My Mother's Mirrors

My mother's death certificate says she died of sepsis. Cardiac arrest would have been as accurate, since both were results of other conditions. You'll never see it on a death certificate, but she died of osteoporosis and Lewy body dementia.

When my mother started talking about “that family in the next room,” I knew we had a problem. The “next room” she was referring to was the mirrored closet door in her bedroom.

            My mother had Lewy body dementia. Lewy bodies are the abnormal round structures that are deposited in the brain when people have Parkinson’s disease. Although people with Lewy body dementia sometimes develop physical symptoms similar to Parkinson’s, the first symptom is usually an inability to separate reality from—what? Dreams? Misinterpretation of sensory stimuli? It’s the second most common type of progressive dementia after Alzheimer’s, yet most people have never heard of it.

            My mother had been diagnosed only a few months earlier because she called me while I was on my way home from church.

            “Where are you?”

            I could tell by the tone of her voice that something was wrong. “What’s going on?”

            “Well, I might need your help later. I just wanted to be sure you were around in case they didn’t leave.”

            “In case who didn’t leave?”

            “Oh, there’s a man and a woman. I guess she’s his wife. An older man—her father, I think. And some kids.”

            “What are they doing?”

            “Just looking around. They pick up stuff and look at it and put it back down. I asked them what they want, but they won’t talk to me.”

            I wasn’t more than fifteen minutes away, and I wasted no time getting to her condo.  When I arrived, she seemed a little frightened. Her eyes darted nervously around the room—which looked exactly as it had the last time I visited her—nobody there but her, and nothing out of place.

            “Did they leave?”

            “I don’t know where the others went, but the older man went into the bathroom. He must be sick, because it really stinks now.”

            The bathroom door was nearly closed. Half afraid of what I might find when I pushed it open, I was nevertheless emboldened by my inability to smell anything more than my mother’s favorite air freshener. Cautiously, I peeked in.

            The bathroom was empty.

            I spent the next two hours trying to convince my mother to go with me to the emergency room. Worst case, I feared she’d had a stroke; best case, I knew she’d suffered hallucinations several years ago when she had low blood sugar.

            And I did convince her. But four hours in the emergency room produced no explanation for her Sunday “visitors.” In fact, she was surprisingly healthy for her 84 years—her blood pressure and cholesterol were better than mine!

            “I must have dozed off and had a dream,” she said, by way of explanation.

            I didn’t buy it. She’d been awake when I arrived, yet she was convinced one of them was still around. And I discovered later that another of them, a boy about eight years old, stayed behind and kept her company, sometimes watching over her while she slept. She named him Peanut. She enjoyed his company, but she wasn’t as sure about the rest of the family, especially the father. She didn’t trust him.

            When my brother-in-law and his family came to visit at Christmas, they covered the mirrors with pretty stick-on paper, thinking that maybe if she couldn’t see the reflections, she’d realize they were simply closet doors instead of a portal into another world where people that only she could see lived. And for a while, it seemed to work. But the hallucinations started being triggered by the bathroom mirrors, and they became more frightening. Because she seemed to fare fairly well during the day, I started spending the night with her, but soon realized she needed someone with her who was awake and alert 24 hours a day. The complex she lived in included a section for assisted living, so she moved from her condo into an apartment.

            There, too, she was convinced she was seeing people in another room through her mirrors, but they didn’t come into her quarters as often as they had. For a time, she would buzz for help or walk down to the dining room and help the staff fold napkins if she became frightened at night. Then one afternoon she called me to come get her because she wanted “to go home.” I found her outside the building, waiting for me at the curb. Usually that wasn’t a problem. Residents came and went as they pleased, and she had often met me outside when we were going out to eat, which we did at least a couple of times a week. But this time she was outside because my father, who had died three years ago, was working in the attic, and he and his crew were making so much noise it was giving her a headache. She wanted to go home, meaning my childhood home, which they had left about the time I started college. If she had started out to try to find it before I’d arrived, she could easily have wound up on a busy highway. We had to move her into the memory unit.

            The memory unit had fewer mirrors. Although she had fewer visits from the family—even Peanut was absent—she started having visits from relatives: my niece of 15 years earlier, a cousin of 30 years earlier. They always needed her help—help she was unable to give. Then one night she was convinced she was a visitor in someone’s home, and while the attendant stepped out to let her change into her pajamas, she decided to shower in order to free up the bathroom—her private bathroom—for those who needed to shower in the morning. Unattended, she flooded the bathroom floor, then slipped and fell when she stepped out. Her spine, like chalk from osteoporosis, crumbled, leaving her nearly paralyzed below the waist.

