the end of november.

This morning I finished the first draft of my first novel. It's been a long time coming, since February, and this morning I wrote the final scenes, made a title page, came up with a title for that matter, and converted the document from 180 single-spaced pages to 357 double-spaced pages.  I am so thankful for the book. I love it! Is that crazy? Is it crazy that I just began to cry when it was finished. I don't even know why.

a few pictures from lately.

Halloween night. Our friends got really decked out! We were excited!  Thank you Stefanie and Paul for donning the afros.  And if you're wondering who is down in the right corner, it's Mark.  He's Mike Tomlin. I'm Troy Polamalu.  Hannah and Josh won the costume contest as a snowboarder and a black diamond.  Dad was... some kind of old man. Hilarious.

Sisters, sisters. Never were there such devoted sisters...

Jonathan had discovered the sugar rush of orange marmalade and instead of eating the toast, licked the jam from it. Dad was helping out, which Jonathan thought was totally bizarre.  "Uhh, Papa? What are you doing?"

perspectives on early Christmas festooning.

A common point of contention this time of year is the early Christmas decorating, as exhibited by establishments such as Nordstrom, Starbucks, and the Gap.  Once Halloween is gone, the Christmas train pulls into the station and anyone that sells something gets on board. 

I hear people say all the time, “Oh.my.gosh. I can’t believe they’re already decorating for Christmas. It’s not even Thanksgiving! It’s ruining the spirit of Christmas, commercializing it, nobody remembers what Christmas is really about…” It goes on.

And while I can understand the sentiment of such complaints, I would like to take my stand on the opposing soapbox.

When I saw the first RED CUP (capitalized in honor of importance) of coffee from America’s largest coffee shop chain last Wednesday, I was thrilled.  Yes, it was the fourth day of November. But something about those red cups evokes a sense of great chilly gladness within me.  Those cups scream, “Drink me! You will be filled with the joy of Yuletide!”

And in department stores the great colored balls hang down from the ceiling, strung up with glittering tinsel. Who doesn’t want to hear Mariah Carey sing about her baby on Christmas a hundred times? Shopping in Nordstrom suddenly becomes this wonderfully sentimental walk down memory lane. The smell of Nordstrom reminds me of my mother when she would go to galas with my father. Those were always in December it seems, and he would wear a tuxedo and she a long black skirt with a deep red top. Those nights my parents became the stars of some great fifties movie.

My sister agrees with me (Can I get an “Amen” Hannah?) too, I’m not the only one on the box in the corner facing the ring.  Both of us love when it begins to be dark at 5:15 in the afternoon. Suddenly snuggly evenings are longer and the cold, dark outside forces you in to hunker down and wear socks around your house.  And, after turkey day, when there is a tree with lights and ornaments sitting in the middle of the living room, where else could you possibly want to be???

I must say that I used to follow the crowd on this, believing that Christmas festivities waited until at least the day after Thanksgiving, if not the first of December. I changed my mind, or I took a stand for the thing I always loved. Bring on Christmas early! I will sing carols as soon as I see my first tree.  I’ll try to keep from decorating until after Thanksgiving, but you can believe I’ll be enjoying the mall and Starbucks a little more often.

 

a room with a view.

The Principle of Trees in October

In fall the house is cold.

Hardwood floors, curled upward at the baseboards

from summer humidity

and time,

chill my feet from below.

The toe I broke a while back, 

all healed, feels sore.

Even socks can’t warm these feet

and I don’t want to wear shoes

inside.

 

I like to have my nose turn cold, like a steel doorknob

and touch it with the soft skin on my hand

between my thumb and forefinger.

Slightly damp hair chills my neck and back,

the collar of my sweater is cold too.

 

Pattering fingers dance on the white keys

and turn opaque with cold.

My rings slip around and the diamonds fall

to the underside, unseen.

I grasp a cup of coffee, also losing its heat,

and stare transfixed out the drafty panes

and the leaves outside the window are

like a blazing fire.

part-time all the time

I suppose that I could have gotten a full-time job somewhere. I could leave my house at 7:30 and get to work by 8. Stay there until 5 and wear black slacks with button-ups and sweaters. I could have a little cubicle, maybe eventually an office, and work at my computer and talk to "clients" and write memos.

