The Wait

First we’ve got the classically horrific waits; for the dad to emerge dead or alive from heart surgery, the husband to call from a war zone, the daughter’s CAT scan result to come in re. the effectiveness of chemo. 

 Then there are the middling annoying waits -- not fatal but certainly life-eroding. Our accumulated eons lost waiting for buses, appointments, dates, planes, repair men, lunch, in line at the DMV, on hold with tech support, stuck in traffic, waiting for the meds to kick in... 

And this I know to be true: Surviving the big waits does not make us any better at handling the lesser waits. Even if we bring a book, or our knitting, catch up on our texts, or have a vivid fantasy life... a wait is time irretrievably squandered by the drop-by-drop seeping bleed of normal life. 

Onto the third type of wait. The career wait. The one where you've done all you can do and your fate and future, income and sense of worth are now in someone else's hands, off screen.

Perhaps to those Serenity Prayer types who can wrap their heads around accepting the things they cannot change, waiting for a thumbs up or down from an editor is a snap. 

Some humans even seem to be distractable. My husband for example, can glance down at the newspaper and laugh at a Dilbert cartoon while we are in the middle of a fight. 

Some people are optimists and assume all outcomes will be rosy. Others are tra-la-la about what is or is not meant to be.  

And if the point is to live as l-o-n-g as possible then the way time warps into slow motion while we’re waiting for a call should be cause for gratitude! THANK YOU WORLD for the fluid and inconsistent nature of time! Thank you for adding to my life span in this remarkable way!

But alas, people like me can not be distracted from our obsessions and we don't assume all travails will end in delight or even mercy.  

So, as we await career news we do not find ourselves accepting or celebrating the wait. Instead, as the time elongates, we implode, growing stooped, wizened, bitter. A new eye twitch develops, the lip curls. We swear at the cat and snarl at the dog. 

Karl Wallenda, of The Flying Wallendas once said something like, To walk the high wire, that is life! Everything else is waiting. 

Well, Karl, I’m waiting.

xo

Amy

Barbie!

There were three types of girls in Detroit, where I grew up. 

First, there were the girls of no significance to this discussion, meaning the ones who didn't care for dolls at all.

Second came those who longed for Easy-Bake Ovens, Betsy Wetsies (a baby doll that peed), Chatty Cathies (that talked) or Ginny dolls, whose figures were as boring and flat-chested as our own. I suspect these girls saw themselves growing all the way up and getting married and having babies, like their moms. These were the girls, I assume, for whom Mattel created Barbie's Dream House and pink Corvette convertible, as if Barbie herself were not enough.

The third group, my group, was grossed out by babies and dreaded the prospect of motherhood and ovens and houses and cars and all things that put the "dull" in adult. We found our goddess in Barbie because she was about having fun, and she was pretty and had evening gowns (as did no one we knew in real life) and tiny bracelets and a different pair of high-heeled shoes for every outfit. But we'll get to her shoes in a minute.

I was 5 when she entered my consciousness via commercials during the "Mickey Mouse Club." My instant longing for her is the closest I've come to feeling a spiritual connection: Suddenly and desperately, I wanted a Barbie of my own -- and to be a teenager when I grew up. 

And 50 years later, if given the choice, I'd still like to be a teenager when I grow up.

My best friend, Roberta, was older, so she got her Barbie first. Hers was the classic -- a breathtakingly beautiful, blond, ponytailed Barbie. We lived in a neighborhood that was entirely Jewish and African American, where there wasn't a blond to be seen. So of course the exotic, blond, obviously Gentile Barbie was utter perfection -- as anyone but my mom understood.

My mother preferred short hair. Hers was a tidy, brown helmet. And as long as I was under her control, my own brown hair was vigorously maintained in a home-cut pixie. Neat and crisp and, above all, short.

So I shouldn't have been surprised when, on my 8th birthday, after three years of near-constant begging, the Barbie I finally got was the 1962 dark-haired doll with the (short, neat, crisp) bubble cut. The Jewish-looking one.

There are still people who persist in believing that girls should have dolls that reflect them, but they are wrong! Trust me, if you are a green, rashy Cyclops, you do not want a green, rashy Cyclops doll. You want a beautiful, blond, goyish, ponytailed Barbie so that in your green, rashy Cyclops imagination, you can be her!                                                    
                                                    

Needless to say, I was devastated.
And then, just as I was learning to love my decidedly inferior Barbie, her left foot was gnawed off by Ralph, our dog.

