Merry Christmas!

  It's been too long since I've posted, and I'm sorry! Happy Thanksgiving, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year! I've been blessed more than words can say in 2015, and look forward to more adventures -- and hopefully a new book to publish -- in 2016. Here are a few photos of my gorgeous family. I'll try to post something substantial before Valentine's Day.

November Book Contest

November BetterThanGoodreads Giveaway! Like the contest post on my author Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/authorSterlingRWalker/  for a chance to win ALL THREE Orphan Ship paperbacks. Who doesn't like free books? The winner will selected on Nov. 30th. You're not limited by distance--I'll ship them anywhere. Like my Facebook page, like my post, and win free books! And if you've already read them, they make great Christmas gifts!

http://www.amazon.com/Orphan-Ship-3-Book/dp/B016DDZA98/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1446490642&sr=8-4&keywords=the+orphan+ship

Have a wonderful November and don't forget to count your blessings! ~Sterling

Leaf Me Alone

 

  I listen to them. They say I'm beautiful when it gets cold. They love my red color, but they complain when all the red falls off and they have to rake it up. No one says it's beautiful when one of them loses the stuff on top. 'Hair' they call it. The two-trunks are disgusting creatures.
  After I'm bald, they go around and drive tubes into my bark and catch my sap in buckets. Oh, the pain! The oak told me they boil down the sap and eat it on pancakes (whatever that is). Revolting.
  None of them will allow another two-trunk to drive tubes into their bark and collect their red sap in buckets. 'Blood' they call it. Although the dogwood told me he heard some of them talking about a movie (whatever that is) where the two-trunks did that to each other and laughed about it. Disgusting creatures! I wish I had been planted somewhere far away from these lunatics.
  The oak told me when I die, I won't go to two-trunk heaven (whatever that is) but to the lumber mill. 'Hardwood floors' they call it. What an insult to my beauty. I feel safe in saying the trees will still be around long after the disgusting two-trunks. No creature so revolting can possibly survive its own stupidity.
  The next time you see a bald two-trunk eating pancakes, think of me.

Lighthouse Keeper

  It's 387 steps to the top. I know this because I'd counted them every evening at twilight for fourteen years. I could get to the top in my sleep. In 2006, they installed a switch at the bottom of the stairs. Then I only had to climb once a week to clean the windows or change the bulbs.
  Natalie left in '07 and took Gemma with her. She said it was too isolated and no place to raise a child, that Gemma needed other children to play with. I stayed.
  In '08 the hurricane took out most of the beach. I rode out the storm in the lighthouse tower. The generator needed tending, of course. It was my duty. The light stayed on for forty-eight hours straight. The governor thanked me in person for my diligence. The state even gave me a raise.
  Gemma graduated high school last year. She asked if she could come live with me. She said she missed the solitude and the beach and me. Mostly me. She met a surfer I don't approve of, but he's opening a T-shirt shop on the boardwalk. I guess I could learn to like him if it means Gemma stays on the island.
  Last week my left knee gave out on the seventy-eighth step. I had to descend the rest of the way on my bottom, like a toddler. "Knee replacement," the doctor said. "No more stairs."
  I'm too young to retire.

(I thought this fit well on a hurricane weekend with Joaquin passing by the coast of NC.)
 

The Influence of Music on My Writing

  I was in third grade when my older brother Adam brought home the first record album he had purchased with his own money. It was Kiss Destroyer. I remember being stunned and fascinated by the four men on the cover dressed in black leather costumes with chains, platform spiked boots, and makeup masks. Scary stuff for an eight year-old whose musical experience prior to this had consisted of listening to my mother's old Beatles albums on our derelict hi-fi, but I cannot understate its influence on my life.
  I grew to appreciate the loud music coming from Adam's room. While my peers were still singing "It's a Small World," I was soaking up Deep Purple, Peter Frampton, Grand Funk Railroad, Boston, and Bachman Turner Overdrive. My brother was also an avid reader, and I don't think it was a coincidence that his favorite genre was science fiction. His music and reading seemed to go in lock-step, and my own reading preferences soon followed.
  I was eleven years-old when Star Wars came out in theaters. The movie seemed to resonate with me as much as my brother's Rush A Farewell to Kings eight-track tape. After reading every Nancy Drew, Hardy Boys, and Three Investigators book in fourth and fifth grades, I was ready for something more edgy to stir my imagination. Star Wars was the first SF book I read, and I had to consult a dictionary several times to get through it. Science fiction became my genre of choice.
  In high school I discovered Harry Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series. AC/DC's Back in Black was my favorite album, but I also played air guitar to Scorpions, Quiet Riot, and Def Leppard. My music and reading preferences were in lock-step, and my writing followed suit. I have a filing cabinet drawer full of short stories and half-finished novellas from high school and college, and most of them are SF.
  Does what we listen to influence what we like to read, and vice-versa? Compare my love of heavy metal and science fiction to my best friend in high school who preferred pop music. The first time she played Madonna in the car, I needed a barf bag. It was no surprise to me that she liked to read chick-lit. Nicholas Sparks is still her favorite author. (I need a barf bag just thinking about it.)
  In college I dated a guy who introduced me to more metal and took me to concerts. Judas Priest was our favorite band. He preferred Tom Clancy novels to SF, but I married him anyway.
  When my youngest child was four, I threw away the Sesame Street cassette tapes (it would be another five years before we had a vehicle with a CD player) and told my captive minivan audience, "Now we're going to listen to some real music!" I think the first song I cranked up for them was Collective Soul's "Heavy." And when my oldest son was experimenting with groups like Fallout Boy and Yellow Card in middle school, I bought him the Best of Led Zeppelin. I'm proud to say that he now knows the lyrics to every song by Metallica.
  Now here's my disclaimer: I'm sure there are some country-music lovers out there who like to read horror. There are probably a few Taylor Swift fans who don't read chick-lit. There's no proven correlation between music and literary tastes, but it's definitely been true for me. Listening to metal sparked my interest in science fiction, and, like most authors, I write what I like to read.
  Music stirs my imagination. Reading makes me a better writer, but it's the music that makes me want to write. While I'm sitting in carpool, I blast Rush Clockwork Angels to help me imagine the next scene in my book. What do I listen to while I'm writing? Nothing. Silence. But I need the music to get me in the right frame of mind to write. It's funny how that works.

