A Letter to my Daughters as They Turn Five

The day you were born a thread began.  A delicate yarn of endless possibilities that with each passing year unwraps itself to reveal more and more the person you will become.   At first, the unspooling  happened slowly, it was days before you even opened your eyes to see the world around you.  Then, a year of quick firsts: your first smile, the sound of your voice for the first time, the first flop from your belly to your back, a clumsy step the day before Christmas, it all seemed to be moving in slow motion.  My life with you then was a deep lake, still and endless.  I could swim forever in my awe of you, and never reach the surface.  Then there were days where I was sure I would drown in my own guilt and self-doubt.  When you wouldn’t take two naps every day, I was sure I screwed it all up.  I weaned you off the bottle too soon, I started the cereal too early, I never allowed a pacifier.  Your bedroom is too far away from ours so we need to buy a new house with a better floor plan.   There were no answers, only guesses and assumptions.  You were a mystery,  a new planet in the center of our universe, and we knew nothing better to do, than to orbit you.

The next few years happened swiftly.  That lake became a rushing river of danger and chaos.  With your exploration of our house, a heightened sense of fear and anxiety washed over us.  A fall down the stairs, a burn on the heater, a bruise from the coffee table.  Disaster was everywhere, and it seemed natural to want to gather you up and save you from everything.  But with that terror came a gaggle of milestones.  You spoke to us in full sentences.  You slept, fully and peacefully.  Finally.  The thread in front of you began to emerge like a beautiful tapestry at your feet.  Your jokes made us laugh, your uncanny ability to remember everything we said astonished us.  Your need for me grew into something three dimensional.  Instead of the one with the bottle, I became the one with the answers.  And a fear that seemed so certain only months earlier, that I would forever lose myself in you, became weightless and less significant.

Now, as you grow into a little girl with hopes and dreams, I realize the role I share in guiding you.  I am teaching you new things every day: how the water cycle works, what a hairdryer is for, what the phrase “I don’t care” means, why broccoli is green.  I am everything to you.  I am your teacher, your mentor, your soft place to fall.  The words I say to you have ballooned in importance, and I have to admit that something in the center of me swells with a mixture of pride and terror as I realize that I am forever shaping you and how you will see the world.

 Last night, I sat next to your bed and rubbed your back as you drifted to sleep.  The air outside was dark and cold and a sliver of a whistle slid underneath the windowsill.    I ran my hand up and down your accordion of a spine, the same way I did every day, three times a day, when you were small enough to fit in the crook of my arm.  I miss those days when your eyes grew wide at the sight of me, and our relationship was new and shiny.  I miss holding you over my shoulder as my hips tick-tocked you to sleep.  I miss the smell of baby powder on your neck, the sound of your cry over the monitor, the way you laughed after you spit oatmeal all over my shirt.  But when I saw you there last night, a big girl in your big girl bed, a million miles away from that place, that sadness melted into excitement.  I can’t help but dream about the road we have before us.  The milestones yet to pass.  The thread that started the day you  were born has enveloped us both, bound us together.  I know someday that thread will weaken, and I will have to let go of my end.  But for now, I will welcome it.  I will lay down and let it wrap itself around me.

The years I have known you have been the best years of my life.  Because of you, I know myself in a way I would never have dreamed.  I am more than the woman with the bottle.  I am Mommy.  And that is the thing I am most proud of.

Tags: motherhood, sappy stuff, twins

An Interview with Don Juan

I was recently honored to provide a blurb for the book, DON JUAN IN HANKEY, PA.  It didn’t take me long to put into words how I felt about the book.  I first met Gale Martin, the author, at Wilkes University, where we studied for our Masters in Creative Writing together.  I have been hearing bits and pieces of this book since its inception, and my adoration for the project never waned.  It’s not easy to do humor, but it’s even harder to create a narrative that is as rich in snark as it is wit, and to do it all with a good amount of down-to-earth likability.  And that, my dear readers, is exactly what Gale Martin has accomplished.  I was so honored to be a part of the launch for DON JUAN IN HANKEY, PA, but even more honored to actually score an interview with the novel’s lead stud, Argentine baritone Leandro Vasquez.  I have to say, it was…interesting.

Leandro  Vasquez: Hola, Amye! Guapa!  So I am—honored to—how you say—hang with you.