Those were difficult times, emotionally. I wrestled with issues of unconditional versus conditional love, of guilt versus anger. I believe that was when I learned to sigh.

My daughter and her friends grew up with heaps of Barbies, which they often left naked and abandoned with the dirty socks and dust bunnies under the bed, their heads twisted impossibly, arms and legs in agonizing positions. But back in my day, at least in my world, no one owned multiple Barbies. You had your Barbie; she was sacred; you loved her. Period. The end.

So, while Roberta's Barbie tossed her silky blond ponytail and stood propped against the wall wearing two shoes, mine toppled with her empty pant leg flapping. There were no Barbie wheelchairs. There were no Barbie crutches or prosthetic devices other than crunched-up tinfoil, which, even to a wildly imaginative kid, didn't look so hot.

Nonetheless, we spent countless magnificent hours playing pretend, my Barbie and I, dressing and undressing, preparing for dates, or prison breaks, or terrifying adventures in the yard. She was always game and uncomplaining, willing to have a go at even the most perilous or romantic plans.

She was a great pal, inspite of her tiny waste, her missing foot, her gigantic boobs. That's why I wish all the anti-Barbie grown-ups would stop judging her by her looks! I mean really, who among us has had successful careers as a pilot, pediatrician, flight attendant, astronaut, veterinarian, lifeguard, firefighter, cowgirl, teacher and, most important, teenage fashion model, appeared in many books and videos and controversies, and had their portait painted by Andy Warhol? 

And whereas most of us would fetch much less on the open market than we used to, an original Barbie, which sold for $3 back in 1959, now commands up to 8,000 bucks. But that's not why I wish my beautiful, short-haired, one footed Barbie was here today. I just wish I could see her again, catch up after all these years, hang for a while, maybe play the Barbie Queen of the Prom board Game, one more time! 

xo Amy

P.S. This is a re-worked version of an LA Times piece I wrote in honor of Barbie's 50th birthday March 9, 2009.

Wild Things!

Maurice Sendak's death was announced Tuesday just a few minutes before I was due at the residential foster home and school where I volunteer, teaching writing to abused teenagers.

Sendak once told NPR's Terry Gross that as a kid he thought that "adults seemed mostly dreadful." I suspect the kids who find themselves in our foster care system would agree.

I got to the school library before the class arrived, so the librarian and I had a moment to grieve about Sendak. She told me that she and her husband had just been talking about his 1967 book, "Higglety Pigglety Pop! or There Must Be More To Life." She said it was that book that helped them throw over their old life and move to California years ago.

Our conversation was interrupted by a scream in the corridor. An amazing, prolonged, nightmarish scream, produced by a child beyond the brink. I've read about screams sounding inhuman, but this was the first I'd ever heard.

There was no explanation.

When I first toured the school I was shown a few small, soundproofed rooms, each with a narrow bench-bed inside. Details were few, but I was told that the children could be volatile and self-destructive and sometimes needed isolation. When the unearthly scream subsided, I imagined the screamer being ushered into one of those freak-out chambers to roar his terrible roars and gnash his terrible teeth.

Transitions from one class to another are delayed when there are disruptions in the hall, so my kids were late trooping in. There were two new faces. Other faces were missing, including some I'd become quite fond of.

I'd been discouraged from asking questions about my students' lives, and so I know very little about what situations land them here or take them away.

I am endlessly curious, of course, about the big, painfully blushing shy boy who likes art books; the too-cool-to-smile but clearly sweet boy always eager to read his writing out loud first; the chatty ones; the pierced and tatted; the ones nodding on meds; the giggly; the sullen; the pregnant. But when the librarian says, "Trust me, you don't want to know their stories; it's best to just think of them as kids," I try to do just that.

On Tuesday, I asked the class if they knew who Maurice Sendak was, and none did. I asked if any of them knew the book "Where the Wild Things Are," and a few said they'd seen the movie.

In 1993, Sendak told NPR, "Children surviving childhood is my obsessive theme and my life's concern." In a 1986 interview with Gross, he said, "Being a child was being a creature without power, without pocket money, without escape routes of any kind."

Looking around at the captive young people in this class, his statements seemed far more relevant than in most classes I visit. Sendak's own childhood, like the ones he portrayed in his books, was fraught with peril, isolation and fear. Many adults have found his vision of childhood alarming and want to keep it from their innocent babes. Sendak's "In the Night Kitchen" is 25th on the American Library Assn.'s list of most frequently banned or challenged books.

