One Month Later

I've spent most of my free time this past month hard at work on my 80s memoir and rewarded myself this morning with a few roses snipped from a bush in our apartment building's yard.  

After two weeks of rain, the blooms that haven't blown are browning and just about done for the year, so I think my fellow tenants will forgive me for having cut three for this small bouquet.  Although a bit bedraggled, it is beautiful and does me good.  

And My Birthday Cake (Lilac Petals Cupcake)

My birthday fell the day before Mother's Day this year, making my weekend home even sweeter for both me and Mom.  Some years, we mail each other our cards and goodies, and other years, we just wait until we see each other to exchange gifts.  This time around, Mom made me my usual cheesecake--and the only cheesecake I've ever liked (with a chilled-not-baked filling of lemon gelatin, cream cheese, sugar, evaporated milk, and vanilla)--for Saturday night, and we all had leftovers of that and Mom's berries-and-flowers Mother's Day cake on Sunday, so by yesterday, a single cupcake back here at the apartment seemed like more than enough.  I froze a few Lilac petals I'd pulled from one of Mom and Dad's shrubs before leaving yesterday morning and they were still a pretty shade of lilac when thawed and sprinkled over the cupcake last night, but the camera refused to capture the color.  In any case, this was my tiny 39th birthday cake, a simple end to a sweet weekend and a pretty start to the last year of my thirties.  

A woman I spent some time talking with in my hometown bus station yesterday morning asked me if I was a student, and I was momentarily flustered by the question, answering clumsily, "Oh no, I'm out of school--Done with school.  I'm older.  I'll be 40 next year"--because I'm smooth like this in conversation, clearly (see:  Goals, cross-referenced with Val, Self-Improvement Needs of)  :)--and she exclaimed, "Forty!?  I was thinking maybe 24 if you were out of school!  Well!  Good for you!"  Noooo, thank youuuuuuuuu!  We talked some more, and it was part of an otherwise already-lovely kick-off to the year ahead.  Lisa and Cheryl, if I looked 39 or 40 or 45 to you in-person last month, let me have a week before you burst my bubble.  ;)

Last year's birthday wishes and goals included finishing a first draft of the 80s memoir I've been working on, and while I've written a lot, I learned early-on this past year that producing a rough draft by this May wasn't a realistic goal, so the work on that continues.  I continue to write, though, and I'm still walking my way back into running shape, dreaming of spending the morning of my 40th birthday finishing my first full marathon.  I have a lot of (gained, lost, and re-gained) weight to (re-)lose before then, and many miles to walk and then run before that day, but it remains the goal.  Here's to the year ahead.  

♥

Back at It

The holiday hoopla threw my writing routine out of whack, but this first week of February, I'm finally settling back into one.  This is how dreams live or die, it seems:  A few days of not working toward a goal turn into weeks of not working toward it, and then a couple months have passed, and then a whole half-year, and then the dream becomes something one was involved in in once years ago. . . .I return to this, though, and I will keep returning to it:  to my seat at this table and to these stacks and bags of index cards and diaries and family photos, and to the belief that this matters.  

Onward.

Seven Nice Things

I was nursing a headache most of yesterday--yes, my turn, Lisa!--but am feeling better today for Day Off #2 and have gotten a lot done.  And am just enjoying myself.  Seven sweet things this week:

1.)  'Am still working on my 80s childhood memoir.  Loving!  It!  ♥  That pile of paper scraps in the photo above is all the remaining notes that need to be turned into index cards--which will later be turned into "real" writing.  The pile has shrunk so much since I started this in earnest earlier this year.  My goal for the rest of today is to get as many scraps onto cards as possible so I can move on to the filling-the-notebooks-with-rough-drafts stage of things.  Progress!

2.)  The building manager and a plumber had to stop by earlier this week for routine winter-prep radiator maintenance, and as I welcomed them in,  the plumber glanced around and unexpectedly greeted me with "Oh, I like it in here!  It's very family-oriented!" and moments later commented, "It smells really good in here too!" as he left.  I hardly knew what to say besides thank you, but both remarks made me laugh.  A sweet encounter.  

