Blank Page Removal, My Speciality

I make my living as a writer, and I’ve come to the conclusion that the biggest reason people hire me is not because they admire my unique ability to string subjects and predicates together. Truth is, my customers are afraid, and they’re all afraid of the same thing -- blank pages. 

Even those who are possessed with overly healthy egos, who see themselves as bold captains of industry, become suddenly timid when it’s time to  pick up the pen or start clacking away on the laptop. All that white space freezes up the brain. That 's fortuitous for me, since I've got a steady gig at being the one who’s willing to get it all down on paper, whatever “it” happens to be.

I’m happy to oblige. Hiring me means that one less reader in the world will encounter a document that begins with “Webster’s defines “presentation” as …” or “Have you ever noticed how hard it is to write a first sentence?” I can’t promise you Pulitzer-prize winning prose, but I promise to avoid Webster’s definitions and rhetorical questions, so that pretty much pays for itself right there.

Once I’ve filled up a few reams of bond and sent out the words for review, of course, then everyone suddenly returns to knights-in-armor levels of bravery. If there are words already on a page, there is nothing to fear, so opinions can be formed, comment boxes added at will, and arguments about the advisability of ending sentences with prepositions can begin in earnest.

I never mind accepting edits, and I’m sanguine when receiving criticisms of style, grammar or general worldview. For someone with an exceedingly thin skin in private life, I remain unruffled when a customer wants to kill a word, a paragraph or a story. I understand very clearly that I’m a hired gun, and I’ll shoot wherever you want me to aim, even if, sometimes, it might feel as if I’m shooting myself in the foot. 

The reason for this critical nonchalance is rooted in my sympathy for how hard it is to get started, and how easy it is to correct. I’ve struggled with the frozen brain brought on by the blank page many times, but I’ve conquered it by allowing myself the indulgence of a rotten first  draft. It sounds simplistic, but, when it’s time to get to work, I write. By that I mean I write anything that’s on topic, no matter how awful. Then I let that heap of words marinate overnight. The next day, I set about trying  to find what’s worthwhile in the muck. It’s not a perfect system, but it keeps me from freezing to death, intellectually speaking, so I’m happy.

I was working on a project once with someone who had an elaborate classification system for types of writers.  I forget the whole list, but I know he included “storytellers,” “convincers” and “entertainers” in his lineup.  Then he asked me which sort of writer I was. “The sense-maker,” I said, “the one you never, ever notice.” 

He didn’t like that answer, I know, because it lacked the swagger that so many creative types seem to affect. The minute I said it, though, I knew it was true.  I aim for writing that is so clear and sensible that it seems impossible for the thoughts to have been created by a person, and more as if they just sprang up because it was time for them to be seen, like the daffodils in May.

I accepted long ago that everybody’s a critic.  I have a feeling that we humans have been that way since our paleolithic cave painting days. I’m just glad I get to be the one who slips into the cave while everyone else is still standing around, who makes those first marks on the cold, blank wall. And if everyone streams in after me to suggest that I’ll need a few more changes to get it right, I never really mind. I got to be there first, and that always makes me happy.

With Sprinkles

There are women who buy too many purses. They are women who buy too many shoes. My best friend never met a set of high-thread-count sheets whose purchase she could not justify. And then there are women with truly strange shopping compulsions, like me. 

I think that all of us probably have one consumer good that we have a hard time saying “no” to, an item that makes our Visa card start to wiggle in our wallet. Don’t pass me up, the thing says. You really, really need just this one more, and then you can stop. People listen to the call of the credit card, and the next thing they know, there’s a roomful of crying clown figurines, or an unfortunate beer stein collection that fills a rathskeller. 

I grew up in an era when there was only one thing that aspiring intellectuals aimed to collect -- books. It was de rigueur to live under the commanding weight of too many books, stacked on cheap Pier One shelves and collecting dust. Many rueful comments were made at moving time, along the lines of, “We would have been done last week, but (sad shake of the head) I just have so many books.” (Curse you, incredible intellect and remarkable cultural sensitivity. My friends all have hernias now!) I never fell for this, realizing early on that librarians would dust and stack all the books in the world for me, and that I could check them out whenever I wanted, for free. My moving days were always a few-hours-or-less affairs. 