            Her room in the nursing home had no mirrors, and she had no invisible visitors during the week she was there. The day she died, she was more alert and lucid than she had been for months. Then she just drifted away, staring into space. At almost exactly midnight, a week after her 86th birthday, she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, and just—stopped.

            Going through her things, which had accumulated in my garage as she moved to progressively smaller quarters, I found a small looking glass set in a carved wooden frame. It now lies on the vanity in my bathroom.

The Will to Love Now In Paperback!

My little novelette, The Will to Love, is now available from Amazon in paperback as well as for Kindle! It's a story about unrequited love, true love, and destined love, with a rattlesnake thrown in. Here's the prologue and the first few paragraphs of Chapter One so you can take a quick look at it.

Prologue

Daniel knew he was dead. He seemed to be hanging in darkness somewhere far above the hospital. But he could see every detail through the ceiling as the EMTs worked with his body on the gurney in the emergency room—one forcing air into his lungs and one pounding his chest while Dr. Agnew charged the paddles to try to jumpstart his heart.

The doctor positioned the paddles. “Clear!” The body convulsed, but after an initial blip, the trace running across the EKG screen returned to an erratic line.

Dr. Agnew turned to the nurse who was adjusting the defibrillator. “Again.”

Daniel watched his body convulse yet again, and the line again jumped, continued with a few spasmodic blips, then settled into a flat, steady progress across the screen. The doctor stood frozen, paddles held ready to use. “He isn’t responding.”

The nurse turned to reach for a nearby tray of syringes.

“No. Don’t.” The doctor lowered his hands and shook his head slowly. “We’ve already resuscitated him once in spite of his advanced directive. It’s time to let him go.”

The nurse blinked to hold back the moisture gathering in her eyes. “I’m sorry. I know you were friends.”

“Damn!” The doctor thrust the paddles at her and stalked out, sorrow twisting his features.

“Too bad,” said one of the EMTs. “Heard he was a pretty nice guy. Donated a chunk of money to upgrade the cardiac care wing when his wife died.”

“He was. And we failed him.” Still holding the paddles, the nurse wiped at her cheek with one forearm.

The scene began to fade as Daniel felt himself float away into a swirling gray mist. Where the hell is the tunnel? And the light I’m supposed to follow?

He heard a chuckle. No—sensed it. Puzzled, he turned to find out who was laughing at him, and saw a dim glow in the distance. Was that the light? As he moved toward it, the glow grew brighter until he realized he was in a church. Shadowed pews on each side of a broad aisle seemed to be filled with people. Was this his funeral? If so, the people looked awfully damn happy, and he didn’t see a casket. Instead, a minister stood in front of a flower-laden altar, and in front of him…

It was his son, Dan! Older, maybe by ten years, and dressed in a tux. He stood facing a girl with tousled red hair topped by an ornate veil that spilled down the back of her simple, form-fitting—and a very nice form it fit—wedding gown.

His son must be getting married. He was sure he’d never seen the girl before, but she looked familiar somehow. Like someone he’d known once, a long time ago. He wanted to get a better look at her, and found himself drifting around to look into her face.

A shimmer in the air above and behind the young woman began to coalesce as he realized who the young woman resembled—Virginia, the girl he’d fallen in love with fifty years ago, the girl who’d left him wanting to die because he couldn’t imagine living without her. The slanted eyes were the same aqua green, and that slim-waisted, full-hipped figure was identical.

He looked back at the shimmer and gasped as it took the form in his memory. Not the graying, stooped Virginia he’d seen in recent photos, but the young, vital woman he’d known. She smiled at him, filling him with the same deep ache as when she was seventeen and he twenty, and he heard her voice: It’ll be OK, Daniel. It wasn’t our time. It will be theirs.

Then darkness fell and he was sucked into a whirlpool, spun and battered and spewed forth into hard, brilliant cold. He gasped as pain shot through his body and his eyes flew open to see a wide-eyed nurse jump away and collide with the table near the gurney, sending a metal tray crashing across the floor.

“Oh, my God! He’s alive!” An alarm started to shrill, bringing feet thudding toward him.

I am alive, he thought, with some surprise. And I have a lot to do before I die.

Chapter One

Mandy lowered her suitcase to the floor and stared around the entry—or foyer, she supposed it would be called—of the mansion where the taxi had dropped her. The foyer was bigger than the combined living room and both bedrooms of her cottage back in Illinois. The floor under her Walmart luggage looked like marble.

Double doors opened opposite a wide staircase that curved up past a multi-tiered crystal chandelier, and a gray-haired woman wearing an elegantly tailored suit strode out, head down, examining something on a clipboard. Mandy cleared her throat, and the woman looked up with a slight frown. Her eyes traveled from Mandy’s tousled copper-colored hair, down her Star Wars T-shirt, to her worn jeans, and ended on her Reeboks before returning to the freckles sprinkled sparsely across Mandy’s pug nose.

