Talking in circles

As my sabbatical nears an end, I find myself fielding a number of questions: Did you get a lot done? Are you working on a new book? And the most frightening question of all: What's it about?

If I tended to write novels like The DaVinci Code, I suspect that last question wouldn't pose much of a problem; plot-heavy fiction lends itself to quick synopsis. The kind of fiction I write does not. Perhaps that's because it's literary fiction, more about ideas than action; perhaps that's because I'm a female writer. It doesn't take much research to uncover the reams and reams of narrative theory suggesting that male writers tend toward that familiar inverted checkmark of plot structure (conflict, a moment of crisis, resolution) while women tend toward a more circular, recursive form of storytelling. Many people don't understand that, sometimes, there's a point to talking in circles.

I don't think narrative structure breaks down cleanly along gender lines, though. One of my favorite novels is Evan Connell's Mrs. Bridge, which doesn't have much of a plot. India Bridge gets married, has children, leads the life of a society matron in Kansas City; she grows profoundly bored, questions the purpose of her existence, tries to explain her feelings to her unsympathetic husband; in the end, though, she's right where she started. She hasn't changed at all, because she's had no vocabulary to ask for the changes she wants. Honestly, she can't even imagine what those changes might be. And that's the point of the story. It's not a page-turner, but it's utterly heartbreaking.

When I try to describe my new novel, I feel a bit like Mrs. Bridge: I don't get much of anywhere. I'm just getting a clear sense of where the narrative is headed (another difference between plot-driven fiction and literary fiction: I discover the story as I write it, rather than planning out the story before I begin.) I know it's focused on parenting--specifically, on the difficult process of watching yourself become a smaller and smaller part of your children's lives. It's also about life in the remote regions of Idaho--a life that's often threatened by fire. So it's also about firefighters, and the cost of supporting your family with a physically and psychologically demanding job. And, somehow, it's about Texas, immigration law, and the way that affects families too.

How all these pieces will fall together, I'm not sure. I may well discover that some of the pieces belong to other stories. When I was writing my first novel, I discovered that the ending I'd had firmly in mind throughout the writing process made no sense as I approached the end of the story. I won't be shocked if something similar happens this time around.

The element of surprise might be the most important part of the writing process. If you know where the story is headed, what's the point of writing it? How do you keep yourself from growing as bored as poor Mrs. Bridge, who can see the end of her life from the very beginning? Just knowing that I'm headed toward a discovery leaves every door open, even if I'm going in circles along the way.

Disengaging

So, I've been gone for awhile.

About a month ago, I found out I was going to need to have some surgery. (Nothing life-threatening or even particularly serious, just stuff that had to be done.) I hate going to the doctor and generally don't do it unless I'm on the brink of certain death, though I do try to be vigilant about having my annual exam. Sometimes it happens every other year, instead, though my current doctor says that's okay for a monogamous woman of my age. But this year, I was taken by surprise when my doctor discovered a problem of which I had no knowledge at all.

I don't like surprises. My husband knows that to throw me a surprise party would not be perceived as a thoughtful gesture but, instead, an ambush. So I wasn't happy when I found out that my sabbatical schedule needed to be adjusted to include pre-op visits, surgery, and several weeks of recovery time. My usual response to a surprise of this nature is to just hunker down, disengage from my feelings of shock and get very, very practical. When I found out I needed surgery, I started doing research and spending time with my family; everything else fell by the wayside. When I had my car accident last spring, everyone at the accident site kept giving me this odd look, this "Why is she so calm? She just totaled her car!" look. Because there I was, calmly standing by the side of the road, drinking the coffee I'd salvaged from my totaled car. I cried later, at home--but in the face of surprise, I disengaged.

I'm smart enough to know that life isn't predictable or under anyone's control. I spend a lot of time trying to get my students to understand this--to understand that they will find themselves dealing with situations they can't foresee, can't even imagine, no matter how careful and practical they are. Young people tend to believe that if you find yourself in trouble, it's because you screwed up and deserve to be in trouble. (Or because someone else screwed up, and you're unfairly stuck paying the price of their carelessness. Life isn't fair, they know, but fair is different from out of control.) It takes a certain level of maturity before people understand that, sometimes, stuff just happens. It's possible to develop lung cancer when you've never smoked a cigarette. It's possible to feel perfectly healthy on the day you find out you're not in perfect health.

It's hard to live with that kind of uncertainty. Some people learn to live with it very early on, as a result of serious illness or tragedy, but most young people honestly believe it's possible to control their destinies. That's why young people so often take chances that older people won't; older people have learned that so much is beyond their control, they might as well be cautious when they can.

I know that anything can happen at any moment. Sometimes that knowledge is almost too much to bear; sometimes, just watching my kids walk through the door after school feels like a miracle. But I also know that whatever happens in this life, I'll push through it and get back on track somehow. I'll get through it by disengaging, paring down to the essentials--perhaps for a very long time. Disengaging isn't the same as denial, because denial means refusing to deal with the situation, and I deal with everything, eventually. But only when I'm ready.

I'm dealing with things now, writing this, coming back into the world after some time away.

Postcard from a parallel universe

Perhaps it's because I'm on sabbatical this semester, and therefore paying more attention to the world around me than the stack of papers in front of me, but I'm really missing autumn. Perhaps it's because I was in Boise a few weeks ago (and at Ragdale a few weeks before that) and had a taste of real fall weather for the first time in a long time. In this part of Texas, we know fall has arrived when we need to put on a jacket for the first few hours of the early morning. Sometimes I wonder how in the world I wound up here, of all places

A friend of mine recently moved from Kansas City to an apartment in downtown Portland. She's loving her new life, including the change of climate, and I have to admit that I'm a little jealous. Portland is a great city, and I love the ethos of the Northwest in general--living in an apartment in the Pearl District sounds like a great life to me. There was a time when my husband and I were planning an urban life for ourelves, either in Portland or Seattle, but our plans never came to fruition. We wound up staying in Boise instead, and that turned out to be a great choice for us: we taught at BSU for several years, made some good friends, had a baby, reconnected with my family. I've never regretted that decision, but I've often wondered how our lives might have changed if we'd followed our original plan.

A few weeks ago, I watched a really interesting episode of Nova on PBS called "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives." The premise behind it is pretty complex, but it hinges on the theory of parallel universes--the idea that every time we find ourselves at a point where a decision has to be made, there's a version of ourselves that lives out every possibility. We're only aware of one decision, of course, because we're only one version of ourselves.

So, in theory, there's a version of me that made that move to Portland (and probably a version of me in Seattle, too.) I wonder if the Portland/Seattle versions of me wound up going back to graduate school and earning their Ph.D's. My husband was happy with his full-time teaching position at BSU, but I'd hit the ceiling of my options and knew I couldn't spend the rest of my life as a part-time teacher of freshman composition. That just wasn't going to make me happy. The only way I could open up other options for myself was by getting a book published--a process over which I had only partial control--or by getting a Ph.D. So the Boise me chose to go back to graduate school.

But the Seattle/Portland versions of me might have made career shifts when they arrived in their new cities; those choices might have moved graduate school off the radar completely. Perhaps those versions of me found their way into careers that supported the lives they wanted to live, something I knew part-time college teaching in Boise would never do.

The interesting thing about the trajectory of your life is how it builds itself, how one decision leads to others you wouldn't have had to make in other circumstances. If we hadn't moved to Boise, I might never have thought about going back for my Ph.D.. If I hadn't asked Deborah Eisenberg for a letter of recommendation when I applied to graduate school, I might never have considered the program at Missouri--that was her suggestion. (Of course, there's a version of me that didn't make this decision, too. Who knows where she is now, or what she's doing.)

