brown paper stories

I hate to use the word artist to describe myself.  I’m not covered in tattoos and don’t work a night shift at IHOP.  I’m not struggling to make ends meet, recovering from a drug habit, or walking around with paint on my elbows.  I’m a lawyer, for goodness sakes.  The amount of artistry it takes to craft a well-rounded, persuasive argument is only appreciated by a select few.  To everyone else, lawyers are just suits whose mouths open and shut and money comes funneling into their pockets every time they answer the phone.  As if.

But even now that I’ve made a conscience decision to walk away from practicing law, it’s hard.  Hard to call myself a writer.  Hard to create things simply for the pleasure of creating them.  I feel a need to aim that ambition, the same one that fueled me through honors classes and bar exam courses and clerkships, directly into the heart of the creative process.  It’s not good enough just to write.  Any fool with a laptop can do that. I need to be validated.  I need to be paid.  I need for this to mean something.

But art is subjective.  What makes one person laugh or cry or want to call their mother might be pure drivel to another.   My husband read a blog post once that I found particularly emotional and decided to point out an inverted quotation mark.   Thanks, dude.  Glad that hit you right there in the ticker.

When I was writing my novel, I stayed up into wee hours of the night pouring my heart into the story.  I went away for writing weekends.  I traveled to Upstate New York and rode cabs alone in Manhattan and hired babysitters in the stale Texas heat just to finish.  It took almost four years of painstaking rewrites and hundreds of deleted pages.  An editor helped me comb out the background narrative and useless rookie mistakes.  But then, I expected my hard work to pay off.  I would find an agent.  I would get published.  My words would matter.  

And yet here I sit, after putting two children to bed and wiping off kitchen counters and throwing in yet another load of whites.  I don’t have the look of an artist, sitting here in black-rimmed glasses and an oversized t-shirt, with a box of triscuits and a jar of peanut butter by my side.  I instead resemble a slightly-crazy person, ignoring reality and doing what I didn’t think possible:  I’m giving in to my instincts. I’m not published.  I don’t have tangible validation.  And yet I keep on going because I simply cannot imagine a world in which I have to stop.  I put my hands over my ears when that small little voice starts screaming in my head.  No one cares.  Quit while you’re ahead.  You’ll never make it as a writer.  Damn you, little voice.  You are meaningless.

I thought perhaps I’ve not been praying enough, or listening enough, or being present enough in this writing process.  I stopped myself tonight, standing right in front of the microwave, and prayed that God would reveal to me the best path.  How I should be reaching people.  Or perhaps learning not to care so much about what those people think.  After all, I can’t move mountains.  My name might not be in marquee lights. But I can certainly speak with passion – words driven straight from the heart that was formed and blessed by God in my mother’s womb.  My heart is ravenous with emotion.  My soul is aching to be heard.  My hands tremble at the thought of writing about sadness and joy in a way that has never been done before.

And then it comes to me: God’s listening.  I create simply for the joy of creating.  My words are an offering and a sacrifice, and I can imagine no other audience that matters more.

I am an artist. I offer up these small gifts, my brown-paper stories filled with sparkling words.  And that matters, even if no one else is paying attention.

Give bran a chance

I’m not a huge fan of blogs that are only about cooking.  Don’t get me wrong.  I love to bake, and there’s nothing quite so enchanting as seeing a Nikon zoom into a bowl of flour and watching frame-by-frame as the butter is mixed in.  There goes the sugar.  Is that unbaked dough?  Are those hands molding it into the shape of bread? Riveting. But sometimes food is just so important that you need to talk about it.  Like bran muffins.  Let’s discuss.

Bran muffins are usually reserved for the advanced-in-age-crowd with intestinal blockages.  That little raisin-dotted hockey puck acts like a snowplow, dragging its cardboard-tasting self through your colon for a thorough Spring cleaning.  It’s the muffin that’s left at Starbucks after the others have gone. It’s the muffin at a conference room breakfast buffet that you pass up for the crappy plain bagel.  It’s unloved.

But fiber is good for all ages, and I just knew there was a bran muffin recipe out there that didn’t taste like wood shavings.  So I searched online and baked and adapted, and came up with the following.  I decided to rename these muffins “really tasty blueberry banana muffins,” considering the negative PR associated with bran.  It’s our little secret.

So in essence, you mix the ingredients below in a large bowl in no specific order, in between warming up your lukewarm coffee and changing diapers, and then spoon the chunky mess into muffin tins and bake at 375 degrees until they seem done. I promise – no pictures of my grungy hands dripping the batter into my beat-up muffin pans.  You can imagine.