The Will to Love Now Available for Kindle

My novelette, The Will to Love, is now available for Kindle. It's a sweet romance with just a touch of paranormal, and appropriate for age 15 or 16 and older. You can find it here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00KRQ3EG4

How to Get Out of Bed

I know what you’re thinking.

But if you ever come down (heaven forbid) with a full-blown case of sciatica like I’ve had for the last several weeks, you’ll realize how difficult getting out of bed can be.

Lying in bed is fine. In fact, it’s the only place you can be comfortable, since sciatica makes both standing and sitting painful. The problem comes when you just really have to get up—usually to use the bathroom, though eating breakfast before lunchtime is also a consideration.

So there you are with a full bladder and empty stomach, lying flat on your back on a memory foam mattress that has formed to the shape of your body, holding you like a warm hug—and creating a valley you must somehow climb out of. Here goes:

1.     Slowly, without using your right hip or leg, roll out of the body-shaped indentation in your bed and over onto your stomach. The might require several attempts. Tighten every muscle in your body, because when you finally make it, you’ll be lying on your full bladder.  No! Not your glutes!

2.     Massage the spasms out of your hip.

3.     Carefully slide your left leg off the edge of the bed, groping with your foot for your clogs.

4.     Slip your left foot into the left clog.

5.     Slide the right half of your body toward the edge of the bed. Do NOT use the muscles on the right side of your body.

6.     Grit your teeth and pull your right leg off the bed, because now you have to use those spasmed glutes to lower your right foot to the floor and slip it into your right clog.

7.     Use your nightstand to push yourself to a standing position.  Take your cane, stored nearby over night, and hobble to the bathroom, praying you make it in time.

8.     Say a prayer of thanks that Hubby is an early riser, because you know how ridiculous you must look, and anyone who laughed would have to die. 

      With any kind of luck, you can get to breakfast before ten. 

      Now, How to Climb the Stairs…. 

Make a Decision--Stay out of Jail

Most young people who are jailed wound up in trouble with the law because they failed to make a decision.

They just went along with the decisions others made—others who made decisions to rob filling stations or beat up on that person they thought dised them. Not sure if that statistic still applies, since it was quoted in the ‘70s, but I wouldn’t be surprised.

One of the things I did in my checkered educational career was tape textbooks for blind students at the local community college, and it came from a social work text that belonged to a young man who was planning to counsel prisoners.

That text and this week’s prompt, added to a comment Hubby made on the way home from Panera (my favorite place for breakfast) on Monday, made me think about decision-making. It’s one of the most fundamental acts we have to learn to do—and do well—before we enter the adult world, yet nowhere are we taught how to do it. Possibly for that reason, many of the people I know whose lives are less than satisfactory have made a series of perhaps not bad, but not really good, decisions. I remember reading a magazine article once when I was a teen that suggested making a list of the good things and another of the bad things about any particular action we were considering. It helped, but it wasn’t enough. For one thing, it didn’t take into consideration others who would be affected by the decision.

The particular book I taped used a decision-making paradigm that consisted of concentric circles. In the “bull’s-eye” was the decision maker, the person who would be most affected by the result.

In the next circle, the decision makers put the names of those who would experience secondary effects from their decision: wives, children, parents….  In the third circle went the names of those who would suffer tertiary effects: close friends, co-workers… .THEN they made their columns, a pro column and a con column for each person.

No longer can you come to a decision because it makes you feel good. Now you have to think about all those who might suffer—or benefit—from your actions, and in what ways they might suffer or benefit. You might even be inspired to talk to them about it.

I think this paradigm is a much better approach to decision-making than any other I’m acquainted with, even though that’s all I can remember about it. It’s relatively simple, but forces the decision-makers to realize their actions have a ripple effect on their world and what those effects might be—unlike the old two-column method. 

Do schools now teach decision-making? What kind of paradigm do they use?

One

Full moon,

Snared in bare limbs

Of cold trees,

Breaks free

On drift

Of mist.

*Th challenge on GBE2 this week was to write something using only words of one syllable.

Why Do I Even Have a Kitchen?

I once saw a sign in a catalog that said, “I have a kitchen only because the house came with one.” Except for the occasional holiday, that pretty well describes me. If I didn’t like eating so much, I’d give up cooking.

I’ve actually considered that. My house is maybe two blocks from a mall and a major highway. Six restaurants are within easy walking distance and another eight are a reasonable hike. A short drive takes me to so many more I can’t even count them. I can buy sandwiches, Chinese food, Mexican food, seafood, southern cooking, pizza, Japanese food… It just goes on and on. And the prices are reasonable. I could actually eat restaurant food more cheaply than I can cook at home if I made good use of doggy bags.

