an ode to a new pen: or, the joy of everyday objects

In terms of joy office supplies can bring, a new pen is second only to a new notebook. And oh, the thrill in a day that brings both a new pen and a new notebook: I would burst with the writing possibilities, if that were possible.

The new pen that I got today has that smooth, roller-ball ink flow that makes everything you write look important. The first time I put it to paper, my hand practically twitched with a desire to create something that would last generations.

And yet what I was writing was my to-do list for the day, and it was full of words and phrases that wouldn't make sense to anyone outside my company, let alone someone ages and ages hence. What I was writing with this new pen would just end up crossed off and thrown in the recycling bin at the end of the day, but I'm telling you, it was the boldness of the ink that made me want to switch to writing poetry or a letter to a long-lost friend. In the scratching of the pen on paper, I could almost hear a story beginning.

Why is it that things—and having the right thing to do a task—makes us feel like we are better able to do that task? I've thought of this before: What is it about having the right pen that puts me in the mood for writing?

Why do I feel like it has to be a certain kind of notebook, with a certain kind of line, before I can settle in to a writing mood?

This is all bordering dangerously on a self-judgmental tirade about how I use excuses for not writing. That's not where I intend to head.

I'm more aimed at this idea: I am what Laurie Colwin calls a "domestic sensualist," someone who drinks in the beauty of everyday objects and realizes that a pen, just an ordinary pen, can hold so much more than ink. These objects that we surround ourselves with can tell stories about the most normal, uneventful days of our lives, and that is why getting a new pen, one that writes so smoothly, can feel so momentous. It is a thing of beauty and possibility that we can touch every day.

That is also why I set the table for even weeknight meals with my grandparents' wedding china {a Noritake pattern with a pink rose and gold leaf} and why I use a demitasse spoon and a white cup and saucer for my morning coffee, even though it's just me and even though I'm in a hurry. Living with and using pretty, meaningful objects brings delight to even the dullest of days, and it helps me remember to look for beauty on those days when nothing seems to shine.

The new pen I got is just an object; it is just a utilitarian thing that I can use to craft my to-do list and write notes to myself. But it also creates a daring, bold line that seems to want to declare something, write something, live something.

Even though it's just a pen, it can remind me of this: Sometimes, we do the most mundane, routine things with the most mundane, routine objects—and we are flooded with joy at the mere ordinary beauty of it all.

l is for lunch

Recently, I've been reading books that either explicitly or implicitly remind me to slow down and appreciate the moment where I find myself.

From MFK Fisher, I've been sampling The Art of Eating, which is a book of essays on the joy of food. If there is anything to make you savor a moment, it is an essay on rich meals shared with a wealth of friends. Reading this book, you can't help but plan a dinner party in your head, one that hopefully comes off like something out of a Katharine Hepburn film.

For me, it doesn't hurt that MFK {should I start referring to myself as KA?} lived in Aix-en-Provence for a while and wrote a book about that little town where I lived, too, for a bit. Map of Another Town: When I read that for the first time, I was very much convinced that I was back in Aix, so when I looked up from the page and saw just the normal street outside my normal suburban apartment, I felt let down. Reading about MFK sitting in a cafe on the Cours Mirabeau felt like reading a much more literary version of my own journal.

In one essay in The Art of Eating (in this series called "An Alphabet for Gourmets"}, MFK writes, "A is for dining alone, and so am I, if a choice must be made between most people I know and myself. This misanthropic attitude is one I am not proud of, but it is firmly there, based on my increasing conviction that sharing food with another human being is an intimate act that should not be indulged in lightly."

And that is firmly what I believe. She wrote out my thoughts long before I was alive to have them, and here I am, nodding along with her through the rest of her essay. Is is good to take pleasure in the small moment of eating alone; MFK and I know this.

Take right now for instance. It is lunchtime at work, and I'm surrounded by the din of other people's conversations. They are discussing the Bears game; I don't have much to add beyond an awareness that they are playing tonight.

