So it has been awhile since I have written on my blog. It has been a busy few weeks, and as summer comes to an end, I am a little melancholy thinking about going back to teaching full time and being away from my guys. When I told Joseph there were only two weeks left of summer, he gave a little shudder. I know he is not looking forward to going back to school--getting up early, getting on the bus, completing homework--not the most fun for a teenager. Still, the routine of school is good for him, and I am trying to tell myself that the routine will be good for me--but I have my doubts.
I have had a wonderful summer. I have worked, but I have worked mostly when I felt like working. I have also been able to devote my days to my guys--well mainly Ronan--and then work at night when he is asleep. I have been able to stay up until the early hours of the morning hanging out with my husband, talking and watching movies, and dreaming about our future. These things make me happy.
As I think about happiness, I think it is important for people to realize that happiness is relative. My husband often quotes author Larry McMurtry who wrote about "little cups of buttermilk" in his famous novel Lonesome Dove. The little cups of buttermilk are the little things in life that make us smile, make us happy, keep us going. It is my belief that being happy in this world is just being able to focus on those little cups of buttermilk more than you focus on your struggles in life.
Everybody has a hard story. I think this. I had a tough childhood, but the more I listen to other people, the more I learn that most people have had very hard times in their lives at one point or another. Some people live with amazing amounts of tragedy. How do we do it? How do we live with such tragedy? How do we keep going? It has got to be the buttermilk.
With that in mind, I thought readers of this blog could think about their own little cups of buttermilk and think about what makes you happy. I have many, but these are a few...
seeing Ronan's sleepy smile in the mornings when he wakes up in a good mood
reading one of my husband's poems
reading one of his short stories
hearing a funny, witty joke from Joseph
going for a walk with my family
seeing the wild turkeys that run around our neighborhood
watching a good movie with my husband and then having a conversation where we analyze the writing, acting, plot, etc.
having my husband's strong arms around me in a random hug
making cupcakes and cookies for my guys (ok and myself too)
There seem to be so many more. I guess that is a good sign. I feel like such a fortunate person. Certainly, I have struggles, and some days seem darker than others, but I just try to keep my eyes toward the little things, the little things that can make life so good.
More later...
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Friday, July 23, 2010
on dreams
Well, I am sitting here with my one year old, and it is breakfast time. It is a beautiful morning, and I am looking out the window thinking it is going to be another lovely day. Mornings are my favorite time of day with Ronan. He is smiling and doing his little dance in his high chair. He holds his little arms up and shakes his little body back and forth in a little dance. Of course, the sweet face he makes while he is doing this makes it even cuter. He looks at me like "I am cute, and you are impressed, right?"
My husband has talked about going swimming at the lake down the road from us today, and I think it will be fun. Right now though, in the back of mind, my dentist appointment for the day is on my mind. I need two fillings, which is minor stuff of course to most people, but I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to the dentist. Even the office makes me stress, and the sounds I hear in that place make my blood pressure rise.
I had a kind of bad dream last night about a lion. I was thinking it was maybe related to my stress about going to the dentist, but I have also learned over the years that I create a lot of stress in my life for myself. I worry about things all the time that "might" happen but are really quite unlikely. Still, I looked "lion" up in an online dream dictionary--a reliable source I know--and it said that lions in dreams are generally not good signs, but my lion told me everything was OK and not to worry. ;)
In my dream, for some reason, I had to take care of this lion, and I was worried about it all the time. The worst part of the dream was that, for some bizarre reason, the lion's cage was in my baby's room. I do have some crazy dreams. :) Anyway, every single day, I had to make sure the lion was fed. Apparently, in Crystal's dream world, lion's are satisfied with a few slices of lunch-meat ham. But one day I forgot to feed the lion his lunch meat, and when I remembered, I freaked out because I thought the lion would eat my baby. So I ran into the lion's/baby's room, expecting the worst, as seems to be my motto in life, only to find that the lion was out of his cage and sleeping in the corner. I went over to him with some ham slices, and he willingly went back to his cage. Before I closed the cage, he told me that he would never hurt me or the baby or anybody. He said I shouldn't worry so much, and since I took care of him, he would make sure the baby would be safe.
So call me crazy, but I think that dream means something in my life...Maybe it is about the dentist in some way...Maybe it is about some other stress I create for myself...
But speaking of dreams makes me think about bigger dreams, life dreams, the ones we all have for ourselves. Everyone has them, right? Those dreams that sometimes develop when we are children, but we have them as adults. The dreams that reflect our goals, our wants, for ourselves and our families.
If you are reading this, think about your dream for yourself. What was it? What is it? Are you living it? Are you ignoring it?