No books, no purses, no shoes. I can resist everything, to quote Oscar Wilde, but temptation, and that temptation is sprinkles. Those little bits of color and sugar decorations are irresistible to me. I have sprinkles in a shape that honors every holiday, including pumpkins and baby chicks and tiny hearts. I lack Presidents’ Day Washington and Lincoln head-shaped sprinkles, but don’t think I haven’t looked. I use them, often, and sometimes in unexpected ways. Brownies. Buttermilk waffles. I haven’t tried them on baked potatoes yet, but give me time.

I love them because they are small, humble and cheap.  I love them because they serve no practical function. I love them because they make people smile. I wish I could say all these things about myself, but at least I can say them about sprinkles.

And just like any other true compulsive, I hide my sprinkle collection from those who just don’t appreciate their importance  – down the stairs, behind the door, in the corner of a strange basement space where I keep French bread pans and Dutch ovens. They sit right next to my cookie cutter collection (another problem purchase area, but never you mind about that right now).

I do take some satisfaction in knowing that my inventory for the items that are usually so tempting to my fellow females is as modest as a Buddhist nun’s. I don’t much care about shoes. I own one pair of sneakers, one pair of winter boots and two pairs of black pumps. In the purse department, I have a black clutch for fancy parties and one beat-up Banana Republic carryall, purchased at a garage sale last spring. But ask me how many jars of sprinkles I have, and I’ll clam up. That’s none of your business, bub, and besides, I’m going to use them all someday.

And don’t even think of asking to see my cookie cutters. That’s a compulsion for another day.

Sticking My Head in the Chocolate Fountain: Two Hours at the Bookstore

It turns out, there IS a lifetime limit for time spent in dressing rooms, and I’ve reached it. I’ve logged my allotted hours sitting on tiny slivers of laminate benches, receiving inadvertent treatments of Loser Acupuncture from all the straight pins collecting under my butt. A fair estimate would be that I’ve probably repositioned about a thousand pink junior push-up bras back onto their tiny little hangers, which is a feat of eye-hand coordination that should not be dismissed by those of you so blessed to have never attempted it. Stick a fork in the plastic tag that tracks how many items I’ve schlepped in; I’m done.

So, when Mary’s birthday dawned on a school holiday this year, and she decided on an Uptown shopping day with her sisters, I acquiesced, but with a sinking heart. As the girls discussed their choices of shopping venues (cheap new clothes and cheap old clothes holding equal appeal), my heart sank further. Then I remembered that Uptown had a bookstore, an actual independently owned emporium. Here is what it has: books, lots of them, and a few chairs. Here is what it does not have:  a café, Kenny G muzak, or racks of Kute Kat greeting cards. I felt my gizzards unclench as I bid the girls goodbye and made plans to meet them for lunch in a couple hours.

That’s two hours. Alone. In a Bookstore. I withheld the urge to click my heels up like a leprechaun as I watched them cross the street and head into Everyday People. I was giddy with the thought of Free Time. Let me explain that an ideal 24 hours for me would be 10 hours of sleep, two hours of writing, three hours of exercise and nine hours of reading. An actually day for me does not correspond to this ideal in any way, being mostly filled with pie chart slivers best described as “driving where I don’t want to go, cleaning messes I didn’t make, cooking food I don’t want to eat and shopping for stuff I don’t want.” That last one, shopping, is the worst. If all the retail in the world were vaporized by a crazed anti-mall madman, and we were all reduced to garage sales and farmers' markets, I’d lead a celebratory parade. 

Okay, I take one part of that back.  Bookstores can stay. Especially the one I found myself in on Mary’s birthday. Just deciding where to start took me some time. Dip into my favorite parts of a new classic? Find out what all the fuss was about in the new wunderkind’s novel? Head to the kids’ section and read Betsy-Tacey for a few hours? I collected a few volumes, found a church pew in the back and plunged in. The irony was not lost on me, and the hardness of the seat, certainly at least as uncomfortable as that in the dressing rooms I was avoiding, didn’t bother me one bit. I read all of Michael Pollan’s new book. (It’s short.) I lingered over a giant photography retrospective of Hollywood’s Golden age, and I wanted to slide myself into its black-and-white pages and light Garbo’s cigarette for her. I hopped into a couple anthologies and right back out again. Outside, the snow fell, the cars went by, and countless Visa cards were swiped through countless machines, all over Uptown. Commerce continued, and I remained a dropout. 