Or they are talking about how much Halloween candy they still have at home and should they bring it in? {No, by the way, is the answer to that. We have enough here from everyone else who thought of that idea first.}

These people around me are talking about any number of things, and I get to wrap myself up in their dull roar, their hum of connection. It is all to me nothing but so much background noise, and I sit here alone.

Oh, don't feel sorry for me. I'm looking out the window at this November drizzle and thinking of Normandy. This rain is a Normandy rain, a kind of rain I got to know quite well when I lived there. It is gentle and persistent, but here today, it is warmer than a typical rainy day there—at least in my memory. But it's quiet and beautiful, and I walked to the train station this morning sans umbrella—in honor of those Normans who see little need for an umbrella on a day like this, a day when it's barely but constantly raining.

Eating alone, I can let my mind wander, and that is why I don't want you to feel sorry for me: because in these moments at lunch, I don't have to think of anything particular or do anything productive. I can just be here, at a slowed-down pace, taking in where I am.

Just like MFK.

an introvert in the woods

Over the weekend, I took a little retreat from my normal life, or as I like to refer to it: I ran away from home for a night. It's so much more satisfying, by the way, to run away from home when you're old enough to drive.

I brought Miss Daisy the Pug with me to go camping at the Richard Bong Recreation Area near Kenosha, Wisconsin. I picked that because 1) it was the first thing that turned up with I googled "camping near Kenosha" that wasn't an RV store, 2) it was just an hour and 20 minutes away, and 3) I could reserve a campsite with just a few days' notice. All these campgrounds in Illinois, you have to reserve a week in advance, or of course, you can risk it and just show up.

Risking it is not in my genetic make-up, and if I'm going to drive an hour+ after packing a car of camping supplies, I would like to be darn sure that will be a campsite with my name on it at the other end.

So to Wisconsin I went, where they allow for my level of spontaneity: you can make reservations with 3 days' notice and feel assured of your "spur-of-the-moment" planning.

It was such a good decision.

I've never done the solo camping thing, although I am well-equipped for it. By that I mean that I have all the stuff necessary, but I also mean that I have the personality necessary. I told a few people at work on Friday what I was doing, and I received mostly comments of awe that I would dare to do that.

"Won't you be scared?"

"But it's so dark!"

"Who will you talk to?"

"What if you have a problem?!?"

"Are you going to pretend to be Thoreau and come back with your journals to publish? Are you going to talk exclusively about living deliberately when you come back on Monday?"

But all I kept thinking—ever since I made the reservation—was, "I can feel my soul expanding with this possibility of being so far away from my normal life." {No offense to all the people in my normal life.}

My introvert self was very much made for solo camping trips, and thanks to my parents, who began outfitting me with camping equipment when I was still quite young, I have everything I need to run away from home and pitch a tent and cook over a grill and pump my own water out of a spigot that looks like it's been there since Laura Ingalls Wilder was alive.

I love camping for many reasons, and it's one of the continual joys of my life that my parents raised me on a foundation of outdoorsy-ness. {It's such a joy that I've even written about it before when I was flying over the desert on the way to Las Vegas.}

I love camping now because it reminds me of growing up, and I can't set foot in a campground without remembering the hundreds of other campgrounds I've been in {all blending into a generalized one, of course, with a mish-mash of red rocks, mountain streams, and tall trees that always smell sweet in the morning air}.

I think about how my sister and I used to spend hours (it seemed) riding the loops of various campgrounds on our bikes. We'd read for awhile, bike for awhile, volunteer to go get water, set up our own steeplechase course {hey, you see what sorts of activities you come up with when you are so far from humanity that you start to think it's normal to shower just once a week}.

And in the evenings, our whole family would sometimes take long bike rides around whatever national park or state park we were in before settling in to play Hearts or study the stars. {All those star lessons, and all I can pick out with any confidence is Orion, Cassiopeia, and the Big Dipper.}

So I love camping for that nostalgic reason—but I also love it because it pares you down to the essential. Everything—from boiling water to cooking breakfast—takes longer than you ever budget for in your regular life, and there's a quiet beauty in saying: I would like coffee, but it's going to be a little while. Delayed pleasure and all that.

