Days 50 & 51

Finished my packet today -- revisions + new work + annotations + letter. Feels good, except now I must get going with the next one immediately! Have a little camping trip planned for spring break, which will make me take a break. My eyes have broken out with eczema -- never had it before -- and I'm generally feeling pretty run down, but my brain feels strong and healthy -- my imagination's on the right diet, if nothing else.

Watched the Oscars yesterday and found myself most moved by the writers' awards and by Natalie Portman's very pregnant belly and the feeling of grace and joy she seemed to have about the baby that I recognized so powerfully. Also by the deaths of old British favorites like Susannah York and Lionel Jeffries. The generation before mine dying off. Didn't really care about any of the rest.

Monday -- everyone tired. Early nights all round.

Days 49 & 50

Almost at the end of my edits for 'Packet 2' and feeling okay about them, euphoric in places, depressed in others, so that's probably about right. Finished "Fierce Attachments" -- an amazing read -- and on now to Toni Morrison and other treats.

Starting a second round of virus-related symptoms and tired, tired, tired, but the blossom is coming out everywhere and it's such a joy to watch the children rediscover the joys of outdoor play, to lie on the hammock with them and sway.

Getting excited about June, imagining a Vermont summer and all the green lushness and good company.

Day 48

Managed to sit down to do a little work after teaching, getting down on (as in not impressed with) my writing, and then there was a call from my son's school. "It's early pick up today!" Well, no more time to get down on myself. Bought ice pops and sat in the garden watching my spring chickens. Bubbles and laughter. Best medicine.

Great poems from my students tonight -- warmed my toes on their fire...

Day 46 & 47

Trying to keep up with editing and reading while my little one watches "The Wonder Pets," home sick still. Yeucchh. This little bug really wanted to hatch in our house.

Reading Gornick's "Fierce Attachments" -- an amazing book. Such a powerful voice.

Days 44 & 45

Flu. All of us sick. Oh, the agony of having to postpone the work when one wants to do it so much...

Days 40-43

My little girl turned four and I turned all my attention to her. Getting a bit behind with the writing, but I figure she deserves my all just now.Pink frou frou, chocolate cake and a party in the garden complete with mini trampoline, teepee and bubbles. We even played 'Pass the parcel,' a favorite game of mine from childhood. Earlier, my son (6) documented her dance/gym class by drawing each new segment and labeling it. Just adorable-- maybe he will become a documentary film maker. I made a book of it with him, and he shared it with everyone and read it maybe 20 times -- his first published book! His excitement reminds me I'm not so crazy to feel that way myself about wanting to share my work (though I'm not sure I can ever produce anything so sweet, nor so simply clear -- a good lesson).

Finished Atwood's "Surfacing" -- I don't remember any of it from 20 years ago, but loved it -- she's so willing to blast ahead and look out! Now reading"Fierce Attachments" -- Vivian Gornick. All inspirational stuff.

Not writing for a couple of days makes me happily desperate to get back to it...

Day 39

Rewrote my last essay following my teacher's comments. Wonderful process. Why can we not all have a teacher to refer to for guidance on each aspect of our life? I suppose if we're good parents, we might provide at least the feeling of that -- something to aim for, though I find I learn so much more from my children than I think I can possibly teach them. Wish they had never seen me angry, but then they wouldn't know how to recognize it, right, and have strategies for dealing with it. Today they mostly only saw me happy, and that makes me happy. Actually went out and had a cocktail with a girlfriend. Whoo Hoo!

Day 38

Inspired by my students, who must be able to tell I am practically on fire with the process. Good feeling, but tiring. Ready for bed by eight!

Day 37

Got my teacher's comments in the mail yesterday, and began working on revisions today. What a joy to have someone tell you where to "cut!"
Valentine's Day -- a BEAUTIFUL spring day -- meant I 'sacrificed' two of my work hours to go out to breakfast with my husband. What a lovely way to play truant. I got a new phone as a gift -- on the same day the numbers stopped working on my old one -- the one I got for Valentine's Day just after my son was born (6 years ago) so we had a means of 'emergency' contact in case the car broke down with us in it in California. How far we have come!
Kids were blissful today about all the Valentine's fun and looked adorable -- all red and pink and hearts. What simple loveliness to carry me through the days.

Day 36

Wrote an essay on my readings this morning in Starbucks -- tap tap tap -- such a relief to write about something other than my life. Ha!