However, I can’t get a wide variety of low calorie, low salt meals in a restaurant. So I have to use my kitchen—albeit minimally.

But my kitchen is much like the rest of my house—straight out of the ‘70s., closed in and dark with harvest gold counter tops. Only two changes have been made to the original design—the former owners painted the oak cabinets white, and I had sheet vinyl installed that looks so much like distressed pine that a visiting carpenter had to bend down and feel to make sure it wasn’t wood. It really made the white cabinets pop.

My dream is to bring the kitchen into the 21st century. I have plans that include ripping out a cupboard so I can have room for a larger fridge (the old one is very small and was in the house when we moved in 15 years ago) and ripping out the wall between the kitchen and dining room to let in light from the glass deck doors.

I don’t know how many more years Hubby and I will be able to climb the stairs to the top floor of the bi-level, but for now the stairs provide exercise we both need, even if I breathe a little hard when I get to the top. In the meantime, I hope to make a home that meets our needs with beauty and character. And I hope to leave it someday a little better than it was when we moved in.

How Does a Werewolf Spend the Holidays?

A little holiday gift for my blogger friends who might not have read my novel, "When the Moon Is Gibbous and Waxing," yet:

Natalie hadn't realized how close the holidays were until Bobbie invited her to go home with her for Thanksgiving. She declined, but started to think about Christmas. She was saddened to realize that her Christmas list had only three entries: Bobbie, Mildred and Henry, and Dr. Persky and his wife. By the time she decided what to get each of them, the ink had started to run in the tears that kept falling on the paper. Christmas must be the worst time of year when you've lost someone. She thought of a dozen things she'd like to get Grammy, but Grammy wasn't going to be here this Christmas or any Christmas for the rest of Natalie's life.

When Natalie dropped off Dr. and Mrs. Persky's gift about a week before Christmas, they invited her to spend Christmas with them. “My sister has children just your age,” said Mrs. Persky, “and I know she'd love to have you.”

Natalie had turned down an invitation from Bobbie, and she turned this one down also. Her mood, she feared, would just ruin the holidays for anyone around her. She mailed a package to Mildred and Henry, then went home and sat alone in her apartment listening to the silence. Most of the other tenants had gone to visit family and friends. Even traffic sounds had diminished, since most of the people living in this area were students. She tried to study, but couldn't concentrate. Why am I so restless? “Because you're lonely, you idiot,” she said aloud. “See, you're even talking to yourself.” Finally she threw her books aside, “Oh, the hell with it.”

She went into the bedroom and got the metal box out from under the bed. Taking it into the living room, she dumped it in the middle of the floor. Then she put all the birth certificates, marriage licenses, and other legal papers together in one stack and the letters in another. She arranged the letters from earliest to latest postmarks and started to read.  

Most of the letters were chit-chat: births, deaths, marriages. Some of them sounded as if they were written in a kind of code, as if the writer feared someone besides Grammy was reading them, and occasionally it sounded as if one was missing. Not unlikely, coming out of Russia back then. Finally Natalie came to a letter not more than ten years old that seemed more than a little strange.

It is good that you raise your granddaughter so carefully, but I beg you, tell her soon of the Family. If she should come into the Inheritance without understanding what is happening, it could be very dangerous for her, you know this. She must be taught soon how to control its comings and goings so she can protect herself.

As for the questions you now ask, even I do not know much of these matters. I must recommend that you write to another cousin who is a Keeper of the Family. I regret that she does not know English, but she does know German, and I recall that you know that language also.

There followed an explanation of how to get in touch with the cousin who was Keeper of the Family. The whole thing about the Family and the Inheritance struck Natalie as melodramatic, but the letter that now interested Natalie was the thick envelope that came from the named cousin. It was, indeed, written in German, and while Grammy's German had been quite good, Natalie's was barely adequate. She went to her bookcase and found the German-English dictionary left from her undergraduate courses and started the struggle.

                 Ilona has written to me of your problem and your interest in the history of the Family. I first must say that I agree with her that you must soon tell your granddaughter of the Family lest she by accident discover the Inheritance. You have had good luck that it has not happened already. It is very important that she understand what she is. Beware especially the full moon.

How the Family came into the Inheritance is hidden in time. I heard different tales from different Keepers when I was young. Some say it just happened. Others say we have been here since the beginning of time. One story is that long ago our ancestor lived in Persia, where he angered an ancient king. The king ordered a witch to curse him and all his descendants. He fled into the savage lands to the north, but at the next full moon the curse afflicted him. Still, he married, some say to the daughter of the king who was the cause of the curse, and had many children, and for years it seemed that was the end of it. But when cousins married, several of their children inherited the curse. Many bands of marauders roamed that area then, but seldom did one attack their villages because of the stories of what happened to those who molested the villagers.

