So many of you wrote in and feared for the lovers in Anita’s life. They are in peril. This promises to be a very hard book, but two days ago it wasn’t that kind of trauma for Anita and me. She did her duty. She stayed at her post. She made the hard call in the midst of death and violence. She was a good cop, a good soldier, a good . . . she did her duty. She did not panic. It ended up with her in the hospital and it cost her the life of someone she valued. It also cost the lives of good men and women who stood shoulder to shoulder against the great bad thing. There are losses that aren’t about romantic love. There are losses that are about a different kind of love. The people that will go into the bad place with you and not panic, but stay at your side shooting, fighting, risking it all for the goal, the objective, the mission, but there will always be moments that come down to just surviving. The men and women who stay with you through something like that – you love them. They love you. It’s not romantic love, but it is a bond that will make you answer a phone a decade later and say, “What do you need? What can I do?”
It’s also the kind of emotion that will make you not answer the phone ever. It is a level of pain and trauma that makes you want to forget. You don’t want to relive it. You don’t want to look at it, or talk about it. You want to move on; forget. sometimes in that effort to push it away you will destroy everything in your life to avoid the pain of it, the truth of it.
I have had the privilege of knowing men and women who have served their country, worn the badge, and come away with the real deal. I have dated, and been friends with men that are still haunted. I know when they share their stories with me in any way that it’s a privilege to be trusted with those moments of truth. a lot of them are told with laughter, but every once in awhile their eyes grow haunted and the pain comes too close to hide.
Anita had one of those moments and I spent the next twenty-four hours trying to ignore the pain. I was willing to blow up my imaginary world and throw all the hard work that Micah and Jean-Claude had done to bring together the preternatural community so that we could have a crisis and Anita and I wouldn’t have to deal with what was really bothering us. We were willing to ruin our relationship with Micah. Willing to ruin our relationship with other lovers. Anita and I tried to sink ourselves into sex. Nothing worked yesterday. Some of it was good pages, but really I was blowing up my world, destroying books and books of relationship building. It was my husband, Jon, who told me not to do some of it, that it made no sense. I was angry with him, though we didn’t fight, because I knew something was wrong with me and how I was reacting.
This morning when I woke up I understood what I’d been doing. I also knew what I needed to write today. I have to look at what happened in the shoot out. I have to let Anita feel the pain of what she had to do, and what it cost her and others. I was willing to blow up my world, Jean-Claude’s world, Micah’s, sacrifice Damian, hurt Nathaniel, or try to just skip to sex and comfort. I fought with myself all day and at midnight I called it, because I didn’t know what the hell was going on. I just knew it I wasn’t thinking right.
This morning it was so clear, even logical. I’ve spent twenty years writing Anita. I’ve interviewed people about what it feels like to take a life in the course of their duty. I have been blessed and trusted with the stories, without them this series would have been so much weaker. I wouldn’t have understood, and there are things that I will not understand because this is fiction for me. I’m not there. I’m not going through the real doors. I’m not having to look down the barrel of real guns and make choices that will be irrevocable. In real life there is no rewrite, more’s the pity.
Today Anita has to wake up in the hospital with that moment of confusion of “where am I, what happened,” and then the memory will return. She’ll remember the moment. The gun, sighting down the barrel, pulling the trigger and watching him drop. She would make the same choice, but that doesn’t mean she won’t be haunted by it. You can be right. You can be brave. It is some comfort, but in the end the people still died, and you couldn’t save them all, and sometimes killing the killer is just one more trauma.
There are losses that make you weep, that drive you from sleep to pace the darkened house, because sleep is full of dreams, nightmares, or sometimes it’s just too quiet and alone with our thoughts isn’t that great. I should have remembered that yesterday, but it took me time to work it out – to remember.
I’m just lucky that what I do is fiction. That I didn’t ruin my actual relationship with the man I love, and I have a chance to rewrite the fictional mistake. That I didn’t blow up the political structure of our country for real, but just on paper and I had a smart man to tell me, “This isn’t logical.” Thanks, my husband. Lucky for me, and for Anita, there is a do-over today. It won’t be pleasant, in fact it will be emotionally pretty horrible, but when she’s faced it, worked some of it through, then she will still have the loves of her life, the men she depends on, and the careful political structure that Jean-Claude and Micah have worked so hard to make will still be working. I am dreading writing this, but I feel strangely peaceful about it, too. This is what comes next and the days when Anita would destroy her love life, her friendships, to avoid the pain of what she’s had to do in her job are past. I’ve had better therapy than that, and so has she.