Really Tasty Blueberry Banana Muffins

(Not bran.  Don’t call them bran or your family will rush out for donuts.  Stress the really tasty part.  Enunciate blueberry)

1 1/2 cups All-Bran buds (it looks like dog food, but it’s actually not)

1 cup buttermilk (this gives it a wonderful flavor)

1/3 cup vegetable oil (please don’t sub in applesauce. You’re making healthy bran muffins for crying out loud.  Live a little)

1 egg

2/3 cup brown sugar

1/2 teaspoon vanilla extract (I just pour a splash in.  Use your judgment)

A few shakes of cinnamon

1 cup all-purpose flour

1 banana – all mashed up with a fork

1 cup frozen or fresh blueberries

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

You will be surprised at the looks on your family’s face when they eat them.  No one throws up.  No one says “I’ll have that cheese danish instead, thanks.”  There actually is no cheese danish offered, which makes that last part work out so well.

Finally – a bran muffin that’s worthy of love. You might eat so many you’ll send your husband to the grocery store for more toilet paper.  But whatever you do, don’t give up on healthy food.  Just tweak it and re-make it and rediscover ways to make boring things taste wonderful. Even if that means changing the name. Even if it means an extra tablespoon of sugar or nuts or berries.  Even if it means telling your kids it’s really tasty. Because it is. Trust me on this. Even your colon will thank you.

apple of my eye

I was annoyed.  Here we were on a budget and my husband was off buying random things for his computer.  Didn’t he understand I’d see the bill?  Didn’t he get it that we are trying to be frugal?  The conversation went something like this:

“I see you bought something at the apple store,” I said.  I was scrubbing food off plates after dinner.

“Huh?”  He looks up at me from his magazine, looking empty and confused.

“You don’t recall what you spent hundreds of dollars on just last week?”  I rolled my eyes.  I scraped harder.

“It must have been some kind of mistake.  Maybe they mischarged me for something I bought on itunes.”

“Not possible,” I said.  “It said apple, not itunes. You should call them.”

The following week, I emailed my husband the 1-800 number listed next to the charge on the credit card bill.

“Did you call?” I asked one morning.  “The apple store, I mean?  That’s a lot of money to be overcharged.”

“Back off,” he said in a hurry.  “I’m in meetings all morning.  But I will.”

On Saturday, I brought it up again, how crazy it was that he didn’t remember what he bought, or that apple really overcharged him that much, and reminded him that we had to cut back.  Did he not take this seriously? Why was he acting like it was no big deal?  Am I the only one around here that worries about such things?

But Sunday was Mother’s Day, so I let it go.  Early in the morning, while the sun was just peering around the horizon, my husband got out of bed and woke the children.  They all came bounding in, singing and yelling.  “Happy Mother’s Day!” my daughter shrieks, handing me a poem she had written and a box she claimed to wrap herself.  Her hair was wild and messy as she sat cross-legged in a tie-dye shirt and underwear on our king size bed. “Open it!” she yelled.

I start to unwrap it, and I see the little familiar white logo peering around the wads of tape. A brand new iphone.  From the apple store. My heart sank.  All that scolding and nagging, for goodness sakes.  I felt ashamed.  “I saved up my allowance to pay for it,” my husband says as he points to a wad of cash in the top drawer.  Just put it in the bank and use it on the card.  He had a glimmer in his eye, like he pulled one over on me.  Like he got me good. And he did.

I hugged my kids.  I read the poem with gusto.  I ripped open the box and hugged my husband for the secret he held onto for weeks.  I smiled at the gesture.  For the love and sacrifices and surprises my family has always shown me in my short stint at motherhood.  I texted my husband later, on my brand new phone.

You make it so easy to be a mother, it said.

I love apples.  You can throw them in a bag on the way to the park.  You can surround them with cinnamon and bake them in a crust. Or you can talk into them, and hear your husband’s deep voice on the other end telling you he’ll be home soon.  Kiss my boy for me.  Keep the soup warm.

My family is so fun to love.  They make my heart swell and I just want to wallow in them for the rest of my days.  It’s not the poems or expensive gifts or trips to the vegetarian place I love (that they hate) that matter.  It’s that I get to see the members of my family open their eyes every morning, one by one.  I get to wrap their sleepy bodies in my arms at night.  It’s the expressions on their faces when they are excited, and the longing need for me when they are weeping.  It’s the surge of sweetness I feel when I touch them, like a slice of warm apple pie on my tongue.