I am here to tell you that you should not ignore your dreams—even if they are big dreams. When I was in college, my advisor took a few of us to a talk given by a woman named Sarah Weddington. She was the youngest woman ever to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. She was just 25 years old, and she won the case. The case was Roe vs. Wade! Talk about a big case, right? Anyway, I don’t remember much of her talk, but there was something that Ms. Weddington said that has stayed with me for years. She said that people should not be afraid to follow their big dreams—even if they seem impossible. After all, if nobody followed their big dreams, big things would never get done. Of course, I can’t quote her, but that was the gist of her message. I won’t forget it.
My dream when I was little was to be a writer. I read like crazy until I turned 16 and then was boy crazy. :) And I wanted to be like the writers whose works I was reading. I wanted to write novels and have them published. I soon, however, realized that I seemed to have a gift for teaching and for inspiring other people. Even in high school, I started to think I wanted to be a college professor, but it seemed unlikely, so I decided to major in Elementary Education. When I got to college though, I realized Elementary Education was not for me, and my college professors made me feel like I was smart enough to be one of them. They also showed me a path—a way to achieve this dream—and I was brave and followed it. It was a good thing to do.
As an adult, I still had this dream of being a writer, and I had this secret dream of being married to a writer. I imagined a household where writing and books were paramount, and my two imaginary children (one boy and one girl, of course) would love writing, too, and would go to college one day and say “My Dad and Mom are the famous authors of blah, blah, blah.” Of course, all this seemed impossible to me.
But then I met my husband. He is a writer. I liked him from the first moment I saw him, something just hit me. I think it was like the love at first sight people sometimes talk about. It wasn’t just that he was handsome. He looked wise and a little sad, like maybe he would understand me. And THEN, I read a couple of his short stories, and that was it. I knew I loved him.
Still, my dream seemed impossible for some years.
Of course, here we are. I now share my dreams with him. He is so gifted. It is a tragedy, in many ways, he is not famous yet, though I think it is lucky for me. If he had already been famous when I met him, how would he have ended up with me? He surely would have a young super model-like wife. Anyway, it worked out, I think. :) I feel we are on the cusp of making dreams come true.
My husband’s first book comes out this fall. I think it is going to be big. It is a children’s poetry picture book. It is a fun/scary story, and everything in me tells me people are really, really going to like this book. I worked for about five years as a Children’s Literature professor, and I have rarely seen a story this good. On top of that, some of the illustrations are now coming in from the artist, and they are amazing. So this is it, I think. The beginning of a dream come true.
I have this amazing husband, who is supportive of me and a genius with the written word. I don’t have a little boy and a little girl—two boys instead, but I love them so much. I am surrounded by guys, and so far, everyone seems to love reading and writing. Even our infant loves books like I have never seen a child love books. I guess it is in his DNA. More on that later.
Final thoughts to end my ramble...
People should try to follow their dreams. When you get off the path you are supposed to be on, you will start to have that “this is not right” feeling. I think this. I have felt that feeling a time or two in my life. I don’t feel that anymore, and it feels good. If we have to work hard anyway in this life, we might as well work at making our dreams a reality.
My husband has talked about going swimming at the lake down the road from us today, and I think it will be fun. Right now though, in the back of mind, my dentist appointment for the day is on my mind. I need two fillings, which is minor stuff of course to most people, but I am a bit of a wimp when it comes to the dentist. Even the office makes me stress, and the sounds I hear in that place make my blood pressure rise.
I had a kind of bad dream last night about a lion. I was thinking it was maybe related to my stress about going to the dentist, but I have also learned over the years that I create a lot of stress in my life for myself. I worry about things all the time that "might" happen but are really quite unlikely. Still, I looked "lion" up in an online dream dictionary--a reliable source I know--and it said that lions in dreams are generally not good signs, but my lion told me everything was OK and not to worry. ;)
In my dream, for some reason, I had to take care of this lion, and I was worried about it all the time. The worst part of the dream was that, for some bizarre reason, the lion's cage was in my baby's room. I do have some crazy dreams. :) Anyway, every single day, I had to make sure the lion was fed. Apparently, in Crystal's dream world, lion's are satisfied with a few slices of lunch-meat ham. But one day I forgot to feed the lion his lunch meat, and when I remembered, I freaked out because I thought the lion would eat my baby. So I ran into the lion's/baby's room, expecting the worst, as seems to be my motto in life, only to find that the lion was out of his cage and sleeping in the corner. I went over to him with some ham slices, and he willingly went back to his cage. Before I closed the cage, he told me that he would never hurt me or the baby or anybody. He said I shouldn't worry so much, and since I took care of him, he would make sure the baby would be safe.
