Overnight Camp

Monday, Jul 5, 2010 | Holidays, School, Summer | 1 comment

This summer, I’ve heavily loaded the front end of our summer holiday. Whether this proves to be a good idea or not has yet to be established, but at the very least, it will prevent the early lethargy and cries of boredom that marked the early days of last summer’s holiday.
Albus spent his first few days of holiday at home with us, and he was a changed person. He organized a self-monitoring system (“we all have to be honest”) to keep track of good and bad behavior. With AppleApple, he set up a stage in the living-room and organized a play that they plan to work on over the summer. He was, in short, a suddenly happy, thoughtful big brother, not the surly child we’ve seen so frequently in these latter days of the third grade. I think he must have been suffering more than we’d recognized, at school this year. He and I spent some time together, just the two of us, on Friday, and I asked him what he did not like about school, and he said that he didn’t like sitting still. Sitting still and doing work, because the work was boring–sometimes it was boring because he already knew how to do it, and sometimes it was boring because he didn’t know how to do it. Bit of a catch-22 there.
What most amazed me and Kevin was that these projects that Albus was organizing involved sitting down and writing. We could barely get him to write two sentences for his homework all year, and there it was: evidence of spontaneously occurring, self-motivated, parentally-painless application of literacy skills.
(We see this from AppleApple all the time; in fact, one of our projects last week–hers and mine–was to put together her newspaper, which is now completed! We just need to make copies, and possibly figure out how to post it online and link to it from the blog, to save paper and postage. More info on this soon. If you want a paper copy, send me a message).
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So, was it wise to send Albus off to overnight camp so soon after he was released from the bonds of school? The photos I took of AppleApple at camp yesterday show her busily arranging her bunk with all of her belongings (and she took her journal, so I expect new stories for the next edition of “Family Times” to be forthcoming). The photos of Albus, however, show him attempting to smile, then not even trying. His features and posture are transparent. He looks much younger in photographs. I could hardly stand to look at the photos last night, he looks so lonely and uncertain in them. I hope this was temporary. They were going to go swimming straight away.
I wonder–maybe he’s a homebody?
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I will see them both tomorrow, because I’ll be picking up AppleApple, who is only staying for two nights. She has a soccer tournament all this week and weekend. Albus has the choice of staying on till Saturday, and I really wonder, now, what he’ll choose.
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My two little ones: it’s just like a regular school day, on the days when Fooey is at home. Playing at the counter, colouring, writing. We have hired a neighbour girl to tutor Fooey and Albus this summer. Fooey is very close to reading, and eager to work hard on it–and I don’t have the time to feed her need as much as she’d like. She just spent a full hour sounding out words with our sweet, patient neighbour.
Albus was less keen to hear about the tutoring plan, but surprisingly accepting–we want him to keep working on his writing and reading this summer (which he may just do all on his own–who knew??); they’ll run multiplication tables together, he will read out loud, and work on writing an ongoing adventure story. After seeing Fooey’s appetite for learning this morning, I’m wondering whether half an hour, three times a week, will be enough for her.

Camping and Beach

Monday, Jul 5, 2010 | Family, Photos | 0 comments

We spent the long weekend at my brother and sister-in-law’s farm, where we’ve gone for a few years now, to camp in comfort on their big lawn. There is always a bonfire, and the beach is nearby. We went into town early on Saturday to watch the Germany-Argentina game (my brother didn’t sit down the entire match, even when it was apparent that his team was going to win), and then Kevin and the kids and I vegged at the beach all afternoon. It was so relaxed. Lots of work to pack up and lots of laundry today, but so relaxed in between.

Last Day of School

Monday, Jul 5, 2010 | Kids, Photos | 0 comments

Goodbye to junior kindergarten, grade two, and grade three. Albus looked like a weight had lifted off his shoulders. “We’re going to have a water fight at B’s house!” he told me, and headed off down the sidewalk with some friends. AppleApple almost had to cry about her dear teacher, who is leaving the school. The kids had some special teachers this year. I’m deeply appreciative of all the energy and effort that goes into caring for my children all day long.