However, as I have never been one to stay indoors and as I couldn't think of a job where I would stay sane inside of an office all day, I have chosen (or been dumped into) a life of part-time jobs.

I work half time as the Youth Director at Hope Church in Winston-Salem. This means that I pick up high school kids from school and take them to Starbucks and the grocery store. I meet with them for Bible study on Wednesdays and teach Sunday school and plan things like lunches and days on orchards to pick apples. 

I try to write for ten hours a week, working on my book. I never achieve ten hours because I don't have the discipline and life happens and it's the first thing I let fly, though writing my novel is my greatest hope and passion. Funny how we let things like that happen--let our passions linger on the sidewalk waiting for us while we keep holding up one finger, saying "one second!" with a look of apology on our faces.

Leading Young Life at Forsyth Country Day School is a volunteer thing, but ends up being another job which I love. Mark and I just got to spend three days at Windy Gap with 56 high school kids from our school and it was incredible.  The other leaders in our area are some of the coolest people I've ever been friends with and I find myself doing work at the YL Office more often than anywhere else.  Today, in fact, as I sat in the corner of Lauren's office, Murf (the area director) came in and, not seeing me, turned off the light. I realized that if I spoke I'd scare him half to death. So I spoke. And watched him teeter as a falling tree when the ax's final blow has severed the trunk. I actually thought he might crumble. We laughed and he apologized desperately for having used the bathroom just beside Lauren's office. "I don't use that bathroom when the girls are here!" he exclaimed. "I am so sorry you had to hear that." Life is a comedy.

My other job, working at the front desk at a local bone and joint doctor's office, is another ten hours a week. Mark calls it my "fun" job, mostly because he knows I spend the whole morning laughing. I work beside Natalie. She's a good girl, born and raised around here in Walnut Cove.  She's married to Russell, has two daughters in high school and college and has worked at the office for over 15 years.  She knows everyone. Somehow every person that migrates through our office has some kind of connection to Natalie or one of her four sisters or her mother. She's always telling me, "Ginny, it's a bad scene." On bad days, when seventy-year-old women wave their umbrellas wildly, refusing to pay their twenty dollar copay, she purses her lips and, in her southern tongue, orders me to follow her to "the closet" (the supply walk-in closet).  Her eyes widen and, breathing fire, she'll call a spade a spade, use choice words to describe the man who demanded a second set of x-rays and the woman who picked twenty-two pieces of candy out of the candy bowl when she herself wasn't even being seen--her son was. Her son is forty.  "It's pitiful," Natalie says. And all I can do is laugh. 

october in winston-salem

It is fall again. For those of you who have followed my blog for at least a year (thanks! What an honor) you know that I am completely besotted with the season that is upon us. The blinds stay open at all times, the windows stay up to welcome the crisp breeze. I have spent countless minutes sitting, staring, out the window above my writing desk. The boys play flag football in the city league every Tuesday night and I pace the sidelines with my arms crossed over my chest in an attempt at warming  up, screaming every so often, and running down the sideline before I can stop myself.  Hannah and I bought the most charming pumpkins at the farmer's market this week and today the leaves are falling, swirling in the breeze. It is my season of joy.

Autumn in West Chester was colder than it is here in North Carolina. I remember vividly running through the park at the end of Hillside Drive, kicking up the piles of leaves collected on the edges of the path. We could play for hours outside, my sister and me, even until dusk.  I have no memory of gloves, only small white fingers turning red, then opaque with cold.  My nose would run and when I reached up to wipe it with the back of my little cold hand, I would laugh at the numbness. The monkey bars, metal and painted yellow, were like ice and after swinging from rung to rung our hands smelled like cold metal. Inside, when it was time for dinner, the house felt so warm and my mother making stew on the stovetop would laugh and make us wash our hands from all of the dirt.  We wore wool sweaters and jeans with saddle shoes, all hand-me-downs; we were ragamuffins with flyaway hair and a bottomless supply of imagination.

The need I feel for the outdoors must have been born all those years ago when we played outside all day.  Our TV was small with a circular knob that could be turned to receive 4 stations.  I wished for cable then, but I am thankful now.

Jonathan, my sister's son, is a year old now. We spend hours outside, picking up acorns and throwing them, examining sticks and bugs, exploring leaves and hoses and mulch.  Hannah says that Jonathan wants to be outside all the time, that he cries and bangs on the door until she lets him free. I feel like that too, and as I sit here on this fall afternoon under this great blue sky, I'm thankful, again, for the season of great joy.

about the book...

