Alicia Who Sees Mice

I was just in the bathroom thinking my gratitude thoughts like a good little bobblehead. I found boots that fit my skinny ankles AND are waterproof and not hideous at the thrift store and bought brand new leggings that are so soft I feel like I'm in jammies and then I looked down and wouldn't you know? A hole in my crotch. No smartass, not that one. My neck's not that long. A hole in the crotch of my leggings. Grrr.

Which got me thinking how I complain too much and why do I do that? Sometimes it's because I'm a grouchy pants. Sometimes I'm afraid I'm devolving into a family trait of being negative and complaining all the time and I definitely don't want that.

In writing it's more deliberate though. In writing I do it because I hate that fluffy crap that doesn't have the grit and substance of real life with holes in brand new clothes and all the pot holes that get us stuck.

The time I don't feel all that gritty? Teaching.

Especially teaching ESL.

Teaching ESL makes me laugh and laugh. And not fake, polite laughter, but deep belly-hurting laughter. I don't know how great I am at teaching it. Truth be told, I'm not sure I'm great at all. But dang if we don't have fun.

The funniest thing that ever happened was when a man accidentally used Urban Dictionary to look up "bottom," and gave a very strange definition regarding homosexuality that made me laugh so hard I cried and had to take five before I could even explain what had happened. Last week, I was teaching some mamas how to pronounce "brought" and kept using "bra" to get the verb sound right. One woman had forgotten one so every time I grabbed my straps and pulled my tits up, she started laughing. Then I laughed and we all just about died by the end of class.

And then one night, during a break in the high level class, I was trying to prop the door (it had gotten hot in the room from the computers.) A particularly nicely dressed, young Peruvian gal crept down to see if the stopper had gotten under a file cabinet. She pulled out a mouse trap complete with a dead mouse.

"AHhhhEEEEeeee!!!" Her scream pierced the entire lower level of the college.

More laughter, more tears as the class filed back in to see what was going on. Then we sat down to read House on Mango Street. She stepped out for a moment and when she returned and it was her turn to read the very next vignette was "Alicia Who Sees Mice."

I think that's the most fun night I've had all semester. Then I walked in,late, well after 10:00 PM (and keep in mind my bedtime is closer to 9,) and the toddler potty was in the exact center of the living room containing exactly one turd and one apple core. Life's gritty and full of turds and apple cores and soft new leggings and laughter and tears. I'm going to sew the damn hole up. Take that!

I love teaching. I love being there to witness the moment the dots connect and a person arrives at the Aha! moment of reading their first word.

My four-year-old read his first early reader book this weekend and it was all I could do to keep from jumping out of my skin. I don't think I was this excited when he took his first steps. OK, I was. He walked down the hallways saying "go, go, go!"

When I worked in residential treatment, I worked with two boys who did not know how to read a single word. Both were well beyond the ages when such things are learned. One boy had had his head fractured as an infant and the other was born with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. I loved these boys whole-heartedly. I worked with them daily on memorizing the sounds, developing ways to parse sounds by karate chopping words into syllables, and enjoying the sound of being read to. They were, after all, still little boys. After months of working together, I am proud of the progress they made in being able to decode (word-call,) simple words. It was a milestone for them when they first read words and I feel like it's one of the great experiences of my life that I got to be involved in it.

In particular, they learned to read "bad." Because these kids had such a massive history of abuse and neglect, the first time they decoded this word, I internally panicked. What came out of my mouth was "BAD KITTY" and a dramatically waving finger. We screamed "bad kitty," a lot that spring.

But, teaching adults is a wildly different world. I don't have to worry so much about offending, although I'm still extremely careful with feelings. Learning is a vulnerable process and care should be taken with other people's souls.

Last week, I was teaching ESL and one of the mommies quietly asked, whispered really, what the difference was between "bush" and the bad word.

After a moment of confusion, I wrote "bush" and "bullshit" on a small dry erase board and showed them to she and the other women in class that afternoon. They got their cell phones out and showed me translations that didn't really make sense and we laughed wildly while discussing when it was appropriate to use each and pronouncing each word carefully so that the mommies would be able to tell when their children were swearing in order to properly reprimand.