The long chain of choices that brought me to this particular moment in this particular version of my life probably couldn't be traced back very far, since it involves the smallest decisions along with the big ones--whether to drink a cup of coffee or make a trip to the grocery store, for example. And it's probably best not to think about the millions of versions of me that have met with untimely deaths because of the choices they made, however innocuous those choices might have seemed.

Instead, I'll focus on the small miracle of being where I am right now. It's not a perfect place, true, but it's a human place. The fact that I'm still here seems like reason enough to be happy.

True West

I’ve been doing some reading in the last few weeks, both in preparation for a class I’m teaching in the spring and in support of some writing projects I’m working on. My class is going to focus on literature that examines our evolving relationship with the American west, from frontier to New West. But the reading has started me thinking about why I identify myself as a westerner, and what exactly constitutes “The West” in contemporary culture.

I’m planning to ask my students that question next semester, to give them each a map of U.S. and ask them to mark off The West, then discuss how they came to a decision. How would I mark that map myself? To be honest, I’m not sure. Certainly the Midwest is part of the western U.S., part of the frontier that people were exploring as our country expanded westward—but is it a subsection of The West now, or is it something else, something of its own? I spent twelve years in various parts of the Midwest—Kansas, then Iowa, then Missouri—and I have to say that none of those places felt like Idaho, my geographical home. But does that mean they didn’t feel like The West?

I didn’t expect that Texas would feel like home either—it was just below Oklahoma, certainly part of the Midwest. By the time we moved here from Missouri, after I’d finished my Ph.D., my husband and I had moved enough times that we knew what to expect: we’d hate our new location for awhile, identifying all the ways in which it failed to measure up to our old stomping grounds. Eventually we’d forget to hate it, though, and start to focus on the things we liked. We weren’t even planning to live in Texas long enough to get used to it; we’d live here only as long as it took for one of us to find another job in a more desirable location. Texas was never a place we’d imagined ourselves living for the long haul.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we found ourselves immediately delighted by just about everything we discovered in San Antonio. Excellent Mexican food on every block! (We’d never been able to find even passable Mexican food in Missouri.) Fresh tortillas made daily at the grocery store! A festival for every imaginable thing—books, strawberries, accordions! Add to this the fact that winter lasts for about two weeks in January, and it didn’t take long before we started telling people that we were never, ever leaving Texas.

My husband and I have often wondered why we felt at home here so quickly. The only explanation we’ve come up with is that Texas felt familiar to us in ways we didn’t expect, ways we still can’t articulate clearly—ways that would seem to include the Midwest, too, though we didn’t have the same affection for that region. (The fact that my husband grew up in Kansas, that it’s his geographical home, just complicates matters further. Can it be that Texas feels both like The West and the Midwest? But if that’s the appeal, why does my husband prefer Texas to Missouri—which also must have felt like the Midwest? Shouldn’t Missouri, Kansas’s next door neighbor, have felt more like home than Texas?)

I guess there’s no accounting for what the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan calls topophilia, the emotional connection between people and the spaces they occupy. Perhaps it's just as irrational as most emotional bonds.

All I know is this: I love The West. I know it when I feel it, and I miss it when I don’t. And here in Texas, for whatever reason, I find myself at home.

Home Again

I'm back in Texas after a week in Boise. I made this trip to the Northwest mostly to celebrate my dad's 82nd birthday with my family, but I did some work while I was there as well--I met with a class of really wonderful students at Boise State University on Thursday and did a reading at BSU on Friday evening. I taught at the university for a few years in the mid-90's, and it was good to have a chance to reconnect with some of the people I knew back then.

I still call Boise my hometown, but I have a troubled relationship with the place. Partly, I think, this is because I lived in Boise mostly as a kid--so I go back to feeling like a kid every time I return, feeling trapped and discontent and vaguely furious all the time, exactly like a teenager. There's no reason for me to feel this way now, of course, but it's like an emotional reflex I can't prevent. I lived in Boise for only three years as an adult, those three years I taught at BSU.

This time, though, staying with my sister instead of in the house where I grew up, it was easier to be in Boise and still feel like myself. Just having my own car to drive seemed to make a huge difference. When I'm there with my own little family, my husband usually drives; it had never even occurred to me that being a passenger in a car in my hometown contributed to that feeling of being dropped back into childhood again. Just having some small measure of autonomy this time let me be in Boise and still feel like the generally well-adjusted adult I've been for more than twenty years now.

When I talked with my friend Karen's nonfiction writing class at BSU, one of the things we discussed is what constitutes an Idaho story. Does it have to include hunting and fishing, for instance? Part of my own Idaho story is having grown up as a non-hunter in a family of hunters, and becoming a vegetarian as the result of that. (Though I gave up vegetarianism when I moved to Texas, a.k.a. The Land of Meat.) Another part of my Idaho story is the class division I faced because I never learned how to ski. By the time I was in high school, all my friends had been skiing since they could walk; even if I'd had the money to buy or rent equipment and go skiing on the weekends, I wouldn't have been able to keep up with them. Whole layers of the social hierarchy in my high school just weren't accessible to me for that reason alone.

In my first novel, part of what makes it an Idaho story for me is one character's feeling of being trapped by the landscape of her life. The Boise where I grew up was very remote--it's not within easy driving distance of a major city, and in any case my family didn't travel for recreation. We drove to a campground, or we drove to a relative's house in the Midwest; it wouldn't have occurred to my parents that we might just go visit a city for the sake of seeing what it had to offer us. I always wanted to live somewhere other than Boise, because it seemed like Real Life must be happening somewhere else. I always wrote stories about people who lived elsewhere: Seattle, New Orleans, Chicago, Paris, all manner of places I knew absolutely nothing about. I had no idea how I'd manage to go to any of those places on my own, but I was intent on getting away.

When I drove across the country to start graduate school, I remember being shocked by how much space there was between Idaho and Kansas. Somehow, the "away" I'd imagined wasn't quite as far away as reality took me. I wound up in a strange state, in a strange town, on a strange campus with (it must be said) a strange roommate. But that's where I learned to see Boise as a place in its own right, a place with a very specific personality and character--a place worth writing about. When I left Idaho, for the first time I met people who were fascinated by the idea of a place they'd rarely even heard of. As my friend Steph puts it, "Before I met you, people from China were more real to me than people from Idaho."

These days, when I go back to Boise, it doesn't look a thing like the town I remember. It's much larger than the place where I grew up, much more urban, much more hip. And, truth be told, San Antonio feels like home now. I'm glad to be back.

But Boise is a place I love. Most importantly, Boise is a place.

Teaching the Gaps

I've been thinking about Carson McCullers ever since my last blog entry. Specifically, I've been thinking about the fact that no one reads McCullers anymore, as far as I can tell--she's rarely ever represented in the big anthologies of American literature, dozens of which are sent to my office every year. I find that very depressing, because I learned so much about writing with emotional accuracy from reading her work. At one point in my academic career, when I was contemplating a focus on literature instead of creative writing, I aspired to become the preeminent Carson McCullers scholar. Her work is pretty sentimental, I'll admit, but I think that's understandable when you consider how young she was when she died.