SAHMA--Stay at Home Mom/Author

  What do I do all day? The first thing I do each day is clean. Not because I like to clean (yeah, I hate it), but because in cleaning I find things that need my urgent attention. Unfinished tasks, projects, and moldy things the kids hide in the couch cushions. While I clean, I find new things to occupy my time--time that I should spend writing.
  When I tire of projects, I write. (Yeah, I know I should rearrange my priorities: write first, projects second.) While I write, my house gets dirty and disorganized again. The place perpetuates new projects all by itself. (The kids help some in that department.)
  Then there's those all-too-frequent moments--and by moments, I mean hours--when I check my email, Facebook, and Amazon. It's a bad habit, one that sucks up my time like the Dyson vacuum cleaner I can't afford. I could probably write a novel every six months if the internet was down. (There's an idea!)
  And when I'm really bored, I call my mother and listen to her whine while I paint my toenails or look at Amazon again.
  I used to have a condition called chronic volunteerism, but I was cured when I published my first book. I've yet to find volunteer work I enjoy that doesn't use up too much of my time--time that I should spend writing.
  Oh, and sometimes I take care of my four kids who still live at home. Three of them are adults so I consider my job done if I keep food in the kitchen, TP in the bathrooms, and laundry detergent next to the Maytag. The youngest still needs to be fed and chauffeured around, but sometimes the older ones will do that for me if I tell them--and by tell them, I mean beg, plead, and bribe--in the middle of writing a scene.
  I've trained them well, but I will always be mom first, author second.
  Time to get off my blog. I hear my laptop calling.

August Relief

 

  Most Southern kids hate the oppressive heat of late summer, but I'm always grateful for August. It's the only month of the year when Daddy will run the air conditioning. No matter if July is sweltering and September is miserable, we only get relief in August. I can sleep past 8:00 a.m. without waking up in a puddle. Thanks goodness we don't live in Florida. It's hot enough here in North Carolina.
  I love falling to sleep to the gentle strains of the AC's mechanical buzz. Our home is cool for 31 blissful days, even though the summer heat lingers from late April to early October here.
  I always have nightmares when it's hot at night, but Daddy hasn't quite made the connection. I wake up to the continuous chirping of the crickets, but to me it sounds like monsters outside my window, ready to feast on my flesh like zombies.
  Once I woke up screaming for Daddy. There was a thunderstorm and the rain was coming in my window. I though a burglar had shoved me into a bag and tossed me in the river. I know it was just a bad dream, one of many, but my home doesn't feel safe in the summer. Something about the open windows, the stifling air, and an imagination that can't get a good night's sleep while I'm tossing and turning on sweat-soaked sheets.
  I only sleep soundly in August when the windows are closed. In August I'm safe from the storms and the monsters. My nightmares take their annual vacation, at least until Daddy gets the electric bill and opens the windows again.
  I'm grateful Daddy runs the heat December through February, at least.

Prayers for Nathaniel

  My life was a blur when I had small boys. The oldest was six years old when number four was born. 'Crazy' was an apt description of my life. I was so busy meeting their basic needs for food, clean clothes and diapers, and transportation to preschool and soccer practice, that sometimes I neglected my own needs. Thank goodness for a camcorder or I would have forgotten all the sweet moments, the laugh-out-loud funny things they did and said.

  My third son made me laugh the most, but he also gave me heart attacks. Nathaniel was absolutely fearless, very unlike his cautious, easy-going older brothers. I had to relearn how to parent when Nathaniel came along. At 18 months, he walked to the edge of a two-story balcony with no railing. I couldn't reach him because the space was only wide enough for a toddler to squeeze through.

  I've never prayed so hard in my life. But God heard my prayers, and Nathaniel turned away from the ledge and came back to my waiting arms.

 Two weeks later, Nathaniel vanished from the yard when I turned my back for a moment. We lived on a cul-de-sac so there was no fear of him getting hit by a car, but I frantically searched for half an hour, recruiting the help of any neighbor I could find. I don't think I stopped praying the entire thirty minutes, until he reappeared from a backyard. He explained that he had gone to see a doggie, and was mystified why I was sobbing and hugging him so tightly.
 
