Happy news! I'm going to be published and I made $500! Very cool. I won 2nd place in a national essay contest. Very exciting. Funny thing is, they've been trying to tell me for weeks, but I've been ignoring the phone calls because the number looked suspicious. Silly me. Finally, someone left a message and wow- I won! Well, it's second place, but I'll take second place when it means a check for $500.

The essay will be published in a collection, so I can honest-to-goodness (what does that phrase mean?) say that I've been published. Very happy.

It's a little telling that I won with an essay. I've been entering my novel and short stories for ages, but this was one of the first essays I've entered. It's easy for me to write essays about my life and my kids, so that doesn't seem like legitimate writing. Kind of messed up, huh? Stories require me to work much harder, which makes me feel like a writer.

I talk in essays. I'm always looking for the object lesson, or at least, some way to connect the dots. The words simply spill out of my thoughts - it's me thinking out loud.

Lesson learned. Don't make things harder than they have to be.

It's easy to find my voice when I write from my heart about my life.

When you don't get paid for your writing it's a blessing and a curse. A blessing because there's no pressure. No one's expecting anything. After all, they're lucky you wrote, right? I write an e-column for a local parenting magazine. I don't get paid for this effort. And surely I don't put as much effort in to it as I could. My name is on it and you never know when someone who knows someone who knows someone might read it, so I do make a good effort. Last week, they skipped my post presumably because I was late with it or it wasn't up to snuff. There's the blessing - I'm not worried about this and they must not be either since I didn't even get an e-mail reprimand.

The real problem, the curse, is that I don't have much time. Not having enough time is the root of all that is evil in my life. So writing something for nothing doesn't have much appeal. Especially for an e-magazine that may or may not have a large readership. I read some of the other bloggers. They are good. Makes me feel a bit guilty. I know I could do better.

The curse also comes in the form of guilt concerning my lack of effort, and the intimidation by these other superior writers who obviously have much more organized lives. How else are they finding time to turn in such well-written timely posts on a weekly basis? Maybe I'll get fired. I've never met the people I'm 'working' for, so I wouldn't necessarily take it personally.

Lately, I can't imagine ever making a living at this craft. Maybe it's that I came so late to the game. I don't have the requisite writing degrees or years of stump-journalism. I just write. And I love it. Making a living at something you love is a gift. A gift that comes after vast amounts of effort or one lucky break. Talent probably plays in to it at some level.

I worry about my oldest child. He wants to be a writer. He already is a damn good writer. Better than me. At least better than me when I was 15. Back then I wrote for my high school paper and my diary. Passionate articles about the cliques that crowded our school and the lack of consistency between school curricula in our district. I wrote sappy, heartfelt poems and long, boring diary entries. My son is writing for our local paper, has his own blog, and won an international writing contest. Maybe I am silly to worry. Maybe he will figure out how to make a living at this. Nothing would make me happier.

Some Days

Some days the words just fly, and some days they are eeked out like the last drops of expensive moisturizer I can't bear to waste. And then there are days like today. I wrote the stuff that was necessary. A letter to my child's school complaining about a situation (actually I called it "Feedback" which sounds much less threatening), a post full of factual information about planting seedlings (with a few side comments about my own mistakes), and a quick edit of a potential contest entry.

But, even though today's writing was basic white bread, it was better than the days when I don't write. On those days I feel a suffocating sense of lost opportunities. a dread that I will never really be a writer.

Normally I don't write because there isn't time. (Children are VERY time consuming). And as I drive or clean or shop or handle a million tiny details of running this household, ideas pop in and out of my head. Ideas that might have been a short story or an essay or the beginning of the novel I finally publish. If I can't get them down on paper, they are gone, popping like bubbles. When I try to recall them later, they never sound as good as they did the first time they rolled through my head.

I have so many projects started, I despair that I will ever finish them. And that makes me feel like an amateur, a wannabe, a fake. As long as I am writing something, possibilities exist. It's when I'm not writing that I worry it will never happen.

Steven King, or maybe it was Malcolm Gladwell, or some other equally successful writer, says you need 10,000 hours of something to become the best. This should make me the best at driving children places or doing laundry. But since I don't want to be a taxi driver or run a laundromat when I grow up, I beg, borrow, and sneak time to write. I'll keep writing. I figure I'm probably closing in on the 5,000 hour mark.