Days 34 & 35

Weekend and small son's stomach flu or food poisoning, up all night changing sheets, plus grading plus cleaning doesn't leave much time for real studentship. Still, set out on Atwood's "Surfacing" -- an amazing piece -- and found my own 'graded' packet in the mail from my teacher. She was helpfully critical and complimentary in the right doses. Now I have revisions to consider plus new readings and work on my new piece, in which I have meagre confidence. At least now I have a new deadline to kick me along! i also find myself being more generous in my own comments on my students' work.

My 3 -almost- 4-year-old daughter rode her bike almost without help this afternoon, and my son came home from a trip to Lowes with his own tool set. Oh, my little grown-ups -- how beautiful they are. Sweetness personified. Now I have a birthday party to plan!

Day 33

Feeling a bit discouraged about what I'm writing, probably because ill and premenstrual, and looking at yet another ear infection to treat -- makes me oddly anxious. Wondering what good it all is, and knowing I have to just write through the blues... It will be good to get honest feedback from my teacher -- one way or another, I'll have some kind of marker or goalpost...not that it's about goals, but sometimes it helps to know which direction to kick the ball...

Day 32

Writing about my grandmother's death -- a strange detachment from the reality of the memory as I write -- the logical brain interpreting the emotional pathways...

My little girl has begun to cry in the mornings when I leave her at school -- has always been so happy to be left before. I know it isn't an issue of abuse, so perhaps it is the development, at almost 4, of attachment. Her body is so warm, she is so intensely alive, and it is her dance through life, her movement, and sudden moments of pause, that inspire me, just as my son's 6 year old questions and desire to understand push me on to question and understand. A purpose-driven life driven by my children's sense of purpose and drive.

Day 31

Finished Winterson and Woolf, and just today watching PBS' documentary series, "Eyes on the Prize" in a belated attempt to educate myself about the details of the Civil Rights movement, and to try to comprehend my current setting  -- SC.  Wept most of the way through, in part because of the poverty and segregation I see still very much alive here. There are a handful of black kids in my son's "school of choice," and very few black teachers. If I write about it, though, of what value or use is my voice? And yet we must write about what speaks to us -- I can write at least so that my children grow up knowing how I feel and will, perhaps, think about issues of human rights. Feeling heavy with it all, and terribly tired. Can't seem to stop, though, for if I do, it will be like starting up an old car whose battery has run low...

Got a group e-mail from my classmates. What a beautiful clamor of voices -- the best thing about being a student again -- community and free speech that gets a little heard!

Day 30

Interesting how writing an essay, like riding a bike, comes back to you immediately. It's just that you can now hear the squeak that's developed...

Days 28 & 29

Crazy weekend, trying to read and write half-logical essays on the reading while also negotiating runny noses and meltdowns. Have not, at least, melted down myself yet, much thanks to a yoga pajama party last night and a sitter this morning, but there are still 4 hours of Sunday left...

Day 27

Rain, rain, rain, drowning my abilities to get going. Trying to get some of the reading done while I'm in this 'stay at home' kind of mood. How lucky that I can.

Reading Alix Kates Shulman's "Memoirs of an Ex-Prom Queen," published 1972. How frightening how little has changed between men and women...and yet so much HAS changed. I am on an MFA program where the majority of students are women (not so the M/F teacher ratio, but it's getting there). Wondering though, what new thing I have to say, other than a different voice to say it in. Just write, says Woolf, so I will...(but not tonight!).

Day 26

Medicine. Massage. Good.

Day 25

Body rebelling; mind in turmoil -- watching PBS series about the Civil Rights Movement and reading "A Room of One's Own" simultaneously, I feel the same mixture of adrenalin and pain swelling just under my solar plexus as I did when I first read about these things -- both a horror and a desire to act. I am reminded, too, of Woolf's brilliance and influence -- things I couldn't appreciate when I first read her back in my early twenties. I cannot believe she was suicidal -- her mind is so clear in these pages. But I know, don't I, how things can turn. I found myself looking out of my window after I'd finished to see if she was there. I wanted to embrace her, make the pain go away, thank her. She is in so great a part why I am here doing this -- why there are books I want to read out there. She brushed off the dust of the establishment and revealed the shine -- women's voices!

Day 24

Mailed my first 'packet' of writing and reading responses to my teacher -- it will be fun to have this old fashioned type of correspondence -- real mail! Feeling tired and exposed and wondering how I'll keep it up.