Marathon running has become a cultural presence. So much so that, even though people act shocked, and express that they think you’re a little nutty for wanting to do one – nobody bothers to ask you why you want to do said nutty thing. It’s just something we do now. It’s a touchstone of achievement still, something that is still hard, as evidenced by how few people want to get in on the training run fun with a nutty runner like me.

The truth is that ANYONE can run – but not everyone wants to. Maybe some folks see it as a waste of time. Or it hurts too much. Or what if that dreaded stitch in the side thing happens? Running just isn’t for everyone, maybe that’s all. I personally don’t believe that. I think you’re just chicken, like I used to be.

“Oh,” they say, “that’s amazing. I can’t run more than a mile/thirty seconds/a few feet.” I guess they’d think I was even more nutty if they knew just how much you have to do to be ready for a marathon. By now, I’ve logged 193 miles with my little phone app. It has, on occasion, failed me, or I’ve accidentally “dumped” a workout, and there are all the miles I’ve done before I ever got my hands on this sweet phone back in July, and the hours I’ve spent sweating in a recumbent stationary bike, trying to keep my knees in one piece. Yes,  have to bow and pay feasance to my aging body, as much as it aggravates me to admit to it.

Let’s find a route with a 7-11 on it.

When I first started running, I was a 16 year-old with no idea what I was doing. Track seemed like a good idea. I wanted to do a sport, be a part of a team, meet some new friends. Our practices consisted of lots of trackwork, and then assigned “long” runs that we did in groups…with minimal supervision. I’m pretty sure we did our best to figure out ways of avoiding too much mileage. And the complaining from us when those runs did get slotted in…well, probably Coach Addo just learned to tune us out. He should have taken me by the shoulders and compelled me to look in the mirror. Wake up, you are BUILT for distance! Nearly six feet tall, and there I was, huffing and wheezing my way through endless 400 and 800 races. My self-delusion continued through a short career as a walk-on at UNC Chapel Hill, where, if you can believe it, still no one said anything to me along the lines of, “Can you just give 5 miles a try?” There I was, foolishly believing in the dream of “middle d”, surrounded by Olympic athletes.

I learned to start loving the longer stuff after a while – it took the Marine Corps to drag it out of me – but it hasn’t been until this year that I have finally found my way to going THE distance, and not being frightened by the journey. Only took about 20 years…. I was “gonna” do a marathon last year, the same one I actually AM doing this year, but I let the inner voices and doubts talk me back out of it. This year, I signed up back in April or something. It was a way of ensuring that I would not let the same thing happen again. As daunting as it seems, I know I can make it happen.

Plan, what plan?

I started out with a training schedule. It was doable. It seemed ideal. I was right on track, until…summer vacation, crabby kids, husband on overseas travel for work, and everything else pushed me right off course. I knew somewhere in there I’d have to make the choice to roll with it. Dragging the kids to the high school track in town was not a lot of fun. Biking four days a week seemed counter-productive. So I threw the schedule out the window, and began to work on making it work, no matter what it looked like. The schedule I was using was already taking a “less is more” approach, so fine-tuning it while simultaneously ignoring it has been interesting. Like right now, it wants me to be doing a 16 miler. Not ready yet…plus, it’s harder to find one of those loops than you might imagine.

The other side of the training has been getting to know my body all over again. I’m 36. I don’t recover the way I used to (none of us do). I have to manage my food, what kinds and how much, at different times of day. Sometimes taking advice from the “experts” is good, but sometimes you have to pay attention to whether it’s working or not. I tend to protein load in the morning, and indulge in carbs at night. More specifically, an egg, coffee, and a little bit of carb for breakfast. Big lunch, equal balance of the two. More carb than otherwise for supper. Lots of fruit and veggies. It can get complicated, but it’s been part of the learning process. The whole point of it is getting into a routine that works, that keeps you from crashing during the day, and feeling an energy reserve during lengthy runs.

Screw you guys, I’m goin’ home.

There’s always that temptation to cut it short and go home to wallow in a bowl of ice cream. Aside from the fact that with a run that lasts over an hour, you CAN go home and eat some ice cream, or have a beer, giving up is a dangerous game. It’s probably the reason why I committed to this marathon so early this year. Throwing in the towel sends a message. I’m not talking about the one that gets sent to your aching whatever once you stop. It’s the one that gets sent to your kids, your significant other, your boss…that you can’t find the fight in you. A marathon, like anything else in life, is a goal you have to fight for, if you want it. My kids weren’t around when I had to fight for all the other stuff I’ve accomplished in life, but they’re here for this thing. They’re going to be dragged kicking and screaming down to Hartford on a Saturday morning, so that they can watch me run over the finish line and dissolve into a puddle.