As I write today I will think of my friends who have done, and are doing, this for real. To the men and women who put on a uniform and do their duty, thank you for your service.
Tag: writing
Carving words out of flesh
The moon hangs in the sky glowing like white-gold. I can see it as I write this, and I see the beauty of it, I do. I’ve found a new band that I’m loving, Imagine Dragons. I’ve got their album up full volume roaring around me. All three dogs are scattered through the office asleep even with the happy thud of music. I was never allowed indoor pets as a child, and having the dogs fulfills a wish I’ve had since I was very small.
I’m in the middle of a great scene with Anita about to wade into a fight between the police and the undead. We have zombies! Except for the jeopardy to my imaginary friends it’s a great scene, the kind I used to love, but I’m hitting one of those moments that just happens when you’re writing a big book. I don’t know if it’s the size, so that you begin to despair at every finishing the journey, or something else. I just know it always hits somewhere between 300-500 pages when I realize that 500 won’t see me done. Yay, for you guys, more to read, but I still gotta write it and my deadline does not change. So, on one hand I’m having a great time fighting zombies on paper and seeing new facets of my characters as they rise to the occasion, but on the other hand the amount of pages stretching before me . . . it’s a little daunting. But between this sentence and last our Japanese chins woke up and invited me to play and it’s impossible to be unhappy after playing on the floor with two adorable dogs that happen to be yours. Sasquatch, our pug, watched from his bed confident I would pet him after the rough housing was over. His expectations were fulfilled, lazy ol’ pug.
I am resolved to finish this scene tonight. I’m not sure why but I feel if I get past it that some magical page barrier will be past. This feeling is usually right and once past a certain point the book gains steam and flows. I’m really looking forward to that part of the writing process. Right now, I’m stuck in the part of writing where it feels like I’m carving the words out of my own flesh. It hurts, it leaves a mark, and you begin to worry about scars, but I’ve learned that if I just keep carving eventually the right symbol is painted on my skin and the muse and I are one again. Until that time I have the moon, music, the dogs, and myself. Sometimes the solitariness of my job is not my favorite part, especially when the dark is populated with demons from old issues, but then one of the ways I exorcise my demons is by writing them out in fiction. And no, before someone asks, I have never really had to fight zombies. Sorry, fiction.
Writing and Voting
A great morning of writing. The scene that had seemed insurmountable yesterday was easy as pie today. My mood started to brighten last night after gym. Sometimes I forget just what a mood lifter exercise is for me. Time with the family at dinner & after helped continuing the uplift.
After a truly wonderful family night & a very productive morning on Affliction, we will be taking Trinity for her very first chance to vote. Homecoming dances, first high heels, researching colleges, drivers ED, all milestones that I knew I’d look forward to for her, but I didn’t realize how excited I’d be about Trinity being able to vote. It’s just so cool.
I urge everyone to vote today. Doesn’t matter which candidate you vote for today. It isn’t the day for anything but urging everyone to vote. Your vote matters no matter who you vote for, it’s democracy in action & it’s excited me since I had my own first chance to participate. That was a presidential election, too.
Joy Requires Effort, or Finding My Wunjo
I wrote this a few days ago, but never got to post it, so here it is,one of my lessons for the year. Enjoy.
I got up just past dawn to write on the new book, Affliction, but I’m only now getting to my desk at 8:07, so what was a doing for the last couple of hours? What was so important that it kept me from my desk and work? Glad you asked.