They say that for a long time the Family was feared but respected. Then, as Christianity spread across Europe, some called us Children of Satan, and many of us died at the hands of priests. There is another story about two young men of the Family in those times...

Natalie stood up and stretched. She was surprised to discover that she had been working for two hours. The hard work of translating was more than offset by the strange story that was unfolding. A curse that worked like a recessive gene, an Inheritance that helped the Family protect their neighbors, then was turned against them. Children of Satan. Well, people who had epilepsy used to be thought of as possessed by demons. Natalie picked the letter back up and continued.

Nikolai and Alexei were members of the Family who had the Inheritance. They were raised on neighboring farms and were very close. When they were youths and had just come into the Inheritance, they ran together in the forests near their homes. As young men, Nikolai married a young woman of the Family who did not have the Inheritance, Alexei fell in love with one of the village girls, and she loved him in return though she knew what he was.

Then one night Alexei was running alone and was seen by a farmer who was a follower of the priests. The farmer made the mistake of attacking Alexei with his scythe. In defending himself, Alexei killed the farmer. Alexei was heartsick. This was proof, he thought, that he was, indeed, a Child of Satan as the priests said. If his soul had not been lost when he was born or the first time he changed, it most certainly was lost now. He could not take his own life, so he decided that the only way to atone for his sin was to spend the rest of his life in a nearby monastery. The monks there were as much of the old religion as the new, and they would protect him. He said good-bye to his beloved Katerina.

But when he went to say good-bye to Nikolai, his boyhood companion told him he was a fool, that he had only been protecting himself. “Katerina's father will give her to some rich, old farmer and she will spend her life bearing children for a man she does not love.” He told Alexei that his newborn son had been born early and with hair on his body and that he would raise him to be proud of the Inheritance. And he said, “We are as much creations of God as mankind is. But if the priests will not let us serve God, I and my family will surely serve Satan.”

The legend says that Alexei spent the rest of his life in the monastery and lived to be very old. Katerina was given to a rich farmer and bore many children. She was a dutiful wife and a good mother, but very sad, especially when there was a full moon. Nikolai and his wife had many children also, but because of his pride, he let himself be seen one night by a priest, who gathered the villagers and hunted him and his son and killed them and burned their bodies. Then they gathered the rest of the family and burned them. As the flames caught around her skirts, the oldest daughter cursed them in the names of God and Satan. Within a year, the plague swept across Europe and everyone in the village died.

Natalie put down the letter. Gooseflesh played up and down her arms. She had been born early and covered with hair. She remembered Grammy saying that. Natalie had thought nothing of it because premature babies are sometimes born fuzzy. The hair falls off in a few weeks. But this Inheritance was serious enough to have gotten an entire family murdered by fear-crazed villagers. What could it be? Whatever it was made Alexei powerful enough to kill a man who was armed with a scythe and the villagers frightened enough to burn women and children at the stake. Alexei thought his soul might have been lost the first time he changed. They talked about the villagers as mankind, as if they were something different. And at the beginning of the letter, the Keeper had said, “Beware especially the full moon.”

Natalie suppressed a giggle. No, it couldn't be what she was thinking. That was a silly story to frighten children, not something a modern young woman would even consider. This “Family” had played a cruel joke on Grammy. In anger, she swept the papers and letters up and threw them into the box. But as she did, a paper folded in a small square dropped out of them onto the floor. Natalie stared at it. On the outside was written “by Ursula Kisel.” Natalie's hands trembled as she picked it up. It was old and fragile, and she unfolded it carefully to discover a short poem written in a small, neat hand:

The midnight moon, icy white,

Rides the clouds across the night.

Its leering face is full tonight

Above a world misty bright.

The whimpering wind is damp and cold,

Laden with stench of leafy mold.

Brown leaves race across the stone,

Chased by demons of their own.

In those of us who bear the curse,

Again awakes the ancient thirst.

The changing swells within our breasts

As, howling, were-men turn to beasts.

            In a kind of collage, the events of the last couple of months flashed through her mind, and she remembered. She remembered climbing out the window at Grammy’s house and running under the full moon, and she remembered leaving the lab that first night under the full moon. She remembered the two men stalking her across the parking lot, reaching for her as she shook with terror, and her satisfied rage as she turned and attacked. And she knew what the figure beside her name meant.

              Natalie rose weakly and stumbled to her desk. Somewhere, she remembered, she had a calendar that showed the phases of the moon. She dumped the desk drawer onto the floor.

The calendar wasn't there. She started emptying the bookshelves, casting the books onto the sofa, the coffee table, the floor. Finally she found it and flipped through the pages until she found December and the next full moon. It would be tomorrow night.

