Dear Diary,
I am in between. This is perpetual. Why do I need to keep discovering it as if it were brand new?
The dishes will never be done: I will turn around only to discover someone eating another bowl of granola with pearsauce. Today’s batch of bread will get eaten before the week’s out–all four loaves. And the cookies. And the yogurt, and anything else that I make. We will run out of canned tomatoes, perhaps before spring.
I will sign a book contract. It will feel provisional rather than triumphant. I will remember all the steps yet to be completed. (Like the manuscript.) It will remind me that Hair Hat never felt quite done either, even after I saw it in print.
My children will grow, but I won’t be done with them.
I will fill pages, but I won’t be done with words.
I will get up at 5:40am to run. But I won’t be done running.
None of this is discouraging; or, it shouldn’t be. To be in between is to be alive.
I am in between.
And I need my bed, just now.
Yours, Carrie
A Birthday
How could I not have gotten a photo of this beautiful child, dressed in her new sparkly black wizard robes and an elegant black hat, as she accompanied me post-cake, post-presents, to The New Quarterly’s fall launch party last night? Let’s just say I was filled with pride.
We juggled a packed schedule yesterday and celebrated eight years of AppleApple. She is quick, hard-working, serious and silly, talented, creative, thoughtful, perceptive, eccentric, independent, an old soul.
I’d planned a chocolate cake, but when consulted, AppleApple said, no thanks, she doesn’t like chocolate cake. Friends on Facebook had just posted a retro-sounding easy-to-make cake recipe: yellow cake mix, vanilla pudding mix, coconut, sour cream (we substituted crema, because it makes anything just that much better). Kevin and the little kids baked the cake yesterday afternoon, and AppleApple decorated it herself after school, with leftover Halloween treats. It was tasty and old-school.
We’d organized a birthday brunch for family, and let the big kids stay home from school for the morning. A horse theme was apparent from early gifts, but later gifts revealed a taste for Harry Potter, too. After a somewhat rushed supper (chicken noodle soup and devilled eggs, as requested by AppleApple), and the candle-blowing, the cake-eating, and some fracas over who could pass out the gifts (Fooey was in a state), AppleApple and I raced out the door to our literary date. She and Kevin traded places after 8pm, and she spent the rest of her evening at home putting together her Harry Potter Lego. She still has her friend party, tomorrow (and, I must add, so do we … send us strength). Our house will be transformed into Hogwarts, potions and wands will be made, unicorns sought, and some more of this cake will be eaten–it was such a success, we’re reprising it for tomorrow.
May this year to come be blessed, my child.
Almost Eight
Today is the last day that AppleApple will be seven. So, as is tradition, we took a photo to mark the occasion. Her sister appears in the background of one with a most pitiful expression and a gash on her head, self-inflicted (which may be better than the alternative; not sure), when she was jumping with excitement to get into the back of the truck. I was at home trying to write another story, and Kevin was managing all the kids. It was a picture of gore when they arrived home–gore and chaos. We cleaned her up and steri-stripped the wound (Kevin’s job; mine was to hold her and remind her take calming breaths). At one point, post-supper, I was fielding information that required a response from all four children, simultaneously, while trying to clear the table and do the dishes. With today’s story rattling slightly unfinished around my head. AppleApple was going down the party agenda, in detail; CJ came to report that Albus was being mean to him; Albus explained that he just needed some Alone Time; and Fooey desperately wanted to be held, too (I was holding CJ). I looked at Kevin and said … I am feeling some stress. He agreed.
But onward. This is the pace. I will do my level best to keep up. And tomorrow my seven-year-old will be an eight-year-old.
Trespasser
Part of me wants to write a blog. Part of me thinks it would be more appropriate to write in a journal and close the pages afterward.
One thing to note: I had an excellent writing day on Saturday. For some reason, focus landed in a heap. Better than focus, it was creative energy, and all I had to do was follow the flow of images and ideas. It was a story that I had not planned to write, that came up the day previous; we’ll see whether or not it holds long-term, but it certainly climbed out of me whole, like it had been waiting to be written. I love when that happens.
