A few weeks ago, my niece called me to ask for some book recommendations. She had an assignment to read the biography of a person who had changed the world. Not wanting to be typical, I stayed away from people who've changed us in obvious ways (I'm certain---since I had a very similar assignment I had my tenth grade students do---that lots of kids would read about Einstein, or random presidents, or even movie stars). Instead, I found her some biographies about writers, because I think they change the world, too. Sometimes they only change the world for a few people, but the impact grows as those changed also make changes. Several writers have changed my live, but three in particular were born today, November 29. These aren't just writers whose work I enjoyed reading; they are writers whose work changed me, by giving me an idea or two I had never considered and then showing me how the idea played out in a well-wrought imaginary world---also leading me to see how it might play out in my own, real world. I read each of them when I was young and impressionable, not to mention lonely, so their work became, for me, not just stories but ways of learning about the world. All three of them are dead, now, but I think there's still a sort of cosmic responsibility to let your favorite authors know you appreciate them, once in awhile. (I've occasionally sent letters to living favorite writers, although it feels like something I shouldn't confess to doing.) So that’s what I’m doing today. In a way, it’s almost not even about the authors, but about the books themselves, independent of their writers, changing the world by way of a reader or too. The book keeps the author alive, as long as someone is reading it, a sort of post-mortal communication by way of paper and ink.

When I was in fifth grade, I must have read Little Women, by Louisa May Alcott, at least seven times. I put it down so often on my reading list that my teacher, Mr. Strong, asked me to read something else. I think I was drawn to it at first because of the similarities to my family: four sisters. Plus, I liked old stories, books about the past; I had the romantic view of history that made me wish I had been born in the 1800's. (Which family I would wish to join more, Laura Ingalls' or Jo March's, was a toss up.) I liked the gentle romance in it, too, Laurie's bumbling attempts to win over Jo, Meg's idyllic wooing by Mr. Brooke, Amy and Laurie finally getting together. I was also drawn to the life their family shared---Marmee, especially, seemed intriguing. Whose mom was like her, helping her children overcome their faults, taking care of the poor, always singing? I especially loved that she tried to teach Jo how to manage her quick temper with use of a book (although I had no clue what Pilgrim's Progress was). It wasn't so much that Jo had a temper and I thought she shouldn't, but the process of trying to overcome it.

Looking back as an adult, I think part of what drew me to Little Women, over and over, was that each of the sisters was a bit like me. Meg's desire to fit in with her friends, Beth's shyness and love of kittens; Amy---well, she was an Amy completely unlike me, vibrant and brave and outgoing, the Amy I wished I could be. Plus she could paint. And Jo, of course, with her writing. Maybe I have been trying to become Jo all my adult life. In fact, one of the few things I didn't like about the book (still don't) is that she gave up writing to become a wife. I still think about her declaring "I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle—something heroic, or wonderful—that won't be forgotten after I'm dead. I don't know what, but I'm on the watch for it, and mean to astonish you all, some day. I think I shall write books, and get rich and famous; that would suit me, so that is my favorite dream." Even in the fifth grade, it was my favorite dream, too.

How this novel shaped me is by giving me a family that was similar to mine---and then showing me how different it was, too. It showed me that my way of looking at the world wasn't the only way. It also puts forth some ideas about gender that I didn't really notice as I read them, but that continue to affect me. How does a woman find happiness in the world? Is it by Meg's traditional path, or the more creative one that Jo and Amy follow? Is finding the person you love and getting married the only way to live? Can't a woman continue on with her creative side even after marriage? Of course, our perspectives now are far different than those held by the March girls. But I think they are still valid questions. More than anything, Jo's passion for writing still continues to haunt me. She's still a role model.

Alcott wasn't particularly fond of her Little Women books. "I'm tired of providing moral pap for the young," she wrote in her journal. She liked writing what she called "blood and thunder" novels, full of mystery, duels, bloody deaths, addictions. She only wrote Little Women on the advice of her publisher, and maybe to have something she could publish under her own name without embarrassing her family. Yet, to my uneducated 10-year-old mind, the book wasn't about morality at all. It was, in the end, about the search for the self, a search I continue to progress in.

I've written before about how much I like C. S. Lewis's Narnia books. He was born on November 29, but a generation or two after Alcott (1898). The books were thrilling in a way I couldn't really explain, and I loved, loved, loved Aslan. The images of crumbling, empty Charn, Queen Jadis with her Deplorable Word and, later, the juice of the magic apples staining her face; the striped scars on Aravis's back; the making of Narnia and the ending of it, that field of lilies at the end of Dawntreader: all of those things stay with me. But it was that deep, unnameable thrill that influenced me the most; it was the touch of the Spirit telling me that what I read was True. Not scripture in the truest sense. But still a sort of scripture to me, an introduction to spiritual concepts like the creation of worlds, like good and evil, like the archetype of the symbolic sacrificial lamb. Like forgiveness and faith, too.

