Four Months' Growth

So, it's been just a little under four months since I posted. I was in the midst of my first NaNo novel, teaching, and dealing with day-to-day "stuff."  Blogging took a backseat, and it wasn't until today, my first day of Spring Break, that I could even get to this page. 

Here's a rundown on the growth rings I've accumulated:

1. I ended up with about 25,000 words in my NaNo novel. Not bad for the inaugural effort!
2. I had a 100% retention in both my 0900 courses in the Fall--not 100% pass rate, but not losing any to withdrawals is pretty fantastic!
3. I continue to fight with ADD brain, but there are certain strides that I'm making.
4. I had to drop out of my women's fiction critique group. They were awesome, supportive women, but my plate got so full that I wasn't able to pull my weight, and it wasn't fair to them to pull me along. They've left the door open, and I hope someday I'll be able to catch up with them.
5. December and January were months full of depression, but I fought through it thanks to a good therapist and good friends.
6. My job is being forced to change pretty drastically because of overzealous, under-informed legislators, so I've had to apply to a graduate certificate for composition studies that will begin this summer. Hopefully, I'll be accepted.
7. I was honored to be invited to share some knowledge and experiences about Southern Women's Fiction in a presentation at the Casper College Humanities Festival.  Here's a link: Kitchens, Porches, and Pews: Southern Women's Voices Through Narrative

Time moves on, and so will I. 

Cleaning My Plate

Food is a conduit to all things Southern, at least in my opinion. It pervades every part of our culture; it builds and destroys relationships; and it has rules for every occasion. With those rules comes two that were drilled into my head from an early age: never put more on your plate than you can eat, and always clean your plate.

I can't say that I've always been successful with both of those rules, and in reflecting on it, these rules moved past food and seeped into other parts of my life. I almost always have too much on my plate, whether by choice, by default, or by the excess mind-baggage brought on by having an ADD brain that is hellbent on working overtime without time and a half pay! This all leaves me questioning myself, wondering if I'm measuring up or letting people down. My to-do list is a barrage of shoulda, coulda, woulda, hafta's.

So here I sit, taking some time out of the to-do list to blog and reflect on what I would tell me, if I were my friend. And that's the key, isn't it--if I were my friend. How many of us take on work, hobbies, and relationships to fill up our time and lives so that we can live from outside ourselves instead of from within? How many of us define our worth based on how others see or react to us? How many of us clean our plates and stuff down the contents whether we're hungry or not, just because "we're supposed to?"

I want to buy new dishes and eat from them whatever makes me feel good and healthy. I want to be more thoughtful about what I put on that plate and be okay with deciding it's fine to change my mind about eating something if I lose my taste for it.  I want to balance good choices with decadent dessert choices. Most of all, I'd like to be able to be my friend. I have lost sight of that through the years, while I've been busy trying to clean my plate.

picture from http://momland.wordpress.com/tag/clean-plate-club/

Homesick

I got excellent news yesterday. My dad DOES NOT have lung cancer. Yet, today, I'm still feeling sad, still feeling a little out of sorts. I should be jumping up and down, celebrating. So what is it that causes this heavy, dragging weight on my chest today?

I think it's the pull of home--those apron strings that I added elastic to as I moved almost 2,000 miles from where my family has lived since the 1700's. That South of contradictions that so many of us want to escape from while at the same time longing to throw our arms around it and give it some sugar. Under the neck, where the old lady sweat smell of our great-grandmother lingers. That cloyingly sweet, familiar smell of cherry pipe tobacco mixed with the musk of coondogs. Daddy's breath filled with eye-burning secondhand smoke of a Vantage cigarette tinged with yeasty Miller Lite. Watching Mom's hands with the blue dye of denim worn into the weave of adhesive tape that wrapped around her fingers as she sewed loop after loop of gold thread on back pockets. The feel of bare toes sinking into red mud so strong that it sucks at my feet to keep them from moving forward. The grit of soil that scraped my lips as I bit into a thick, sun-warmed strawberry just picked from the plant. The way my butt felt sitting in a perfectly curved apple tree branch, bark imprinting itself into my back as I read The Secret Garden.

This was childhood - the romanticized memory of it. Filled with people, places, sounds, tastes, fears, expectations, and not-quite-true truths. It's what I  choose to keep of childhood that I draw my stories from, and not all those stories are true. Some of the stories I create are to show what it was; others are to tell what I wished it had been, and yet others are to smudge the truth to what I can bear to remember. It's the heart of the story that is usually the truth--even if it's just the truth I choose to believe.

I didn't leave my home because I didn't love it. In leaving my home, I think I found it, understood it, and actually valued it more. Thomas Wolfe's title says "You can't go home again." And that's true insofar as that it won't be the same place, time, and situation. Moreover, you won't be the same person. That's where the mistake is, isn't it? Expecting that memory of home to be frozen in time----to be the truth--where the definitions and boundaries of relationship and place and family  are clearly defined. To go home, you have to accept that the people, place and yourself have changed. That the love of family doesn't necessarily mean that you know them anymore--they don't completely know you anymore either. So, we need to keep talking, keep telling stories, for in telling stories of what was, we better understand what is, and we can hope for and work towards what will be...could be.

So this week, I miss that place and those people so very much. Yet, if I still lived there, I would not be me; I would be a different form of me--the one I can't imagine, but that's another story.