When I was in my first graduate program, working on my M.A., one of my professors visibily turned up his nose when I mentioned McCullers as a writer I admired. "I suppose she wrote some nice little stories," he said. The operative words in that sentence were nice and little. From this comment I was to understand that nothing she'd written really mattered that much--it wasn't innovative or groundbreaking or any of those other words that quickly become associated with writers like Hemingway and Faulkner and Fitzgerald, the men who were writing and publishing at about the same time McCullers was. The one story my professor did like was "A Tree, A Rock, A Cloud," probably McCullers' most famous story (and, ironically, my least favorite of her work.) But in retrospect, it's no surprise that my professor would have liked this one: the words of wisdom spoken at its pivotal moment come from an old man, not a young girl.

I didn't even realize how many "nice little stories" I'd missed out on in my academic studies until I got into my Ph.D. program and had to put together a reading list for my comprehensive exams. Then, suddenly, I saw the hundreds of women who'd just been left out of the anthologies my professors had selected for all the courses I'd taken. Those books left no way for me, the literary novice, to see all the gaps in their versions of American literary history--many of which are populated by women.

My response to that has been to teach the gaps whenever I teach a course in literature, especially an intro-level survey (which may well be the only literature course some college students take.) Working from the assumption that most of the teachers my students have encountered so far will have taught the Big Name Writers, I teach Sarah Orne Jewett instead of Mark Twain. Instead of Ralph Ellison, Ann Petry. The Street is nearly always the book my students list as their favorite among those we've read in that class. We do read male authors as well, if it's a general survey course, but we read selections by lesser-known writers, like Edgar Lee Masters and Sherwood Anderson.

It probably comes as no surprise that some students object to this strategy. On my teaching evaluations, I get occasional comments like "We read all these weird authors I'd never even heard of before," and "I thought this was supposed to be American literature." I'm not shy about being a feminist, and I teach Women's Studies in addition to literature, so the fact that I teach a lot of literature written by women is nearly always seen as a political statement. Which it is, of course--but it's something I do in order to help my students see the gaps in their education, to see who's in those gaps and start thinking about why those writers might be there. Why did they get left behind or glossed over? What are they saying that's so dangerous and uncomfortable? My students laugh at the thought that The Awakening was considered scandalous in its own time, but that doesn't mean they're okay with Edna Pontellier, a mother who isn't completely devoted to motherhood. That idea is still uncomfortable, even now, a hundred years later.

Still, my students like to argue that "teaching the gaps" is unnecessary; discrimination is a thing of the past, they claim, and I'm just perpetuating it now by discriminating against white men. Whenever they make that argument, I tell them the story of when my daughter came home, just two years ago, with a list of 20 Famous Americans on whom she could choose to do a report for her history class. Of the 20 people on that list, 2 were women. So I explained to my daughter that I thought this was a ridiculous list, and I proposed a solution: I'd make up a new list, and my daughter could take it back to her teacher, and the teacher could choose any name she liked for my daughter's report. (I also told my daughter I'd be happy to write a note to her teacher explaining my problem with the assignment, so she didn't have to do that if it made her uncomfortable--but my daughter said she didn't mind talking to her teacher about it. That apple didn't fall far from the tree.)

Our list included 18 women and 2 men, the same proportions on the original list. When my daughter came home the next day, she said her teacher had indicated that any of the names on our list would be fine.

As long as there are lists of Famous Americans like that one coming home from school--and as long as there are anthologies that minimize or leave out Carson McCullers in favor of her male contemporaries--I'm going to keep teaching the gaps. It might not make me popular, but I'm hopeful it will lead some of my students to see how carefully their knowledge is constructed to avoid certain people and the difficult questions they dare to raise.

Small World

I discovered earlier this week that a woman I knew twenty years ago, a graduate of my M.A. program, is now a colleague of a woman I knew from my Ph.D. program. This knowledge arrives after learning that a friend from that same M.A. program is now a department chair at a university where a friend from my Ph.D. program is now a dean--and where yet another friend from that Ph.D. program is a brand new faculty member.

Whew! Don't worry if you can't follow the logistics--I still get confused about who's working where and doing what, exactly.

Ages ago, someone gave me this very good piece of advice: always remember that academia is a very small world, and that burning bridges is therefore a very bad idea, because it might limit options you can't imagine will matter to you at some point. None of us can envision how the various paths we've taken through our lives will cross in some far distant future, so our best bet is to maintain the integrity of each of those paths in case we need to traverse it again. When I was at Ragdale, for instance, I met a writer who'd had a bad experience with an editor I know well and for whom I have enormous respect; nothing I said was going to convince him that perhaps his experience had been an isolated incident. One experience with one person carries forward in ways we may never be aware of.

I've been thinking about this recently as I contemplate a story I just re-read last week, "The Sojourner," by Carson McCullers. I first read that story when I was a sophomore in college, taking my first required class for English majors, but I really couldn't remember much about it, other than the ending. I did remember it as a story that touched me deeply, though. It was one of those stories that made me think "If I can write something like this in my lifetime, I'll be happy." So I went back to read it again, to try to figure out why I still remember this story when, truth be told, I've forgotten so much of what I've read over the years.

It surprised me to discover that this is a very grown-up piece of fiction. The central character, John, lives abroad and has returned to the United States to attend his father's funeral. While he's in New York, the night before he's to return to Europe, he sees his ex-wife and feels compelled to get in touch with her again. She invites him to dinner that night. John knows his wife has remarried, but he's still rather stunned by the physical reality of her new husband and their two children. Coming face to face with them makes him realize that he really hasn't moved forward in his own life at all: he's still pretty much where he was right after their divorce, still single and self-absorbed and travelling through his life without caring too much about anything or anyone in particular.

Initially, I couldn't figure out what would have appealed to me about this story as a nineteen year old; as a middle aged woman, I identify with John's sense that time passes more quickly than we realize--that years fly past us and accumulate and suddenly we're the adults in the room, not the kids. But then I came across this line: "His own life seemed so solitary, a fragile column supporting nothing amidst the wreckage of the years. He felt he could not bear much longer to stay in the family room." And suddenly, I remembered what it felt like to be young and single and to not know whether you'd ever be part of a family of your own, to feel like your life as a single person is somehow less meaningful than it will be when you're part of something larger than yourself.

I think that's why I identified with John as a college student, and felt such compassion for him at the end of the story, when he makes a desperate, futile attempt to connect with his girlfriend's son--a child he's had no time for previously, a child who knows John doesn't really care for him at all. At nineteen, I read this as a story about the difficulty of making connections with other people, no matter how badly we want to do that; now, I read this as a story about the profound implications of all the connections we make, given the small amount of time we have to make them.

I thought about this at Ragdale, too. As I read through the journal entries left behind by writers who'd stayed in the Blue Room, some of whom I know, I realized that our lives had intersected in a way I might never have known about. Knowing they'd been in that same room, sleeping in the same bed, provided me with a sense of community that made me feel right at home. Most of our connections are like that, I think: invisible, but no less important in the small world we share.

The Basic Thing

When my son was little, he used to ask me a baffling question: "What's the basic thing about X?" (For X, substitute anything you can think of: cheeseburgers, The Flintstones, going to the movies. I got all those questions and many, many more.) It's a harder question than you might imagine. I didn't realize this at first--I thought, well, the basic thing about a cheeseburger is the burger. But without the cheese, of course, it's just a burger. So perhaps the basic thing is cheese. But no. A slice of cheese alone does not a cheeseburger make.

I started thinking about this yesterday, when I started to write an essay on character that I was asked to contribute to Center, the literary magazine published by the graduate writing program at the University Of Missouri. But the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized how tricky it is to identify the basic thing about anything. For example, parenting.

