Writing on the Run

A photo of my daybook.
I was working on a poem on these pages.

I’m not a runner.  On occasion, I’ve been bold enough to tell myself that this time it will be different.  If I just stick it out, I’ll be able to run a distance without getting winded, without feeling like my heart is trying to fold itself up like a pair of freshly laundered socks.  

The only time I’m able to break this rule is in my writing notebook.  In here, I’m Usain Bolt.  I’m not running to tone and maintain, or to achieve Olympic gold, rather, I’m running for my life, my writing life.  In my notebook, I’m dodging the censor, and the cursor. 

When I have a blank page in my writer’s notebook, I see possibility.  I see the opportunity to simply write without judgment, mine or anyone else’s. .  Here I’m able to, as Don Murray discusses, write badly to write well.  I do not have the distraction of the blinking cursor, taunting me with each blink, or the audience for whom I’m writing whispering in the back of my head that my last line was awful.

Pictures of the important people in my life help provide me
writing inspiration, but also my support system.

I’ve made my writer’s notebook my safe place.  It is bookended by photos of all the people in my life who care for and support me: my husband, my daughter, my parents, my best friend, my mentor, and my dog.  These people provide me with plenty of writing material, but also are those who allow me the freedom to experiment, mess up, and try again.  This comfort allows me to take risks in my writing that I don’t allow myself to take when I’m staring at the cursor. 

There are fewer distractions for me when I’m writing in my notebook, even if the place where I am actually writing has more than noise and activity than a quiet classroom or office.  There are no red squiggly lines reminding me I’m an awful speller, no green hecklers prompting me to doubt my grammar knowledge.  I’m less judgmental about my writing, so I can just write.

When I journey through my writer’s notebook, reliving the writing I’ve recorded, I feel accomplishment.  In this notebook I have found understanding of another’s writing, felt the pain of watching a grandmother succumb to Alzheimer’s (not my grandmothers, but a grandmother of a character I created) and discovered truths about my family and myself. None of these discoveries would have been possible without the security of my writer’s notebook. 

I guess I am a runner of a different sort.  My sharpie pen is laced up, the open track of my notebook ready for sprints.

Sacredness of the Ordinary

It is smooth to the touch save for a dimple in the middle, silver, and the size of a nickel. In the rare moments she wants to cuddle, my daughter will perch on my lap, pull the necklace close to her, and align her thumb in the pendant’s middle—a cast of her one-year-old thumb.

That cast marks my transition to motherhood and my re-education of things I thought I knew.

The sleep deprivation of those first few weeks, standing in her bedroom, shirt wet from my tears and hers because I could not get the mandrake shrieks of my colicky child to stop, trumps any late night college study session. I also realized that fears I previously thought legitimate pale in comparison to the fear that gripped me as I witnessed a heart wrenching febrile seizure and the nerve-wracking ride to the hospital that followed. 

That first year was not all scary and frustrating lessons, however. There were many moments of joy: seeing not only myself, but my mother and grandmother reflected back in her bright eyes, which shortly after her first birthday changed from blue to hazel; watching her confidence grow as she toddled from the couch to my open arms; and, laughing as her diapered bottom swayed to the “Single Ladies” video.

I also learned to appreciate the fun in every day.  I remember someone asking me how parenthood was and replying that there was not a day since Evelyn was born where I had not laughed. Five years later, that laughter and appreciation for the lighter side of life continues, especially now that she has a newfound love for joke telling--and her knock-knock jokes don’t make any sense.

It is hard to fathom that the little girl whose thumb made this print is now a kindergartner, a little girl who loves to read—to her mother’s joy--a little girl who relishes in making new friends, and a little girl who is not afraid to make her voice heard—usually, but not always, to her mother’s joy.

In the end, the greatest lesson I learned in that first year, and continue to learn in the four years since, is how quickly time moves. This year, she went off to kindergarten, confidently strutting through the doors; tomorrow it will be middle school, and then high school and then college. Like so many mothers, I wish I could freeze time and keep her this age longer, to relish each minute.

Yet, with each passing year, I will have the memory of the first year that changed the way I defined myself—no longer just daughter, sister, wife and friend, but mother, first and foremost—cast in silver, smooth to the touch save for a dimple in the middle.