I didn't fully understand, of course, how allegorical the Narnia books are, not when I read them over and over as a child. I didn't know that C. S. Lewis was an atheist until he began discussing religion with J. R. R. Tolkein. But as I got older and began to experience my own spiritual conversion, I was always bothered by the belief systems that had come and gone. No one believes in Zeus anymore, or in Epona (the Celtic horse goddess) or the Norse Odin. Yet people did believe in them, once, and lived their lives by their beliefs. Why didn't they know the same God I was coming to know? During that time in my life, I happened to reread the Narnia books, and then to dig into C. S. Lewis a little bit. He based the novels on religious motifs---not just Christian, but all religions. (Queen Jadis, for example, is highly Islamic.) He, like me, had read fairy tales and mythology, and as he wrestled with his own faith, changing from an atheist to a Christian, he considered my same questions. Lewis came to believe that the Pagan mythologies were God's way of expressing himself through the people at that time---the way, given their lives' perspectives and conditions, they could understand the spiritual. That made sense to me. The understanding of the spiritual by way of stories is, it seems, a human instinct.

I've since read several of Lewis's books for grown ups. (Till We Have Faces is a particular favorite.) As good as they are, as thought-provoking, though, they still are paler in comparison to the magic of Narnia, which had an immense impact on my spiritual possibilities. I might not have ever believed without having read them. C.S. Lewis said that "miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see." I like that thought, like the idea of truth being everywhere, only we can’t always see it within our perspective. His books were a sort of miracle for me, retelling in a way I could grasp the story I might not have been able to see without them.

Madeleine L’Engle, whom I've written about at least one other time, is the last of the November 29 babies, born just a few years after Lewis (1918). Her Time Quartet series does a similar thing with truth, flinging bits and pieces of it across the universe and throughout time. Or, maybe with L’Engle, truth really isn’t the right word. Maybe it’s good and evil. She wrote A Wrinkle in Time after reading some of Einstein’s work, and I see it as an application of those ideas into the world. The images of the witches explaining tesseracts, or of Meg walking back down into the city to get Charles Wallace back, the furry beings without eyes: these have all stayed with me, but what has impacted me the most is the idea of possibility. Especially in regards to time, to being able to move within it. I confess it is one of my greatest wishes, to be able to go back in time. Silly, yes, but it’s a concept I continue to ponder. As I do the ideas of multiple worlds, and how small decisions make huge consequences, and what average people can do against evil in the world.

When I graduated from BYU, Madeline L’Engle spoke at the convocation. (She was also given an Honory Doctorate of Humane Letters.) I can’t even say how excited I was! She spoke about her process of becoming a writer, and she said something that continues to stay with me. While she was a mother to young children, she wrote bits and pieces when she had time, but she knew she couldn’t do both well. "I knew there would be enough time in my life for both," she said (I wrote that down on the back of my program with a pen I borrowed from a guy sitting next to me who I vaguely remembered from one of my lit classes), "so I kept the stories in my head until the children were old enough for me to have time to write." That continues with me for obvious reasons; it gives me hope that I could still achieve my writing ambitions, and plus, there’s that idea of time again. Her speech that day was the first thing that really taught me: right now matters. Doing your best with what you have right now matters. And I don’t think I would have heard it as well if it came from someone I didn’t already admire so much.

So, now I’m wondering: are there authors who’ve influenced you or changed your life in some significant way?

It starts with a quiet, dark house, with everyone else sleeping. I rinse the cranberries while the sugar dissolves and comes to a boil; they are every possible garnet shade. I pick out the reddest one. It gives way under my teeth with a woody sort of crunch, spreading on my tongue a bitter juice; the barest hint of sweetness makes it bearable. There is some metaphorical connection between the cranberry and life, I think. I pour them into the bubbling sugar syrup and start stirring, and as they heat they start breathing, splitting their skins with an audible sigh. It is a sad sound to me, but with a hint of purpose. I keep stirring, the berries keep breaking down, and in ten slow minutes, alchemy: from sugar, water, and conglomerate colors to rich, bittersweet gel. The scent of it rises in steam, a fruit-sweet smell that makes me think of grandmothers, the kind I didn’t have, the kind who lived in old houses, thriving in kitchens, boiling and basting and baking. Even though the closest I got to a cranberry as a child was a glass of Ocean Spray with some Pierre water, the scent of them steaming makes me feel safe. Comforted. The dark house sighs around me, settling, the children sign in their sleep, dreaming, the cranberries give up their last sighs, surrendering. And I feel it, I feel that Thanksgiving feeling, which is complicated, a hundred different shades of gratitude mixed with want. I don’t know if it is happiness tinted with sadness or the other way around. But it is here: Thanksgiving.