I had to take the dogs outside before I dared to bring them over to my office, so I grabbed leashes, and found the lower third of two of the leashes wet – one was very wet. I smelled my hand and it wasn’t water. We have three dogs, two males, I knew it wasn’t water, and in fact if it had been it would have been worse, because that would have meant a leak in the ceiling somewhere, that would be worse than Sasquatch our pug having peed on the leashes, really that would be worse, but standing there with dog pee on my hand and two useless leashes I wasn’t thinking that logically. How do I know Sasquatch was our perpetrator of pee? Because for some reason Mordor was still in his crate. When my sister, Chica, left for work she must have put him back in, and let me say his crate will need to be cleaned out later. *sigh* I grabbed extra leashes from the back of the pile and finally managed to take the dogs out. I then cleaned up the pee underneath the leashes on the floor and on the pair of snow boots that have been sitting there for months. Why didn’t the snow boots go somewhere else? I have no idea, they aren’t mine. *deep breath* *let it out slow*
It was a beautiful chilly autumn morning, almost cold enough to see my breath, and there was a flock of birds in one of the tall trees. I think it might have been cedar waxwings, one of my favorite birds, but I didn’t have binoculars so I couldn’t swear to it. Normally, I’d have taken the dogs in and run for the bionocs, but I knew I had to clean the leashes first, so I soaked them in soapy water, applied anti-urine stuff to them in the hopes that the dogs won’t now think they are markers to be remarked forever, then I washed the leashes again, marveling at how our twelve-year-old pug had gotten this high up on the dangling leashes. He’s spry for his age apparently. *grumble* The leashes are now hanging in the downstairs bathroom to dry. By the time I got down the flock of maybe cedar waxwings had vanished, of course.
I was grumbling to myself, “I bet James Patterson doesn’t have to clean up his own dog mess.” I was being childish and a very grumpy bear, so when I got to my office and treated the dogs with their favorite snacky bit, I decided I’d mediate and get back into the headspace to write.
I lit my candles, I knelt on the meditation cushion, but was still too agitated to meditate, so I reached for my runes, the Norse runes. I have several sets made of different types of semiprecious stones. I find often when I can’t still my mind and heart that picking my rune for the day helps me find that inner quiet, that inner strength. Yesterday’s rune was rose quartz and I was going to put it back in the velvet bag and reach for another one, but in picking up the bag I spilled all the runes out in the storage area underneath my altar. I thought, “Really? Really!” Well, yes, really the universe seemed to say, and I proceeded to hunt the spilled runes through all the other paraphernalia underneath my altar.
Rose quartz is a heart stone, and for me it’s always about emotions and heart issues, as I hunted and searched trying to make sure I didn’t lose one of the runes it was not lost upon me that I’d just dumped all my “emotions” and was having to gather them back up. I had to laugh, because I love the Norse pantheon, and Odin especially has a sense of humor, or of the obvious, and this was such a lesson. I said, “Thank you, Odin.” I found a stone I hadn’t worked with in months, but it’s box held one of the pink rune stones, though the stone is black and holds a star within it. Black star diopside, in fact. Most of the stars in my life have come from very dark places, and it also represents the blackness of space full of stars and I need to look outward more and not narrow my vision down quite so much. The mundane things have to be done, like cleaning up after the dogs, but I can’t let the mundane mire me into it, because I’m supposed to be following my star. That was one lesson, but the other was more important. I couldn’t find two of the runes. One Mannaz ended up still being in the bag with two other runes that hadn’t even fallen out, but the one I couldn’t find was Wunjo. I found a whole unopened bag of rose quartz rune stones that I’d forgotten I bought as a gift for someone. I thought I can use the Wunjo from this, but I wanted my Wunjo, my rune.
The meaning of Wunjo is joy. I’d lost my joy, and as I sifted through everything underneath my altar I was determined to find it. The rune turned out to be somewhere I’d already looked, I swear, but it was my altar and like altars is a place of mystery and miracles, so one misplaced stone isn’t that surprising. I found my Wunjo, my joy, but it was upside down, reversed, which means the opposite of it’s normal meaning. I had found my joy, but I wasn’t joyful, and I wasn’t. Spilling the runes had calmed me down, but I was still grumpy and prickling with all the small issues that had delayed me this morning, and they were small problems. It’s funny, no matter how much death and destruction you live through, there will come a morning where the mundane problems make you insane again, and then you have to remember, or be reminded of your joy.
We have had Sasquatch for twelve years. He’s the oldest purebred pug I’ve ever owned, and he’s my third one. The other two died by the age of nine from heart complications, or some other genetic defect. Every day extra with our olden dogger is a blessing.
Our two Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, make me laugh and roll around on the floor with them more than any other dogs I’ve ever had.
