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Stories: From the Outside Looking in

09 Jan

Sometimes when I am traveling and lost in my thoughts I look in the windows of passing houses and cars and think, ‘There are people in there I do not and probably will never know, living lives that I know nothing about.’ It is a humbling thought about my small place in the universe and the many strangers who occupy it living mundane or possibly fascinating lives. There is a curious part of me that wants to know them. To know what is going on behind the brightly lit window. Is it a happy family just sitting down to dinner? Or a family torn apart by tragedy wondering if they will ever smile again.

The man driving the car next to me while his wife rests her head against the window: who is he? Have they had a long trip or is she weighed down with weariness? I wonder what the anchor tattoo on his shoulder means and when and where he got it.

If I had one superpower, it would be to look into a person’s eyes and know their life’s story. Maybe I’m too curious for my own good; I suppose some would call it nosy. Maybe it is my love of story and wanting to know where people are coming from and what makes them who they are.

There are billions of people on this planet with their own lives and fascinating stories. Every once in a while we hear about one of them through an uplifting or tragic news piece. It is just a blip on the continuum of time and then we go about our business returning to the rhythm of our ordinary days. As I pass by the windows, my imagination takes over and creates the story of the family who lives there or the destination of the car beside me.

I imagine the man with the anchor tattoo celebrating with his former Navy buddies when Seal Team 6 took out Bin Laden. In their revelry they agree to matching tattoos. Right now he and his wife are on their way to the graduation of their oldest son from the Naval Academy. She is reminiscing about her boy’s childhood and wondering how they got here so fast as she rests her head against the window.

I imagine an elderly couple in the 1940’s bungalow we just passed. She is slowly clearing rose patterned dishes from the table while he sips his coffee from a dainty chipped cup: the last remaining piece of their wedding china. She joins him at the table as they comfortably chat about news of the kids and grandkids.

I have no way of knowing if these stories are true. The characters don’t even know I exist. I am merely someone passing by in the car. An outsider.

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Daily Prompt: The Outsiders

 
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Posted by on January 9, 2014 in Uncategorized

 

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Chivalry is Not Dead

13 Dec

Apparently neither is mind-reading.

While loading my van at Costco I was composing Facebook rants in my head such as, “The best rain dance I can think of is a trip to Costco” and “Why does the checker fill the box so damn full, I can’t lift it out of my cart” (I don’t usually swear out loud, but remember this was all in my head) and finally “If you are going to sit and wait 15 minutes for my parking spot, you might as well get out and help me!”

Well apparently the man waiting for my spot was a mind reader. It was either that or the aforementioned box spilling half its contents on the ground as I wrestled it out of my cart. He jumped out and offered to help. I gladly accepted and then said something that will make many of you cringe: “I don’t usually come to Costco without my husband’s help.”

It almost sounded politically incorrect to my own ears. Did I just admit that I really needed a man’s help? I used to go to Costco by myself….if I was lucky! Sometimes I had three little helpers with me. Now a couple of those helpers are teenagers who are too busy to shop with me and I could easily fill two carts at Costco. Between the shopping, loading the car at Costco, and unloading the car at home, I consider my trips to Costco my workout for the day. So do I need my husband’s help? No, not necessarily. I could be an independent woman and handle it on my own. Do I want my husband’s help? Most certainly. We enjoy each other’s company, it makes it much easier for me, and he gets to throw things in the cart that I don’t normally buy. 

But on the other hand, I do need my husband. There is nothing wrong with needing another human being. Americans have made independence an art form and a soapbox to stand on. If either gender needs the other than you are “whipped” if you are a man or “repressed and anti-feminist” if you are a woman. Why don’t we all just admit that on a basic human level we need each other. We were created for it. It says in Genesis that a “man will leave his father and mother… and the two will become one flesh.” One flesh. I don’t know about you, but I desperately need all of my flesh. 

My students are studying Medieval literature and chivalry. Chivalry is defined as: bravery, courtesy, honor, and gallantry toward women. In other words being fierce and brave in battle and courteous and gentle in the parlor. This isn’t popular in today’s society because we mistakenly believe that for a man to be chivalrous a woman must be weak and in need of a knight in shining armor. But what in the definition of chivalry indicates weakness in women? Chivalry is holding one human being to a high standard in the way they treat another human being. Seems to me that we could all stand to be more chivalrous with each other male or female.

So thank you, man at Costco, for showing courtesy and honor and coming to my aid one human being to another.

 

 
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Posted by on December 13, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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This Too Shall Pass

09 Dec

I don’t often miss my babies, but when I do it comes over me in a wave so powerful I can feel their soft bodies in my arms and smell the baby smell of warm milk mixed with baby powder.