Advice for my daughter

My dear daughter,

You are so precious at this age.  Everything I do is right, and true, and my kisses are like pink bubble gum sparkles on your cheeks.   I am taking it all in that you love me so.   But soon, you will see the ugly and cruel side of life.  I will stop making sense to you, and you just might not like me as much.   I always hope that you’ll laugh at me and consider me wise, even into my age-induced Alzheimer’s days to come.  But in the meantime, consider this advice:

• When in doubt on what spice to use (whether it’s in eggs or potatoes), use Herbs de Province. You can’t go wrong.

• You will someday be tempted with many vices.  Some are minor, but others have lifetime consequences.   Please don’t experiment with drugs.  They kill.  Got it?  Are we clear on this?

• If your clothes are too tight, it looks like you’re tying to hard.  Let your body speak for itself.

• Embrace who you are.  If someone suggests you to change your character, find a way to distance yourself.  Such people are toxic.

• Laugh all the time.  It’s good for your soul.

• Find true friends, and work to keep them.  They are more precious than diamonds.

• Pray.

• If you are engaged and you have the tiniest shred of doubt that the man you are about to marry isn’t right for you, walk away.  It can be the day before.  It can be the day off.  I promise I won’t judge.  Just politely return all the presents and keep your head held high.

• Kids are glorious, but don’t rush into having them.  Enjoy your freedom.

• Don’t eat low-fat ice cream.  Go for the real stuff.

• A meal that takes a long time to prepare, with excellent ingredients, is worth it.  It shows how much you appreciate your guests.

• Always, always, always tell the truth.  Lies are corrosive.

• Nothing you could ever do in this world would cause me to stop loving you. Please remember that however hard you fall, I’m here to catch you.

• Look for character traits in a man that your father has: strength, honor, loyalty, and wit.  Because you’ll be married to him for a long time, and you need to laugh through many trials.

• Never email thank-you notes.  I have on occasion, but I’m not proud of it.

• Reading fiction is never a waste of time.  It cultivates a garden in your brain filled with glorious blooms of words and characters.  Speaking of, read Atlas Shrugged, and Jane Eyre.

• Wash your hands to the tune of Happy Birthday.  Twice.

• Please know that when I die, I’m not forever gone.

• Live life with wild abandon.  Freely and fully, knowing you are a child of God, rich in spirit and talents.

• Sing and play any instrument you can.  Music is the closest you’ll ever feel to heaven.

• Cut all your hair off at least once in your life.

• Travel to Europe.

• When you think there’s nothing left – when life is bitter and cruel and seems like it’s suffocating you – laugh.  Then laugh some more.  Always find the funny, because it’s there like a rough-cut jewel.

In your five-year-old world, I know so much.  But soon, when I fall out of favor in your eyes, I hope you take these bits of advice to heart.  My sweet young daughter, light of my life, child of my heart. . . It’s a rough world out there, but the battle has been won long before you entered it.  Your job is just to navigate through the best you can, with your head held high, smiling in the light of the morning sun.

Be the woman I know you can be.

Mom

Brushstrokes

The artwork of Georges Seurat is ugly when you stand up close.  The compilation of colors and brushstrokes and dots make no sense when you’re staring directly at them.  You go take a look at Monet’s Water Lilies from a foot away and tell me I don’t know what I’m talking about. I think life is that way.  Up close, it’s messy and ugly and disorganized.  But just take a look how breathtaking it is when viewed as a whole.

CAMILLE PISSARRO: “Landscape at Pontoise”, 1874.

Just this week, I tried to capture unique, individual moments.  Globs of paint just slapped on the page.

• I walked into my daughter’s room and my son had happily covered himself in black Sharpie marker. I mean all over. On his legs and his hands and his stomach. “What in the world have you done?”

• “Don’t you ever swing with your brother walking behind you,” I yell to my daughter as my son lands face-down in the dirt, screaming.  “Swing! Swing!” he says to me as if I didn’t just see what happened.  Then she starts crying because she feels bad and says  he shouldn’t have been there to start with.

• “Can you read just one more chapter?” my daughter begs.  “Just one more?” She cuddles down into the pillow with sleepy eyes.

• “You eat that carrot,” I say.  “It’s good for you.  There’s just one more on your plate, for goodness sakes.  It’s not like I’m asking you to eat a mouthful of dirt. Why are you making that face?”

• “Ice creeeeeeam!” my son shrieks.  “Not for breakfast, kiddo,” I say in return. He throws himself down on the floor in protest.

• I look at my daughter, with a headband and a ruffled purple skirt and a shirt that says Girls Rock.  She’s wearing shades with Tinkerbell on them and her hair is all messy. “But why are you wearing sweat pants underneath?” I ask.  “It’s 90 degrees out.” She shrugs.