Yesterday I was helping my son get ready for school when my husband pointed out that while I was away at Ragdale, our kids got themselves ready for school every single morning. I know they're completely capable of doing this--they're certainly old enough--but I've been in the habit of helping out since they were small people. So now I do it without even thinking about whether it's really necessary, or if it's of benefit to them.

My husband and I grew up in very different families. I had a hands-on stay at home mom and a working dad; my husband had two working parents and two much younger siblings that he was responsible for much of the time. I think he knew more about being a parent when he left home for college than I did when we had children of our own. Still, I have to question whether being a hands-off parent is the basic thing about good parenting. There were mornings while I was gone, I've heard, where my husband wound up driving the kids to school because they'd missed their bus. So what's more important: teaching them to take care of themselves, or teaching them that operating on a schedule is an important part of life? (I really don't want my kids to be like the students who wander into my classroom ten minutes late every day and fail to see why this is an issue.)

Ideally, of course, they'd learn both lessons. But if I have to choose between the two, I'm going to teach my kids that maintaining a schedule is a matter of respect. When my daughter called from the bus stop a few weeks ago to tell me she'd just realized that she forgot to put on makeup before she left the house, I told her she'd have to go to school as she was. I wouldn't agree to drive her to school after she'd come home and finished getting ready; that was something she had to learn to do in the time between waking up and leaving for the bus. When she did the same thing earlier this week, she didn't even bother to call home. She knew her main responsibility was getting herself to school on time, and that's what she did--even though it meant letting people see what she looks like without eyeliner.

Kids make mistakes, of course. When they miss the bus after school, very occasionally, I don't tell them to make the long walk home along a busy street; I go pick them up. But they're apologizing to me the minute they get in the car. They know they've messed up. They don't assume they're entitled to miss the bus once in awhile, that I should be available to pick them up. They respect the fact that I have a schedule, too, that I'm responsible for being other places and doing other things. But they also know that they will always come first, when they really need my help.

So maybe that's the basic thing about being a parent: making sure your children understand that they're always your first priority, that this is a privilege not all children share, and that they therefore shouldn't abuse that privilege arbitrarily. This is something we can help them understand by letting our kids know we have faith in their ability to be responsible for themselves--and providing backup when, inevitably, they fail. Or by making sure our kids show respect for others by being where they're supposed be, on time--and providing backup when, inevitably, they fall behind.

Well, look at that: providing backup. The basic thing.

Postcard from Ragdale #4: The long look back

Today is my last day at Ragdale--tomorrow morning, a driver will pick me up and take me back into the world, back to O'Hare, where I'll board a plane and be with my family before it's time for dinner. I've missed them all, of course, terribly, and I'm looking forward to seeing everyone. Still, it's hard to want to leave this place.

Last night I sat on the Blue Room porch and watched the sun set over the prairie. One evening the sunset was a bright, electric pink; last night, it was a softer peach . I'm wondering how many other colors I might see, given another week. The autumn light in Illinois feels very different from the light this time of year in Texas--and I suspect it is, given the difference in latitude.

But being here by myself, in this light, has helped me remember what it felt like to be young, single and childless, consumed by my writing. That wasn't always a happy time. But I do remember it as a time when writing was often all I really wanted to do, when I spent more time in the world inside my head than I did with the people who actually live out here with me. (Maybe it's healthier to keep the focus out here, but given the shape the world is in, I'm not so sure.) And it was important to remember how it feels to want to write--not just to know you need to do it, because it's your job and you're on sabbatical and people expect things from you, not to mention what you expect of yourself. This was the first time in a long time when I sat down in front of my computer with my brain full and thought, This is going to take all day. And felt pleased.

Today I went for one last long walk on the prairie. I tried to remember all the things I'd noticed yesterday, when I went for a walk without my camera. Something happened over this past weekend--whether it was a change of light or a change of temperature, I don't know. But everything was different, suddenly: the trees are going yellow and red in big patches (and there's a shade of red that belongs only to fall, it's nothing like the red hibisus that's probably blooming in my back yard right now); the grasses are drying gold and orange; the milkweed pods are just about to split open and release the cottony stuff that carries next year's seeds to the ground and catches on the grass to keep them from blowing away. I hadn't forgotten that fall color happens-- but I had forgotten the overwhelming sense of nostalgia that comes along with fall's arrival.

There are many things I want to remember about my time here-- like the way, very briefly, when you're out in the middle of the prairie and there are no airplanes flying overhead on their way to O'Hare, when you're far enough away from Green Bay Road that you can't hear cars passing by, you can almost imagine you're hearing what the first pioneers heard, and seeing what they saw, as they whacked their way through the tall grass prairie. I want to remember the excitement of hearing fresh work from the writers who read last night, especially the one who was brave enough to share a few new pages from the story of a kind of a grief I can't begin to imagine.

Too often, I think about my writing very casually. I make up stories. It's something I do when I can find the time. Last night was a good reminder that writing can, sometimes, be the thing that saves your life.

A Meditation on Walking

We live in a world that is not kind to people, especially women. One of the first things I have to teach my students in Women’s Studies is that women are taught to be scared for a reason: if we’re afraid, we won’t venture far from our homes. If we’re afraid, we might not try to do scary things, like be the first person to hold a particular job. If we’re afraid, no one has to work very hard at keeping us in check, because we’ll do that to ourselves.

“But wait a minute,” my students say. “There are good reasons for women to be afraid.”

Well, true. And this is when we discuss what the statistics tell us, and my students learn that they should be more afraid of their fathers and uncles and boyfriends than the stranger in the bushes.

I walked the Shaw Prairie for the first time Wednesday, and I went back for a longer walk yesterday. But after a week here, I’m still trying to leave the world behind: when I hear a rustling in the tall grass, I get nervous. When I hear a sound on the trail behind me, my first thought is that someone’s following--not the more likely explanation, that a squirrel just shot across the path or a bird just landed in one of the bushes. There is no reason to be afraid here. I know that. And still I am.

Today I started wondering if it would be possible to lose that reflex—if I stayed at Ragdale long enough and walked the prairie every day, would I learn to stop being scared? Would it be like when you get a drastic haircut and, for awhile, you keep trying to push your hair behind your ears, even though there’s no hair left for you to push? Eventually, you stop. And maybe, given enough time, given the right circumstances, I could learn to stop worrying that someone—that big scary stranger in the tall grass—was out to get me.

When I was in college I liked to take long walks by myself, sometimes in the arboretum in the afternoon, sometimes in the residential areas after dark. Every one of my friends told me this was dangerous. If I left a fraternity party on my own, I’d get at least three offers to escort me home. I didn’t know, then, that I had more to fear from the people I knew than the people who might be lurking between Here and There. I just knew that I wanted to walk by myself, because I enjoyed being alone and because I refused to be afraid of doing what I wanted. I wasn’t going to be limited by the assumption that someone was waiting to get me.

Maybe what I did was dangerous. I know I wouldn’t do it now, and I know I would yell at my daughter if she did the same. In spite of what I know about the stranger in the bushes, how unlikely an assailant he is, I’m still afraid of him. More afraid, now, than determined to enjoy myself, to live my life the way I want to. And I’m not sure whether this is a bad thing.

I doubt I will ever have the chance to spend enough time on the Ragdale prairie to stop being scared. But it’s good to know there are still some places in this world where that feels like it is, at the very least, a possibility.