So call me crazy, but I think that dream means something in my life...Maybe it is about the dentist in some way...Maybe it is about some other stress I create for myself...
But speaking of dreams makes me think about bigger dreams, life dreams, the ones we all have for ourselves. Everyone has them, right? Those dreams that sometimes develop when we are children, but we have them as adults. The dreams that reflect our goals, our wants, for ourselves and our families.
If you are reading this, think about your dream for yourself. What was it? What is it? Are you living it? Are you ignoring it?
I am here to tell you that you should not ignore your dreams—even if they are big dreams. When I was in college, my advisor took a few of us to a talk given by a woman named Sarah Weddington. She was the youngest woman ever to argue a case in front of the Supreme Court. She was just 25 years old, and she won the case. The case was Roe vs. Wade! Talk about a big case, right? Anyway, I don’t remember much of her talk, but there was something that Ms. Weddington said that has stayed with me for years. She said that people should not be afraid to follow their big dreams—even if they seem impossible. After all, if nobody followed their big dreams, big things would never get done. Of course, I can’t quote her, but that was the gist of her message. I won’t forget it.
My dream when I was little was to be a writer. I read like crazy until I turned 16 and then was boy crazy. :) And I wanted to be like the writers whose works I was reading. I wanted to write novels and have them published. I soon, however, realized that I seemed to have a gift for teaching and for inspiring other people. Even in high school, I started to think I wanted to be a college professor, but it seemed unlikely, so I decided to major in Elementary Education. When I got to college though, I realized Elementary Education was not for me, and my college professors made me feel like I was smart enough to be one of them. They also showed me a path—a way to achieve this dream—and I was brave and followed it. It was a good thing to do.
As an adult, I still had this dream of being a writer, and I had this secret dream of being married to a writer. I imagined a household where writing and books were paramount, and my two imaginary children (one boy and one girl, of course) would love writing, too, and would go to college one day and say “My Dad and Mom are the famous authors of blah, blah, blah.” Of course, all this seemed impossible to me.
But then I met my husband. He is a writer. I liked him from the first moment I saw him, something just hit me. I think it was like the love at first sight people sometimes talk about. It wasn’t just that he was handsome. He looked wise and a little sad, like maybe he would understand me. And THEN, I read a couple of his short stories, and that was it. I knew I loved him.
Still, my dream seemed impossible for some years.
Of course, here we are. I now share my dreams with him. He is so gifted. It is a tragedy, in many ways, he is not famous yet, though I think it is lucky for me. If he had already been famous when I met him, how would he have ended up with me? He surely would have a young super model-like wife. Anyway, it worked out, I think. :) I feel we are on the cusp of making dreams come true.
My husband’s first book comes out this fall. I think it is going to be big. It is a children’s poetry picture book. It is a fun/scary story, and everything in me tells me people are really, really going to like this book. I worked for about five years as a Children’s Literature professor, and I have rarely seen a story this good. On top of that, some of the illustrations are now coming in from the artist, and they are amazing. So this is it, I think. The beginning of a dream come true.
I have this amazing husband, who is supportive of me and a genius with the written word. I don’t have a little boy and a little girl—two boys instead, but I love them so much. I am surrounded by guys, and so far, everyone seems to love reading and writing. Even our infant loves books like I have never seen a child love books. I guess it is in his DNA. More on that later.
Final thoughts to end my ramble...
People should try to follow their dreams. When you get off the path you are supposed to be on, you will start to have that “this is not right” feeling. I think this. I have felt that feeling a time or two in my life. I don’t feel that anymore, and it feels good. If we have to work hard anyway in this life, we might as well work at making our dreams a reality.
Friday, July 16, 2010
on writing
So I am certainly no Stephen King, but since I am a writing teacher and am married to a writer, I think I know a thing or two about writing. Plus, Stephen King, wonderful as he is, doesn't own that title, right? :)
I am sitting here at midnight. I am taking a break from work in order to blog. You may ask why I am up at midnight working. It is not because I am such a devoted writing teacher; the truth is, I am up at midnight working because I am married to a writer. So my husband is behind me at his desk, working diligently on a poem. It was an amazing poem in its original incarnation, but he is now working to make it "scan." For those of you who don't know, this means the lines have to follow a certain pattern of stresses and unstresses.
I anxiously await the "reading" I assume I will get when he has the last two stanzas he is working on now complete. This is how things generally work, so I am unable to go to bed until I get to hear what he has been working on. I have grown tired of working on the composition handbook and grown tired of e-bay, Facebook, and even the University of Pennsylvania list calls for papers. So here I sit. Blogging about writing. And yes, I know that last sentence was a fragment.
