Happy Monday…

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This morning, in the midst of a major meltdown during my writing time, I heard something knocking and went outside to find a pileated woodpecker on the dead tree behind my cabin.

My meltdown was impressive — my 13-year old could have learned a few tricks from it. On Thursday I go back to work — at the college, I mean. (I’m supposed to be working now, my real work, which is writing.) I can’t bear the thought of the start of a new quarter teaching full-time:  26 composition students, 25 literature students, 16 (so far) creative nonfiction students. I called my mom and told her she should pay me to stay home this fall. (She laughed.) I called a friend and told her I was abandoning the novel rewrite. I emailed friends (several) and whined, whined, whined…

The only advice that ever worked for me when my daughters threw tantrums was to lie down on the floor with them. To be fully there in all the maelstrom and torment. I didn’t have to cry and kick my feet–in fact, throwing my own tantrum was counter-productive. I just had to be there. I had to let her know that she was fully heard.

So I’m trying to be there for me.

I know, I know. Bethany! It’s not that bad! It’s not that many students! They will be wonderful students! You’ll be talking about books and writing! What a great job!

Today, additionally, would have been my dad’s 85th birthday. Happy Birthday, Dad.

Doubt

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I opened an old notebook, thinking I must have a poem — one bad poem — that would illustrate this feeling. And I found this, from February.  I keep confronting the same blocks, and learning the same lessons over and over again. It’s a spiral.

THE TABLET OF THE HEART

Today my heart is a tabby cat,
and then a slice of lemon in a water glass.
My heart is a postcard of Notre Dame,
a few lines of a poem by Rumi
on my coffee mug.
Later, my heart is a child swinging
from her mother’s grocery cart.
At evening, I open my notebook to write
and nothing comes.
So I sit listening to the wind in the trees
outside my window
and I remember how God writes,
how effortlessly–a foil star on a calendar page,
dinner on the stove, a daughter
leaning in the doorway, her hand
on her skinny hip.
All of it written indelibly on the tablet of the heart.

Happy People Dancing on Planet Earth

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Just when I was wondering if there is another way to “be,” a friend sent me this video of Dancing Matt. I especially appreciated that its sites include the USS Abraham Lincoln, where many of my students (and spouses of students) have served. I hope you enjoy it, too. ap120710.html

Starting over…

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I love September. Perhaps because I’ve been a student and a teacher most of my life, the year seems to me to begin in September rather than January. I got married on September 1st, 27 years ago. Of course there’s the bliss of new school supplies. In truth, I get a little antsy at the thought of going back to school–I always think I’ll get more done in the summer than I do–of getting back into the routine of teaching, and of my daughters’ homework. But I’m elated, too. With the change of routine, comes a promise of change, of a better routine, of the chance of getting more work done.

So my husband is home, cooking us meals and bossing us around, not the slightest bit aware of how well we did without both while he was gone. (We missed him, not the cook or the boss.) After dinner last night I decided that the best thing for me to do was to come out to my potting shed (my, ahem, Writing Cabin) and write all evening. I typed in changes to the novel through page 40. Today my goal is to push through another 10 or 12 pages and then print it all out and read it. And then do more.

I want to finish this rewrite so I can write a scathing novel about marriage. It makes me happy to think of it.

As St. Teresa of Avila said, “All will be well, and all will be well, and all manner of things will be well.”