Growth is Not a Straight Line

This spring in Minnesota has been an odd juxtaposition of stop-and-go thawing, warmth then cold then warmth again. But the weather has been the undercurrent to the other sorts of shifts, the way our family is getting ready to send our daughter Abby to college and how our granddaughter Camille is learning to tell us everything on her mind as she runs on her newly-turned-two-years-old legs. Our son Shawn's art career is expanding, our daughter-in-law Beka is learning about urban farming, and Mick is getting ready to attend a conference in the Azores. I'm training new slush readers at Every Day Poets, lining up tasks for Abby's high school graduation party, and doing everything else I can to keep busy so I don't dwell on the fact that she won't live in this house with us come September.

All of this is growth. The reminders that this is the season for growth are everywhere, in the way our grass is suddenly brilliant green and how the violas have exploded in the front garden. It's there in the robin's nest tucked in around the support beams beneath our deck. I see it in the way the crabapple has suddenly burst into a white-petaled extravaganza in our front yard. Growth comes no matter what, regardless of whether we turn the calendar page or snow appears in May. There's no stopping it.

I've heard parents say they wish they could keep their kids little forever. As I watched Camille at her own birthday party over the weekend, I was reminded just how much a parent has to be involved when a child is two years old, how things move between exhilarating and exhausting. I watched Shawn and Beka being parents, something that they weren't only a few years ago. My son, who used to come home completely banged up from skateboarding, now chases his daughter away from the alley behind their house, keeps dangerous objects out of her hands, and loses sleep when she cries. And I'm glad it's his turn. I'm happy he's grown into the man he is.

Abby's turn is next. She'll move from this beautiful, stubborn, smart, and sometimes tender high school student to a college-educated woman before we know it. She'll have stops and starts along the way, shifts that force her to reframe who she is.

Winter seemed like it would last forever this year. Of course, it didn't, in spite of the snow that kept returning after we thought we were done. And now, the sweetness of spring is sharper, more deeply appreciated than ever.

Abby in front of her high school. Photo by Luann Glaser.

DO A KIND THING

As a resident of the midwestern United States, I'm quite familiar with the destructive capability tornadoes possess. And so I've been glued to the news coverage of yesterday's massive tornado and its aftermath in the Oklahoma City area (Moore, Oklahoma, to be specific). The images of a shattered community are heartbreaking. This is one of the worst tornado disasters ever.

If you haven't seen those images, look here.

Huffington Post has a list of ways to help Oklahoma tornado victims here.

Please consider helping.

First Five Fragments for Friday

Your weekly offering of writing/art prompts.

1. Surprise beneath our deck: two robin nests, one on each side of one of the main support posts. Wonder if the robins are related.

2. What we've found in our delivered pile of compost this week: flattened plastic bottle, rocks, bits of glass, a piece of metal, a wooden stake, pull tabs from pop cans, bit of plastic bags. In the past, we found a man's (we think) sandal.

3. Now that warm weather allows windows to be open, we're reacquainting ourselves with sounds of wind through tree branches, wind chimes, cardinals who just want to reproduce, motorcycles, kids playing outside, barking dogs, airplanes, school buses, laughter.

4. Life in the suburbs isn't always about the automobiles:

This guy hangs out on our neighbor's roof every day.

5. Which photo would you choose: one of a couple smiling at the camera or one of that same couple hugging each other?

Happy Friday! I'll be digging in compost this weekend. And you?

52 Ways to Shift Your Focus: Reconsider How You Define "End"

Shift #52: Reconsider How You Define "End"

In the year since I began my "52 Ways to Shift Your Focus" series, I've loved thinking about all the ways people get stuck in their creative processes and their lives. Pushing myself to write a weekly post on this topic has forced me to reconsider how and why I write, as well as how I approach the work of others. It's been an honor to hear from readers and to bounce ideas off people close to me.

The last post in a series like this is tough to write. Do I put up a big bang of a post that pulls everything together? Do I say what I'm doing next? Do I look for other work?

Ah. Wait a minute. What I really want to do is this: reconsider how we define the end of a creative work or, really, the alleged completion of any project/task/responsibility/interest that has consumed a significant bit of time in our lives.

Creating this project has made thinking about ways to shift my focus become a habit. In that sense, this project will live in my head for a long while. It'll be there the next time I pace around and wonder why I can't sit still long enough to accomplish anything. So, for me, it really doesn't end with this fifty-second post. I am struck by the persistent idea that "the end", as it pertains to creative work, is only applicable at a writer's or artist's death. And, even then, creative work can inspire and twist someone else's art, so it may not actually be the end.

