Friday was the last day of school for my school district. I happened to find myself behind the bus for the middle schoolers on its last trip home.
As I hovered behind it, anxious about all the things I needed to get done before the end of the day, a boy got off. He whipped around the front of the bus and stood in his driveway, watching it leave.
And as it pulled away, he threw his backpack on the ground and started dancing.
The little angel pulled the shower curtain closed so I couldn't see her in the bathtub. Her voice held a very firm edge, the one she'll use when she's in upper management, I'm sure.
"I DO NOT WANT TO GO TO THE DENTIST."
"I understand that. I don't particularly like going to the dentist, either. But if you don't go, all your teeth will fall out."
"I WOULD RATHER LOSE ALL MY BOOKS THAN GO TO THE DENTIST."
"You have to go to the dentist."
Splash. Something that sounded like a bar of soap bounced off the tile.
"I WOULD RATHER HAVE TO LEAVE MY FAMILY AND LIVE IN THE FREEZING COLD WITH PENGUINS THAN GO TO THE DENTIST."
"I WOULD RATHER BE SUNBURNED ALL OVER MY ENTIRE BODY THAN GO TO THE DENTIST."
"I WOULD RATHER NOT HAVE ANY FOOD FOR A YEAR THAN GO TO THE DENTIST."
At this point, I was shaking with the exertion of trying not to laugh out loud and extremely grateful she'd closed the shower curtain. My stomach hurt from containing the giggles threatening to totally blow my cover.
"ARE YOU LISTENING?"
"Yes. But you still have to go to the dentist."
"OR ALL MY TEETH WILL FALL OUT."
"Right."
"THEN I WILL GET DENTURES."
I whipped the shower curtain open. She was laying on her stomach, glowering in righteous indignation up at me. Or as much righteous indignation as you can muster when your hair is clipped to the top of your head in two places.
"Child, WHO DO YOU THINK MAKES THE DENTURES?"
Tonight there's a free happy hour at The Writer's Place, 3607 Pennsylvania in Kansas City (on Pennsylvania behind the Uptown) from 6-8 pm. Free beer and nachos and the chance to hear about all the programming and perks of The Writers Place with a side of peer pressure from me to become a member. (Which is totally not required in order to schmooze with writers and drink our beer.) Door prizes! Win books, Spin! Pizza gift cards and more. Thanks to Muncharoo, Chelly's Cafe, KC Hopps and Spin! for their generous donations to feed starving artists.
I picked the little angel up from school early yesterday because I thought there would be extreme weather, and I was paranoid after the decimation of Joplin.
The sun shone and the birdies sang.
Then there was today.
I was totally joking. And note to Rita: It's Wednesday.
I grabbed Petunia, my work laptop, my cell phone and my work notebook and shut myself in the only room with a door in the basement. And then my mind starting doing its anxiety thing.
I heard thunder and rain and sirens going on, shutting off, going on. I live in the eastern suburbs of Kansas City.
I pictured the little angel hunched in the basement at school, crying. I pictured not being able to get to her. I pictured every nightmare a mother can have. I felt so lonely.
And then they started pouring in: the tweets.
Finally the storm passed. Unfortunately, it took its toll on nearby Sedalia.
Even though I picked up the little angel early yesterday, even though we were two hours late this morning because of a dentist appointment, I asked.
And they made me feel better, normal even.
The sky was a mixture of puffy white, angry gray and brilliant blue as I drove to the school. Kind of like my mood.
"Were you scared?" I asked, as we walked to the car.
"A little."
"Did you cry?"
"No, I tried to be brave about it."
The teachers did skits for the kids during the hour and a half they were in the basement. And apparently gave them Pop-Tarts because they were stuck down there during lunch. I am so impressed by their ingenuity and grace under pressure keeping all those kids entertained for so long.
I came back and realized I'd left people hanging, these people I'd relied on so heavily over the past two hours. So I tweeted I was home with my girl.
All told, I probably talked to at least 25 different people today, some of whom I barely know. They distracted me and filled my heart with their good mojo. I didn't feel alone anymore.
Thank you, my friends. It's an amazing thing when you can have community alone in the dark.
My girl lay on the slip-and-slide, letting the water wash over her feat, looking up at the sky. The heat felt oppressive after weeks of cool.
The radio cut off in mid-song. I thought maybe the cord came unplugged, then the shrill emergency signal played. Surely a test, since the sirens weren't going off. I waited for it to end, watching the little angel flop over onto her stomach on her plastic banana peel.
"A tornado is on the ground. Take shelter immediately."
There was information about where, but I didn't hear anything except what I didn't hear, which was "Jackson County." I looked up at the sky, but everything above us was blue, not the green of a pre-tornado sky, not the swirling clouds of the masthead of this blog. Tornadoes were not in my sky.