I'm most likely at the halfway mark of my stay on this earth too (if I'm lucky), so at the rate I'm going I'll be the best when I'm dead.

April 26, 2012 Compulsive Writing

Getting published is such a pie-in-the-sky goal. It sounded so glorious once upon a time. Now I know. It’s easy to get published. Pretty much anyone can get published. It’s the getting paid and having people read what you published that’s tricky.

I’m a wearily busy mom of three who is pulled in too many directions and have the stretch marks to prove it. The ones on my belly are easy to hide, it’s the ones on my face that trouble me.

I’ve decided to start blogging without a net on this site. I don’t know if anyone will read it. I’m just putting it out there for my own peace of mind. Some days my attempts at becoming a writer make me feel like I’m a little kid playing an adults only game. I don’t have a degree in English, writing, communication, or anything that would really lend itself to making me sound like I have a right to be writing.

I’ve never held a paying job for my writing abilities, unless you count the temp job I had at DuPont where I spent six months editing their ISO 9000 document. I had no idea what they were talking about, but correcting the grammar of the several dozen engineers who wrote the rough draft didn’t take great literary prowess.

So I write. A lot. I always have. It’s a bit of a compulsion. Once trapped in a souped-up Celica with my little brother who refused to stop, I resorted to writing on the backside of a Cheezit box. We were attempting to make it across the country from Delaware to Sacremento in less than three days so he could report in for active duty with the United States Air Force. Happy to say he made it. In fact, he just retired after 22 years flying fighter jets.

I’ve written two novels, one non-fiction collection, too many essays to count, and am at work on a memoir/creative nonfiction book about breaking a horse and raising kids.

I have been published and even collected about $200 for my efforts. My published pieces were all parenting articles for a local regional magazine. Now I write an e-column (for free) for the same magazine. I blog in two places – Kid Friendly Organic Life (for over three years now, which seems like a record for a blog, so many of them flame out) and my new one, The Mama Load.

Like I said, this blog is my hands-free blog. It will be mostly me whining about not getting published and lamenting my efforts to see my name in writing. I don't have time to edit another darn thing, so forgive the typos and grammar mishaps. 

I think this getting published dream is becoming an epic journey and as always, I need to write about it. 

Hill Living

Hill living isn’t for everyone. It certainly wasn’t for me in the first five years we lived here. “Here” is the scenic hills of what we affectionately call, “Pennsyltucky” for reasons both aesthetic and cultural. Our small farm is located in South Central Pennsylvania at the bottom of York County down a winding hollow. There is no level ground to be found on our road, and every ball my children have ever played with eventually winds up in the yard of my neighbors on the bottom of the hollow.

My husband is an expert with shims and my horses have muscled hind legs and backs from the simple effort of grazing. Cutting the lawn is a life-threatening activity. On the upside – we have the best sledding hills around (the children have to wear safety helmets because of the dangerous speed). We can even “leaf sled” in the fall on the dry leaves that cover the hillside. And in the summer our homemade slip-n-slide is the envy of all our friends (or at least their kids). I count it a bonus also that when my children request that I rent one of those giant inflatable bounce houses for a birthday party, I can honestly say – sorry, they require level ground.

Our chickens are nonplussed by the hill. They quickly discovered that standing on the high side of their yard, they can get enough lift to clear the fence and let themselves out to free-range on the days I’m slow to open the gate.

I would even go so far as to say I like the hill – as long as it never rained. But it does rain here. Quite a bit. We work a constant puzzle to keep the barn dry. Previous owners were obviously not hill people because instead of installing a bank barn (like all the early Pennysvlanian settlers did), they carved out a nook on the hill side and plopped down a plain old shed-type barn. Slowly the hill behind the barn has been sliding in to the barn.

This past summer we challenged mother nature and dug out the back of the barn before installing a wall to hold back the hill. Now my husband spends many of moment studying the wall convinced that it is already leaning from the effort of holding back the hill.