Postcard from Ragdale #3: Little Writer on the Prairie

The rain has stopped and the weather has cooled and I think it's officially coming up on fall (in this part of the country, anyway.) The Canada Geese have been flying overhead en masse, the crabapples are ripe on the trees--to the great delight of the chipmunks that live on the grounds, all of whom are stuffing their cheeks full of them--and every morning, when I look out my window, a few more leaves on the trees have started to turn. It's still very early in the season, of course, but I'm glad I was here for a little piece of it.

Yesterday I took my first long walk on the prairie, starting out at the north end of the Ragdale house, where I took these pictures of the Ragale angel. There's a small blue angel at the top of the official Ragdale letterhead--everything around the Ragdale house, not just my room, is a very specific shade of Ragdale blue--and there's a carved wooden angel's wing on the wall of the Barnhouse living room. I'm assuming this is the woman who inspired it all. And that seems fitting, given that there is definitely a sense that someone's watching over you here. Not in a creepy way, but in a grandmotherly kind of way. At dinner a couple of nights ago, one of the other residents said "There's something about this place that just puts out of a vibe of 'Come on now, no procrastinating, get to work'--but in the nicest possible way." I think I'd have to agree.

From there I ventured out beyond the split rail fence. The Shaw Prairie, right behind the Ragdale house, is one small part of the Skokie River Nature Preserve. What I like best about the prairie is that trails are mown into it, so that when you're walking you're surrounded by the tall grasses and flowers, some of them ten or twelve feet tall. There are moments when it's a little claustrophobic, when I hear a noise in the grass and start having a Children of the Corn flashback--but then I remind myself that this is the real world intruding unnecessarily, because there's not a thing to harm anyone at Ragdale, as those casual raccoons demonstrated earlier. (In fact, the day I arrived, the driver who brought me up from the airport said "There's no crime in Lake Forest. The police here really have nothing to do. So be sure you come to a complete stop whenever you're at a stop sign.")

I took the center trail out into the middle of the prairie, then cut off to the north and found an area with trees and a bench dedicated to several members of the Ragdale family. That's where I called my husband and tried to describe what I was seeing, though I'm the first to admit that words are no match for the prairie and we didn't talk long. I wandered back to the center trail, then toward the Skokie River. I think this suspension bridge might be a new addition since my last trip to Ragdale--it looks new, anyway. I didn't brave the swaying bridge this time, though. Instead, I kept meandering north along the riverbank, through the Shaw Woods, and eventually found myself in Bennett Meadow. In spite of the fact that I feel like I'm out in the middle of nowhere when I'm on the prairie, I think it would be pretty hard to get lost. All the trails loop back on themselves, kind of like the circular path of the labyrinth mown into the grass in the back yard of the Ragdale house. (And, after all, it's still in the middle of Lake Forest--how lost can you get in a town full of houses the size of Costco?)

I don't know if you can see the bee at the center of this photo on the right, but he was one of many I saw while I was walking. At dinner, a visual artist commented to me that he'd been for a walk as well, but hadn't seen any bees. "That's because they were all following me around," I said.

After an hour or so of walking, I ended up back at the Ragdale house, on the south porch. These cat sculptures were soaking up the sun in a bright corner, exactly where a pair of cats should be. And they didn't seem the least bit interested in bothering this little bird I found perched on top of a (blue) post at the edge of a nearby flowerbed. I sat on the porch for awhile, soaking up some sun myself--it isn't cold for the people who live here, but it's cold for me. Let everybody else wear shorts, though. I'm putting on a sweater and enjoying a little taste of cool weather while I can.

The Wildlife Catalog

Three deer, grazing in a corner of the back lawn when I got up and opened my window shades.

Two fat and casual raccoons who emerged from the shrubs when the rain stopped yesterday afternoon and moseyed across the back lawn toward the garden, not the least bit concerned about who might be seeing them. They know this is their home and we're just polite guests, trying not to leave our footprints.

An abundance of chipmunks, too many to count, one of whom had breakfast with me this morning--I sat in the geranium room with my coffee and newspaper, he sat calmly on the window ledge, on the other side of the glass, eating seeds from a dish someone had placed there for him.

Two arrows of Canada Geese flying south through the cold, clear sky--one early this morning, one just a few moments ago. A sure sign that fall is on its way.

Postcard from Ragdale #2: Rainy Saturday

It's been raining here at Ragdale, pretty consistently, since mid-afternoon yesterday. This is good writing weather--it keeps me inside--and we're supposed to have one more day of rain tomorrow. Then a sunny week ahead, which is good, because it's going to take a day or two for the prairie to dry out enough that I can go for a walk. Yesterday I had the good sense to walk the grounds and take some pictures before the rain began. (I also had the good sense to decide against a walk on the prairie when I saw how dark the sky had gone--otherwise, I would have been soaked to the bone by the time I got back to the house.)

Yesterday, reading on the back screened porch, I kept getting distracted by the sound of trickling water. Then I decided that I was being distracted for a reason--a fountain exists to be looked at and listened to, after all. So I ran upstairs and got my camera and headed around to the south end of the house. This "purling fountain" sits right in front of an outdoor porch--as I mentioned yesterday, there's no end of spots in which to sit and enjoy the outdoors at Ragdale. It's one of the things I love most about this place. The inscription on the fountain reads "Purling fountain cool and gray/Tinkling music in thy spray/Singing of a summer's day."

Near the foot of the outdoor patio on this end of the house is a cement block that holds the impression of many, many hands. I got all choked up when I saw it--maybe because it reminded me that Ragdale was, for a long time, a family home, and this is such a common and familiar thing for a family to do. It turns out these handprints belong to the children and grandchildren of Alice Hayes, granddaughter of Howard Van Doren Shaw, who designed and built the Ragdale house for his parents and his family to use as a summer place (hence the abundance of porches.) They made these handprints as part of a farewell family gathering just before Alice donated the Ragdale house to the city of Lake Forest.

From there I walked across the back yard and into the garden. The garden gate has an "R" woven into the wrought iron design at the top and two little Chinese lions beside each gatepost. The trees on the Ragdale grouns are just starting to turn (the green leaves have that tired, yellowy color that means they're just about to give up), but the garden is still full of flowers. Also, as is the case in just about every corner of Ragdale, it's full of scultpure: I found this little guy hiding under an oak tree. (I actually had to kneel down and get under some low-hanging branches to take this picture--that's how hidden he is.) In the Ragdale living room there are scultpures of bears, a dog and a chicken, so I'm guessing that Sylvia Shaw Judson, the sculpter, was a great lover of all animals. I'm impressed that the sculptures aren't on display so much as they're just part of the scenery--this deer is placed exactly where an actual deer would be, hiding away out of sight.

Also in the garden: this sundial, designed by Shaw. The inscription reads "Hours Fly/Flowers Die/New Ways/New Days/Pass By/Love Stays." You'll notice that the grass around sundial isn't pristine, and that's pretty much the case throughout the Ragdale grounds; everything is very beautiful and well-kept, but not perfect. This looks like a place where real people live. I think that's why the writers and artists who come here marvel at how quickly they settle in and feel at home.

I left the garden and meandered toward the back of the grounds, where the split rail fence divides Ragdale from the prairie preserve, and that's where I made the decision to turn back rather than brave the prairie in the face of what looked like an impending downpour. On my way back toward the house, I passed this profusion of flowers (and for those of you worried about the dwindling bee population--I really think it's okay. They're all up here, having a snack, and they seem quite happy.) Lots of other flowers in all colors, too, many of them taller than me--that's the really cool thing about the prairie, how tall the flowers grow when they're left to do their own thing. Not to mention the variety of flowers. I didn't even know that phlox grew wild before I saw the prairie last time.

