Outside the Comfort Zone

When I was a little girl I was afraid of the dark. Mother put a nightlight in my room to try to alleviate this, but I believe the nightlight made things worse. I had a four-poster bed and the posts cast snake shadows on the walls. Once, my foam rubber pillow slipped off the edge of the bed, rested against the nightlight, and started a smoldering fire. The smoke woke Mother and there was a lot of alarm about this incident for a while. Then Daddy found a different kind of nightlight, one that lasted, I know, for fifteen years. It was small, cylindrical, and casts snake shadows just like the first one had. But we had no more fires.

I have never been a great sleeper. I fall asleep fast but staying asleep has always been a problem. As a child, I remember waking in the middle of the night, most nights, terrified of the shadows, afraid to peer out the window by my bed, a window by the way, that was usually open. This was before we had air-conditioning, and in Corpus Christi, we needed cool air far more than we usually needed heat. After a while, I would get out of bed, creep to my open doorway. Mine was the first room off the hallway. I would glance towards the living room. There was a window there that reflected light from the streetlamp on our corner, and those reflections looked like demons to me. I would race to the end of the hallway where my parents' room and my brother's room opened opposite from one another. If my parents' door was closed, as it usually was, I would opt for my brother, my Bubbie, my protector, my adored one. He never even awoke, but in his sleep just hugged me to him and I felt safe there. His window was also beside his bed, and I remember staring out that window at the streetlamp on the corner, feeling the soft breeze coming through the screen, and falling gently off to sleep. This same feeling still comes to me when my SO hugs me close to him during the night.

After I was grown, I carried this fear of the dark with me into my marriages, secretly. I didn't want to admit openly to being so silly, so scaredy-cat. My second husband was a traveling salesman. We lived in Jackson, Mississippi, far far from my old home. When he was gone, I slept with the lights on. What was it about those lights that made me feel more secure? I talked to my mother about once a week, and finally ventured to tell her about how noises in the night could paralyze me, make my heart pound uncontrollably. I'll never forget her response. She said, "Go see what they are." Go see? Actually get up and go find the thing making the noise. What a foreign idea that was to me. She said she had even gone outside in search of the thing that was making her afraid. "How can you do that?" I asked her. "Aren't you scared you'll run into a burglar or a prowler, or someone who wants to hurt you?" She replied, "If I'm outside I figure I can outrun them. Inside, I'm trapped."

Once I was raising my own children, I began to practice my mother's method. Get up and go find the thing that was frightening me. It always turned out to be the refrigerator, or a limb blowing against a window, a click-bug in the bathroom, or simply the house settling. I don't know when it happened exactly, but somewhere along the line, I stopped being afraid.

Years ago, before I ever had anything published, I attended a writer's conference in Houston. One of the instructors said something that stuck with me as well. She said, "Every day, do something that causes you unease, or that you dread." She was speaking mostly about learning to deal with rejection, with the business end of writing. Call an editor. Seek an agent. Submit a story. Get outside your comfort zone.

I recently had a little piece published in Birds and Blooms Magazine. It was submitted so long ago, I had actually forgotten about it. Two years ago, right after I built my greenhouse at the Buffalo Wallow, in my enthusiasm, I wrote a little article about backyard greenhouses. A few weeks ago, an issue of that magazine arrived, had been forwarded from Texas. I didn't even open the package when I saw who it was from, could not understand why I was getting this magazine when I had ended my subscription to it long before we made the permanent move here to the mountains. I figured they were just trying to induce me to re-subscribe. I tossed the package into a stack of other magazines waiting to be perused, on the trunk in the corner of the living room.

A few days later, my aunt called. She had been in her doctor's office, in the waiting room. She picked up a magazine, was reading along when she saw my name in the byline. She said she laughed out loud she was so surprised, and told another patient in the waiting room, "I just found an article my niece wrote." As I listened to her, I went over to the trunk where I had pitched the Birds and Blooms packet. I tore it open, and there it was, a thank you note from the editor, and my article inside the magazine covers.