Available for Kindle at http://tinyurl.com/886lsrv 
and for Nook at http://tinyurl.com/7zn72bz

My Love Affair with Numbers--Not

If Sherry, an employee in the closely held corporation I worked for before I went to work for the giant, international corporation, saw the license plate on your car once, she knew it forever. She was also one of the fastest typists I’ve known—easily exceeding 100 words a minute. I don’t think there was a connection.

I, by comparison, can’t even remember my own license plate—or telephone number—or even address—unless I come up with a memory hook of some kind. Sometimes it’s as simple as putting numbers together. I can’t remember my address as 2-1-3-6, but I can remember it as 21-36. I remember my cell phone number the same way.

But the landline that Hubby and I had installed BCF (Before Cell Fones) practically had to be tattooed onto the back of my hand. Finally Hubby said, “Look. There’s an 8. That looks like an interstate cloverleaf. Then the interstate that runs through town. Then the state route where I grew up, followed by another cloverleaf.” Haven’t forgotten it since. But I have to go through the entire litany every time I fill out paperwork.

So you can imagine my utter joy when Illinois started offering “vanity” license plates. For me it isn’t a vanity to select my plate—it’s a necessity if I plan to ever remember it.

I ordered my first one about the time I finished the first draft of When the Moon Is Gibbous and Waxing. I'll never forget it. It didn't have one number in it.

It was WERWOLF. 

Beginnings: "Call Me Ishmael"--Or Maybe Not

When you get to be my age, you’ve had so many beginnings and endings that you lose count. So far, at least, a beginning has followed every ending—and I have faith that will always be the case. But the sheer number of beginnings is a bit overwhelming.

And that’s my excuse for being late with this blog. I couldn’t decide which beginning to write about.  So I just decided to write about beginnings of novels.

When I first started studying fiction writing, I was told, “If you don’t capture your reader in the first three chapters, you’ll never capture them.” 

Have you stopped laughing? Yeah. The last thing I read said a writer has one sentence.  ONE SENTENCE!  “Call me Ismael,” isn’t going to cut it any more. On the other hand, I think one of my favorite authors got it right. Thank Jim Butcher for, “The building was on fire and this time it wasn’t my fault.” (Quoted from memory, so don't blame me if it isn't exact.)

How do my own first sentences stand up to that? Not so well. Which might explain why I’m not a best selling author. The first sentence of my published novel, When the Moon Is Gibbous and Waxing, is, “When Natalie recorded the final reading for the blood she had drawn from her guinea pigs that afternoon and looked up from her meticulous notes, she realized how quiet the lab was.” Not very exciting. But you do learn a lot from that one sentence: the name of the protagonist, her job, the approximate time of day, and something about her personality. And trust me, by the end of the opening scene, you get all the excitement you need.

Looking through my works in progress, I see that’s my pattern—I begin quietly, giving the reader several paragraphs to get to know the protagonist, then finish the first scene with a bang. But in the sequel to Gibbous Moon, I break one of the cardinal rules of fiction writing—I don’t even begin with the protagonists. Then I kill off one of the characters I do start with. In the second chapter, I kill off the other one. (Can we, like, call that a prologue maybe? No? OK, then just live with it--no pun intended. That’s how it has to be.)

Book three—or it might be book four—in the series actually does begin with a prologue, which we are told is simply not allowed. But when I presented the first chapter to my critique group, they demanded it. Once it was written, I agreed with them, although it means the book follows the pattern I’ve established. I do like the first sentence of the official Chapter One, though:

“In the genetic crapshoot that preceded David’s conception, something had gone very wrong.”

Does that beginning get your attention?

I'm a Fairy Tale Princess

My bathroom is avocado green. There. I’ve said it. And, shameful as it is, it’s all true. But hear me out.

When we moved into this 1970s house, the fixtures in the guest bathroom, which I claimed as my own, were avocado green, and the walls were covered with cream, pink, and green wallpaper in very narrow stripes and topped with a  border that looked like a Monet painting. One day I was walking through Wal-mart, a place where I spend as little time as possible, and saw a shower curtain with exactly the same look. I almost didn’t pick it up because the shower already had beautiful glass doors. But I did, and I hung it up over the glass door. It was perfect. A few months later, I talked Hubby into removing the shower door. That’s where it started—a Monet’s garden look for my bathroom.

A few years later, I covered the tile floor with new vinyl that looks like green Italian slate. I put a swag of silk flowers over the mirror. I found a cute bunny statue to peek out from behind the basket of silk vines I put on the floor. At an art fair, I found two watercolors by a local artist that also fit into the Monet theme. Yeah, I know. It sounds just too, too precious. But I like it. And because Hubby and I don’t share a bathroom (much as I love him, he’s kind of a slob), it’s one of the few rooms in the house I can have pretty much the way I want it.

