Frog Funeral

For Christmas we received the most alarming gift ever. This is what happened:

Two days before Christmas Jonathan and I decided to get a jump on things and start wrapping, instead of waiting until after we returned from the Christmas Eve service and staying up all night so we were shot on Christmas morn. So we pulled all the packages that had arrived by mail from the basement and the closets and started to wrap.

We pulled out books and games and clothes. Jonathan opened a box that had arrived about a week earlier by UPS, been thrown over our high spiked fence, and sat in our bedroom since then. He reached into the styrofoam peanuts and pulled out...a plastic bag full of frogs. Live frogs.

He nearly screamed. Then me. Then we wanted to throw up. It was just wrong. How could frogs travel by mail? UPS? In a little bag with no food, no air, no nothing? Why hadn't anyone warned us? I wanted to all up PETA. It was deeply disturbing.

Worst of all, we could not take them out because they needed spring water, and after that they couldn't eat for two days, because they had to calm down after the trauma of travel and a new environment. I felt like they had been sent to us to die.

Worse, as I read the precautions and rules, I began to wonder what kind of frogs they were. They could survive in a box with no food, light or water for at least two weeks. We could not touch them. They were totally toxic. Were they some brand of corporate frog, bred for consumers? It was all so sci fi and wrong, and now we were part of it.

But, in the end, they were not toxic, merely carriers of salmonella. We got the water, set them up in their slightly cracked frog o sphere with bamboo and blue rocks and fed them. And, truth be told, they were kind of cute. It was fun to watch them swimming around. They were easy. They looked happy. The boys named them Silly Hopper and Snowflake. My sister did research. They were South African frogs, which grew up to five inches in the wild (wow!) which meant that if they ate real food, perhaps they could get that big in our house, which, I guess, is why they said to never let the frogs be anywhere near food. Perhaps they would show bionic force and burst from their frogosphere. They started to appear in my dreams--huge, emerging from the terrarium, hopping around, toxic. Deeply disturbing.

We enjoyed a happy month. We calmed down. Some days they were slower. They liked fire and sun. I think you can feel where this is headed...

Well, this morning we came down and the frogs were dead. Both were floating belly up. It was heart wrenching. And we don't even know how to dispose of them in an environmentally safe way. We plan to bury them in the yard, and pray that no bird or coyote will dig them up and become ill and die.

For now the living room is a dead zone. It feels sad. I really don't want to deal. The boys are sad.

The frogs we never asked for, but came to love, are dead.

We don't know what happened to kill them so suddenly. Were they cold? Already sick? We don't know, but we still feel like murderers.

We will give them a proper burial. It is all we can do.

Mommy Shock

Last night I went to my first writing group with John Rechy. As some of you may recall from an earlier blog, I forced myself to submit first. My work was critiqued second for the night.

When I was there I realized it had been about nine years ago since I went last. He is older, and a little wackier. Though, when he waded into the writing he was just as brilliant, spot-on and inspired as he was nine years ago.

A lot has happened in my life since then. I got married. I had two children (when I told him that he looked shocked, but said nothing.) I quit my job. And I have done a million things that are fascinating, life-enriching, and have nothing at all to do with writing. At that time my whole life was writing. Really, whatever the quality, that was all I did. Fiction was just one more type.

So I returned.

And I was humbled.

The group went around and gave their comments. They were both kind, and pointed. That is what he allows. Only he gets to do the all out critique, and he is careful to balance the harshness with encouragement.

One woman got so rabid that when he tried to shut her down he failed. She could not reign herself in, about one section that drove her crazy because of my confused point of view. In the moment I felt like laughing. Now I feel like crying.

I left the evening stirred up, overwhelmed, my mind on fire, my body exhausted, my stomach in a knot.

I kept trying to figure out what it was that left my mind pinging in a million different directions. There are many things. But I think one was that fo the first time in three years my writing was being taken really seriously, edited seriously, at a very very high level. And it did not hold up. Or, at least there is much, much to be done.

It is not that I can no longer write. No. I believe I will always be a writer.

But if writing is like a discipline, like swimming, track, training for a marathon, I have gone from being an Olympic athlete, writing daily and hard at the paper, being questioned constantly, edited constantly, challenged constantly, to a fat couch potato. Sure, I tell myself, I am still a writer. I write this blog. I write freelance articles when I can. I wrote a novel in a month.

But all of this is solitary. It is being held to no standard, no editing, no outside eye. It keeps me writing, yes, but there is no discipline to it, no one pushing me, challenging me. And I have slipped. I have gotten lazy. Slipped into cliche. I dash things off without really taking the time to slow down and figure out exactly what I want to say, in an original, unique, careful way.

My outdated version of myself as a writer was punctured.

It did not feel good. I had to look at my prose, my sloppiness, my inattention to certain details, and it was not a fun experience. I felt flabby, out of shape, like I had slipped.

I experienced Mommy Shock.

And part of me wanted to run and hide. To say Well, I must take care of my children. I have done so much. To justify my bad writing, my lack of attention. But that is a cop-out. And this is a turning point. Will I look head on at my writing, however shoddy, and learn from the master, and incorporate these lessons without ego, and work, with discipline, to get myself back on the Olympic team?

Or will I hide in my home, scared, and continue to write for no one but myself and a few friends, with an occasional freelance article to show for myself.

I know I am still a good writer. But last night I was faced with the question--now that I am venturing out of my safe, unassailable Mommy lair where no one really evaluates me--do I have the cojones, the discipline, the courage to do what it takes? To join the Olympic writing team again?

Or do I want to hide in my home, behind the excuse of children, and remember my outdated version of myself as a great writer, while my skills, my writing muscles, my tools and discipline atrophy?