Amye:  Do you always speak in running triplets?

Leandro Vasquez:  Sí, mi— bomboncito. I am—how you say—English challenged.

Amye:  “Bomboncito,”   whatever that means, was four syllables in a row.

Gale Martin (author):  He just called you his pie. It’s a term of endearment in his country—Argentina.

Leandro Vasquez:  (Takes Amye in his arms.)  We can speak—language of—passion, love.

Amye: But, Lion Man, I’m a married woman.

Leandro: Amye, dulce, but you are so beautiful.  You are like a dove, a white white dove.

Amye: I don’t really know what to make of that one either… can you say it again?  This time in my ear?

Gale (interrupting): Okay!  I’ll take it from here, you two!

Leandro (shakes head vigorously and drops Amye to the floor.): Oh yes! I take. I interview.  Me. Lion Man.

Gale: Okay,  what do you want to talk about, Leandro?

Leandro: I boil—like water. I have bone— to prick you.

Gale:  (I sure hope he means he has a bone to pick with me.)  What’s the matter?

Leandro: I am star— of DON JUAN IN HANKEY, PA. Is named for me.  No?  Why I have— no words until—page 150? Book is half over.

 Gale:  It’s true you are the Don Juan of the title.  Because you are the star of the book, I need to spend time building up reader expectations prior to your appearance.  So we learn about you a lot sooner than page 150. In fact, people are already talking about you by page 49. So that when you appear on page 150, the reader thinks, I was more than willing to wait until page 150 to meet this guy because he’s so vital to the story. That way, when you finally make an appearance, the reader will pay attention.

Leandro (rolls eyes):  Sounds like spin—to me. Why you have –only three women—on opera guild? (Smiles lasciviously.) Should be dozens waiting around—for me—just like at –Gotham City Opera.

Gale: I don’t have to tell you Hankey Opera is a small company. You know that. I’ll just say that you are thinking about this the wrong way. Deanna, Vivian, and Oriane aren’t merely themselves. Each one stands for a type or class of women. Deanna is every Type A overachiever you’ve ever met. Vivian is every New-Age ultra politically correct wacko you’ve encountered. And Oriane is every small-town virgin who’s crossed your path.  That has to add up to hundreds of women.

Leandro: Ahhh. How do I love women? Let me count—the lays.  Maybe 91 en Turquía. At least 450 en Francia. Some 1,100 en España.  Slim girls—en summer. Fat-legged girls—warm up a me—en  winter.  No hundreds. Thousands.

Gale: Everyone who’s anyone will know before long that you are a man to be reckoned with.

Leandro:  Don’ think so. Too many—men in book.  Richard. Know-bee. Arnaud. You litter—what could be—great book with—muchos wimps. No real men.

Gale: That’s a matter of opinion, Leandro.

Leandro: Why you need—more than one—macho man—in one book? No need. Me, Lion Man— is alpha—omega, no?

Gale:  Characters are sometimes revealed through other characters. You learn a lot about Vivian because of how she interacts with Richard.

Leandro: Bibian. Tetas grandes. No for Richard. For Lion Man.

Leandro Vasquez in a scene from Gotham City Opera's Don Giovanni

Gale: There’s no denying Vivian has a great figure. Okay, great tatas—but in point of fact (debating whether to tell Leandro the truth), the story would be really dull if you were the only man in it.

Leandro: Dull? What means this—dull?

Gale: Tell you what, Leandro. I will leave the opera singing to you. You leave the storytelling to me. And we’ll let the reader judge whether the story is better because there are more men than you or a big fat flop, okay?

Leandro:  Tell you now. This book a—whopper, fat flop.

Gale:  Readers, this book is available online at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and iTunes. Why not get a copy and decide for yourself whether DON JUAN IN HANKEY, PA is a winner or whopper fat flop?

*

You can read more about DON JUAN IN HANKEY, PA, or learn various ways to stalk Gale Martin here.

November’s Prose in Pubs

Just a reminder that my reading series, Prose in Pubs, will be held this Sunday, November 20th at Jack’s Draft House in Scranton.  The show starts at 7pm.