• “Is that hail I hear?” my husband says, as he rushes outside to check the garden.

• “Time for bath,” I said as my son took off running.  I had to chase him all over the living room while he squealed with delight.  I finally grabbed his shirt and pulled him to the floor.  “Noooooo!” he yelled.  “No bath!”

• “Let’s move,” I say to both kids.  We are late, as usual.  My daughter’s pony tail looks horrible.  It’s all lumpy.  And is that a stain on her jumper?

• “I’ll just have Wheaties,” my husband said.  “But I made chicken pot pie,” I whined.  “I worked so hard and made the crust and everything.”  I’m not proud to admit it, but I think I stomped my foot a little.

• Why is there a pair of scissors lying in the bathroom?  Why is this toothpaste open?  And why, for the love of everything in this world, do you kids always run around messing things up the very moment I clean them?

• Re-fold that towel.  Put away your shoes.  No, not in the middle of the floor, but in your closet.  Please don’t hit your sister.  No, you can’t have another juice box.  Did you get into my makeup? PICK THAT UP, for crying out loud!

But when you stand back from afar, it’s a blend of screaming and laughing and crying that somehow makes up a family.  It’s the texture and pattern of our journey.  I try and gather up all these tiny brushstrokes in my heart.  At the end, I’ll look back and think to myself –

Oh dear God.  How breathtakingly beautiful.

My fancy pedicure

All spring, I’ve wandered around with dry, calloused heels.  I thought it was about time for professional attention, so I bopped over to my favorite day spa.  I say day spa loosely, since it’s really just a Vietnamese nail salon that happens to have daytime hours.

But I’ll take it, and I sit down to the usual French pedicure and the pleasure of a barely-functioning vibrating chair.  It’s always the same, really.  They shove a paper in front of me with all sorts of upgrades and add-ons, but I always refuse in the name of economy, or habit, or fear that they might start painting elderflowers on my big toe because of a communication breakdown. But this day was different.  On this day, I’m doing something fancy.

The lady seemed shocked with I told her what I wanted – the extra-long pedicure with citrus scrub.  She nodded at this with approval, like I had solved a world’s riddle or chosen the right name for my first-born child.   “Ah, you’ll like it,” she said.  I planned on it, since it cost an extra ten bucks. I looked forward to feeling the tension ooze out of my body through my feet.  What girl gets to have citrus scrub on a Tuesday afternoon?  I do, suckahs.

I closed my eyes as I started to ease my feet into the water, but a moment later yanked them back out.  Why is this water a thousand degrees?  Are they trying to scald my nails off? “Too hot?” the lady asked as she nodded up and down with vigor.  If she was nodding, didn’t she already know the answer?

A bit of cold water later, the nail lady reaches for a Tupperware container with a strange orange substance that looked like gritty Gatorade.  Ah, the citrus scrub. Things are looking up.  At that very moment, I received a work phone call, my old office in a panic about a constable standing there with a subpoena demanding medical records.  The lady nodded at me again as she smeared this orange salty goo on my legs.

I was in the middle of my conversation about subpoenas and court orders when the nail lady began grinding this gritty substance into my legs.  My dear woman, you aren’t trying to get dried-on egg from a frying pan.  These are my legs we’re dealing with. As she begins to rub the top layer off my shin off, my phone beeps in with a physician who wants to go over a bad patient encounter.  A vague, orange-like smell rises to my nose.  It’s like my five-year-old’s lip smacker in “raving raspberry” that smells nothing like an actual raspberry but instead some cloyingly sweet imitation that only kids (and consumers at Bath & Body Works, apparently) just love.  And it was so bright I began to wonder if it might have been radioactive.

This lady is going to town rubbing fake orange salt into my legs – really putting her weight into it – while I’m trying to conduct business.  Why is she focusing so much on my legs?  Is she ever going to get to the toenails for goodness sakes?

I finally end my phone call and try to start editing a paper.  But the television on the wall is showing a Lifetime movie about a skinny girl in a fat suit to show those mean country-club snobs how awful they are to the plus-size crowd.  Just when I’m trying to fix a comma splice, the main character rips her fat suit off. How can I possibly not watch that?

The lady proceeds to slap hot towels on my legs (that now contain multiple abrasions from all the scrubbing), which burn like hell.  She whips through the nails like it’s an afterthought and then tells me to wait under the dryer.  I look outside with a sigh.  What was once a beautiful sunny day has now turned into a downpour.

