Departures and Other Comings and Goings

We saw a film called Departures last night.  It's a Japanese film about a man who is fired from his job as a cellist with a big Tokyo orchestra.  To make ends meet, he and his wife move back to his home town, and he takes a job as an NK agent.  Based on the ad in the paper, he thinks an NK agent is a travel agent, but as he finds out later, it's a person who prepares a body for burial. 

As a former hospice worker and someone who has lost very close family members, I was moved by the man's journey through the movie.  At first, the job repulsed him.  But he came to love the job and even defend it to others who thought it was bizarre or unclean.  I balled over a lipstick scene that caught me offguard because of my own mother's funeral.  (Note to others: always discuss the color of the lipstick with the funeral home before they put it on!)

But the theme of departures is what really hooked me.  I've witnessed a lot of departures in my own life.  More, I think, than the average thirty-something.  We've moved at least five times in our marriage; I've held three (four if you count homemaker, a dubious title at best) jobs over those years; I've lost a mother, grandmother, father-in-law, several pets to death; I've left behind more friends than I can count; and our son was diagnosed with diabetes (a departure from good health forevermore). 

Some departures were good.  They brought fresh change and welcome challenges.  Some were not so good, even downright bad.  But they all brought stress, because they were all outside of my control.

I long for a departure that I choreograph.  A departure from the hectic life that has led us to this moment in time, a departure from everything that creates havoc in our lives, a departure from a conservative culture that we don't feel comfortable in, a departure from obligations and expectations that seem so trivial compared to the obligation to our own moral center, our emotional well-being, and our children's development.  Instead, I'm grounded.  Like a large, flightless bird, I run around in circles, but I don't get off the ground.

So I write.  Deep down, this is why I write.  It is my small attempt to fly.  To depart the world that sometimes presses down so hard and squeezes me into a tight ball.

Writing Dates

When we can, my husband and I have a date at the local college to sit and write together.  I write my stories, and Daniel writes his sermon for the week.  I laugh when I think about the the vastly different content being poured out across from each other.  He writing about deep, spiritual insights; me writing about puppy dogs and flatulence. 

I have no doubt, however, that Daniel would rather write sometimes about adolescence and childhood than the deep spiritual and theological matters of life.  It's tough to get those things on paper without sounding artificial or moralistic.  I really respect children's writers who can slide the great lessons of life into their writing without the reader even blinking an eye.  I love Kate DiCamillo's stories, because she is a master of this.  Example: in The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, Edward the Rabbit talks with an ancient doll at the end of the book about hope.  At this point in the story, Edward has suffered so much pain that he can no longer bear to love.  The doll tells him, "You must be awash in hope. You must wonder who will love you, whom you will love next.”  What a beautiful line, but it flows so easily with the story. 

On to Iscandar!

For fun, we've been watching old epidsodes of Starblazers, one of the first anime superhits of the late 70s.  I wasn't sure the kids would enjoy the dated look of the cartoon, but they don't mind.  They enjoy the wacky theme song and crazy plot line as much as I did when I was young (I was seven when the series first aired).

My son wisely pointed out one of the series' key features to his sister tonight.  When the Star Force was enduring a particularly nasty attack by the Gamalons, Maggie looked worriedly to me and asked, "Are they going to be okay?  Are they going to make it?"  Elijah answered, "They always make it out okay, Maggie.  Don't worry."  And it's true, night after night, the Star Force is okay.  So far they've endured a missile net, fake stars, sulphuric rain...and the ship sails on.  Miraculously! 

I guess it's not surprising that Elijah finds the predictability of the show reassuring.  It's easy on the mind as well as the eyes.  I think we all wish we could face life with the knowledge that we'll "always make it out okay."  Of course, the flipside of the show is that the Gamalons seem to lurk around every corner.  I guess I'll take the unpredictability of life over constant attack by alien forces.  Call me crazy.

From K to 5

I have been writing.  I know it doesn't look like it here, but I have been faithful (well, at least 95%) to my pledge to write every day.  The grade school memory exercise was fun and revealed some things about myself I didn't realize until I wrote some things down.

Here's an excerpt from my fifth grade entry:

"Like every kid this age, I felt old and wizened and strutted the halls like everyone should jump out of my way. Wisdom dripped from my 10-year-old fingertips. I remember fifth grade as being a year when friendships meant a lot to me. And impressing friends. I seemed to have hung out with boys, however, more than girls at this age. I found boys to be a lot more funny than girls. Or maybe I found my friendships with girls to be a lot more stressful. I never fully recovered from the pain of comparing myself to my kindergarten friend who could read better than me, and by this time, she had found another friend which effectively made me a third wheel. And did I mention that new friend’s mother was my fifth grade teacher? Oiy."