Well, well. And what do you know! I am a writer -- still. Just one who isn't writing much at the moment. It isn't always simple to wrestle with the desire to write and the desire to live life. And let's face it, there is fear involved with writing. It's so damned personal, and has so much ego wrapped up in it, and you have to fight the feeling that a rejection is about more than just the work. I think it's this fear that keeps me from biting off the BIG, time-consuming, full-length novel that nobody might want to publish, or if published, to actually sit and READ. And there's this niggling thought in the back of my brain telling me it's risky, that it might, just might, have contributed to the failure of my marriage, and God knows I don't want this new relationship to fail, too. Because when I'm writing, everything else in my life is tuned out. It's not easy for me to find balance. But I'm trying every day to face this fear. Because the payoff, my name in a byline, a little teensy-weensy check, gives me the ultimate feeling of purpose.

Onward....

April Fools

No idea why I used that title. I'm not even sure where "April Fools" even comes from, but it might be something interesting to look up sometime.

I'm joining my SO in Colorado later today. I miss him, but at this moment I'd rather stay home and putter in the garden with the cat. I hate leaving the cat with a sitter after the last time. I just hope he stays well while I'm gone. He's clearly enjoyed having it just the two of us for the last few days. He even did some real exploring outside yesterday morning, walking up the north fence almost to the front forty. When I was done with my little greenhouse project, I called him to come inside with me. He sat in grass up to his chin and stared at me. I imagined him daydreaming about being a lion on the Seregeti or something. Anyway, he didn't come, which he is wont to do when he's happy with his situation.

Later on, I called him in through the sliding door in the bedroom, which faces out the direction of the north fence. He seemed surprised to find that there was a door there, and once he was inside, snooped around the bedroom for a moment as if he were inspecting some new terrain. His usual door is the sliding door that faces to the back yard, so I think I must've thrown him off calling in him through a different door. Odd to think of how limited his world is, and how content he seems to be with those limitations.

I submitted a little piece and a photo to Birds and Blooms magazine yesterday. They don't pay much but if they take it, it will make me feel like a productive writer. I'm finding that most of these specialty magazines really don't pay a lot. I'd have to be incredibly prolific to make even half the equivalent of the advance on my last novel. But I'm just not ready yet to focus on a big project right now.

What has happened to my spelling ability? I used to be a good speller. In school, I was usually one of the last to be eliminated in spelling bees. But sometime in the past ten years that ability has really fallen off. I don't know if it's a reliance on spellchecker or estrogen depletion, but it bothers me. I'm really not happy about growing old, but I don't want to be one of those ridiculous women who fights it tooth and nail. However, I do need to get more active. I dug out the pilates CD and worked out twice this week. Sure made me feel better, and it puts no stress on the damned foot.

It was while I was in the middle of the Tuesday workout that my grandson called. While we were talking, I set him up an email account and we went through how to use it. He even sent me an email while we were on the phone, asking for a new Xbox. I replied that I didn't approve of them, thought he was way to obsessed with video games, and that he would not be getting one of those things from me. He already knew all that, so he just laughed. I hope he will email me regularly, although I'm not taking the laptop on this trip. My SO really hates it when I take it along, plus I'm flying and already have another carry-on, and since I'm not in the middle of a writing project anyway, there's no real need for me to take it. I can hardly scold my grandson for being obsessed when I have my own obsessions. I sent him a parting email last night. Hopefully, there will be a reply waiting for me when I get home.

I have a gazillion things to do this morning. And I'm going to be exhausted by the time I land in Grand Junction, with only two hours of sleep last night. A splitting headache kept waking me. It's from the oak pollen. I know better than to stay out in it as long as I have been this week. When I got in the hot tub last night, I swept a big green pile of it off the spa cover before I opened it. It's the one drawback to living under an oak motte: the pollen and the ocean of fallen leaves.

So I will go off today, and I will try not to worry over the cat and the plants. Daddy's coming to tend the garden, and the sitter is coming to check on the cat this evening. I've got everything covered. And I'll be seeing my DC son this Sunday, so why am I so reluctant to go? I think I've fallen too much in love with this place. Obsessions--

Onward ....