Up the street, the girls had already tried on a hundred outfits and taken photos of themselves in 75 of them, all of which had already been posted to Facebook. So much face-making, so many pixels, such a freakin’ waste of energy.

They called my cell and let me know it was time for lunch (I was buying; they remembered me). I carefully replaced all my reading and began to wrap up for the cold trek back across the street to reality. I felt as if I’d finally gotten enough of something that I’d been needing for a very long time. It was like being a glutton who had been given free rein at the midnight buffet. I had not only indulged in the chocolate fountain, I’d stuck my head into it, mouth wide, and I drank my fill.

I didn’t even end up with any straight pins stuck in my loser butt. That’s what I call a good day.

The Look of Love (Ouch)

She’s a very well-behaved person now, so it’s hard to believe, but Emma was once an accomplished biter. She avoided being shunned at the playground or expelled from preschool, but she had a pretty serious habit going for a while. Her most consistent and gullible victim was, you guessed it, me. 

I fell repeatedly for her predatory tricks because, in the ramp-up to chomping, she’d affect a look of utmost love and adoration. Cocking her tiny head to one side and making warm and gooey eye contact, she’d lean in close. A string of drool would drip from her slackened lips. I’d feel myself melting. 

Then she’d clamp down her little canines and refuse to let go. 

I fell for this act so consistently because I wanted, really wanted, to believe that THIS was the day she would Hug and Snuggle and Love Mommy. It took me a long (pathetically long) time to admit to myself that this ball of pre-nuclear energy NEVER wanted to hugsnugglelove. She wanted to move. She wanted to go to the playground NOW. And, when she felt like it, she wanted to tear into a hunk of my flesh with her baby teeth.

I had reason to remember the Biting Years just this week. Emma, newly 16, received her driver’s license recently. For a while, she was euphoric. She texted all her friends. And then she turned to me with a soft-focus gaze and cocked her lovely head to one side. “Mommy,” she murmured, “What are you doing tomorrow?”

Um, yoga, work, errands, picking up Mary after school.

She snapped the sweetness shut like a sterling silver compact. I could almost hear the click. “Do you REALLY need the car? I think it would be a better use of energy if I could drive it to school. Besides, you always say how much you hate to drive.”

So, it turns out, she wasn’t settling in for a mom-to-girl chat, she was fishing for use of the very vehicle she’s referred to as “pathetic & sad” and “a freak car.” Even though it was my wheels she was after, and not a sliver of my shoulder muscle, the feeling was similar. 

The interrogations have been ongoing. Each day I am expected to account for my intended whereabouts and offer “alternate transportation” suggestions. I finally shared an online calendar of my schedule with her, hoping that transparency will bring relief, but I don’t have much hope.

Life with Emma has not changed. She still wants nothing more than to move. She wants to go to the playground NOW. The only thing left for me to do is hand over the car keys. And maybe find a few bandaids to put over the wound.

Frankly & Absolutely

I must be listening to the radio too much, because NPR-speak is starting to make me twitch. Since I make a living putting words together in what I hope to be a pleasing and logical way, I find that I resent all the filler that keep getting stuffed in the sausage of conversation. Say what you mean, I want to shout at the radio, and, while you’re at it, stop starting every sentence with “Well.” (I don’t actually shout at the radio, but I already have long talks with myself in the grocery store, so it’s probably only a matter of time). 

It’s getting to the point where I prefer the “umm-ers” to the people who seem to be under the evil influence of a computer speech generator that randomly spews out the same 100 words all day long. At least the ummers, desperate as they are to make a sound, any sound, aren’t pretending that there’s any meaning behind what they are spewing. But the characters who begin their response to every caller with “That’s a great question!” are wearing thin.  Just once I’d like to hear someone say, “That’s a stupid question. Why are you asking me that? I refuse to answer, you butthead.” Guess that will happen when NPR starts covering tractor pulls, but still.

In addition to filler, I’m starting to develop an allergic reaction to words that actually mean the opposite of what is said. Those used to be called lies, but I guess they’re called ultra-truths now. My two biggest nemeses are that terrible twosome, Frankly and Absolutely. I’ve observed that anyone who starts a sentence with “Frankly” has no intention of telling the god’s honest truth, and is more likely to be full of beans than to be frank.