Heading around the north end of the house, I made a final stop to photograph the "Bird Girl" statue that sits in front of the Barnhouse. This is probably Sylvia's most famous statue, thanks to Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil. She's smaller than you might imagine, and I think I'd prefer her without the flowers. The Ragdale office sells replicas of this statue (in addition to sweatshirts and other Ragdale paraphernalia), and I'm fairly certain I'll have a copy of "Bird Girl" sitting on my entryway table at some point.

Once the prairie has time to dry out, I'll post more photos. I'm sorry now that I didn't take the time to walk the trails on Thursday afternoon, when I first arrived. I was so tired from travelling that I opted for a nap instead. With any hope, the trails will be dry and travel-worthy within a few days. It wouldn't be a Ragdale experience without some time on the prairie.

Postcard from Ragdale #1: My room with a view

My first Ragdale visit was four years ago, and I didn’t have any idea what to expect from it. What I got was a quiet room at the end of the second-floor hallway in the main house, Alice's Room--an easy place to hide out and do nothing but work.

I’m staying in the main house again, but this time I’m in the Blue Room (aptly named for the painted blue woodwork and wild, leafy wallpaper. That’s right, blue leaves.) My room faces west, so as I sit here typing I can look down on the back lawn, where deer sometimes wander out to graze, and into the south edge of the prairie preserve. I also have half of a screened porch to enjoy—I share it with another resident, and our halves are divided by a privacy screen. But there are so many porches in the Ragdale house that I’ll never have trouble finding a place to enjoy the outdoors. (Last night I heard a coyote howling just before I went to bed. I love that this place is designed to communicate with its surroundings instead of sealing them out.)

New things: the Barnhouse was under renovation last time, so this was my first opportunity to see the beautifully updated space. I hope I’ll have a chance to stay there sometime, though those rooms tend to be assigned to the visual artists. Regin Igloria, the director of artist residencies, tells us that plans are in the works to renovate the main house before too long (though the plan is to leave the house esentially as it is--just in better repair, and with updated plumbing. To which I say, "Hooray!")

Also new is the presence of wireless Internet access, which I'm going to try to use sparingly. Part of the point of being here is disconnecting; I had a conversation with another writer at dinner last night, and I told her that one of my favorite parts of being at Ragdale is the change of pace that occurs when you give up a car and every little errand involves a longish walk.

I’m going through the usual stages of residency: yesterday afternoon was panic (“Why did I do this? I’ve made a terrible mistake. I have nothing to write about, and I’m stuck here for two weeks.”) Once I’d taken a nap and had an excellent dinner and met the rest of my resident cohort, that feeling subsided a bit. Now I’m in the settling stage (“Okay, at least I can read and relax and have some time to myself, even if I can’t write a lot. This won’t be so bad, and two weeks isn’t that long.”) As I recall, this fairly quickly resolves into a productive writing groove, after which the time begins to fly and it’s clear that two weeks is nowhere near long enough to do what you’d like to do.

The last time I was here, I was intent on having something to show for my residency (since I was missing my son’s birthday, and a visit from my sister, in order to be here) and I made an effort to do little more than write. This time, I need to wander as much as I write—both in my thoughts and on the grounds. I need to look around, get my bearings, figure some things out. I need to read and think and rejuvenate the writing part of my brain. Clearly the folks who put Ragdale together know what that involves—note the nice little library and cozy reading chair beside my bed (complete with a throw, lest the reader should take a chill.)

This time, what I needed most from Ragdale was a peaceful room with a view that encourages lots of daydreaming. And magically, here I am.

On the road (well, in the air) again

I'm off to Ragdale for my second writing residency tomorrow. My last visit to the magical and historic home of Howard Van Doren Shaw and family was, in a word, fabulous: lots of walking on the prairie, lots of sitting on my screened porch and thinking, lots of deer-watching, lots of writing. I don't want to sound too new agey here, but there is absolutely something to be said for the energy in spaces that have housed writers and artists for so many years. I don't think I've been able to sit at a computer and write for eight hours at a stretch anywhere other than Ragdale.

I'm feeling anxious about leaving the family for two weeks, of course, especially now that Hurricane Ike has decided to make the Texas coast his target. I know the kids will be fine, though. They're largely able to take care of themselves, and they have a very capable and caring parent to rely upon when they need help. But it's not so easy to turn off the Mom side of the brain, even when I'm too far away to solve many of the problems that might arise. Or the Wife side of the brain, for that matter; when you're lucky enough to be married to the person you most enjoy talking to, it's hard to be away for so long.

At least Ragdale has wireless Internet access this time around--last time, such was not the case. And while that did make it easier to disengage from the minutiae of family life, it also made staying connected that much more difficult. I can see where this would be a good thing, sometimes, but not when there are kids in the mix. Still, I'm going to try to limit my Internet use in the interest of keeping my brain focused on the task at hand.

Assuming I can get my wireless connection and digital camera to work properly, I'll post photos and updates here in the next few days. Onward (and upward!)

Amusing moments from the McCain viewing party at my house

So my son had to watch John McCain's acceptance speech last night as an assignment for his history class. (I didn't object when he was required to watch Obama's speech last week, but this time around I was thinking, "What? That's a ridiculous assignment. They shouldn't be requiring me to expose my child to Republican propaganda.") My son decided he wanted to watch the speech by himself, in our bedroom, where he could focus on his note-taking--his job was to write down 15 facts from McCain's speech. Please don't get me started about how difficult I would find that task.

After my son had left the room, my husband turned to me and said, "That's probably for the best. I wouldn't want him listening to me and writing down facts like 'If John McCain wins the election, my family will be moving to Canada.'"

Once McCain started speaking, of course, no end of hilarity ensued. I can't wait to introduce Sarah Palin to Washington.

"Um . . . Mr. McCain . . . Washington is dead, sir," my husband said.

"What?" I said. "No one told me that! I just had coffee with him yesterday!"

And on and on and on. Before too long, my son came out of the bedroom with his list of facts (I didn't fact-check his assignment, in the interest of letting him get to bed sometime before the new year.)

"So, what do you think of Mr. McCain?" I asked.

"He almost got me," my son said. "I think it's pretty impressive that he spent five years in a prison and didn't come out completely mean and evil."

I declined to challenge that assessment. "Well," I said, "Dad and I have always told people that the only way you and Sissy can rebel against us is by becoming Republican accountants. I guess it was inevitable that we'd part ways."

My son gave me a sideways look. "I said he almost got me. This fish is not taking the bait."

If my eleven-year-old is smart enough to see through the rhetoric of jingoism, let's hope the rest of the country is too. I'm not holding my breath, but I'm audaciously hopeful.

A heaping helping of hot coals for your head

Dear Volleyball Coach:

Over this past summer, my daughter decided to go out for the volleyball team at the middle school where you're on staff. I guess I assumed middle school sports still operated the way they did when I was a kid: if you wanted to be on the team, you showed up for practice every day.

Clearly, that's not the case. My daughter went to two days of three-hour practices after school, and then she showed up for the 9 a.m. Saturday morning practice session you'd scheduled. At some point along the way, she was told that 15 of the 45 girls who wanted to play volleyball for their school would be cut; there was "space enough" only for 30 girls, 15 each on the A and B teams.

Since she didn't play volleyball last year, my daughter knew she was one of the girls vulnerable to being cut from the roster. And, sure enough, when we went back to the school at noon on Saturday, we saw that her name wasn't on the list.

