A Gift

I don't have money to give my son a car for his 18th birthday. After working in the social service field my entire life, my son is my walking savings account; all my money has gone into his Catholic school education, kindergarten through high school. (I decided to send him to Catholic school kindergarten for a very illogical reason--paying day care costs as a single parent had been impossible but I'd done it--so, hey, why not Catholic school?). So, no car--but I do want to give him something special. I'm writing him a gift--a keepsake--detailing the highlights I remember of his eighteen years. Will I end up just writing highlights that strike me and leave out ones important to my son? If my son were writing his autobiography, he'd include specifics about grade school soccer and floor hockey and basketball and baseball games, goals and free throws and home runs scored. He'd write of Bulls and White Sox games and the one Bears game we went to, and he'd remember actual scores and names of the opposing teams. Me, I remember the rainbow that splashed across the sky after a rain delay, or the man selling Mexican corn, or the black towels we waved at the momentous blackout game, the electricity palpable as we clinched our division win in 2008. Will my list of memories be standard mom memories, resulting in a book he'll put aside, that gets buried under old textbooks in his cave of a room?

How should I write this gift? At first I thought, a la 100words.com, of writing 100 words for each year of his life. But some years--especially his first year of life--can't be summed up in a mere 100 words. Or should I use bullet points with a snappy sports-like title: "Momentous highlights of the formative first 18 years of T's life?" Should I include pictures? I groan at the prospect of going through the albums stored in my son's room--not only are the albums stacked topsy-turvy in no logical order, the pictures are arranged in no less haphazard way. I remember J scolding me for not writing dates of the back of photos. J, you're up there enjoying some celestial sport, seraphim against cherubim, maybe--take a minute to enjoy an "I told you so." How am I going to look at a shot and remember if Ty was three or four or five? It's hard enough compiling memories by specific year; I've spent the last few days finding and looking through old calendars and trying to decipher my scribbles.

But research is done; I'm going to look at each year at a time. Maybe some years will work better as bullet points; maybe a 100-word essay will be fine for others. If I were a poet, I'd try my hand at an ode! Let me begin.

Writing Blues

I still feel in a writing funk, maybe from my most recent rejection. Although a long Sunday stretches before me, I feel like a puppet with two many chores and interests competing, yanking my to-do strings: reading the Sunday paper, cleaning the cat litter box, reading in "An American Tragedy," straightening up so I can invite Ms. M. over for coffee, helping T. brainstorm ideas for his Theology paper, practicing on "Red" (my violin), and of course writing and revising. Maybe my blues stem from being a Gemini--I want to be a Renaissance person skilled at a zillion things but without the necessary genius or discipline. The green monster of jealousy appears with gleaming red eyes and sharp outstretched claws whenever I read of another writer's successes--especially if they're younger than me--especially if they're related to me. I start bashing myself--"You don't work hard enough, D." or "Who ever said you were talented?"--a total waste of time that scatters any creative force that might actually be brewing inside me!

I suspect that Emerson knew this feeling: "It is the highest power of divine moments that they abolish our contritions also. I accuse myself of sloth and unprofitableness day by day; but when these waves of God flow into me I no longer reckon lost time. I no longer poorly compute my possible achievements by what remains to me of the month or the year; for these moments confer a sort of omnipresence and omnipotence which asks nothing of duration, but sees that the energy of the mind is commensurate with the work to be done, without time."

Work is the only escape ladder out of this funk and into the divine moment Emerson speaks of. So, onward! I'll finish revising Chapter 15 of "Rachel and the Cousins: 7th Grade." Here, Rachel goes apartment hunting with her dad and her dad's fiance--and Rachel decidedly does not want to move from their cozy basement apartment. I'll also work on a gift--shh!--for my son's 18th birthday. I'm collecting and organizing memories and key dates--the date and time when he first tore up something (a cable TV guide), the day he said his first sentence: "This is a sock." Of course I'll have to make some corny reference to the serendipity of this early remark, for now T. is a die-hard Sox fan!

And of course all that distracts me from my writing can paradoxically make it richer--being a mom, being a friend, reading literature and newspapers, playing an instrument. Even cleaning the cat litter box. Life is more important than literature. And as my good friend M. always said, balance is everything.

Rejection Blues

I pick up my violin for a few minutes of obligatory practice--the strings are out of tune, and I flinch, just as I did a while earlier today, glancing at the last page of the novel I thought was in great shape. "Nora's pink mouth opened..." What was I thinking? Her mouth was pink? Maybe her lips--but her mouth? And why would I even mention lips being pink? Out of tune. No wonder I'm getting rejected. Add to to-do list: Reread and revise "Roll Call by the Elephants."

I have the Rejection Blues. I worked feverishly for the last few months revising "Bestfriend," polishing it yet one more time, this time adding excerpts from letters J. wrote me. In less than a week, a mere "No thank you" email hits my inbox.

I read in "The Writer" magazine about writers half my age whose publication credits are in the double- and triple-digits. Why do I even try? It makes me feel even worse, remembering my own long-ago back-to-back publications, being a high school and college "star." Am I just fooling myself, lulling myself with past laurels? Has my talent decreased with the years?

Of course, I get too hung up on age, hating society's bias but internalizing it all the same. I had an epiphany about age the other day, though, while writing in a Starbuck's in Roscoe Village--I remembered that I had indeed lived in Roscoe Village for a couple of years in my twenties, although the area wasn't quite as trendy. But those were hardly happy years, working at nothing jobs and obsessing over hollow romantic relationships, with hardly the nurturing circle of family and friends I now have. Sure, I'd like to be young again--but I sure wouldn't want to relive my own youth. And if any skills do decrease with age--if they do--well, isn't that balanced by the gifts of experience?

In any event, talent doesn't matter--all that matters is that I'm a writer, and writers write. And hope always does surge up again despite rejection. I can tune those violin strings; I can enter the world of "Roll Call by the Elephants" once more and picture my characters again. And maybe someday I'll post a celebratory entry!