Also, I simply must ask, when did “yes” get a demotion?  It used to be a perfectly good word, as plain and humble as as “you betcha.” Now “yes” isn’t good enough anymore; it’s come to seem pale and vapid next to its souped-up-on-steroid s cousin, “absolutely.”  If I ask you a question and you answer “absolutely,” I doubt your motives, your intentions and your IQ. I say it frankly, and I’m absolutely sure. Now let me go back to shouting at the radio.

Teenage Dream

They cost just two-and-a-half cents apiece (“Give me a nickel and then I’m packing up,” said the weary garage saler), but Clive and Patty were definitely one of the better purchases of my lifetime. Their ratio of joy-delivered-to-amount-invested far exceeds that of more luxurious pleasures. Who needs Big Stuff when you can own a couple bits of small, cheap plastic that make you smile?

The duo (pictured above) are clearly ‘60s era cake decorations. But, beyond that, their life is a mystery.  How old was the person celebrating the big day? Was it for a brand-new teen or a late-blooming eighteen-year-old? Were they used many times, for all the members of a large family, or did they only hear that off-key version of Happy Birthday and feel the thrilling flame of the candles, just once in their little plastic lives? Whatever their backstory, Clive and Patty aren’t talking.

They are emblems of the entry into adolescence, in the way that long-ago admen saw that age to be. Thus, they are depicted lounging in positions of exaggerated repose, as if the sudden surge of hormones has dissolved their spinal columns. They prop themselves on books, but of course the schoolwork is ignored for the greater thrill of the hottest piece of high-tech equipment – telephones with extra-long cords. Looking at them, I can almost hear the opening song from Bye Bye Birdie:

Hi, Nancy!

Hi, Helen!

What's the story, morning glory?

What's tale, nightingale?

Tell me quick about Hugo and Kim!

Nancy and Helen, what a pair of cutups. They’re probably in a nursing home now, drool dribbling onto their hospital gowns, but they sure loved to give each other a jingle and gab on the horn, back in the day. And remember those little glass bottles of Coke, Helen? Yes, Nancy, and also – record players! 

I’ve been thinking about teenagers lately because, as of Monday, I share living space with three of them. After years of obfuscation, upselling and bare-faced lying about her age, Mary Katherine finally turned 13; Emma reached the 16-year-old milestone the next day. Angela, our elder stateswoman, is exactly 16½ today.  

Everyone I know has an opinion about teenagers. I suspect that the very people who were once the absolute worst examples of “these kids today” are the ones who seem most incensed. It’s not a new story (Socrates said in 400 BC that “the children of today are tyrants.”) Still, I wonder if it’s true that the ones who acted up the most are the ones who are freaking out the loudest now.

I’ve watched several acquaintances get utterly gobsmacked when their little darlings hit that certain age. What’s funniest is when the person complaining about the behavior actually exhibits it. A mom will sarcastically decry teen sarcasm and eyerolling by sarcastically declaring, “And I LOVE the eye rolling,” while, at the same time, rolling her eyes. Hmmm.

For the moment, I’m observing this hysteria from a distant shore. Yes, I entered motherhood knowing I’d be adopting an adorable Chinese baby, but, unlike some of my pals, I think I did understand that she wouldn’t be four months old forever. Not to be all Stephen Covey here, but I began with the end in mind. Children grow up. They become teenagers. They leave. You live for a while more. Then you die. That’s pretty much the trajectory, and all the eyerolling in the world won’t stop it.

I’ve been known to publicly state that the absolute ideal age for a human being is four-and-a-half, especially the summer before kindergarten. If I could arrange for an endless stream of kids that age to drop by now and then, to bake cookies with me and mess around with watercolor paints, I’d be very happy. Also, I’d prefer some who still take naps, but that’s quibbling.

Much as I love an unspoiled type, I also enjoy teenagers. Everything is extreme, even dumb stuff like boredom, or sleep. And everything is possible, which is alternately terrifying and thrilling, for all of us. Perhaps it’s true that the worst offenders from the past are the strictest parents of today. I spent my teen years watching television and going to the library (yes, it was just as pathetic as it sounds, now that you mention it), so I can’t really imagine the Bruegelian bacchanals that my parent chums continually conjure up. 