At twelve, Nathaniel was diagnosed with thyroid cancer. He spent his thirteen birthday in the hospital. Eighth grade was a blur as he recovered from surgery and struggled to adjust to a synthetic thyroid replacement while going through puberty. It was a long road to recovery, complicated by years of 'self-medicating' and addiction. I've never spent so much time on my knees, praying for one individual. I consider Nathaniel my greatest challenge in life, and one of my greatest blessings.

 I've never stopped asking God to watch over Nathaniel, my heart attack child. On Sunday he moves out to attend college. He'll be living by himself in an apartment in an unfamiliar city. I think I'll be doing a lot more praying, but I'll trust in God to watch over him. My job as a mother is (mostly) done.

Wedgewood

  Julie tried to ignore her stinging eyes as she started on the dining room. She told herself it was just the dust as she blinked hard and began to take the beautiful china out of the hutch. Julie took time to wrap each plate in newspaper before placing it in the box, but she had no illusions that her brothers were taking the same care in the kitchen.
  A crash and tinkling of glass met her ears, but she refused to go investigate. Let the selfish jerks clean up their own messes.
  "Aw, man, that might have been worth something!" Ed bellowed from the living room
  Mike bellowed back, "Shut it!" and "Where's the broom?"
  Julie assembled another box and started opening the drawers of the hutch. A long, tarnished, silver cake knife drew her attention. She took it out and squinted at the engraving on the handle: Michael and Anna, June 23, 1956.
  Julie wiped at her uncooperative eyes as she placed the knife in the box for the auction. She turned back to the hutch and opened another drawer. She discovered a blue velvet box filled with tarnished gold spoons. They looked very old, as if they had never been used.
  Mike walked in to check on Julie's progress. He snatched the box of spoons from her hands and tossed it onto the dining room table. "Don't get sentimental, Jules. We sell it all. Everything."

The Fine Art of Bus Riding

  Something about riding the bus, I can't explain it. You just see things from the road that a comfortable train ride can't deliver. The real world. Life. I don't know--are you buying this?
  Speaking of buying--only a loser would buy a bus ticket from Sacramento to Peoria instead of flying like a normal, sane person. But I only had $200 and love the smell of sweaty strangers and bus toilets. Plus I love seeing hundreds of miles of corn fields up close and personal.
  Every stop is an adventure, a feast for the eyes. Speaking of feasts--the smell of Joe's Diner and the delightful heartburn that follows is enough to make the humblest soul pray for their insurance to cover a gastric bypass surgery.
  So I took the bus to Peoria for the reading of Aunt Isabel's will. What did she leave me from her vast fortune? Just a bus ticket to anywhere I want to go.

Fresh Air

  Nora wanted to go for a walk but Elias said no. It was spring, his worst season.
  "Okay if I walk by myself?" she asked, her patience wearing thin.
  "If you don't mind showering and washing your clothes when you get back." Elias said this between puffs on his Albuterol inhaler. "Pollen," he reminded her for the umpteenth time.
  Nora repressed a sigh with great effort and went outside. Spring was in full bloom and she could only watch it from the wrong side of a triple-paned window. She needed some fresh air.
  She took a long walk, knowing Elias would be fuming impatiently for her return. No doubt he would want the air filters changed again.
  Nora thought about her dog Lucky. She missed the black lab terribly, but Elias had made her choose: me or the dog. She wondered sometimes if she had made the right choice.
  A field of Queen Anne's lace seemed to beckon her. Nora felt a twinge of malicious delight as she walked through the waist high weeds, coating herself thoroughly with pollen. Elias probably wouldn't let her step foot in the house. He would want her to strip on the porch.
  Nora rubbed pollen in her hair and laughed. Maybe her sister would let her have Lucky back. She would rent a garden apartment or maybe a small farmhouse. Fresh air filled her lungs as she walked, enjoying the heady smells of spring and the thought of imminent freedom.
 

Cry "Wolf!"

  The alarm was so familiar that Laney knew what to do the instant she heard the metallic click five seconds before the howling began. It was as if the system was clearing its enormous throat in preparation for the hellish serenade that would follow.
  Her roommate Carla swore under her breath when the click sounded. She found her bathrobe and slippers, and was out the door before the fire alarm was full volume.
  Laney grabbed her master keys and followed Carla out to the breezeway. She didn't see many residents coming out of their suites, but she didn't expect to. The hypersensitive new system went off every night, sometimes two or three times a night, but as an RA Laney had to set the example and evacuate the building.
  Jeff, the RA on the other end of the eighth floor, nearly ran Laney down as she reached the stairs. "Key the rooms! Get everyone out!"
  Laney shook her head. "Let them sleep. It's another stupid false alarm."
  Jeff seized Laney's wrist and dragged her back to the breezeway. "Key all the doors! This time it's real! There's a bomb in the building!"

(True story from my adventures as an RA in Sullivan Residence Hall at North Carolina State University, 1985-1988. Go Wolfpack!)

What Color Is Your Sky?