I get to be in my beautiful office which I helped design. The trees are turning their autumn colors gold, orange, scarlet, as if the world is beginning to smolder. The view is great. There was a time in my life when the kitchen table, or a type writer stand on wheels was all the office and privacy I had to write, and now I have this huge room of my own.
I get to work on the twenty-second Anita Blake novel, Affliction. My first novel, Nightseer, was supposed to be the first of four novels, but my editor at that time rejected the second book, because the first one hadn’t sold enough, as is typical of a first novel. I remember when I got the first contract for the Anita Blake novels, the first one was complete and they’d bought it, but they gave me a contract for three books. I remember thinking, “Well, at least I know there will be three books in the series.” I am writing the twenty-second novel! That is so cool.
I have eight books in the Meredith Gentry series, and yes, there will be a ninth, but Merry and I are negotiating with each other on what that next adventure will be. I was pretty grumpy that my main character wasn’t cooperating to the degree that I had to miss a deadline and wait for her to talk to me again, but to have a fictional character so alive in my head that she argues for her life and her happiness is an amazing gift. I have faith that when Merry and I finish our lover’s quarrel/feud that the book that comes from it will be better than anything I could have come up with on my own without her input.
I’m a writer, all I’ve really wanted to be since I was about fourteen. How many people get to follow their dreams and be successful at it? I mean, that’s pretty cool when you think about it. Sometimes I get caught up in the deadlines and the work, and forget just how amazing that is that I am a #1 New York Times Bestselling Writer, and I have exceeded every goal I ever had a as a writer. How amazing is that?
Two huge crows have come to sit in a tree near my office. One is calling out over and over, I thought there was a hawk, because that’s what the call means. Apparently, there is no hawk, but it is time for me to get back to making pages on Affliction. You think it’s just two crows that happened by, well maybe, but then again, maybe not? There is more magic around us every day than most of us realize, and there is more joy to be had even on the grumpy bear days. I’m off to honor my Wunjo, my joy, because part of what the rune means is that joy in the face of whatever may come. It is going smiling into battle, not because you know you will win, but because you get to go and try yourself against the odds, against the others, the elements, all of it. Go joyous into your day, not because it’s perfect, but because it’s your day – yours- own it, love it, find your joy, just remember sometimes you have to work for it, hunt for it. Joy requires effort to find it sometimes, but it is so worth it.
Merry Gentry novel, or the next one
I have blogged about what Merry and I are doing about the next Merry novel. I’ve twitted and I could have sworn FB posted about it, but one more time.
I didn’t abandon the Merry series, she and I fought the good fight for nearly six months. She didn’t like my plot for the next book because it screwed up her happily-ever-after. She is demanding a book plot that doesn’t make her now happy life into a misery. She stopped cooperating as a character and I missed a book deadline for the first time in twenty years of writing. I backed off, and let my stubborn Merry have some space, as I’ve moved off to play with Anita and even brand new stories, Merry has slowly begun to deign to talk to me again. I am hopeful that she and I will reach a compromise.
I just need to tip-toe through the minefield so that I have an interesting book that ties up lose ends from Divine Misdemeanors , but doesn’t blow up Merry’s life with Doyle, Frost, the new babies, and everyone else. If nothing bad happens to anyone it’s not a book, it’s a very long vignette – like a day in the life of. Story needs conflict; Merry needs her happy life, and therein lies my dilemma.
Spiders, knees (human, not spider), dogs, book, and new ideas
This week so far:
Found brown recluse spiders in kitchen and one in the hallway bathroom. Exterminator has laid extra traps, but I am unfortunately allergic to most pesticides. It’s not an infestation of the scary buggers like we had about seven years ago when we found them by me being bitten by one. (That was painful and just not something I ever want to repeat.) Then Jon and I had to go away for a week so they could fumigate the house and not poison me. We did research for Blood Noir in Asheville, North Carolina, and even sick from the spider bite we both still loved the town. Need to revisit someday.