These moments are fun and meaningful and exciting and useful. Teaching is like that.

One of my first contacts with an ESL student involved a young man telling me that he had lived in a storage facility without a roof in Arizona for years as an adolescent. He was hiding from the authorities and so lived there because no one was likely to find him there. He described loving the stars.

Well, Brene, You're Right. I'm vulnerable.

I love Brene Brown. I am whole-hearted. I lean into the discomfort. I push myself and believe I am worthy of love and belonging.

Except sometimes when I don't. Sometimes I'm mean. Sometimes I'm unhappy. Sometimes I'm vulnerable in more than one part of my life and then I fall to pieces and need putting back together again. I'm built like humpty dumpty. Ok, not so much with the last part.

So the other night, I had had a really, REALLY busy day. This busy day followed a series of about 12 days where my four-year-old threw screaming fits exactly EVERY time we went anywhere.

So this morning, I get up, pack up the kids for tumbling lesson for Thing 1, then put them in the rec center childcare for 45 minutes while I work out, tumbling lesson for Thing 2, then drop off Thing 1 at gramma's, take Thing 2 for errands and napping in the car... I'm going to stop now because I'm sick of this so I'm certain you've begun skimming by now.

By the time it's evening and I'm to be 10 minutes late for work, I have to jet out still in my work out clothes. I should specify exactly HOW inappropriate for work they are here. On top we have: a torn open t-shirt that says "DOPE" across the bottom in red letters with a tanktop under and who-cares-what-else. SERIOUSLY. Torn. Dope.

And sometimes, especially when I'm teaching a writing lab late into the evening in a small extra use building, I see next-to-no-one and could keep my jacket on and get away with this, sort of. But it's hot in the lab and

Not tonight. Tonight, unbeknownst to me a small group of all the higher-ups and most important of the people who could ever give me a full time jobs are all coming to have dinner with a speaker whose been flown in. So every single one of them passes by the window where I am wearing said inappropriate outfit. Thankfully I am at least working with a student.

A student whose feelings have been hurt by an instructor who was not careful wording strong direct criticism. So after working with this student for an hour, I help him through some tears and hurt feelings and he leaves and I'm left to flail uncomfortably for the next couple of hours through being in my insanely uncomfortable skin.

I fail at: making flyers, blogging, responding to emails, smelling pleasant, and that's just the beginning. In between these failures, I spend my time obsessing about what a shitty mom I am and how badly I've handled everything, um, ever.

As the event lets out, a colleague of mine comes up and we make small talk. Somehow she ends up telling me she'd like to read my book. Instead of having a normal person's reaction to this I say,

"It's a great book." (and it is. But I say this in a voice that squeaks and smells of awkward vulnerability and weird eye contact and probably old sweat since I'm still in workout clothes from approximately 10 hours earlier.)
I laugh and then say, "it'll change you're life. Well, ok that's a joke but it's a good book."
She practically sprints away.

When I get home, instead of asking directly for support from Rob, I whine about our son and he says he can't do anymore talking tonight (it's late and he's right it is.) and instead of saying anything smart, I nervously henpeck about him drinking my whiskey and any number of other things I don't actually care much about and he refuses to sleep with me (which I admittedly deserve.)

I spend hours that night tossing and turning and experiencing the hell of the evening over and over again.

The next day I wake up and cry to Rob about how I am spending a lot of time vulnerable. A LOT. And while I usually lean into it, it's all been too much. I tell him through tears how dumb I was the night before and how much pressure I'm putting on myself and how hard it all feels. The stakes are huge. I want to be a writer. I want to be a good mom. I need people to love this book. My son deserves the best of the best. And what if none of those things happens?

Publishing my book is intensely personal. A friend said when she was reading it, she felt like it was really personal to read it since she knows me and she felt like it was almost too intimate to read what I'd written. I knew exactly what she meant.

I spent years on this. I did the absolute best I could.

Doing the best you can, it turns out, is scary. Because there's no better. So if it's not good enough, that's the top.There's no better. You just failed after trying as hard as you could then.