Midwife to Stories

Wednesday, Jun 30, 2010 | Writing | 0 comments

Friends may have noticed a slight up-tick in the writing time, or a sense of greater urgency to get to work, and it is true: I am working on a specific project that is occupying my mind.
I would like to describe exactly how my mind is being occupied by this book, because it feels like a new experience. I am calmly, joyfully, quietly, peacefully occupied.

I have blogged here before about my Nicaragua project, and the Juliet stories, several of which were published last fall in The New Quarterly.
And I have blogged about my attempt to write some of the material as memoir, since there is overlap between what my character Juliet experiences and what I experienced as a child. (I lived in Managua, Nicaragua during the contra war, in 1984 and 1985; my parents were peace workers).
But the memoir did not get very far. I found myself frustrated by what was–by the intransigence of fact. Life unfolds in a dreadfully under-plotted fashion. There is a narrative arc to it, but it is not always the arc one wishes for, as a writer. For reasons I can’t analyze, I find more truth and symmetry and meaning in fiction than in non-fiction (this is true as a reader, and as a writer). In fiction, anything can happen; but the things that happen have to make sense. In non-fiction, everything has happened; and some of those things do not make sense. The Juliet stories play with that line between fiction and non-fiction: I’ve created a fictional world rent with the holes and spaces created by memory.
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This all sounds too theoretical. There’s nothing theoretical about writing a story. I am at a loss to describe how it’s done. When I have an idea for a story, it is very general, and sits in my mind in a visual and emotional way. I hold a particular emotion at the front of my mind that I want the story to contain. And I see the story’s structure, the physical shape of it, in a very visual way that is almost impossible to describe. I don’t think up the structure–I see it, as if I am discovering something that already exists, and then translating it into words.
The story I am writing right now is about a young woman visiting her grandmother, and I have a sense of time slowing down within the grandmother’s apartment, which I think relates to the grandmother’s physical difficulty moving, the slow pace of her life, and her stretched-out understanding of time. I see the entrance into the story like a wall with an arm reaching through it and making a tunnel, down which Juliet is travelling, and Juliet is glancing down side tunnels and being reminded of other things, and letting her imagination sneak off, but she continues to be pulled along this tunnel, and as I get further into the story, I see that the tunnel is the hallway of her grandmother’s apartment building, and I see that Juliet wants to reach her grandmother’s door (yet, Juliet is already also inside the apartment–so the story must belong to two separate times, must be in part a reminiscence). I sense that she cannot enter her grandmother’s apartment again. I sense grief, and a desire to be let in; but I also sense Juliet’s curiosity; it will rescue her, and the story.
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Weird. I’ve never tried to do that before–to explain the strong visual sensations I have while working or thinking about a story. The structural visuals have very little to do with what turns up on the page (the story has neither floating characters nor tunnels, I promise); though I wonder whether a reader might sense their presence underlying the story. Every story has a shape, and a texture, and a flavour. The flavour can be the hardest to get right. Often a story resists being turned into something that it’s not. You just cannot change the underlying mood, which is why I think this invisible structural patterning is so crucial to what turns up on the page.
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I would like to write three more stories for Juliet. I have them in my mind, and when I think about writing them, I feel a combination of fear and great purpose and excitement.
I began working on this material in 2006. I applied for and received a Canada Council grant, based on an entirely fictional idea, nothing whatsoever to do with Juliet; part of the grant went towards travelling to Nicaragua for research. I took my family, and my mother and one of my brothers along on the journey. While there, I began to understand that the story I wanted to write was not the entirely fictional one proposed; the story was closer to autobiography. I’ve never wanted to publish stories about myself, and took care in Hair Hat not to. But I’d written and published a story in 2005 set in Nicaragua, and I realized it had potential to belong to something larger; I just had to leap over my fear of the autobiographical.
It would be tedious to recount all the different forms this material has taken in the years between then and now. The character of Juliet has always been a part of it, though in the first story I wrote, she was named Mary. At first, I thought it was the mother’s story (her name is Gloria, and always has been). But the further I got into the project, the more I began to see that it was Juliet’s story–the child’s story.
It was only this spring that I discovered something new, and it came as a hallelujah moment: the stories stretch beyond Nicaragua and into Juliet’s future. My Juliet now gets to be a mother, herself, and to reflect on that. She gets to be a teenager. She gets to be single, and she gets to be married. She passes through all of the awkward stages to adulthood. She is fluid in age and understanding, and time itself is fluid, and in many stories she is a child and an adult.
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This year has been one of calm revelation. I’ve moved away from my parallel dream of becoming a midwife, and accepted that I am a creative person, and that making things is my gift. I can’t change who I am, and it doesn’t matter whether the world generally assigns value to it. In the years since my first book was published, I’ve told myself that I would keep being a writer if only … fill-in-the-blank. If only I’d get this grant, or publish that story, or win this award. In other words, I was hoping for visible affirmation of my choice to keep slogging away at what is a quiet, interior occupation often plagued by doubt. But every if-only achieved proved too temporary, too easily knocked down by every if-only not achieved. I began pursuing more seriously my interest in midwifery. I am so glad that I did. Had I not, it might always have teased at me–the what-if, the could-I-have-been? The deeper my exploration, the more I discovered (to my deep disappointment) my interest waning.
My interest in writing has yet to wane. May it never. Slowly, I’ve come to understand. Being a writer is not about achieving if-onlys. It is about accepting that one is a writer–and not necessarily a good writer or a well-known writer or a celebrated writer or a successful writer. It’s about being what one is, regardless of outcome.
What the Juliet stories have taught me is that some stories just long to become. They feel necessary. I am not a midwife to babies, but I am a midwife to stories, and I have been a midwife to this character.
(Thanks for the thought on being a midwife to moments, Janis; that helped me pull this idea together).

