THE FUN PART?

I remember when the urge to write first hit me. I was about forty, and had finally, often painfully, moved through the first four of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. My physical needs were met, I felt safe, was happily married, and felt good about my work as a psychotherapist.

And then—ZAP! WHAP! BANG!  Self-actualization, the fifth need, knocked me upside the head with a message so hard and clear, it blinded me to anything else. I want to write. I need to write. Now.

Every morning, before work, I’d pound the keys, so reticent to stop that Ed practically had to pull me away to see my clients. I wrote about whatever came to mind, with little concern for its worth or use or context. It was joyous fun. And, eventually, the characters for a novel came to me, no shadow of a plot, just a burning yearning to bring those characters to life with words.

I’d been a “bookworm” as a child, reveling in The Bobbsey Twins and then teen detective Nancy Drew  (“Where there’s a will, there’s a way,” Nancy said, while working on a legally problematic estate case, and I thought that was about the coolest thing I’d ever read). I wanted to be Jo in Little Women, curled into an overstuffed chair, squinting at a page in my notebook as I chewed on my pencil. As I got older, I read southern icons–Tennessee Williams, Toni Morrison, Robert Penn Warren, and I marveled at how they could pull me in and keep me riveted to a story that was fabricated, and yet so real I could feel it. Magic, I thought, the way those writers create. It’s just magic.

Turns out, it’s not magic. I found writing fiction to be hard, often grinding work. I took classes and workshops, hired editors, winced at their criticisms, made significant changes, and, slowly, I built my novel. Natalie Goldberg helped me discover that “betrayal” is powerful for me. I learned, through Elizabeth Strout, to use an emotion I’d felt myself (I picked “shame”), and then blow it up bigtime in my protagonist. I added subplots, removed them, added new ones. I researched black music in the eighties. I had people read my manuscript, some of them African American since I have so many black characters. I listened. I wrote. I edited. I wrote. I edited some more.

During a period when I wasn’t working on my novel, I wrote and published essays in literary journals and published a memoir–”Catching On—Love with an Avid Flyfisher”. It was well received and won a national award. But I struggled to market it, doing readings and signings in bookstores up and down the west coast. I didn’t like the business part. I’m an introvert with an extroverted side, and people often drain me. Selling a book wore me out. I often felt wistful about the good ole days when writing had been, not a business nor a chore, but a passion. A fun one!

My novel is almost done. An artist friend is creating the cover. I don’t have the energy to approach traditional publishers, so I’m exploring how self publishing has changed since my first book. My goal, when I began writing “The Shame Stone”, was to write a good novel, meaning one that’s engaging and makes the reader want to keep reading. My new goal is to handle and present The Shame Stone as an artful gift to the universe, not something I sweat and fret and fuss about. (Well, sure, I’ll send a copy to Oprah, because, you know, Oprah.)

I’m rather amazed to be at this point. I don’t know what’s gonna happen. I do know I want to stay excited about writing, and not get bogged down in the grind. I’ll be on the lookout for the fun part.

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Pride

“Pride” has been a confusing concept for me. I was taught both not to have too much of it, thus avoid conceit, and to be filled with it, pleased with myself for academic or practical achievements. Pride goes before destruction, the Bible says, “and a haughty spirit before a fall.” Pride is associated with ego, in my mind, worth watching and tempering.

But, when checking dictionary definitions of “pride”, I was happy to see this one:

Pride: “Confidence and self-respect as expressed by members of a group, typically, one that has been socially marginalized on the basis or their shared identity, culture, and experience.”

I’ve been angered and saddened at the stance and scriptural distortion of Christians who believe LGBTQIA+ individuals should not be fully included into the church. And I’ve long championed these people’s rights to full inclusion, including ministers’ rights to marry them and the people’s right to become ministers themselves. I recently looked forward to honoring them, along with Ed and our daughter and our two grandchildren, when we planned to march in the Seattle Pride parade with Reconciling Ministries, the organization that guides Methodist churches to become Open and Affirming places, welcoming people of all gender identities and sexual preferences.

On Pride Sunday morning, after gathering at Seattle United Methodist Church and singing an uplifting song about unity, we marchers walked a few blocks to the parade’s starting point, where we waited. And waited. And waited. Though the mood was festive, the costumes flamboyant and fun, and the weather sunny and warm, I got tired and antsy and did my share of grumbling, unlike my family, who handled the two and a half hour wait just fine. I almost didn’t believe it when we finally started the march.

But then, oh, what a march it was. We hoisted posters declaring our “Pride + Faith”, signified by our Christian symbol of the fish icon painted with rainbow colors, while we marched, cheered on by jubilant onlookers packed deep on both sides of 4th Avenue, all the way to Seattle Center.

