Catching Up on Some Classics...Modern and Otherwise

I've been shifting gears lately, both in my life and in my writing, and I think in my reading as well.  I've had an itch to get back to the basics. 

Summer is here.  Motherhood is bare bones during this time.  Back to just being MOM: fun, carefree, spontaneous.  Gone is MOTHER who is in a perpetual state of reminding (do your homework, brush your teeth, practice piano, don't wrestle the black dog with the white couch cushions, blah, blah).

In my writing, I've taken a hiatus from the rigid poetry of picture books (and I don't mean rhyme here people...if you've tried to write a picture book you know of what I speak), and I am trying my hand at more, well, novel-ly stuff.  It's kind of liberating in a scary, jump-out-of-the-plane kind of way, but for me, it feels like a necessary leap.  Right now, I need to write what I know.  More on that in a later post.

And for reading, I'm picking up the classics.  For some reason that is beyond my understanding I never read To Kill  a Mockingbird. Such was my embarrassment, I kept this fact hidden from my more literate friends, but this summer, I took the book by the horns and read it.  And wow...I get it!  What an amazing book.  I'm almost glad I didn't read this book until now.  I don't think the high school me would have appreciated in the same way.  Plus, I'm notorious for not re-reading books, so I'm not sure I would have picked it up as an adult (bad habit, I know).  I was so inspired I moved on to the modern day classic, The Help. 

What about you?  What classic have you picked up lately?

My Mother's Day Booty

Being a mom is very, very, very, very hard.  But it is also quite awesome.  Because you get little gifts like this...

A picture of a flower from my daughter,


 

And this, a "Mother" anagram from my son (note my favorites: "H" is for "heretitary" and "R" is for "radical"),

And this, "Coupons of Love" from my son. Especially funny is the fact that they expire on Mother's Day, the day that I received them. Clever boy!

  

I've said it once, and I'll say it again.  Humor is one of the best gifts we as mothers can give our children.  There are a bucket load of other great character traits that I hope my children cultivate and nurture, but their senses of humor will help them pick themselves up when the world knocks them down.  It also won't hurt when trying to weasel your way out of cleaning your room...

Ode to a Playground Tree

Today was a beautiful day in mid-Missouri.  The kind you wish you had all year -- breezy and cool with just the right amount of sunshine.  The perfect day to visit a playground.  The perfect kind of day to think about trees, don't you think?

There's something special about playground trees.  There's an oak tree next to my daughter's school playground, and you can tell it is well-loved by the children who visit it day after day.  The earth below its branches is worn smooth by the hundreds of feet that run circles around it, and the roots no longer hide beneath the dirt in an unseen jamble.  They've been slowly exposed over many years and now lay bare, like the gnarled and wrinkly fingers of a doting grandmother resting her hands on an earthen skirt.  Twigs of all sizes and lengths are scattered about, remnants of a thousand abandoned stick forts.

I don't profess to be a "treehugger" as such, but I could imagine wrapping my arms around this leafy lady and protecting her so that future kids can play under her shelter and shade.

Inspiration Hot Zones

How many of us find our inspiration in the shower?  Or in the car on a long drive listening to (insert your favorite band here...my current is Mumford and Sons)?  Or admit it...on the throne!  I recently discovered another inspiration hot zone.  My bed.  Right before a nap or bedtime.  Right before I slip away...into...dreamland.

But it can be tricky.  Wait too long and you're asleep at the risk of losing everything you imagined.  (Ask my husband.  I hold the world record in shortest time between head on pillow and the snorty, spittly sounds of night's first slumber.)  The goal is to wake yourself up enough to write it down before it drifts away.  Be careful!  It may be your greatest idea yet. 

Or maybe just indigestion.  You really shouldn't eat pizza right before bedtime.  Shame!

Democracy is HARD!

I've been gone for a while but with good reason.  You see, every now and then my life is swallowed up in trash talk.  And I don't mean the kind where I speak ill of others.  I mean real trash...garbage...detritus. In a (British, because their words are always cooler than ours) word, rubbish!

It's a long story, but when I first moved to my current place of residence (5 years ago), we had no curbside recycling.  I worked hard to rectify that situation: a personal proposal to our city's Environmental Quality Commission, eventually a seat on said commission, coordination of a pilot project to test a new curbside recycling service, several public surveys, public opinion sessions, a major council vote to pass a trash contract with curbside recycling (2 years ago), the initiation of said service (1.4 years ago) and just last week, one final pain-in-the-butt public vote to keep the new service.  (Because a small group of angry residents felt that they were being forced to use a service they didn't ask for...nevermind that their elected council representatives took the public's opinion as a whole into consideration when agreeing to the new contract in the first place!)

I'm happy to say their proposition was defeated (74% to 26%!), and my small burg will be able to keep the great curbside recycling service that was put in place over a year ago.  But all this taught me how truly, truly hard democracy is.  You have to fight and scrape to get the things you want.  And then it goes to committee, and then it's voted on, and then sometimes voted on again. 

I guess it needs to be this way.  It's what has made the United States the great place it is.  But it's hard, and most of all, it takes participants.  I pushed on, because I wanted my kids to see that you can get things accomplished if you try.  I hope they learned that lesson. 

I also told them that the day they turn 18 is the day I expect them to register to vote.  Hopefully they'll remember the crazy fight Mommy got into over trash (of all things) when they were young and remember the difference a vote makes.

First Line Contest

Jump here http://cherstinieveen.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/first-line-contest/ and enter the First Line Contest sponsored by the 2011 Writing and Illustrating for Young Reader's Conference in Utah.  You'll be glad you did!

Superpowers

My daughter and I have a frequent discussion over which superpower is best.  My daughter's recurring, never-changing desire is to fly.  My husband echoes this wish.  "You can't beat flying," he says.  My son vascillates between the ability to time travel and the gift of super-stinky flatulation (he's 10 years old, if you couldn't guess).

Me, I want to to be invisible.  Hands down.  Now, I could go into all sorts of reasons why I would like to be invisible.  Some are more noble than others, but mainly, it would allow me to be the penultimate observer of humankind.  Haven't you always wanted to eavesdrop on a conversation unnoticed?  See what people do when they think know one else is watching?  (And hey...this is a blog by a children's writer...don't go creepy on me). 

As a sometimes-therapist in my social work profession, I try to become invisible.  I remove as much of myself from the conversation as possible and let people reveal themselves little by little.  If I'm a blank, non-judgmental mirror, the results can be dramatic.  But what would I witness if I were completely transparent...a fly on the wall, so to speak.  Would I want to see?

Alas, I'll never know.  I'll have to settle for my too-solid life.