And please, shut up about the texting, I want to tell my friends. You might as well say “davenport” and “icebox” and talk about the great mileage you got on your Model T. You are old. They are young. They have shinier toys than you did at that age, but you don’t have to act like their toys are from Satan. You’re just jealous that YOU couldn’t text in American Civics class, so clam up already.

These days, I’m not rolling my eyes and sarcastically saying, “I LOVE having three teenagers in the house.” I’m just saying it, and I mean it. Of course their adolescence won’t be like Clive and Patty’s, and I wouldn’t expect it to be. (What is the proper decoration for a teen-theme birthday cake these days? A giant thumb?) But they’ve made it this far, and they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. They’d be the first to tell you about my long list of flaws as a mother, but I feel pretty darn proud that I got them to this point without driving away with their carseat on the roof of my Honda, or letting them suffocate on the dry cleaning bag. Hurray for me, and for their keenly honed survival skills.

They’re here. They’re alive. And they’re teenagers. No eyerolling required.

Saturday Night Not-So-Live

Award show season is in full swing at our house. For some people, that might mean an uptick in appearance of expensively dressed people crying in front of acrylic podia, glimpsed for an instant during nightly remote flipthroughs. Here, it means printed ballots, wagers, fashion analysis and much – much -- sideline commentary. (To quote my pal Joel during a recent visit, “Don’t you girls ever stop chattering and just watch the televison?”)

The answer, Joel?  Not so much. We prefer to misconstrue, gossip, ponder and generally pay as little attention as possible. There is a slightly increased focus during the Miss America pageant, since actual cash money is riding on that one. The crowd at our house was almost universally positive that the winner would be Miss Arkansas, a yodeling ventriloquist (you read it right the first time) who seemed unstoppable. She was stopped, it turned out, by a heavenward pointing 17-year-old from Nebraska, and we losers tore up our ballots in disbelief, roaring our terrible roars and gnashing our terrible teeth. Except for one of us. In a scenario we’ve seen played out at every raffle and jelly-bean-counting contest for the past 15 years, Emma, it turned out, was the only person who had guessed correctly, and she walked away with a crisp fiver and bragging rights that will last until January two thousand and twelve.

An awards show evening is not an orderly affair in these parts. Confusion tends to reign supreme, as at least half of anyone gathered has no idea of what is being broadcast at any given time. Adults are not immune to this phenomenon, and are, perhaps, the worst offenders. At least I am. During the Golden Globes, I glanced up briefly from my newspaper and saw someone I decided was “the other Asian” from Glee. I indicated as such, pleased that a minor player got to present a big award on stage. The “nos” from the crowd led me to gasp, “The kid who plays Other Asian isn’t really Asian?” “He’s not that guy!” they shouted back. Another pal, closer to the television and with vastly better eyesight, started it all up again by saying of the young man up on the screen, “Wait, this guy doesn’t look Asian; are you sure?” I went back to my newspaper, confused.

And so it goes.

Tonight is the Grammy Awards Ceremony, and we’ll follow the same routine we’ve held to for some time now – taping of all the red carpet preshows, engaging in much dawdling to gather everyone in the living room (“Wait!  I need more Fresca!”) and a planned hour-or-so delay so that we can speed through commercials and boring people (boredom being determined by the vocal majority, usually defined as any man other than a certified hottie, and anyone over 30).

Hanging over our heads is the knowledge that if we move too swiftly through the dreck, churning the white Tivo triangle along the green bar of captured programming, we will eventually hit the hardest moment of the evening – when we lose the ability to escape from real time and are forced to sit through the broadcast like all the other chumps in that auditorium in LA in the middle of the afternoon. It’s like being torn out of the VIP Lounge and dumped in the Wal-Mart parking lot. The evening deflates quickly once we cross the reality line, and no one seems to care as much about the awards, the outfits or the backstories. People (me first; it’s in my contract) drift up to bed, and it’s rare that we're around to witness the big award of the night, whatever that is. 

We are, it turns out, much happier in the fast forward mode; none of us cope gracefully with the heavy pull of real-time. And I still can’t figure out if Mike Chang really is Asian.