If you are a kid, have been one, or have some of your own, you know the refrain. “I can’t do it, it’s tooooooooo hard.” Tough crap. Children of first world nations don’t have to worry about working in mines, sweatshops, or being sent to the workhouse when their families can’t afford to keep them. That was happening only about 80 years ago in this country, and it still happens all over the world. I was just as guilty as anyone else of thinking life was too hard when I was a kid. My biggest worry was whether I’d ever have the cool clothes or the Cabbage Patch Kid everyone else had. That’s not a terrible thing, it’s certainly better than wondering if you’re going to die of blacklung before you get to marry and have your own kids. I just want my kids to know that things that are difficult and sometimes painful are not to be shirked. They are to be faced, head on, while you scream, “Oh yeah? f*** you!!!!” We’re obviously devoid of many rites of passage that used to exist. I like to imagine what parent groups would say to children leaping over bulls, or going off into the wilderness for weeks, alone, to seek out visions. It might be fun just to throw that into the public arena.

Why? BeCause.

So, yes. I want to demonstrate to my kids that I can kick the crap out of a goal, out of 26.2 miles. It does help that there are nearly 2 dozen charities to support for the ING Hartford Marathon. You can pick any one you want. I chose Jocelyn’s Run, which is a locally-based autism charity that aims to help families with a child on the spectrum. It was the reason I felt good about picking the Hartford marathon. We have a nine year-old with autism, and he has a 5 year-old brother. We’re lucky enough to have a good standard of living. Not every family gets that lucky, so I am hoping to raise a bit of money to aid in that fight.

Someday I would love to run the Marine Corps Marathon, and bring my kids to that, so they can see what the faces of heroism really look like, when the Wounded Warrior detachment shows up. At the end of the day (mine or anyone else’s), I hope that my marathon run inspires someone else to do one, the way I was inspired last year by my high school classmates who ran various ones. I’m grateful to them for having the guts to finish, so that I would know I could as well. Sometimes a marathon doesn’t have to be a marathon, either. Sometimes it’s just finishing something difficult, depressing, challenging, or inspiring. For me, the people who do that are the everyday heroes, and that’s enough to get me out of bed in the morning to tug on running shoes.

(Thanks to Kate Dee for being an amazing example of courage, and to Lynn, Jasmine, and Heather for running their hearts out for causes or just because.)

The bullies started off being primarily teachers. Probably some to many of my former classmates had very different experiences – but on the side of things where the misfits and I resided, it wasn’t happyville. I was, probably, classic ADD, waaay before such things were being identified, labeled, or given any attention at all. The usual modus operandi in my case was to sit in class, and pop off into distracted daydreams. Teachers would often then startle me out of my reverie, in front of the class, and attempt to embarrass me into paying attention. Homework was often incomplete, and before long, I was singled out as being potentially “slow” – something that didn’t play out to the teachers’ satisfaction, I guess, because I always scored high on standardized tests, and, much to their dismay, I gather my intelligence testing was fairly high. My mother never would tell any of us our scores, but the guidance counselor at the elementary school let it slip that they hadn’t had anyone test so high before. I don’t say that to stroke my ego by any means. Knowing that fact was useless and even more depressing to me – mostly because I couldn’t seem to make my brain do the things it was “supposed” to do. It was a long and endlessly unhappy tenure in elementary and middle school….

There seemed to be no end to the adults who felt that it was okay to demean and humiliate, not just me, but anyone who failed to turn into average or better than average workers. How could I explain to any of them that I wanted desperately to be like the rest of the class, getting A’s, privileges, stickers, pats on the back? I can’t count the times I cried myself to sleep, or just dreaded going home to explain yet another crummy report card or test. And before long, the kids picked up on the notion that if adults were doing it, teasing, mocking, harassing – all of it was not just something to be gotten away with, but tacitly approved. It was like living through a kiddie version of a Code Red (made so famous in A Few Good Men), and the few times I did speak up, was given the message from administrators that it was MY fault.