 

  Grandma was the anxiety queen. She needed Paxil long before it was invented. She considered Grandpa to be the number one source of her anxiety, but I think eighty percent of her ranting came straight out of her imagination. Grandpa, for his part, was oblivious to most details of domestic life. It didn't trouble him that Grandma was oblivious to what he did at work all day to support her comfortable home life, yet somehow she felt vindicated directing her vitriol at him. Even as a kid, I could tell her logic train left the station without her.
  So Grandma worried, fretted, and complained every time she opened her mouth, then wondered why no one wanted to spend time with her. The sky was always falling in Grandma's universe.
  Grandpa buried his nose in books, collected antiques, and was completely unruffled by Grandma's occasional attacks on his character. "You never listen!" or "You don't understand!"
  It was true that Grandpa didn't understand Grandma, but he was at peace with his ignorance. The sky was always blue in Grandpa's universe. I couldn't blame him for seeking solitude in books. I think he would have loved to have a pair of earplugs to enjoy his books without the unpleasant background noise from the anxiety queen.

Art Appreciation 101

  "Art is not for the cultivated taste. It is to cultivate taste." ~Nikki Giovanni

  "What's that supposed to be?" Jaime muttered under her breath. "It looks like someone threw up on the canvas."
  "You're standing too close. Back up and you'll see what it is." I hated being stuck with Jaime for the museum tour. The bubblehead couldn't tell a Manet from a Monet and thought Van Gogh was a rock band.
  "It's not even framed." She sneered. "It looks like he used it to clean his brushes."
  I suppressed a sigh of exasperation, but after peering again at the Monet, I had a twinge of doubt. It did look like something that was rescued from a dumpster. I couldn't tell what it was and there was no title card to hint at what Monet had in mind when he painted it.
  Or threw up on it. Or used it to clean his brushes.
  Most of the paintings in the Marmottan had a similar vibe, although I would never admit that to Jaime, the poli-sci major.
  "I'm sure his good paintings are at the Louvre. Why don't we go there?"
  It was the first intelligent thing Jaime said all day.
  "The Louvre is air-conditioned," she whispered.
(Painting: Claude Monet
Le pont japonais)

Ten Things You Know to be True

  1) Politics is always a topic to avoid at family get-togethers.
  2) Money has never bought anyone happiness or lasting joy.
  3) Carbs do make you fat, especially when you don't exercise, but they taste good.
  4) Renovations are never completed on time or under budget.
  5) Kids can always find where you hid the Christmas presents or the Halloween candy.
  6) If it's cold and rainy, you will oversleep.
  7) People always get stomach bugs in the middle of the night.
  8) It's impossible to clean up vomit in the middle of the night.
  9) There is a God, He really does love us, and He sent His son Jesus Christ to atone for our sins so we could return to live with Him again.
 10) Life has a purpose and every life is precious. We are here on earth for a reason. Nothing God does is accidental, arbitrary, or up for negotiation, no matter what liberals say.
  

Night Visitor

 

    I felt a weight on my chest and woke in the dark, gasping for air. Two glowing golden eyes stared calmly into mine. It was my cat, Stormie.
  Stormie was a solitary creature, sort of a "feed me and leave me alone" feline, the antithesis of her name. For her to climb on me and wake me in the middle of the night was odd.
  I tried to nudge her off, but she dug her claws into the quilt and wouldn't budge. Her eyes peered into mine, never blinking. She wasn't purring, just gagging me with her fishy breath in my unprotected nostrils.
  I determined to move out from under her. I didn't care about cat communication, but I did want to get back to sleep. Maybe she needed water or the basement door was shut so she couldn't get to the litter box. What was Stormie trying to tell me?
  Then I heard a floorboard creak on the stairs.  I stopped breathing, listening for the sound to repeat itself.

Trends

  I wanted to fit in so badly in middle school and high school, but there was never money for the trendy clothes the 'cool' kids were wearing. I saved my babysitting money to buy a pair of white canvas Nikes with the trademark light blue swoops on the sides. I assumed these overpriced shoes would announce to my cynical peers that I had arrived.
  No one looked at my feet. They had no reason to because they wore the same brand of shoes.
  I still felt an overwhelming need to be accepted by the cool crowd. White canvas is hard to keep clean. Every weekend I scrubbed the Nikes with bleach and an old toothbrush so they always looked new.
  Still, no one looked at my feet. I hadn't arrived. I had sacrificed my uniqueness on the cold, impersonal altar of conformity.
  I outgrew the shoes around the same time I started to feel less concerned about fitting in. I realized I didn't need special shoes to impress the elitists who didn't accept me even when I met their dress standards.
  My first pair of tennis shoes in college came from Kmart and cost a whopping $5.00. I painted multicolor polka dots on them and wore them with pride.
  People looked at my feet and smiled.
  I didn't care if the smiles were from admiration or scorn because I wasn't trying to impress anyone. I wasn't trying to fit in or be accepted by those who assumed to set the dress standards. I became a trend-setter simply by standing on my own two polka-dotted feet.

