Watching My Mother Die

I’ve been spending early evenings, usually the time between 5:00 pm and 8:00 pm (she goes to bed at 8:00), sitting with my dying mom who likes to watch CBS.  This is what I have learned. 

• No newscast is worth watching.  TV newscasters can tell you only what they consider news at that moment.  What they feed us are half truths and speculation.  What is really worthwhile and of import may not be known for hours, days, or weeks. 
• People on Jeopardy and Wheel of Fortune are no more interesting than my friends and neighbors.  I would rather play Jeopardy with my friends and neighbors than watch someone else’s friends or neighbors play it on TV.
• The questions on Jeopardy are more interesting than the puzzles on Wheel of Fortune.  When the category is People on Wheel of Fortune, you can bet that the person is not Thomas Beckett, Sir Thomas More, St. Augustine, Dante Alighieri, or even more recent Nobel prize winners in literature like Mario Vargas Llosa, Doris Lessing, and Gunter Grass.
• My mom has become kind to me in her old age.  She now thanks me and tells me how good I am.  It’s too bad it took the imminence of death for her to begin to see me truly.  What attitudes and conceptions about others should we change prior to our death?
• There are more good books and writers than I had imagined.  I don’t normally read fiction, but this death-watch has left me unable to give non-fiction the concentration it deserves.  In addition, a good novel will pull me along without any effort on my part, which is good because I have no effort to spend on reading.

Here is are 7 of the ones I have recently read:

The Illumination: A Novel

A must-read.  So well written, I was compelled to re-edit my own novel.  It’s almost a collection of short stories showing the impact of people on others with whom they have relationships varying from deep to non-existent.  This is a book I didn’t want to put down.  Get it at any cost.

Queen, The (The Bowers Files)

A thriller which explores the relationships between an FBI profiler and his family.  Interesting if only for the way crime scenes are analyzed. 

Things Not Seen

A young adult novel in which the boy wakes up to find himself invisible.  He meets a girl who is blind and reveals his secret to her. The story takes us through the boy’s life of what he can do while invisible and makes the point that relationships shouldn’t be based on how people look.  A fun read.

Swamplandia

A 12-year old girl’s mother dies, and her father, older brother, and 16-year old sister struggle to survive and run their Alligator wrestling attraction in the Florida swamps.  But the mother was the star of the show, and life is cast on its head.  Anything can happen and does.  Well-written, so well written, that it is a book I may come back to time and again. 

People of the Book: A Novel

I had read one Geraldine Brooks novel, but decided to give this one a try anyway.  The story was good, but I was bothered by the one-sided view of Christians.  The book portrays good and bad Jewish and Muslim people, but all the Christians are bad.  The story intersperses a real object, the Sarajevo Haggadah (a haggadah is a book used at Passover giving the order of service and the words that are read.) This particular Haggadah is richly illustrated and belongs to the museum in Sarajevo.  Weaving together modern history of the Sarajevo fighting, along with medieval history of the illustrations and text, Brooks takes the reader on a journey through Nazi controlled Europe, the Dark Ages, and the Crusades, and the protagonist’s family history and romance (or should I say lack, thereof.)

The Sense of an Ending

 A strange book. The first part explores a college man’s relationships with other male classmates and women. While I was reading it, I couldn’t wait for it to end. Then I reached Part 2 where that same college student is retired and trying to make amends for something he did in the past. Part 2 is compelling, raising questions about how we view our own past and whether we can ever go back and right wrongs or redo our paths. Please, please, don’t give up in Part 1. Part 2 is worth the effort.

The Thing Around Your Neck

A collection of short stories by this Nigerian author.  She examines the life of Nigerian women in various social classes and in and out of Nigeria.  I enjoyed every story and gained greater insight into the struggles and joys of another continent.

Outlining for Non-Outliners

Or why to outline your book.

I don’t outline.  Or maybe I do.  When I write, I write sparingly, then go back and fill in the description, history, details, allusions, punctuation.  I think ahead with plot, and write brief sentences or phrases to let me know where I am headed.  I make my notes a couple of pages ahead of the text and use no special format.

However, I was recently required to submit an outline of my historical fiction novel.  My husband said, “You outlined all your books in law school.  Can’t you do the same thing with your novel.”  I started to tell him a novel was nothing like a text book, but stopped.  I had noting to lose trying to do a novel outline.

So for other non-outliners out there, here are my steps:  (Note:  I have been hand writing the outline then transferring it to Word’s outline view.)