There are about a million things wrong with this scenario, but let's start with the "obesity epidemic" we hear about so often in the news. Every time this topic comes up, the focus goes straight to food. What are kids eating? What should they be eating instead? Perhaps we should ask why kids who want to be active at school are being denied that opportunity. Is it any wonder that young people develop a negative attitude about exercise when their earliest experiences with team sports lead to outright rejection?

I'm not going to argue that my daughter was the best volleyball player in the group. She wasn't. She knows that, and she admits it freely. But she wanted to get better--that's why she went out for the team. She hasn't participated in club volleyball or skills clinics because her interest in the sport just developed recently. The message you're sending to her is that if you aren't interested in sports from an early age, you might as well forget about getting active later in life. (And the idea that 13 is "later in life"? It's just absurd.)

And what about the girls whose parents can't afford club volleyball and skills clinics? I'm getting a much clearer picture of why obesity and poverty so often go hand in hand.

So when you say there just isn't "space" on the team for my daughter and 14 other girls, I'm guessing what you mean is that strong athletes would lose playing time if they had to accommodate less talented teammates. That, of course, would be a tragedy.

I understand that talented athletes can only improve their skills if they play against athletes at or above their own level. I'm not opposed to the idea of dividing the kids into A and B teams. But what about a C team, or even a D team? The band program provides you with an excellent model: no student is turned away, even if he or she isn't particularly talented. They're sorted into honors band, symphonic band, intermediate band--there's a place for everyone who wants to stay involved with music. Perhaps this is because music teachers understand the benefits to be gained from pursuing their discipline.

I hear many arguments in favor of school sports: they teach teamwork, cooperation, dedication, time management. I don't dispute that any of these things are true. But if you really believe these are important skills, I find it hard to understand why you'd turn away a third of the students interested in developing the very qualities you're so quick to defend.

My tax dollars are subsidizing the giant new high school football stadium that, I now understand, will benefit only a select few high school football players. My tax dollars are subsidizing your volleyball program, too--in spite of the fact that it's not available to my own kid. And while you may argue that this is always the case, that my tax dollars also subsidize the Talented and Gifted education that my daughter enjoys while others are turned away, let's keep in mind that everyone gets to take math. The fact that some students can't learn math at her pace doesn't lead to them being told "Sorry, there's no room for you in Algebra."

Luckily, I've taught my kids to be tough. When they face disappointment, I've taught them to shake it off and plan for the next challenge. Now it's up to me to do the same, to lead by example.

At church this morning, the reading from Romans indicated that I should retaliate with kindness when someone is unfair to me, that I shouldn't retaliate in kind but, instead, fight injustice with goodness--and that by doing so, I'll heap hot coals on the enemy's head. So instead of calling you first thing in the morning and telling you exactly what I think about your sports program--which, let's face it, would do no good anyway--I'm going to encourage my daughter not to give up on fitness. I'm going to encourage her to take care of her physical self as well as her spirit, to welcome and support everyone, no matter their failings. I'm going to teach her to destroy your power by exercising her own.

Game on, coach. This time, you are not going to win.

Out of the Blue

An old college friend found me on Facebook this morning, a person I've thought about more than once in the years since our paths diverged in Idaho. She wanted to apologize for some wrong she thought she'd done me all those years ago, so I quickly wrote back to assure her that the past was the past and long since forgotten. Truth be told, I can't for the life of me remember why I was so angry with her back then. (Though, since we're telling the truth, I do remember being really, really angry.)

I'm glad to know that she went on from college to live a happy life. As I recall, neither of us were particularly happy people at that point--probably for different reasons, but in my case I know the problem began and ended with the feeling that I wasn't a person of any merit. I did a lot of stupid, dangerous things as a result of that feeling, and it's nothing short of a miracle that I'm still here to tell the tale. But I've always believed that things happen for a reason, which means there's a reason why I'm still here and why I took the path that brought me to this moment.

When I was younger, I hated the story of the Prodigal Son--the story of the kid who screws up and comes home to find that he's already been forgiven. I was the good kid in my family, sandwiched in between a rebellious older sister and a younger brother who, as my dad would put it, was "a typical boy." That means he got into some trouble along the way, but no more than expected. (When my kids were little and my son was acting up, my dad would say "Leave him alone--he's just being a boy." If my daughter was doing the same thing, he'd give me the hairy eyeball until I intervened. And now you know why I wound up teaching Women's Studies.)

So I always hated the Prodigal Son, because it seemed to me to be one more example of the good kid being overlooked and the bad kid getting all the attention. We all know that isn't fair.

What I didn't know, as a young person, is how often I would need to be forgiven myself, and how grateful I would be that people have the capacity to forgive each other. And ourselves. After I left home for college, I quickly gave up on being the good kid--so I'm still working on that last item. I have many current shortcomings, but many more memories of times I knowingly made the wrong choice. Giving myself a break is sometimes not an easy job.

But it's easy to forgive the people who hurt me a long time ago, especially if time has proven those hurts to be so inconsequential that they don't even live on in memory.

So welcome back, my old friend. It's wonderful to hear from you.

A Sad Day

I've spent the past two weeks reading and thinking about fire, trying to internalize the language of wildland firefighting so the characters in my second novel will sound authentic--both those who are firefighters themselves and those who have lived with or around them. Growing up in Idaho, I knew a lot of people who worked fire crews in the summer. It's a fast way to make decent money, when you're a college student. But I never knew anyone who planned to fight fires long term, to make it their life's work.

It's a good thing some people do. On Monday evening, a range fire swept up a hillside in Boise and burned nine houses, damaged ten more, near the subdivision where my sister and her family lived for years. News reports are saying firefighters were on the scene in just minutes and had a plan of attack for fighting a fire in this area--the wildland-urban interface is always vulnerable, especially in the West, where rain is scarce and fuel abundant. Everyone who lives there knows fire is a distinct possibility.

But, then, every one of us who lives in a house with electrical wiring knows fire is possible. We don't respond to that threat by living in tents and giving up our wired lives; we take our chances, try to be safe and hope for the best.

One person died in the Boise fire. She was a woman I knew when I taught at Boise State--not a close friend or someone I kept in touch with after we moved away, but a person I liked and admired. I'm sad to know she's no longer in the world, sad that anyone had to die this way. Her husband had noticed smoke rising behind their house, stepped out the back door to see where it was coming from--and then, he says, the fire swept over the top of the ridge and toward their home so quickly, he didn't even have time to get back inside. He ran around to the front, and when he saw that his wife wasn't waiting for him there, he knew she wouldn't have time to make it out.

This is a powerful reminder that the subject I'm taking on in my work has real consequences for real people--it isn't just the dramatic engine of a story. It's a regular part of life in the West, no different than hurricanes for people on the Gulf coast, earthquakes in California or ice storms in New England. None of them can be stopped. The best we can do is decide where we want to take our chances.

Taking the Long Way

I started the day with a run. It's a good way to put a positive spin on the day, and I love that I have time this semester to run in the morning. This still cracks me up: I'd never run so much as a city block before I turned 40, and now I actually have to use running as an incentive for completing less desirable activities. As in, "If you grade five papers, then you can go for a run." And it works! No one is more surprised by this than I am.

During a normal semester I have to save my run for an after-work activity, which means it's highly vulnerable to further postponement due to unforeseen complications: missed the bus, need a new binder, need a ride to X's house so we can do homework together, etc. etc. (I know I could plan a 5 a.m. run to escape these complications, but I also know how pointless it is to make plans I have no intention of keeping.) This semester, though, I've promised myself that running will be one of my priorities since, after all, healthy body = healthy brain. So after the kids get on the bus, after I've had a sufficient amount of coffee, I put on my running shoes and plug in my earphones and get busy.