3.)  A coworker left a thank you on my note that accompanied the cookies I'd brought into work last week and later thanked me in-person.  A day-brightener for me. 

5.)  Chicago Cubs in the World Series playoffs!  I'm not wildly enthusiastic about any one team--I tend to wish them all well--and it would have been a treat for Dad if his Pirates had advanced in the playoffs, but how fun to see the Cubs and their fans having such a great ride this fall.  

6.)  This pup, an English Yellow Lab--

--is now my younger brother's dog.  So sweet!  ♥  My brother, his wife, and somehow-almost-two-year-old Bianca have all wanted a dog for ages, and this one looks so dear. 

7.)  Chilly fall weather has returned, and with it, a pot on the stove here of simmering cinnamon water.  Today's mix is simply cinnamon with vanilla, but as I finish my iced teas while I write this afternoon, I'll throw in the lemon slices too.  Snow flurries and a frost warning are in the forecast for the next few days.  Oh, fall!  Love, love, love.  

'Back to the index cards.  'A sweet weekend to you all. 

You must begin to think of yourself as becoming the person you want to be. ~ David Viscott

The past two weeks have been wearying, and aside from a Saturday when a combined headache, kink in my neck, and day without sleep found me waving the white flag from my bed, I have plodded on and even have some good things to show for it.  The bathroom has been put back together post-painting, with new shower curtain and curtains too.  The bedroom wall-painting is almost done.  The headboard project is at least begun, with stars, string lights, and waiting-for-payday pillow shams next on its to-do list.  The bedroom curtains are up but lacking their ruffle-trim, tie-backs, and the hankie-patchwork-type sheers I'm planning to hang underneath them.  The 1980s childhood memoir-writing continues. The healthy eating continues.  It feels, though, like I've just been hanging on and getting through this fall so far.  Do you remember the brilliant exchange between the frustrated sheriff and his secretary in Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men?  It keeps coming to mind this month.  "What is it that (Justice) Torbert says?"  he asks her.  "About truth and justice."  She distractedly answers, "We dedicate ourselves anew daily.    Somethin like that."  The sheriff responds, "I think I'm goin to commence to dedicatin myself twice daily.  It may come to three fore it's over."  Hear, hear.  I brought in Halloween cookies for my coworkers this week, and the cashier yesterday morning told me "I love your smile" while bagging my groceries, and I'm choosing to accept both gestures as signs that hope is not lost.  :)  Here's to the plodding-on.  

A Childhood Reading Mystery I Thought I'd Solved

One of my clearest and funniest memories from first grade--the 1983-1984 school year for me--is the morning I skipped into class with a book from home in my hands and bragged to my teacher that I'd read it all by myself the night before.  This teacher, Mrs. G, was so sweet and pretty and encouraging--I just loved her--and she oohed and ahhed over my accomplishment and asked me if I'd like to read my book to the class.  Oh, yes!  Pride overcame shyness that morning, I guess, because soon I was sitting in The Teacher Chair with my book with all my classmates fanned out around me as I began to read.  The book had a How-I-Spend-My-Day theme, and its final page showed the narrator settled into bed for the night.  My classmates looked awed by my reading skills--"Wow!  Val can read a whole book!  Just like the teacher!"--and I, who had decided as soon as starting kindergarten the fall before that I wanted to be a teacher when I grew up, was having a ball.  The last sentence of the book was something like, "As I fall asleep at night, I hear the owl" or "Outside my window sits an owl."  Since I hadn't read the book out loud before, I hadn't known until reaching the final word on the final page that I couldn't pronounce "owl."  I stumbled and stuttered and "oh-orrrr-ahhh-owwwwrrrruhhhlllllll"-ed as I tried to shape the letters into a word with my mouth, but no.  My teacher, looking puzzled, came over and gently whispered, "Owl.  Owl," but I still couldn't pronounce that word.  ("Horse" was another word that took me awhile, for whatever reason.)  My classmates didn't laugh and didn't seem any less impressed, and I remember nothing else about the experience except how baffled I was by what had just happened.  If I was already, at six years old, as hard on myself as I would be decades later, I likely focused more on the one missed word than the fact that I'd just gotten to "play Teacher" and read aloud to my entire class.  :)  In any case, I have been trying for ages to figure out what that book had been, and I thought I'd finally found it last week.  The book above looked so promising:  The koala bear character takes us through his/her day, and the final page even ends with an illustration of the bear in (a darling patchwork) bed.  Alas, though!  The story ends without a mention of the owl that tripped me up, and the search continues.  I know, we're all thinking, wouldn't it be funny if this IS the book and I'm just not remembering its final page accurately after all these years, but I really don't think so.  :)  Maybe one of these days, as I hunt down and research 80s trivia like this for the memoir, I'll solve the mystery--and send a copy to sweet Mrs. G, as well.  ♥