Jon’s knee that he had surgery on about five years ago is acting up. I’ve taken him to two doctor’s this week. Just learned early today that next week he’ll be talking to a surgeon. 🙁
Our Japanese chins, Keiko and Mordor, both have kennel cough, even though they were both vaccinated against it. Apparently, some dogs will get a mild case of it even with vaccinations, or sometimes because of it, but still better than the life threatening full blown illness. Our pug, Sasquatch, who is 11 years old, is fine. Pugs are the tanks of the toy dog world on most things. 🙂 Chins are quite a bit more fragile in a lot of ways. They tend to get sick more often, are more delicate for injuries, and how do you keep their food out of all that lovely, long hair? I swear Keiko rolls in her soft food like some dogs roll in noisome things in the yard. She ends up wearing her food, and since she has medicine in it, the texture on her curls is interesting. We love our chins, but pugs totally spoiled us with their comparable ruggedness and wash and wear ease of grooming. Still planning to have more chins someday, but first we need another pug. We all miss the dual snoring.
In the midst of all the doctor and vet visits, I have actually been trying to write more on the next Anita Blake novel. I announced the title at DragonCon this year, but never put it up on the blog, so here it goes. The next Anita novel is entitled,”Affliction.” Micah is called back home by his estranged family, because his father, a county sheriff, has been attacked and is terribly injured. Anita and Nathaniel are going with him for moral support and to meet his family under very trying circumstances. It’s an interesting book to be writing. I can’t wait for you guys to finally read it!
I had one day this week that I wrote six pages on, Affliction, and four pages on something brand new that demanded to be written. It came out of nowhere and made me go, really? It’s brand new, but I guess it contains at least two different ideas that I’ve made notes on before. I just never thought about combining them, and there were several new ideas added to the old ones, and it just worked. But first to finish the book. I don’t even know if the four surprise pages are part of a book, or a short story? It’s cooking, but whether it’s stew, soup, or something else, I won’t know for awhile. It’s kind of nice creatively to not know for a change.
Moon, Darkness, and Dawn
I left my office last night with the moon riding high and bright through one of the skylights. The moon was bright as a full moon, though she was only three-quarters done. I woke this morning in the dark. If there were stars I couldn’t see them. It was just black. I cuddled close to the warmth of my husband, Jon, for a few more minutes, but my mind was alive with the writing. He wrapped himself around me and I forced myself to be present in the warm nest of our bed, our intermingled limbs, the sensuousness of his body pressed against me, the feel of his breath against my skin. I made myself be present, dragged myself out of my head and the words in it long enough to honor that moment, such a wonderful way to wake up. Sometimes, if I’m not careful, I will get so caught up in my work that I miss how amazing the rest of my life is, and these last two years, but especially the last year I’ve really tried to enjoy and be aware of the moments, the present joys, rather than rushing from deadline to deadline, goal to goal. Sometimes the writing engulfs the world and it needs to for me to be able to write, but I’m working equally as hard to be in the rest of my life. It’s a great life and I’ve worked really hard for it, not just the material things, but the emotional things. People always assume that if a couple is happy it was effortless, that happily-ever-after thing, but real love isn’t that. Real love is that Jon and I made a deal that he’d get up with me, so that I could get to my desk ASAP. So he could make sure we all got breakfast. Without this extra bit of planning some mornings he and I forget breakfast and then there’s that sugar crash later. Not good. I eat at my desk, and yes I know people say that’s bad for various reasons, I do it because even breakfast with my family derails me from the book now. I talk as little as possible to anyone, because everything distracts and takes me out of the mindset I need for this work, this calling, this thing I’ve been compelled to do since I was about twelve.
Today it wasn’t a problem not to talk to anyone, because the house was dark, no one up, but Jon and myself. I was in my office running water into my tea kettle with no lights turned on yet. I know my office in the dark. But there was this red glow against the drawn shade of the window, what was that? Why was it red? I opened the shade and, you guessed it – dawn. It was a crimson glow against the horizon, a bloody neon slash above the tree tops in the eastern sky. When I say goodnight to the moon high enough to see it through my skylights, and good morning to the red blush of dawn, I’m in the zone. But I also remembered to enjoy that first warm, cuddling wakeup in the nesting dark of my husband’s arms. I’m enjoying my office and the little votive candle I have burning on my desk. It’s two anthropomorphic ants having a picnic. It was part of the summer collection from Yankee Candle a few years ago. Why do I have it on my desk? To remind myself that when it’s lit, I’m working, but that I’m also supposed to be having fun while I do it. So worker ants, having a picnic – work ethic and whimsy. It helps me remember that I’m supposed to be doing both. And no, before anyone asks, I haven’t always had the ant votive. It was something I found a couple of years ago to help me remember to work hard, but remember to take some time out of the work to enjoy myself. Some mornings writing a blog, or something unrelated to the book for just a few paragraphs helps clear the morning garbage out of my head, and let’s me get to the scene in my head. I can see it, now I have to find the words so that, eventually, you can all see it.