Sure, the next book will be better than this one. I will grow as a writer for the rest of my life and continually get better at it and so someday I'll look back and think how much better I could have written this book. But for now, this is all I have. This is the best I could do. And I need it to be good enough to get to all those other books I'll write later.

And I get four and five stars. But those four stars are like in a performance review when your boss says, you're great here, here, here, and here and you have room for improvement here. I think oh god, four stars and you're my friend means that you really would've given it 2 if you didn't know me and what if everyone who sees the reviews thinks that too.

And you can see how this road of vulnerability can lead to insecurity and how much worse I can make ANYTHING if left to my own devices.

I am through-apnd-through honestly me. All the time. I'm genuine.

So if I feel like I said above, and I try to say "the book's great." It comes out weird. This is the closest I've ever been to knowing what it feels like to have Asperger's. My voice goes all flat and low and my eye contact is off and sometimes I say things as questions accidentally and then I laugh too loud and ... I mean to say, "yes, I'd love for you to read my book. thank you." But instead it comes out "I'm a weirdo!"

So instead of cheerleading and trying to convince anyone I'm anything but terrified, I started with my husband and said, "I'm spending all my time feeling vulnerable. And I can handle that in one area of life at a time but this, this is hard."

And he does what he does. He hugs me more. He tells me I'm beautiful more. He tells me, I am, in fact, not built like humpty dumpty at all but am sexy and that our 4-year-old is hard and we've all had a hard week. He tells me he's had a hard week with our 4-year-old too.

So then, when the next colleague, that very morning, congratulates me and asks about how I feel about the book, I'm honest.

I tell her it's the most time I've ever spent being vulnerable and that's good but it's hard too. And I sell a copy. Lean in.

No is really a redirection, not a slap on the wrist

My older son is into mazes right now. I loved them when I was a kid too. I remember sitting in the back of the room with the other gifted kid who was never doing his work either (we were really terrible students,) making mazes for each other. It was so fast for me to visualize the path through the maze, especially if I started at the end.

I don't want to get all self-helpy on you or anything, but I've been thinking about the word "no." And not just because my younger son recently turned two. I've been thinking about it since my novel came out.

Since I released the book I've had to do a lot of asking and promoting and tossing ideas out. Nearly all of the time when I've asked things, they've been well-received. But no one's going to hear "yes," all the time. Not every road is a simple direct path, there's bends and turns and sometimes even dead ends.

I have this shame though when I butt up against the word "no." As though my asking were unjustified.

People are generally flippant about asking for things. "You can always ask, right? What have you got to lose?"

But the truth is I do feel like I lose something when I ask. It's generally worth the risk, but the let-down of "no," can be hard to bear. It makes me feel the shame of asking for something I didn't deserve, of stepping beyond my station, beyond where I've earned being.

The feedback on the book has been phenomenal. People are up late reading. They're telling friends. They're reading!

But I knew the negative would happen eventually and so it did. A woman told me in a terse tone that she had put down the book. She'd been offended by a scene in it and refused to read the rest.

And I was devastated and ashamed.

She was a librarian. I realized that I had wanted her to like my book because I'd wanted my passions to come together. It's kind of like when you really like two people and so you want those two people to like each other but they don't.

But after some time to process the whole thing, I decided it was worth it. She's not my audience. The library's job is to create a space where everyone can be and get engaged in reading and the community. My audience has appreciated the story. And not everyone will. At least my first (not-so-constructive) criticism was in person. At least it was direct. At least it wasn't a person who truly needed the story.

The library is not the venue for my book. The library should carry copies for sure. But that's not the place to promote it. The book is about serious problems. It's uncomfortable at times. And that's not what a library is for.

I'd asked and received the answer, "no."

I self-published. No one knows where the publishing industry is headed and I took a risk and put my neck out to do this. I don't have a reputation yet. So book stores see me as a risk. I'm asking them to take that risk and it makes me terribly nervous.