Ode to an OCD Gardener

  The garden was my grandmother's pride and joy, more so than her own grandchildren. She took exceptional care of it: weeding, watering, fertilizing, and fussing. To this day I have no idea why she never planted anything edible, since she complained to no end about the cost of groceries.
  Grandma would proudly point out the different types of flowers to me. "Those are snapdragons, those are daylillies, stay on the path, don't pull leaves off the mint." (She never used the mint for tea or anything useful--she just liked the way it smelled.)
  It's ironic that the backyard flower garden she kept vigil over at number 12 Briarwood Road for 50 years was her whole life because the garden killed her, literally.
  Grandma didn't drive if she could walk because she complained to no end about the cost of gasoline, so she often walked to the hardware store to buy goodies for her flower children. One morning she walked there to buy fertilizer for her precious shepherd's purses. The smallest bag the store had in stock was 50 pounds.
  "We'll deliver it to your house, Mrs. Lang, for $5.00."
  Did I mention Grandma was a tightwad? She didn't even walk home to get the car, but carried the 50 pound bag home in her arms, which gave her a heart attack.
  From which she never recovered.

Vigil

  Anna wanted the Mormons to knock on the door. She was eager to hear about the prophet Joseph Smith and this gold Bible she had heard so much about down in the village of Palmyra.
  "Pa said they're sending the men out two and two on missions, to preach the word of God," she told her mother.
  "Come away from the window, Anna!" Ma said with feigned patience. "No one ever comes up this way to visit, especially no Mormon missionaries!"
  Anna would discreetly watch for them when she went out to feed the chickens, gather the eggs, and slop the hogs. When she walked down the hill to school in the village, she kept her ears open, absorbing gossip about the new church as she passed townsfolk going about their business. Most people didn't have anything nice to say about Joseph Smith and the shocking new religion he founded, but Anna was eager to know more. She hated Ma and Pa's austere Presbyterian church she was forced to attend every Sunday in nearby Manchester, NY.
  She thought there must be more to know about Jesus than what was in the Bible. "What about the other apostles, like Andrew?" she once asked Pa. "Why doesn't he have a book in the New Testament?"
  "Hush your mouth and don't talk nonsense!" Pa snapped. "Preacher says there ain't no other scripture 'cept the Bible!"
  Anna didn't dare utter what she was longing to ask: "What if Preacher's wrong? What if Jesus did restore his church to the earth? What if he did give Joseph Smith a golden Bible? What did they call it? The Book of Mormon, named for a prophet who lived here in America before Columbus?"
  The rumors fired Anna's imagination. She watched every day, hoping the missionaries--maybe even Joseph Smith himself--would come to call.

Belly Dreams

  I used to dream about waking up on my 45th birthday and discovering I'm pregnant. Maybe it's a subliminal fear based on what I see when I look at myself sideways in a full-length mirror. That, and the fact that my daughter often pats my belly and asks if I've got a baby sister in there for her.
  I've been pregnant eight times--four miscarriages, four babies--so pregnancy is a major part of my past. After my first baby, I even decided to teach childbirth classes. I guess I had a pregnancy fetish, like some women have shoe fetishes (although I have that, too).
  Anyway, the recurring dream: I'm old and gray and my youngest kid is in middle school. I'm running around the house, frantically searching for my maternity clothes and a crib--which, of course, went to Goodwill a decade ago. Usually I wake up hyperventilating and avoid my confused husband for a few days.
  Once I dreamed that my 70 year-old mother-in-law was pregnant. Talk about weird. But then the next time I saw her, I checked out her belly and realized it doesn't get any better with age. Thank God for elastic waistbands.

Something's Fishy

  I love to shop in Korean Korner and look at the different types of fish on display in the back of the store. My kids hate going to KK. Between the fresh fish and the kimchee, the place is not for those with sensitive noses.
  "Just a minute, I want to get some shrimp," I told my restless brood yesterday afternoon as they gawked in horror at the glassy eyes of the flounder staring up at the ceiling from its final resting place--a bucket of dirty ice.
  "Gross, Mom." My seven-year-old held his nose as we walked by the carp in all their rigor mortis glory.
  "Just a minute, we need rice noodles," I said.
  We headed down the daunting noodle aisle with its thousands of colorful packages, each stamped with Asian characters we can't read. I go for the package that looks familiar. The fishy smell isn't much better near the front of the store. The whole place smells like low tide.
  "But I don't want shrimp for dinner," my youngest complained. He didn't relax the pincher grip on his nose the entire time we were in the store. "Why do we have to come here?"
  "This place has the best prices on fish," I explained, feigning patience.
  "I think she comes here to torture us," my oldest opined.
  "No, I just like to look at the fish." I smiled at the Chinese cashier who rang up our items.
  "Then why don't we just visit an aquarium, Mom?"

Springtime Surprise

  "It's just weeds," Julie said.
  "It's too pretty to mow down," Anna whined.
  Julie drove the John Deere lawn tractor into position at the edge of the field. "You know we have to cut it down. We have to find it before they sell the land."
  Anna turned pale. Julie knew she remembered. She put the tractor into gear and drove forward slowly. The waist-high weeds vanished beneath the blades and shot out the side in a cloud of wet green fluff.
  "Be careful!" Julie shouted to Anna as her younger sister walked in the tractor's wake. She held back a comment about watching for snakes. The word alone would send Anna into hysterics.
  Julie steered the mower toward the far edge of the clearing, all the while keeping her eyes peeled for something that didn't belong in an overgrown meadow. Something she and Anna had left in a snowstorm ten years ago.
  Anna's simple mind assumed it would have melted away with the snow, but Julie knew better.
  The mower blades clogged with the damp vegetation after she had cut down half an acre. Julie cut the mower and raised the chute to kick the debris free.
  Anna walked over to help her. She saw it first and started to scream.
  A human skull was lying face-up on the ground, the mouth and eye sockets encrusted with dirt.
  "We found it," Julie said.

