a year older. His bathroom breaks are so lengthy I think he might have fallen in. This week, however, I finally got some insight into why he's gone so long. A girl he likes is in a club that meets right across from the bathroom. Devon is gentle, soft-spoken and afraid to try something outside his comfort zone, as least as far as math is concerned. As for girls, well his huge dark eyes would melt even the coldest twelve-year-old's heart. As the older brother, he has the responsibility for keeping the cell phone, and he always holds open the door. He also must endure Darius' endless teasing about his girlfriend. Remarkably, it doesn't bother him and there's little sibling rivalry between them. They are as quiet and polite as my other tutoring group is rambunctious.

The other group meets in a room in an assisted living facility close to the school. Imagine four boys: two second grade twins, a fourth grader and a fifth grader tumbling like puppies into the well-apportioned living room of this very nice facility where classical music wafts from hidden speakers. They're noisy and untidy, shedding coats, backpacks and sometimes bits and pieces of paper, string and small stones as they make their way from the front door to the room where we meet.

The first few meetings were chaotic. In fact, I wasn't able to teach anything. It took all I could do to keep them from running like crazy through the halls, diving under chairs and leaping out in an attempt to scare with me or one of the other boys. After two completely out of control sessions, I had a meeting with the twins' mom. They were separated. From what I understand, I got the better deal. The tutor who ended up with Alex still can't keep him in his seat, let alone the room.

Now Alex's twin, Ian, is a self-assured cocky seven-year-old who decided today that he would sing all the answers to his math problems. This was . . . interesting. He not only sang the answer, but he'd sing his methodolgy as well. "Eight minus four is . . . seven, six, five, four . . . four." "Two plus six is . . . three, four, five, six, seven, eight . . . eight!" However, it didn't do much for the other two boys' concentration.

Ian and the fourth grader, Parker are also brothers. Different fathers here too. Parker is slight and almost feminine with long, tapered fingers and fair blond hair that falls straight down from the crown of his head. The twins, whose father, I suspect is a manly man, recently cut their hair in Marine Corps "high and tight" style. Parker's father doesn't seem to be in the picture. Mom handles the twins and Parker by herself.

One day, Ian and Parker recounted how Parker had received a black eye over the weekend. Apparently, on Saturday morning, mom fell asleep in the bathtub. Parker was trying to sleep in, but the twins wanted him to get up, so they pounced on him and pummeled him until he threw them off his bed. Fists flew next, followed by door slamming and Ian retreating into the kitchen for a butcher knife with which to hack open the door. Mom, meanwhile, is still alseep in the tub. While I am trying to look both sympathetic and appalled--I cannot imagine my children chasing each other with butcher knives--I am shown the various war wounds, bruises and bumps, the result of these fisticuffs which went on for the better part of thirty minutes before Ian finally stormed into the master bathroom, still brandishing the butcher knife, to wake his mother up so she could get Parker out of bed. Yes, I think I might be exhausted, too.

Jerrick, the third boy in this equation, is a neighbor. Parker is allowed to come to his house, but the twins are strictly forbidden. No big surprise there. Jerrick is bigger than both the other boys, but easily cowed by Ian's sheer boyishness. He's an only child of a single mom and likes to collect things. He has hundreds of cards from various collectible card games, none of which he knows how to play. He has forty-one mechanical pencils in all different colors. He also has a trumpet, which he brought in this past week and attempted to play. "How long have you been playing?" I asked.

"Two days," he replied. And then continued to make sounds like drowning cats until I broke in to thank him for the performance.

The day he brought in his collectible cards, it was hard to get anyone interested in math. They were all over the three tables, on the floor, on the chairs. By the time we had retrieved all the cards and he'd packed them away--each set had its own rubber bands and had to be tied just so--I practically had to break out a cat-o-nine-tails to get them back into the mundane universe of integers and fractions.

This afternoon, while I was working with Jerrick and Parker was whipping through a page of problems so he could be done for the day, Ian decided that he would remake his science-class mobile into one large extended clear plastic straw with rubber bands, paper clips and squares of paper tacked onto the end. Earlier in the hour, he'd pushed one of the three small tables into a corner, claiming he needed his own space. Now, in the space he'd created in the room, he began spinning in place, faster and faster until the entire mobile flew apart and scattered across the room. Parker immediately dove out of his chair for the pieces near him; Ian collapsed onto the floor saying he felt dizzy (hm, wonder why?) and Jerrick looked stricken. For the next five minutes, while I got Parker back into his chair and back to work, Ian pestered Jerrick for his snack and then fell down again, saying he would die of hunger before the hour was over.

Jerrick hid the graham crackers under his shirt.

Ian tied his string sack around his neck and pretended to hang himself. Then he went to the fridge in the room, which is reserved for residents, and began rooting for something to eat. By this point, Jerrick is so traumatized that he's sitting stock still. It hasn't been this wild since the twins were together and I know it will only get worse as the weather gets warmer.

Three minutes before the hour is up, Ian packs up his bag, marches to the door and leaves. I let him go. It's not worth the fight at this point. He wins some. I win some. And in between, we work on math. Parker says, "You're just going to let him go?"

"Yeah," I say. "Unless you want me to tell him to wait for you."

"Nah," he answers. "I used to take karate and my sensei said I have a really fast punch." Parker seems to be worried that Ian will be jumped on the way home, though I doubt that anyone would come out on top with Ian, the butcher knife wielding seven-year-old. But Parker is more fragile and I offer to walk him home. "Nah," he says. It's not as dark as it was on the first night, when he asked me to walk him home and then made sure I kept a good twenty paces behind. I obliged.

They pack up. Jerrick has recovered his wits and he and Parker head for the door. Before I've even pushed in the chairs, they're running across the lawn through the gathering dark, all exuberance, bravado and pure boy-ness at its very best.

Claiming

2010-01-31T23:27:00.000-08:00

People think that just because I am the Senior Editor of Orchard House Press that my day consists of rejecting manuscripts and drinking coffee. Actually, my job is much more Chief Operations Officer than Senior Editor and has been for about ten years.

Ten years is a long time to not write anything. The last novel I published came out before my son was born. Then when he was a baby, there were two collections of short fiction, erotica to be precise. They are, of all my books, the ones that have made the most money.The first one I wrote with him in a Snuggly. The second I wrote with him at my feet. In between I was on a panel about writing erotica. It started at 10:00 PM. The lateness of the hour conflicted with my son's bedtime. So I brought him. He fell asleep on my shoulder and drooled for an hour while I talked about the pros and cons of writing explicit sex.

When I look back, it seems like there was so much more time then. And looking back further, I wonder what the heck I did with all that time before I had kids and before I was a self-employed. Most of it was spent looking for my "other half," a journey that is half anxiety, half self-analysis. Now, at nearly fifty, I feel as though I should be settled, wise, serene.

But I am none of those things.

And today I am thinking about other writers.

I don't know how other people make their peace with the writers who get corporate backing, six figure advances and no other responsibilities than to produce a novel every year. I struggle. I struggle with jealousy, with wanting that life, with not wanting that life, with being thankful that I don't have to worry about my book being butchered by some nitwit with "the bottom line" as his motto. I struggle with the fact that I will, most probably, never be reviewed by the New York Times Book Review. With the fact that I know I'm a good writer. That I have a gift and that I am a better writer--in terms of the craft, especially--than a lot of the writers I read. And I read a lot.

One of the inherent dangers with depression (you knew that figure in here somewhere, although I swore that I wasn't going to talk about that today)... okay... one of the inherent dangers with being me is that I do tend to see the greener grass in someone else's pasture. Having come to realize recently that my mother's angry resentfulness about anything that she had to do for us--laundry, clean up, cooking, etc.--and my father's attitude that anything, even a root canal, was better than spending time with his wife and children, has left a few ... scars, has made me wonder whether it's actually possible to undo twenty years of intensive conditioning and then thirty more of reinforcing this behavior on my own by making choices that would echo that resentment and anger. I want to change. I don't want to be miserable. I don't want to make other people miserable. I want to be a beacon of light and hope ... okay, that last bit is not true. I'd just like not to be a sucking black hole of despair.

I thought that if I could simply disengage and stop caring it would be easier. The problem with that is that other people notice that you've disengaged. And while they're waiting for you to come back out and play it's easy to convince yourself that they don't like you anyway. So why bother going out at all?

I've always wanted a single fix, a silver bullet with which I could slay my enemy. But the mind is too tricky and complex for that. In Ibsen's play Peer Gynt, Peer looks everywhere for answers to the big questions. Toward the end of the play, he peels an onion, and as he pulls away layer after layer he realizes there's no center. Just layers. There is no answer, per say. Rather, the answer is in the layers. So it is with the mind. The answers to my questions lie in the layers of experience, conditioning and memory.

Add a healthy dose of chemical compounds and hormones moving around in living, changeable flesh that is fueled by food which may or may not be what the body actually needs the most at that moment--you need a supercomputer to figure that out, I think--and you have ... well a person. A human. Fallible, mutable, imperfect.

And so, we come round to that greener grass again.

I look at some of these other writers' blogs. One women, who has nearly twenty novels published by Tor, talks about how she likes to write in a cafe between her massage and going to the gym. She talks about the single malt whiskey she drinks, about working on an outline for a book, posts her workout schedule and what she eats. The fact that she has time to go to the gym everyday, and can afford a masseuse ... something about that life appeals. Yeah, I'd like to plunk down $50.00 for sushi after going for a "climb," at the indoor rock, but ... well quite simply, I can't. Don't have it. Don't got that advance, baby, for the book that's still on index cards on your kitchen table. Don't have the time.

I look at Scott Westerfeld's website. That guy is prolific. He travels, he speaks, he writes. He's a known commodity. He's not the best writer and none of his ideas are particularly unique, but he's struck a chord and that's why he is where he is.

BTW, neither of these people have children.

Downstairs, the kids are watching Food Network. It's just after midnight on a Sunday night, now early Monday morning. Jenn is working. Brianne is working. And I? I am claiming.

For the past month, I have worked every spare moment of every day without fail. I've signed off on The Mardi Gras 3000 Player's Handbook after reworking two stories completely and editing all ten others (some extensively); I've signed off on the Mardi Gras 3000 Crusade Battle Anthology, some twenty-odd stories written by twenty-odd different writers at various places in their writing careers. I've renamed almost every single book of the Bible for the Terrapyre Prayer Book with names that actually stay true to the text, context and yet bridge the gap between the "real" world and the world of Mardi Gras 3000. Then I proofread the Prayer Book. A lot has changed in this universe since some of these things were originally written. It's my responsibility to make sure everything is up to date.

Then I started in on the Sourcebook, which is the writers bible for this world. I'm still working on that. And I'm still working on a novel called Angelus: Fallen, which will be the first novel I've published in more than ten years.

Do I want this other woman's life?

Hm. Let me think about it. Nope. I guess because I can fill a blog with more than just what I'm eating and drinking and how many times I made it to the gym last week. It's important for me to claim my identity as a writer. I write every day and I nurture other writers. I might not be working on my "own" novels, but I can think of a bunch of people who would trade places with me in a minute.

I need to claim the grass that's at my feet, cause it's just as green as Six Figure Advance's grass. In some ways, mine's a lot greener 'cause where I live, it rains. All year. And the grass is greener now than it was last August. Where she lives, it's -4 degrees and under four feet of snow, her grass is dead.

Into the World

2010-01-24T16:03:00.000-08:00

In the beginning of the film American Beauty, Lester Burnham is masturbating in the shower and his voice over remarks that "this is as good as my day is gonna get." He has a crappy job, an overachieving wife who feels she hasn't reached her potential and a teenage daughter who doesn't like him. He thinks back to a time when he was really happy. And realizes that it was when he was a teenager, working at a burger joint. It was a time without responsibility, a time full of possibility when the world lay before him like a sparkling, golden landscape waiting to be explored.

What happened to the person who used to be up hours before everyone else? What happened to the person who used to teach school with a puppet named Mouse? What happened to the person who . . .

I think part of the reason depression is so devastating for everyone involved is that it kills, just as surely as high blood pressure, a sudden heart attack or inoperable cancer. It kills slowly. But it kills just the same.

"The person who . . . " is long gone. Dead.

Where did that happy, early rising person go? Into the world.

When I feel this way, no one wants to be around me. This is ironic, because this is when I need people the most. But I'm not much fun to be around. So, until I'm in a better mood, I am alone. But the more I'm alone, the more alone I feel, and therefore the more depressed I become. Well, I guess it's my own fault, right?

I mean, depression is all in your head, right? Just pull yourself up by your bootstraps, there, girl! Turn your blue day into a new day! Look at these stupid pictures and feel better! Please. Spare me.

Nothing that I do can make it better. Nothing that I do will change how you feel. I can't do anything. I want to fix it, but I can't.

Funny. I feel the same way. I want to fix it, but I can't. Anymore than I can fix Faith's diabetes or Max's autism. It is what it is. I just don't want to fight about it anymore.

I think about characters like Lester Burnham. I think about the times I was truly happy. And when I find them, I try to identify what it was that made that time good. But then I remember that every time I have been happy, I've also been unhappy. I'm not like Lester. I can't just quit my job, start working out and go flip burgers. Because even if I did, I still wouldn't be happy. And that is how depression kills.

Happy Freaking Saturday

2010-01-09T13:23:00.001-08:00

Thank goodness for the "unfriend" option on Facebook.

I don't like starting my weekend with a certified letter from an author. It amazes me that someone who can come to my house, spend the day with us and then decide it's appropriate to share confidential information about our company with a vendor. A vendor who was complaining that we hadn't paid them--when in fact we had.

It's not like this is a big surprise. I can tell the keepers from the lemmings.

It's amazing that you were stupid enough to hire a lawyer but forget to take me off your friend list at Facebook. Truthfully, you're no great loss.

What you are is a b****.

Every Day a New Day

2010-01-07T18:49:00.000-08:00

Last night, Jennifer stayed up all night.

In 8 hours, she created a 14 page, scene-by-scene outline for the Mardi Gras 3000 novel Elijah. She wrote 3000 words. The plot is tight, the logic and science flawless.

I will never be as good as she is.

I will never be as able to suck it up and put the seat of my pants into the seat of my chair and just *do* what needs to be done without complaint or resentment.

She amazes me.

She inspires me.

And I'm damn lucky to have her in my life.

Cris

The Christian Thing

2010-01-05T19:48:00.000-08:00

One night, fairly recently, I was on the phone with a family member. Her significant other came home, having just spent an hour or so with two of four elderly grandparents and announced that Jennifer and I weren't "pulling our weight" in terms of care giving.

This past weekend, my family and I (and here I mean the 5 of us), spent the day at this same grandparent's house. E. is Jennifer's paternal grandmother. Her husband, L., hasn't risen from bed for months. He's not ill, per say. He just doesn't want to get up anymore.

"What I wouldn't give to just lie down like that," E has said, a wry smile and self-depreciating chuckle follows.

But she can't. She has an adult mentally-disabled daughter who lives with her on the weekends. C. has moved out of the house within the past two years. For the first time. She now lives in a group home that she likes and takes the bus to and from her job where she does some basic office work like filing and copying. C. is intelligent. She loves to read and has a number of varied interests. She also likes being treated like a real person.

On a recent episode of Glee, the cheerleading coach, Sue Sylvester, allowed a girl with Down Syndrome to try out for the squad. Sue put her through her paces, while the other cheerleaders cringed. The faculty reacted, too, condemning Sue for humiliating the girl. But did she? By the end of the episode, we've learned that the unlikable Sue Sylvester has a sister, who also has Down Syndrome. To see Sue with her sister reveals a side of this character that no one expected. Her sister, like the potential cheerleader, just wanted a chance to be treated like everyone else. It's not cringeworthy; it's a level playing field.

In this same way, C. wants to be treated like a regular person. She wants to be included in the conversation. When we visited this past weekend, I took the Kindle, which was a Christmas present to the family from one of our friends. Jennifer suggested I show C. how it worked. I did, but she wasn't as impressed with the ability to read books on this device as she was by the fact that she could go to Wikipedia.

C. doesn't have a computer. She's never been on the Internet. I don't think she's ever seen a laptop aside from the ones we've brought on occasion. But the idea of having access to the world's biggest library for free--and right from the living room--had huge appeal. I showed her an entry on bats--animals are a favorite topic of interest--and explained how some words linked to other articles about different kinds of bats, habitats, etc. "Wow," she said.

She sat back down on the couch and I returned to the chair I had been sitting in. A few minutes later she asked, "How much does that cost?"

I told her. "You know, if you want to give me the money, I'll buy one for you and I'll teach you how to use it."

"Really?"

"Yeah," I said. "You bet."

Now, let's go back to E. She's in her nineties. The reason her husband won't get out of bed. is he's become incontinent. It happens. Personally, I don't think it's a make or break situation, but I am also not a man of a certain generation who has always been THE MAN of the family. He's proud. He's dignified. He has been a loving father and good provider. He has borne the death of his only son. He has survived. But now, he needs help.