It's the 80s Every Day Here--Or How I'm Writing My Book

As I mentioned in my birthday post in May, I decided awhile back to buckle down and really dig into the 80s childhood memoir I'm writing.  And so I have.  Most days/nights these past few months, I can be found for at least an hour--usually more, because I'm truly loving the whole process and am just determined to keep at it this time until a book comes out of it--sitting here at my green gingham tablecloth-covered table with my seemingly-endless piles of notes, my 1980s diaries, all sorts of memory-jogging ephemera my mom and I have saved all these years, hometown maps, old photos, packages of blank index cards--Mead-brand 3" x 5", and as with the green gingham tablecloth, and my usual black Bic-brand pens and ever-present glasses of iced tea, I'm almost afraid to shake up my routine now by changing any of these details, so I buy these index cards a few packages at a time--and a wide assortment of spiral notebooks--one for each year the final memoir will cover, plus one for family recipes I think I'll be including, is the plan--writing and remembering.  I've never enjoyed writing anything more, which is saying something for this one who has always loved finding the words. 

The old diaries mention all the personal girlhood and family memories, of course--Christmas wishlists, what we ate for dinner, who got in trouble for what, first bra, first deaths, school assignments, school book orders, Papa and Grandma's 50th anniversary party, Dad's local races, Mom's country decorating magazines, my younger brother's new stuffed "Pound Puppy," my older brother's new "Miami Vice" poster, and my proud "I learned how to do a front walkover today!"--

--but also record the drought and scorching temperatures during the summer of 1988, former First Lady Nancy Reagan's mastectomy, and that Michael Jackson's video for "Bad" is really more like a movie.  :)  Diaries are such treasures, and mine are, for this project, a most-amazing resource.  

It makes me happy every day to be getting somewhere with this.  I have a number of other writing projects here that I've started and stopped, and re-started and set aside again, but I'm in such a beautiful groove with this one, it just delights me. 

My parents have been answering the most random questions--"Where did our neighbor Paul work?" and "What model of car was that beige-ish one we had that had the backseat that folded down?" and "By ANY chance, do you guys remember who lived in our house before we loved in?  You DO?!  Oh my goodness!!"--  ♥ 

--and I have been in touch with others recently who have helped me piece a few more memories together.  When I was three or four, I would spend the hours my mom worked outside the home at sweet fifty-plus-year-old Bobbi's house.  This heart-of-gold had been recommended to my mom as simply the best with children, and she truly was.  I loved my days with her.  She had Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls and a big jar filled with marbles, but it was Bobbi herself I most enjoyed.  "Maybe the two have nothing to do with each other," I prefaced a query with a few weeks ago, "but I always associate the smells of lumber and manure with her home.  I've always liked the smell of manure!  It's a good memory for me."  My former babysitter's grown daughter--I am now in touch with this woman's daughter!  I'm having a blast, I tell you!  ♥--responded that this all makes sense because they had, after all, lived on a farm.  And her dad had owned a construction business.  :)  When I reported this to my parents, they immediately said, "Well, yeah.  We could have told you that."  They hadn't known that I'd been wondering all these years.  In this case, though, both the memory-confirmation and the contact with Bobbi's daughter were more than worth the research. 