As I dropped my youngest off at school today, I thought of returning home to a quiet house with dishes and laundry to do, papers to grade, and the quietness of no interruptions. There were many days I longed for this. Oh, how I longed to have a few quiet hours with no little person tugging at my leg while her sister was screaming in the crib. But now that those days are here, I sometimes find myself suffocated by the quiet and missing the little warm bodies that needed me more than anything in the world. The way their bodies meld and fit so perfectly in my arms, The wispy hair that always seemed to smell so good, and even their sweet and sometimes not so sweet little cries are all part of an overwhelming stage of life that we usually wish away.

We can’t wait for them to grow more and more independent, to give us some of our independence back. And then you wake up one morning and realize you have arrived. That was it. That was all you got. Just a few years of never enough cuddles, wiping away tears, and being the center of their world. Now it’s friends, iPods, closed doors and navigating the reality of raising young adults. This stage is fun and beautiful in its own way, but so very different.

When we are in the midst of struggle and hard times, we often hear the adage, ‘This too shall pass.’ Unfortunately the same holds true with times we treasure.

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Posted by on December 9, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Dear Fellow Drivers,

28 Nov

I am a distracted driver. There, I said it. I know what you think of me. I’ve ridden with my husband enough times to fear that I am the “crazy driver” he is often frustrated with. But before you call me a menace to society or wish me permanently banned from the roads, I think you should know a little something about me.

I have not been in an accident or even had a speeding ticket since 1996. (ok, one photo-enforced speeding ticket, but we all know those are evil and don’t count). 

I have a job, a husband, and four children which means I have a million things on my mind at any given time, and most likely, there are at least 3 different conversations going on in my car that may sound something like this:

Child #1 “Are we stopping at Safeway?”

Child #2 “Can Olivia spend the night tonight and bring her dog for us to keep?”

Me “Yes.” 

Child #2 “Really?!! We get a dog?”

Me “What? No, of course not. I was talking to your sister.”

Child #2 “Moooom! But, you said, YES!”

Child #3 “MOM!! I’ve been telling her to stop touching me for like 20 minutes!”

Child #4 “That’s impossible. We’ve only been in the car for 9 minutes.”

You get the picture. Anyone with more than one child is very familiar with the above scenario. 

So yes, I am a distracted driver. I may cut you off in traffic. I may miss an opportunity to let you merge. I may even inadvertently block the entrance to the apartment building you are trying to turn into because the light changed and the line of traffic didn’t move as far forward as I anticipated. 

I’M SORRY! I really am. I’m not an idiot. I’m not a bad driver. I’m just distracted.

For my part, I will strive to focus on the task at hand and be more aware of being extra courteous to you, my fellow drivers.

For your part, before you mouth horrible things at me to express your rage or even pretend to shoot me with your finger (yes, that really happened) can we just give each other a little grace. Whatever I did to elicit such a response was in no way intentional, and if we’re not exchanging insurance information then no harm was done. So take a moment and think about your response. If your destination is so life altering that arriving two minutes later will wreck everything, than by all means, spew your hatred. Otherwise, just  accept the mouthed apology of a frazzled woman and move on.

 

 

 
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Posted by on November 28, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Free Spirit – Daily Prompt: Close Call

25 Nov

She was born different. The two before her had responded to my presence, my voice, my wishes. She rarely did. She wouldn’t cry it out, but would only get more agitated. Wouldn’t go to sleep unless dad was in the room putting pressure on her back or snoring quietly on the floor. She wanted control. She seemed to need it, like the universe was unfairly against her and she could put it aright.

She didn’t want to hold my hand, but wanted to run ahead. For this reason, we didn’t venture too far from our home and the parks near it. On this particular day we went for an adventure to visit a larger park. We run along the gravel trail my voice playing in my ears like a broken record, “don’t run too far ahead, come back, wait for mommy.” She waited for me at the road, but it was one of those nice neighborhood roads with a pretty island in the middle and landscaping that often obscures a driver’s view. We checked one way and stepped into the crosswalk. I grab her hand and feel her pull it away and start to run. She picks up speed and I scream as I see the car coming up the other side. I reach her just as the car screeches to a halt and the driver covers her face and mouths, “I’m so sorry” at the thought of what could have happened.

Shaking, I nod to the driver, and grab my child’s hand dragging her the rest of the way across the road. She wrenches free of my grasp, looks at me as if to say, ‘what’s wrong, mommy?’ and skips the rest of the way to the park. I let the tears fall knowing that it is the adult’s job to carry the burden of ‘what if’ while the child rests in the security of innocence.