Adding fuel to the fire were some other particulars which made me stand out even more, I guess…my dad was and is a priest of the Protestant sort, so I frequently got a lot of teasing about whether I’d be a nun when I grew up, and some other things that stemmed from the ignorance of most people about what that sort of family must be like. I was scrawny, had goofy glasses (it was the 80′s after all), and by the time I was in 5th grade, I had size 9 ladies’ feet. You can imagine what effect that might have.

Things got progressively worse and worse until I tried to run away in 9th grade. I’d left a school system, tried to fit into a new one, and it seemed to follow me…all the crap that I was trying to get beyond.

Do you want to know what helped me to turn the corner? I hope so, whether you’re in school, or work at one, or are just a caring adult:

Someone finally saw my struggles and reached out to me.

It was right after the running-away attempt. I was supposed to get in trouble, but we had an assistant principal at this high school, and he handled the incident. He told me that he’d become aware of everything going on, that I was being bullied, harrassed, and threatened – that he doubted I would have done what I’d done if not for all of that. He opened his door to me, told me to come and tell him if anything further happened. Why? ‘Because this should be a safe place for you.’ was approximately what he said and how I recall it, even now.

So I say to anyone reading this – take a moment and help make life feel a little safer for someone who is struggling. Last fall at my younger son’s birthday party, I had a middle school-aged sibling of one of his friends helping me with goody bags. She was clearly wanting someone to talk to, so I let her share anything she wanted. She was surprised by me letting her in on the fact that I’d been in her shoes. I’m hoping I don’t look or act like a victim anymore. It was that same message, that it DOES get better.

I let go of the pain and anger years and years ago – and I do say this as well – going through a little strife helps mold you. I eventually got the guts to join sports (and lo, found that it was the best solution to my distractable self – went on the honor roll, even!). I got my degree in something I was passionate about, even though there were lots of obstacles. Did a lot of strange and interesting things in my youth. And now, I have my own family. And you know what? Having struggled and come out the other side, it makes me acutely aware of my own kids and the potential pitfalls. I teach them to be sensitive to kids who struggle. It’s a big thing for us, since one of our kids is autistic. I know what could happen, I know the rough road ahead for each of them.

To parents – teaching empathy is so important. Beyond that, establishing trust and open communication is vital. We all have our shortcomings – I was always too scared to tell my parents what was happening to me. I never thought I’d be believed, so we have to make our kids believe in us.

To teachers and administrators – school has changed a lot since I was a kid – I am grateful for the changes. Even more than zero tolerance policies, however, we should be pushing for tolerance of one another. School being a safe place is an undervalued message (albeit a challenging one). Even just doing what that one principal did for me, just talking one on one to a student, it can change someone’s world.

To kids – have the guts to stand up for what you believe in. The faith that life isn’t always going to be painful. The courage to do the right thing, even when no one is looking. It doesn’t take much. But once you start doing things, you find it’s addictive, and the good feelings you get are just a perk.

Actually, if I’m being quite honest, reading critically for short story writing has turned out to be much more helpful than I’d guessed. First off, you don’t want to be a rambler if your narrative is supposed to be succinct by nature, so you start thinking about how to say everything in much smaller, more meaningful mouthfuls. When you write long, you get a little lax. I’ve used the running metaphor for writing before, and it still holds true. When I set out on an hour or more looooong run, I’m only worried about being able to make it for the return leg, so I take it easy, and coast, and delve off into fantasy or two. On the days I go fast and short, I have to remain in the moment, focus on form, and push myself. This is exactly how I am feeling as I move through short stories. A little bit of endorphin, a little panic, a glance at the clock every few moments, and eventually, I can see the end nearing. I’ll breathe when I’m done.

Through the auspices of this reading group, I’m expanding a story I mentioned before, based on someone I observed in our neighborhood. Instead of one tiny piece of his pie, I’m making the rest of it, into a village narrative. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m in the home stretch of the second in the series. I wish it had been easier and more quick, but holy hell, we got the mother of all snowstorms last week, and I’ve been on my own with our kids, with my husband overseas on business. To quote Metallica, “…frayed ends of sanity/hear them calling me….” Tonight was a particular challenge, with our younger child going apeshit several times. He’s always been high strung, a colicky personality to the bone, but tonight was a new level of freakout. It’s tough to get him ramped down from those moments – you tell him he’s got to chill and do some breathing, and he screams that he’s CALMED DOWN NOW!!!!!!! I have never met this kind of kid before…and it’s chemistry, too – his extra-extrovert to my sanguine (normally) introvert. We collide like matter and antimatter – and clusters of black holes are littered around us by day’s end. I love his passion, for the most part, but it might kill me.