Once we put our ideas out there into the grand stew pot of creative work, someone else can ladle out bits and pieces to rearrange in their own bowls. (Hmm. It's clear I cook. Napkin?) All goofy metaphors aside, being a writer or painter or photographer is such an essential part of some people that no project is really the end. There's always more. There are stories and pieces of art that feel complete and we sign off on them, but then there's the next thing. There's the other way the project could have been done, there's the project that erupted from a spark while we were doing something else, there's the response we want to make to someone else's work. There's the way the sun catches the dew in the morning, the way the clouds move across the sky, or the last thing our kid said while heading out the door and we absolutely have to capture it somehow. There are all these bits and pieces of our lives that come together to be distilled into another bit of beauty or a realization that rings true for a community. There is no end to that.

It's somewhat serendipitous that I'm concluding this series right now, as my daughter gets ready for her high school graduation in a couple of weeks. Yes, I'm exactly the sort of parent who tears up over that kind of stuff . I've been trying to apply ways to shift my thoughts away from this being the end of Abby's childhood and toward the wide open possibilities that she will encounter at the University of Minnesota this fall. This series is not just for people to work out their creative project kinks; it's a way of being in the world. Shifting focus. Seeing "the end" as an open door. Stepping back at looking at something from another angle. And doing it again if necessary.

Aside from the fact that my future Tuesday posts will have a different title, I don't know what's next. That's a beautiful thing.

First Five Fragments for Friday

Your weekly offering of writing/art prompts.

1. Name the ghost that visits you most often.

2. The spark at the end of life: biological/chemical or spiritual?

3. In spite of the stormy destruction of her home, she rebuilt, added softness, settled in, laid eggs.

4. Where did this dialogue come from? "I got a chicken!" "I can't find my way out." "I'm stunned!" "Oh, no, I'm dying." "You have to learn to disengage." "Hold on, I've got to put my spirit back in my body." "That spider is gross. I'm naming him Grosser."

5. Dear Target: Please stop asking me if I want to save money by getting one of your REDcards. Make your cashiers stop treating me like I flunked economics 101 because I continue to refuse your REDcard even as they tell me how much money I would have saved as they total my purchases of dog food, underwear, soap, and milk. They tell me I can set it up as a debit card attached to my personal checking account! I don't want another card to keep track of while you track me.

Happy Friday! Happy Mother's Day to those who celebrate it this coming Sunday.

photo courtesy of morguefile.com

52 Ways to Shift Your Focus: Stop Apologizing

Shift #51: Stop Apologizing

Remember when you were nearing graduation, figuring out what you wanted to do with your life? Maybe you got advice, suggestions, offers to show you how to do this or that.

Remember who you tried to please? Why you said yes to things that didn't fit? And then, later, maybe you burst out of your own life after trying to fit into a mold that took you far away from the creative work you wanted to do because those artistic dreams were just that, dreams. Not a real job.

As adults who do creative work, we know that we have to get over that and just do what we're going to do. We find ways to make a life that incorporates the writing or art for which we have a passion with the need to pay the rent and buy food and even health insurance, if we're lucky. 

Still. We go along this path and life sidelines us. We have kids. We have mortgages. We have dogs who eat underwear out of the laundry basket. Charities call us up and ask us for donations and we wonder if it would be rude to say we could use a donation to keep the creative work going. People still try to fit us into a category that suits their view of what an adult life looks like.

When I was getting ready to head to college, my father offered his strong advice that I would be smart to obtain a civil service position. He was a federal civil servant himself, pleased with the job security and benefits that came with his job that spanned the Truman through Carter administrations. He wanted me to have the security he had, to have health insurance and regular holidays. He also wanted me to go to college, but that may not have been his biggest concern. He didn't quite understand how my love of books was going to translate into anything other than teaching unless I went into journalism. At least, this is my best guess of what he was thinking as I look back from a chasm of years.

My mother, too, wanted me to be secure. Doing creative work wasn't secure. My older sister, who got a fine arts degree in photography, worked in banking and law. My older brother, who once told me he originally wanted to go into architecture, ended up studying engineering and now is a real estate agent. Creative types, both of them, channeled into other work.

As the youngest kid, I decided that wasn't how I wanted my life to play out. The interesting thing about making a deliberate choice is that, even after practicing this for years, I still sometimes find myself feeling like less of an adult than my peers in the eyes of those same peers. For example, there was the fellow parent who asked me what I'm doing now that I no longer work as a health assistant at the nearby elementary school. When I told her I was on the staff of an online poetry journal and doing some writing of my own, she said, oh, you don't have a real job, then. There are those who figure that, since I sit in front of my computer in a home office, my work is certainly interruptible (which shocks me in this age of telecommuting), so why don't I answer the phone in the morning?