Your day essentially becomes about the survival tasks, and so instead of running from activity to activity, you take your time and focus on where you are. I am scrambling eggs over a grill. I am boiling water to clean the skillet. I am doing the crossword while drinking coffee.

I think that's what I needed when I ran away from home: to be present where I am. There is nothing else in a campground to distract me, unlike at home where I could always be cleaning a bathroom or organizing recipes or re-doing my budget. There's always some task to be done, but in a campground, I cannot do any of that.

I cannot clean the bathroom; it's a pit toilet and the thought of cleaning that is something to avoid contemplating for very long.

I cannot do laundry; I wear the same clothes for several days.

I cannot see friends; they are over an hour away back home.

When I was camping, it was just me and my little pug surrounded by trees and a soft dampness to the air that helps you remember that life is more than running from one thing to the next.

And as a bonus, when camping alone with a pug, you get to see faces like this all the time—faces that say, "But I thought we lived inside!"

a wagner matinee: thinking of willa cather in nebraska

Shostakovich's 5th Symphony is on the radio—it's Saturday night and Garrison Keillor's A Prairie Home Companion is featuring the St. Olaf Orchestra, and that's what they're playing.

Shostakovich. Just saying his name makes you sound like you're in the cultural know, as if you've taken in hundreds of concerts in hundreds of gold-edged halls from London to St. Petersburg and you can remember each of them with clarity that rivals the tone coming from the St. Olaf first-chair flute.

Shostakovich. I say it aloud in the car. I'm out on the edge of the prairie—Garrison Keillor reference there, don't know if you caught it—and heading east on I-80. I'm in Iowa but thinking of Nebraska and Willa Cather.

It must be the classical music: she wrote a short story called "A Wagner Matinee," and it's hard now for me to look at the prairie and not think of its main character—an old woman who years before gave up the music and culture and dances and high teas of Boston for a Nebraska farm and the man she loved. She returns to Boston in the story—leathery, work-worn hands, eyes that have squinted in the sun for too long, having heard no music since she left the East but splayed notes coming from an out-of-tune piano. Her nephew takes her to a Wagner concert, and it's no longer the prairie she hears and sees but the life she could've had.

The music crescendoes in the story, and I've always wanted to be sitting next to that old woman—no, more than that. Willa Cather makes you feel that you are that old woman: living and thankful for a life on the prairie that has its own richness, songs, color, and crescendoes, but at the same time, yearning {secretly, quietly} for the clash of the city, the hush of the concerts, and the beguiling knowledge that you're in the center of it all.

The concert ends. The Flying Dutchman and Tannhauser are over, but Aunt Georgiana doesn't want to leave. Her nephew thinks, "I understood. For her, just outside the door of the concert hall, lay the black pond with the cattle-tracked bluffs; the tall, unpainted house, with weather-curled boards; naked as a tower, the crook-backed ash seeldings where the dish-cloths hung to dry; the gaunt, moulting turkeys picking up the refuse about the kitchen door."

Out on I-80, I understood, too: with Shostakovich strains filling the car and abandoned barns and windmills, cows in their pasture, and dried out fields of corn {oh, the drought} filling the landscape, I understood.

The 5th Symphony became just the right soundtrack for that moment on the road. The swelling stings matched the swell of the hills, and I thought about what gumption, what daring, it must've taken to move out to the prairie and try to make a life here, as Aunt Georgiana did in the story and as my family did generations before me.

The piece ended and the audience at A Prairie Home Companion clapped. Wild applause for the orchestra, and I pretended it was a round of applause for all those who made the prairie a home so that years later, I could drive across it on a freeway and marvel at the orderly beauty of agriculture and hard work.

fortune cookie

"This place is notorious for terrible fortune cookies," my friend Sara said one Saturday night as we sat in this dimly-lit Chinese restaurant on Main Street Suburbia.