Elsewhere
Chapter finished! Yay!!!
Have also managed to make my tea too weak, then too strong, then added hot water at suggestion from online fan, but now it’s too weak again. There must be some magical balance between tea, and added hot water I don’t understand. *hmm* In all the tea making I managed to spill tea all over counter, shut my skirt in the towel drawer, and generally make an absentminded mess, but I don’t mind. These are all signs that my concentration is elsewhere, namely on the book. I wiped up the spilled tea, opened the drawer and freed myself, and have put on more hot water for better made tea – see its all fixable. What isn’t fixable, or replaceable is this level of emersion in my writing.
There is a reason that the absentminded artist/scientist is a stereotype, because when that level of creation is reached, the inside of your head is so real, that your connection to the outside world isn’t perfect. It’s why we’re clumsy sometimes, and careless, and double book our appointments without help, because the laser pointer of our minds is being used elsewhere.
I’m back to elsewhere. *waves bye*
Don’t Let Perfectionism Stop You
When you got behind the wheel of a car for the very first time did you expect to be able to drive perfectly? Not only perfectly, but to drive so well you could drive in the Indy 500 and win? Of course you didn’t, because that would be beyond unrealistic, it would crazy talk; right? Right.
So why do so many people believe they should be able to sit down and write a novel the first time out, not only a novel, but that their first draft, first sentences, will capture exactly the brilliant colors and images in their heads. They seem to expect their day dreams and fantasies to spill out of their finger tips in a perfect flow first time out of the box. When this miracle of perfection doesn’t happen in the first few lines, or paragraphs, or pages, they get discouraged and give up, or start revising right away trying to make it perfect. I’ve now lost count of the number of people who have told me about the first chapter, or three chapters, of their book that they have been revising for the last three, five, eight, ten years. When they get the beginning perfect they’ll finish the book. The chances of them ever finishing their book is about zero, because perfectionism is damn near impossible to achieve in a first draft, especially the first time you try to write.
When I first started writing book length stories I found the 70/30 rule, or the garbage quotient. 70% of a first draft is garbage, 30% of it is gold, but I had to write all 100% to get that percentage of gold. The stuff I could keep and was actually good was scattered in among the crap of the rest. If I’d waited for a perfect first draft I’d have never finished a book. Perfection, if it exists, comes with editing that rough stuff into finished product. When I talked to the woman who would be my first agent, her first question was, “How many drafts of your first novel have you done?” My reply, “Seven.” That was an answer that let her know I was serious and not caught in the perfection trap. I went home and did one more edit of my first novel and sent it off. Months later she’d take me on as a client, and I had an agent. It would take almost four years for the book to hit the shelves, but that’s another story. The point is that writing, good, professional writing is rewriting.
I’ve now written over thirty novels and my garbage quotient has gotten lower just by practice and knowing my craft. Some first drafts are 80% gold and only 20% garbage, but not always. Sometimes it’s more like 50/50. It just depends on the book. I routinely throw out hundreds of pages in a book, winnowing it down through edits and that’s before it ever leaves me and goes to New York for my editor to read.
So, the next time you look at those great notes for your story, or novel, and think, “I can’t get it perfect. It won’t match the vision in my head.” And you get frustrated and stuck before you begin, or soon after you begin, just take a deep breath and keep going. Plow through like a bull in a china shop, break everything in sight heading for your goal of being able to type, “The End,”. You can clean up all that broken mess in the next draft, and put in new cabinets the draft after that, and when the room (the draft) is close to done buy new china and put it in just the way you like it, and know, just know that with every book you’re going to destroy your idea, your dream, and make you want to weep at the ruin of your bright dreams like broken porcelain scattered in bright pieces across your desk, but know, absolutely know, that you can fix it later, but to give yourself something to fix ya gotta break it first. You’ve got to be willing to be really bad, to be really good.
I’m Back!
