I woke up this morning to the sound of a young female grew-up-in-Montana writer being interviewed about her collection of short stories on NPR. Hey I’m a young female grew up in Montana writer. I checked her blog. In an interview she said something about making time to write everyday. I thought to myself, “Hey I’m awake and the rest are still asleep on this Sunday morning. I think I will get myself up and have some writing time.
So I got up and went into the front room where I immediately faced the pink and blue princess and new technology sugar frosted detritis of my daughter’s birthday yesterday. I started some water boiling for a quick cup of instant coffee in order to face it and to give me courage to write.
For some reason thoughts turned (I suppose because of the radio conversations’ references to Montana and college) to an awkward dinner I once while in college, lonely, and apparently socially inept. As a writer who doesn’t produce much and wonder why–I was aware with Zen-like clarity– of my movement as I jumped up to deal with the boiling water and coffee just as an image so clear and so full of potential as a short story popped into my head. And as I was trying to figure out what was wrong with my life 20 years ago–when I was young and cute and didn’t know it–in a literary fiction sort of way, my kid arouses herself and wanders through the room to the TV, which she turns on to a very loud episode of Spongebob Squarepants, lounges back against some pillows and declares that she is hungry.
I haven’t really written anything except that I remember an incident from when I was in college.
I find myself agreeing to–offering even– to make pancakes which I begin, still thinking I can satisfy my child with food and then go back to my writing –yeah right–that train has left the station;
I fill a bowl with pancake mix, oil and milk only then to discover that we are out of eggs. I pull on some clothes, inform my husband that I am going out and head to a corner market for milk, and also the Sunday Paper which I see as I am paying for the eggs.
Back home again, I make pancakes and also coffee, out of beans this time for sharing with the spouse, instead of the instant that I had made for myself. I hand deliver a cup of java to the spouse who is working now but on a laptop and still in bed so physically it feels like he is doing nothing and I am doing everything as I begin to burn the fake sausages and spill coffee beans in the soapy dish pan and try not to burn the pancakes by clinging steadfastly to my post in front of the stove while verbally mapping the location of the milk carton so my daughter can find it herself as though this were a game and she wore a blindfold.
The strong coffee and New York Times Real Estate Section make me tense and anxious as I broach the possibility of heading up to Lincoln Center to try to catch an ensemble-improvised-three-and-a-half-hour-long-French-language-theatrical-piece that was recommended by one of my clown friends who is single and lives in Manhattan.
My mind is full of the dishes in the sink and unwritten stories in my head as I apply sunscreen to myself and my offspring and follow her downstairs to act as her spotter as she practices using her new pink and black RIPSTICK on the sidewalk in front of our building. I go down quickly without keys or cellphone so when we become hot and tired and The Husband still has not come down yet we cannot stop and go up for a drink of water.
And as I write this I am backtracking because I have just lost the edits I have just made which causes me to look at the clock and think of The Husband who is now in the park with My Kid and her RIPSTICK and how I still haven’t started the breakfast dishes which is the reason I ditched them and came back up to the apartment for a few minutes instead of going to the park with them for some family time and how really it is time now to be thinking about lunch…
And the phone rings and it’s My Kid calling from the park; “Mommy where are you?”