I studied writing, rhetoric (the philosophy of writing), and the teaching of writing for a good ten years to get my PhD, but I am pretty sure being married to a writer has taught me just about as much about the writing process and about how the mind works during that process.
Just as Composition researchers feared--or maybe as I feared--, there is not much order to the way the mind works, or not that I can tell. There seems to be that kind of "cooking of the soup" that Peter Elbow wrote about. I remember reading Elbow and his talk about the magical concoctions in the mind when ideas are developing, and I had serious doubts. I doubt Peter Elbow no more.
My husband has a gifted mind in many ways, but he is especially gifted when it comes to language and the manipulation of language. I guess that is why he writes such wonderful poetry. I like to study him. I wonder where this gift comes from. Is it something he was born with? Is it something he developed? I am sure it is both. He read so much as a child. That had to do wonders for his little mind.
I like to watch his process. It is much as Donald Murray and Peter Elbow describe. He gets ideas, and then he lets them "simmer." The funny thing is that sometimes things "cook up" quickly; other times, things must "simmer" a long while.
Either way, I notice that he is the kind of writer who gets through many drafts in his head. This is a lot like me. When things finally go to print, they have gone through many drafts in my head. Some writers put down much rougher ideas and then go through a lengthy revision process. My husband still revises, but things seem to have be worked over quite a bit before he writes them down.
I wonder how this applies to my teaching of writing, and I think this. I think I have to understand that some of my students will not have as much process as others, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. I think, sometimes, writing teachers get so caught up in measuring the process. We certainly need to do this. We have to have something to work with. However, I think we also have to be more understanding of the fact that there are things going on in the minds of writers that we will NEVER be able to teach or measure or assess. That is a tough thing to write, but here at now 12:22 in the A.M., this seems like truth to me.
OK, I think that is it for my first post. I hear him whispering some words. I am hoping I am about to get my "reading."
I am sitting here at midnight. I am taking a break from work in order to blog. You may ask why I am up at midnight working. It is not because I am such a devoted writing teacher; the truth is, I am up at midnight working because I am married to a writer. So my husband is behind me at his desk, working diligently on a poem. It was an amazing poem in its original incarnation, but he is now working to make it "scan." For those of you who don't know, this means the lines have to follow a certain pattern of stresses and unstresses.
I anxiously await the "reading" I assume I will get when he has the last two stanzas he is working on now complete. This is how things generally work, so I am unable to go to bed until I get to hear what he has been working on. I have grown tired of working on the composition handbook and grown tired of e-bay, Facebook, and even the University of Pennsylvania list calls for papers. So here I sit. Blogging about writing. And yes, I know that last sentence was a fragment.
I studied writing, rhetoric (the philosophy of writing), and the teaching of writing for a good ten years to get my PhD, but I am pretty sure being married to a writer has taught me just about as much about the writing process and about how the mind works during that process.
Just as Composition researchers feared--or maybe as I feared--, there is not much order to the way the mind works, or not that I can tell. There seems to be that kind of "cooking of the soup" that Peter Elbow wrote about. I remember reading Elbow and his talk about the magical concoctions in the mind when ideas are developing, and I had serious doubts. I doubt Peter Elbow no more.
My husband has a gifted mind in many ways, but he is especially gifted when it comes to language and the manipulation of language. I guess that is why he writes such wonderful poetry. I like to study him. I wonder where this gift comes from. Is it something he was born with? Is it something he developed? I am sure it is both. He read so much as a child. That had to do wonders for his little mind.
I like to watch his process. It is much as Donald Murray and Peter Elbow describe. He gets ideas, and then he lets them "simmer." The funny thing is that sometimes things "cook up" quickly; other times, things must "simmer" a long while.
Either way, I notice that he is the kind of writer who gets through many drafts in his head. This is a lot like me. When things finally go to print, they have gone through many drafts in my head. Some writers put down much rougher ideas and then go through a lengthy revision process. My husband still revises, but things seem to have be worked over quite a bit before he writes them down.
I wonder how this applies to my teaching of writing, and I think this. I think I have to understand that some of my students will not have as much process as others, and this is not necessarily a bad thing. I think, sometimes, writing teachers get so caught up in measuring the process. We certainly need to do this. We have to have something to work with. However, I think we also have to be more understanding of the fact that there are things going on in the minds of writers that we will NEVER be able to teach or measure or assess. That is a tough thing to write, but here at now 12:22 in the A.M., this seems like truth to me.
OK, I think that is it for my first post. I hear him whispering some words. I am hoping I am about to get my "reading."
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