They were about 30 miles town the road in Higginsville. And then they were 130 miles down the road in Joplin.
Beloved pulled up from the grocery store. "Did you hear the emergency signal?" he asked.
I nodded. "Do you think we should go inside?"
This is what I always ask. We waver, usually, because even if it looks fine, these things can come up quickly, but we also don't want to spend half our summer in the basement because there's a storm down the road heading away from us. But it's always sort of a hard call, especially because I don't want to scare the little angel.
"Will the tornado come here?" she asked, standing up from the slip-and-slide.
And I want to say no. But it's not as easy as telling her there are no scorpions in Missouri and no way a tsunami could get our house. So instead I tell her if we hear the siren or if the air looks funny, we will go inside.
"If a tornado came here, would it get us?"
"Not if we were in the basement."
I hope these are true answers.
My prayers are with Joplin and the other communities in Missouri and across the Midwest that were hit yesterday. The death counts are rising and the footage terrifying. I can't watch it right now, because -- as long as I've lived in the tornado belt, I don't remember ever hearing there is a tornado on the ground take shelter immediately come across the airwaves so bluntly before. It was very, very hard for me to let my daughter get on the school bus this morning.
And I can't really think about much else today.
He left quickly this morning, balancing coffee cups and keys. The little angel and I had been squabbling -- she shrieked when I brushed her hair, I yelped when she accidentally stomped on my bare toes in her new tennis shoes. Beloved sighed and disappeared out the door.
The little angel stomped over to an old wooden chair I'd taken from my parents' house. It made a familiar squeak as she flopped into it, her lower lip sticking out.
"Why are you mad?"
Silence.
"I can't help you unless you tell me what's wrong."
I turned my back to her to unload the dishwasher. When I looked back seconds later, her little face was blotchy, tears streaking her face.
"What's wrong?"
"I didn't get to hug Daddy!" she cried.
I dialed the phone. "Someone's crying," I said, handing it over to my girl.
I could tell from her end of the conversation he was trying to reassure her she would get hugs tonight, that all was fine, but she started crying harder. Finally, she handed back the phone.
"He's coming back," she said, running outside.
I could imagine the frustration. He'd already been kind of late when he left, and I wasn't sure how far down the road he'd traveled before the phone call.
I could've spared him. I could've handled it on my own. But I didn't.
I knew he'd be late. But I knew he'd come back. And I knew -- once he parked the car and the little angel threw herself into his arms -- that I'd see the smile that washed over his features. The look of clocks resetting, priorities stabilizing, peace as long as your loved ones love you.
Some people say the world's going to end tomorrow. But that's just formalizing what we live every day. The truth is we don't know when our cards will get drawn.
Take the hugs when you can get them.
Someone won a $50 Barnes & Noble gift card at Surrender, Dorothy: Reviews!
... I've been reading a ton of books for BlogHer Book Club. And I do believe I've forgotten to link some of my reviews. (swears under breath)
First! Caleb's Crossing by Geraldine Brooks. It's historical fiction about the first Native American to graduate from Harvard.
Here's an excerpt:
Bethia and Caleb reminded me a bit of Katniss and Gale in the Hunger Games trilogy, if you're familiar with that, although this is definitely literary women's fiction and not young adult fiction. But we all love a star-crossed-friendship-maybe-based-on-sexual-attraction, don't we?
Second! Girl in Translation by Jean Kwok (spoiler alert). It's literary fiction about an immigrant Chinese girl who works in a sweatshop before entering the Ivy Leagues. (Jean Kwok is my new favorite author -- and she's become a friend.)
Here's an excerpt:
Though it's eye-opening and interesting to read about the life of a new immigrant in modern America (Kimberly's friend remarks, "people don't live this way in this country!" with the shock and dismay I felt upon reading it), the strength of Girl in Translation is the force of Kimberly and her ability to see herself for what she is and what she is not.
The stack of books in my to-read pile just keeps getting bigger and bigger. This is why I can't get into Angry Birds. What if the world ends in 2012?
Ever since my sister pretended Mike Wolfe of American Pickers was her BF, I made fun of her on Twitter and ended up interviewing him over the phone for BlogHer, my family has been all about the pickin'. The Easter Bunny even brought me an Antique Archaeology tshirt.
But this Mother's Day, the pickin' got serious.
I know, right? Aren't they so creative?
My mouth hung open, sort of salivating in anticipation. It's possible being from Iowa makes one prone to sorting through people's junk. Maybe it's because we didn't have any cool stores growing up, so we were forced to make do with vintage. Maybe it's because people in Iowa have sheds where they can store forty years worth of crap no urban dweller would have room for. Whatever the reason, I've always liked looking through old stuff even if I had no intention of bringing any of it into Chateau Travolta or wherever I was living at the time.