Each of us librarians at work have a recommended reads shelf. I've learned that you can tell a lot about a person by the books he or she recommends to the general public. Their reading tastes, certainly (one of my co-librarians is a genius at finding intriguing nonfiction, for example), but also their political tastes, their talents, hobbies, and passions, and their literary inclinations (one librarian's shelf is built of contemporary literary fiction; another has great taste in gentle reads). On my shelf, I always make sure to include at least one poetry book. Usually it sits there for a long time, novels and nonfiction revolving around it, before someone finally takes it up, takes a chance, takes it home. It's always a little bit discouraging to me that so few people read poetry now (unless their English teacher makes them, of course, which somehow isn't the same thing). Somehow poems have gotten this academic image: you go to a university to learn how to read poems, and then you become a professor in order to teach other people how to read poems. (You may swap out the word "write" for "read" in that last phrase, if you'd prefer!) Or they're associated with difficult reading---you have to know tons of other stuff in order to understand poems. Or, of course, there's that connection lots of people make between poems and writing papers, so they're all wrapped up in library and word-processing agony. Poetry and pleasure don't seem to have anything to do with each other for most people.

Of course, I have to confess that there are plenty of poems I've read that haven't brought me any pleasure. I'll read something in a literary magazine and think huh? What does that mean? There are some poems that, as a card-carrying English-degree graduate, I am Officially Supposed to Love. But I don't. (Marianne Moore, anyone?) And there are a few poetic genres that just don't work for me, like beat poetry or language poetry (the latter because I reject the idea that only language poems ask the reader to make the meaning; I think all real poems do that). Concrete poems aren't my favorite.

So I understand, sort of, the idea of not liking poetry.

Except for: I love poetry.

And I want more people to love it, too. So what if it's harder to read a poem than that email joke your mom's best friend's cousin's ex-husband's yoga teacher just sent you? I'd like to ask the "poetry's too hard" camp. As with most valuable things, what you invest in poems---some time and thought---comes back to you in surprising benefits. More than getting over the concept of difficult, though, I think it's about getting over the concept of boring. Falling in love with poems becomes easier when you think of the very idea of poetry as being something that's subjective. I mean, seriously: ask 15 poets for a definition of poetry, and you'd get 15 (at least) different definitions. The same, I think, goes for readers of poetry. We are all asking for something different from poems, and not all poems can give what every poetry reader needs. In essence, what I mean is that not all pieces of writing that are called poems are actually poems to each reader. Sometimes, you read a bunch of poems, and every single one has that poem-esque quality to it, the feeling that Emily D. described as making your body so cold no fire can warm it, or that the top of your had has been taken off. That chill, that shivery discovery: a poem! But you could give the same bunch of poems to someone else, and they have no physical reaction. That's because for that person, those poems aren't poems. Yet. But they can become poems---time, experiences that change you, study, serendipity are all things that help a text become a poem.

For me, that's part of the pleasure of reading books of poems: discovering which ones, in the anthology or collection I am reading, are poems to me. And thinking I want to tell someone else about this poem, wanting someone else to share in its poem-esque-ness. To not be the only one shivering. Of course, what makes a piece of writing into a poem for an individual is, well, individualized. For me, it is a combination of language, rhythm, imagery, and theme; it's also an indescribable something makes me think I'm not the only one. Part of the chill, I guess, comes from the sense of recognizing a piece of yourself in someone else.

It is one thing to say: I love poetry. It is another thing entirely to say I am grateful for it. I'm not sure if that might not even be a weird thing to be grateful for. (I've not published this post for two days now!) But I am. Grateful for poetry. When I first fell in love, it was because poems were solace. Writing them was a way of figuring out the experiences I was having, of putting them into a form that seemed more manageable. They are also, for me, a cure for loneliness. Even though I don't have, well, really anyone to share that "this is a poem!" feeling with (Kendell is not a reader of poems---well, he's not a reader, period), I still share it, in a way, with the poet. It is finding an Other that is like me. But it's not always about similarity; I'm also grateful to poems because of their difficulty, the way they have of challenging an idea, or of making me think a new or different way.

OK, seriously: that is not a title I ever thought I'd write. My dad's extended family isn't particularly close. Growing up, we saw my them roughly once a year, at Christmas; twice a year if someone died. Usually we'd see my dad's mom, Grandma Elsie, on our birthdays, too. I have a clear memory of the time she had us over for dinner at her house on a day that wasn't Christmas; it's clear because it happened once. Everyone just got older each year, both the cousins and Grandma Elsie, and here and there got married and started families (usually not in that order), and slowly we stopped seeing each other, even at Christmas. Becky and I took turns babysitting for our cousin Susan (who I remember as the best-paying mom I babysat for); my first job, the summer I was 15, was working for my cousin Rochelle's husband at his pizza shop (the only time in my life I could make my pizza the way I really like it---light sauce, extra cheese, pineapple, and Canadian bacon---without someone telling me how gross that is) and sometimes we'd have family reunions. But even though we all lived within five miles of each other, there just weren't a lot of family experiences.