Daily Prompt: Close Call

 
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Posted by on November 25, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Book Review: The Husband’s Secret

21 Nov

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As you may remember, I reviewed Liane Moriarty’s previous book, What Alice Forgot, and recommended it to everyone I know. So you can imagine my excitement to read her latest book, The Husband’s Secret. I hate to post a negative review, but I learned a hard lesson. Just because you love one book by an author, doesn’t mean you will love every book by that author.

What Alice Forgot, was a sweet, poignant story of a woman trying to figure out what went wrong with her marriage and how to fix it. It followed one family’s story with flashes of memory between 10 years before and the present. The Husband’s Secret tells the story of at least three different families. It starts by telling each families’ story in alternating chapters. It ends with each families’ story intersecting. This method of storytelling has become an increasingly popular way to handle multiple characters and often multiple narrators or points of view, but to the average reader it can be confusing and tedious. Jodi Picoult did this successfully in My Sister’s Keeper. She used it as a way to tell one families story through the perspective of each family member. But I digress…

The cover of the book has this grabber:

“For my wife, Cecilia Fitzpatrick
To be opened only in the event of my death”
Cecilia finds this letter in a box of old tax receipts in the attic. She has no idea that it will blow their serene, suburban lives apart.

The letter is a Pandora’s Box in the sense that evil she had never known was revealed when she opened the letter. Without giving away the story, I will tell you this. When I finished devouring it, (Yes, didn’t like it, but couldn’t.stop.reading) I had to verbally process the story with my husband. As I finished, he was obviously disturbed, like didn’t even want to talk to me anymore disturbed. “Why would you read something like that, and why would you put me through it?”

I didn’t mean to! I felt duped. I loved her other book full of hope and sympathetic characters. This book takes some of your worst nightmares and lets them play out in characters’ lives who I’m not even sure I like very well. The characters make extremely selfish decisions and then pick up the pieces of their lives and move on. In some cases the repercussions of the selfish decisions are treated as an inside joke. In other cases the selfish decisions cause terrible tragedy.

If you spend some time looking at reviews on Amazon, you will see that my opinion is in the minority. But for the sake of mine and my husband’s sanity I will review carefully before reading another of her books. I still enjoy Liane Moriarty’s writing style for the most part and will probably follow her blog.

 
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Posted by on November 21, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Story-formed, Redemption and Gravity

01 Nov

I enjoy analyzing literature and movies because at the very root it is the study of story. We all live and breath stories. Often the first question we ask someone after we find out their name is, “where did you grow up?” This invites story. Or we ask, “how did you meet your spouse?” Once again, we are asking for a story.

The beauty of a good story draws us in and affects us emotionally. Often a story is most compelling when it fits into the context of a larger more universal story. We are then allowed to interpret it on a level of shared human experience.

Watching Alfonso Coarón’s Gravity in 3D at an Imax theater was one such experience. On the surface the movie is limited in relational interaction and seems to be a series of unfortunate events, to say the least, but from a universal story standpoint it is so much more.

*SPOILER ALERT*  Most major plot points of the movie Gravity are discussed below:

We first meet Dr. Ryan Stone (Sandra Bullock) on a space walk recalibrating a piece of damaged equipment on the Hubble telescope. A medical engineer who has been trained as an astronaut, she appears shaky and unsure of herself. She tells Matt Kowalski (George Clooney), “I hate space.” Which begs the question, what is she doing out there? What exactly she fixes and why she is qualified to fix it do not seem important plot elements to the writers.

What is important to the writers is that she appear lost. Both literally and figuratively, Dr. Ryan Stone becomes lost in space. Here is where the universal story comes in. Though Hollywood might deny it or call it something else, nearly all of our stories deal with redemption, and imbedded in many stories in both movies and literature, we find a Christ figure.

Lost

Early in the film, debris repels Dr. Stone off of the telescope and into an untethered free fall in space. She is lost. Matt Kowalski has to come find her. As they are slowly floating toward the space station, we find out that Dr. Stone had a little girl who died in a playground accident. Ryan received the phone call while driving home and has been lost ever since. She tells Kowalski, that she gets off work and just drives.

Found

Kowalski is able to locate Stone and fly to her location using an outdated jetpack. He then tethers her to him and carefully maneuvers them back to the now destroyed shuttle. They continue their spaceflight to an abandoned russian space station. They approach too fast and bounce off grabbing for whatever they can. At this point, Stone’s legs are wrapped in cording attached to the space station while Kowalski, still tethered to her, is drifting into space. Kowalski realizes that his weight and trajectory will eventually pull them both away from the station and in a move reminiscent of many mountain climbing movies, cuts himself loose.

