Being 100% Present…

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Yesterday Bruce had surgery — adhesions from scar tissue were causing the small bowel obstruction, and that (by this point) was the best case scenario. No bowel resection. No colostomy bag. He’ll spend another week in the hospital getting going again. And he HATES the hospital.

When I work with my creative nonfiction students on their stories, I try to impress on them that a successful life needs the same elements as a successful story. Stories need conflict and resolution. They need heroes. They need action. They need — most of all — an author who is paying 100% attention to what happens and the consequences of what happens. That’s what I was trying to get at in my last post. You are the hero of your own story — even when it feels like it’s about everyone but you. The trick is to be fully present.

On Thursday, I was not fully present. I felt like two people — one who was saying and doing kind things but only because she felt she had to, and another who was pissed off and did-not-want-to-be-there.

Somehow, by Friday, I had turned a corner and I knew what I had to do.

It’s like the difference between rocking a baby when you are tense and sleep-deprived and mad at your husband (couldn’t he get out of bed and rock the baby?!), and when you just let yourself relax into the chair, look into your baby’s eyes, and, well, be there. If you’re 100% there, no matter what it is, then it’s your story. So far as I know, that is the only way to make it your story.

 

Life happens…

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The wine is for my cousin Patrick — my maiden name is King, and my dad grew up in Oregon. (I wish Patrick could drop by to help me drink it. I could use some conversation, preferably about Yeats or Herbert or Dickinson.)

I spent 12 hours today at the hospital with my husband. He has been in the hospital since Monday night when he was admitted with severe stomach pains and diagnosed with an obstruction in the small bowel. Maybe. He was sent home Wednesday afternoon, but we were back in Urgent Care by 8 p.m.; he was readmitted to the hospital Thursday morning. Feeling sleep-deprived and, generally, as though I needed to be put in a hospital bed myself, I thought of the words of the Puritan divine who, on his wife’s death, wrote something in the order of “God has been ever vigilant to test and strengthen my faith.”

Really? Sometimes our “real life” means paying attention to somebody else. Anyway, my goal last night was to get a good night’s sleep. Today my goal was to talk to Bruce’s doctors. They are not in agreement, but we’re getting closer to a diagnosis.

While teaching this spring, so busy with my students that I couldn’t sustain more than a few minutes of writing each day, I kept myself going with the thought, “This summer I will write.” I imagined writing 3-4 hours a day, at least. Hasn’t happened. This summer has been a marathon of caregiving — my mom, my girls, now my husband. I have scarcely had a single day that was not somehow interrupted.

Interrupted? I believe that’s called “life.” I suppose it would be cool if I could have 90 days of uninterrupted work, but in fact I really like my family. I like being available to them. As I tell my mom, “I’m glad I have a mom.” I’m glad I have my girls. I am eager for Bruce to get well and come home and take back his usual role as “Chief Cook and Bottlewasher.”

Today, when Bruce had been whisked away by a competent x-ray technician, I took my notebook out of my bag and said, “Okay, Bethany, write for 10 minutes.” I wrote for 12. Then I closed my eyes and I think I nodded off for a few minutes.

Now it’s 10:15. I’m drinking a glass of wine and watching TV with my girls.

I’ve had a busy weekend…

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I’ve had a busy weekend, and I can’t believe it’s already Sunday evening. I haven’t done much writing, but I cleaned my house, entertained guests (and talked about Nathaniel Hawthorne, movies, children, and my novel), and I thought a whole bunch about my novel. Meanwhile, my friend Carla Shafer is doing the August Poetry Postcard fest again this year, which means writing an original, new poem each day and mailing it. She shared this one with me, too:

(Postcard of timedelayed stars above Mt. Baker)

Follow the Arc

Stars spinning away from the earth

a curve becoming a wheel

waves falling from the sea

snowballs flying from grip to hit

a hand ready to clasp

cats’ tails, orgasms, rainbows

shadows tracing glaciers

along the the rib of a mountain

a story on the way to its end.

Sure enough…the cows have come home.

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It’s my third morning of work — back on the novel — and, just as I predicted, I’m feeling better about it. And about life.

I’ve also been reading The Pen and the Bell, a splendid new book about writing and meditation by Holly Hughes and Brenda Miller. One exercise they suggest is to write about how one begins.

This summer I haven’t been getting up early. Even when I get to bed at a decent time (last night, for instance) I sleep until six or seven in the morning. This morning, it was seven o’clock when I opened my eyes. But by 7:15 I had made coffee and was headed out to my cabin. Or, “The Potting Shed,” which is what I call it. I flipped on some music (Shostakovich), and my electric fireplace (no heat today, just the flicker of flames), and turned on a lamp.

Some mornings I light a candle, too. It was so warm this morning I skipped the candle (and soon turned off the flames — who needs the atmosphere when it’s 75 degrees at 8 a.m.?). I got out my journal and scribbled, pretty aimlessly, for a while. Then I picked up my notebook.

I read aloud. I made some notes. I found  my laptop (in the house, in Annie’s room as she borrows it to do her math homework and never returns it). I typed up what I have on the midpoint event. I’m killing a character — just a minor one — but it’s hard! I tend to watch out for my characters as if they were my children, and even the bad ones get all kinds of attention and positive efforts lavished on them if I’m not careful. “How does this advance the plot?” “How does this contribute to the main character’s emotional development?”

I wrote a very bad first draft of the death scene. I printed it out.

And now to do a little more.

That wasn’t so much how I start as the whole lollapalooza.

Over and over people say to me, “How nice that you’re not working this summer.” That’s what I want to write about tomorrow.