So I've not seen my Uncle Monte since...well, I know I only had three kids, so it's been more than three years. But on Wednesday, I spoke to him on the phone for nearly two hours. Haley has been working on a project for her personal progress award, a family history of sorts. She found pictures of herself with her various grandparents, and we got them developed in black and white. Then she interviewed each grandparent, asking them a set of questions. She typed everything up and made a scrapbook.

Of course, the only problem was my dad, who can't answer questions about the past anymore. My mom suggested I call Uncle Monte, and we finally managed to connect on Wednesday night. I wasn't sure how he'd feel about answering our questions. Well, honestly: I wasn't sure about talking to him at all. But it was a great phone call. He told me stories about my dad that I had never heard. He told me about his dad, my grandpa Curtis, who I didn't know because he died when my dad was sixteen. He told me the details of his death. He told me my dad's much-hated high-school nickname: Monk, short for Monkey, given because he could walk both up and down the steps to the basement on his hands. I didn't know Dad was a star running back on the high school football team. I didn't know he once carried home 500 cockleburrs by sticking them all to his shirt (he and Monte wanted to make a cockleburr rug for their mother, which seems like an odd sort of gift for your mom, but whatever). I didn't know he once accidentally shot a girl.

In fact, as Monte spoke and I typed as quickly as I could, I found myself battling the furious tears trying to push their way out. On the one hand, talking with Monte was nearly like having Dad back on the other line---they have the same way of stringing words together, the same syntax, the same way of telling a story that makes it impossible for the listener to get a word in edgewise. Even their voices sound similar, and I realized all over again how much I miss him, miss my dad. How much I would give to have him call me like he used to, to tell me a story about something that happened "down at the coffee shop." (95% of his stories started down at the coffee shop.) Or to sit outside with him in his backyard, listening to the kids play and laughing at off-color jokes.

On the other hand, I found that my tears really were furious. At myself, mostly. Because why did I go through thirty years of my life, thinking that my experiences were the important ones? Why didn't I ask Dad ever about his childhood? Really---aside from a few vague impressions, I knew absolutely nothing about his life before I existed. Why didn't I ask him about his baptism, or about why he chose to marry my mom? How did he feel about becoming a parent? (Three of the questions Haley had on her list that Monte couldn't answer.) Why don't I know what books he liked to read as a kid, or what he remembers about his dad's death? I know stuff about my mom's side of the family. Why don't I know about my dad's?

It was almost midnight by the time I got off the phone with Uncle Monte. I said goodbye, checked on the kids one last time, and then curled up on my couch for a good, long cry. Because not only do I miss my dad, and not only am I mad at myself for not ever really listening to him, I feel something wholly unexpected. I felt reunited with a piece of myself I didn't know was missing. Listening to Monte's stories about my dad, my uncles, my grandparents and even a few about my great-grandparents, I discovered little bits of my personality scattered here and there. My penchant for the dramatic? Totally comes from my dad's side of the family. Love of mountains? Got that from my grandpa. In my swirly rush of emotion, it wasn't the sadness or the anger that predominated. It was the ah-ha feeling, the sense of understanding myself better. Of feeling more whole.

And that's why I am writing that thought, the one I never imagined having: I'm grateful for my uncle. Grateful he knows how important stories are and was willing to take the time to share them with me. Grateful for the thing he taught me, probably without meaning to: both sides matter. Just because I wasn't as close to my grandma Elsie as I was to my mom's side doesn't mean I don't have a fairly wide swipe of Allman in my genetic makeup. I feel steadied, somehow. Like I have two hands to hold instead of just one.

So far, I haven’t been very successful with my daily gratitudes. I know, it’s shocking. At any rate, I realized today that it’s only a week till Thanksgiving, so I’m going to try harder. And I can’t let today pass without saying how grateful I am to be Nathan’s mom.

Nathan was my surprise baby. My totally-out-of-the-blue, did-not-plan-this-one, holy-cow-are-you-serious baby. I was, in fact, nearly three months pregnant with him before I figured out I was pregnant. Jake was barely one, and I wasn’t at all sure I was ready to become the mother of three kids. Or to let go of Jake’s babyness the way you have to when another baby comes along.