And for my efforts, I have gotten a modest fee, and a genuine two dollar bill to frame and baffle my husband with when he arrives home. It’s not perzactly publication, but if I can get a little feedback, and a collection of stories to play around with, it’s well worth it.

To be continued…..

My mother likes to tell a story about a time, when I was a teenager, that she came in to wake me, and swears that I mumbled, “Brain and brain, what is brain?” Like Spock, my brain had apparently gone on the fritz. Or on the lam. I don’t remember saying any of it, and I don’t normally somnambu-vocalize, but I used to be one of those people who didn’t function in the morning. I’d be up, late at night, drinking coffee after coffee, feeling fine, and have no trouble going to sleep.

These days…at the age of 35 (and my darling hubby a little beyond that) we find ourselves obsessing over sleep, whether we had enough, whether we got the right kind, and what the hell was up with those LOONY dreams last night? Seriously. We’ve actually had conversations where we wondered whether our house was built on a temporal rift, an ancient burial ground, something that would explain some of the wacko dreams we seem to have in concert with each other. I do wonder whether science can provide an answer to why it is that we both dream heavily during the same night, even though, obviously, they’re different dreams. Other nights, we’re both out cold and can’t recall anything.

There are reasons to stay awake at night, certainly. Number one is that your kids are hopefully asleep (although I see an alarming number of my friends who have insomniac offspring – I feel for them…not fun!). And if  your kids are asleep, your house suddenly becomes the adult playground. All the off-color language starts flowing like Prohibition has just ended. We look at movies we’d never dare to with small people on the loose. And, of course, the other thing, which is supposed to only get better as we get older, right?

I mean, the thing is that, with your kids underfoot, you just try to have a conversation. You can’t. Kids have a set of directives, I have come to see, that when they see someone trying to talk on the phone or to someone, that’s when they suddenly need everything that they’ve been putting off for the whole day. I get the “I’m hungry, I’m bored, I want you to read a story, I need to suddenly paint a portrait because I’ve been studying Da Vinci’s techniques,” every single time I pick up the phone when my mother calls. Right now, I’m getting the, “I need you, I want you,” from the wrong party, if you know what I mean.

I know I can’t blame them for everything, including for why I might be overtired (they have their flaws, but they certainly sleep), but it has to be a contributing factor. I have moments when I know I had a conversation with someone about something but I will be damned if I can think who the heck I was talking to. I think also that having kid in your life, with the parental-ADD that comes in the package, means that you have to be a little more careful about trying to remember. I have moments when I am certain I had a conversation with someone, only to realize that I was playing out a potential conversation in my head, or that I dreamt it….

When I write, and am distracted, or affected by my memory gaps as I write ~ well, you can imagine how well that goes from time to time. There have been things I wrote, and went back to read, and found that none of it made sense, or that I was evidently under the influence of aliens or rampant hormones (that’s a whole book on its own!). Brain and brain…. Not all of it makes it out there for everyone to see, thank goodness, but some of it does. I’m coming to view this as part of the territory, that I will stray, “speak” out of turn, irritate, or upset the apple cart a bit. I don’t plan on sharing huge swathes of personal detail, but yes, it’s still possible to mess up and say something that doesn’t sit right with everyone.

As I can’t fully blame my kids (at least not for too many more years…they are learning how to read now), neither can I just blame it on a faulty noggin. Mine is faulty here and there. I know I don’t have total recall. How much use it not to see a photographic image of a page and everything on it, but only a fuzzy photo of the page, and roughly where the thing you’re trying to think of is on that page? Only a tiny bit of useful, I can tell you.

Our brains are the single biggest asset we have…. I have lost one grandparent to complications from Alzheimer’s for instance, and my father’s parents are both slipping into the ether of dementia, right in front of us. My other grandmother, whom I don’t get to see very often, is also affected. It terrifies me. Of the four of them, three are college graduates. They were all voracious readers. The only thing I can see that was a risk factor they all had in common: they never really participated in any kind of cardiovascular exercise. I hope that as I go along (and I do exercise for that reason), and Generation X ages, we all can escape this fate.