Well, you might be thinking, if their children are incapable of taking care of them and they are not able to take care of themselves, perhaps it is time for the grandchildren to step up. Said grandchildren include Jennifer and her sister, Angela. Angela and her husband live close to E. on the Seattle side of the Puget Sound. Angela has done quite a bit to help out, in addition to helping her husband's mother get ready to move out of a house she and her husband have lived in for 40? years and into an apartment. Oh, and they are run a successful dog walking/training business. And they're both actors who are regularly employed in Seattle's theatre community.

We live on the other side of the Sound. It's a ferry ride ($9.50 one way, $25.00 coming back) or a road trip ($20.00 +/-) in gas. Since we borrowed money from E. last year to keep the house of of foreclosure, she's knows we're not flush and it's difficult for us to get ahead enough financially to take a day off. Although we'd like to get over there once a week, we usually make it once a month.

Seen in this light, we aren't pulling our weight, as the Significant Other was quick to point out. I guess I should mention that S.O. works Seattle-side and stops on her way home to look in on E and family. But still.

The exector of the family will, however, is none of these people. Rather, it is their other daughter, let's call her R., who lives on Vashon Island, a ferry ride away, just like us. She has a M-F job, as does her husband. She works on Vashon; he works in Seattle. They have a grown daughter who lives on her own. R doesn't like to visit on the weekends because C. is there and they don't get along. Perhaps this is because whenever R comes to visit, she pointedly ignores C. This generally results in some anger on C's part. After all, she's come to see her mother on the weekend. Why is R monopolizing the conversation and ignoring her? R has flat-out refused to handle any of C's paperwork. That's left up to the increasingly overwhelmed E. R has also refused, despite her mother's request, to look into an assisted living facility that will accomodate E and L because R believes that her father doesn't want this.

R also feels that we're not pulling our weight. And has said so on a number of occasions.

Aren't families great?

Yesterday, I wrote about losing my temper. This situation is a field of land mines waiting for someone to step into it. I would really like to give R a piece of my mind (or the flat of my hand). But I won't. Because I've been mired in family politics long enough to know that it won't do any good. The best we can do is say she's a hypocritical b****. But a church-going one!

Our favorite slogan in this house is: If standing in a church makes you a Christian, does standing in a garage make me a car?

The Christian thing to do would be to set aside her anger, resentment and frustration with her younger sister and treat her like a person. It would be to listen to her mother's wishes and get her parents into an assisted living facility ASAP. It would be to help her mother with the reams of paperwork required for C's care. It would be to get her father help so that he doesn't lie in the darkness for 24 hours a day, drifting into numbing depression. It would be to show up on the weekends and help clean out the basement, the pantry, the piles of boxes in the closets and under the beds.

The Christian thing to do would be to buy her mother a dryer because she's never had one. She only got rid of her ringer-washer in the past 5 years. The Christian thing to do would be to remember that this is the woman who took care of her for 18 years and the man who worked so that she could have clothes on her back and food on the table.

But I guess that for all her talk, she really isn't a Christian. Funny, isn't it, how the ones who wouldn't be welcome inside a "Christian" church are the ones who are responding in a Christ-like manner. In fact, it's the Christian lesbians, the agnostics and the Buddhists who are working together to make E's wishes a reality.

I guess those right-wing "Christians" are too busy organizing and p0liticking to look to their own. I guess they've never actually read the book they spend so much time quoting out of context.

Meanwhile, we'll continue to do what we can. For E. For C. and for all the elderly, disenfranchized and poverty-stricken. Because we know what it's like to feel overwhelmed and helpless, poor and marginalized. Every. Single. Day.

The Switch

2010-01-04T19:13:00.000-08:00

I haven't written anything for nearly a month.

It's not that I didn't want to. But I couldn't. Couldn't muster the enthusiasm for anything. Didn't really see the point. In some ways, I feel the same way right now, although three hours ago, I felt fine.

Depression is a funny thing. It's like being a child again and your entire world can come crashing down on you when your best friend decides to walk home with someone else or that snotty girl at school makes a disparaging remark about your outfit. Your world is small. Then and now.

A remark that, on a different day, would elicit no response at all feels like a deliberate slight. You ask yourself are you too sensitive? Are you overreacting? It's a crap-shoot, honestly. You have to take into account the speaker, what that person was doing when this happened, how his or her day was going at the time, the stresses, the pressures . . . it's ridiculously endless.

Some people have learned to shut their mouths during those 15 or so seconds that it takes the brain to catch up with the body's fight or flight response.

Unfortunately, I am not one of them.

Is my day now ruined? Hm. Don't know yet. It's still early--relatively speaking for this household. Am I still pissed off? Um. Yes.

It's ironic to me that I've come through the dreaded month of eternal darkness (otherwise known as December) by sheer power of will. I woke up this morning feeling more hopeful that I had in a while, thanks to a conversation with Jess last night, and then it all falls apart.

You think I'm being overly dramatic? You know, it depends on where you stand. It really does. An argument with someone you care about--child, co-worker, friend, partner--can ruin anyone's good mood. The difference is that I don't just bounce back.

There's a switch. A chemical reaction that takes place inside my body. It flips on. It flips off. For the longest time, I wasn't even aware it was there. When I became aware initially, I had no control over it. Over time, I have learned to pay attention to events or feelings which will trip that switch. If I'm lucky, I can re-wire the circuit before it blows.

Today just wasn't one of those days.

Am I still pissed off?

Not so much. The hard part is still to come. What do I do now?

I can apologize. Once, that was enough. But after a certain point, "I'm sorry," is just a bunch of letters that don't mean anything. It's automatic. You expect to be forgiven, but the truth is you have behaved like a jerk. Having been on the receiving end of a couple of these truly empty apologies, I've gotten to the point where I'm like, "Yeah, well I accept your apology, but frankly, that doesn't mean s***." So I could still say the words, but I'm not sure there's much point.

I can simply pick up from where I left off and go forward. Not pretend like it never happened, because that's just stupid. But just go forward.

Or I can stay up here in my little room and fuel my anger until I've really got the potential for a full-on out of control temper tantrum.

Hm.

You know what, Monty, I think I'll take what's behind Door #2.

That being said, I'd better go downstairs and make dinner. Maybe a little crow. Yum. Pass the salt.

What's Hard

2009-12-08T18:28:00.000-08:00

You know what's hard? The limitations of language. The expectations of others.

What's easy is the reality of our household. It's very simple. But there are no words that accurately express the nuances of these relationships. There are words that define parts of it: Mother, daughter, son, partner, friend. But some of these words have shades of meaning.

Then there are expectations. One family expects to see one configuration; another family expects to see a different one. How you do you explain a triangle when everyone expects a straight line?

Finally, we have the issue of what is personal and private set against what it personal and universal. I'm willing to be transparent about myself. It's inappropriate to make others transparent without their permission and participation.

For almost two decades, I've played a game of poker with friends and family. Sometimes, I show; sometimes I bluff; sometimes I call and everyone has to lay their cards on the table. This, however, is rare.

If you won't understand what I say, why should I explain it to you?

Try me, you say.

No.

Why not?

Because unless you've had to think outside this box, it won't occur to you to do so. And I'm tired of explaining.

You're not giving me a chance.

You haven't earned my trust.

. . .

The fact that the words aren't accurate isn't my fault. And if I don't get hung up on the words, then everything is fine. Simple. Fluid and constantly in motion. If I try and explain to you how it is, I'll get hung up on the words and all the fear will come back.

Maybe it should.

No. I banished it. We battled. I won. End of story. There's an old expression, "Words cannot express. . ." and in this case, words cannot express what is simple. And what is true.

A Boy Alone

2009-12-07T20:13:00.000-08:00

Between Jennifer and myself, we try to read everything we can get our hands on about autism. We have educated ourselves so that we can, in many cases, educate the people who are part of Max's life, whether they're physicians, teachers or other parents and kids.

I'd read a review of Karl Taro Greenfield's memoir Boy Alone and got a copy from the library. Let me say right now I would have been furious if I'd paid for this book. I am furious that thousands of trees have been made into the paper that printed this book.

Greenfield's book is a self-centered, angry, juvenile tirade against his severely autistic brother, Noah. Born in the mid-1960s, Noah was diagnosed with "autistic tendencies" and was also labeled "retarded." As of this writing, he's in an institution. Unreachable. Or perhaps that should be unreached.

I thank God that Maxwell was born when he was. The resources available to us are incredible. The fact that the Internet can connect us with thousands of other parents.

Greenfield's whining begins on the first page and continues throughout. There are absolutely no redeeming qualities to this book. Greenfield, despite everything that's happened to him and everyone he's met remains stoic in his rage. He is unchanged. I'm appalled that Greenfield's book was published and blurbed by people who are actually making a difference in autism research. I'm appalled that his agent, his publisher--his family!--thought this was appropriate. But in today's society, what isn't appropriate?

Karl Taro Greenfield says over and over how ashamed and embarassed he was by his brother. His brother, who remains institutionalized and will be for the rest of his life. His brother, who had the bad luck of being born before anyone was talking about mercury in vaccines. His brother who was born before anyone was talking about treating autism as an auto-immune disorder. His brother who has been the subject of numerous articles, written by his father, and yet receives no benefit from any of it. His brother. Locked in a world of his own. Alone and unreachable.

To Karl, his brother Noah is disgusting. But he just can't bring himself to walk away.

You know what, Karl, you should walk away. Far, far away and never come back.

Karl Taro Greenfield should be ashamed. He should be ashamed of himself. Houghton Mifflin should be ashamed to have published this book. The people who blurbed it should be ashamed of lending their names to such a furious diatribe against an innocent, and allowing someone to rant against a boy.

Grow up. Get over yourself. It's not all about you, Karl. In fact, it never was.

Black Friday, 4:00 AM

2009-11-27T20:34:00.000-08:00

I am on my knees on the floor. I am not, however, paying homage to the retail gods and giving thanks for great prices. I am weeping.

It started on Wednesday, when I began feeling old and in the way. I don't know why I was feeling this way. All I know is that when I came downstairs that morning, my switch had flipped. The joy was gone, replaced by free-floating anxiety and a tendency to misread facial expressions and body language, not to mention words spoken in English. This becomes problematic when the language you rely on is . . . English. Needless to say, the day did not go well.

I fought with everybody, pretty much. Got mad. Tried to get a grip. Held on for a while, then, when I was busy navel gazing I accidentally let go. By the end of the night, I felt okay. And Thanksgiving day was easy and relaxed. Then last night it all came crashing down. I found myself on the floor of my room, wrestling with a pain so deep and so powerful that I wanted to die.

There is a kind of clarity that comes with this kind of pain. The pain obscures any rational thought, and all the irrational ones as well. I wasn't thinking suicide. I wasn't thinking at all. I was praying. Praying for companionship. Praying for guidance. Praying for the pain to end.

Finally, I got up and began to pick up the papers and books from the floor where they'd fallen some hours before. The last one was a piece of art that my daughter Faith made for me. It's a sheet of white paper with two drawn lines and a rock glued somewhat off center. There is something about this particular piece that I just love and last night I realized what it was. It's completely random, and yet totally deliberate at the same time. It is art made out of what is at hand. It is art made with love. And it's darn funny to hold a piece of paper with a rock glued onto it in your hand at 4 AM. It made me smile.

With that smile, I knew my prayers had been answered. In this house, I have companionship. In this piece of artwork, I have guidance--look to your children, who will drop *anything* to play with you. In that moment, the pain eased. A little while later, I finally fell asleep.

When I woke up this morning, I realized that since Brianne moved in, I hadn't had any nights where I felt so completely alone. Long after the children have gone to bed, I can almost always find Brianne and Jenn at the kitchen table or in the living room.

The other thing I realized is that it doesn't feel right anymore when she's not in the house, especially at night. And I'd come full circle.

Click.

Cris

For Real

2009-11-26T19:51:00.000-08:00

There's a hole in the middle of the prettiest life
So the lawyers and the prophets say
Not your father nor your mother
Nor you lover's gonna ever make it go away
And there's too much darkness in an endless night
To be afraid of the way we feel
Let's be kind to each other
Forever and for real.

I dropped out of college in 1981, after changing schools once and majors twice. I had a lot of experience in theatre lighting and set construction and soon was working steadily as a lighting tech and designer for the Folktree Concerts at the Somerville Theatre and elsewhere. I freelanced for Folktree and a bunch of other people up through the late 1980s. During this time, I had the opportunity to meet and work with number of folk musicians. One who has remained a favorite for more than twenty years is Bob Franke.

Bob is a gentle, considerate man. The first time I heard him live, I was standing backstage with Loretta Lee, one of Bob's longtime friends, softly singing along and she said, "You really are a fan." It was true. I knew all the words to all of his songs and had even managed to find a copy of his first album Love Can't Be Bitter All the Time, which was then out of print.

I always come back to his songs, for inspiration, for comfort, for remembrances of the people who have come into my life and faded away while I wasn't paying attention.

On this Thanksgiving Eve, I am thankful for absent friends--remembered, and not forgotten.

There are sorrows enough for the whole world's end
There are no guarantees but the grave
And the life that I live & the time I have spent
Are a treasure too precious to save

What can you do with your days but work & hope
Let your dreams bind your work to your play
What can you do with each moment of your life
But love til you've loved it away
Love til you've loved it away

Cris

If you'd like to know more about Bob, here are two of his websites. The Song Journal, Bob Franke's Website

To Whom it May Concern

2009-11-20T20:09:00.001-08:00

Thank you for your pathetic attempt at ruining my day. Since I've been writing to you regularly with updates about the state of your order, I'm not sure why it's all suddenly my fault and I am expected to make it up to you by paying as much for shipping as I spend on groceries for my family for a month.

I can only assume that you also mean it's my fault that the economy has tanked, that I chose to feed my family instead of buy 2 cases of paper three months ago. I guess, while we're at it, I could also take responsibility for world hunger and the fact that India now has nuclear bomb capabilities. Is there anything else you'd like to blame me for?

I just want you to know that after agonizing over how to respond to your stupid and pig-headed email for almost thirty minutes, wanting to resolve your problem immediately and in the most economic way for you, the customer, I finally proposed a solution I thought would work for everyone and even meet your arbitrary deadline and I dutifully sent it off to you.

You can imagine my dismay when I received an auto responder telling me you are away for the holiday and won't have access to email for a week or so. Unfortunately, that means the deadline will be missed. Now, I ask, is this also my fault?

You say call me. Hm. Let me think. No.

Why not? 1. Your litigious. 2. Your a jerk. 3. I do not deal with someone with anger management issues on the phone. 4. You think the world owes you something and it doesn't. 5. I could go on . . . but why bother? I don't call people like you. Sorry. I have learned a few things in nearly twenty years. People like you are common as dirt, predictable as Federal holidays and only serve to remind me of all the wonderful people in my life who are not like you!

And thank God for them! I am so grateful that you are in the minority of the people I have to deal with on a daily basis. I am so grateful that I am not related to you--though I'm related to one just like you and therefore I have so got your number, buddy.

Our next communication will go one of two ways. You will either back down and be nice, which has been your mode of operation (I am not even going to comment on that) or I will hear from your lawyer, who you probably have to keep on retainer. Either way, whatev. Not afraid of lawyers. Not afraid of you.

Ah. I feel better now. Thanks! And have a great day.

Cris

Creation's Void

2009-11-20T04:15:00.000-08:00

I miss the old SNL with Chevy Chase and Gilda Radner. Watching TV with the lights off, staying up "late" and then talking about the routines and the jokes the next morning. I was raised Catholic and always met my fellow musicians in the basement of the church, where we'd tune our guitars, talk about SNL--acting out the best bits--and then go much more quietly upstairs to await our entrance at the start of the 9 AM "folk mass." It's funny, isn't it, how memories like that rise to the surface--the play of light through the windows, the scent of candles and cologne, a joke shared solely through eye contact, the perfect blend of harmony--completely unbidden, triggered by a turn of phrase, a photo, a smell.

Almost every single one of the people in that group are on Facebook now. Some I've friended; some I haven't. I don't have a lot to say to them, I guess, anymore, though all seem to have done well. Most have children, careers, grandchildren, a wallet's worth of photos. Fun to see the family resemblances. I'm happy for them. We all turned out all right, despite our parents' convictions we'd rot our brains with television and amount to nothing.

Watching my children grow up, talking with Brianne and other people from Gen Y, I am reminded that everything is the same in that great cosmic sense of cyclical repetition. The issues may be different, but that sense of wanting--needing--to break away is the same.

In my family, it was assumed we'd grow up, go to college and start families of our own. When I expressed doubts about leaving home for college, my parents told me in no uncertain terms that I was going. Now, I'm glad they did. I've see what happened to friends of mine and also of Jennifer's who didn't leave the familiar for the great unknown.