But honestly: the entire experience of Nathan was perfect. Simply perfect. His was my easiest pregnancy, easiest delivery, quickest recovery. And he came at exactly, exactly the right time in my life. It freaks me out a little bit, to be honest, to think about how things would be if he hadn’t come when he did, because the time when I had wanted to get pregnant for a third time would have been impossible. Nathan was the answer to a prayer I didn’t know I needed to pray. And it still seems magical to me; he’s the only kid I didn’t do anything to get. (Well, besides the obvious.) There was no stopping pills or trips to the doctor to make him. He just appeared. He even looks a little bit different than my three very-planned kids, with his pale hair and blue eyes. I still have no clue how I got him.

So I still feel lucky to be his mom. I remember when he was born, feeling like he would be both fierce and gentle all at the same time. That has proven true; he is fierce. He’s always loved anything that had even a vague resemblance to a sword (the first thing he did when he was able to pull himself up to stand was try to get into the knife drawer) and continues to be a big fan of weapons of all sorts. He has moods where you can nearly see his fierceness rise off of him, like steam. But he’s also got that gentle side to him. He’s open and affectionate in a way that is uniquely Nathan. Plus, he always knows when I am stressed or upset and need a hug. I continue to hope that life doesn’t force him to bottle up that gentleness, that he can keep it and share it with his wife and children one day.

Yesterday he turned nine. Nine. I know it is a cliche, but I still can’t believe how fast the time is going. A few days ago, I got out some hand-me-downs for Kaleb, and discovered that he’s big enough to wear the clothes Nathan loved when he was four. Orange has always been Nathan’s favorite color, and he’s always been very particular about his clothes, so he’s had a lot of favorite orange shirts. There are a few shirts that are so evocative of him, so full of his Nathanness, that I couldn’t bear to hand them down to Kaleb. I just put them back in the box, so that in twenty years or so, when I discover them again, I can still pull them from the box and remember him like this:

just turned four and so wiggly I almost never got a well-focused picture of him.

Birthdays always bring this sad/happy thing I have into my heart. Sad to see one phase end but happy to see another one begin. I loved his baby boy years, and his little-boy years, and I know I will love the new phase he’s entering, too, the full-fledged boy years. I still feel lucky, whenever I stop to remember how he got here, to be his mom.

Forget anything sentimental or meaningful.

Because right now, what I'm grateful for is DSL that works. Especially after five days of having DSL that didn't work.

It's good to be plugged in again!

I had to go to Toys R Us this week, to exchange a Wi game for Kendell. Once I'd haggled with the manager over the return (apparently it's against the Official TRU Rules to exchange a non-new-release game for a new-release game---who knew?), I wandered through the store. The entire store.

And I have no idea what to get my boys for Christmas.

Haley is easy, simply by grade of her gender. Girly stuff in adolescent form will be great for her. Kaleb is in love with several different toys, so he'll be easy to make happy. (Well, aside from the fact that he is not going to find one of those gynormous dinosaur things under the tree!) But Jake and Nathan? I'm stuck. don't really want to get them toys they'll play with for a few days and then forget about. Plus...toys. They're nearly 9 and 11, and they don't play with toys as much.  They like building stuff (like Legos and Magnetix) and they like running around the yard playing with swords. Nathan still loves the castle he got last year.

But no one really needs anything.

And I'm feeling torn. I mean...it's Christmas. I've established all these elaborate traditions where even their new underwear are wrapped. (Actually, they're in the stockings...but you know what I mean.) I know they look forward to Christmas morning all year. I still want it to be magical. And fun. But---they don't need anything. At least, not anything you can wrap and put under the tree. And I really hate that I am looking for gifts simply because it's Christmas and that's what you do.

Part of my trouble is, as always, my own self and how I am never ready to leave one phase of motherhood before it's time to go on to the next. It's knowing that I'm rapidly approaching the days when the toy store just isn't a place I go very often. The Black Friday early-morning shopping, the occasionally-frantic process of finding THE hot toy: I don't have many Christmas seasons left to do that. I never realized just how good it was when the answer to my child's wish was at Toys R Us. Things are getting more complicated. Searching through stacks of race cars and/or army guys is sort of my way of holding on.

And I've been thinking about slippers. Specifically, a pair of slippers hand-knit by my grandma. When we were at her house, she nearly had on her hand-knit slippers. They were thick, nubby things, comfortable and warm. One Christmas, she made two pair, one for each of my older sisters. I loved those slippers. I coveted them. I probably asked her to make me a pair 59 times during the following 12 months. And, that next Christmas, there they were: my slippers. I loved, loved, loved them. I loved them for their shape---like penny loafers, sort of, only with yarn tassels instead of coins---and because the wish had been fulfilled, But also because Grandma had made them for me. I love, love, loved her, too, and every day they were there, a little reminder that she loved me back. Warm and comfy and teal green, mine to wear whenever I wanted.