But in the here and now, I have to say that I probably am going to screw up and/or have brain farts with the best of them. At least I am not like a Sue Grafton, who writes her crime books, envisioning her ex-husband as the murder victim in each one. Or Hemingway and Fitzgerald, who seemed to have written self-destructive prophecies. Or the Eat, Pray, Love author, whose ex was unhappy enough abut her portrayal of him that he penned his own book, apparently in response. And one does wonder what Jane Austen’s contemporaries thought of her mocking them quite blatantly in her books. It seems to come with the territory, in a way that not much of the other aspects of the arts seems to. Nor, in fact, that much else in this world seems to. The written word has a power unmatched, probably because it does come from the mind, the seat of intellect, origin of emotion; it is the reason our hands, hearts, and mouths move. Perhaps it is necessary to recognize that power and submit to it a little, so that we can understand how much it can affect and alter our world.

In other words, keep learning.

It’s probably good then, that he was doubting whether I’d be able to get this particular agent person to take me on – (note: he has clarified and said he was referring to this based on a short story that I had written, that he thought it would be a bad idea to send it to this agent, I guess he feels it was not one of my better moments in writing....) I shall refer to this particular agent person as just that, or maybe, “this P.A.P.,” at least until I have unleashed myself and my mountain of wordiness onto the poor soul. I had been secretly worrying about it all, but once the Husband voiced his concern, I could feel the tiny little fire – even if now I find that it was a focused concern, on one particular thing (this was the story I sent off to this Glimmertrain submission process – I don’t have extremely high hopes for it. My short stories sometimes don’t seem to do what I want them to – I guess that’s why I tend to focus more on longer fiction – more narrative to engulf myself in. I’ll post it after I find out whether it was rejected, I guess…!)

This is the wee flame that propelled me from community college into UNC, as a junior transfer. I’d originally applied as a sophomore, and they called to say, jeez, you have too many credits for that, and not enough for junior…I don’t know what came over me, but I pounced. Maybe it was the thought of being in Jordan-land. Or the look I’d had at the campus, with its old, old atmosphere. I just rounded the corner, contacted a few people (thanks again to my high school AP English teacher!), and fought my way in. I had to do that a bit at UNC, probably because it’s a 50k student population, instead of a tiny liberal arts school…but yes, I managed to get my degree, even after being told I was two courses shy of graduating, mere months before I was due to hit OCS for the USMC. Again, under the gun, right, yessirree.

Sometimes, it hasn’t panned out 100%, but by and large, I find that I can really gear myself up when a deadline is looming. I recently found a paper I wrote for an astronomy class, under the same pressure. Somehow I had absorbed all this data about theoretics, quantum mechanics, and wrote about wormholes in a way that was clear I knew what the hell I was saying when I wrote it. Rereading it, however, holy cow…I could barely make sense of it.

Not just academics, either. After our first child was born, and shipped to a NICU out of state, I fought with everyone over the bill we were sent by a private doctor who saw him during that time. In the end, the doctor decided to write it off, and the whole thing was resolved peacefully.

In the past few years, my skills have slipped, though. I guess life got a little stressful, and I bundled myself up in the shell of protecting myself and our kids from the big bad world. It sounds ridiculous, unless you’ve been down our road. When you have a child with a major disability, you tend to be either really reactionary, or else, like me, becoming like a tank, heavily armored, and ignoring everything.

This past year has dumped me on my head here and there…and I was really starting to be stressed out and unhappy over everything…but, of course, bottling it up until my guts hurt. And then, I started talking to whatever it is out there that might be watching over us…I don’t know what to call it right now, obviously that is a whole different story (I grew up a “PK” – a priest’s kid)…but I was asking for a signpost, basically something to tell me in which direction to head. If it’s to be writing, that’s where I would love to go, but I don’t want to be selfish and do it if it’s not the right thing for me to do. And, when and where I least expected it – that was when my dad jumped out of his seat the next time I saw him, and he dug out a business card from his date book, and handed it to me, with this particular agent person’s name on it. If that’s not a signpost, I don’t know what is. Anyone could have given me a name, but this came from my dad, and it’s someone he has known for a long time. And this person’s family are a truly amazing bunch. I could hardly ask for a clearer roadmap, I guess.

So that lit the first fire of “gotta do” under me, and thankfully, my husband and his tiny expression of doubt have pushed me quite a bit further down the line. Where to now…?

But let’s be honest: even as a child, I knew that the tormentors were acting out of their own pain. I could see it. Oh, sure, some of them were riding a bandwagon, or trying to get accepted by being nasty. Oh, and lest I forget, there was a culture of bullying that, to me, was fully supported by the teachers and administration in our city.