Gardening on a hill side is also a challenge. Each year we figure out another place to install a “terrace”. We’ve used boards, stones, and bricks to wall up an area large enough to grow something. Lucky for me I married a mechanical engineer who insists on using a laser level to ensure that the garden really is flat. I’m more of a slap it up and see if it works kind of person, so the garden I made with a small brick retaining wall outside the barn is not really retaining the rhubarb.

We’ve filled our south facing slope with fruit trees and grapes and had such success, that we soon had to terrace in a blueberry garden and two more vegetable gardens on the same hillside. The term “well-drained soil” must have been coined on a hill like ours. Last year when the overwhelming rain rotted out the root vegetables of many people in the area, we had a bumper crop of sweet potatoes. Our pumpkins (the ones that didn’t roll down the hill) also did well while a neighbor pumpkin farmer lamented the rotten fruits in his field that lies between the hills.

I think every farm must provide its own challenges. In the beginning I looked at this hillside and wished it were flat like the land we had left on the Eastern Shore of Maryland. I didn’t think it was possible to grow food for our family on a hill. But the bounty of our freezer and pantry prove otherwise. I’ve heard people talk of how impossible it would be to raise enough grass-fed animals and organic produce without more “farmland”, but living where we do, I have to say any land can be farmland if you farm it. 

Home Alone

Home alone. Lately it seems to be the story of my life.

Having a husband who travels frequently for his job has its pros and cons. Lately I’ve been thinking mostly cons. When the kids were small it was tough because all the diaper changing and long nights fell to me. The unrelenting toddler talk and constant baby carrying simply wore me out, body and soul. These days the kids are big enough to bathe themselves (but not big enough to pick up their wet towels or carry their dirty clothes to a hamper, apparently), but the exhaustion still can be overwhelming. I’m the only one who can help with homework, wash the pans, chase down the errant dog, or locate the form that was supposed to have been signed yesterday. No one but me can be trusted to lock the doors, turn off the lights, and throw the cat out at night. The game pieces, dog toys, and snack leftovers will lie there until I pick them up. No one else feels responsible for their whereabouts.

At the end of the day when everything is (mostly) put in its place and children are snuggled in bed or in front of their computers, the phone rings. It’s my love’s voice on the other end. He is excited with news of his successful meeting and gives me the details of the delicious dinner paid for by the client. He complains of the boring hotel room and the empty cable TV. I listen and try to stifle the screaming inside my head. There is nothing to tell about my exhausting day. I’m sure he doesn’t want to hear about the huge mound of semi-white socks I sorted, so the laundry basket would be empty and I could use it to round up the pile of dirty clothes blocking the door to the bathroom. My dinner of cold tomato soup and the crusts left from the kid’s grilled cheese, doesn’t seem newsworthy.

Rationally I know it is not his fault that I am listening with one ear, while cleaning up cat barf and reminding my oldest that he really needs a shower tonight. He is traveling for a job that provides the DVDs I am fishing out from under the couch. His important work pays for the groceries I have yet to put away. I understand this and yet it is very hard to be cheery and supportive when he calls. I miss him dearly and can’t wait to hear his voice, but when I do my own voice is strangled by resentment. I am grumpy and tired. I am sick of doing everything.

For his part he does wear his own guilt well. He sends me off on a girls weekend with my buddies and never even raises an eyebrow when I leave him home with the kids and head out for drinks or parties with friends. I suppose this is a necessary compromise. I don’t feel I have the right to complain. I joke with other wives in similar situations about being “single parents”, but really we aren’t. Our husbands will come home. Their absence is necessary. My struggles are only temporary.

And the flip side is that when he is gone, dinner just might be sandwiches or scrambled eggs or hey, maybe we’ll skip dinner and just have a big batch of popcorn! And on the rare evening when no one has to be at practice, lessons, or a game, I get to decide what movie we watch. I miss his warmth on cold nights, but I love the full rights to the entire bed. I roll around and if I wake up at 2 and can’t sleep, I can turn on the light and read. Just last night the dog woke me up to go out at 3am and when I couldn’t get back to sleep I streamed a movie on my Kindle Fire under the covers. Couldn’t do that if hubby were here. Of course, I wouldn’t have been the one the dog woke up either.