And oddly enough, looking at my children's stories, I'm equally comfortable writing for girls and boys in my younger fiction, but as my books aim toward an older audience, I find it more comfortable to write from a boy's point-of-view.  I had trouble figuring out the mind of other girls growing up, and so I don't feel comfortable writing for girls now.  Hopefully that will change as I reflect on my own childhood experiences.  Probably also doesn't hurt that I have a girly girl for a daughter.  She'll educate me, for sure.

A Memory Exercise

All of the sudden, the new dog has settled into our home and is normal.  Housebreaking fixed, howling at night fixed.  It's almost too good to be true.  So I have to find something else to write about.

Because I promised myself I would write every day during Lent, I've had to come up with some themes to get me going.  One of the projects I decided to tackle was a recollection of my school years grade by grade.  My husband was surprised I could remember enough from my childhood to write about, but I think I've been able to pull up some good stuff. 

Here is an excerpt from my kindergarten-year entry:

"The thing I remember most about kindergarten was being jealous of another friend who read so well that she was shuffled off to 1st grade reading group every day. The two grades were connected by a small stairway in the corner of the room. The first grade teacher would emerge from the mysterious recesses of first grade, call her name, and whisk! she would disappear for an hour or so. I remember thinking, 'I’m a good reader, too! Why can’t I go?'"

Kindergarten was a foreshadowing of my school experience for the next 12 years. I always wanted to be at the top of the class.  I didn't feel that I had looks going for me, so I leaned on my smarts.  Coming in second was a bitter pill to swallow.  (Of course, in adulthood, I've learned many times over that you can't be best at everything, and life is lot better because of it!)


My goal in this writing exercise is to delve deeper into how I thought as a kid.  Most children's writers I have had the pleasure of talking to say that understanding your own childhood is just as important (if not more important) than understanding how kids today think.  My children give me boundless examples of "kidspeak" and point me to what is funny for a child, but I want to pull on my own experience as well.  And as I have found in the course of this writing project, there are things about myself I didn't even realize until I wrote them down and saw patterns develop in my distant experiences.  Now, on to first grade. 

Forty Days of Discipline

I never fully got into the practice of giving up something for Lent.  It was my Baptist childhood, I think.  But this Lent, I decided to do something instead of giving up something.  I am going to write every day for 40 days.  Some of that may be book writing (better be!), but some of it will be blog writing.  It all counts!  So away we go...

My days lately have been filled with one thing mostly...the new dog.  Charlie is overall, a good dog.  I think he must have had a rough life.  He is quick to feel threatened and go slunk away in a corner.  He pees like a fire hydrant (submissive urination, it's called) if he feels I am angry at him (unless, of course, he is outside where he is supposed to pee.  Then he refuses to pee for fear it will start another cycle of me being grumpy at him.)  Patience is my mantra lately.  Did I mention he has a habit of howling at night when we put him to bed, too?

Anyway, all this trouble with the new dog made me think of my own dogs growing up.  In particular, I think of Heather.  She was my first "dog."  She was a beautiful Irish Setter.  I haven't seen an Irish Setter in a long time, and I remember her being unusual even then.  I say "dog" (in quotes), because she was a stray.  I don't remember actually having this dog live with us.  I think she just visited and claimed our yard as her own.  We might have fed her.  I remember playing with her and thinking she was just the coolest dog ever.  Except one day she disappeared and never came back.  I did not get a good explanation as to why, but I found out (much later) that my parents had  taken her to the pound. 

We parents see pets, and life overall, in a much different light than children see it.  I loved a dog that my parents obviously despised.  So much so that they lied to me about why she disappeared.  Is it the burden of responsibility that changes us as we age?  Or do we lose touch with something else inside ourselves?  I'm not sure.

But it helps to think that at least my children love Charlie, even when I want to ship him off to Mars.

Writing in the Headlights

I have a new favorite quote about writing:

"[Writing] is like driving a car at night. You never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way."-E.L. Doctorow.

I experience this almost every time I write.  I sit down with a great idea in my head, thinking I know where the story is going, then as I sit down, the character does something, or says something and then bloop...I have a whole different story on my hands.  Sometimes I find this phenomenenon exhilirating.  Other times I find it exasperating.  Especially if I liked the first story better.  I guess an extremely gifted writer would wrangle the story back into submission and go with the original idea.  I, however, find it almost imperative to follow the new train of thought.  I've swerved to avoid a boulder in the darkness, and I want to follow the new path.

Take for instance my latest journey.  I sat down this week to write a story about gift-giving.  It was supposed to center around a young boy and a king.  Instead, I end up writing about a king who wears his clothes too big.  WHAAA?

Maybe I've got my headlights dimmed too low?