Whenever I wanted for about three or four months, that is---and then my feet grew. Even though I didn't get to wear them for anywhere close to long enough, I still loved those slippers. I kept them in my closet for a long time, until they went the way of missing socks and my favorite white blanket: who knows where they vanished to? But I never forgot them.

That, I suppose, is the sort of impact I want my gifts to have. I want to fulfill that long-held desire in each of their hearts. And really: Haley isn't easy, either. She's easy to buy for. But probably not as easy to fulfill-a-long-held-desire her. I don't want to put things under the tree just so that there's things under the tree. I want it to count. I want it to matter.

I want it to not be forgotten.

I wasn’t a very nice big sister when Becky and I were growing up. I’m not really sure why. Probably I was jealous, as that seems to be the motivation for all sibling issues, isn’t it? Plus, our tastes were different; Becky was a big fan of Barbie dolls, which I hated. It was so hard to get their tight pants on, and there was always a shoe missing; I was more of a baby doll kind of girl. But it didn’t really get any better even after I was old enough to exchange dolls for makeup and trips to the mall; I didn’t start treating her like a human being until I was 18 or so. Every once in awhile, when my kids aren’t getting along, I’ll talk to them about how much I regret not being a good big sister. You can’t ever get back that childhood time, and I missed out on a ton of possibly-fabulous moments simply by virtue of my meanness.

Luckily Becky is the forgiving type, because we are fast friends now. Get us together, or even just give us a phone, and we can talk for hours. When we hiked Timp together, for example, we talked nearly non-stop all the way up (4-ish hours) and all the way down (another 4). Last fall we drove to Idaho together in an enormous rental car, an up-and-back-in-a-day trip for a funeral, and we talked during those seven hours, too. I don’t think there is much Becky doesn’t know about my life. All my secrets are safe with her.

Something I admire about her is her courage. It seems like when the tough conversations need to be had, she’s the one to initiate them. She’s way better at unleashing her Inner Suellen (the inherited-from-our-mother part of our psyches; see my Nordstrom post for a rare sighting of my I. S.) on unhelpful store clerks and/or the world’s slowest rental car employees. She is able to say what she is really thinking without being offensive or hurtful. Plus, her heart is open; she doesn’t keep herself shuttered up and aloof, like I tend to do. She manages "normal" way better than I can!

Maybe it’s because we’re both the product of the same household. But even though we disagree on the merits of scrapbooking (one day I will convert her!) we have a startling amount of things in common. We both got English degrees (although at rival universities!) Reading, quilting, being outside, running, an affection for iris—just a few of the things we both like. Our marriages are similar enough that when one needs to vent, the other understands right away; plus we both have our lingering baby desires. She is a person I know I can go to when I am upset, and she won’t only be a shoulder to cry on, but also an intelligent and trustworthy voice.

One of my life’s greatest sadnesses is that I never managed to give Haley a sister. I am grateful for all my sisters, as they each add something unique and precious to my life, and I am sad that she won’t have that relationship. I hope that life will give her plenty of surrogate sisters, but I don’t believe that anything is the same as the relationship you have with the ones you grew up with. I’m grateful for my little sister, who forgave all my meanness, and for our sweet bond. It is something I treasure!

The short version:
race #: 638
Finished in 2:04:22.5, for a 9:29 Min/Mi pace
42nd in Women 25-39
4 Clif Bloks consumed
Gorgeous weather
Fantastic course
Great company
Only embarrassment: my headband slipped down, so I have a lovely sunburn line right across the middle of my forehead
Aches and pains: quads and my second-to-littlest left toe, which really cannot any longer be considered to be a toe, but simply a blister with an attached toenail
End-of-the-race photo (thanks Jessica!) :

(me, Jessica, Hayley, Taunya)

The Long Version: (as if I could just leave it with the short version!)

When you're running for 2+ hours, you have a lot of time to think. Even with music coming through my headphones, my thoughts kept running all over the place. From mile 4-ish to somewhere in the middle of the seventh, I thought about how I would write about the race. Of course, there are tons of details to include. Like how the route was way more hilly than I expected or planned for, both up and down but consistently losing altitude, so today my quads are killing me. Or how the out-and-back part, on the dirt road, seemed to be everyone's least favorite spot, except for mine. Me, I loved how intimate the contact felt with the canyon, on the dirt road nearer the canyon walls. Plus, having an out-and-back portion helped calm my starting-to-paralyze-me fears over coming in dead last; on the -back part I could see there were still plenty of people behind me. Or even how, during the last mile, my feet hurt so badly that the stones in the asphalt each seemed to be a tiny dagger slicing right through my shoes' tread, down through the balls of my toes and right to the bones.