Bobbi's daughter actually remembered me and my family, it turns out.  I hadn't known until I started looking into it that my dear babysitter had even had children of her own--let alone that her children had known my family--so this was all news to me.  "I remember you and your brother as well as your dad, can't remember your mom," Bobbi's daughter wrote in one of her emails last month.  "I sold the family farm to a couple from New Jersey. It is something else now. My mother is 87 now. . . .I remember your curly hair."  Ha!  ♥  This woman I'd gotten in touch with online not having realized we'd ever met--and until finding her name online I hadn't even known existed--remembers my hair!  I laughed out loud when I read that, and I alternately smile and shake my head at the wonder of it all. 

Picture me at my gingham table, then, with a full-to-bursting heart and ever-growing stacks of index cards as I make notes on 1977-1980 and recapture my memories of 1981-1989.  

One of my earliest memories has always been that of my maternal grandmother's asking me a day or so before my birthday party in 1981 if I was excited to be turning four.  The more I think about it and write about it, the more it's struck me how poignant it is that one of my first memories is of being asked if I'm excited about something--and such a celebratory something.  ♥  A most-beautiful beginning to the lifetime ahead. 

I write, and I write. 

The days/nights that I don't write, though, I read a little more and listen to extra 80s music--"extra" because I'm all about the 80s music, anyway  :) --and just let myself think. 

I can't attend this one--most unfortunately for me, while I work on this--but my twentieth high school class reunion is this summer--so this is very much a season of nostalgia here. 

Many of my former classmates will be hearing from me in the days ahead, of course, even if I can't join them for drinks and dinner just yet. 

And I intend to be at the twenty-fifth reunion, whether I attend it with research questions to ask or a finished book to share.  :)

I have been in touch with a few favorite former teachers recently too, and each bit of contact means the world to me.  Sweet Mrs. T read Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH to my class during second-grade afternoons.  Mrs. R, Kindergarten Teacher to Beat All Kindergarten Teachers, would remember me and my mom even when we'd run into her in town when I was in high school.  And wonderful Mr. V encouraged my artwork and turned me on to science too.  I feel so much love for these gifts of people. 

There has such a blessing of love in my life all along, and I feel more grateful for it all the time.  To connect all the dots now, page by page, and note by note, is pure joy. 

The recipe for Grandma's fudge--or "Gramma's," as I spelled it in February 1988--mentioned two photos up is here, by the way.  "Yum!" is right.  And Paul Simon's video for "You Can Call Me Al," one of my favorite songs from the 1980s, noted in the photo above, can be seen here, (speaking of pure joy).  :)  ♪  "A man walks down the street, he says why am I soft in the middle now, why am I soft in the middle, the rest of my life is so hard. . . ."  ♫  Ahhhhhhhhh, the 80s, truly!  Love, love, love. 

The process--or at least, the process so far--is to gather all the 80s-related memories and thoughts I've jotted down onto scrap paper, in my diaries and journals, here on the blog, and sometimes even quickly onto paper towels fast-before-I-forget-this and transfer them to the index cards.  This has taken most of the past three months, and. . .many notes to go before I sleep.  A few years ago, before I'd really declared my intention, even to myself, to write this book, I was jotting down memories onto scraps of paper and saving them--thinking, I suppose, that I could elaborate on them here on the blog or at least transfer them into my journal to record them, so now I have a huge number of scraps and pages to sort through--and in some cases, decipher, if I scribbled the notes too quickly--and rewrite onto the cards.  When I know which year--between 1977 and 1989--the memory is from, I write that onto the index card.  Eventually, I'll rewrite all the "1987" index cards into the "1987" spiral notebook in a more organized way, for example.  And then it will be more writing and rewriting to turn each year's notebook into "Real" Writing.  The 1981 index cards' notes have almost all been transferred into the 1981 notebook now, which is encouraging to me. 

And yes, the (twelve?) spiral notebooks are all different 1980s-themed ones I've been collecting at thrift shops and online.  Mike thinks that's excessive, but why not have 80s supplies around me while I'm otherwise so immersed in the era, says I--and "You're not the one writing it, so what do you care!?" I retort as I return to my Care Bears and Lisa Frank rainbows and Mrs. Grossman stickers. 

I'm still aiming to have a finished draft by my next birthday.  And then the work of submitting it to potential publishers will begin. 

In the meantime here, it is index card-by-index card and a decidedly enthusiastic Val .  ♥