We headed to breakfast, and then we pulled up at my favorite antique store/flea market in Kansas City. It's four stories tall, you can see through the floorboards to the people walking around below your head, it has a wicked-scary freight elevator that swings eerily in an open shaft, and by the time you've walked through and made eye contact with all the stuff, four hours have disappeared -- along with your nasal cavities, any liquid left in your eyeballs and your common sense.
I got a potting table.
Mike Wolfe would be proud.
My friend AV blogs about sex. She's a sex blogger. SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX SEX
It doesn't seem like a job for the faint of heart, and fortunately, she isn't. She mentioned to me once that her family had asked her to adopt a pseudonym for writing because her writing embarrassed them. This week, AV wrote about it on BlogHer.
She wrote:
And if one thing I write makes one person feel less isolated, then my mission is complete.
Know, too, that I don't write about these things because I think it's safe or because I live with my head in the clouds and think it's perfectly acceptable to do so, but because I know it's not safe and it's not acceptable in this or any other society. This isn't a popularity contest -- it's a call to arms. This is the resistance.
In telling my stories I am liberating others to do the same, whether privately with me in my inbox, or in their own lives.
She wrote this and a lot more on her Facebook wall, in response to family members telling her they were embarrassed by her actions, telling her they felt sorry for her parents.
Then her mom responded:
Having said all this -- what do we think about our daughter? Allow me to express with pride that my husband and I find ourselves extremely satisfied in how she shares her own experiences and thoughts. You think we should feel ashamed but we fail to find reason to do so. We raised a daughter who stands firmly on her beliefs and values despite strong opposition. There is no shame in that.
Writing and family -- it's always a tightrope that every writer walks, and maybe more so every blogger. In telling our own stories, it's very difficult to not share someone else's. But AV is only writing stories of her own experiences -- if anyone should be upset, it should be the other individuals who were in the room, not her family.
I've had disagreements with my family over whose stories were whose, over whether or not I curse too much or have unpopular politics. I've often wondered if I embarrass my family on a regular basis with my words.
I think -- at least in American culture -- someone who writes about sex, not pornography, not erotica, but the actual act of sex as a physical, emotional, spiritual or not experience -- is literally and figuratively getting naked in a way few other writers do. Parenting bloggers write about guilt and walls streaked with poop. Food writers describe burning things, falling souffles, embarrassing mistakes. The ability to feel and express sexual desire is almost caricatured in modern society -- it often feels like there is only porn or tantric soul rocking -- nothing in between, but it is in the between that the rest of us live. Are we loved? Do we love properly? Is there a properly? If we don't have sex often enough, are we undesirable? Is sex as important as we thought it was? Is it more important than we thought it was? What is sex past twenty, past thirty, past when you look hot doing it? What is sexiness after the body starts to decay? What is sexiness when you're young and not yet comfortable with yourself?
I don't write about sex, other than the How to Get a Happier Marriage posts I did for BlogHer last year. It's not something I'm comfortable blogging about. But I did write about it a little in my novel, and in doing so, I started asking myself all those questions above. Sex is more and less than what we think it is. Perhaps it's the most vulnerable we can be.
I think as a people we're afraid to talk about actual sex for all of these reasons. We're comfortable with hinting at it, commoditizing it, using it to sell beer, acting as though we get it all the time, pretending we don't need it or we live for it, but heaven forbid we ever talk about it as the inherent part of the human experience it actually is.
Yesterday and Wednesday I was off from work to add a Part II to my novel (fingers crossed, it was a specific request). On Wednesday, even though I forced myself to ignore my work email, I checked my personal email and immediately fell down the rabbit hole of responses and responsibilities and lost almost two hours.
Yesterday, I took a complete and total Internet hiatus. No blogging, no email (!), no Twitter, no Yammer, no Facebook, no LinkedIn. I did text with my sister a little, but I also actually spoke to her on the phone for more than an hour. And last night I called my parents and told them a bunch of things I'd forgotten to tell them in the mad rush of email that is usually my life.
My life is email? Yeah, it kind of is.
At the same time, I'm reading Super Sad True Love Story in fits and bursts, which is a novel about a bunch of people trying to stay young forever who spend their lives completely immersed in little personal data devices that hang around their necks.
A while ago, the little angel asked me if I loved my phone more than her.
The last two days while I've been off, she's gotten off the bus at home instead of after-school care, and we've set up the sprinkler and invited friends over to run through it. The weather has been glorious.
Today I'm back online, back at work, back on email. And I'm determined to not become a Super Sad True Love Story character.
But it's hard, in this world we live in. It's hard.