Those are the exact moments when I take a deep breath, squelch the urge to kick someone in the shins, and focus on how much better my life works when I do not apologize for who I am. For doing creative work. For drawing boundaries. For having a partner and kids who wrap their arms around the way each of us have different talents and make a variety of contributions both inside and outside our home. 

My parents would be supportive of my life now in an old-fashioned way because I'm married and they would figure I just get to stay home. They still wouldn't completely get it. And I'm thinking about that quite a lot as my daughter gets ready to head off to college later this year. I've been trying to encourage her to try everything, to follow the path that she feels with her heart and make choices that fit for her, not the choices that fit someone else's vision of who she is. Including mine.

The real strength of a writer or artist or musician or anyone else who follows a creative path against the advice of others is the way we come to this: the certainty that we are better when we acknowledge who we really are  and find a way to do work that isn't at odds with our deepest selves.

Some of the reasons I ignore ringing phones.

First Five Fragments for Friday

Your weekly offering of writing/art prompts.

1. Minnesota spring weather and boomerangs - similarities?

2. What keeps you awake at night?

3. The last group discussion I was part of focused on wonder. My mind went in the direction of  wonder as awe. The hostess went in the direction of wonder as questioning. Which way would you have gone?

4. The fowl version of happy hour on a patio: the mallards who have been hanging out on our next-door-neighbor's roof.

5.  Take off your watch for the weekend.

Happy Friday.

Finally.

When You Have Friends Who Blog…..

In the interest of shaking up my blog posting schedule, here's a fun little exercise thanks to my friend, Oonah, who blogs at Parallel Oonahverse. She got these questions from another blogger, Amos Greig, at A New Ulster. Yes, when you have friends who blog, sometimes the posts you put up are all their fault.

Feel free to swipe these questions for your own fun.

1. If you could be any type of animal, what would you be and why?

Hoo, boy, it's easier to think of what I would NOT want to be, like a gnat that eventually gets violently swatted by someone who thinks it's the biggest pest in the world. Or a gorilla that lives in a zoo and gets to watch faces too similar to its own stare back at it. Or a wasp that sends people into a panic until they find a way to kill it.

Maybe a seagull, who gets to soar far overhead and gets to hang out near the surf all day long. That could work.

2. Is there anything you collect? If so, what?

Cookbooks, rocks, earrings, photos, pens that write without skipping.

Does dust count?

3. What is the overall goal of your blog?

An ongoing exploration of the creative life.

4. How do you feel in big crowds of people?

Depends on the crowd. If it's at the Minnesota State Fair, I love it. If it's at a science conference, I feel like a total fraud (my husband is a scientist). If it's at a punk rock concert, I keep looking around to see if I'm the oldest one there.

5. Mobile phones (cell phones) - what's your opinion of them?

Necessary and fun tool in my life. I try to be polite about its use so someone doesn't shove it in an orifice that isn't quite the right shape.

6. If you could decorate your home in any style, what would that be?

Huh. Why is that important?

Okay. Well. Clean lines, soothing colors, edgy artwork, tons of books. What do you call that?

7. Do you believe in extraterrestrials?

Seriously? Sure. We'd be silly to think our planet is the only one with life forms.

8. If you could meet any mythological creature, what would it be and why?

All the creatures Hagrid took care of in the Harry Potter stories except the big spider. Yeah, I know, that's more than one creature and it's not exactly classical mythology.

9. Would you rather stay busy or have a lot of free time? Why?

Right now, I'd rather have a lot of free time because 2013 has been crazy busy and I'm getting a little tired.

10. If you would have a chance to travel to the moon, would you do it?

Given my fear of heights, maybe not.

11. What music album are you still frequently listening to now that you also listened to years ago?

How many years are we talking about? Because I've listened to Rancid's "Let the Dominoes Fall" for about three years straight. On CD and my iPod. No one has albums anymore, except a few people with a vinyl fetish. I go through phases where I listen to a lot of Pink Floyd, Doors, and Led Zeppelin. I love late 60s/early 70s rock.

And that ends this People Magazine-esque version of One Minnesota Writer. Back to you, Oonah.


Oh, and Happy May Day!


UPDATE! Go check out Constance Brewer's answers at her blog, Life on the Periphery. See, the fun just goes on and on.