I pay my extra fee for such a fancy pedicure and hobble to the front door. “Come again!” the lady says to me.  I reach down to touch my calf, only to realize the salt residue hasn’t been washed off and there’s a sticky substance remaining.  It rubs against my jeans and I’m a bit grossed out.  And annoyed.  And wondering if I might get skin cancer from that toxic, possibly radioactive orange goo being involuntarily pressed through my epidermis.

I am beginning to think it was all one fat joke. “Did you see her face when I put on those hot towels?” the nail lady says to her cousin. “That’ll teach them to stay off their cell phones.” All the ladies double over with laughter as they turn up Lifetime television. One woman puts the orange gel back in its protective case, so it doesn’t harm the environment.  And because left uncovered, it might kill everyone in the room that breaths in the toxic air.

And to think I paid extra to get something fancy.  What a sucker.    

What makes up a life?

I’ve heard it at least a hundred times.  Whether it is coming from a contestant on a reality show, an artist I’ve known, a musician I’ve sung with, or a fellow mom in book club – it’s always the same.

This is what I love.  This is what I was meant to do. This is my life.

It’s an innocuous phrase, meant to place emphasis on a particular thing as important.  I get it.  Others might wander aimlessly around, trying to find their footing on the tall and slippery ladder of life, but you?  Well you’ve got all that figured out.  No more soul searching. You have passion, my friend.  A calling that few others have.  [Art/kids/music/comedy/writing/cooking/acting] is your life and you just don’t think you could continue to draw a breath if that particular thing wasn’t in it.

You can.

I’ve been amazed at how many people put their life’s worth into things that don’t last.  Fame is fleeting.  Inspiration comes and goes.  Our senses dull over time and sometimes we lose them altogether.  You will lose friends and even the strongest earthly bonds can crumble or be taken in a moment’s notice.  Children you devote your entire life to – all those waffle and banana sandwiches, for goodness sakes – can turn and just walk away.

The value of your life cannot be measured by these things.  Even though it’s tempting.  Even when these things bring you great joy or tremendous success.  Rachmaninoff gives you goose bumps.  Playing your guitar in front of a crowd is the best drug in the world. Writing makes you feel normal instead of a crazy person with ribbons of words spinning around and tying knots in your brain.  You finally made it. These are gifts that have been entrusted to you alone, to polish like fine silver and use for a higher calling. That much is true.  But it’s still not your life.

Your life is a soul, housed in a ruff-hewn body whose organs and tissues break down with time.  A body that is complete with a mouth that says stupid things, and a stomach that consumes more stupid things, and feet that rest and stay clean more often than they get dirty.  And this soul has a decision to make.  It has to choose its master.  It can dedicate its life’s work toward fleeting fame, or something that does not disappear into dust.  Music, art, writing – these do not make up your life.  But forgiveness.  Grace.  The unconditional love from God, the Father.  And Jesus Christ, his only son. This is life. 

I was raised in the church since birth.  I was sheltered and kept in a small, clean box where truth was easy and evil was dark and avoidable.  I cringe now at the judgment I placed on others who chose different lifestyles than me, or who took long, meandering paths to express themselves.  People call themselves believers and yet go home to beat their wives, cheat on their spouses, make their children feel like pond scum, or feel absolutely nothing at all. There are horrific things done in the name of God, and going to church on Sunday means nothing, really, to sanctify one’s heart.

 I’m not saying this to be righteous.  God knows I don’t have that right.  But through the course of my life’s many misadventures, I’ve grown to realize that everyone finds truth in their own time.  In their own crazy, soulful, serpentine way.   It’s not our place to judge or tell people what to believe or how or when or why.  Last I checked, we aren’t the savior police.  But when it comes to my own soul, it has been filled with love that has no human replication, warming my brittle bones and washing clean what I used to think was white, but later realized was stained and broken.

I used to think that tangible things mattered.  Like if I wasn’t here to raise my children or be my husband’s partner that their lives might possibly end.  But people will go on without you.  Someone else can sing or write or love just as easily.  These things are not the foundation upon which your soul is supported.  You cannot place your trust in these.

But the purity of God – a light so bright that you cannot view it head-on and emotion so strong it fills you with something stronger than fear itself– this is not something found in a cheesy Christian bookstore.  It is not limited to those wearing pink silk dresses and sitting in pews.  It is not reserved for those who say the right things or look the part or tug at your heartstrings or lack all intellect.  It is simply for the soul who seeks it, and accepts it with grace.

So as it turns out, the pure, unabashed, accepting love of God is my life.  My screwed up, messy, inadequate human life.

That’s all I really have.  It’s all that matters.