But if I think of the path this book is taking like one of the mazes my son does, I can see the end. In the end, I do well as an author. In the end, I'm moved by women who read my book and tell me their stories of being sexually abused, of living in residential treatment, of finding their paths. Someone notices the line that I loved writing most when Seffra is under her kitchen table carving in the under belly of the wood and how the fibers snapped like teeth breaking. As a reader, I live for lines that I can taste in my mouth or that move my mind across skies, lines that grind grit between my teeth.

When I tell my kids no, I realize how they don't want to hear it. Sometimes I get down on their level in order to try to help them see that "no" is not really a bad thing. They simply need to change tacks.

So I continue to ask. I realize that no is a dead end in the maze. It's the part that tells me I'm going the wrong way; I need to turn around so I can get to the end. No, is simply a redirection. It says, nope, not the library. It says I need to change tacks, try something else, connect with artists, connect with the disenfranchised. That is my path.

Here are the tacks that have gotten me partway through the maze:

• I did my first live reading at a coffee shop in Breckenridge. It was terrifying and wonderful and people listened and I got one under my belt. Plus, I got to have an evening out.
• I met the owner of a small book shop who invited me to do a reading at his shop and offered to carry my book
• Colorado Mountain College where I work will be selling copies of my book and will be featuring me in their Speaker Series where I'll give a reading and a talk and sell books. This will be huge in providing credibility to me as a writer and will also be a tremendous boost to me professionally. Or so I think. I'm not at the end of the maze yet.
• I have an author event scheduled at Bookbar in Denver and am very excited for the excuse to go to that venue and check out their digs.
• I'll be having a release party soon and dang if releasing this book isn't something to celebrate the hell out of!

If you hadn't seen it before, here's the link to pick up a copy of my book, Between Families, which I am terribly proud of and hope you enjoy:

https://www.createspace.com/4811178?ref=1147694&utm_id=6026

And if you don't, change tacks.

On Suicide

A character in the first book of Between Families faces suicide. The scenes and descriptions are somewhat autobiographical and based on when I was 17 and attempted suicide. There has never been something so important to have failed at. I literally have never learned more from a failure than from that one.

That said, I know how I felt at the time and it was such a deep and profound vacuum of sadness that did not allow a single moment of joy in. Each moment was interminable, keen and cruel, and it was impossible to tolerate time. Suicide sounded like a relief from that endless black pit that swallowed up my everything. My depression was situational, not chronic. I have never experienced another bout like it. I was young and didn't have the same concept of time then that I do now. I didn't know how to hold on and wait and that things would get better. I just didn't know.

But I am fortunate in that the depression I experienced was due to things going on in my life. It was situational. I do not have chemical imbalances that make depression an ongoing struggle. I do not know that repetitive cycle of pain and hopelessness.

I don't know what it was to be Robin Williams or the other couple of folks I've known who have been successful at suicide. I imagine if they felt the way I did, much less many times over, or in greater depths of darkness, or with neural pathways permanently damaged by substances, unable to feel joy in a profound way, I hope their suffering from that is over. Surviving that feeling for any period of time is brave. Do not call those who attempt or commit suicide, cowards. They are surviving through insurmountable challenges and the fact they try at all, is a testament to the human spirit. They survived and managed to touch your heart despite a depth of darkness plaguing them that we cannot imagine. They deserve respite from that and respect for trying even if they helped entropy along before the rest of us were ready for it. I wish for no more successes in the nasty business of suicide; I hope you will tell me if you feel the pull of darkness. I hope respite can be found through other means. But my opinion on your sadness is not helpful. My heart is. I hope my prayers are. More than anything, you have my compassion.

