Mondays

As Mondays go, this was just like any other. Except for the sublime weather. Oh, and the email I received from a woman who wanted me to know that she was using a story of mine as a teaching tool for her students! How cool is that? She uses my story "Pretending" in order to teach her 10th grade English Lit students about flash fiction.

I'm flattered and humbled. I'm also sporting a pleased-as-punch grin.

My story Pretending appeared in the 2009 Summer Issue of Staccato Fiction.

Happy Monday.

Good read:

I've just finished Shellie Zacharia's collection Now Playing. I'd call the collection more simple than not, though I don't mean that in a negative way. I found it refreshing. The characters are honest and straightforward, and there's a recurring theme of guitar players and teachers. There are a lot of stories here (28) comprised of seemingly equal parts flash fiction and short stories.

Several of the stories stood out for me: "Take," "Luckily, Lucy Sims Has No Stamps," "Cyrus Is Spinning," and "Cardboard Ben."

Good read:

I've just finished Jael McHenry's The Kitchen Daughter. It was a good read; parts of it were a great read. What stops me from declaring it a "great" read overall, though, is that I almost didn't finish it. At the 37-page point, I was ready to close the book permanently, park it on a shelf, and say not every one is a winner. But I invoked my daughter's rule that you have to give a book 50 pages and kept going. I'm glad I did. It was worth the read.

The opening was slow for me, a little disjointed, a little too much repetition from the protagonist, Ginny. I understand, now, afterward, the need for the repetition. I recognized then, too, though to a lesser degree, that it served a purpose of laying foundation, of informing the character. It was enough of an irritation, though, a distraction, that it stops me from proclaiming it GREAT.

That said, there's something really remarkable about the book. I'm a believer in the idea that we react to any given book based on a lot of things, most notably, what's going on in our lives at that moment, our emotional state. These things, along with our own experiences and baggage, make us more or less receptive to a story, a style of writing, a subject matter. I was moved by this story; somewhere along the way I bought in and found myself inside Ginny's world, invested. She has Asperger's, though she's never been officially labeled as such. I felt Ginny's frustration, her confusion, her desire to fight through all of it; I cheered alongside her with each victory, with each new learning and understanding. What holds it all together for me is the touch of magic, the idea, the possibility... she's able to summon up the ghosts of her relatives by working from their handwritten recipes. There are also a couple of twists weaved in that take the story deeper and kept me reading.

Put this on your summer to-read list.

Dog Days of Summer

Yep, the dog days of summer are here and I love, LOVE them! I love wearing shorts and walking around barefoot. Love the job of puzzling out how to keep all the flowers and trees and budding vegetables watered. Love sitting on the patio and reading a book, the sun warm on my skin.

It occurs to me that if I lived in a clime where it was warm and sunny year round (or perhaps the majority of the time), I probably wouldn't salivate as I do when summer rolls around. It'd be the same old stuff. But, of course, that's not how it is here and so I look forward to the lazy days of summer, wishing they'd last forever.

Last week it was unbelievable hot here - I'm not complaining, mind you, just stating a fact. We smashed the old record (97, I think) on the way to a new one: 104! But the best news is that the heat index was a whopping 119 degrees. Holy cow, right? It was like how I imagine living in the desert is. It was crazy and fun and gloriously hot. My hubby and I headed down to the lake (Lake Michigan), hoping for a little lake breeze.



Hope your dog days of summer are fabulous, too.

Great read:

I have just finished Elizabeth Strout's Olive Kitteridge and all I can say is wow. WOW. This is a novel in stories, which is all the rage right now, and it was so captivating, so spellbinding that I'm nearly beside myself. Olive is a character with so many flaws that she feels... well, human. The normal imperfections that we all have, the gripes that we feel but perhaps don't voice. She's handled with such honesty, such tenderness and heartfelt emotion that I came to believe that I knew her, really knew her, that she was a part of my family.

I so thoroughly enjoyed each story, beginning with the opening one, that I was genuinely surprised with each subsequent story as it became my new favorite.

This is the first time I've read anything by Elizabeth Strout and I felt like I was in the hands of an expert, a master. She took her time with each story, with each character - and for this I was thrilled because everyone always says to get to the story, cut all the excess, which I always take to mean no lollygagging. But that's how I felt in each of these stories: lollygagging. In a good way, a way that let me see the surroundings, see the nuances of the characters, feel their emotions, each lollygagging moment building upon the previous moment, each lazy-like detail filling in the edges so that, at the end, a full-bodied masterpiece is realized and I feel as though I know and understand these characters, especially Olive Kitteridge, to such a degree that I'm amazed by it all and definitely, definitely better off, fuller, for having spent time in her world.