Recently, someone Jennifer had known and considered a friend since their early teens contacted her on Facebook and took her to task for an incident that had happened more than ten years ago, an incident of which she was completely unaware until he brought it up. He was unhinged, furious and had been carrying a perceived slight around for a decade.

About fifteen years ago, I ran into a woman I'd been close friends with about ten years before that. I was so happy to see her. Our lives had been intertwined for so long that I had completely forgotten that we'd had (what I considered) a minor disagreement about a group project. In the end, she'd left the group. We didn't see each other much after than, and less than a year later, I returned to school and didn't have time for anything other than my course work. She was surprised that I was happy to see her. I thought, my God, you were one of my closest friends . . . why would I hold onto such a small thing in light of all we had shared?

I read recently that the enemy of evil is forgiveness. Not revenge. Not justice, but forgiveness. I hadn't thought about that before. It's hard for me to see the grey areas sometimes and the choices afforded by black and white don't easily accommodate forgiveness.

And I'm not sure I could forgive anything. Everything. There are just some things I personally find unforgivable. Yet Christ would have us do just this. Forgive even the most terrible acts we might imagine. He forgave his murderers.

What would that be like, I wonder? To have committed such a terrible crime and to be forgiven by the one you have wronged or the parent or spouse or child of the person you'd hurt or even killed? Would the enormity of your actions tear you to pieces after receiving forgiveness?

And aren't these the questions that keep us up at night? The idea of the existential void, of fate's role in our lives, of what is good and what is evil and how can we be sure we're right?

It won't be dawn here for a few more hours and I am ready--finally--for sleep. It eludes me most nights and so I listen to music or surf the web or read or stare out into the darkness, unbroken by streetlights and, lately, by stars. It is absolutely silent here now. Imagine that. Like the intake of breath before the world began.

That moment when anything is possible. Anything at all.

Wash Me Clean

2009-11-18T23:45:00.000-08:00

It's 7:30 AM. I've been asleep for about 3 hours. Someone's shaking me awake. Jenn. OhmyGodohmyGodsomethingkilledthe chickensCrisohmygod.

Rolling, stumbling out of bed, What? What? A surge of adrenelin makes my muscles bulk and I'm reaching for my clothes and Brianne's in the doorway . . . My heart is pounding. Behind Jenn, I'm looking out the window, down in the fenced area. I can't see anything. Where are they? The hutch's door is still closed.

... something...ripped their heads right off.

I'm shaking. Words are starting to sink in. Max is okay. Still sleeping. Faith, awake watching quietly. The room is spinning. Reaching for a bottle of water. Leaning against the bed, the world slides away and for a few minutes, I'm just . . . not . . . there . . . Breathe. Okay. Breathe. Wait, don't--

Cris, what's wrong?

Words not coming out. Sit down. I thought . . . I can't say what I thought: Max is dead. Faith isn't breathing. Brianne has fallen down the stairs . . . a million terrible nightmares all rolled into that split second between sleep and waking. I take another deep breath.

Jenn is calmer now, almost apologetic for waking me. Brianne is getting dressed. "You'll listen for Max?"

"Of course." I step into the upstairs hall. Down in the foyer, Jenn's work boots are tumbled on the floor where she kicked them off. The gloves hurled half into the living room. There's mud on her jeans. I watch out the window while Jenn digs two more graves. She lifts Daisy gently out of the hutch. She looks like a dark oblong stone in the early light. Brianne reaches into the hutch to retrieve Bock Bock.

Holes filled, stones mark where they, and others, lie. Inside, we're together on the landing again. Clothing stripped off, we head to bed. I lie awake watching the light grow outside the window until Faith's breathing has slowed into sleep again. It's 8 AM

* * *
I am so sad, I can't stand to be inside. Taking the outgoing mail and my mp3 player, I pull into the easement where I am faced with a huge flat bed tow truck blocking my way to the street. The driver's door opens and he heads up to a neighbor's house. The only car in their parking lot of a driveway is Anthony's and he doesn't get up before dark. I tap the horn. The driver turns and looks at me. I gesture to his truck. He comes toward me. Through the passenger side window, I say "Could you move your truck?"

"What?"

More loudly this time, "Could you move your truck so I can get out?"

"Don't be rude," he says and turns away.

Rude. Don't. Be. F---ing. Rude!? Don't start with me or you'll see what see a whole new side of rude, you cretin.

Out on the road, pushing his idiocy aside, I try to focus. It's raining. The sky is low and grey. Leaves are blowing like crazy across the road, swirling into the air. I feel beaten down, reduced to nothing. Behind me, in the house, everyone is sleeping.

I drive. Down to the one-room post office run by someone who knows my name. Another customer opens the door for me as I stagger up to it, loaded down with boxes. It's warm inside and smells like paper and old wood. "It's good to see you, Cris," Diane says. She's about my age, her blond hair streaked with white. She smiles. We make small talk until the counter is clear of boxes, then she points to the new stamps and we talk about art for a few minutes.

I always come down here to the Southworth post office to mail my packages. I can't stand the Port Orchard post office, where everyone, except my friend Mario, is so rude that I actually lost my temper and made a huge scene about eight years ago--which I had never done before and have never done since. Reluctantly, I leave the warmth and the company. The road the post office is curves around down toward the Puget Sound. I drive slowly along, looking at the houses, one has a second building that looks like it used to be a pump house or some kind of cold storage. Both structures are made out of brick, which is not common here. There are classic A-frames, little bungalows, small farms. Lots of "No Trespassing" signs and eight-foot high laurel hedges. But it's quiet. I reach for my camera, but realized I don't have it with me today. I make myself a promise that I'll come back this week and walk here and take pictures.

Back toward civilization, a sudden glimpse of the Olympics bathed in late afternoon light. A bright stripe illuminates snow and jagged peaks. I pull over, watch until the clouds shift and the light fades.

In the easement again, the tow truck is gone. Or maybe he never came back. I really don't care. The sun has already set. I check the office; UPS has already come for the pickup. I drop off two boxes of colored lights that I bought for $4.00 to brighten the office. I'm here by myself now, and I'm often lonely. Joy is trying hard to find me today and I'm giving her all the help I can.

Inside, the kids are playing a game together. They greet me with a rush of words and then race off again. In the darkness at the top of the stairs, Jenn stands with her hand on the top of the banister. I climb the stairs. We embrace and I finally let go of the grief I've been holding since dawn.

Ubuntu

2009-11-16T23:00:00.000-08:00

So much of life is about synchronicity. About finding hope or inspiration or understanding in the most unexpected places.

A few days ago, I went to the library to pick up a book on hold and, as I always do, I stopped to peruse the shelves of new arrivals. Our library also has a program called Books 2 Go, books set aside in special book cases attached to posts and placed throughout the library filled with both classic and contemporary novels that have always proved interesting reads. I discovered Tim Winton this way and his novel, Breath, has become one of my favorites.

But last week, a book with a red cover caught my eye. It's a well-worn paperback, published in 2006 called I"m Proud of You: Lessons Learned from My Friend Fred Rogers by Tim Madigan. Though I didn't watch Mr. Rogers Neighborhood growing up (like Tim, I was a Captain Kangaroo kid), I came to love his gentle nature and thoughtful way of interacting with children.

When Fred Rogers died in 2003, I felt a great sense of loss. Like many people, I had been surprised to learn that he was exactly as he presented himself to be. Exactly. He was truly a gift from God, the only person I have ever known who loved unconditionally.

Have you ever felt unconditional love? If you're a parent, you have. And if you're like a lot of parents, myself included, you don't always recognize this gift for what it is. But what about from other adults? Probably not.

As I'm reading Tim Madigan's wonderful book, I am struck over and over again but the depth of love in the friendship between these two people. How Fred Rogers was so willing to embark on the journey of friendship, willing to take risks, willing to always see beyond the surface of people and to love them unconditionally for who they are. In all of the letters Tim includes that passed between them, there is never any advice given, never any "shoulds." There is thankfulness and gratefulness and appreciation.

I don't think it's any accident that this book came into my hands at this point in my life, at a time when I am sometimes so engrossed in my own suffering that I am unable to feel the everyday blessings that surround me. This book isn't a primer for how to live, but a reminder of what is possible.

Life's greatest gifts often occur unexpectedly within the most mundane of events. And the simplest act of kindness and love can be completely transformative.

Have you heard the starfish story? Tim asks Fred when he sees a starfish curio in Fred's apartment.

I don't believe I have, Fred replies.

After a great storm, a man is walking alone on a beach. He notices that there are thousands of starfish washed up on the sand. In the distance he sees another man bending over to grab something and hurling whatever it is into the water. As the first man approaches the second, he sees the second man is throwing starfish back into the sea.

"What are you doing?" the first man asks.

"If these starfish don't get back into the water, they'll die."

"But there must be thousands of starfish on this beach. What possible difference could it make?"

"To this one," the second man says, "it makes all the difference in the world."

Ubuntu is a South African word which means, "I am because we are."

I am because we are.

A Coward's Way Out

2009-11-13T22:00:00.000-08:00

Like everything in life, life itself becomes a choice.

Take my life, for example. I have two small children. My son is ten. He has autism. He is afraid of death. How much of his life would I destroy? Well, considering that in his view, I am Baby Squirrel, I'd say that I'd devastate his life's work. I'd cut out the heart of his universe. I would break his heart.

My daughter is seven. I've co-slept with her since she was thirteen months old and was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes. She has no desire to sleep in her own room. What could be better than a King six bed with your favorite Mama and about thirty stuffed animals? Not much. Actually, probably nothing.

And to all those parents who say "Kick the child out of the parental bed," I say, Read Our Babies Ourselves. Want to wipe out SIDS? Co-sleep. And if you think I don't worry about her becoming comatose during the night or dying? Guess again. I check her breathing. I check her glucose level. I make sure she's exactly where she should be before I go to sleep. Or I set my alarm (a.k.a. my partner, Jennifer, who works nights) to come and wake me up so I can make sure she's okay.

Her life would become all about "Why did Mama leave? What did I do? Didn't I love her enough?" And isn't there already enough pain and heartbreak in this world?

And then there's Jennifer. Right now, Orchard House Press is run by two people. I am one of them. In fact, right now, I'm the one focusing primarily on the publishing house. If I weren't here, the business would fold. Nearly three hundred authors and artists would find their books suddenly out of print. Some, I'm sure, would find other publishers. Some would not.

My partner has Chronic Fatigue Syndrome. The medication she needs to help her be functional (e.g. wake up. Literally. Just wake up.) costs $6.00 per pill. The medication lasts for 8 hours. That's it. The insurance company wants us to prove she has sleep apnea. Which has nothing to do with CFS. But, as they're part of the huge broken U.S. health machine, I'm not surprised. Her PCP hasn't gotten around to calling the insurance company to find out exactly what they want on their forms even though I asked her to do this six weeks ago. They're very earnest and concerned on the phone, but their follow through sucks big time. We don't have the money to pay for this medication. The pharmaceutical company who makes it has our application for patience assistance. They haven't made a decision yet.

So my partner with CFS now has two special needs kids and a failing business, but no house. The house is in my name. It both of our names were on the mortgage, the kids would lose their health insurance. So the bank would foreclose.

Then there's Brianne. She'll be 21 in a few weeks. The amount of stress she handles now is tremendous. The amount of extra stress she'd be under then . . . . She's a strong person, but that's a lot to ask of someone who has recently embarked upon the journey of adulthood.

I have family--a sister in New Jersey, the DiMarco clan out here. I have friends, people who care about me and who have really hung in there with me during all these ups and downs.

My pain, at times, feels like more than I can bear.

My pain, at times, convinces me I should never have been born. That I have contributed nothing to this world. That I have no worth.

I don't care so much about whether people think I'm a coward. But it pisses me off to be called selfish.

Even if you live on a mountain, alone, and haven't seen anyone for twenty years, somewhere, there is someone who knows a story about you, maybe someone who knew you as a child, remembers a funny incident, a joke, a smile.

No matter how terrible your pain, the pain you would inflict upon those who love you would be far worse.

My pain--our pain--comes and goes. It's as real as a broken bone. As real as a broken heart. As real as the first time you realize someone has betrayed your trust. And as sharp and poignant. every single time. It lays us low. It wipes us out. It slays love and kindness and gratitude.

It's a tide that ebbs and flows. Regularly, it covers me and I drown. Then it draws back, perhaps to hit harder next time, perhaps to ebb into a string of good low, tide days.

It always returns.

This past week, I was spun up in a tornado of fury. Set off by nothing and everything. Justified and ridiculous. Blinding and illuminating.

This morning, I woke to a cloudless sky. I drove to Silverdale for an eye exam. It's been several years since I've been up that way and the highway exit has been rerouted. I got lost. Exiting the highway, driving under the interstate and reentering to turnaround, I drove up the on ramp and caught my breath.

The Olympic Mountains, dark blue against a lighter blue sky, bisected by strips of pure white cloud. Thunderheads in the distance, gold edged by the sun.

This evening, Jenn woke me from a short nap. "Was this week better or worse than last week? What about the week before?"

"What are you asking me?"

"It's hard for me to tell whether a medication's working."

"I don't think it makes that much difference."

. . .

"It's a cycle."

"I want to break the cycle."

She looked at me for a minute and then said, "I'm not sure you can."

Reality is harsh. Living is hard. Some days it really, truly sucks.

I may be selfish sometimes, but not that selfish.

And I've never been a coward.

Luminous

2009-11-10T21:50:00.000-08:00

At dusk, the chickens must be secured in their coyote-proof hutch.

Last night, in the pouring rain, I carry two large buckets full of water to rinse out and refill the animals' water containers.

Entering the rabbit and chicken area, I see luminous shapes moving in the near darkness.

They are not chickens, not ghosts, but . . . rabbits.

How tired was Jennifer this morning at 7:30 A.M. when, at the end of her work shift, she went outside (also in the pouring rain) to let the chickens out and feed the animals?

Tired enough, apparently, to not only let the chickens out, but the rabbits as well.

The fact that they didn't dig out under the fence must be a testament to how well they're treated here.

I can barely see now, and there's a black youngster who's still hiding. There he is.

They go almost obediently back into their atrium, out of the rain, to where their food awaits, some jumping at the closed door, not understanding that it's closed against the other escaping while the escapees are rounded up.

"Tomorrow," I tell Jennifer, "when you let the chickens out, you don't have to let the rabbits out as well."

She looks at me, soaked to the skin, my hair plastered against my head with a startled expression on her face. "What?"

"The rabbits," I say. "I don't think they need the run of the yard."

Her mouth forms a silent O. I slip out of my muddy boots, strip off my wet clothes and toss them into the laundry room.

"I'll make coffee," you say handing me a towel.

I just smile.

Mayberry

2009-11-09T23:37:00.000-08:00

I miss Mayberry
Sitting on the porch drinking ice-cold cherry Coke
Where everything is black and white
Picking on a six string
Where people pass by and you call them by their first name
Watching the clouds roll by
Bye, bye

I grew up in the 1960s, mostly in the mid-West. There were always a lot of kids in my neighborhood and I never wanted for playmates from the time I was four until we left not only the mid-West, but also the 1960s.

In my childhood, Fathers worked, Mothers stayed home and kids went to school. In the afternoons, we'd ran wild through back lots or nearby woods, corn fields or elm-covered streets. Freeze Tag. Kick-the-can. Hide-and-Seek. Red Rover. Stick ball. Kick ball. Jump rope. Or a thousand other games involving bicycles, go-karts, wagons and pedal cars. As the day ended, we'd race home to wash our hands and faces and present ourselves at the family table where Fathers sat, still in their white shirts from work, and Mothers brought nutritious meals to the table to gave thanks for the food we had and the lives we led.

I was never afraid. On my bike. At the neighborhood pool. Hunting for tadpoles. Fishing with corn for the catfish at the bottom of the pond. Running through the summer dark among trees and shrubs. Alone. With others. I was mostly unaware of the outside world until 1970, when I read my first real newspaper article. It was about Kent State.

I don't know whether my mother's heart ever went to her throat when she heard the screen door slam behind us.

Looking back, it seems like a lot changed in that decade. But maybe it just seemed that way to me because I saw it reflected in my parents. When I was a toddler, my father had a crew cut. My mother wore a dress every day or smart capri pants like Laura Petrie. In my first ten years, I watched my mother stare at the television with tears pouring down her face as Walter Cronkite announced to the world that our President was dead. I saw my father come into a hotel room ashen-faced to say that Robert Kennedy had been shot. I saw cities in flames in the wake of Martin Luther King's death. I saw people their thumbs out along the side of the road holding signs that said "Woodstock." I watched a man put his foot on the moon. By the end of that decade, my father's hair touched his collar in the back and my mother was serving TV dinners. Something profound had changed.

Does every child feel this way, growing older?

Will my children look back on their first decade and remember the bottom falling out of the economy? Will they resent us for making them aware of money so early or will they be, like my grandparents were before them, thrifty and cautious and grateful for everything they have?