I want to write.

You Never Know What Matters...

I try so hard to feed my sons' brains and hearts and souls. To expose, but not pressure, to encourage discipline, but not cripple with expectation. It is hard. I feel I have no model. I had lots of exposure--by Seventies standards--but not much attention to me, and what I might have been good at. Whatever. I am just trying to pay attention for my boys.

Theo has music at school. It is a sweet program and I like the teachers. They have been doing a lot of Peter, Paul and Mary--which is an orgasmic experience for me, the child of the Sixties. It was a time when folk music was so far-reaching that even my buttoned up US Navy father played the guitar, the ukelele and endlessly played Peter Paul and Mary. We sang those songs over and over, in the car, in the rocking chair, everywhere.

So now Theo learns.

A few weeks ago they started learning This Land is Your Land. He learned one verse, and he was proud. And when we drove to Phoenix through the desert he sang it. I told him there were more verses, and I tried to remember. I stumbled through a few. When we got home I searched on the internet and printed out the words. Sometimes I come into his room after I have tucked him in bed, and there is the piece of paper with the words, folded and unfolded, lying on his bureau. He got up to verse 2, then verse 3.

Last night I told him I would come to school sing today. This morning, after I hauled him out of bed, I saw him crouched on the floor in his bedroom with the piece of paper, reading and rereading the verses. Hurry, I shouted. Hurry.

We went, and sat as his class sang with Teacher William. I saw Theo crouching behind his friend, with his wad of paper unfolded, all the verses of This Land Is Your Land in front of him. He was ready to sing, verses I-5.

They didn't sing that song today. But of all the things I do, who would have thought that printing out the words to that song would have meant anything at all?

I guess you just have to throw it at the wall and see if it sticks...

Look!

After a week of rain, this appeared today! Wondrous. The most beautiful rainbow I have ever seen. All the way across the sky, from one side to the other. Theo spotted it. We pulled out in the rain and gaped.

How Many Hours

How many hours a day can my son talk about playmobil, castles, catalogues, cameras, policemen, computers and toys he dreams of having. We are going on two hours, now, and he has not slowed down. Oh my.

Food for Thought

Yesterday a mama I love came over to talk and caffeinate with me. We spoke about creativity, finding time to pursue our dreams as mothers, and how much of your precious time should go to the "art" itself, and how much to the business, the promotion, the endless drumming up of business.

She told me about a documentary about an old Indian jeweler she knew, who used to work up in Malibu. He was ripped, talented, and successful. He looked like a man following his dream, his art, his bliss. But he revealed, in this documentary, that he spends more time on the computer and on the phone doing the business end of things, so that he can do his art.

It made me think.

Someone always has to do the business end of things. You cannot just do art, unless you find a patron, or have a brother with a sales background who will peddle your work with passion and leave you to the paints (Theo Van Gogh, for instance).

Creative people shy away from the business side, but it must be done. And today, it seems, in the creative arts you are expected to do more and more of the business side and promotion yourself. You must be an entrepreneur, too, to be an artist, a writer, a film maker, a poet. Otherwise, you will just be a hobbyist. Which is OK.

And I thought about that. Not that journalism is art--but I was so blessed to write in a place where once I was hired the only person I had to sell my idea to was my editor, whose door was pretty much always open. They might be good, they might be bad, but it didn't take long to get an answer.

Freelancing is a different story. You have to write the story, yes. But that ends up being such a small part of the whole process. You have to find the place to pitch (appropriate voice, etc), see if you have a contact, harass daily or weekly, write up a proposal, wait for them to decide, then, IF they say yes, file the story, wait to be edited, and finally, many months later, get paid. The writing part is probably only 30% of the total.

To me, it feels like not enough. But if your starting point is: you could do something for someone else all the time, OR you could spend three quarters of your time promoting yourself and trying to find the space and means to do this thing you love, well, then it doesn't seem so bad. Indeed, that privilege of doing your passion feels like a gift. Even if it is only for 30% of the time.

What do you think, you artists, writers, film makers, and creative people out there? What is the proper ratio between art and commerce in the life of one who wants to pursue what they love?

It's a Family Affair

Last year I swam the Alcatraz Swim with the South End Rowing Club with my amazing Aunt Judy and my cousin-in-law, Mike. It was one of the highlights of my year, and I think it drove my father nearly mad--just knowing there was a crazy athletic event involving family and danger that he did not take part in.

So this year he begged us all to do it again. He would train, he promised. And we need this promise from him, because he is probably the weakest swimmer of us all, chills easily, and will not give up, even when he should--an endearing, if perhaps life threatening quality.

This year I want a different challenge. But then, I thought, my father turns 70 this August. He really really wants to do this before he dies, and he wants to do it with the whole family. And now, it looks like it might be the whole family. My aunt will do it again. My cousin may do it. Two other cousins may do it. And one cousin's husband may do it.

Two days ago a dude from Seattle contacted me on Facebook about my story, saying his Seattle club wants to swim. I told him my whole family might do it. "Doesn't sound that hard, then, if your whole family is going to do it?"

Do you know my family? I wanted to shout through cyberspace. My aunt is the co-founder of the Ironman. My cousin went to the Olympic tryouts in butterfly. My cousin who swam last year is an astounding year round surfer whose son does big-wave tow in surfing in Asia. My brother swam all through high school and even after years of not swimming can jump in the water and swim a mile no problem. My father? Well--we are going to have to take care of him. But my family? We are astounding!

Today I will sign up. Alcatraz 2010. Will it be with a wetsuit? Or skin, as they say at the South Bay Rowing Club?

Hmmmmm