Category Archives: writing

Hey Y’all, (don’t) Watch This

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50_Cupcake_HiRez

Today is my 50th birthday. So far this morning I have celebrated by catching up on things that slid past while my attention was directed elsewhere: getting the final grades in, why the dishwasher was making that funny noise, blue line edits to Fall or Fly, what to do about the nasty stain in the downstairs toilet bowl….Turning 50 is very glamorous.

One of the items I’m catching up on is this weekend’s blog. It is very satisfying to go from 49 to 50. Among other things, this is the age at which society begins to ignore women, which means we can do as we like. At the fundraising galas, while the eyes of the men with bow ties are on the cute little blond across the room, I can drink their champagne. When a kitten tries to cross a busy road, I can leap from my automobile and demand everyone halt because I have grey in my hair, heft to my hips, and the authority of surprise behind me. Yet no one will hold me accountable, because I am a 50-year-old American woman.

If I’m reading the hints right, society thinks women are supposed to feel bad about turning 50, slightly apologetic or guilty that we couldn’t keep ourselves young and thin forever. Ha. I got these wisdom lines from a lot of different places, none of which I am ashamed of being in. And from knowing a lot of different people, most of whom were worth knowing, and the ones that weren’t I don’t know any more. Traveling light is a good thing at any age, so it seems a little counter-intuitive to worry about carrying other people’s baggage now.

Thus I spent my birthday morning stamping gel flowers into all the toilets in the house, because they promised to eliminate odors AND suspicious pink crusting. I found it very satisfying. Who knew they even made such wondrous things? And my husband has promised me one of those little round vacuums to do the floors – you know, the kind cats like to ride in You Tube videos. It’ll be entertainment as well as cleaning. Not that cleaning is my thing: living in a comfortable house while saving time is. I have stuff to write, mischief to make, cats to play with, husbands to tease – ehm, strike that, just one husband – and causes to support. Heh heh heh. Never underestimate the power of a woman whistling on her way.

Hold my stolen champagne glass, kiddo; I’m goin’ in.

The Monday Book: NIGHT JOURNEY by Kathryn Lasky

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It stands to reason that, having cleaned out the children’s room, I would have picked up a book or two to read for fun.

What’s really cool is when you start reading, and suddenly you remember a line from the book just before you read it, and you quote it as you read along. Which is how I found out I’d read this book a long, long time ago.

I picked up The Night Journey not because I remembered reading it, but mostly because it had a Samovar on front, and because Trina Schart Hyman illustrated it. She’s one of my two most favorite children’s book illustrators. LOVE her work.

Journey describes a great-grandmother and grandchild reconstructing the elder woman’s escape from pogrom-filled Russia when she was the age of the child to whom she is now telling the story. Filled with finely-drawn characters like Aunt Ghisa (a little bitterness from the unmarried sister who still loves her niece) and Wolf, the tormented loner who escaped an earlier Cossack raid at a cost higher than life. When Rache is first told her great-grandmother’s story, so intense is Wolf’s part in it that she writes it in a letter to be opened on Rache’s eighteenth birthday. The letter being opened is the culmination of the story, and it is intensely bittersweet.

Children’s books aren’t so layered and deep these day, methinks. The dismantling of the Samovar so the family can sneak it out with then, and the protection of the gold coins the family carries, run through the larger historic story like gold threads. It is a very satisfying read.

And fast. Which is fun sometimes, when you just want to spend two nights living someone else’s life from the safety of your pillow.