I went to college with a typewriter. I wrote my first novel on a computer that took a 5 1/2" floppy disk. Now, I write on a laptop that's smaller than my typewriter was and the Internet has become my dream of the worlds' biggest library.

But for all this, sometimes I wonder what it would have been like to have lived with some fundamental differences in place. What if I were heterosexual? What if I'd never left the mid-West?

On a hot summer night
He wrote Billy Bob loves Charlene
In letters three foot high
And the whole town said that he should have used red
But it looked good to Charlene
In John Deere green

Would my life have looked like Field of Dreams?

Sometimes, watching The Andy Griffith Show or The Waltons, I wondered about the life I couldn't have--the acceptance I would never find.

Luckily, I was young then. And naive.

When I listen to country music, I imagine a world of happy (heterosexual) couples with tow-headed kids who love to help on the farm, where men are men and women love them for it (Gretchen Wilson doesn't figure into this worldview, nor does Miranda Lambert's "Gunpowder and Lead.") Where each night after the animals are in the barn, the family sits down together and bow their heads and pray as one, while squares of buttery light spill into the darkness. And on Sunday, fresh-scrubbed hard working men and their beautiful wives and kids all file into the church to raise their voices in song, listen to a sermon admonishing the men--but not too harshly--for the beer consumed on a Saturday night, and go home to a supper of fried chicken, cornbread, sweet tea and vanilla ice cream.

And I think, in some families and in some places, this vision of 50s normalcy is still a reality. But that beautiful picture presented in so many contemporary country songs--much like a TV ad for Hidden Valley Ranch dressing--is created for the specific response it will evoke. and is not a world that most of us fit into. We're not straight or white or middle class, for one thing. We don't hold with fire and brimstone. We don't think machismo is an appropriate answer to every situation, nor is a good fistfight. We don't drink or sit on the porch smoking cigars and talking about Red State politics and how this country is going to hell in a hand basket. We don't know all of our neighbor's names, nor do we care to. We don't think all women need a good man to make them happy. Or any man, for that matter.

The world I remember, the world I thought would be mine to embrace, is long gone. Or maybe, it never existed to begin with.

Sometimes I dream I’m driving down an old dirt road
Not even listed on a map
I pass a dad and son carrying a fishing pole
But I always wake up every time I try to turn back . . .

Maybe it's a good thing to wake up. 'Cause in the world where I live, there's not just black and white, but brown and gold and cinnamon and . . . a lot more colors than I ever saw in Mayberry.

Angelic

2009-11-08T22:25:00.000-08:00

Imagine that you just found out your best friend or you wife or your husband or your lover was an angel.

Would you believe?

Everytime you're with this person, you feel relaxed, safe, without fear, without doubt.

But then your friends and neighbors and co-workers start to see what a wonderful person your angel is.

Could you share?

Could you put aside your personal needs and desires if you knew that the angel could change hundreds or thousands of lives?

Could you let her go?

Could you follow?

And You're the Only One Who Knows

2009-11-06T17:26:00.000-08:00

In every heart there is a room
A sanctuary safe and strong . . .

I saw your picture today.
You are beautiful.
As always.

I spoke to you in cautious tones
You answered me with no pretense
And still I feel I said too much
My silence is my self-defense

It's been sixty-seven days
since I've heard from you.
That was when you said
I'd ignored you for
the past six months.

I accepted the blame
as is my way.
But later I realized
I had answered all your mail.

I fought with you
that night
twisted up by the wrong medication
and a chemical storm.

And then retreated.

And every time I've held a rose
It seems I only felt the thorns
And so it goes, and so it goes
And so will you soon I suppose

You disappeared
taking the child with you.
I think of him as my son, too,
A choice we made together

I have asked everyone
I know to help
me find you.

I have asked everyone
I know to tell
you that I love you.

I have asked everyone
I know to tell
me that you are okay.

So I would choose to have you here
That's if the choice were mine to make
But you can make decisions too
And you can have this heart to break

It is never simple
or easy
It hasn't been since
the turn.

I have no regrets
other than my own failings.
Certainly none about you
or our son.

And this is why my eyes are closed
It's just as well for all I've seen
And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows

Please come home.
I miss you.

And so it goes, and so it goes
And you're the only one who knows.

Cris

Who Holds Your Hand When You're Alone?

2009-11-05T23:50:00.000-08:00

After a string of good days, a spectacular crash. I am a porous stone as one drug leeches out and another leeches in, waiting for the rain to wash me clean, fearing it will freeze instead and I will crack and fall to pieces.

I felt fury take me. I can't do this anymore. I am going to fail. Why do we persist using the same tools that have failed us before? I hate this . . . everything!

I am shouting. Again. Then the self-loathing pummels me to the ground. Pounding down the stairs out the door into the night. It's 2 A.M. and I'm standing on the porch.

I am so angry that I can't even move. A sudden gust of wind lifts my hair. Calm swirls around me like a presence, like a cool hand on the top of my head. It is my Christ, come to remind me that I am never alone. My anger is gone. A sudden cloudburst brings a storm of hail so heavy I can no longer see the trees ten feet away.

A single flash of lightning, so bright I feel as though I've been caught unexpectedly in a camera's bright flash. One second . . . two . . . thunder so close it shakes my bones.

Why can't I figure this out? Is the only way to measure days into segments and rush from task to task?

The fury of hail subsides as quickly as it began.

Back inside, I rip my schedule from the pantry door and crumple it into the garbage. Screw it. Color-coded garbage anyway.

Jennifer says she's going to overhaul Max's curriculum. I know the feeling. He can't encode, so how can I teach him how to spell? This is how: You try something new. And you keep trying something new until you find something that works. But you don't stop putting one foot in front of the other. You don't stop pushing back the blankets and getting out of bed. You don't stop walking or singing or playing with your kids. You. Find. Another. Way.

In a few hours, the sun will rise.

Every day a new day.
Every moment another chance.
Take a breath.
Let it out.
Begin.

Some Days, it's All About the Wait.

2009-11-04T12:10:00.000-08:00

This morning, when we checked the status of Washington State's Referendum 71, which would "expand the rights, responsibilities, and obligations accorded state-registered same-sex and senior domestic partners to be equivalent to those of married spouses, except that a domestic partnership is not a marriage," has passed in King County (where Seattle is located), but the ballots are still being counted in most of the other counties.

I am hopeful.

On Tuesday, November 3, Maine overturned it's gay "marriage" law.

You know, I don't care what it's called. It could be called "The two people living together who may or may not have sex who just want to be able to keep the house and support the kids if their partner dies suddenly" law. It could be called the "My partner is in the hospital and we don't have the same last name and oh, God is she all right and when can I see her?" law. It could be called the "These are my children. This is my family. We're human beings, not 'abominations of nature' so please treat us with respect" law, or even "We have made a lifelong commitment to each other and would like to celebrate this joyous event with a ceremony that has some resemblance to the pictures of the perfect wedding that has been pounded into our heads through TV, music, movies and print media since we were toddlers" law.

As far as I'm concerned, it doesn't have to be called "marriage." I'd rather not quibble over semantics. If the far right wants to claim the word "marriage," fine. Whatever. I really don't care.

It's not about the word, anyway. It's about the fact that a lot of men and women, for whom having a child is never an "oops," are choosing to have children and raise them in the stability of a family unit. Choosing being the optimum word here. Our kids certainly didn't get here by immaculate conception.

And I honestly fail to understand why it's okay for a fifteen-year-old to un/intentionally get pregnant, have the baby, leave it with a baby sittter or grandparent or parent or whomever and continue on with her life and actually finish high school (!) and not bother to name the father or involve him in his child's life and no one seems to find this a problem--because if it were a problem, there'd be a law against it, right?

But two adult men or women who have created a loving home and who sincerely want to have a child are denied the same legal benefits as a loving and committed heterosexual couple who have children or for that matter any heterosexual couple.

Or for two people, regardless of gender, to make a lifelong commitment to each other, whether they choose children or not.

When our country was founded, only white men could vote. Slaves were counted as 3/5 of a person when counting the population to determine how many seats a state got in the House of Representatives. Blacks were given the right to vote after the Civil War, but if you lived in the South, you could only exercise your Constitutional right if you could pay a poll tax and pass an 8th grade literacy test. Native Americans weren't made full citizens until 1925, and women didn't get the right to vote until 1920.

The Civil Rights movement occurred in my lifetime. Roe v. Wade was decided by the Supreme Court in 1972.

Americans are known for our relentless pursuit of freedom and justice. I can only hope that enough people in Washington state remembered that at the polls.

Cris

Taking My Place in the Story of Leaves

2009-11-03T22:34:00.000-08:00

I kick at the leaves of maples,
reds of seventy different shades, . . .

I walk out this morning on the way to see a new P.A. I'm running late, as usual.

yellow
like old paper, and poplar leaves, fragile and pale
and elm leaves, flags of a doomed race . . .

The sky is a clear autumn blue. The leaves are brilliant in the light. I can hardly keep my eyes on the road the trees are so beautiful. The light, the colors, the day takes me back ten years, maybe fifteen. . . . I am driving to work through colors so luminous they seem lit from within. I am living inside the characters of a book I will begin writing in a month's time. There is nothing I need or want except for this light, the stars that guide me home and the knowledge that my life is about to change.

I kick in the leaves, making a sound I remember
as the leaves swirl upward from my boot,
and flutter, and I remember . . .

Today, in Bremerton, the streets are deserted. It's early afternoon when I park on a side street and smell the ocean as I lock the car. I am thinking about Hanover, New Hampshire. Of a bookstore where I spent countless hours, sitting on the floor in the basement, reading world mythology. Of the ride back when the sky was steel and the sun cut shafts of light and color across the hillsides.

Kicking the leaves, I heard the leaves tell stories,
remembering, . . .

Sara's office is small and square. She is slight, dressed in beige and black. Her eyelashes dark, her hair a blondish silver that keeps drawing my eye as I try to puzzle out its intended color. She is wearing makeup, not to augment, but rather to cover. What does she see when she looks into my eyes? She asks my permission to take notes. Outside, the sun is lustrous. There is a Mexican grocery with yellow and orange walls. For a moment I am walking in Los Angeles, surrounded by Mexicans, beautiful and dark. I smile as we pass on a street full of music, where trash blows into the gutters. And I wonder where I would be now if I had moved to Long Beach or Twenty-nine Palms rather than Concord, New Hampshire in the fall of '92.

buying
a cup of cider at a roadside stand
on a dirt road in New Hampshire, and kicking the leaves, . . .

Sara listens carefully. She talks to me about atypical anti-psychotics, of second generation anti-depressants, of using anti-psychotic drugs to treat depression. Fear is rising slowly inside me. "In the old days . . . up until a few years ago . . . treated with . . . and lithium . . ." These are new and unfamiliar names: Seroquel and Abilify, used to treat Bipolar Disorder and Schizophrenia. We talk about side effects: Sudden drops in blood pressure on standing up, increase in blood sugar--which may result in Type 2 diabetes--increase in cholesterol . . . "but with a balanced diet and exercise . . . you just can't eat donuts and sit on the couch . . ." Well, that's no my thing anyway.

I think it's the idea of an anti-psychotic that frightens me. I look out the window and think of flying.

Now I fall, now I leap and fall
to feel the leaves crush under my body, to feel my body
buoyant in the oceans of leaves, . . .

It seems that when the initial combination of drugs don't work, or cease to work. . . Zoloft, Prozac, Wellbutrin, Lexapro . . . with an SSRI, P.A.s and doctors found that pairing an SSRI with a low dose of an anti-psychotic drug often works well. I am already taking an SSRI, so the chemical changes won't be as abrupt as they might were we to change everything all at once. So we agree to taper off the Wellbutrin and add BuSpar (buspirone). We agree to check in after ten days. She tells me to make an appointment for four weeks.

breathing the acrid odor of maple . . .

I"m at the pharmacy for an hour. Some confusion. Apologies. I don't care. I'm staring out the window, unfocused, allowing memories to wash over me. The smell of apples, fingers of wind throwing leaves into the air, the rush of sound through the treetops, the night I saw a ten-point stag half in shadow near the house I was renting in the woods. The smell of hickory in the woodstove, the feeling of an axe in my hand, the sound the wood made as it split along the grain, then heavy in my arms up the stairs and into a stack on the floor where it would wait for its turn in the firebox.

Oh, how we flung
leaves into the air! How they tumbled and fluttered around us,
like slowly cascading water . . .

When I am finally finished, the light is already failing. Thin, bluish clouds have blown in from the west. By the time I get home, the shadows are long in the orchard and the chickens have put themselves to bed. Inside there is hot coffee.

Now, in the dark, the clock tells me the day is ending. But not for me. Not yet. I think of the moon, silvering the leaves and the branches in the woods. I think of Orion who led me home to that house in the woods where I first heated with wood and then the years we heated with wood, after our furnace died. The night is sharp and clear; the clouds have moved on. I hear the rabbits, restless, in their atrium. The knowledge that my life is about to change.

Now I watch my children . . .
and I know that I
diminish, not them, as I go first
into the leaves, taking
the way they will follow, Octobers and years from now . .
I smell and taste the leaves again,
and the pleasure, the only long pleasure, of taking a place
in the story of leaves.

Cris

With thanks (and apologies) to Donald Hall. "Kicking the Leaves" from Old and New Poems.

Context

2009-11-02T18:34:00.000-08:00

I find myself in a strange position. I have a friend, a woman, who I like very much. She is a new friend, but I enjoy her company and her insights, her sense of humor and her approach to life in general. She is very different from most of my other friends. I think that's part of why I like her. We've worked together and worked together well . I would feel a loss if she were to disappear from my life.

Through a mutual friend, I now know something about her that I would have not have known otherwise. This information did not come to me through gossip, but was disseminated in a public forum. For better or worse. But now it is done and cannot be undone.

This information has to do with an incident that happened some time ago. There is evidence of remorse, which one might interpret as guilt. There is evidence of information omitted. But the omissions are not something I would ever know about her, unless I were her lover. Which I am not.

When a crime is committed, our sympathy lies with the victim. We count ourselves lucky. We decontextualize it, compartmentalize it so that we can understand. Sometimes the crimes are so terrible they are overwhelming. When I hear about crimes that are almost too horrible to be believed, I am always enraged. At first. Then I want the laws to be stricter. I want justice to be swift and as humiliating and shame-inducing as the crime. And then I weep. I weep for the victim/s. I weep because sometimes we are nothing more than animals, no better than the chickens on my farm who will literally peck to death the bird at the bottom of the pecking order, no better than my beloved rabbits who bit the limbs off a new born, who then bled to death in my hands. I wept then too. But for different reasons.

Animals are animals because they lack a certain kind of intelligence. Animals are animals because they don't have impulse control. Nor are they able to think about the consequences of their actions--especially how their actions might literally ruin someone else's life. A child's life. An adolescent's life. A woman's. A man's.

Have we become so apathetic, so tuned into the "playlist of our lives" that all we have left is moral ambiguity that allows us to participate--even if that participation is observation--in crimes like rape, murder, child abuse and more?At what point do we say, ENOUGH! My God, what's wrong with you? What are you doing? Get the f--- away from her! At what point to we put our bodies between the victim and the perpetrators? At what point are we willing to risk our lives to protect someone who is being destroyed physically, emotionally, spiritually or psychically?

As a writer, as an academic, I understand the importance of context. A singular sentence in two different contexts means something completely different.

So. My friend. The information in context means one thing; out of context it means another. I have to infer some of the context, and then there is the benefit of the doubt.

An interesting phrase "the benefit of the doubt." It is, in a way, the cornerstone of our legal system. Forget about innocent until proven guilty. Few people presume innocence once an arrest has been made simply because of the enormous number of facts, pieces of evidence and that all important "probable cause" that goes into making an arrest in the first place. No, our legal system is built on doubt.

Good people do stupid things all the time. Good people sometimes do terrible things. Good people sometimes do terrible things to themselves because the pain of being simply alive is too much. I see too much. I can't bear this. I am being torn apart by these feelings. I am being crushed by the pressure. Oh, dear Lord take this pain. But instead of prayer, they reach for a bottle or a vial or a needle. And then life becomes bearable, if only for a little while.

When it's over and you realize what an incredible mess you've made, you ask for forgiveness. From your friends. From yourself. And if your friends are true, they will remember who you were before and who you are after, who you are now. We are flawed. And that's what makes us human. But we are not animals. And we should not behave like animals.

And when good people stand in the harsh light of their reality, and they promise they will never forget what they have done and they ink this promise into their skin and they get sober and they get straight and they take charge because yes, life is damn hard and that's just too bad and what did you think would happen if you chose that path and you've got one chance so don't blow it . . . something changes. A door shuts on a monster that will bang on the other side as hard as he can for the rest of your freaking life. And you can never never open that door again because if you do, you will be lost forever. You enact a certain strictness. You become exacting. You become demanding. You demand perfection of yourself and you are a shining example to others of what is possible, dammit.

And it is at this point in your life that I meet you. And you blow me away and I really like you and you are so talented . . .