I probably didn't need to tell you it was a Chinese restaurant, what with the fortune cookie context clue and all, and I probably didn't need to tell you that it was dimly lit.

From my experience, unless a Chinese restaurant is located in a mall food court, it's only half-illuminated.

Why is this? Are the restaurants, normally filled by groups of women and families with children picking the cashews out of the cashew chicken, going for that romantic mood?

Is all of China operating under a partial blackout and so the American restaurants are trying to be authentic?

Because I like Chinese food, I refuse to think about the possibility that the restaurants keep you in the murky dark so you won't be disgusted by the real color of moo goo gai pan.

So there I sat in the half-dark {half-light? Is this revealing something about my optimism?}, full of egg foo yung and with a take-home carton full of egg food yung {so much food: why is there so much food at Chinese restaurants?}.

I reached for the fortune cookie, which I don't actually like. The staleness, the crumbs, the thin glue coating to add a sheen. No one actually thinks fortune cookies are fresh: why bother with the sheen?

I also don't like those games you're supposed to play with fortune cookies. You know, those games where you're supposed to add "in between the sheets" to the end of your fortune and then everyone laughs at the dirtiness of what you're all thinking. Everyone thinking the same thing at the same time, a phenomenon that doesn't often happen.

But after reading a dirty fortune cookie, everyone is thinking about that preposterous proposition, and most everyone is thinking about how full they are, stomachs bulged full with gooey sauce and sticky rice.

I cracked open the fortune cookie, shook off the crumbs, and pulled out the fortune.

I let the cookie clank down on my plate as I read:
You find beauty in ordinary things. Do not lose this ability.

Sara leaned over my shoulder. "What's it say? Isn't it just ridiculous?"

Beauty in ordinary things—no, it wasn't ridiculous.

It also wasn't so much a fortune as a command, and I didn't know how I felt about being bossed around by a slip of paper that until recently had lived in a bad cookie.

But I liked the idea.

I like the idea of finding highlights of pretty on a normal Monday afternoon: in the sun on the office building or in a co-worker's laugh.

I like looking for what draws the eye on a long drive through what other people would call the Middle of Nowhere: have you ever really looked at old barns, or how soybeans look so daring when they're just beginning to grow?

I like finding charm in a typical Chinese restaurant on a typical street in a typical suburb: who you're with in that very particular place creates the charm, you know.

I do this because our lives are full of normal days.

There are highlights, of course:

weddings and
holidays and
early outs from school and
long-weekends in both familiar and unfamiliar places.

But mostly what we live out, day by day, is a string of normal.

Days where nothing is out-of-the-ordinary and where we eat well, talk to people we love, and go to bed on time.

These are days to be thankful for, but if you aren't looking for beauty in ordinary things and ordinary times, then these stretches of normal can feel claustrophobic. Like they're cutting off your blood supply. Like you're sitting in perpetual half-darkness.

I can't live like that.

{I also can't live with one excitement right after the other. Always moving on to the next big thing and superlative topping. That's tiring. That's unsustainable. That's limiting in its grandeur.}

For me to appreciate the extraordinary, I need to enjoy the ordinary.

"No, it's actually a good fortune," I told Sara as I slipped it into my wallet and slipped out of the booth. Out of the restaurant and into the half-light of a late spring dusk.

april in paris

Continuing my trip down memory lane, here's another snippet from my time in France. I guess I should say this is a trip down la rue des souvenirs, if I want to be all French-y about it.

I wrote this for my hometown newspaper, too—you can read another piece I wrote for The Hawkeye here—and it's the only piece my editor suggested.

"Write something about April in Paris," she said, and this is what came out.

-----

Now it’s April and thank goodness I don’t have to live through the normal adage “April showers bring May flowers.” J’en ai marre de la pluie; I’ve had it with rain because it’s been raining since November. I want more of the sun, that brilliance of the day you can hear in Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong crooning “April in Paris.”

It’s impossible to be in France in the spring and not think of that song, even if you’re not in Paris.