Invisible

  I've never thought of myself as a transplant or even a refugee. Girl from the Bay Area spending her single years in Beirut right after the war. I rented a basement flat in the nicer part of town where the buildings were still functional, though missing a few walls--maybe a roof--compared to the rough side of town where the piles of rubble were inhabited by opium addicts and feral dogs.
  I could pass for Lebanese with my dark hair and eyes, as long as I didn't open my mouth to speak. Men on the street would smile at me with a smug type of satisfaction, pleased that my eyes were the only things visible through my veil. I was invisible like every other female in the city, but at least I could leave my flat without a male warden--I mean, escort--like my suffering sisters in Kabul.
  Inside my unfurnished home, I wrote feverishly, trying to capture the essence of Beirut in my novel, trying to see inside the minds of the middle-aged women who had been small girls when the bombs fell. I often took my binoculars and stared out my only window at the sides of half-standing buildings, electrical wires like giant black spiderwebs woven between the crumbling walls. The electricity brought a sense of normalcy to the Lebanese people. Too poor to rebuild, but not too poor to give up their color TVs.
  What would it be like to find happiness in these ruins? I wrote, trying to imagine my main character as complacent, yet resourceful. Like me, I suppose, only fluent in Lebanese.
  I headed out to the street market, wordlessly exchanging coins for bread and vegetables, smiling, nodding, and pretending to be invisible like my characters.
(Photo credit: Beirut, before and after restoration.)

Finding Faith

  The black and white photo revealed the most pathetic-looking child Marie had ever seen. Sad, vacant eyes stared out from a pinched little face with a turned-down mouth. Short black hair cut as stylishly as a worn-out old broom. She was dressed in a mismatched assortment of oversize flowery shorts, gray t-shirt that doubled as a bib for the past several meals, argyle knee socks, and no shoes. Her limbs were boney. Every detail of the child's appearance screamed "orphan," including the collection of rusty tricycles in the background.
  Marie put the photo aside and scanned the letter again: Warangkana, age 3. Happy, healthy girl. Rangsit Babies Home. There was some outdated information on a Thai growth chart and a few vague sentences about 'likes to play ball' and 'good appetite,' but it wasn't much to go on.
  "All that time I spent doing paperwork," Marie sighed, "all the money I still have to pay my blood-sucking adoption agency. And for what? A sickly looking child I know nothing about." She picked up the phone and made the call.
  "I'll take her! How soon can I leave?"
  Two weeks later Marie stepped off a plane in sweltering Bangkok, numb and exhausted from spending the past 25 hours in coach and layover. It was time to meet the love of her life, Faith Elizabeth, and she wouldn't have done it any other way.

 

Dust--An Ode to Spring

  Luke liked to throw the windows wide open on the first warm day of Spring. As soon as he would leave for work, Bonnie would go through the house and close them. She would get out her cleaning supplies and try to rid the house of the pollen. The yellow grit covered every surface.
  Bonnie would mutter unkind things about Luke under her breath as she wiped down the windowsills. She knew both the griping and the wiping were futile because Luke would open the windows again as soon as he got home, and they would argue about the dust.
  The Spring day when Bonnie realized she was pregnant, Luke didn't open the windows. "You can run the air if you like," he said, kissing her goodbye as she rested her forehead on the toilet seat. Bonnie was touched--for all of ten seconds. She figured his thoughtfulness wouldn't last much longer than pollen season.
  It seemed stupid to argue about something as small and fleeting as dust. Bonnie thought about the baby, who was probably no bigger than a grain of dust, who was causing her all this misery. She thought about Luke who seemed to float from job to job like the drifting pollen. She thought about the dust in her father's urn at the VA cemetery. Bonnie hoped the baby was a boy so she could name him after her father, but she knew Luke wanted a girl.
  It seemed like minutiae in the larger scheme of things. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.
  Bonnie's thoughts drifted like dust as she managed to get to her feet. She washed her face at the sink and decided she felt too horrible to wage war on yellow dust that day.

Persistence is Key

  "I want a cat," Phoebe insisted.
  She was starting to sound like a recording. Normally I could tune her out, but after a solid hour of this mantra, I was starting to develop a migraine.
  "No, Phoebe."
  "Please, I want a cat."
  "No." I began my own mantra, complete with visualization and "ohm."
  "Please, Grandma."
  I tried reasoning with her. "You know Cujo will eat any cat we bring home." Cujo was my Chihuahua.
  "No he won't. Please I want a cat."
  "What about the nasty litter box?"
  "It'll go outside, like Cujo does, Grandma."
  Never try reasoning with a seven year-old with her mother's my-way-or-the-highway personality. I switched back to my "no" mantra.
  Once Phoebe got an idea in her head, she would persist for days. Anytime I was in the same room with her, it was, "I want a cat. Please can I have a cat."
  We went to the SPCA on Saturday and looked at cats.
  "I want this one." Phoebe held up a kitten with fur the color of smoke.
  "It's going to cost us $150, Phoebe."
  "You can afford it, Grandma, you're loaded."