Too tired for anything but blogging …

Tuesday, Jun 29, 2010 | Chores, Laundry, Photos, Running, Writing, Yoga | 0 comments

I want to write about writing, but it may be that I’m just too tired tonight to write about anything at all. Therefore, insert photos! This 365-day project has had the unexpected effect of being like a tutorial in portrait photography (don’t know why it took me till day 150 to figure that out). Last night, Kevin and I watched The Young Victoria (a very pleasant romance, if you’re into Victorian costume drama), and what kept diverting my eyes? The lighting. How is her face lit? It looks like natural lighting, but is it? And if not, what is the director using to give the appearance of natural lighting? Etc.
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It’s nearly July. The big kids have one day of school left in grades two and three. And my Fooey has completed junior kindergarten. (See photo, above, of her getting ready to go to school this morning).
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Last week, I only exercised one day out of seven. Wow. That was not good. And I felt it. I felt tired, which made me feel less like exercising … which made me feel even more tired. So, with great intentions I went to bed at a reasonable hour last night and set my internal alarm for early morning yoga. Slept without stirring for approximately seven hours, and woke when my husband tapped me on the back. Apparently his internal alarm had sounded. Mine, not a peep, not a polite brrrrng-brrrng; nothing. Which meant I woke just as morning yoga class was about to begin; but, being awake and well-rested, I hopped out of bed, ate a banana, and headed for a run. It was surprisingly less tortuous alone than I’d anticipated. I even heard a rooster crow in the park’s zoo. I didn’t think about much, just ran. It wasn’t super-early, so people were out and about, lots of construction workers heading to sites in the area, friendly hellos from other runners and cyclists. And I enjoyed the endorphins, and felt ready for my day in a way I hadn’t all last week.
My goal is to exercise four times a week: two runs, two yoga classes. I will report back. I enjoy setting goals; don’t always meet them, but enjoy setting and re-setting them. Life is flux.
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Photos above include AppleApple on her last day of horse lessons (at least for this round), with Sunman, who was her regular ride. I love how comfortable and affectionate she is with all animals, even ones that are so much larger than her.
We also had some awesome rainstorms this weekend; guess I was over-optimistic about the laundry-hanging on Sunday.