I’ve written about this before, but in light of recent events, I want to just lay out a couple of things for everyone who has kids now, especially for those who never experienced being treated the way that I was treated (and so many others who were as well).

You have to have some understanding of your child’s school, other than going for open houses and conferences. I make it a point to drop in whenever I have a concern, but in the town where we live, my fears are a lot less than they would have been where I grew up. From about day one of middle school, life started its downhill slide for me. I was in that stage of life during the rise of slam books, I was a gawky, shy kid with glasses and size 9 feet, a late bloomer for puberty. My parents were not really involved with school except for my dad to utilize his network of “spies” – to wit, his parishioners who worked at that school – so al he knew was whether I was “behaving” or not. He and my mom had no clue what was really starting to go on. And I was terrified to tell them. No, I don’t remember why. I just know that I felt like I couldn’t. Some of the teachers loved to openly mock the students who were not meeting expectations, something that had started for me back in grade school. Maybe they thought it would embarrass me into doing my homework – but that wasn’t going to help, I was classic ADD in a day before anyone understood it – but I think it pissed them off that I would score high on mastery tests and not be able to produce in class what they wanted. They also turned a blind eye to kids going after one another. In one case, a class I was in turned on a substitute teacher, and had her in tears. I was even egged one day, walking home from school, and when I finally got myself in front of the principal to lodge a complaint, he essentially told me that he felt it was my own fault.

Teach your child compassion, no matter what. Even through the worst of what was happening to me, I knew, as I said, that my abusers were in pain themselves. It’s hard to sell that to a kid who is getting threatened and broken down, but it’s crucial. It allowed me to forgive (even if I don’t forget). And it apparently comes through to the kids who are bullying. Some of my worst “enemies” in middle school found themselves in big trouble when a cheating ring was discovered. They’d picked the biggest dragon lady of a teacher in whose class to do it, too. I remember seeing them all lined up outside her room, one could almost hear a bell tolling, and one of the kids approached me. He had been pretty awful to me, even getting his younger sibling to mock me in the halls. He looked ill at that moment, though, and asked me what I thought he should do. I got that sick feeling, wondering why he was asking me of all people, but I told him to tell the truth. It couldn’t get any worse, and confessing might begin the getting better. Not that I was able to do it all the time, but I really thought it was the only option for his situation. I was telling him this, knowing that his father was probably more terrifiying to him than the teacher. For all I know, he got a beating for what he’d done. We understood each other in that moment, and I stopped hating him. I think I stopped hating anyone at that point, and decided to figure out a new way for myself to live. Not long after that, I think, was when I decided to take advantage of a program that allowed me to go to high school in a different town. I’m not sure what has happened to some of the kids who were so unhappy and so mean, but thanks to social media, I have “friended” a few of my middle school classmates and found that, indeed, we all grow up – not only that, that they thought differently of me than I might have imagined.

Teach moral courage. Another not so easy sell, because this one means standing up and making noise when we see something that’s not right. I was friends with every type of person through all my school years. It never mattered to me whether someone had a “disability” or was different – I looked for good-hearted, funny people to be around. After a while, it became obvious that I had to speak up and tell someone to shut it when they were being cruel. But that was only after I felt empowered to do so. A big part of that came from my high school principal, an amazing man who told me that I was allowed to feel safe at school. He was serious about it, and knew that I was a good kid who needed an ally. He gave me my life back at that moment. I would really beg of school administrations to decide to be bulldogs for their kids, and tell those kids that they are allowed to feel safe. It was my first time feeling like anyone had my back, and I cannot express enough how much things changed for me after that. When I started as a freshman, I was in basic level classes, getting by with C’s, still picked on, unhappy, alone. By the time I graduated, I was in honors and AP classes, making honor roll, captain of the track team, maybe not belle of the ball, but much happier (stupid hormones and teenage angst aside!).