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Roads

  The road is lovely, shrouded in autumn leaves. My favorite colors, my favorite season. Glorious scenery flies by as I shift into 6th in my favorite car--the convertible Beemer I got as part of the divorce settlement. Poor Dave never knew what hit him. He doesn't believe in lawyers so I picked his carcass like a Thanksgiving turkey. My favorite holiday, but this year I'll spend it all alone. Dave never wanted children. I went along with his plans, thinking he'd change his mind someday.

  The road was impassable after the earthquake. I traded the Beemer in for a Range Rover. After one winter alone, I was looking forward to spring. I decided one winter was one too many and tried dating again. It was rocky and full of potholes, just like the road home. I called the DOT to fix the road and stopped going to bars. That's when I met Sherman in December. He was my UPS delivery man. (Did I mention I also gave up going to malls to shop?)

  After our first date, Sherman confessed that he had a daughter, Danika. She was six. We went to see her Christmas pageant. She was one of the angels. She turned out to have an angel's personality, too. I found myself falling into the long-elusive role of mommy and loving it, despite Dave's dire predictions. Now it's autumn again and I drive a minivan, with a car seat in the back, over the repaired road to my house.

Lifeboat

  Ma Ling needed a lifeboat. She understood the concept, but didn't know the Mandarin word for rescue. She knew that at the age of five, and with the added burden of missing fingers and toes, her odds of being adopted were slim to none.

Ma Ling watched the light-skinned, well-dressed people tour the orphanage on Fridays. They were always smiling, always taking photos, but they only had eyes for the baby girls in their arms. They never noticed the older girls, never spoke to them.
  Once a red-haired woman came to visit Ma Ling's room. She handed out lychee candy and smiled a lot. Ma Ling smiled back at her and tried to make her drab Hello Kitty t-shirt look presentable, but she knew not to get her hopes up. Sure enough, no one in Ma Ling's room went home with the lady.
  The orphanage director came to the room the next day and took photos of each of the five year-olds, something she had never done before. Lifeboat, Ma Ling thought. Send me a lifeboat.

  This is our Ma Ling. Our daughter Malani, adopted December 5, 2010 at the age of 8 1/2. We weren't her lifeboat--she was ours.

My First Memory

 

  I was lying in bed, although I was fairly certain it was a crib. It was dark and I remember thinking I should be asleep. I could hear the sounds of the house creaking, settling down for the night. I was afraid of the sounds, but not the darkness.
  I could hear the blood pounding in my ears, and I imagined it was the sound of soldiers marching across the floor, coming to get me. I knew about soldiers because my dad was one. I knew we lived in England because my mom mentioned it often. I knew my brother Scott was asleep in the same room. I wondered if he could hear the soldiers marching.
  I pulled the covers over my head and tried to shut out the noise, but it did little to muffle my runaway imagination.
  I've always had an imagination, coupled with insomnia. I've always heard the house creak at night. It was particularly bothersome years later when we lived in a Victorian white elephant that creaked all the time, day and night. I didn't have a decent night's sleep until I went away to college. The dorm was quieter than the house.
  I have many memories of sleepless nights, my ears perked up to note every creak, snore, or meow. I've written novels in my mind during those sleepless nights, so the time was never wasted.

Pain Expressed Heals, Transcends, Motivates. Pain With a Purpose.

  In the midst of my childbearing decade, I taught natural childbirth classes out of my home. The first-time parents who sought me out were older--knocking on forty in most cases--highly educated, mostly crunchy. The women needed haircuts, the men wore either Birkenstocks or ties. They sat on my living room floor in the lotus position and tried to visualize pain. What it would feel like. How she would accept it and work with it. How he would help her during labor.
  Once in a while, a nervous couple would ask me to be with them during labor and delivery as a doula. I would get a call late at night, drive to the hospital, spend eight to twelve hours coaching the mother to breathe through each contraction and showing the father how to press on her back and give her encouragement. I must have been a decent childbirth instructor because no one ever mentioned postpartum that the pain surprised them or that it was more than they could handle.
  My own childbirth pain was unbelievable, particularly my one induced labor on this day twenty years ago. When the contractions became five minutes long, all reason, all my so-called training, went out the window. I screamed though transition because there was nowhere else for the pain to go. The mothers I coached never screamed. I'm not sure how I could have helped them if they had screamed.
  Does pain have a purpose? Yes, sometimes. Today the pain of delivering my third child is a distant memory, but now I get to experience a different kind of pain: mental, emotional, and spiritual. The physical pain was a breeze, in comparison.
  Here's a photo of my four "pains" in chronological order: C-section, natural childbirth, the induced labor birthday boy, and C-section. I'd do it again in a heartbeat, but I thank God I don't have to do it again!

But Is It Art?