What can you expect?  Well, we have Dr. Nate Pritts coming in from Syracuse.  Here’s a bit more on Nate:

 Nate Pritts is the author of five books of poetry, most recently Sweet Nothing.  POETRY Magazine called his third book, The Wonderfull Yeare, “rich, vivid, intimate, & somewhat troubled” while The Rumpus called Big Bright Sun, his fourth book, “a textual record of mistakes made and insights gleaned…[in] a voice that knows its part in self-destruction.”  His poetry & prose have been widely published, both online & in print, at places like Southern Review, Columbia, Washington Square, Gulf Coast, Boston Review & Rain Taxi where he frequently contributes reviews.  He is the founder & principal editor of H_NGM_N, an online journal & small press.

We are also so fortunate to have Jennifer H. Fortin, who will be reading from her first full length book, Mined Muzzle Velocity.  Here’s more about Jennifer:

 Mined Muzzle Velocity is Jennifer H. Fortin’s first book. Her work has appeared in, among other places, Action, Yes, alice blue, Blackbird, BlazeVOX, Coldfront, Copper Nickel, Court Green, Everyday Genius, GlitterPony, H_NGM_N, LIT, Sink Review, and TYPO. Dancing Girl Press published her chapbook If Made Into a Law in 2011. Another chapbook, Nicole C. (Apartment 4), was published as part of the Dusie Kollektiv in 2011. Another is forthcoming from Poor Claudia. With three other poets, she founded and edits LEVELER. She has been named a Finalist for the Poetry Foundation’s Ruth Lilly Fellowship. Fortin is a Returned Peace Corps Volunteer (Bulgaria 2004-2006).

And, just when you thought things couldn’t get better, we have Scranton’s own legendary slam poet, Mike Ambrose!  Mike has been on the local scene for quite a while, and is always a highly requested reader.

 And last, but certainly not least, we will be hearing from Alexis Belluzzi, author of Practicing Distance, a wonderful chapbook published by Big Table Publishing.  Alexis has her BA from Susquehanna University, her MFA from Hollins University, and her M.Ed. from Bloomsburg University.  Her writing has won the Andrew James Purdy Prize in Fiction.  She lives in Lake Ariel with husband, daughter, 2 cats, and 1 neurotic dog.

 

This will be a great show.  Please come out to support the local arts in Scranton, and to hear some new voices!

Tags: Prose In Pubs

Excerpt from Fat Girl, Skinny (My Memoir)

Today’s post comes from my memoir, Fat Girl, Skinny.  I’m having such fun doing these (final???) revisions, that I’ve decided to share some with everyone.  I hope you like it, and maybe this will shed some light on where I’ve been hiding for the past two years!  Let’s hope I am close to finding the book a home!

When I walked into Weight Watchers in 2005, I was 265 pounds.  I set an immediate goal of 165 for myself.  This chapter is about the day I reached that goal.

Excerpt from Fat Girl, Skinny:

The relationship with my scale is as precarious as two teenagers in heat.  Sure, as long as everyone is doing what they’re told and playing by the rules, it’s all butterflies and hand jobs.  But Inevitably, someone wanders outside the lines, the mutual trust is broken, someone’s head swivels, and  the next thing you know it’s all death threats and restraining orders.  But I can’t walk away.  I am tethered to this uncertainty.  This is my life as a fat girl.  This is the life of someone trying so desperately to be something else.  To be thin.  To be normal.  To be accepted.  To be anything but what we are.  We can turn on a dime.  We can flip the switch from rage to sage in five seconds flat.  And it all depends on one thing: that smooth, slick bastard of a scale in the corner of my bathroom.

There are only thirty-seven steps between my bed and my scale.  I know this, because every morning, before my eyes even fully open, I take that journey.   Some days, when I have been good the night before, and I can feel my skin loose and a pocket of air under my feet, the walk is more of a skip.   It’s a journey made with baited breath, with hopes high and fingers crossed.  It’s like having a boy slip his hand under your shirt for the first time, or sneaking out with your girlfriends at three o’clock in the morning.

Then, there are nights when I fuck up.  When I slip and allow a hot fudge sundae or a dozen 10-cent garlic parmesan wings past my lips and  the next morning my skin feels like sausage casing stretched over layers of fat and gristle and I can barely drag my pork loin legs to the floor.  Those are the mornings when the world is heavy and nothing comes easy.  Those are the mornings when I have to stop myself from smashing my scale into a billion pieces with a sledgehammer and lying on the ground while the remaining shards float down over me like ash.