Most watchers were delighted to see us. They cheered, gave us “thumbs up” signs, smiled and blew kisses. It felt so personal, so real, to make eye contact with as many of them as I could. Ed held his heavy Pride poster way up high, shifting it from hand to hand. At one point, a twentiesh woman in the crowd turned to her young friend, and, with a quizzical look on her face, said, “Methodists?”

I didn’t know exactly what she meant, but I did know how it felt to get such loving responses from a group that has been treated like third class citizens for oh so many years and so often been the target of hateful rhetoric and exclusion by people claiming to follow Jesus. Our LGBTQIA+ sisters and brothers treated us with respect, enthusiasm and love, as we proclaimed our beliefs and marched to support them. The people at the parade affirmed and honored me as I affirmed and honored them, for exactly who they and we are—worthy, beloved citizens of God’s kingdom.

Now, that’s Pride. Not self-centered, ego-driven pride. The good kind of Pride, that marches hand in hand with love.

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ONE OF THESE DAYS

I could hardly stand it, I was so excited about seeing Emmylou Harris at The Gorge Amphitheater. Not only would I see the woman whose music I’ve adored since I was in my twenties, the concert would, I figured, feed the song in progress in my head, a song that would honor Emmylou and my other musical heartthrob, Jesse Winchester. The few lines I’d written pulsed inside me like the first lines of a novel, followed me around relentlessly. Drunk on wine. My feet were dirty. Been awhile since I’d seen thirty…

I was armed against the notorious Gorge heat with a thin white t shirt, a straw hat, and a cloth to soak with water and wrap around my neck. I’d heard the traffic was bad, but I wasn’t prepared to travel only 6 miles in an hour and a half. When we finally arrived at the Gorge, I was relieved to manage my cumbersome gear while trekking a considerable distance to “The Lawn”, where I would, I figured, enter and remain in a transcendent state, as Emmylou worked her soulful magic.

I settled among the throngs of people, thousands, I found out later. I saw the stage, at least two hundred feet away, so tiny I could barely see blurry dots. On the gigantic screens on either side of the stage, I saw the tiny dots magnified into Neko Case, the opening act. Her voice was loud and metallic in the hot, humid air. Surely, I thought, Emmylou will be more visible and audible than this.

Ed says that, when the Emmylou dot appeared on stage, and I heard the dull, awful sound produced from that sterile, impersonal platform, he saw excitement drain from me. “I could see you sink,” he said. “And you kept trying to make it better, you’d sit up and clap and sing along to the few words you could understand, and then you’d sink again, and I knew there was no way to make this thing all right.”

To make things worse, Emmylou wasn’t the main act, (Brandi Carlisle was), so, during Emmylou’s performance, the young whippersnappers around me, who obviously did not know they were in the presence of royalty, were gabbing and giggling and getting in the way. What a bust. How would I write a song about my transcendent Gorge experience, when the only thing it transcended was any notion I had of how disappointing a concert could possibly be?

I was not great company as Ed and I drove home the next morning. And that afternoon, the song-writing instruction book I’d ordered to guide me while I wrote my Emmylou and Jesse masterpiece, wouldn’t load correctly into my Kindle and was a non-readable mess. So much for new creative adventures. Who did I think I was? Never mind that my favorite kitty (RIP) was named Emmylou Harris Morrison. Never the hell mind that I use her name for my email address.

I do not, however, wear a navy t shirt with “Nevertheless, She Persisted” in bold white letters on the front, for nothing. I called a songwriter friend, who came over and helped me with some basics. When she asked me what particular images Emmylou’s songs gave me, I thought of a rumpled bed in a Las Vegas Hotel and a fierce, bible toting woman striding through a valley, singing “One of these days…”. I remembered a slave who sure could sing in the fields.

And I remembered the one thing Emmylou said at the Gorge concert that I could both hear and understand. “When things were so bad for so long, what I didn’t know was that they could get much worse,” she said. “But then, I found out that if you just live each day the best you can, well, things get better. They do.” That was one of the things I most loved about Emmylou. She wasn’t afraid to sing about the dregs of misery, and she celebrated joy. Her music kept me going when I didn’t think I could.

I’m back to writing my song. I write a little each day, the best I can. It’s titled “Emmylou and Jesse Drove Me Home”. It’s getting better. It is.

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THE QUEEN IS OUT.

Every year for about ten years, when I’ve told people I’d be claiming the title of “Queen” on my birthday, wherein Ed does my bidding for an entire weekend, some smart aleck says, “Yeah? So what else is new?” or “And tell me a time you’re not?”