Leftovers

My family is attempting to move from one house to another and then still another. It's a complicated process and not in the least less complicated for the age of my kids. Their ages mean that you set a pile in the corner of things to go to the thrift store and then another pile in another corner of things you're waiting to find all the pieces to and there are four more piles like these in every room. And ten minutes later, there are new piles that are of plastic pieces your three year old thinks make great new weapons, and choking hazards held by your 19 month old. They disassemble your piles and toward the end you find yourself putting more and more items into the recycle bin, more things go to the thrift store instead of being stored or sold. In that vein, these are notes I've found scribbled around. I'm recycling them, but first reprinting them here. I've written so many notes on ideas to myself over the years, it's time to let most of them go. I trust ideas will keep coming and hopefully an occasional lump of time to follow up on them. Without further ado:

 

Gypsy Weasel

An old woman nurses comfortably,
sitting cross legged in a square in Prague.
Milk's gone but baby's happy,
pacified on history.
He doesn't know he's poor,
and grimy, narrowly cushioned
by age
from the cold hard cobblestones.
It is a creaky comfort;...
it cracks and groans
lactose sugar water
sweet as snow on a sunny day,
with weasels sneaking from Lodgepole to Aspen,
conspiring with the gypsies to steal my lunch.
Both not understanding,
incredulous that I,
wouldn't offer a baby everything
when I have so much.
Not seeing it as stealing,
anymore than I see not giving
as not offering up what I have
to the mouth of a toothless babe
who is comforted only by the old lady weasel
her tit shriveled and dry
under the old town clock.

 

(A note I wrote when I left the residential treatment center where I used to work.)

When I arrived, I swept the light of excitement into the room.

Plans were made, some executed.

Successes of the mind... trials of the spirit

took place in every class I held.

We wrote our hopes into existence, fought our fears with chalk and

words words words

were everywhere.

In that place, we faced things together, candor and jokes our daily bread.

And now that I am gone,

the jokes, like drawings hanging in the window fade.

The outline of a heart holds strong while the others fade to yellows.

As colors fade and memories too, the love holds strong, the love that was every joke

every smile I ever sent you.

Color and light dissipate, the love more abstract, always there

tucked in the corners of books and cracks of walls.

Love is still there.

Tallgrass Writer's Workshop- Written at lunch one day.

If you take a walk on a college campus,
do it on a Saturday in June.
It's a ghost town then.
Students tucked in,
no more dressing in stockings to head down to the Student Union for breakfast,
with hair fresh out of rollers, the crick not yet worked out.
Graduation has moved online.
You wear a cap and gown at midnight and Skype in from Greece and Thailand,
or work's bathroom if you transferred in from community college.
So go to a college campus on a Saturday in June.
Sit in a carefully landscaped courtyard, where your thoughts can settle like the dust on a bookshelf
far from the honeysuckle smells of the countryside which are souring now, fermenting, dying.
Where cottontopped folks sit in rockers and used to give uninterrupted advice,
whether it was 140 characters or *gasp* more.
In the courtyard, you'll find, along with your dusty thoughts,
a concrete fountain turned off and a piano in waiting.
Chiseled in the concrete, evidence of the past in block letters
1932, 1934, 1935
and the piano,
draped with a bright blue tarp begging to be undressed, caressed, keys tinkled on,
it's tied to a street lamp, dimmed now.
Strapped down like the identity of the town whore (then)
or worse, the town bore (now,) pompous and self-interested.
Still telling long tales of who was who and what family wronged which
and which was what one and which ones were who
While millenials zip by in peddal pushers and helmets.
What used to be reserved for Saturdays at home- the pedal pushers
or pilots- the helmets
They're chasing the bees.
They've gone missing, haven't you heard? Colony collapse.
It's all the twitter here
A screen blue, a few taps & the light changes, brightens.
Faces alight, the youth mobilize, ipheromones at the ready

directing them where and when
abuzz the hundreds of followers pass flowers blooming in the bushes.
The birds cheaping and nesting in recovered private.
THERE!
A statue in bronze, a hornet in World War II attire.
It's not what the swarm had hoped for.
Was a hornet part of the collapse or just honey bees?
They'd wanted a queen.
Someone to order them,
tell them what to do,
how to protest,
how to fix it all.
in 140 characters or less
ipheromone
a brand
that block letter stamps into you
the answers
short and sweet.
Not a relic in a flight suit
male and irrelevant. A drone.
I pull out a pocket knife.
Night falls.
The street light chirps on.
The millenials and bees and ideas all gone off
I settle in,
cut the cords
lift the lid
and play.