In terms of the book’s structure, I am seeing it in a very complete way in my mind, seeing what remains to be written. Today is meant to be a writing day. But I have not entered into the manuscript yet, despite the empty house, and the empty cup of coffee. I feel tired, and contemplative. I am thinking about my grandma, whose body was buried yesterday, and I am thinking about what that means …
And this is where I should get out the journal and write privately. But something in me wants to tell how moved I was to stand beside her body, and to speak quietly to her. It was a moment that may not have happened, had Fooey, five years old, not been utterly fascinated by her great-grandma’s body: she asked me to hold her up. She had questions about every detail: Why was Grandma wearing her glasses when she couldn’t see anymore? Why were her hands folded? Why was she wearing a necklace (I hadn’t looked closely enough to see that she was). As we stood there together, I found myself becoming comfortable with the presence of a body emptied of its spirit self. In the past, in similar situations, I have felt–well, frightened–but instead, I felt … okay, somehow. It wasn’t my grandma lying there, it was her earthly body. It was what remained after a long life had ended. We could say goodbye to her.
At the burial site, the minister said that this was as far as we could walk with the body of (she said my grandma’s name, which I won’t). I found that profoundly moving. We could only come this far.
AppleApple said something that struck me afterwards. She said that she felt like she was trespassing, as she looked at her great-grandma’s body. That was the word she used: trespassing. It wasn’t how I felt, and I’m trying to understand what she meant: maybe that without the self to animate the body, the body is somehow unprotected. That there is a fundamental vulnerability. That she is gone, and just like it would feel like trespassing to walk through an empty house and take things that do not belong to us, everything we take from her is now one-sided, forever after, because she is no longer here to offer these things herself. Or maybe AppleApple simply sensed that we were trespassing on something too private, on the body’s still and silent forever rest.
I don’t know.
Rest in peace, Grandma.
Writing Week
Today was supposed to be the start a writing week, which would include this weekend, and every day of the coming week. Though I’m still not prepared to announce details, I am already working with an editor on the latest draft of The Juliet Stories, and expect the ink to dry on the publishing contract fairly soon, at which point I will shed superstition and tell. Suffice it to say, there is work to be done, and I am glad to be doing it. But twelve hours a week does not feel like enough time in which to accomplish what I want to do. So, Kevin kindly offered to help me make more time. Writing weeks are hard on everyone, require a ton of extra scheduling and planning, and are, frankly, a gruelling way to produce new work. But I’ve found them to be an extremely efficient use of time. The last writing week, I wrote two new stories while spending my days and nights completely lost in my own head. I need that level of focus. Therefore, the planned writing week. But early on in the planning, it seemed the week was already being chipped away at: AppleApple’s eighth birthday happened to fall during the week; there were necessary parties and cakes to be made; then The New Quarterly contacted me about their fall launch–yup, during writing week. But we decided to go ahead, largely because this was the only week that could work before the new year.
Yesterday morning, my grandma passed away. How quickly plans change. How easily they can be changed, when something critical arises. How little the little problems matter. Of course, we will be at her funeral–no matter when it falls. What could be more important than taking time to honour her life?
I am looking at a photograph of my grandma holding Albus. He is six months old, a drooling fat baby, nearly wriggling out of her arms. She is so completely herself in the photograph. A small smile crosses her lips as she gazes down at him. Her hair is done, like it always was. I think of all the ways that she was there for me, even though we lived at a distance. I remember the angel food cakes that she made for many of my birthdays: with strawberry icing. We were frequently travelling on my birthday, which falls between Christmas and New Year’s; I remember on several occasions that we blew out candles and ate Grandma’s specially-made cake for breakfast, before my family set out on a long birthday drive home. Her recipe for sugar cookies (a very unusual cookie that looks and tastes like a muffin top) was the last recipe she gave me: I phoned to get it a few years ago. She was already showing the early signs of Alzheimer’s, but she was able to read me her recipe, which was for a batch twice as large as the one I make (and which is posted on the blog). She had lots of grandchildren and great-grandchildren to bake for. She not only produced enormous batches of cookies and other baked goods, pickles, and all manner of canned foods; she also worked outside the home for most of her life. I never heard her complain. She was possibly the most composed person I’ve ever met. She could be relied upon to bring calm and dignity to any situation.
So. This is what this writing week will bring instead: memories, family time, and a batch of sugar cookies. Who knows, it may bring some stories home, too.