Be honest with your kids. If you were bullied, you’ll probably share that. I say lay it all out, even the stuff that is embarrassing to you still. I will tell my kids that I got egged, had pennies and gum thrown at me, the names that I was called, that one girl told me she would kill me…and I’ll talk about how I handled it (not well at times - I did try to run away, after all). But if you were one of the mean kids, yeah, maybe that’s not so easyto confess. But you should. If you feel bad about how you acted at that age, say so. And say why you think you acted like that. You don’t really want your kids repeating that behavior, I know you don’t. here’s obviously more of a zero tolerance policy, and more of a huge reactionary mentality after these situations have spiraled into tragedy, but don’t wait. Sit down now with your kids and talk. “Do you get picked on?” and “Are you ever mean to other kids?” It’s as good a place to start as any. I try to stress to my younger son (our older one is autistic, and we deal with that differently) that kids are sometimes going to be mean and angry. They’re going to say things because they hurt inside (like his one friend who kept saying mean things to him – this boy’s dad had lost his job, and they had just bought a house – you do the math), or they’re scared, or they’re just doing what other kids do to try and be liked more. Not everybody will like you. That’s ok. It’s more important to like yourself, because that shines through, and people are attracted to that.

I admit that I still have trouble socially – but my family was more about making fun of one another than teaching how to laugh at ourselves – at looking for someone to blame and pointing out others’ mistakes, rather than taking the blame and admitting that we’d screwed up. Teach your kids how to laugh at themselves. I can’t stress that enough. I wish I was more able to do that. I’m still learning that skill at 35. Let your kids screw up, and then talk to them about what might be learned, and how to avoid it next time. We’re too much in the way these days as parents, as far as mistakes go. We’re there to catch them before they fall, but not to teach the lesson that might have been learned. Our younger son was roughhousing with my husband, and knocked his little noggin into daddy’s eye socket not that long ago. It resulted in a black eye for my husband (who had to put up with all sorts of cracks from his coworkers), but also in several lessons for both of them. For our little guy, he learned that we can unintentionally hurt people we love, that his head is as hard as granite, and that it’s ok to get ribbed about beating up daddy. My husband learned that people think he secretly goes off to do UFC fights. And that he’s not as thick-skinned as he wants to be.

The biggest thing to repeat is the refrain I keep hearing now, “It gets better.” It does. It really does. Life is so much broader than middle or high school. You might have to put your head down and bulldoze to get through some of it, especially if  you want to get out and be any kind of success, but someday, after the caps have been tossed in the air, we all walk out into the real world. And your time will come where you will have kids, or maybe you’ll be a mentor to a child in your life, and you must try to be honest, have courage, and teach a child the same. We can survive, we have made it through the terror tunnel of teenage years for eons. Believe me: I lived through it, and so can you.

I have a secret weapon now, though, taped up in plain sight so that I can see it every time I sit down here. It’s a business card. It has an agent’s name on it. It was given to me by my dad, who happens to have known this person since he was a kid. The agency is in L.A. – I’ve heard of it before – it’s sitting and cheering me on to finish writing more, lots more, so that I can then pass it along to him.

Sometimes I put Pippi:

Fellini's sense of humor....

As I mentioned, navel-gazing is not a wonderful pasttime, as opposed to Naval-gazing, which very often can be, particularly if dress uniforms are involved. One of the things that happens with writers, or with people who find blathering about feelings in the written, rather than spoken, word, is that we let it all go. Sometimes we forget that others may be wondering what the hell we’re carrying on about. I’m not saying that’s what was completely at play. Part of my meandering in that post was, indeed, wondering whether anything would answer besides my own echo. I guess that’s ego, in the Jungian world….

I think we all have our own particular worries and self-doubts. They show up at the most inconvenient of times. They take a perfectly decent day and make it addled and uncomfortable. And yes, they drag us right back to the upheaved hormone imbalances of our teenage years. I wish I was immune from it – I wish I could stop worrying, fretting, overanalyzing…but I’m not. Maybe accepting some of these things that are too expensive to fix at a therapist’s office is like accepting that, short of a tummy tuck, pregnancy has left some of us with a lasting gift on our bodies….

Anyhow – once I got past thinking like I was still shopping at the Express and wearing a can of hairspray every day – I was thinking about my goal that I’d set a while back. 10 finished writing projects before year’s end. I think I can still manage, since I was nice and vague about the parameters involved. But I began to think further ahead, to the point when our younger child starts full days of school.

For some moms out there, having a career and a life outside is really a high priority. For me, eh, I never liked the office environment…I’d like to work on my master’s and get certified in the state as an archaeologist. I’d like to just work privately, and contract out. Beyond that, I’d rather be available to my kids. So…I think my goal for next year at this time is to have sold some of the things I’ve written. I’m going to worry about something productive, if I can, and build my writing resume. And maybe look into a class here and there. Online.