1. Skim each chapter and write phrases or sentences which illustrate the plot developments and essential elements.
2. When you record an essential element, does it refer to something earlier that you have forgotten to note?  Revise your earlier outline.
3. When you have finished—indeed, while you are still working on the outline—you will find some chapters have one line, some many.  This is a good time to rethink your chapter breaks.  It may be that one plot element is sufficient.  It may be that some chapters are too long.  This is a great way to edit for readability.

By this time, you have a working outline that you can submit to agents and publishers.  And you have a working outline for your own use in editing and revising. 

Wonderful Depression

That’s not a title you expected to see, is it?  Depression is never wonderful.  Or is it?  When I was severely depressed a few years ago, I sought help, but that’s a story for another day.  What I learned then, was depression means that there will be a brighter day ahead.  Depression means that these feelings I have are normal and appropriate at this time.  Depression means that I give myself permission to be a slacker.  Depression means that I read young adult (YA) fiction (and enjoy it). 

Why am I depressed this time?  There are several reasons all related to one event.  My mother is dying.  Because she is dying, she needs full-time care and I am with her when the other caregivers cannot be, or when they fail to arrive as promised.  I have no time for my normal daily routine.  I have no normal daily routine.  My daily routine is not normal.  Yesterday, I was called away from a job to spend 4 hours with my mother.  I read an entire YA novel during that time.  It’s one of the things that keeps me from crashing and burning in this time of emotional and life upheaval.   

Here are two novels I can recommend.  They are a series, I think. 

The Wednesday Wars

The Wednesday Wars features the Presbyterian outcast in a middle school filled with Catholic and Jewish students who are released on Wednesday afternoons while the Presbyterian boy must stay with the teacher who hates him.  It is a coming-of-age novel filled with Shakespeare and baseball heroes.  I did not consider it as well written as it’s sequel: 

Okay for Now

I loved this book.  Where Shakespeare featured in the first book, this book has Audubon’s birds and a quest to recover what has been wrongfully sold in a small east coast town.  Did I say I loved this book?  What’s not to love about a book where love rules and a world gone wrong is made right.   If not for the silly cover, I would consider adding it to my library.  Perhaps, I’ll purchase it anyway.

Despite the silly title and silly cover, read this book.  It contains everything a good novel should have.

Random Thoughts from Eugene Peterson

 

I watched a live feed from Q:Ideas For The Common Good this week of Eugene Peterson speaking on subjects close to his heart.  Who is Eugene Peterson?  A scholar of Greek and Hebrew, a professor, a pastor, an author.  Check out his books.  These are thoughts I picked up from the feed, some might be close to exact quotations, but I claim no accuracy.  This is what he said, filtered through my brain.

• TV preachers preach black and white and set up an enemy.  When you have an enemy, everything is black and white. But, the Bible isn't black and white; the gospel isn't black and white.   Sermons suffer greatly for lack of ambiguity.  It’s tempting to tell too much. 
• Our fight is not against people (atheists or secularists).  Like Zaccheus, people outside the faith are up a tree; we must invite them in.  We can’t impose the story of the Bible on then; we must invite them into the Bible’s story.
• God is the larger context, and the plot in which our stories find themselves.
• The Bible is inerrant and infallible, but not literal.  Children take things literally when they don’t want to understand (don’t want to obey). 
• Language cannot be translated from one culture to another literally.  It can be translated truly and accurately, but not literally.
• Adding chapters and verses to the Bible tempts us to use it as a reference book.  We need to remove/ignore those when we read and get lost in the story.
• Half of the Bible is poetry.  We must not miss the metaphor.
• Pray the Psalms, and you are praying the prayers that Jesus prayed.
• If you have to ask what Jesus’ parables meant, you missed the point.
• Sabbath teaches us that we awaken to a world we did not make and to a salvation we did not earn.
• Sabbath: time to pray and play.  If pray and play don’t work together, both are diminished.  Play is how we are restored, because it’s not necessary.  Prayer is the Holy Spirit breathing with us.  Learning to pray is learning NOT to do something.  God does it.  Prayer is a conversation; we need to listen to God.

Old, But Valuable

Too much can be lost when books and music have a limited audience and then go out of print.  You might happen upon them in a thrift store or Ebay or even on Amazon, but there’s a reason they are no longer in print; they would be unprofitable.  Out of print and unprofitable don’t mean without value, however. 

I ordered this out of print book of poetry for a single poem and found others that touched me.  Here are two of them.

You! Jonah!: Thomas John Carlisle: Books
ASIN: B001CJQS5Y

by Thomas John Carlisle, published in 1968, a collection of poems about Jonah.