You aren't longer apathetic. You aren't out of control. You have fed and sheltered someone dear to me. You have borne witness to your own darkest moments and been through hell to come out on the other side. How can I judge you?

I wasn't there.

These are my People. This is Where I Come From.

2009-11-01T22:13:00.000-08:00

My parents met at Carswell Air Force Base in early 1959. My father was a ROTC officer; my mother a certified nurse. My father pursued my mother with such singular focus that within six months, they were married. In their wedding pictures, my father is in uniform.

My mother had joined the Air Force right out of college. She'd been engaged to a man named Jim. That's all I ever knew about him. While she was taking her nursing boards, Jim went to her father and said he wanted to break it off. Her father, Blaine, told Jim to stay away from his daughter. And when my mother finished her last exam, her father was waiting for her.

Knowing my mother as I did, I'm sure she blamed herself. She wasn't pretty enough, thin enough, contrite enough . . . whatever. But she was pretty enough. And smart. And creative. And she also suffered from chronic depression, though she would never admit it and was never medicated for it. I see so much of myself in her and I wish she was still alive so that I could . . . talk to her, apologize for being such a handful (now that I have a handful of my own), admit that I was wrong, invite her to visit and bring her oil paints. The list is endless.

My parents honeymooned in New Orleans. They were both jazz fans. There is a photograph of them together at a small glass-topped table surrounded by exotic flora, their empty glasses before them. Nine months later, I was born.

We never stayed anywhere more than four years. My paternal grandmother, Margaret, had doted on her only son to the point where he had come to believe that he could do no wrong. His ego is bigger than the Goodyear blimp. His head has trouble fitting through most doors.

We were his trophy family. The attractive wife who knew how to throw a dinner party and serve just enough alcohol to loosen everyone up but to keep the guest from puking in the bathroom. I know she hated those parties. Hated the enormous amount of work it took to prepare, host and then clean up. My father showed up for the party. Then he disappeared again into the basement, which was where his home away from home was located--his home office. We weren't the ones he looked forward to seeing. We were the place where he got fed and picked up clean laundry. We were expendable.

I saw my father on weekends when he mowed the lawn, until I was old enough to push the mower. I saw him on Sunday morning when he'd appear at my bedroom door and tell me to get up for Mass. We were always late. But for some reason, he felt it necessary to sit in one of the pews in the front of the church. Whenever I was with him, I knew humiliation wasn't far away.

He was angry when he didn't get his way. He understood that relationships took time, but we weren't the relationships he was interested in. I grew to hate him. I hated his distance. I hated the way he would take advantage of the enormous emotional turmoil that adolescence brought, waiting until I slipped up in some way, waited to point out just how wrong and stupid I was.

But I never learned not to take the bait. I fought him and I fought hard. When I was a child, he would pin me to the floor with one hand and slap me with the other. When I was older, he threw punches. The day I finally had enough I threw a can of soda at his head. It connected and gave him a black eye. That was the last time he ever hit me. I was seventeen.

My father had an affair with the woman he hired to care for my mother while she was dying of cancer. He converted to Islam. Then he married her. They came to visit when my son Max was eighteen months old. It was absolutely horrendous. His new "wife" was invasive, manipulative, hurtful and did I say manipulative? She was determined to bring the family together. As long as it was on her terms. She gave me a dress. I haven't worn a dress since I was fifteen. And I sure as heck wasn't going to start now because this . . . I'm too polite to say what I actually call her in my head . . . wanted me to.

I wouldn't give up my immoral life--leave my wife and child--because she had a problem with "you know" (Are we really back to calling it "the love that dare not speak it's name? "Oh, please. You're joking right?). He was too much of a pussy to stand up to her (she might withhold . . . s-e-x . . . if he didn't cooperate), so I wrote a long letter to him, with Jennifer's help, drove to his hotel and dropped it off. Then we went home and locked the doors.

The following morning, he pounded so hard on the door that our neighbor the cop came down to see if we were all right. I refused to even yell at him to go away. I was completely silent. That was almost ten years ago. We haven't spoken since.

Why am I telling you all this? So that you will understand how I came to be here--to be this person. There is nature and there is nurture. And both of these aspects shape you. As I assume a fighting stance and prepare to confront the darkness within, my failures and victories won't resonate much without context.

If you're reading this, I assume you want to take this journey with me. I am tired of hiding. I am stunned by how freeing it is to tell the truth.

Tell all the Truth but tell it slant--
Success in Circuit lies
Too bright for our infirm Delight
The Truth's superb surprise
As Lightening to the Children eased
With explanation kind
The Truth must dazzle gradually
Or every man be blind--

Emily Dickinson

Genetic or a Lifestye?

2009-10-31T21:00:00.000-07:00

My daughter has been asking me since the beginning of September what I was going to be for Halloween. Her costume choice changed every day until about a week ago, when she decided she wanted to be a witch.

Her brother, caught up in her enthusiasm, decided he was also going to be a witch. But how to tell them apart? Makeup of course. So, Faith was a blue witch and Max was a red witch. And no one in my family reacted with any surprise at all. Why? Because we've trained them. And trained them well.

A couple of weeks ago, Jennifer and Brianne took Faith to the Goodwill in Bremerton to get some winter clothes for both her and Max. I like to stay home. So does Max. This works out quite well. We have a nice time doing our "parallel play" and are ready for company when everyone gets home.

When they got home, Jennifer showed me what she'd chosen for Max. She brought out a thick, cowl-necked sweater with alternating pink and red horizontal stripes. Perfect, I thought. It's going to be a cold winter and we're going to have to wear layers. Like five or six. Max came into the kitchen and Jenn held up the sweater. "Is that for me?" he exclaimed. "Oh, it's beautiful!"

When we first decided to home school, we got a lot of "what about socialization?" What about it? I'd say. Are we talking about the socialization that allows bullying? That allows kids to be brutalized on the bus, the playground and in the classroom? The socialization that tells girls they have to be thin to be beautiful? My daughter has my build. She's broad and strong as an ox and perfectly proportionate (and within her weight range, just in case you're wondering) but she is not slender. That is not her build. So I should socialize her to hate her body at seven-years-old? Is this the socialization that reduced my son to tears in the dojo when a girl with a chip on her shoulder told him he was stupid and weak? Then Sensei's response: Yell back. Yeah, my son is going to do that. You really don't get him do you? So you can take your idea of socialization and . . . . well, okay then.

This is the same socialization that would have robbed Max of the joy of receiving a sweater that prominently features his favorite color: Pink. What? Pink is for girls you say? According to whom? Did you know that up until the 1950s, the reverse was true? "There has been a great diversity of opinion on the subject, but the generally accepted rule is pink for the boy and blue for the girl. The reason is that pink being a more decided and stronger color is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl." Ladies Home Journal, June, 1918.

Do you know why the sudden reversal? When the United States entered World War II, many factories, including ones that built the planes needed for the war, were extremely short handed. So women entered the work force. And when the men came home, the women were expected to give up their jobs. Thank you and good bye. According to Color Symbolism and Trends, "Having replaced men in wartime industries, Rosie the Riveter of the '40s returned to being Susie Homemaker in the '50s. Reflecting the 'pink-is-for-girls-mom-in-the-kitchen-father-knows-best' mentality, she was admonished to 'think pink'– to wear pink lipstick, drive a pink car, or buy pink household appliances–all of which was reinforced by an all-pink sequence in the classic Audrey Hepburn Technicolor film, Funny Face. The quintessential icon of femininity, Barbie, was born and much of the time, she wore pink."

In the first part of the twentieth century, pink was for boys, but after WWII, pink is for girls? It's completely arbitrary. But if my son wore his new favorite sweater to public school, what do you think would happen to him? Which is why we didn't even consider public school as an option and why I don't even bother responding anymore when people say, "But what about socialization?" I just raise one eyebrow.

And as for the question of sexuality, I firmly believe that homosexuality is genetic. It appears in all populations in nature and is completely normal. I don't think wearing pink will have any effect at all on whether or not my son is gay. Personally, I don't give a rip. I raise my kids to be kind, gentle, considerate, observant, polite and cooperative. As far as I'm concerned, whether or not they wear pink is simply a "lifestyle choice."

Cris

Virtual Light

2009-10-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

In the 1990s, Jennifer introduced me to cyberpunk. Although I'd read Ian McDonald's Out on Blue Six, which featured raccoons with cybernetic implants, I was relatively uninitiated into the distopian vision of a world that may be just around the corner.

Bruce Stirling and William Gibson were pretty much the gods of cyberpunk. Stirling's story "Bicycle Repairman" and Gibson's Mona Lisa Overdrive proved canonical, but the one that stuck with me was Gibson's Virtual Light.

Sixteen years after the publication of Virtual Light, we now have that fabulous vision of the future--instant information--that Gibson's marvelous pair of glasses promised. This emerging technology is called Augmented Reality (AR) and is currently appearing on iPod and other smart phones all over the world. The application is called Layar and if you hold your phone up so it can "see" what you're looking at, you will be privy to instant information about the location, shops, travel directions--even notes and "tags" left by other users.

Imagine never forgetting a name--or a face--again with instant links to Facebook.

Seems cool, right?

Take it a step further and imagine you can block out anything you don't want. Opposing political, religious or cultural points of view, for example. What a relief not to get any news about those Blue States or Red States and their corresponding politics. What a relief for the Conservative Right to have the word "homosexual" forever erased from their online vocabulary--and for their children's. Just imagine how peaceful and insular and uncomplicated life would be.

Unfortunately, taken to its logical extreme, we might become a country/world where common ground becomes all but impossible to find. Why should we even look? There are plenty of people who share our point of view. Why bother with anyone who doesn't agree with us, right?

After Prop 8 (California's ban on gay "marriage") passed, opponents made a list of donors supporting the ban linked to an online map availible. And while a lot of people, myself included, thought this was a good idea--know your enemy and where he lives works for me--I hadn't really thought about the other possibilities.

With the rapid advancements in technology, it won't be long until it's not just your Facebook page that's going to be instantly available. Anything that's a matter of public record could easily be folded into an application that would give you an enormous amount of information about anyone. Anytime. Anywhere. Divorced? Adopted? Signed a petition to support domestic partnership? Letters to the editor? Arrests? Incarceration? Been fired recently? These and other bits and pieces of your life would now on display. Imagine the fun hackers will have with your DMV records, suppressed legal proceedings. The possibilities are endless.

I don't particularly want the bigoted individuals in the conservative town where I live to have instant access to my name and address, as well as a Google map to where I live. There are just enough people who have a large enough axe to grind that this technology could become a tool for the kind of ugly assaults that some of us--myself included--are trying to prevent by building bridges. The reality of my presence in this town and that people see me shopping with my family, out to eat, getting coffee at Starbucks is how I change minds and hearts. One at a time. I don't represent the entire lesbian contingent, thank God, but the more I'm seen as just a regular person, the less the "label" matters. And that's a good thing.

I am really not in favor of any technology that can easily further separate us from each other and our shared humanity. I may not like my neighbors, but if their house was on fire, you can bet I wouldn't stand in my driveway and laugh while it burns. So, I think I'll pass on AR. I like RL better anyway.

Cris

Thanks to Jamais Cascio's thoughtful article "Seeing Too Much" (The Atlantic, November 2009).

Just Too Busy Being Fabulous

2009-10-29T22:08:00.000-07:00

I don't know if any of you have to try and get past due accounts to pay, but if you do, you know it's not much fun. At OHP this lovely job falls to me. I abhor having to call stores and remind them their payment is overdue, especially when they're an independent company struggling just as much as we are.

I understand how hard it is to keep your business going. I spend a lot of time on the phone with our utility companies setting up payment plans and negotiating partial payments that will keep the phone, Internet, electricity, water (pick one) turned on until more money comes in.

However, there's a difference between actively working with the people to whom you owe money and blatantly ignoring repeated letters and phone calls. In this particular case, there was an author reading and signing at this independent store.* It was really successful. The author left more than 60 copies behind and the store sold them all.

That was a year ago.

In that time, I have left messages (15), written letters (13) and asked the author if he might be able to drop in on them and see if he could give me some insight into what was going on. He did try--and I appreciate that--but the only new information he was able to tell me was that they'd moved.

In the beginning of October, I sent out notices for past due accounts, which I do every month. I send yet another letter and a copy of the invoice to this store, this time using language that made it clear I was going to have to turn them over to collection if they didn't pay. You have to careful how you phrase this, because saying "I'm going to turn you over to collection" is actually not legal. Don't ask me why. I guess that's why there are lawyers.

Yesterday, I couldn't bear even looking at the phone. But today was different. I was annoyed. No, I was mad. Why won't they pay me? That little voice inside my head (the good one, not the bad one) said, "Call them right now." And so I did.

I got the manager on the phone. I explained who I was and what I needed. She said, "Oh, yes. I got your letter."

Which one? I'm thinking. How nice of you to acknowledge that you've been ignoring me.

"But it came right before I went out of town."

And you were too busy to write a check. Okay. That happens.

"And then when I got back, I was busy with another project."

Uh-huh. She's now in overshare. This is not what I want to hear, if you know what I mean.

"With the move and everything--"

Six months ago . . .

"and the mail got all messed up--"

because the post offices in Utah don't believe in using change of address forms . . .

"I've just been so busy--"

for a year . . .

"But I'll get do it next week."

Sure.

I'll be waiting by my mailbox. Because, what you owe me will pay November's second mortgage. But if I'm not doing a happy dance by the end of the week . . . I'm going to be sending your information over to my "Uncle" Guido. You know? Hey, I'm a DiMarco. That has its benefits, if you know what I mean . . .

You were just too busy being fabulous
Just too busy to think about us
Just too busy

Cris

*all of the particulars of this situation have been changed. Because I'd get in trouble otherwise.

Spare Change

2009-10-28T23:00:00.000-07:00

The other day as I was waiting for the light to change down by the Walmart, I saw a woman standing on the sidewalk with a sign that said, "Hard Times. Please help."

My first thought was, "Way to state the obvious." But after that wave of sarcasm passed, I got mad. I pulled over, rolled down my window and said, "You're squandering your potential."

"What?"

"Your potential. You're wasting it standing here with that sign."

"What @*$% business is it of yours?"

"You're standing on a corner with a sign, expecting people to hand you money. What did you think was going to happen?"

She didn't answer.

"You have tremendous potential to change the world. Everything you do affects something. Why don't you use that potential to make a positive difference?"

"You're crazy."

"No. Just pissed off. Like you are. Like we all are. But I know that looking for handouts is not going to feed my family or help me keep my house."

"What, you think you're better than everyone else?"

"No. Just more stubborn."

"What?"

"Every morning I get up because people depend on me. If I don't, that affects all of those people in a negative way and who knows what kind of ripple effect that has. If I get up, I make a positive impact. They see me persevering, despite the tanked economy, despite everything. And maybe that gives them hope."

"You want a medal or something?"

"No. I want you to stop wasting your potential to be a positive force in the world."

She steps back from the car and gives me a well-known and often used salute. It doesn't bother me. I've accomplished what I wanted: Made her angry enough to think about it. Maybe she'll be back tomorrow. Maybe she'll come back for a week or a month or a year. Maybe she'll never think about this conversation again. Or maybe these two minutes will change her.

You never know.

Cris

Coyote Ugly

2009-10-27T22:21:00.000-07:00

Faith and I spent most of the day in Tacoma visiting her endocrinologist at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital. I'm kind of picky about who my children see, so this is our fourth endocrinologist. I like her. So does Faith. This is a good thing.

When we got home, it was close to 6 P.M. Jennifer, who went to bed at 9:00 this morning, was crashed on the couch. The past few days (years?) catching up with her. Brianne looked a bit frazzled. "Need a breather?" I said shifting into Mama's Home mode. "A shower."

When she comes back downstairs it's pretty much dark. Jenn hasn't had the energy to see to the animals so Brianne and I go out to make sure everyone has food and water and the chickens are secured in their overnight shelter. Lately they've been shunning their fancy new digs for the waterlogged soon-to-fall-apart wooden one. But tonight I want them in the new one.

I'm feeding the rabbits, checking their water. Bok Bok is already in the wooden box, but she wants the treat of canned corn enough to come back out. But where is Busta? While I finish with the rabbits, Brianne goes back inside for a flashlight.

We look everywhere. Then, as I'm rechecking the sliding bolts on the rabbit atrium to make sure they're all secure, I see it. About five feet of upright fencing has been ripped down. We added this fencing after we realized the chickens were smart enough to climb onto objects near the fence and fly out of the chicken area and into the unprotected back yard. The fencing starts at about about four and a half feet and extends to about seven feet high. The section that's bent looks like someone just pulled it down from the outside, ripping it away from where it had been secured in the 4x4 uprights.

"A bear?" I say. We've had several of these, one last spring who left us an unpleasant surprise one morning. 'Nuf said.

