This past weekend was going to be a big weekend.
A week before, I got a gumption. I put the money down. I took time off work and really pushed myself to git-r-done. I spent that friday at the local library in one of their private study spaces. It’s a strange feeling to be working on a book in the library. The doubt takes on a different shape, a different feeling–you’re surrounded by books of all makes and models, of all genres and all levels of literacy, of all desires, of all aspects of the human imagination . . . and not a one of them have a price tag.
The library here has these private little offices that are partitioned off by glass dividers. there’s a place to hang your coat, a big boardroom like table with popup power supplies, a dry erase board, and these tall, thin windows that, ironically enough for a fishbowl office, are glassless so that all the ambient sound from the lobby bubbles up harmlessly from below. Standing behind one of these windows, you can clearly see racks and rows full of mystery novels in the fiction section across the way. I can’t fly there. Can’t walk across the air. Can’t swim across the gulf. Can’t be carried over.
I have a ladder that I’ve built in between my chores. don’t know how much weight the ladder can bear, don’t know how far it really reaches yet, but minute by stolen minute it has grown substantially, and I was told that this weekend, I needed to get it ready to deploy–now or never, time to cross the divide.
click-clack–things fell together neatly. I just happened to have $300 leftover from my bonus. they just happened to want their submissions in 12 pt font, double spaced, new chapters starting on new pages, so the shortcomings I was experiencing with a 10pt, start a chapter on used page format just kind of disappeared. I felt a little unsure about my rag-ladder, my book -of-many-colors. I wanted other people to check it, see if it could hold weight, but it seemed to me like instead of holding a burden, it became a burden, but I didn’t let it shake me too much. It’s no different than usual. It’s hard to read stuff that’s still kind of in that could-use-a-good-edit stage. I’ve read more than my fair share of stories that have issues obvious to me but not the author, and it is kind of a burden to have to dig up the positive from something you couldn’t possibly believe would be successful. I paid for the hotel room anyway.
The next friday, I’m still trying to keep positive. Still trying to just get through my workday. Still trying to figure out how to ask for help for the thigns that matter to me . . . around the house, around the writing, but strangely enough I felt a little lighter, knowing I wouldn’t be using my every spare moment to write, knowing my lunch hour could be used for something other than spending time at the coffee shop. Came home, and as I’m turning the door knob my mother calls. you know when moms call you on a friday night, something’s just about to not go your way.
My grandmother . . .is young. she’s 68. She gave birth to my dad when she was 15. She was in her 30′s when she became a grandmother. Nobody believed she was my grandmother. she was arguably the most beautiful woman in the county, real red hair, smokin’ hot body, a penchant for jewlery, a southern drawl with southren sensibilities and a wicked sharp manner that could put Scarlet O’hare in he place. I’m very proud of her. I’m very proud to have given her two great grandchildren. I’d give her more if I thought I could. I’d have baby after baby if it made her happy. She has ovarian cancer. she is going to die. And that’s a fact i’ve lived with for 7 years. I knew that tough old bird wouldn’t just roll over and give cancer an easy time. She had her last chemo treatment the day Asa was born, and when I was pregnant with Seth it came roaring back. He’s almost 2 now. They told her then that she didn’t have long to live, but it’s not like she was going to miss out on her beautful great grandson . . .
My mom didn’t want to tell me because I had finally, finally, finally come out of the closet about wanting to be a writer. She wanted me to go. She was crying when she told me but it’s not like I could have gone to cinci and had her pass away without me saying goodbye.
i woke up saturday morning just mired in this tumultous feeling between grief and rage. It’s all for nothing. It’s a waste of time. It’s such a stupid, vain thing . . . and I rest so much on it. I rest my entire life’s worth on these stupid fucking stories. I have no career. I live in a rental home. I have two kids with hand me down clothes on. Nobody cleaned the house for me. i couldn’t speak a word all morning. I wanted to wring someone’s neck. Seth started pulling out toys while I was trying to clean and threw his ass across the floor. couldn’t hear him cry over the vaccume cleaner. Couldn’t hear him cry over those cyclindic thoughts in my head about how stupid and childish I am, how worthless I am, how souless, how wretched. I took a bath. The thoughts released their hold on me a little. I could go on with my day.
So it was Jackson that I saw on Saturday. Instead of a swank suite with roses and chocolates and the like, my car was sailing by houses made of junk and the wrecked cadavers of cars piled up one on top of the other. Boarded up storefronts and starving dogs, fighting cocks in the yards of crack dealers ’cause they’re not afriad of the cops, they’re only afraid of their customers. In the nicer outerbelt of the town, a two story hospital too afriad to tranfer my grandmother to OSU has told her it’s time to call hospice.
In the cold, dry hour of 7 o’clock we go to visit her, and she’s in this room with one single light above her bed. She’s not talking of death that night, but her eyelids blink slow and sticky, and her body shape in the bed doesn’t look human. we talked alot, but I honestly don’t remember much about it.
we drove around because I didn’t want to go straight home to the kids. I jsut drove ’cause I didn’t know where to go . . .hated driving ’cause it just felt like I was goign through the motions . . just wasting time again. got myself a ski from the gas station, and decided to pursue the sound.
As black as it was outside, we drove out to Hammertown lake and rolled down the windows. It was too cold and wet to sit outside. Just beyond the windshield, just beyond the door, the lushest sound fell down around the perimeter of the lake like a curtain. I stopped my breathing just to hear it. This was the sound of the spring peepers.
Ancient sound
Healing sound
if I could just be immersed in it, some part of my soul could be healed. I wouldn’t need to write. I could just be. I could be a little girl again. I could live on a farm again. I could slop hogs and get my toes muddy again. I could see night again, stars again, let time heal me again.
But then I drove off.
the next day we spent most of our time at the hospital. My grandfather never repeats his words but he kept telling us that he was going to try to have her transported to OSU, that the doctors there would be able to give her a second opinion, that they’ve been through this before. The pastor entered the room and I left to give them privacy. when I came back she looked lighter, happier–told me he had sung a few hymns to her and I felt a little stupid that I had to sulk away from that. It should have been me singing like the spring peepers, of songs telling her how much I loved her.
I tried to think of the words I’d say if this was the last we’d ever speak, and I had such a hard time choking it out. All I could say was ” I am so honored that my kids would know . . . that my kids would know their great grandmother.”
And she simply slapped me on the hand and said “don’t be sad, honey. I am at peace. Smile–you’re too beautiful not to smile.”
She told my husband a story that when I was 3 she took me clothes shopping and I cried when I couldn’t have patent leather high heel shoes, and strangely that made me feel a little better about myself.
I visited with aunts and uncles . . . feeling like I was gonna see them again pretty soon.
Had to go home and wait for the news.
Pasquale is tilling his garden . . . should be time to till mine as well.
the editor at the writer’s intensive moved my dates to septembe so I wouldn’t forfeit the money, gave their condolences.
Work is just as shitty and hateful as always, but work’s got it’s own problems right now.
I have just enough hope to open my netbook and tie another mismatched rung onto my rope ladder.
Behind me I have boarded up storefronts, stories of one factory closed after another, stories of tar paper houses and friend living in garages with their four kids after the landlord sold the property out from under their feet.
I did it for you. I do it for you. and I know when I hear that sound of thunder breaking across the heavens, that the valkeries have culled another warrior for valhalla, that my lord Thor has rode his great goat-cart across the skies, a brother, a father and friend to all warriors, he would have a great friend in her. She will raise the horn in valhalla before speeding through to the arms of Jesus, and I am at peace with that.
