Month: July 2014

I don’t think I’m the only one who, as I get older, mark sections of my life by the milestones. You know: When I was in college. When I had my first job. Before marriage. Before the baby. After the baby. After the baby became the teenager. After…you get it. Usually, I tend to think about these milestones as just that–moments that, once they move into the past, become a dividing line between life sections. A line, as if the moment itself is only there for a second, a demarcation, but nothing else.

And then there are the times when you’re actually in the middle of a milestone, when it hasn’t yet become a line drawn in sand. (Or, if you’re anywhere near my age, a line drawn between two sides of a bedroom on The Brady Bunch. Oops–digression.) At this stage, a milestone feels much more like a transition.

Like this summer. We’re now on the countdown of less than a month before my son goes off for his first year of college. There are other events that I know, when I look back, will be those milestones I’ll build patterns around–my own going back to work full-time, the niece’s wedding we’re going to next month, the departure of one of my favorite cars (the very old, little red BMW). But the biggie is definitely my son leaving home. Who knows what the future holds, but the now–the right now–seems already full of befores and afters.

Before he leaves, we have (and will have):

• Shopped for dorm supplies.
• Bought him a new suit, the last one being purchased piecemeal for some friends’ Bar Mitzvahs way back in middle school, and this one being something he’ll wear at many jazz performances for the next few years. (And he’s holding onto the other as back-up!)
• Replaced the very old, little red BMW with a not-QUITE-as old, but pretty darned near, Volvo wagon, which will actually let him transport his bass and one or two other members of whatever combo he’s playing with. The drummer will have to get his equipment there some other way.
• Watched him clean out layers of history from the closets and drawers in his room, all the time knowing there will be more left to do later, but accepting what I get.
• Nagged at him a million times, hugged him another million, and wondered at times if there were actually enough huts to hold me till the first visit.

After he leaves, we will:

• Take a mini vacation before coming home to an empty nest.
• Get back and touch with each other, wife and husband, and the whole relationship that we have today, as opposed to “before the baby”
• Do some final tidying on his room and then pass his doorway a currently unimaginable number of times without going in.
• Stop buying “Ian food” at the grocery store, except for non-perishable foods to be sent in a care package.
• Struggle mightily and then reeducate ourselves with the TV or Wii remote don’t work, and we can’t get to where we want on Netflix.
• Feel the emptiness of that third seat at the theater as the next X-men, Avengers, Spiderman, Pixar, Shakespeare, fill-in-the-blank movie comes out.
• Send him first draft chapters or picture books that I just want him to read.
• Text and email silly funnies and (hopefully) get his version back in return.
• Wonder how, at the age that still feels so young, I got to the stage of being a Woman-Whose-Child-Is-Off-At-School. Wondering also who the heck that person even is? And being kind of happy and excited about finding out.

Yeah, those are the things on either side of the line. But today, this month, and for a few more weeks, I’m Mom in the Middle. In the middle of it all as it’s happening, experiencing a layer of something–a complication, an emotion, a passage? It’s there every single day, almost every single moment, even when we are doing everything the way we used to and not taking a single active step toward the way we will do it after.

Milestones. Transitions.

Feelings.

 

 

As of 10:00 tonight, I’ve written 11 scenes, 64 pages, and almost 16,000 words. I don’t put much weight into my word count, typically, but it’s a nice piece of fast drafting to see the numbers grow. I’m somewhere in the middle of Act II, with Act III and IV still to come. It’s that weird stage where I think I’ve probably got too many pages for a good balance of things that have happened and things that still have to happen, and there are peeps from the little voices saying things like, “You are going to have so much work to do,” and “Why even finish and print that scene, when nothing happens in it?” and “Sure, it’s easy to talk about putting all this off until revision, but you’re going to have to actually do it at some point, you know?”

It doesn’t always help that the voices aren’t telling me anything I don’t already know. And the good feelings I have about how I’m rolling the ideas and possibilities out onto the page–well, you know, those could all be delusions of some twisted grandeur, right?

I’m getting downright rude with the voices. I cut them off before they can finish what they want to say. I turn up my beboppy music, the stuff they don’t like to listen to. I use some of the words my dad wishes I wouldn’t, although I think he’d accept that it’s all for a good cause. And I keep writing.

I continue to bracket notes in each scene, places where–at some point–I will need to do research, or figure out the important roots and causes of my characters’ behavior. I let myself write more sentences than I know will be acceptable, so that I can explore a feeling or reaction or idea–knowing that, if I use it, the whole thing will show up in a different place and in totally different words. And I’ve stuck a couple of notes into the front of my binder.

• What’s at stake? (I know it nebulously, but I will need to know it concretely.)
• Get these kids moving. (As I realize I am writing way too many sitting scenes.)

More stuff to not fret about (too much!) until I’m ready to revise. Sometimes it scares me–all the big things I think I can leave out of this fast first draft. It doesn’t scare me nearly as much, though, as getting stuck in place trying to figure out a problem that won’t figure, or going down a worry path that has no end.

And, mostly, it’s good. Mostly I’m reveling in the click of the keyboard, the stack of pages in the binder, the fact that I am filling empty pages with words and sentences. Mostly, I’m loving being in love with a story again.

Stuff:

1. I am making progress on this fast-first-drafting thing. I’m not getting in the after-work writing that I should, but I’m managing steady writing on the weekends. And I’m sticking to my goal of blasting along, without questioning or worrying (much) or stopping to fix stuff. No fixing allowed!
2. The new job is making me happy. I seem, somehow, to have landed in a place where people are respectful and kind, just because that’s the kind of people they are. Plus, we’re trying to help education, plus I’m always busy and never bored, plus we’re in walking distance of frozen yogurt.
3. My son leaves for college in six weeks. Tomorrow, we’re going shopping for dorm bedding. I’m voting for polka-dots, but he’ll probably pull out the whole independence thing and veto that, right?
4. We didn’t see any fireworks last night, but we had several hours of BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! Alice paid more attention to the clicking of the laser pointer, so I’m guessing cats don’t suffer in the same way as dogs. I hope all your dogs have recovered and relaxed!
5. I just read and enjoyed Natalie Lloyd’s A Snicker of Magic. Nice magical realism, with a slight flavor of Savvy, and a very sweet layer of friendship and family.
6. I love three-day weekends.