Brianne goes outside of the enclosed area and shines the flashlight on the wood. There are claw marks, but they don't look like bear. Then she holds up some golden fur that was caught in the fencing's ragged edge. "Coyote. They're good with fences."

Well, I guess they are, considering he had to get his back paws up four and a half feet, then his body over the top of the fence enough to bend it backward so he could get into our enclosure. They are also much bigger than I remembered.

We secure Bok Bok in the fancy new nesting box--one that is shaped like a triangle and includes a perch. It's fashioned from heavy-duty hog fencing with corrugated tin sides to keep the rain and snow out. Pretty swank. And did I mention that Jenn's mom, Carol, designed, built and sells these? Yeah. Necessity is a mother, we like to say. In this case Necessity was Jenn's mother.

I go back inside to get the heavy duty stapler so we can put the fencing back up, at least until tomorrow when we take another look and re-evaluate whether or not we need to make more changes or just make some changes to our schedule.

When Jenn finally wakes at 8:00, I break the news to her. "I don't know whether it happened early this morning or this evening," I say. "Do you remember seeing Busta this morning?" She is surprisingly calm. Owning livestock is a tricky business. Animals die. And sometimes you've become very attached. It's terrible when you lose animals to a predator. But it's not as bad when that predator is a wild creature instead of your neighbor's pit bull. But that's another story.

She looks at me sleepily. She closes her eyes and I think she's fallen asleep again. But then she says, "You know, I don't remember."

We'll miss Busta. She was at the bottom of the pecking order, literally--once you see a real pecking order, it gives that phrase all new meaning. She came to us because Carol's chickens were likely to kill her if she stayed with a larger flock. She liked to be picked up and petted. No, really. Australorps are very affectionate chickens. The more you give them love, the more eggs you get, especially during the winter when a lot of other chickens stop laying.

I don't like birds, in general. I wouldn't choose to have them for pets and I was nonplussed when Jenn decided she wanted to add chickens to our little farm. But these chickens are really great. They always made me laugh when they came running when they hear our voices to get berries, corn, or other treats. And a running chicken is really, really funny.

I know I speak for everyone here when I say, Busta, you will be missed.

Cris

How Can I Trust You?

2009-10-26T19:12:00.000-07:00

A year ago, I went to my primary care physician. I was at the bottom of my depression cycle. I felt everyone would be better off without me. I hated work. I hated my life. I hated the fact that I was on this planet and seemingly making everyone around me miserable. I requested a medication check and a therapy referral. My PCP changed my medication, taking me off one drug and putting me on a new one. He says, "Most people tolerate this one very well." That's it. Have a good day and here is your referral to Behavioral Services.

If you have state health insurance, as I do, you get basic health care. No dental. No eye. You get two provider group choices. You pay a monthly fee (which is doubling in January, thanks to the outgoing Bush administration.) So, Behavioral Services proved pretty typical of what I'd come to expect. There aren't any fancy fish tanks like there are at Mary Bridge Children's Hospital where Faith gets her diabetes care (she's on a different health plan). They're understaffed. The only person behind the desk when I check in is the receptionist who is very nice (think big loopy handwriting with little hearts and flowers. No really, this is what she draws on your appointment cards), but not the sharpest spoon in the drawer. She can't answer basic questions. Okay, I think. Not a great start, but okay.

The woman I've been assigned to is very nice, but completely distracted. About half-way through the appointment she apologizes to me and tells me her mother died suddenly the week before and she's still kind of reeling. I can emphasize. My mother died in 1997. I know what it's like to be where she is. However, given my state of mind and what has brought me here, I'm not too thrilled to find out that not only is she distracted, but I also can't see her again for three weeks. After that she isn't certain what's going to happen. Okay, I think. It's okay. I showed up. I took that first step. I can hang on a little longer.

On that same day I meet with the M.D. who works exclusively in this office monitoring the medications of the patients. She takes a look at my med list and gives me a printout of common medications used to treat depression. I've already tried half of them. She says everything looks fine, and she'll check in with me in a few months--if I feel like I need to.

Can you see what's wrong with this picture yet?

In the meantime, Jennifer has lobbied hard for Max to meet with a therapist (a social worker) who's covered by his health insurance. She takes him the first couple of times. But then I hear myself saying that I want to do it. I want to be more involved in his life. And this would be the perfect opportunity. We go to see Ann and I like her immediately. She's warm and gentle and obviously already really likes Max. She's open to input and we work well together. Max and I deepen our trust through these visits, where he is more physically affectionate with me than he's been in years. After each visit, we have lunch together and have some time to talk, just the two of us.

Now, let's go back. It's three weeks later. My second visit to behavioral Services, and my therapist tells me she's taking a leave of absence, but will refer me to another woman in the group. To make a long story short, after some shuffling around, I end up with a psychologist who tells me to buy a book that I not only have to special order, but also must save up a month to afford. I go back for the second appointment. He seems surprised. I think he's an arrogant jerk and I cancel appointment #3, thoroughly pissed off that I already paid for the stupid book.

Now, let's backtrack. About 4 weeks after I have this medication change, I'm feeling better. Then one day, I come home from the office, walk into the kitchen, and start yelling at Jenn. For no apparent reason. It's like a switch just flipped in my head. She knows I have a temper. But never, in fifteen years, have I been mean. That night, I was.

Spring forward to early summer 2009. I decide I want to start seeing Max's therapist, Ann. But my policy won't cover it. Oh yeah? I think. I don't think so. Since you haven't been able to provide me with a decent therapist--and I've seen three of yours. I talk to the guy who makes these referral decisions and tell him that I don't care how many hoops I have to jump through, or how much paperwork I have to do. I don't care. But I am going to work with Ann. Period. He says it's unlikely to be approved, but he'll call me back. He calls me back a week later. My request has been approved. Guess he actually took a look at my file.

Let's jump ahead to mid-September. I'm back with my PCP. I'm really down again. He ups the dosage on one of my medications. The same one I started taking a year ago. He asks me to fill out the same stupid questionnaire I fill out every time I come here, which doesn't even begin to measure the way I've been feeling.

Now, finally, let's go to today. Monday October 26. Jennifer has agreed to come and see Ann with me. I want to get to the bottom of why I've been so angry. Yes, the economy has tanked. Yes, we're under a tremendous amount of stress. But. . . something is just not adding up. She tells Ann how I never used to be mean. And now, every time we have an argument it descends into something ugly. Something different. Something that's not me.

And as I'm sitting there, it's like a lightbulb suddenly goes on in my head. I turn to Jenn. "You know, until just now it never occurred to me . . . what if this is a side effect of the medication.?I started taking it about 4 weeks before this first happened and it's gotten worse in the past few weeks . . . ." Everyone is quiet for a moment.

When we get home, I Google the side effects of this medication. Top of the list: Agitation. 31% of people experience agitation as a result of this medication. An additional 5% become hostile. Twenty-two percent experience increased sweating. Hm. For a year, I've been telling my doctor about these exact symptoms. I'd asked him if they might be menopause. But that didn't explain why all my earlier symptoms of menopause had completely gone away and then suddenly just the sweating, short temper and shorter fuse were back almost two years later.

Here's the thing. I never wanted to be a doctor. Or a pharmacist.

I was under the impression it was the physician's responsibility to talk to patients about possible side effects of any drug they prescribe. As well as possible interactions. I'd seen two physicians. And a psychiatrist, who can also prescribe drugs. All of them had reviewed my medications. None of them had talked to me about possible side-effects. None of them had asked me, in the numerous visits when I came back again and again for a "medication check" if I was experiencing any of those symptoms. No one made the connection--or even posed the question--that the symptoms I was describing were actually not menopause, but side effects of a drug.

For a year, I've put my family through hell. I've always felt that there was a trigger, something chemical that set me off--it's never been something that was situational.

I'm not saying that there aren't things I could have done, that I see now, in retrospect. But that's really not my point. And researching medications is not my job. That's your job, Doctor. That's why they pay you the big bucks, right? Because I really don't want to think that this happened because I have state health insurance and I fall into the white trash, won't amount to anything, probably on welfare, you don't really matter demographic. Just because you're poor doesn't mean your judgment is impaired or your insights into your own body should be summarily dismissed.

I put my life into your hands.

I need to be able to trust my health care team, don't I?

But how can I? How can I?

Cris

Complete Transparency

2009-10-24T19:45:00.000-07:00

This morning I paid the mortgage. Then we had $9.00 left in our bank account. By the end of the day, we'd received 2 checks, bringing the total amount of money OHP had made this month to $800, which is not even half of our mortgage payment.

I have to call our mortgage company on Monday because I can't make the second payment on our second mortgage--the one that is in default. I am not looking forward to this, but it must be done. Just as I will spend next weeks calling bookstores who owe us money and writing the last set of letters to these stores before I go about the nasty business of hiring a collection agency. I've dealt with my fair share of these--usually from the other side though. I wish these stores would at least answer my letters, emails and phone messages. I wish I didn't have to go this route. But not following up on this is irresponsible--to my company and to the authors whose books are on the unpaid invoices. This is one of the parts of my job I hate. But there is no one else to do it but me.

Tonight, I am faced with a difficult letter to write. One that I don't want to write, but, like calling those bookstores, it must be done.

Our authors are among some of the best people I have ever known. Flighty, funny, odd, down-to-earthy, out in the ozone... they are creative people and creative people are not cut from the same cloth as the rest of the world. It upsets me more than I can ever articulate that I can't do more for them right now. Because they deserve it.

The letter I have to write goes to one of these hard-working individuals who wants to continue to promote her books. I have to tell her that I don't have the physical resources to do that right now. I have to tell her that one of our distributors has decided that the best way to communicate with us is through their lawyer. They say we owe them $5,000.00. I say, "I don't think so." Whatever. Lawyers don't scare me anymore.

I have to tell her that two of our distributors, independently of each other, have announced they're deferring all payments until January 2010. I'm surprised some of them have lasted this long, honestly, since they get 5% of the book's cover price as payment (bookstores get 50%, for example) they're hurting, too.

What this means is that aside from the past due accounts, of which there are more than usual these days, I don't see a whole lot of money coming in right now. I have the means to fill orders for stores and Amazon.com until what's on our shelves is gone. Then, it's a bit of a wait and see. Holding on just a bit longer. Not letting that nagging voice in the back of my head that tells me I'm fooling myself and everyone else if I think I can make a go of this get to me. Today I can say, "Shut up, okay. I've got too much to do to listen to your whining."

I have to tell my author that I can offer her two choices, neither of which is great, but they are the best possible choices given the circumstances. I don't want to do this. But the only other answer I could give her is unacceptable to me.

I hate it when people or characters in books say, "I had no choice." Because it's not true. You always have a choice. Whether you choose to see it or not, acknowledge it or not, it's still there.

I have nothing to lose. Nothing to hide. I am 49 years old. I have no use for the trappings of diversion, subterfuge, distraction, look over there while I ... whatever. I have become older and wiser and less interested in social conventions, fashion (well, okay I never was interested in fashion), and pretending that it's all sweetness and light. 'Cause it's not. And I don't give a rip whether you agree with me or even like me. Not everyone will and I am really okay with that. No, really.

So I choose to be honest. To be transparent. Because when that happens, some of the pressure eases, the pretense falls away. Ask me anything, I say to my friends, to my kids. I won't lie to you. There isn't anything I find uncomfortable to talk about anymore. I'm too "old" for that.

So I'll write this letter. And then I'll go on to the other tasks on my list tonight. And tomorrow, I'll take a day off. Truly, completely off. No work. Period. Because I can't remember the last time I did that, and that tells me it's been to darn long. And I'll play with my kids and catch up on my TV shows on Hulu and drink coffee and let my brain stop whirring for 24 hours. So that when I wake up on Monday, I'll be ready. Ready to pick up the load I set down. Ready to go forward, again.

Rise

2009-10-23T18:05:00.000-07:00

It would be a lie if I told you that every morning I leap out of bed, throw on my clothes, wake the children with songs and pancakes with organic maple syrup, and the grownups with omelettes and fresh-baked bread. That'd be nice, but it's not real.

There's a scene in the movie My Stepmother is an Alien where Kim Basinger's character Celeste Martin rises with a smile and the energy of a small tornado and the whips up a "small" breakfast for the new man in her life and his daughter. When they come downstairs, the entire table is covered with food, everything from pancakes to a roast turkey.

Unlike Celeste, I don't burst out from the bedclothes ready to take on the world. We may have the same desires in the spring to action make life happy-happy kind of way, but I just don't spring. Most mornings, my first thought is, "Why should I get up?"

I look out the window, which is uncurtained and nearly floor to ceiling. I see trees. Leaves of green and red and gold. I hear the chickens in the yard. These days it's usually raining. If it isn't raining, the light has already slid around toward the west, even though it may still be morning, and so I think the day is already gone.

But the truth is, the rain is what keeps this area green all year. Everyone's lawns look awesome right now, as opposed to the summer when they all look like oak floors. And the day isn't gone. It hasn't even begun yet.

But this morning, I could only stare at the rain from the warmth of the bed and contemplate my next move. The house was completely still. Jennifer had gone to bed around 8 A.M. Faith was still asleep. Max was still asleep. Brianne was still asleep. The cats were groggy. "You don't have to get up," a voice says. "What's the point, anyway?"

But I got up. Moved through a cold and silent house. Made coffee. Woke my son so we could do our school lessons before the others got up. And then, just as everyone else was stirring upstairs, I closed the front door behind me and went to the office.

I was quiet there, too. And cold. With no supplies, there are no print jobs to run and it felt weird to not be starting my day in the production room checking on my machines. I had a hard time getting started. Lots of phone calls today to return. A lot of email. People asking questions I don't know how to answer.

I feel like I'm letting everyone down. I look at my inbox full of very reasonable questions. No one is freaking out. But our authors and artists want to know what's happening, when certain projects will be done, when this or that will be available. It's a horrible feeling to know that--in this moment at least--there is literally nothing I can do.

To clear my head, I go for a walk down a side street that slopes down to a horse farm I've come to like. Because it's private property, I don't even go to the fence, but stand on the side of the road and watch the animals. They lift their heads. There is a beautiful young stallion with a roan coat and black feet. He is perfectly still, like a poem waiting to be read. He sees me. We look at each other for a moment. Then, with a toss of his proud head, he kicks up the dirt and runs, away down the pasture, until he is a blur among the trees.

I hold his beauty in my mind as I climb the hill back toward the main road.

In the office again, I open a letter from an author who has sent me $10.00, a letter and a little story about persistence. When I've finished reading, I smile. Though I can't control the state of the economy, I can control what I will do within these circumstances.

Jan says, "Don't let temporary circumstances steal your dreams. Your authors believe in you. I believe in you. The hard times don't last forever."

This is why I put my feet on the floor every morning. In my hands, I not only hold my dreams and the dreams of my family, but I also hold the dreams of more than a hundred other people. OHP has made a lot of dreams come true. I know this. If this time is a test of my faith--my faith in myself, in the vision that has guided us thus far--I am ready.

Yes, it would be easy to quit.

But nothing worth doing is easy. A dream like this demands all of you. A dream like this demands you risk everything. A dream like this takes you down the the darkest pit of despair that you can possibly imagine and asks, "Are you ready to give up yet?" And when you say No, it it takes you down one level further. "How about now?"

From that place, as dark as the depths of Tartarus, I look up. If I squint, I can see the sky. To the voice, to the sadness and the dark and the feelings of failure and all the other temptations that try to break me, I say, No. Not now. Not ever.

A weight lifts from my chest. I see the grace of an animal in motion. I hold a tangible example of someone's trust in my hands.

Wake up.

Get up.

It's time.

Rise.

Short Circuit

2009-10-22T16:46:00.000-07:00

You know what's the most insidious aspect of chronic depression? It's the way it short circuits my ability to feel joy.

Last night, I got back to the house around 8 PM. We'd talked about wanting to get the kids to bed earlier because everyone is having a hard time getting up. I'd promised Jenn and Brianne I'd watch FlashForward with them at 10 PM. This is something I look forward to.

I looked at the clock. I looked at my computer, which had been off a total of 5 minutes while I walked from office to house. I saw the work scheduled for my evening and knew that I could not possibly make dinner for everyone, clean up and get my work done in 2 hours. I put my head in my hands.

Jenn said, "Cris, why are you sad? We can pay the mortgage. You should be joyful!"

I looked at her and said, "You're right. But it's like . . . ."

It's like this. Something wonderful happens. I have a surge of happiness. It lasts about 10 minutes. Then I sink back into my reality again. A reality that isn't so bad. A reality in which I am surrounded by people who love, support, care for, step in and help, sacrifice for me. I have a family, which I never thought I'd have. Two amazing children who think I'm pretty awesome--who love me unconditionally--which is truly a gift from God. I do work I love. I have time to be creative. I make my own schedule. The list is quite long.

And my brain *knows* all of these things. And I can look at all these aspects of my life and acknowledge how great they are. Really, honestly great.

But I don't feel . . . anything.