I’ve gotten used to these comments, and, during pre-birthday time this year, I graciously explained to the smart alecks, that, yes, I am generally comfortable stating my desires, and, yes, I do get my way from time to time, but Birthday Queendom is bigger and better than ordinary queendom. It’s ordinary queendom on crack! I mean, I can do whatever I want and I don’t have to lift a finger. 

But–And I know this falls under the heading of “Measliest First World Problem Ever”–being Queen for the weekend is not without its challenges.

For one thing, how is a Queen supposed to enjoy doing exactly what she wants, like, say, going to see Seattle Rep’s “Nina Simone: 4 Women”, when she knows the story is the kind that shakes and emotionally drains her faithful, sensitive servant? Queens are benevolent, right? And will the rest of the day even be fun if her servant is wiped out? Better to see a romcom, one the Queen and her servant will both enjoy and not fret over.

Same with meal preparation and cleanup. After the Queen’s servant preps, cooks, and serves the Queen something delectable, such as pork tenderloin and fruit salsa and grilled romaine with anchovies and Caesar dressing, is it permissible for a Queen to sit quietly and watch her servant clean up the messy kitchen, when the Queen knows his back hurts—I mean, hurts a lot? Is it Queenlike to jump up and help him? Queens can expend massive energy figuring this out.

And what if the Queen feels boring for not coming up with novel, exciting, queenly things to do, opting, instead, for walks in beautiful woods with waterfalls, and breakfasts and lunches and coffee at Valley restaurants, and afternoon naps and movies, and nights at home, listening to music. Ohmygod, I’m boring, the Queen is prone to think, as she combs through and discards listings of What’s Going On In Seattle This Weekend. I’m settling into placid routine, the Queen moans. Maintaining a Queenly image can be exhausting.

And, as far as the smart alecks go—Well, there is that little matter of Ed’s and my wedding vows. Ed had long told me he thought women were in charge anyway, and he hoped I’d rule him gently, so, at our wedding, right after “I promise to be your wife, your lover, and your friend,” I added, “and to rule you very gently.” I suppose that promise had a slight Queenly ring to it, which somewhat supports the smart alecks’ view.

Anyway, I’m not going to be Birthday Queen anymore. I’ll just be Ed’s everyday queen, who does pretty much what she always does, cranked up a bit for the occasion. I’ve learned that with great power comes great responsibility. Thanks, but no thanks. Queendom does not agree with me.

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OUR SILLY ANNIVERSARY

Like most married couples, Ed and I have our “stock” stories, ones we pull out and tell at parties. One of our favorites is about finding out, after five years of what we thought was married life, that our union wasn’t a legal one. My ex and I had separated in the seventies, and, as a result of a drunken $25 bid he made on a no fault divorce at an ACLU event, and the fact that the attorney failed to file the prize divorce (I know, I know, you get what you pay for), I was, in 1988—Drum roll—a real life, bona fide bigamist.

After telling everybody we knew that I was a Bigamist!, I had an attorney friend in Mississippi work with a judge to straighten things out. She said, just to be safe, it would be good idea for us to marry again. We said our vows to each other at our church, a big smile on our pastor’s face as he told our story, the congregation cracking up, and then feasted on a cake with white frosting and green letters that said “FINALLY”.

We now had two anniversaries, six months apart, October 16, when we first wed and April 17, when we re-wed. We called, (well, I called) the one in April our “Silly Anniversary”, and each year, we tried to do something silly. Ice cream at odd hours or a vacation when we needed to be working or silly dancing in the living room. But, not long ago, as we told our bigamy story at a dinner gathering, I realized that, though we’d kept celebrating the October one with a trip or a concert, we had all but forgotten to celebrate the April one, the silly one, and it had become nothing but an old story.

Our Silly Anniversary is coming up, and this year, we decided to bring it back. Well, I decided to bring it back, and I told Ed, who said he’ll bring it back with me. And then, bless him, a day or so later, he told me he’s thought of something silly for the day, and he’ll surprise me with it.  He says it involves music and food, so it can’t miss.

Back in ’88, after we got that little bigamy problem taken care of, Ed and I were laughing about it, and then, in a moment of seriousness, noted that, not once during the process, did we consider the fact that this would have been a perfect time to get out of a marriage that wasn’t a legal one. Though we’d had times together so wonderful we soared to the heavens, we’d also been through agonizing times, when we felt trapped in hell. But calling quits to our union didn’t enter our minds, because the silliest thing in the world would be for us to be apart.

Happy Silly Anniversary to Us. And many more.

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