Redeemed

He sacrifices his life to save hers.

Once inside the space station, Dr. Stone removes her spacesuit and floats for a moment of tranquil sleep in a dancer’s pose evoking emotions of peace, surrender, and complete fatigue. However, her journey is not over. This space station contains a module that will allow her to reach a Chinese space station that contains a space capsule able to enter earth’s atmosphere. She detaches the Russian space module full of hope and one step closer to home.

The module is out of gas. At this point she despairs for her life and decides it is better to turn the oxygen down and drift into death. Clooney, (her Christ figure) comes to her in a dream (in spirit) and shows her the way.

Restored

She wakes up, restores pressure to the cabin, and for the first time in the movie, we see life and determination in her soul. Through a manipulation of the jets used in landing she is able to reach the Chinese space station and man that capsule through earth’s atmosphere.

Baptized

The capsule parachutes into water. Dr. Stone frantic to get out, opens the door allowing water in that sinks the capsule. She narrowly escapes and surfaces with a life-giving breath. Crawling her way to shore and haltingly standing tall, we see a new resolve. Her despair, and disorientation in space have turned to exhiliration and joy to be alive.

Interwoven in this poignant redemption story is cinematography beyond rival and flawless performances by Bullock and Clooney.

 
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Posted by on November 1, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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The Process

29 Oct

There is never enough time for reading and writing. Maybe someday I will sit in my study, no scratch that, I prefer a wood-paneled two-story library with a skylight and rolling ladder. Someday I will sit in my library surrounded by books, magazines, papers and a laptop and read and write to my heart’s content (or until my husband feels severely neglected). Maybe someday I will even pursue a Master’s degree. But today is not that day….

Today I teach two courses, raise four children, and support my husband in his ministry. When I do find the occasional day to read and write, I’m continually reminded by my growing stack of books to read and magazines to peruse that this is not that day. And yet I still try. Because when that day comes, I want to be ready. I want to have spent enough time on the process that I am ready for the next step.

Sometimes that process is painful. I actually wrote a blog last week and never published it. Why? Because I decided that my writing wasn’t good enough to be “published.” Well, of course, my writing isn’t good enough to be published! That’s why I started this blog. To practice writing. And yet I can’t get out of my own way enough to follow through.

Art is like that, and we are our own worst critics. I’ve yet to meet a musician (and I know many) who after a performance would say, “Yep, that was perfect! Went exactly as I’d hoped.” No, there are numerous aspects to critique and improve on for next performance. And so it is with writing. Even a published author when rereading his work is not always completely satisfied with the end result.

I recently read Ender’s Game. I enjoyed the introduction almost as much as the story. Orson Scott Card takes us on a journey of his imagination and shows how he created the world in which Ender Wiggin lives. But he admits early in the introduction that this new release of the novel needed, “something besides the minor changes as I fix the errors and internal contradictions and stylistic excesses that have bothered me ever since the novel first appeared.” An author continues to revise even after publication.

As I am in this day of my life I will enjoy the process both of loving my family and of writing when I have the chance. I will get out of my own way, hit publish, and be done with it knowing that right now the process is more important than the end result.

 
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Posted by on October 29, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Blogging as Personal Discipline

18 Oct

Why have I started this blog? You may ask. There are blogs out there too numerous to count. What could I possibly add of value to the blogosphere? Good question. Why would I think that my ideas are worth reading and would make a difference among the insane amount of information and reading material we have available to us? As Julie says in Julie and Julia, “I could write a blog. I have thoughts!”

But, no, that is not the reason I chose to start this blog. The reason is simple, whether anyone reads my blog or not: I started this blog to discipline myself as a writer. How’s that working for you? You may ask. Well, since I have posted three times in more than two weeks, I would say I have some growing room – but I will keep at it. And three blogs in two weeks is more than I wrote last month, or the month before that, or the month before that.  Baby steps to writing….

 
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Posted by on October 18, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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Link
04 Oct

Want to Understand others? Read Literary Fiction

This links to an interesting article in USA Today. Not only do I agree with this assessment, I want to add to it. Reading great literature (and good writers in general) also helps you think like the author. I tell my writing students all the time, that if you are immersing yourself in great writing you will be tempted to emulate great writers. Just like when I finish rereading Pride and Prejudice for the umpteenth time, I’m compelled to ask all my friends, “Are your parents in good health?”

 
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Posted by on October 4, 2013 in Uncategorized

 

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