When my mother died, I inherited the silver tea service my sister and I bought our parents for their 25th anniversary. Now I understand the look of dismay on her face when she opened the gift. It’s impossible to keep shiny, and nobody in her—or my—mostly bluecollar world has tea parties anyway. When I want a cup of tea, I stick a mug in the microwave. But I kind of like the patina on old silver. So I put a bunch of silk flowers in the teapot and sat it on the back of the toilet. (Who says a toilet can’t be pretty?) The sugar bowl and creamer hold plenty of cotton balls.

As a corporate employee, I had to be calm and decisive. As an author, I write about cops and werewolves. In my bathroom I can be all girly. I can have perfumes lined up on the vanity and a drawer full of makeup. I can be the fairy tale princess. OK, the fairy tale dowager queen, then. No jokes about thrones…

Cobwebs in my Brain--and a Poem

Cobwebs are nearly a feature of the decor in my house. I hate cleaning, and my theory is that as long as the spiders stay up there and catch flies, we can coexist. But this morning I woke up with cobwebs in my brain. 

Not the kind made by spiders, of course, but the kind made by staying up too late and getting up too early--plus taking a couple of medications that say, "Do not operate heavy machinery while taking this medication." 

Which brings up a question: Just what qualifies as heavy machinery? Heavy is pretty subjective, don't you think? I assume I'm allowed to use my blender and not allowed to drive an end loader. But in between lies a vast category of machinery that's "a little bit heavy" or "almost heavy" or "heavy, but not quite heavy enough to prevent the taking of medications." What about my car? Is it heavy machinery?

This morning I opted to let Hubby drive to church--that's how cobwebby my brain was. I also opted not to volunteer to run one of the television cameras--a job I sometimes do because everyone else is too busy or too lazy or too intimidated to tackle it. (It isn't that difficult if you have more than four hours of sleep. A college class in studio production helps, too.)

A long afternoon nap cleared the cobwebs out of my head. Wish I could clear the cobwebs out of my house that pleasantly.

On a more serious note, I'm sure I've used this here before, but with the prompt for this week being "cobwebs," I couldn't resist. Besides, it's one of my favorites of the poems I've written.

Love

Is like the silken touch of cobweb

Against the cheek,

And often just as absently

Brushed away.

RITE OF PASSAGE--In Retrospect

That fateful day, I became a senior citizen.

No, I didn’t turn 62—or even 55. That came later. The change, while unofficial, was much more fundamentally significant than mere age.

I bought a luxury car.

Yes, it’s true. No longer would you see that gumball red sports car zipping around town, careening around corners, leaping away from stop signs at the head of the pack as I plotted the next chapter of my novel.

At the height of my mid-life crisis, after I’d cast aside the practical economy cars of my youth, I was often heard telling people I’d drive a sports car until I couldn’t find room in it for my wheel chair. But I failed to consider that irresistible and inevitable force brought to bear on those of us of a certain age and familial persuasion. I became a grandmother.

At first it wasn’t so bad. An infant seat could be wedged into the anatomically shaped, albeit nearly nonexistent, back seat of the turbo-charged, five-on-the-floor bomb, and an infant needs almost no legroom.

True, when I wanted to take my husband and daughter along on my outings with the grandbaby, one of them had to more-or-less curl up into a ball to fit into the other back seat. But it was only for short distances. They could handle it.

But babies grow. And this one grew and grew, until, at age six, she could barely walk under my outstretched arm. My back seat still had enough room for her lanky legs as long as I didn’t have to move the driver’s seat to get in and out. But I could see my fate staring me in the face from a year or two in the future. I couldn’t let my granddaughter be uncomfortable, no matter how short the trip.

Then fell the final blow. She became a big sister.

Talk about fate staring me in the face. The little guy was built like a fullback from day one. And now we had to use two cars for a family outing. The logistics were beginning to get unwieldy. I had to give up and admit I needed the dreaded “nana-mobile.”

I set out on a search to find something of adequate size that wasn’t too much of an affront to my self image, firmly believing no such thing existed. I must have looked at every van, mini-van, SUV, and sedan in town before I heaved a heavy sign, patted the hood of my sports car, and bid it a fond farewell. I had selected a sleek, black two-door with room in the back seat for three adults abreast. My grandchildren would be comfortable even after they outgrew me (by the time they were 10 years old).

What sold me on that particular car? Well, it wasn’t really the prestigious maker and model. It wasn’t really the roominess or living room comfort. It wasn’t even really the somewhat ominous look of it.

I think it might have been a comment the salesman, unaware that I’m a writer of horror/mystery novels, made while showing me how spacious the car was.