But what I am not sure of how to do is to relate, with the details, how the race felt for me. It's an odd thing to say about a bunch of people running down a canyon, for feet on pavement, but the race had a certain spirit for me. Yeah---that does sound weird. But I'm going with it. I started feeling it while we stood near the starting line, waiting for the race officials to smooth out some problem with the aid stations. The color of the light, the shadow-and-sunspot pattern on the sandstone walls, the blue sky with its few streaks of clouds. Then, the sudden and steep downhill. You know that I'm literally fearful of downhills, right? So I started out a little bit hesitant. I immediately lost sight of Jess, Taunya, and Hayley, my racing compatriots, but then, I knew I would: they were always going to be faster than me. With all that initial downhill, it was a little bit hard for me to get a good pace going; I'd trust myself enough to speed up a little bit, but then I'd get unsure and pull back a bit. I'm certain the runners around me, who I'd pass and then let pass, must have thought I was crazy.

Once we got off the road, though, and onto a biking trail, I was feeling better. Settling into the run. While I ran, I looked at the landscape. Here and there were trails, sandy little divets winding through the cactus and sagebrush, and I'd have these wild little desires to take the trails instead. At mile 4, the route went off the bike trail and onto that dirt road, and that was when I really felt great, even though there were racers already coming down when I was only half-way up the road. I found myself passing other runners, especially on the uphill parts---feeling quick, really quick, passing people on uphills. (Even though that "quick" feeling is really subjective; I think I'm still slower than the majority of the other runners in the race.)

At the aid station by the turn-around spot, I suddenly remembered Becky telling me that I should start taking my Bloks early on in the race. So I grabbed one out of my pocket (the boys shorts worked perfectly!), chewed it up, and grabbed some water. That was the way I handled all the aid stations: a Blok, or just a half Blok, and a few mouthfuls of water. The aid stations were spaced out perfectly for me, so just as I felt I was starting to run out of energy, that half a Blok kept me going. I never really felt spent.

After the out-and-back, we continued on down the canyon. Somewhere along the approximately 892nd hill, I was no longer afraid of going down. I don't know why at all. Suddenly I was just flying, feeling fast and lethal---but going downhill. From then on, I used the downhills to add a little speed to my time, or to pass people I couldn't stand to be behind for one second longer. (Like the girl whose lower legs flew up at an odd angle at every step, or the man whose grunting breaths I could hear over my music.)

Maybe that fast-and-lethal feeling (again...keeping it subjective and in comparison to my running friends' 8-minute miles) is what gave the race its spirit. Or my sudden downhill fearlessness. Plus the perfect weather, the gorgeous route, the feeling I had of being in shape, healthy, strong. It's hard to put a name on it. I know my speed isn't anything impressive. But I still felt this little inward glow of self-satisfaction. It felt like I was supposed to be there, running that race.

When I took my shoes off after the race, my toe looked like this:

A lovely, multi-layered blister. With different colors of pus, even! My feet hurt, my IT bands ached, and I had that weird soreness I get right above the back of my pelvis. My quads were already tight. But it was worth it for that little inward glow. Runner's high, maybe. Or racer's high. Figured-out-running-sustenance high, runs-down-hills-with-confidence high, running-in-the-desert high. Whatever.

It's a good glow.

(This is one of those posts I'm not sure I should post. I'm not sure if it will mean much to anyone but me---not sure if it has any meaning at all. Why am I posting it then? Good question...Maybe just so I could share the Anne Sexton poem at the end?)

Perusing blogs one day, I read an entry discussing the possibility of going back and doing things over again. What might you change if you could revise your life? I have considered this often in my own thoughts every now and then, but since reading that post (and I can't remember where I read it, or I would point you to it) the idea has been in my head. I even bumped into it in other places, like a funny little essay I read about using your seam ripper not just on your quilting mistakes, but on your life's too, and again in a random poem*** I flipped to in an anthology, just when I had a few quiet minutes to myself one morning. I keep thinking---which mistakes would I change, given the chance?

In that blog entry, the writer discussed not being successful in life. She wrote about how, in a couple of generations, no one would remember that she existed. She thought about the goals she had for herself as a teenager, and how she hadn't accomplished any of them yet. Sure, she'd gotten married and had kids. But what about real success, the kind the world sees---namely, in her life, becoming a writer. Sound familiar? Maybe that is why her ideas have stuck so strongly with me: because they are worries I've had about myself. I've often thought that the person I was when I was just stepping into adulthood, the person who was certain of the type of woman she'd become---that version of myself would blush in embarrassment at all the ways I have failed, so far. If I could go back and rectify those failures, make different decisions, follow a different path---accomplish everything I thought I would, at age 18---wouldn't I be happier?