I should probably warn anyone who read my review of The Prince of Tides and went immediately to the store to buy a copy:  there is some pretty brutal, graphic violence in the book. Obviously I hated reading these portions of the book, although the violence is a huge impetus in the plot.  There were, however, parts I just about skipped over.

The book is still recommended by me, but with a big fat R rating spread across the front.

"The Prince of Tides"

Because I am always looking for the next good book to read and because I feel like most of the books I begin are actually a bit disappointing, I think I'll begin writing book reviews as blog posts every once in a while. I know that to be a good writer one has to read good writing. It's a sort of teaching once you're out of college. However, considering the current state of my life I have precious little time to read. Therefore it takes an expertly written book to captivate me and hold me prisoner until the bitter end.

I was recently recommended The Prince of Tides by Pat Conroy. Published in 1986, the year of my birth, the book was widely acclaimed and in 1991 made into a movie starring Barbara Streisand and Nick Nolte. 

If you are looking for a worthwhile read, a book that will make you smirk and laugh aloud, a book that will make you turn 50 pages before you realize any time has passed at all, a book whose drama will roam like a tiger in the front of your mind even when you aren't reading it, a book that will make you cry soft, quiet tears, you just may want to pick up The Prince of Tides.

There is something about this story, told in its narrative excellence and quality of description, that is utterly captivating. It is the story of the Wingo family, told by the youngest son Tom.  Tom, his twin sister Savannah and his brother Luke endure a childhood full of confusion, mystery, defeat, trauma, excitement and, most of all, camaraderie. It is the story of secrets and competition in a small southern town and relationships both deep and dysfunctional.  It is brilliant, absolutely brilliant, and I devoured each and every page.

hhg  vb bj,. <---that was Mark

A good friend and I decided to read this book together.  We haven't had a chance to discuss the book yet, but via text she told me she found the book "good but disturbing."  It's true. The plot isn't comfortable or "happy." In fact, I have spent a few nights a little restless thinking about the events of the novel with all of the strange plot twists and unnerving male characters, the wild setting of the book and the bizarre relationships and philosophies.

For four days I've been circling around and around, trying to figure out just what it is that is so beguiling about the Wingos and their ramshackle history.  It is a story of humanity that doesn't feign beauty where it is vile. In some vein each of us carries threads of pain and humiliation, betrayal and suffering. But when it's all over, when the season of pain has come to a close, after all of the secrets and words and wounds, a rich ribbon of love between the Wingo siblings is redeeming. And a story tied with that kind of ribbon is the best kind of story because that is what we are each seeking in our stories, isn't it?

late august.

In late Augusts back in my memory it has been so hot that the asphalt breathes up under your shorts and the soles of your flip flops seem to melt.  Indebted to this time of year solely because of the birth of my precious baby brother and friend, I usually spend the month of August sweaty and ready for autumn.

Last weekend in Pittsburgh we were delighted when a cold snap moved, it seemed in deliberation, down from Canada and covered over western Pennsylvania. We spent the nights with the box fan running in front of the window in the upstairs hallway to bring in the coolest, silver air I've felt in months. I didn't realize how constricted breathing has been until that night breeze moved in over my covers and eased my respiration, forcing me to bring quilts up around my neck and dream outside of summer. 

In autumn, it always surprises me, the haze of heat rises up into the atmosphere for good and every natural color is richer, darker. Back in Winston-Salem the J. Nissen building changes from red to brick red and the Third Street sign seems to glow in green and white. I am completely transfixed by the state of the world in fall. 

Sur la Table is a store that specializes in housewares, mostly kitchen. During a massive downpour in the city on Friday, we ducked into the store front and looked around at pink and green mixers, a variety of box mixes for brownies and red velvet cupcakes with cream cheese frosting straight out of Santa's house at the Pole. I purchased a set of nine miniscule cookie cutters shaped like leaves and acorns to make sugar cookies and ice them with orange and yellow and brown icing and sugar.  I have to wait, but not for long.

...It is finally September, the base of the rise toward fall. Today the temperature has peaked at 75 degrees, down from last week's 88, and I'm sitting under an awning in the shade in long sleeves.