Leap

2009-10-21T21:22:00.001-07:00

Some days, you get up on time and then . . . what? life? . . . happens and you find that it's 5:30 and you're just sitting down to work and you pull your mail, closing your eyes because you never know how much will be there or how ugly people will be or . . . how completely unexpected messages will be waiting to surprise you.

Today, I looked into my inbox and saw that Becky had made a more than generous donation to the mortgage fund. "Hope this helps . . . ." Heck, yeah. I mean like Holy Paycheck, Batman!

You know, it's never a burden to talk to you. . . I'm never too busy. In fact, I can't think of anything I would rather have done this afternoon than spend time with you on the phone. To me, it's just as valuable as anything else I could have done and a heck of a lot more enjoyable. And besides, you laugh at my stupid jokes, of which there are many.

A short while after Jennifer moved herself and the earlier incarnation of OHP (Pride Publications) half-way across the country to move into a relatively small apartment in a renovated Victorian in a town where the winters, she claimed, froze her spinal fluid, we had a very interesting discussion about work.

I know you like to work, I said.

She looked at me.

But . . . well . . . relationships, if they are to survive, take time. It doesn't matter what *kind* of relationship. Friendships--the ones that last--take as much time as a partnership. So I'm not just . . . you know . . . um . . .

You want me to spend more time with you.

Well, a few minutes every day would be a good start.

She laughed. I laughed. The tension broke.

Work that you're passionate about is an important part of anyone's life. It isn't necessarily what pays the bills, but it is what makes us creative, inspired--and inspiring--individuals.

I am very very grateful to you, Becky. Someone who believes in what we're doing, sees the struggle, helps out. Without people like you, people like myself and Jennifer and Brianne and Maxwell and Faith and all the writers and artists that OHP publishes would be afraid to take the chance, leap off the side of that building and trust that we can fly.

Life During Wartime

2009-10-20T23:46:00.000-07:00

Woke up exhausted. Brianne was in the shower; Jenn still sleeping. Get the kids up and dressed. Jenn wants to sleep another hour (I figure it should be 2). Get kids downstairs and start breakfast. Brianne helps feed the kids. Check Faith. Give Lantus. Make coffee. Eat. What has Faith eaten? Calculate carbs. Give Humalog. Drink coffee. Give Max his Claratin, Nasonex. He's coughing. Does he need his inhaler or is it just morning stuffiness?

Create a spelling test for Max that he can actually complete successfully. Review spelling and grammar rules. Create grammar test for part of 2nd unit. We are running behind. My fault. We're 2 units behind in grammar and 2 1/2 in spelling. I want him to actually retain the information. Not rush through a new list of 20 words every week, retain nothing and end up in tears.

He's ahead in vocabulary. We can do an entire week's worth in 1 hour. I remember Shirley Bryce Heath's study: "What No Bedtime Story Means" about the connection between literacy and whether or not parents read to their kids. I read to mine, at least a hour a night. I live for that time with them. It saves me.

It's 3:00 P.M. Jenn went to bed at 10:30 this morning. I want to let her sleep, but I know she'll be angry if I do. I wake her. She makes it down to the kitchen as I'm getting ready to head to the office. She can barely stand up.

Once in the office I have the sudden and terrible realization that a shipment of books must be in Reno, NV by Friday. Will I blow our profit (such that it is) if I ship them tomorrow? Will I be able to fill her shipment? As it turns out, it's "No" to both. They'll get there by Friday by ground and I slip the UPS pickup request in under with one minute to spare before midnight. But we run out of paper before we can get all the books printed. So, she'll be short 4 of one and 1 of another. I am finding I can't keep all my promises lately.

We're completely down now. No toner. No paper. All 3 printers.

I look at all of our available funds. Not enough for the primary mortgage. We made the equity payment before the 15th (no penalty) but the second equity payment is completely out of the question this month, so I'll have to call and renegotiate. We are short $900.00. None of the other bills have been paid. We've bought food, twice. So far this month, we've brought in under $1000.00.

I start to feel panicked. I'm sweating, though it's cold in the office--no heat. I can feel my blood pressure going up. I can't breathe. What should I do today?

What do we have to sell? you ask.

The box of stuff Angela gave us. The Polaroid. The Tablet. Your ring.

Let's go through the software again, you say.

Okay.

Make an action plan, you say.

. . .

Can you do that? Okay. Just come to the house and I'll help you.

I go to the house. We sort through a box of software. Most of it will sell for .50. All told, the twenty-odd items might bring us $400.00--if they all sell.

We'll still be short.

It's midnight. My heart is pounding. I'm exhausted. I want to cry. There have been times today when I thought I might fly apart.

Ann says, "You can't live in crisis mode all the time."

Crisis mode. Life during wartime.

We have a new cat. His name is Easter. He's a kitten. He's so gentle and kind. He likes to chase the light from a laser pointer. He makes me laugh.

All you have to do is breathe.

Dear Lord. Lift me up. My family's home... our sanctuary... it means so much to us. Help me find a way to keep it. I am working hard. I am dedicated to my family. My children. Jennifer. Brianne. Myself. We are all we have. But neither are we alone.

Lift me up.

Breathe.

Did the Wild Rumpus Start?

2009-10-19T17:00:00.000-07:00

"... so they're archetypes."

"They're all parts of Max except for Judith who is his mother; Ira, the mother's ineffectual boyfriend and KW is his sister. The one who leaves."

"The owls?"

"Sister's friends. Max and Carol can't understand them. The rest are Max. The Freudian representation of Max... Explosive Anger Max, Petulant Max, Go Along with Everybody Max, Strong and Silent Max."

"They don't learn anything."

"But Max does."

"He leaves them broken-hearted."

"They're just in his mind."

"This movie wasn't fun."

"It was stupid. Pointless. An exercise in Psychology 101...see how much I understand about human nature?"

"I hated it."

"Why do they keep making kids movies that aren't for kids?"

"This one wasn't for adults either."

"Such amazing creatures. Such an imaginative set."

"I read that Spike Jonze really connected with the kid who played Max."

"Probably because the kid was terrified all the time of those monsters."

"I thought it would be different."

"It sucked.."

"Next time, let's rent a bunch and stay home. That way, if the kids don't like them, we can just turn them off."

"But I like to get them out of the house. They don't get out enough."

"Please don't start--"

"--Well they don't."

"Let's go get something to eat."

"Can I have ice cream?"

"Yeah. Life's short. You should always eat dessert first."

2009-10-18T21:33:00.000-07:00

Ruined your day, didn't I?

Yeah. You did.

You keep inviting me.

Like hell I do.

You let it happen.

I do not.

You're undisciplined. This is why you will fail.

Not this time.

You're fooling yourself. Nothing has changed.

I know.

So you're doomed.

. . .

You know I'm right. "Why don't you ask Ann why I'm always the villain?"

Don't you have anything better to do?

No. What could be better than this?

**** you.

I really like it when you lose your temper. Just like in the movie you took everyone to see today.

It wasn't my fault.

Sure it was. Everybody thinks so.

Yeah, well. It wasn't.

She spent almost $100.00 on this and you ruined it for everyone.

I know.

How do you feel now?

How do you think I feel?

Numb yet? Exhausted? Can't move, eh? So many chores to do. No laughter. No light. No one appreciates you, do they?

I done talking to you.

... for now.

Viva Via?

2009-10-17T18:28:00.000-07:00

I love Starbucks. I love the idea of a "home away from home." I enjoyed working for them, even though the beautiful corporate polish put on everything during the training proved to be pretty transparent. Their ideas are wonderful, but human nature being what it is, it wasn't very successful in practice.

There's a Starbucks in my town. Their shots are regularly burned. If their machines are calibrated every morning, I'd be truly surprised. But the staff is nice and it's close by. So sometimes, if I'm in the mood for a burned shot, I'll go down there.

One of the aspects of Starbucks' marketing plan is to educate buyers about coffee. This is actually how I got interested in working there. All those different coffee regions, the different blends and small, organic farm and the idea of free trade. When you're an employee, you have access to a great deal of literature that talks about complimentary flavors and the "accents" and "undertones" and "brightness" factors of the coffees.

When I worked for Starbucks, the espresso pods were a new item. I tried them in my office, where we had a beautiful little espresso machine that just made the day so much more bearable. While they were convenient, ultimately I didn't prefer to use them. The shot they produced was too weak.

So now there's Via.

One of the members of the extended DiMarco clan served in the Army for a number of years and in a number of countries and situations. She's had great coffee and she's had terrible coffee. She walked into a Starbucks in Seattle and said she wanted to take the taste test. The same test Howard Schultz has been using in a kind of traveling road show shucking the new brand. Apparently, he has been "fooling" his family and friends for more than a year--serving them Via rather than brewed coffee and claiming they couldn't tell the difference.

So, Lyn walks up to the counter. While she's waiting for the two samples in unmarked cups, she's chatting with the baristas about how the coffee in the Army is the worst coffee on Earth. The cups are brought out; Lyn who takes on in each hand. She sniffs one, then the other.

"This is the instant," she says, handing the cup with the Via back to the barista.

The baristas are floored. "How can you tell?" one manages to choke out.

"Instant smells like instant," she says, then turns and walks out.

Because whether it's called "instant," "soluable," or "Ready Brew," instant is still instant.

The End of the World as They Know It . . . and I feel fine

2009-10-16T21:20:00.000-07:00

It’s a quiet Friday night. It’s 8:30 PM and I’m still working. Not that this is unusual, but I’m usually working at the kitchen table surrounded by the chaotic sounds of a three-adult, two-kid household. Not yet. But soon. The stereo’s blaring. And in a moment of pathetic weakness, I pick up the local paper.

…it starts with an earthquake, birds and snakes, world serves its own needs, regardless of your own needs.

Ballots arrived in the mail today. The small town where I live is economically devastated, red-neck, “ho-mo-sex-u-als” need not apply kind of place. My island of sanity is surrounded by a buffer of trees; I’ve a garden and an orchard, but I have to leave occasionally, for those things I can’t grow. Like chocolate.

Referendum 71 (SB 5688). My God! If it passes, the world will surely end! There won’t be any difference between heterosexual marriages and *gasp* domestic partnerships. If this passes . . . you know what will happen?

…It's the end of the world as you know it. It's the end of the world as you know it and I feel fine.

About six months ago, I took the bigots to task both in the public forum of the newspaper and in their online discussion boards—if you can call them that. Good thing I was wearing my fireproof clothing. Whew. I mean . . . the flames of hell that I was apparently burning in were *hot*.

This referendum has a lot to do with making domestic partnership legal. Not “gay marriage.” There’s actually nothing in there about “gays.” But they’re sure that every single one of us “deviants” will be breaking down the doors of their churches to demand to be married as soon as the ink is dry on the paper.

As if. I wouldn’t walk into your little place of bigotry on Earth if it were raining fire and yours was the only building standing.

In California, a number of my friends were married before it was “overturned.” And then suddenly they weren’t married anymore. Then some were grandfathered back in. But those who weren’t—like my friends Piper and Teresa—feel incredibly betrayed.

Did you know that the money for overturning “gay marriage” in California came from primarily two places: The Mormons and the Catholics, though in the latter case, the Pope just urged everyone to do the “right thing.” The Mormons were more open about it. They started a fund.

Fifteen years ago, I made a commitment to my partner. Before God and our families. We’re still “married” and we have two kids. I don’t care if it’s called marriage or not. That’s really not the point. The point is I would like to be able to accompany my partner to the hospital without having to worry I’ll be barred from the room because I don’t have the proper paperwork on me.

It’s small things like that, really.

Step down, step down. A tournament, a tournament, a tournament of lies. Offer me solutions, offer me alternatives and I decline.

…It's the end of the world as you know it. It's the end of the world as you know it and I feel fine.

The Truth About Preditors & Editors, and Other Websites for Disgruntled Writers

2009-05-18T22:22:00.001-07:00

It's a constantly fascinating to me how boards like Preditors and Editors, Absolute Write and others in this vein bring out the worst in people and exhibit a complete lack of common sense. A recent visit to a couple of these boards had me laughing out loud; I wish I could say that I was laughing "with" these poor fools, but . . . that would be a lie.

What's most unfortunate is that the moderators are more interested in fanning the flames of some rejected writer's disgruntlement than in actually providing some savvy publishing advice. This is sad, considering that one of these moderators has been published by a number of corporate houses. Think of what she could offer, but doesn't. I wonder why. Could she truly have nothing to offer these nameless jerks other than snippets of information that are easily accessible to anyone with Google? Her life must be pretty pathetic if this is the best she can do. But, hey, I guess you have to take your groupies where you find them, right?

The most amusing posts are, of course, the ones which take quotes or passages from correspondence completely out of context and recontextualized to make a point. It's amazing that these people didn't learn how to quote properly in high school . . . but I guess that's one of the reasons why they're not published. The other reason is that they're . . . well, jerks.

For more than fifteen years I've been the Senior Editor at Orchard House Press, which has been known by other names. This isn't a secret, btw. I have worked with some amazing people, most of whom are still with us. I've also had my share of self-important wanna-be writers, many of whom end up vomiting all over one of these stupid boards. Honestly, is there anyone left on the planet who doesn't know that 1st Books and Publish America aren't vanity presses? Just look them up. If they ask for money to publish your book, they're a vanity press. It's that simple, people.

We've been accused of being both a vanity press and a POD. We're neither. There are many, many ways you can tell the difference but Miss Moderator doesn't bother to share that information. That would actually defeat her purpose.

I have nothing to hide, which is not true for any of the members of these board. None of the people posting negative comments about experiences with us will use their real names. Why? Because they don't want to take responsibility. Maybe they know they're distorting the truth. Whatever the reason, they're just spoiled children who just want to rant and get their egos stroked by a self-involved little twerp who has set herself up as an authority. Posting a bunch of book covers on a badly designed website makes you an expert how?

I love my job, the authors and artists I work with, the people who make OHP a great place to work. It's challenging, at times stressful, but ultimately rewarding.

It's no surprise that one of these "helpful" sites, Preditors and Editors, is getting sued. They've got enough slanderous and liabelous material on their site for about 100 lawsuits. Are they really helpful? I doubt it. They're not designed to be helpful. They're designed to fan the flames of discontent. So if you actually want the truth, steer clear.

Bye Bye Berties

2009-04-27T22:10:00.000-07:00

I remember my first box of Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans. My neighbor, Anthony, was all about Harry Potter--this was around the time that Harry Potter and the Prizoner of Azkaban was released--he'd been to the movie premier and received a coveted Knight Bus and now he was bugging me to try these weird jelly beans.

He brought two boxes. We sat kitty-corner at my desk and poured them all out. We each got half of each one and I can honestly say that the spaghetti was amazing the vomit disgusting and the ear wax truly vile. But my all time favorite was grass. Somehow, by some mysterious magic, the scent of new mown grass on a summer evening was packed tightly into that little kidney-shaped bean.

By the time we'd eaten them all, we were both a little jiggy. The late afternoon sun was coming in through the window and the grass outside was very green. I stepped outside to say goodbye to Anthony and took a deep breath.

Grass. Me. Six years old sitting in front of my grandfather on his riding mower as we zipped up and down their acre lawn. He was in a white t-shirt and chinos--his yard work clothes, he wore a suit to his job at a clipping service on Wall Street--and as we rode together he sang, his beautiful tenor voice rising above the motor's roar.

That sweet, fresh scent of grass and timothy and clover. The sun sinking down behind the hills. The promise of ice cream and cool, clean sheets and another summer day to look forward to.

All of that came rushing back when I bit into that singular jelly bean.

Max, Faith and I have finished the first two Harry Potter novels (edited where necessary for very young listeners) and embarked on the third. I've been talking about Bertie Botts' Every Flavor Beans since that first ride on the Hogwarts Express.

Today, Jennifer stopped into the local independently owned candy store (their handmade truffles are delicious) and asked if they carried Bertie's beans. The young woman behind the counter took Jennifer to the display and handed her a box of Bean Boozled. A completely different package, a different approach and far fewer choices. Skunk spray or licorice? Try a black one and find out. Vomit or peach? Black pepper or Plum? Not Bertie Botts Many Flavored Beans at all. My kids were just as thrilled to experiment with these and we had a good laugh after dinner, especially when I got Baby Wipes.

But no grass.

Sigh.

Cut From a Different Cloth

2009-03-26T12:52:00.000-07:00

Some women are built to breed. They've got curves in all the right places, but most importantly in this case: hips. When our children were small, Jennifer carried them effortlessly on her hip. She had one hand free to do other things like get our her wallet at the store. Even her 80 year old grandmother could balance Maxwell while cooking a meal for seven. It didn't even slow her down!

As for myself, I go from shoulder to hip without much change. I certainly don't have nice wide hips for carrying children--before or after birth. Carrying the kids for me was an exercise in pure brute strength. If they weren't big enough yet to hold on, they were tucked on the left side at a bit of a 45 degree angle to ensure that I could get my arm around them enough to ensure they wouldn't slip off my "hip." This left my right hand free, which was convenient since I'm right handed. However, I do carry my wallet in the left hand pocket of my jeans. Which became comical when I was trying to pay for something at the store.