“Wow,” he said. “I wonder how many bodies you could stuff into that trunk.”

note: The granddaughter in the essay now drives her own car. The grandson is looking forward to driver's training later this year. Theoretically, Hubby and I could be back into a sports car in less than three years, provided the crack about the wheelchair remains only a joke. That'll be another rite of passage--into second childhood. : - ) We'll see...

The Finality of Peace

 

The more I thought about the prompt for this week, the more I realized that peace is really pretty fleeting.

And it should be. Too much is left to do, to see, to learn, for any of us to find peace while we're still able to draw breath. Only in death should we find peace.

And that made me think about cemeteries.

I took these photos in Scotland a couple of years ago. The gravestones there are a metaphor for the triumph of life over death, because they're covered with lichens and mosses growing right on the dead stone.

 Maeshowe on Orkney might or might not have been a grave. All that's known for sure is that it's very old and that on the equinoxes, the sun shines right in through that door you see and strikes the center of the back wall. (We were there for the autumnal equinox.) A legend says that a group of Norsemen once took shelter here during a storm and that two of them went insane before they were able to leave.
I entered by bending at the waist to walk through a tunnel, then, when I reached the open part under the dome, turned around and walked right back out. Did not like the way it felt. (This was before I heard the legend.)

The graves at Beauly Abby, like many in Europe, were in the floor of the church. I was taught as a child not to walk on graves and it's still difficult for me. Yet the people who attended services here obviously had no problem with it.

Balnuaran of Clava was pretty definitely a grave, and very, very old. The feeling of peace here was amazing. Perhaps the stone-age souls buried here have really found their rest.

Snapshots in My Memory

It used to be a photographer’s worst nightmare, back before everyone carried a cell phone and every cell phone included a camera. That perfect, once-in-a-lifetime picture looms before you—and you’ve left your camera at home.

The first time this happened to me, I couldn’t have been more than 10 years old. My parents had given me their old Brownie box camera (Anyone else remember these?), and I’d taken some pictures I’m proud of to this day. But this particular day my camera was sitting at home on a shelf.

The spring had been, not unlike most Illinois springs, rather erratic, with cold temperatures giving way to warm temperatures in early March, then reverting to cold temperatures and snow flurries later in the month. As I was walking home from school, I passed an ancient tree with gnarled roots radiating in all directions. The wind suddenly picked up and whirled a mix of snow and brown leaves out from between two of them to reveal, hidden among the remaining leaves and snow, a small clump of violets in bloom.

I could do nothing but try to remember it—like a snapshot in my memory.

Several years later, I was in a car with my parents, riding through the countryside between Flora and Olney in Southern Illinois, and there was the perfect sliver of a moon high in the sky long before sunset, like a fleck of gold floating in a turquoise eye—a snapshot in my memory.

Nearly grown, I was on horseback in the Fox River bottoms near Olney. It’s a wild area. Parts of it look like humankind has never walked there. But most of it is laced with trails like the one I rode this warm autumn day, and small pockets of crops are planted in open places to take advantage of the rich, loamy soil. I was riding past one of these when a red-winged blackbird glided down onto a full, golden head of wheat and balanced there, wings outstretched, for long seconds—a snapshot in my memory.

When I was a young mother living in the Kiamichi Mountains of Southeastern Oklahoma, I woke one night to find my bedroom glowing with silvery light. I rolled over and peeked out the window to find a full moon high in a sky covered with puffy clouds that looked like lily pads. They were reflecting the moon’s light so completely that the dirt road leading to our house looked like a stream of molten silver—a snapshot in my memory.

I was visiting my sister on the plains of Nebraska one summer when her husband called from the airbase to tell us to go to shelter because a severe storm was on the way. As we left her mobile home, I looked across the prairie to see a perfect anvil-shaped cloud preceding the storm front, grumbling thunder and dropping bolts of lightning as it approached—a snapshot in my memory.

My kids grew up in a little town south of Champaign, Illinois. I used to take evening walks past a small, picturesque grove. One evening, mist curled around the trunks of the trees and the air was filled with fireflies. Crouched in the mist, surrounded by fireflies, was a wild rabbit—still as death and poised to flee—a snapshot in my memory.

I’ve seen double and triple rainbows—even an upside-down rainbow once. I didn’t have my camera. I’ve seen sundogs and “the new moon hanging from a star,” and I didn’t have my camera. I’ve seen comets that swept the sky—one with a double tail—and I didn’t have my camera. I’ve seen brilliant sunsets, fiery dawns, bursts of lightning in pink and green that came down from the clouds and up from the earth and met in the middle—and I didn’t have my camera.

All just snapshots in my memory--until now. Now you have those snapshots, too.