So there are trade offs. Which is the way life goes. It’s definitely the way parenting works. We all get our time in the trenches, but at least we can take comfort in the knowledge that this won’t last forever. During a recent cleaning frenzy, I was sorting pictures from ten years ago and I ached for those little bodies and happy smiles. We took so many more pictures when they were young. Did we have that many more happy moments? I don’t think so, we’ve just settled in to life together. Back then, it was new. They were new. Now there is no time to take pictures, we are too busy getting through each day. Each day that takes  us closer to the day when no one will need me to clean up their breakfast dishes or find their other shoe.

When that day comes home alone will take on a whole new meaning. 

Mother, Not Martyr

Yesterday my daughter told me that she hated me more than anyone else in the world.  Actually she said this so that the entire neighborhood would be certain also. This came in response to my proclamation that one bowl of potato chips was plenty. All I could think was, what will she say when she’s 16 and I say she can’t spend the weekend at a friend’s house without parents present? I guess I should tell you that my daughter is eight. I know. My husband says that it is due to the fact that we are so alike that we fight so ferociously. But I take issue with that since I don’t mind combing my hair and she is way better than me at math. Her intensity is an awesome thing to witness. I believe with all my heart that it will take her places – some amazing and some very painful. So I try to temper the emotion, help her to tame it and keep it from consuming her. That she doesn’t appreciate this does not deter me.

My easiest child is my five year old son who charms my heart in so many ways. He is bright and creative and flush with affection. He is also mischievous and energetic and prone to tying up the cat with dental floss. He just started Kindergarten and that was pretty easy. The hard part was going to school as the only bald kid. You see, he has no hair. He has alopecia areata, which sounds very lyrical but is actually a horrible cruel disease that makes your hair fall out. Nothing else is wrong, which prompts people to say “it’s only hair” which prompts my husband to restrain me from smacking the people who think that this disease is only about hair. His disease has shown us that people can be unebelievably compassionate, but they can also be cruel and most people can’t keep themselves from staring. I wish it really was “only hair”. 

Despite the alopecia, he’s my easiest kid. He still loves to hug me and kiss me and sit in my lap and hold my hand. I know the day is nearing when he will climb down off my lap and lock his door. But for now, his glorious heart is my anchor for all that is good and true and right with this world. 

My oldest son is much smarter than me and that is difficult. It is hard to maintain your dignity when you must constantly question your judgment knowing that he is also questioning your judgment. I remember when he was a precocious, chattering toddler. He never played with toys or cars or action heroes. When I think back on what he did when he was little, all I can remember is that he thought. When I say he thought, I mean he disappeared into his own place in his head creating stories and pondering things that he had seen. He did this while swinging on the swing, mashing playdoh, or carefully filling my travel mug with multicolored paperclips. Occasionally he would surface and ask a question like, “What’s beyond space?” He’s ten now and I am constantly asking him stupid questions. I can see it in his face and hear it in the disappointed tone he takes with me. A tone that says, “I’m so sorry that you are so dim, I’ll try to talk more slowly and clearly.” And although he has been labeled gifted, he still can’t manage to use a napkin instead of his shirt, find his shoes when they are at his feet, remember to put the cap back on the toothpaste or flush the toilet.

These three little people are my world. Their tantrums and moods color my days. Their wants and needs consume my thoughts. I’ve always assumed that when I became a mom I wouldn’t be one of those women whose life revolves around her children. But how is it possible for a mother’s life not to be a reaction to these beings that she created? Technically, they are part of me. Maybe that’s what gives them such sway. Maybe that’s why one’s tears can level me and another’s giggle can send me to the moon. I realize I am my own person, but I gave a part of me to them in their creation. That connection will always be there no matter how hard they push me away or how hurtful their words.

To be sure, my every waking moment isn’t spent in servitude to them. I have my own dreams and my days are filled with selfish for-me-only acts. But I know that my life is lived on call. 24/7/365 as they say. If my children need me, I will be there. Or I will at least decide whether I should be or not. I can’t ignore them, even as I pretend to when their whining reaches critical levels. They will come first. Which is how it should be. That doesn’t make me a martyr, that makes me a mother.