It all starts with a routine, a series of rituals I perform before the actual weighing can commence.   I climb from the warmth of my bed, walk those thirty-seven steps across my tattered Berber carpet, empty my bladder of every last drip drop, strip off every last inch of clothing, exhale every last bit of breath from my lungs, and slide my bare feet onto the scale’s belly.  I am a slave reporting to my master.  I am a prisoner of the war within myself.  A war that, since its inception,  has divided, conquered and crushed my self esteem, my sense of self, and all the parts of my brain that those skinny, regular girls have intact.

  But on a cold September morning in my school house loft, the hundred years war inside of me screeches to a halt.  I begin that thirty seven step journey, as I always do, but today I know immediately that something is different.  My steps are lighter.  The air smells sweeter.  The birds outside my window are chirping a Beach Boys tune.  Through my window burns the light of a thousand suns.  There is something special about this day.  I close my eyes and begin the routine: pee, strip, exhale, pee again (just in case).  My feet stick to the white plastic and nothing in the world moves, not even my heart,  as the cherry red needle begins its ascent in the three inch wide window.   One hundred, one twenty, one thirty, impossible numbers, numbers I will only someday dream about are left in the dust as the red pioneer forges forward.  One forty, one fifty, one sixty, the pace begins to slow, one sixty two, one sixty three, a plunge towards one seventy, then a ping pong back.  Finally, the needle settles.  One sixty-five.  Goal.  I have reached my goal.

Suddenly, the world is thrust back into motion.  My heart bursts with blood, breath blows back into my lungs, my body shakes, and my eyes well up.  I step from the scale, stand against the white wall, and slide to the ground.  I pull my knees in tight to my chest and sob.  Almost a year ago, I was divorced and morbidly obese.   I was heartbroken and scared.  I was alone and not sure if I would ever be okay, ever again.  I cried every night for weeks, I drank like a fish, made really bad decisions, wore some questionable clothing, and smoked like a car wreck.  And then, maybe because of some cosmic plan or just a really good deal on the joining fee, I tumbled like a stone into a Weight Watcher’s meeting and wrote 165 in that little box marked: GOAL.

And now, that number is tangible.  I can feel it poking into my newly discovered rib cage, brushing against my  protruding collarbones, pressing against my slimming thighs.  I have made it.  I have gotten here.   I haven’t achieved very many things in my life.  I never ran a marathon, competed seriously for and landed a job, birthed a child, or finished Super Mario Brothers 3, but this is something I’ve done.  I’ve lost a hundred pounds, finally, and for real.  In that moment, it is as if a river has been released inside of me, and floating down that river are the moments I remember most about being fat.  Being rejected by boys, the whispers of coworkers at work, the constant disappointment on my parents’ faces, Jack walking out the door.

Then, there is a moment so raw and painful I have to close my eyes as it floats to the surface.  At the absolute lowest point in my life, when I felt nothing but FAT and I could barely stand to look at myself, I put my body into a tub of hot water and I sank.  I sank until the suds covered my bulging belly and breasts, until my three chins were submerged.  I sank until the steaming liquid slipped into my ears, pulled my hair, and wrapped around my mouth.    Down, down, down.  I closed my eyes, and felt myself slip under.  I wasn’t scared.  I was relieved.   I pressed the sides of the tub, forcing my body to stay submerged.  I wanted to disappear from the planet, to wash away what I was.  To erase the stain of me.  Now, on this cool September morning, all of those painful memories flop around on my  bathroom floor,  like waterless fish, gasping for air.

I want to tell the world about my accomplishment.  I want to fling open the windows of my loft apartment and scream until the little dangly thing at the back of my throat wears raw red.  I want to be one of those girls that has something, anything to brag about.    Instead,  I fill my cracked plastic bathtub with hot water and slip into the soapy white basin.  All these years later, the water covers my whole body effortlessly.  I close my eyes, feel the warmth against my skin and remember what it was like, all those years ago, to feel an urge to let go and slip under the slick skin of the water.  I am so far from that place, I think to myself.  I am floating.