When I told my class of wild things that I was going to read "Where the Wild Things Are" to them, there was a little affronted snickering at the idea of picture books for such big galoots.

I thought about telling them that Sendak had based the wild things on his own Jewish Eastern European immigrant relatives. As he said in a 2004 interview with Bill Moyers, "These people didn't speak English. And they were unkempt. Their teeth were horrifying. Hair ... unraveling out of their noses. And they'd pick you up and hug you and kiss you, 'Aggghh! Oh I could eat you up!'"

But I didn't give any introduction, figuring Sendak would want these kids to see the wild things as whatever demons of their own needed taming. I started reading and the whole class was instantly silent and still, like a room of children at story time, which is exactly what they were. Listening to Sendak's words, watching his pictures expand to fill the pages, and shrink back down again.

In "Where the Wild Things Are," Max, in his wolf suit, gets sent to bed without supper. But after his great adventure out-wilding the wild things, he returns to his room and finds his dinner waiting for him, still hot.

Unlike Max, these students can't count on dinner to be waiting for them, but they clearly understood Max, and heard Sendak as clearly as if he were still alive, and would be forever.

xo

Amy
P.S. This is from The Los Angeles Times, May 13, 2012
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-koss-sendak-and-the-wild-things-20120513,0,7624873.story

Why Write?

OK so I sent the first draft of my newest book off to my agent last night, partly to make sure she thinks its worth perusing, but mostly because I was overpowered by the urge to SHOW it to someone. The little kid on the slide yelling, “Look Mommy!”  That’s me, only Mommy has morphed into agent, then editor, then reviewers and, best for last: readers.

Anyway, after however long it was of obsessively manic writing, it would have felt way too weird not to return to this awful backache chair and this blinding screen with my morning coffee. This is, after all what I do. I sit here.

So while it is fresh in my mind, perhaps now is the time to write about writing. Writers writing about writing is probably the number one non real writing writing project we writers participate in, plus, sometimes people ask. So: Here goes.

We’ll take my new born draft as example. Dates might be handy here, but I don’t have any. Suffice it to say: One day while on a trip, I was seized by an idea that I loved. I wrote furiously, cracking myself up, until someone told me there was a book newly out that was based on the same premise more or less.

I put my book aside and sulked for seven years, during which time I got seized by other ideas of no relevance to this story. Fast forward to finding those first twenty or so pages in hard copy. Read it, loved it, remembered the fun I'd had writing it.Thanks to a faulty memory, I could no longer remember the gist of the other author's book. So I started copying my found pages into this newer compute... it was fun and I was OFF! 

It is that OFF that I’m here to discuss. It’s the WHY I WRITE. God knows it’s not for the glory or pay, both of which are negligable. And it’s not, as it seems to be for some, the thrill of seeing my books all bound up and pretty, and it’s not for the fan mail, although all those elements are nice. It is for the fabulous buzz of writing. 

When it is going well, writing is the single most absorbing joy ride I've experienced. I am an obsessive kind of gal, so I do not have a schedule, or do word count, or page count or other things that I’ve heard other writers use. I sit down here at the computer, and write until either life intrudes, (must eat, shit, teach, sleep, keep a dinner date, talk to children or parents or husband.) Or until I'm done. I do not want, at times like that, to eat, shit, teach, etc., but it takes a while to finish a book, so many of those other intrusions are unavoidable.

What do I mean by going well? I mean the story is gushing out of my fingertips, and I am scrambling breathlessly to keep up. I only type with four fingers, and still, after all these decades, can’t write without looking at the key board, and yet, except for the neck pain, I have no memory of looking at the keyboard at all. Are my eyes turned inward? Am I in a trance? Channeling? Conjuring? Who knows. It is some kind of mental / emotional altered state, surly, and one like no other.     

When the writing is going, but not going well, I am equally undistractable, and obsessed, but it isn’t one bit pleasant. Those are the plot days, when the character has reached a wall, and I must slam blindly against the stone, again and again, looking for the door. Those are the times I stalk around the house,drag the dog out for a stomp, look down and see that my hands are in fists. Get a head ache from clenching the jaw. Stare uncomprehendingly at the husband as he speaks. Lie awake twitching.

But it is important to note, that as utterly frustrating and aggravating and infuriating as those bad times are, they are not boring. In fact, none of the process is boring. And that is exactly why I do it.

xo

Amy