A week ago I was in the hospital for my second day. I caught a virus, just a stomach virus. We’ve all caught plenty of them in our lifetime, but I’ve never had one like this before. I spent about two weeks throwing up, and a pretty solid week of being unable to hold anything down, including water. I now understand why they think dehydration killed many of the victims of flue epidemics in the early 1900s, before there was such a thing as intravenous fluids to give the sick, and stop that spiral downward. I was never so happy to be on an IV in my life. I’m feeling much better, though still surprisingly tired with very little effort to show for it. My doctor warned me to increase slowly back to a normal activity level. What he didn’t say was that I’d feel so weak and tire so easily that I would have little choice but to behave myself. But everyday is a bit better, and so am I.
A funny thing happened during this illness, it sort of cleared away a lot of mental debris. Put things into perspective, as it were. I found a quote that says a lot of what I learned, and what I’m still enjoying.
“Normal day, let me be aware of the treasure you are. Let me learn from you, love you, bless you before you depart. Let me not pass you by in quest of some rare and perfect tomorrow. Let me hold you while I may, for it may not always be so. One day I shall dig my nails into the earth, or bury my face in the pillow, or stretch myself taut, or raise my hands to the sky and want, more than all the world, your return.” – Mary Jean Iron.
You would think I would have learned this lesson by now, but I hadn’t. I thought my mother’s death when I was six had taught me this, but maybe there was too much pain attached to that “lesson”, so that it taught me other things. Some things helped me appreciate what I had and take chances and set goals and DO THINGS! But it didn’t teach me to lay in the dark and listen to my husband’s breathing, and cuddle tight to the smooth, warmth of his body, and be grateful that I wasn’t hurting. They gave me morphine in the hospital for the pain, I’d never had morphine – warm, trickling through my veins, the weirdest feeling, like I could trace it through my body, and then the pain abated for the first time in days. I was able to sleep with enough medicine in me, and that, too, was a wonderful thing. Death didn’t teach me to appreciate sitting in my office and typing this to all of you, but life did. I love the view from my office now more than ever before, I no longer bemoan that it’s not a lake, or an ocean, which is the only thing my dream office lacks. I’m happy with my tall green trees now. I no longer think wistfully of that Dalmatian, or English setter, that I’ll never own because I’m not runner enough to keep them happy, but am thrilled with the silky fur of our two Japanese chins, and the comforting snoring of our pug. I realize that the desire for the Dalmatian that came when I was twelve, after reading Dodie Smith’s book “One Hundred and One Dalmatians,” is really a wish to be a different person than I am. I’ve worked too long and too hard to be who I am to wish for such changes. I go to the gym, but a marathon runner I will never be, and that’s okay. I guess there was still a tiny part of me that wanted to be tall, and blond, and gazelle like, but I am short, dark, and . . . and what? Certainly not gazelle like. *laughs* Zebra like? Something sturdy . . . a horse? Pony? In old vaudeville slang I would certainly be a pony, tall leggy girls were stallions.
When I was a little girl I wanted to be either tall, blonde and leggy, and a natural athlete, or darkly exotic and ethnic anything but my Northern European background. There’s still part of me that wants to be that tall athletic girl that I will never be. I am competent in the gym now, but it’s not natural. I will never put a hand out in a slow, easy arc and catch a ball, and throw it without thought, easy as breathing, but then those girls didn’t read much. They certainly didn’t write. I’m not saying athletes can’t be writers, but I think I would have made a choice, been different, aimed outward, rather than inward, and in the end that’s what a writer is – we aim inward. The real world effects us, Gods know, but it is our processing of that reality inside our heads, our hearts, our very souls, that makes the difference. In the last few years I’ve learned to live in my body in a happier, healthier way than ever before, and make peace with the fact that I have to work a little harder to do what some people take for granted in the gym, but that’s okay, they ask me, “How can you write a whole book?” I ask, “How can you run marathons? How can you lift four hundred pounds?” I guess, we all look at the other half and either wonder about them, or even wonder what we might be like if we were them.
It’s okay to wonder, even day dream about being other people, which is part of my job description, I guess. I put myself in other people’s lives, thoughts, what if . . . what if . . . But today I am grateful for what is, because what is, is pretty damn good. I will endeavor to hold this lesson tight and close and not forget that the ordinary is actually pretty extraordinary.