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MISSING WORDS
One of the things I miss the most as I grow older is writing. Once upon a time I wrote constantly and with abandon. The margins of all my notebooks were packed with tiny neatly printed words. Stories burbled up from inside me, characters with complete lives were born upon the page. It is something I have always done.
I wrote in elementary school, junior high, middle school and high school. I knew this defined me, motivated me. Writing was my bliss and my catharsis. I had calluses on my fingers and the last joints of my index and middle fingers were warped to the point that even now the nails do not grow straight.
And then I went to college. I picked a university that had not only literature and teaching programs, but a major in "creative writing". I was creative. I wrote. It was horrible. The major was small and inbred. Unless you could write one obtuse modern genre, you got no support.
I, who read omnivorously, could barely get through the books we were given as examples. The teaching assistants who taught the required introductory classes could not be pleased. The professors who taught the advanced classes in coming months were no where to be found. So I switched to a plain literature major and began to fight my way to my degree.
I kept journals and notebooks of my continued attempts at accomplishing something publishable with my writing. Stories and characters began to build up and become impacted in my conscious and unconscious. As I labored to get into classes that stimulated and interested me as well as meeting general education, graduation and major requirements I had less and less time and energy to write for myself. Too poor for a computer in the era where their all-importance dawned, I labored to turn out papers on Astronomy, Sociology, Anthropology, Old English, Middle English, and Chinese Philosophy, on an electric typewriter. I also had to re-invent my writing style for every class, no lesson learned was good enough for the next class. I put my own writing on the backburner.
My dreams of publishing by the age of 18, 20, 21, 24 all flickered and passed by. I somehow managed to graduate, scrabbled for a job that would pay the bills and support new found hobbies. College education no longer equals a job. The writing sputtered and idled. My youth and inexperience betrayed me. I didn't realize that this skill I took for granted could atrophy like an unused muscle. I assumed it was like my breath and my heartbeat and it would be there when I again noticed it.
Sometimes pen met paper. New characters and plots asserted themselves, old ones jostled in my brain hoping for attention. New notebooks ended up with a handful of half realized compositions before being misplaced. And at some point I began to realize I wasn't accomplishing anything. I found new passions in my dancing and my children.
These new things made me re-examine myself. I discovered that in my heart nothing had changed. I still consider myself a writer, despite not having published, won any competitions, or even finished anything to my own satisfaction. An original concept or a perfect turn of phrase still brings me ridiculous amounts of joy. I revel in big words. I love writing. A humorist writer once said, all writers write constantly, they may not manage to write anything *down*, but they write.
I have learned the lesson. I will not take it for granted any longer. I will use up pens instead of letting them dry out. I will exercise my vocabulary and my wit. I will relearn this skill and tool and find again the bliss and catharsis.
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NORMAL
An acquaintance recently blithely announced to me that my children “looked normal”. I had no idea how to react. Clipping him upside the head with my empty coffee mug seemed like a nice choice. But I was hoping the waitress in the diner would bring me some more coffee. Out of the blue my children “look normal”? What else are they supposed to look like? And what does "normal" mean anyway?
Now there is some context to this commentary, which also sheds light on my confused response. My three hobbies are a Medieval recreation society, belly dancing, and helping a friend run a live-roleplay-game. So this person has only seen my children dressed up in Medieval costume, me for the most part in the same or gothic-vampire get up, and the image of belly dancer is often misleading. So I suppose the shock of my 4 year old twin boys in t-shirts, sweat pants and sneakers with toy logos on them, could indeed be great.
I do not exactly look “normal”, either I expect, although I blend in fine in Santa Cruz, where died hair and tattoos are par for the course. I can and do often appear completely "normal" however. Jeans, t-shirts and clogs are comfort wear. My tattoos don't always show. I appreciate fast food and mall crawls. I get "you are a belly dancer!?", as a reaction more often than not. But I also understand how, being intelligent, educated, open minded, strong, sarcastic, and not suffering fools lightly might make little Mr. Average, who’s running with the alternative crowd to make himself feel cool, doubt my normalcy. This is the same person who assumed I must be an unwed mother since I had tattoos, piercings and was out regularly of an evening without children and husband in tow.
But my kids? Sorry bud, leave them out of it. Having spent my life so far being not normal this is not something I am wishing on my kids. Yes I expect them to mind their manners, I let them keep their hair long, and let them run with my alternative friends (all not exactly mainstream). However, I let them watch too much T.V., I feed them fast food, and had their little baby bits circumcised. They have a father, grandparents. They like robots, dinosaurs, and being loud. They memorize the T.V. commercials for obnoxious children’s toys, and recognize products by their marketing. They steal each other’s stuff, whine, point fingers and beg.
I am extremely maternal, but not a militant mother. I fed my babies formula when I couldn’t stand nursing. I put them in diapers and didn’t insist they potty-train until they were ready for it. I understand completely that there are people out there who quite naturally don’t like children. There are a lot of children out there I don’t like. I have shocked and amused friends with no interest in children in any context with derogatory comments about what could possibly be done with children that are particularly annoying. I completely admit that my children are too much for other people sometimes, heck, they can be too much for me.
My motherhood does not define me, although it is often a handy and easy descriptive. It seems to upset people that I defy stereotypes. But my kids? They are kids. They are pre-schoolers. They are boys. They grow. They change. They absorb everything around them. They have likes and dislikes. They are good sometimes and bad sometimes. What is normal or not? Much to the dismay of those fond of easy answers, most people don’t fit neatly pigeon holed into the stereotype of normal or not normal.
So if my kids turn out to be too smart for their own good, so that they are singled out at school. If they are tolerant and broadminded so their tastes and friends are not Wonder Bread and Skippy. If they don’t look like poster children for Gap or Abercrombie and Fitch. So what. It won’t be because I’m not normal. It won’t be because I have dressed them funny, or taken them out painted blue... well ok, but one dressed himself, and the other drew on his face with Crayola markers. It will be because they have grown up surrounded by choices and input, and have decided for themselves how important image is compared to a confident sense of self.
Right now they are just little boys. They will answer you in gibberish instead of real words just to crack themselves up. They want to play instead of going to bed. They memorize songs from commercials. They want kid’s meals at MacDonald’s to get the toys. They communicate in sound effects and funny faces. They are rough and tumble, “snails and puppy dog tails”. There really isn’t any way to keep little boys from being normal. Or not normal. They are what they are.
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