The other day, my 6 year old daughter and I were shopping for clothes. She's grown about 2 inches this year and really needed a couple of pairs of pants, that she would actually wear. She has lots of pants (mostly purchased by other people) that she refuses to even consider. I trot them out occasionally to see if she's changed her mind, but that's never happened. Her first pair of jeans came from her great aunt Joannie who has one child, now grown, a girl. Joannie knows how to shop for girls. These jeans had sequins and all kinds of sparkly stuff on them. She wore them until she couldn't get them on anymore. And then she begged for them to be included in the clothing archive--don't ask--until I relented.

She's tall enough now, that not as many jeans have the kind of artwork she desires. So finding even one pair is a challenge. More challenging for me, however, is the way they're cut. The popular cut of pants these days for girls--and young women is fine as long as they're standing upright, but when the need to bend over comes into play, watch out. I have seen more backside in public than I ever saw of my plumber, if you catch my drift. Call me old fashioned, but I think a 6 year old's rear end should stay covered, even when she has to bend over.

We finally found some pants that both of us could agree on. And she actually wears them. And as I stepped into my lightweight Carthartt pants this morning, I was thankful that I'm not built to breed and can buy my jeans in the men's department, because I cannot imagine what would happen if I were to wear these low-slung fall off your bum jeans and need to bend over.

A Conversation at Dawn

2008-04-20T22:38:00.000-07:00

“We try a new drug, a new combination
of drugs, and suddenly
I fall into my life again

like a vole picked up by a storm
then dropped three valleys
and two mountains away from home.

I can find my way back. I know
I will recognize the store
where I used to buy milk and gas

I remember the house and the barn,
the rake, the blue cups and plates . . . .”*

The drugs just even you out. They’re not going to make this go away. You have to do that yourself. Try to see everything that is good around you . . . how many people love you.

It is a second skin that envelopes. Cutting off all light. All life. You wait, breathing in and out. Just breathing. All you have to do is stay calm. Days pass. A week goes by. You cannot work. Inside your head the words are spinning, spinning.

In the book you are reading to your children, Mr. Bass tells David and Chuck, “You must never doubt.” But you do. You doubt your power, your strength, the children on your lap. You are your son’s hero. You are your daughter’s world.

I know a man who sees his life as a series of tasks to be accomplished. He finds excitement only in the pursuit. Once the object is his, he ceases to want it.

Ticking off tasks on your checklist is not a life.

After five days, I am back. Everything is tentative. But I laughed with you this morning at the breakfast table. I didn’t yell at my children. I looked at the sky and remembered that you’re always there. Reminding me that all I really have to do is breathe.

*Jane Kenyon, “Back.” Constance. Greywolf Press, 1993.

A Dream of Space

2008-03-25T01:22:00.000-07:00

Years ago, I came upon a PC game based on Arthur C. Clark’s RAMA books. It was only my second PC game and it was hard for me because there was a lot of math for an English major, but I did “beat” it. When I’d finished, I watched a video interview with Clark. He was in Sri Lanka, surrounded by the most beautiful flora, talking about science, space travel and RAMA. It seemed incongruous and yet strangely fitting at the same time.

I don’t know much about Clark’s personal life—how he ended up in Sri Lanka is as much of a mystery to me as quantum mathematics, but the images from that little video stayed with me. I count his work as a major building block in my own development as a writer and as a thinker and my world is a little smaller without him.

I don’t much care for Heinlein; Asimov I could take or leave, but Arthur C. Clark was a guy I went to again and again. What I liked about his work in particular was that he made the extraordinary seem possible. His stories featured regular people doing extraordinary things. These were characters I could relate to and their dreams of space became my dreams of space.

From the time I was about eight-years-old, I thought about space all the time. I imagined myself living in space. I imagined waking up and looking out a window to see a starfield or a gas giant or a million other things that were still mostly imagined. The Hubble telescope was decades away and the first moon walk had just occurred. There was an excitement about space—about the possibilities—and I lifted my eyes to the stars again and again and dreamed.

When I was ten, I started reading Clark’s work in earnest. I carried a paperback copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey with me to school where it perched on the top of my stack of school books in the hopes of a free moment or two to read at the end of any given class. When I finished the book the first time, I can’t say I was sure I understood what had happened. That would come later. But I still remember being gripped by that story, sitting on the edge of my bed when I should have been sleeping, reading by the light of a small desk lamp.

Clark represented a kind of everyman to me, someone whose imagination was full of magical ideas. He represented the possible. And when you’re ten and a girl in the late 1960s, the possible means a lot.

I still have that paperback copy of 2001: A Space Odyssey. And I still look to the stars and dream.

Farewell, Arthur, and thank you for letting me soar to the stars on the wings of your imagination. I hope that wherever you are, the stars shine as brightly for you as you made them shine for me.

What Matters

2008-02-10T16:36:00.000-08:00

I know there are good literary agents out there. Unfortunately, they’re about as approachable as a star—the heavenly kind, not the Hollywood variety. They are an integral part of the New York literary scene and their clients are A-list.

But there are a whole lot of great B-list, or mid-list, authors who are the bread and butter of any publishing house. They’re the bulk of your title list, the steady sellers who’ll probably never have a book on Oprah, but nevertheless are solid, talented and essential.

The other day, I returned a phone call from a woman who wanted to know if the literary agency she’d hired had actually sent her manuscript to Windstorm. Normally, I don’t personally return queries about manuscripts, but I really felt for Nancy (not her real name, obviously) and I wanted to stop her from spending any more money on this phony excuse for a literary agent.

We had a nice conversation; she’s a decent person trying to sell what’s probably a good book. Almost ten years ago, she sold a novel to a New York house which enjoyed modest sales. Her agent at that time, as well as her editor, are now deceased. She has no other contacts at the corporate press and no way to get her foot in the door. Ten years ago, in today’s industry, might as well be a hundred. She’s right back to square one, despite having worked both with a reputable agent and a well known house.

She found this other agency in the Literary Market Place, which is a standard industry text. Lots of writers use it for reference—we’re listed in it, as a matter of fact. But it’s not part of their job to verify that the agents they list are reputable, connected or even vaguely familiar with the industry. It’s caveat emptor—as Nancy discovered.

My day was crammed with problems—a series of printer errors, an in-box full of hateful email—I mean the truly ugly stuff—from customers angry at the delays to people telling me I'm not doing my job because I don't have control over the known universe. I felt like taking a shower after I got through with those. Honestly, it was like being spit on over and over again. It’s amazing how easy it is to forget that on the other end of that email is a real person.

At eight o’clock at night, I pushed away from my computer. My work shift started ten hours ago. I saw my partner for about two hours today—she’s been ill without a diagnosis for almost two years—during breakfast and just before the kids ate around six when she came down to teach our son math. I stoked the wood stove because our furnace motor burned a year ago and since I don’t have $8,000.00 lying around we’re heating with wood. The main part of the house is comfortable, but we’ve shut off one floor for the time being, and I’ve added about 90 minutes of extra chores to my day between splitting wood and maintaining the stove. I was too angry and too discouraged from my workshift to even speak until I’d had something to eat. Luckily, a friend of mine, knowing I probably wouldn’t eat unless someone put a plate in front of me, showed up and created an incredible chile relleno casserole out of the what was in the fridge. After that, we made pipe cleaner creatures for the kids and I finally began to feel human again.

It’s almost one AM now and the kids and my partner are sleeping. I still have a lot to do and I don’t expect to get to bed for several more hours. By nine tomorrow morning, I’ll be here again.

Up until ten years ago, I worked at various jobs from frosting cakes to teaching college. Each of these jobs had its own stresses and rewards. But I’ve never come so close to wondering whether Windstorm was going to make it recently when a series of very expensive problems arose—both in the business and in my personal life—and the wear and tear of a chronically ill partner and two special needs kids is making me rethink the wisdom of this choice if career. But the very fact that I’m sitting here at one in the morning rather than lying in bed staring at the ceiling and dreading getting up for my job is a large part of what keeps me here—working at odd hours and between making snacks and home schooling—trying not to take the ugliness personally, trying not to let it seep in through my skin and make me as bitter and dead inside as the people I often have to deal with. I’m not like that and I will never be. I won’t remember their names in a couple of days, and by the time the tulips are blooming in my garden, I won’t even remember their stupidity. But I will remember Nancy. And I expect she’ll remember me. And that’s what matters.

Religion vs. Faith

2007-05-16T10:58:00.000-07:00

Donald Jackson, former official scribe for Britain’s Queen Elizabeth, is currently working on a project with the Benedictine Monks of St. John’s University (MN) to create the first handwritten English Bible in more than 500 years. A number of the completed pages are already on display. They remind us how truly inspiring—and inspired—illuminated manuscripts can be. In an essay in the Wall Street Journal, staff writer Naomi Schaefer Riley noted that viewing the pages was like “looking at a Chagall window with the full sun of the afternoon behind it.”

Ms. Riley goes on to note that Mr. Jackson, speaking with a group visiting the exhibit “proudly” said, “‘I’m not a committed Christian or a committed anything’” The connection Ms. Riley wants us to make is not only Mr. Jackson seemingly flip about his lack of connection to organized religion, but he’s also without faith. While the former may be true, Ms. Riley certainly is in no position to comment on the latter. Because no one, except Mr. Jackson, knows the truth of his own heart.

Several members of my family are quick to criticize organized religion, lumping together anyone who attends services regularly and/or is part of an organized religious community as lacking some kind of essential common sense. What they don’t realize is that they’re talking about man’s religion. Man’s religion is not God’s.

When my daughter was seven days old, she was re-hospitalized because she was severely jaundiced. Jennifer and I had spent the past three years trying to figure out why our son stopped talking after receiving his MMR and his developmental milestones all but ceased. We’d been assured that thermerasol had been removed from children’s vaccines. To be honest, we didn’t really believe what we were told—that there was no connection between his sudden loss of speech and the vaccine, that he was autistic, that we were destined to lose him to his interior world. Of course, about two years ago, the drug companies admitted that they’d never taken thermerasol out of the vaccines. I was not surprised.

We were exhausted. The second pregnancy had taken a huge physical toll on Jennifer; Max was still saying only two words; and now it looked as though we were facing another undiagnosable problem. It was Father’s Day, 2002. We had friends over for a cookout. Our pediatrician called in the middle of the afternoon. Faith’s blood work was in and it didn’t look good. He wanted to have her admitted right away.

We packed a bag and ourselves into the car; our friends generously offered to stay behind and clean up. It was cold and rainy. I sat in the hospital room with Faith in my arms while Jennifer took care of the paperwork. I could hear her voice in the hall and I could see Max beside her. The sun broke momentarily through the clouds. I remember thinking it looked like an egg yolk. Sunlight slanted in through the window for a minute and then was gone. I wept. But not for the reasons one might imagine. Not because this was unfair, not because I was tired, not because I already had one special needs child and what had I done to deserve another. I wept because I loved her. I loved my daughter with a depth and a passion that was completely different from the way I love my son and my partner.

I wept because I was afraid she would die. Not from the jaundice, mind you, but from something else.

As it turned out, this was the first step on a road that would take us first to a diagnosis of Coombs and then, a month after her first birthday, to Children’s Hospital and her diagnosis as a Type 1 (insulin dependent) diabetic. During the week we spent at Children’s, the day nurse, Sarah, told to me on several occasions that I should “grieve now.” But I had no reason to grieve.

Jennifer and I never doubted our ability to figure out what was wrong with our son. And we kept looking, reading, talking, trying new things until we figured it out. We knew that we would be shown the way. Whether through the intelligence we were given or through the illumination that came from the books Jennifer read or the sheer willingness to keep trying we completely changed his life—and ours.

I wept on that June day in 2002 because I didn’t want to lose my daughter, and I hoped that was not the path that God meant me to walk. When we received confirmation that Faith was diabetic, I was neither angry nor full of grief. I was thankful it wasn’t one of a million things. Her diagnosis was not a death sentence. There is a reason these two particular children are our children. I have faith in the wisdom of the Divine’s choice—though I don’t even attempt to understand it.

I know that I can’t expect to walk into any church in my town or any town for that matter, and be greeted with open arms. There are many reasons why man’s church and man’s religion does not welcome me. But God’s church always does. Man’s church is, by its very nature, subject to the same prejudices, insecurities, politics and dogma as any organization run by human beings. We may have been made in God’s image, but we are not God.

While Mr. Jackson’s remark didn’t exactly endear him to me, I resented Ms. Richard’s assumptions even more. I don’t find the dissonance between Jackson’s work and his remark ironic; instead, it’s just sad. It seems obvious that Mr. Jackson is indeed committed to something. What’s pathetic about Ms. Riley’s article is that she seems more interested in presenting Mr. Jackson in one light and herself in another—making herself look pious by casting aspersions on someone else.

What would Jesus do in that situation? I’d like to think he’d kick some hypocritical a**.

Cris

NAACP Comes Out . . . in Favor of Homophobia

2007-03-23T22:00:00.001-07:00

I can’t say that I was surprised at the recent news that the NAACP presented Isaiah Washington with an Image Award on March 2, 2007 for his work on Grey’s Anatomy, a show which was known only for its quality before Washington outed fellow actor T.R. Knight by calling him a faggot in front of his co-stars earlier this year.

Washington apologized, but his lack of sincerity was obvious since he repeated the epithet backstage at the Golden Globes shortly thereafter. The fact that the NAACP has openly endorsed homophobia by granting Washington the Image Award is no surprise. The GLBT community is pretty far down on the slope of hated subgroups and as we know **** runs downhill.

America prides itself on being a melting pot. This is a starry-eyed dream that, in reality, does not and cannot exist. Humans are not so far away from their biological ancestors to be able to put aside the instincts that seek out and maintain tribal loyalties. Instinct relies on many things—intellect is not one of them.

Ever since the first white settlers came to America's shores, those who came first have always openly despised those who came after. The second wave was trod on by the first, the third by the second and so on. If it wasn’t the Italians, it was the Irish. If not the Irish, it was the Blacks, or the Jews or . . . fill in the blank. It’s as plain as the ink on the page of any American History textbook. Before Blacks weren’t allowed to sit at the lunch counter to eat, the Irish were barred. Racism doesn’t have to cross color lines to exist.

But the one group everyone can get behind in a hate campaign are homosexuals, right? And the one group that can’t unite are . . . you guessed it—homosexuals. Why? Because unlike other homogenous groups, the GLBT community is made up of individuals from every race, class and religious background—not to mention the differences that gender identification creates. Since separatist lesbians won’t work with men—and that includes transsexuals who were born men, but are now women—and since gay men find lesbians graceless, tactless and about as interesting as their overweight, beer-drinking heterosexual neighbor, there can never be a true coalition. Even if everyone does unite for one or two days a year in June to mark the anniversary of the Stonewall Riots and celebrate GLBT pride.

Racism still exists in America. No one will argue that, myself included. I live in a small, rural town, which is mostly white—as are most rural towns north of the Mason-Dixon line—but I’ve never seen the open hatred and disgust on the faces of the people in the grocery store when a black man walks in as I did the night a young gay man came up to the deli counter—in skintight jeans and a shimmering body-hugging shirt, long nails painted fiery red—to peruse the offerings. As I waited behind him, I watched the workers’ reactions. And carefully chose my words when the same workers tried to bond with me about how “gross and inappropriate” his appearance was. You will not find a supporter in me, my eyes and my words said. Despite the cross I wear openly, I am not what you think.

If you want to put this into perspective, I have two words for you: Mel Gibson. Gibson’s anti-Semitic outburst has cost him dearly. Not only was he completely absent from every single Hollywood event this spring, but his new film, which opened to positive critical buzz, was not even on the radar of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences when considering Oscar nominations. Despite the lip service of “we’re all friends here in Hollywood” Gibson’s anti-Semitism was seen as grossly inappropriate. So was Michael Richard’s use of a well-known racial epithet in a recent stand-up routine. Entertainment Weekly covered both blunders—and has been closely following the Grey’s Anatomy story. The difference is that, like the rest of Hollywood and the rest of the country, they do not grant even tacit approval of the racist remarks. However, EW is not alone in its inability to come out against homophobia—despite the fact that they have an openly gay man in rotation for their back page essays.

A recent issue lauded the re-release of an Eddie Murphy live concert, noting only that if you can “overlook the rampant homophobia, this is Murphy at his best.” They, like everyone else, are trying to figure out how to keep their gay readers without offending their middle-of-the-road straight ones. To me, this is homophobic. But, hey, I’m just a lesbian in a decade-plus old relationship raising two kids in a small rural town in America. What do I know, right? I just live with this hatred. Every. Single. Day. And if you think that what the NAACP means is that they’re awarding Washington for his work on a TV show and this has nothing to do with hatred, you’re not paying attention.