Tags: creative writing, Memoir

Meditations on 9/11

When I was growing up, nothing could touch us.  My parents protected us, kept us safe, drove us places, and kept bad boys at bay (for the most part).  On a larger scale, we were in the throes of the Cold War, and a warm and fuzzy President Reagan wouldn’t let anything touch us as a country, either.  I was only a kid and didn’t understand the intricacies of it, but one thing was clear:  my father trusted Reagan, and that was important to me.   When something went wrong, and Ronnie’s welcoming face flickered across the screen, usually from behind his desk in the Oval Office, everything was okay.  We were safe.  We would not be speaking Russian and drinking Vodka for breakfast any time soon.

My family was not a military family.  Aside from a grandfather in the Navy and a distant uncle who made a career of it, the people in my family chose different paths.  The closest we came to a vested interest in world affairs was my father’s work.  As a defense contractor for General Dynamics, we directly benefited from the bulging defense program.  My father designed tank parts, and the more tanks we needed, the more work he had.  In the eighties and early nineties, our cup runneth over.  When Clinton entered the White House years later, my family’s financial situation changed dramatically.  My father’s job was cut, and our family was never the same, on many levels.

Still, my generation, myself included, came of age in a safe world.  A bubble of security.  Sure I grew up listening to stories about World War II from my grandmother.  Her father was forty and had three kids and a bum foot and was still taken away for the war effort.  My father missed going to Vietnam by a weekend.  And as a history buff, I knew full well how WWII bonded the country together, and how Vietnam tore it apart.  Still, we twenty-somethings were far away from globalized fear.  The panic during WWII, might as well have happened on another planet, a place you had to space shuttle away to, it was that surreal to us.

Then, one Tuesday morning in September, four days after I married my first husband, 9/11 happened.  I was on my honeymoon, and spent the entire day trying to get home.  In the days that followed, I like everyone else, became transfixed on that plume of smoke rising over NYC.  It was as if the terrorists drove a missile right through the safety net that my parents and President Reagan had worked so hard to construct around me.   I lost no one that day.  I was lucky.  But I did lose something.  We all did.

9/11 has affected each of us differently.  For some, it was reminiscent of a time when outside forces were still a looming threat to our safety.  For others, it was a call to duty, a call for action.   For the people of my generation, just out of college, starting families and careers, it was devastating in several ways.  It hurdled us into adulthood.  Suddenly, there was a real threat to our safety, to those we loved, to the world we had grown up calling safe.  It was the welcoming of our generation to the grown up table at Thanksgiving.  We were officially adults now.  We held within us a gnawing fear that terror and death could come for us from anywhere and anyone at any time.

But the real effects of 9/11 are much deeper and even more tragic.  We have to live in fear now, which most people do, whether they admit it or not.  Every time we see a suicide bomber or a rogue attack on an encampment of innocents, we think..we could be next.  But while the fear is everlasting and devastating enough, it’s not the real tragedy of that day.  The real tragedy of 9/11 on my generation is the loss of optimism.   I once heard a professor ruminate on the lack of “a proper dream of tomorrow” in this country.  Twenty years ago, people talked about the future as being full of flying cars and robot housekeepers.  He pointed out that those things don’t happen anymore.  What happened to that dream of tomorrow, he asked.   The sad reality is that we aren’t entirely sure there will be a tomorrow.  

The up and coming generations should be the future of a country.  The young people, the ones starting businesses and families… the people just embarking on the American dream.  But we are not that.  Not anymore.  Instead, we are a generation of fear.  We don’t trust each other.   We don’t trust that our government can keep us safe.  We go to work with fear in our hearts.  We feel a sense of living on borrowed time.  Many of us don’t want to have kids.  Those of us who do, live with a sense of panic tethered to us at all times., and dread the day we have to explain to them what all of this means, and how wonderful it was before.  We were born in the late seventies, sandwiched between the end of Vietnam and the building of  America’s defense empire.  We never knew real fear.  And that real fear has now snaked its way into the center of us.  This could all be gone tomorrow, so why bother?  We are apathy.  We are pessimists.  We are  a people living without a guaranteed future, because like my great-grandfather faced in WWII, we know there is a price on our heads at all times.  We are wanted.  Dead.  We are a post-9/11 people.

Tags: 9/11, writing