But I also continue to have other thoughts about the idea. I have absolutely made many, many mistakes in my adult life. But as I gain perspective I am realizing that my mistakes have also taught me. Life itself has been my greatest instructor, and I have been one of those people who insists on learning through experience. Repeatedly I've learned what the right decision would have been simply by making the wrong decision. Or maybe not even the wrong decision, but the safe one, the one with the consequences that were the least frightening. But I have still learned from those decisions; I have, out of my mistakes, still developed bits and pieces of courage and knowledge into the mosaic of self I am right this second.

It doesn't mean I don't have regrets. It just means that, if I could go back in time to try and do things differently, I could only change something if I had the knowledge I gained from the experience of making the wrong choice. At any rate, my choices have led me here, to a very average life---a common life. And probably the way I have let that on-the-cusp-of-adulthood Amy down is that I didn't become a writer. At least, not yet. Still, though, my perception is different than that Amy's was. Because I am finally beginning to see that my path to that goal will be a different one than most writers take. I don't have the life situation that would allow me to get an MFA or a PhD, no matter how much I wish I could. My responsibilities are complex enough right now and simply don't allow for the solitude I would need to write my novel. Plus, something I have learned through working at the library: having a published book doesn't turn you into a famous person. There are tons of people who have written one or two books and then disappeared from the literary world. What level of writerly success would I be happy with?

So right now, I am trying to modify my idea of what a successful life is. When I was at my friend Chris's grandma's funeral, listening to her life sketches, I realized that the little details of her life are what made it good. That she had things she loved about life and pursued them, that she influenced other people in positive ways, that her children and grandchildren were good and kind people: these things made her life successful. Maybe it is not that we are able to become successful in the eyes of the world. Truly, how many people accomplish that? Just in sheer percentages, not many. Instead, I am starting to see success as a series of additions, the sum of your actions and experiences in life. Like, at the end of your life, someone could compile a list: these are the things that went into making her life what it was. Of course, I want on the top of my "things she accomplished" list to be "raised her children well." But I also want other things. I'd like "ran a marathon" on that list, and "hiked Mount Kilimanjaro" there, too. All the books I've ever read, or good photos I've taken; a tally of finished quilts or scrapbook layouts. What real poems I managed to write---published or not---or good essays. Maybe even that long-dreamed-of novel. And also the things you can't plan for and didn't want to do---cancer or divorce or whatever tragedies my life my still bring---I want those on the list, too, because I want, in the end, to know that those things didn't break me. That I was graceful in winning and in losing. But even as I write those few things down, I keep going back to my family---wanting to have them close to me, even as they grow up and away. Wanting to always be involved with their lives. If I can do that, I will have been successful.

Today, I am grateful to be slowly arriving to this knowledge about a successful life. It is giving me a sense of peace I have not ever felt. It's not always present, and sometimes---well, often, let's be honest!---I make myself panicked, thinking of what I haven't done, or I dwell too long on past mistakes I cannot change. I life in the make-believe land of "what could have been." But slowly, slowly, my confidence in my common life being enough is growing, and how glad I am to begin to know it!

***About that poem: Anne Sexton is one of my favorite poets. My top five poets. I had read this before and forgotten it, but that anthology reminded me. It meshes so well with my current thought patterns that it feels I needed to remember it. How life is not the big moments that other people see, but the small and personal ones. Fame and wealth aside, this is really what draws me to writing, the way one person puts something into words that then resonates with someone else. Plus, I often need a transfusion of fire. I, too, want to put on my slippers and stride out confidently, when it is time!

Courage
~Anne Sexton

It is in the small things we see it.
The child’s first step,
as awesome as an earthquake.
The first time you rode a bike,
wallowing up the sidewalk.
The first spanking when your heart
went on a journey all alone.
When they called you crybaby
or poor or fatty or crazy
and made you into an alien,
you drank their acid
and concealed it.

Later,
if you faced the death of bombs and bullets
you did not do it with a banner,
you did it with only a hat to
cover your heart.
You did not fondle the weakness inside you
though it was there.
Your courage was a small coal
that you kept swallowing.
If your buddy saved you
and died himself in so doing,
then his courage was not courage,
it was love; love as simple as shaving soap.

Later,
if you have endured a great despair,
then you did it alone,
getting a transfusion from the fire,
picking the scabs off your heart,
then wringing it out like a sock.
Next, my kinsman, you powdered your sorrow,
you gave it a back rub
and then you covered it with a blanket
and after it had slept a while
it woke to the wings of the roses
and was transformed.

Later,
when you face old age and its natural conclusion
your courage will still be shown in the little ways,
each spring will be a sword you’ll sharpen,
those you love will live in a fever of love,
and you’ll bargain with the calendar
and at the last moment
when death opens the back door
you’ll put on your carpet slippers
and stride out.