For the last few days I've been kicking off the morning with the Dixie Chicks' "The Long Way Around." It always puts me in a rebellious frame of mind that makes me want to run faster and harder. If I could go back in time and talk to my younger self, maybe give her some advice, the first thing I'd do is slap on the headphones and make her listen to this song. Then maybe she'd know that it's okay not to be getting married at 18--it's not a defect you need to rise above, or a condition you need to justify with excellent grades and turbo-charged career plans. You can just be 18 and figuring things out for yourself and, believe it or not, that's okay. You're okay.

But that's a hard thing to know when all the people who have been your closest friends are making concrete plans for their futures and you have no idea what your future looks like. None of the people I knew back then are still married to the same person, and since my husband and I will be celebrating 20 years in December, I guess I'll count that as the blessing that comes of having been a wallflower at that particlar party.

The love of my high school life died not too long ago. I had no plans to see him again--I hadn't seen him in at least fifteen years--but it was still sad to know I never would, to know there will be no bumping into him sometime while I'm visiting home, no catching up, no moment of seeing that we both ended up in a better place for having not made an earlier mistake. He married young, had kids young--and, as it happens, died young. So maybe we all just live our lives at different speeds. Maybe there's an internal alarm clock going off silently in our brains, letting us know when it's time to do various things. Maybe those of us who start our families when we're 30, not 20, aren't waiting for anything--we just haven't heard the signal that it's time to get going.

There are many mothers my age or older these days. That wasn't the case for my mom, who got married and had two children in her early twenties, lost one of those children in her later twenties, then went on to have a second family, of sorts, when my brother and I were born in her early thirties. My friends always mistook my parents for my grandparents; my father was only in his 40's when I was in grade school, but apparently that was late to be a father and none too soon to be a grandfather in the 1970's.

I'm glad I had more time--I'm glad I took more time--to be single and childless, then married and childless. Taking the long way to marriage and family let me find the one person (and I'm still convinced there is only one person) to whom I could be happily married for the duration, and let me become a mother when I felt ready to take on that role, not when I thought it was expected of me. I only wish there were a way to tell every teenage girl that there's no need to be in such a rush. Just take your time, look around and figure out where you are. Then you'll know where you want to go.

Firsts

Today is the first day of middle school for my son, the first day of 8th grade for my daughter. I've spent the whole day trying not to think about the fact that junior high school was the single worst time of my life and 8th grade the single worst year of my educational experience. And I do mean the whole day. I've been awake since 4 a.m.--possibly because I was afraid I wouldn't wake up with my alarm this morning (after three months of sleeping in, it was certainly possible), and possibly because I'd just had one of those terrible my-child-is-missing nightmares that I tend to have whenever I'm stressed out about something.

My son is shy, like me, so I identify with him a little too strongly on days like this. Since he doesn't have a lot of friends, and since the whole eat-with-your-class dynamic disappears when you make the shift from elementary school, last week I tried to give him a little advice about how to navigate the cafeteria situation: just find someone who looks familiar from one of your classes, sit with whoever they're sitting with, say "Hi guys" when you sit down, and then start eating. Probably, I said, they'll be friendly. Most people are. And if they're not, you can pretend you're too busy eating to talk anyway.

"I don't mind saying hi," he said. "I just don't want to get into a whole conversation."

And thus I realized one of the ways in which my son and I are very different: for me, making the first move was always the agonizing endeavor. Once someone had invited me into a conversation, though, I was fine. For my son, it's precisely the opposite problem: he doesn't want to come up with witty repartee. He'd really prefer to eat his lunch and get on with the school day, thank you very much.

Earlier today I was thinking about the guys I knew in high school and junior high, how most of them didn't seem to run in packs the ways girls always did. In fact, some of the guys I knew best had no single close friend; they had friends from football, from basketball, from band, wherever they spent their time. That realization made me feel a little better. My son is not an unhappy kid--just the opposite--and no doubt I worry about him more than I need to. Having said that, though, let me add that I'll be very, very happy when this day is over and I know everyone survived the experience unscathed.

This is also the first official day of my sabbatical, if by sabbatical we mean days during which the kids are in school and I have many hours for doing my own writing and research rather than teaching. In theory, my sabbatical started with the end of the spring semester--but with the kids at home all summer, I think we all know how much work got done. I did start some research last week, and my brain has been spitting out new ideas at random, and I've been very good about keeping track of them so far. I know this is how the process begins; right now I'm walking around, picking up pieces of a puzzle, trying to imagine what picture they might create. Soon enough, it'll be more like I'm running to catch a bus that may well leave without me.

I'm really annoyed that my laptop chose this moment to fry itself, but at least I'll have a new one for my writing residency. I got the old laptop for my previous residency, four years ago, so it's all kind of fitting: new machine, new project, fresh start. We all need those once in awhile.

UPDATE: All present and accounted for. No major emotional or physical trauma. All's right with the world--for the moment, anyway.

Serendipity

My son had an appointment with the orthodontist this morning. It doesn't normally take very long to have the hardware adjusted, but today it took a bit longer than usual and I found myself getting antsy as I flipped through the random selection of available magazines. If I'd been thinking ahead, I would have brought along a book of my own. But I hadn't expected a long wait, and so I was heavy bored.

And then: I remembered that when my husband brought our kids to the dentist (who is also our orthodontist) a month ago, he'd come across a copy of National Geographic that featured an excellent article about fighting forest fires. Since wildland firefighting is central to the novel I'm just beginning, he'd come home excited to tell me about the article so I could run out and buy a copy of the magazine. (Later, my daughter told me she'd suggested absconding with the dentist's copy, but her father had pointed out that this would be wrong.)

As it turned out, that issue of the magazine was already off the newsstand; it was a month old and nowhere to be found. Except, as it happens, at the orthodontist's office. This morning, after I remembered that earlier conversation, I rummaged through the magazine basket and found National Geographic all the way at the bottom. Then I spent the second half of my son's appointment trying to internalize as much information as I could, since I didn't have any supplies for note-taking.

When it was time to check out, I asked the receptionist if it would be okay for me take the magazine and photocopy the article, then bring it back. The whole office staff knows I'm a writer--they have the photo and interview that appeared in our local newspaper last spring posted on the wall of their break room--so I explained that I was doing research for a new book.

"Oh, just take it," she said. "We have lots of others. I had no idea our famous author was doing research right there in the waiting room!"

Fame is relative, of course, but being famous at the dentist's office clearly has its perks.

I know I could have tracked down a back issue of the magazine online, but I wouldn't have even remembered to do that if it hadn't taken awhile to remove my son's bite blocks. Now he can chew with abandon, and I can get ready to write.

Begin the Begin

The start of a new school year seems like the right time to start a new project--especially since I'm on sabbatical this semester. My official project for the fall is to get a jump on my second novel; the first, Little Lost River, is selling steadily, and having written one gives me some confidence that I can write another. But a blog seems like a more manageable task, something I can accomplish even on days when the words pile up against each other like typewriter keys and get stuck inside my brain. Which is more often than I'd like to admit.

In one week, my kids will be back in school and my days will be wide open again. This is both an exciting and daunting prospect, since time and space are two of the three basic ingredients of writing. But the third--good ideas--can't be supplied by the local school district. (Not by my local school district, anyway.) As I'm often telling my students, in writing you have to make the clay before you can start to shape it into something beautiful.

I've been thinking about this particular batch of clay for quite awhile, but next week begins the process of making it real.