Or a usb feed, plugged straight into the noggin, downloading everything. It might not be coherent, but you could edit.

I have promised myself a long day of writing, probably taking a day off of running/biking to do so. I have finished the second draft of another short story, the one I previously mentioned, based on one of my great-grandmothers’ childhood experience of being put into an orphanage. I don’t know if it’s any good yet – I am letting it rest (like a ball of dough) – and will go back to it next week.

Today, I’m hoping that the writing process will be cathartic. I’d love to stop feeling so…buffeted by life today. One of the least favorite aphorisms about writing is that it’s a “lonely job” or whatever you want to call it. Yes, fine, I know it’s easier to physically write when you don’t have someone swirling around you asking for another piece of toast, or what you’re doing on the computer. But I don’t think I would prefer to exist in a hermit state. That said, I find myself considering that, perhaps, life as it is might be better somewhere else. We’ve stayed where we are for a number of reasons, not least of which are the people who teach our autistic child. I’m personally reluctant to uproot, mostly because I dislike moving and changing, but it seems like a constantly repeating scene of reaching out, only to be rebuffed. I try to tell myself that it’s not the case, but that’s not easy when you’re prone to self-doubt. I’m just a little tired of feeling like I’m taking the risks I told myself I needed to (when I realized I was becoming a hermit), only to keep perceiving a message that everything that comes back in return is out of pity, or something.  Stir that up with a nice measure of betrayal of trust and unresolved anger, and you’ve got yourself a drama in three acts. 

I have struggled with unhappiness, the self-created kind, previously in life. At this point, I’ve come to a place where I really work not to allow it to take control of me anymore – something my husband misreads as foolish optimism from time to time. There are still moments like this morning, of being completely overwhelmed by yet another rebuff, as well as home stuff, when I find myself going to pieces over my omelet not behaving itself. I’m sure I’ll be fine in a few hours, but I keep thinking that the only solutions are: cut myself off again, or we go somewhere else, where things make more sense. We’ve been saying now for a few years that our next step, what we really want to do, where we really want to be, is to find a small farm. I can envision the whole thing – especially since we both hate cities (at least to live in) – but I’ve also dug in my heels about making premature moves. I’m a believer in the idea that the right thing will come at the right moment – or at least the moment when you realize you’ve got to get up and get on it.

Somewhere, lurking off in the distant dusk, is this sense that I have, though…that we’ll get there, and that will be it. Just us. Nobody will care that we’ve faded out of the hustle and bustle. That’s my little monster that I still kick back under the bed. I see the danger of letting this post go on for much longer, it’s like staring at the sun; dangerous and alluring. And it could go on forever, cycling around and around, while I get nowhere. Phooey.

I know what I said I am going to do this year – the blog part of is has simply fallen through the cracks for a few months.

So, to recap, I said I was going to have TEN PROJECTS completed by the end of the year.

Where am I with that?

Well, I finished drafting and editing one short story about a guy in 1876. His name is Augustus Purce, and he’s the town drunk, but he’s got a secret. I got a tiddling bit of input on that one, rewrote it a couple of times, and zing-zanged it off to Glimmertrain’s semi-annual thingie for new fiction. Who knows. Maybe I should send it off elsewhere as well, but I have to check on their rules for that. This little story came about from watching our own neighborhood drunk bumble up and down the street on a regular basis. He likes to blather at anything that doesn’t hide fast enough, and swills from a coffee cup. I sort of took that, and wondered what would happen if he wasn’t really what he seemed. And then had to wonder why someone would do that.

Now, just today, I finished the first rewrite of a story that is loosely based on what happened to one of my great-grandmothers as a child. I had to make her older than her brother, which was not the case in reality – she was younger than he was, and only a baby when the general facts of this story took place. Her father died of TB when she was 6 months old, and her mother, being a practical sort of woman, put her and her brother, Millard, into an orphanage until she could find either work or a new husband. This story imagines what would have happened if the children had encountered someone who was as wounded as they were, and who decides to take matters into her own hands. In reality, my great-grandmother was retrieved by her mother. It just wasn’t a terribly pleasant time for her, nor was her mother’s next husband, who sexually abused her. It’s a sad fact that the way she grew up probably turned her into a needy, terrified woman who married an alcoholic.  I plan on touching into her life again for a another story or two.

I have some more things that I have started, but if I count correctly, I’m about halfway there. I think I’m going to try Zoetrope again soon, but until then, I’ll be back.