This kind of experience is such a treat.

I highly recommend it.

Great read:

I was in a bit of a funk after all the hubbub of my daughter getting married: exhausted, missing her, lost without my list of 10-things-must-do-right-this-minute. So what do I do? Why, read a book, of course!

Over the course of this past weekend, I devoured Sarah Addison Allen's Garden Spells. I LOVED the magical realism aspects: they are handled with authority, which, to my mind, goes a long way in making something believable. Loved the homeyness of the main character, Claire; loved, too, that the sister, Sydney, was a direct contrast. The final confrontation, near the end, had me holding my breath, reading quickly to see what happens.

My only small quibble is that I initially thought this might be intended for a YA audience. Not that there's anything wrong with that! No. It's that I don't usually read YA novels. In the end, I decided that wasn't the case.

If you enjoy magical realism, you'll LOVE this. And if you've always wondered what magical realism is, then this is a great introduction.

My Daughter Is Now Married

I'm a mess. It's been 5 days and I'm exhausted, wondering, bleary-eyed, happy-sad, lost.

First and foremost, the event was spectacularly awesome. The day was storybook perfect with temperatures in the mid 70's and sun shining. After weeks and weeks of rain and cold temps, that the day dawned warm and clear was truly a gift. The whole weekend was perfectly gorgeous to boot. As the saying goes in Wisconsin: if you don't like the weather, wait a day. True to form, in the days since the wedding, it's been unbearably humid and hot (in the mid 90's) and today it's 54. So, truly, the wedding day was plucked from the heavens.

The event itself went off without a hitch, though the stress leading up to it was crippling. There are millions of details for a wedding that must be identified, listed, taken care of, and crossed off. On top of these are the ones you've forgotten, the ones that pop into your awareness in the middle of the night, the ones that you must somehow add to the next day's list that's already too long. Then there's the issue of getting the house ready and in order so that you're not embarrassed when 40 people show up the day after the wedding for the gift opening. And when I say house, I mean inside and out. Dusting, vacuuming, window-washing. Yard work: pulling weeds, mowing grass, hauling mulch. In the 2 weeks prior to the wedding, my husband and I nearly killed ourselves hauling mulch from the driveway into the flowerbeds. And by mulch, I mean 33 yards. For those of you who need a visual, think of an impossibly huge pile of mulch and then triple it. Seriously.

I arrived at the day sunburned, stiff-limbed, and severely sleep deprived. Our house was bustling with activity: all the bridesmaids and mothers were getting our hair and makeup done at our house. My mother-in-law had advised that I should try to let loose with some emotion prior to the BIG DAY, but I had been so busy, so go go go, that I hadn't been able to find a quiet moment to relax. She was right, of course. As were all the others who dispensed sage advice. But what I recognize now is that this is a solitary experience. Even though we may have all married our daughters off, we will each experience it individually.

My daughter is my oldest child, the first one to get married, my only daughter. I am deliriously happy for her and her new husband. They are perfect for each other and love one another fiercely. But I cried many times that day, mostly in unexpected, out-of-nowhere moments. In the shower: I thought, she's not going to be mine any more, she'll no longer be a McMahon. While getting my hair styled: "Dog Days Are Over," a song by Florence + The Machine, came on and I thought of the first time I heard this song - while watching Glee with my daughter - and how, because I'd like the song, she'd bought me the CD. In the moments before I was to be escorted down the aisle: an overwhelming thought, this is real, this is real.

There are no time-honored traditions for moms that allow us to acknowledge our emotions during this life-changing event. Fathers offer a toast before dinner, a minute or five where heartfelt words are spoken, shining a light on the father's love for his daughter. Fathers also have the father/daughter dance in which a song that is meaningful to both dad and daughter is played, and they twirl about the floor, displaying for the room, the world, their love and affection, their honest emotions.

I sat on the sidelines watching them dance to IZ's "Somewhere Over The Rainbow," my heart swelling with love and pride while tears ran, unchecked, down my cheeks. In that moment I held my daughter in my heart, remembering words from my sister-in-law:

We raise and care for our children only to let them go when they are capable of caring for themselves; we hold their hands as they learn to walk only to let them go when they learn to run; we teach them to love and care for people so that when they find that love in another, they move away from us and live fully. But ultimately, we hold them in our hearts for all times and from there we never let them go. It is in this place that the joy of loving your child will abide and it is there that you will feel the tug that tells you it is time to pass your child, and all that she has become, to her chosen one.

I'm feeling a little raw, a little lost.