  George took up sculpting in retirement. At first Lucy complained about the mess because he chiseled the expensive blocks of granite until they were piles of gravel, and because George swore a lot when his statues turned into gravel. Then he would sulk. Then he would go out the next day and buy another block of granite.
  Lucy lined the flower beds with George's gravel and tried to be out of the house whenever he chipped the nose off his latest project.
  George kept at it, determined to create something beautiful out of the gray, unforgiving boulders. Lucy stopped keeping track of how much George spent on giant rocks and chisels. At least the house was paid for. She got a job at Target to pay the bills, and to stay away from George's potty mouth. She hoped sculpting was a phase, that George would get bored with it. Hadn't he given up golf, gardening, and bicycling after only a few months?
  But George had something to prove this time. He wanted to leave a legacy as an artist. But Rodin he wasn't.
  One afternoon, Lucy came home from work to find George in a good mood. "Come see what I did." She smiled indulgently and followed him out to the garage.
  She admired his work politely, curbing her urge to ask, "What is it?"
  "Doesn't it look like he's sleeping?" George traced the line of the neck and shoulder with a dusty finger.
  Now Lucy could see it. It was a man without a face.  (Artist credit: Herbis Orbis)

Name Something

  My son called it the loo or the W.C. No matter that he had never been to England or watched Downton Abbey. I chalked it up to a phase, an I-want-to-sound-sophisticated phase. For a while he insisted we call him Hank instead of Henry. His older sister just called him Stupid. Hank/Henry gave her a new name in return. He managed to twist Annalia into gonorrhea, and it stuck. I can't tell you how many times I've answered the phone to hear, "is Gono--I mean, Annalia--there?" I have no doubt I'll find Henry murdered in his sleep some morning. The joys of children.
  Henry also went through a phase where he called me Mother, but now he prefers to call me Kit--which is not my name. Sometimes I think Slave would be a more appropriate title. Gotta love those kids. I can't wait until they grow up and have to clean their own loos.

My Personal Miracle

  Words cannot adequately describe how much I love this infuriating teenager who has raised whining to an art form, who calls me Muumuu--yes, like the Hawaiian dress fat ladies wear--and rolls her eyes at her father. She slams her bedroom door a lot, and seems to have her iPod surgically attached to her hand, but I don't mind the drama, really.
  She is stunningly beautiful with her round face, long, shiny black hair, almond-shaped brown eyes, and bow of a mouth--and I can take no credit for any of her features.
  The first time I saw her photo, I knew she was my daughter. She had that imploring look, her pert bottom lip jutting out in a frown. I knew she needed me as much as I needed her.
  I carefully selected her name, one with meaning that she could be proud of: Maya--which has different beautiful meanings in several languages--and a Chinese name to reflect her unique heritage: Meilin. It means beautiful forest. It suits my beautiful daughter perfectly.
  On June 13, 2000 at 10:00 a.m., nine-month-old Meilin was placed in my arms for the first time in a hotel conference room in Hefei, Anhui, China. As my husband predicted, she didn't cry but I did. It was the most wonderful moment of my life. When you go halfway around the world to embrace a stranger's child as your own, that kind of love transforms you forever.
  Sometimes God sends children to you the traditional way, as He did with my four wonderful sons. Sometimes He expects you to search for them, as I did with Meilin and, ten years later, her sister Malani from Zhongshan, Guangdong, China. God creates the perfect match. No other experience has increased my faith like adoption. My longed-for daughter was my own personal miracle.

The Chair

  His favorite chair was older than me when we got married. The textured red fabric was so worn down on the seat and arms, you could see the individual threads hanging on for dear life. It was his mother's chair before it became his, therefore he would never part with it.
  Being a recliner, it had a tendency to recline whenever you didn't want it to, and the footrest always stayed up whenever you wanted to put it down. I suggested reupholstery once, but then the springs on the seat started to poke through the worn-out fabric and I figured, 'why bother?'
  The chair was banished to the man cave where it was draped with coats when the guys came over to watch football. It was a designated coat rack because it was too uncomfortable to sit in. Soon even the cat wouldn't sit in it, and that's saying something--this animal falls asleep in her own litter box.
  Yet still the chair remained a fixture in our home. It so closely resembled something you would find at the dump that I wondered if anyone would take it if I left it on the curb--as if he would ever consent to the chair being banished to the curb. It was his mother's, after all.
 

 

New Weekly Post Series: Sterling's Short-Shorts

   Seeing Beauty in Rust

   My dad knew nothing about fixing cars, but that didn't dampen his enthusiasm for collecting them. I have fond memories of playing cops and robbers in whatever rusted-out engine-less derelict that graced our yard. One year it was a Model T Ford. Next it was a hearse, which did run, but only got seven miles to the gallon. His collection included an original Impala, a VW Beetle, a rust-colored van with doors that sometimes flew open while it was in motion, and his personal favorite: a Ranchero. It was sort of a car-truck. I rode in the back because there was only room for three in the cab. This was before seat belts and child safety laws. It was a bit awkward riding home from church in a dress, sitting on a wheel hub of the Ranchero, but Dad looked so happy in the driver's seat that I tried not to complain.

   My mother had no reservations about complaining. She was never happy to have a car in various stages of disrepair sitting on cinder blocks in the backyard, but my brothers and I saw the vehicles as wonderful playthings, better than fancy swing sets or a sand box choked with weeds. From toddlerhood we knew what it felt like to sit behind the wheel and use our imaginations--something my own indoor, plugged-in children are sorely lacking.

   The rusty cars had character, like my dad. To this day I loathe HOAs that forbid cars on cinder blocks in the yard. They have no imaginations.