 

NEGOTIATION WITH A HIGHER POWER

I will demonstrate

my immediate

obedience

providing You comply

with my demand

for a more satisfying

assignment.

 

---

COMING AND GOING

The word came

And he went

In the other direction.

 

God said: Cry

tears of compassion

tears of repentance;

cry against

the reek of unrighteousness;

cry for

the right turn

the contrite spirit.

 

And Jonah rose

And fled

In tearless

silence.

True Art

What follows is a quote from Makoto Fujimura, a New York artist and founder of the International Arts movement.  It was taken from the commencement speech he gave last spring at Belhaven University in Jackson, Mississippi.  You can find the complete text of the speech here.

True Art does not chase after novelty—it is a sensory quest toward the New order of what God is creating, toward fully realized humanity. Using our senses, Art poses deeper questions, rather than giving easy answers.  To be truly human in a liquid reality, we must re-define what the culture of fear and cynicism deems as the “world that ought to be.”  "The World that Ought" to be is not an utopia; it is instead created out of sacrificial love. To love is to quest for the “World that Ought to Be.” Love is enduring and love uses all of our senses. Love is generative, and will create the stage for the New to appear. The role of the artist in a liquid reality is to awaken all of our senses through creativity and love. 

He tells us what, but not how.  The how is for us to find.  On to the search to awaken my readers through creativity and love . . .

The Door Into Summer

There is one book I can never forget, but I rarely admit to reading.  It’s time for true confessions.  In the book, the cat—yes, it’s a cat book and it’s not my other favorite cat book:

Millions of Cats (Gift Edition) (Picture Puffin Books) A repetitive story for young children)

--in

The Door into Summer

the cat, in winter, cries and meows at every door of the house, always hoping that one will open into summer.  There’s something in all of us that hopes for that one elusive opportunity/adventure that might be just around the corner, over the hill, around the bend, or through the door.  Especially under the bleak skies of winter, we need that hope. 

In this short novel of my childhood, the protagonist’s life has fallen apart; he needs his own door into summer.  The way he finds it is pure science fiction involving cryogenics and time travel.  We don’t have that technology at our beck and call.  How do we find our door into summer?

By now you’re wondering if I have the answer. . . I could drag this on and let you keep wondering, but I’m not cruel.  Sometimes finding that door requires waiting.  How long?  Minutes, days, weeks, months, years. . .decades?   Scientists may spend decades or a lifetime looking for a breakthrough.  Students spend years in school waiting for that first job that will take them on a new adventure.  Parents spend months awaiting the birth of their child and making preparations for that child’s homecoming.

Our wait is not passive.  Like the cat, we have to check out those doors.  One of them may lead to summer.  But when they don’t, we wait.  The word most non-Americans use to describe a waiting line is “queue,” a word that sprang from the French word for tail.  A cat looking for the door into summer has a tail that drags on the ground in disappointment.  The cat who waits in expectation has a tail held high with a quiver and a shake as thoughts of what might be run through the cat’s mind.

The scientists prepare for that breakthrough every day they study and experiment.  The students study, and search out internships, to narrow their field of interest.  Expectant parents delay their own needs to make the baby’s entrance smooth, even to changing their diet, their transportation, and their abode.  And like the cat, we prepare with tail held high in expectation of what lies through the next door.

That not so easy for we of the complex minds.  Cats have few desires—eat, attention, sleep, play.  My more complex mind is filled with the stuff of business: taxes, marketing, paperwork, and the stuff of life: cooking, cleaning, paying bills, buying groceries, accommodating a dying parent, planning upcoming birthdays, and other mundane activities.  How do we look past these and leave space to prepare and be expectant?

One way is to celebrate the season of Lent, the 40 days (not including Sundays) preceding Easter.  Ash Wednesday, today, is that start of that.  What can we do to prepare room for God and remain expectant?  Sometimes it means letting go of something that deprives us of space and time for deeper thought like television or reading or listening to music or twitter or Facebook or games or radio.  Sometimes it means letting go of something we don’t think we could live without.  Perhaps that means to use public transportation or bum rides instead of using your car.  Or it might mean that you stop eating food that contains calories, but little nutritional value (candy, chips, pop), or food high in fat, or meat, or whatever.  Maybe it means sharing what you have been afraid others might misuse.  What might it mean for you?

Whatever it is, forty days is only a little over a month.  That’s not so long.  Yet, it’s long enough to form a new habit, a new way of life.  Are you, like me, looking for that door into summer this February.  Then join me for Lent and form a new habit of preparation and expectation.  Then you, too, will be able to hold your tail high, knowing that your wait will not be in vain.