I think of it almost every time I look out my window of my room here at lycée Jeanne d’Arc.

April in Paris
Chestnuts in blossom
Holiday tables under the tree…

Although I have to confess that I don’t know what a chestnut tree looks like, I’m convinced that I have one just outside my room. Chestnuts in blossom, as the song says. I open my big windows first thing in the morning and lean out to smile at the charm of spring, saying, “Salut, France!”

Because it is only April, the early morning air still catches in my throat, that briskness you know will grow into the fullness of a spring afternoon.

My tree has sweet pink flowers that cluster as a palette: light pink like a girl’s Easter dress, rosiness like a blush, mauve like a glossed-lip grin. The flowers hang on a blue canvas, the colors so delicate and whisper-like that I hold my breath against all this spring explosion.

But April in France is a taunt.

The weather goads you to not carry your umbrella, your constant fashion accessory, but those blue sky days are quickly followed by mean days of rain that you hoped had gone away.

In Normandy, they have a saying: En avril, ne te decouvre pas d’un fil: In April, don’t take off even one thread of clothing.

It may seem like spring, but don’t believe it until June. When I came to school in a skirt and flip-flops, my natural response to sunny days, I was lectured by many French women at lycée Jeanne d’Arc who think they are my French mother and therefore have the right to nag.

The world over knows that you can’t trust spring weather and that you have to enjoy it while you can.

So April in France is an excuse.

Wear a kicky new skirt with a spring pattern of flowers that you bought at full price because you had a weak moment. You walked by the shop window on a sparkling Wednesday afternoon and lost a little self-control in the immense possibilities of spring.

Looking at the sun’s rays highlighting the cathedral spire and listening to the accordion man play “La Vie en Rose” for the tourists, you were grabbed by the feeling that life is—is—isn’t it too much sometimes?

You had an urge that didn’t come from inside you but more from the sun, spire, flowers, cobblestones, sky: skip along the Seine with your arms held wide to hug the spring, a city-tied Maria from The Sound of Music.

But that’s silly, an urge to repress just like the want to scream in a very solemn place.

And so instead—

a change in perspective

Today, I needed a change in perspective and so I re-arranged my bedroom.

I've heard it said that paint is the cheapest way to redecorate, but you know, just by moving around some furniture, you can feel like you're in a new place, a new room, a new room.

You can get a change in perspective just by moving your bed.

I thought of this in the midst of a 9-mile run this morning. I spent several miles re-arranging my bedroom in my head. Would the bed be better against that wall? Would the dresser fit there? What about the artwork?

Running is useful for all kinds of things, including physical fitness and a sense of accomplishment.

But I also use it as rambling thinking time.

Under other circumstances, I wouldn't allow myself 30 minutes to imagine moving furniture.

On a sunny Saturday morning, though, a few miles into a long-ish run and completely music-less {Lent and its lack of distraction apply even on the running path}, I let my mind wander over art options and so when I got to the end of my run, I knew exactly what I wanted to do.

And somehow, my body wasn't tired enough from running, so I had the energy to move my bed. By myself. I thought of it as weight lifting to accompany my cardio exercise.

I will say: moving my bed and vacuuming was more fun than reps at the gym. If I keep this up, I could have constantly re-arranging furniture {new perspectives all the time!}; a home scrubbed so clean, there's no paint on the walls or sheen to the hardwood floor; and amazing arm muscles.

I am content with my change in perspective. The whole point of this was to make it possible for me to look out the window first thing in the morning. Without even getting out of bed, I can see the just-growing-light sky and the just-budding trees.

I can see my day before I even set foot on the ground, and I can say, "Thank you, Lord, for this day."

A chair for reading. Shoes for running.

And a curly pug tail because Miss Daisy wouldn't stay out of my picture.

A good good morning view.

how i know spring is coming

I know spring is coming because:

I slept with the windows open last night.

A bird woke me up. Actually, several birds. Now I'm imaging how frightening it would be to actually be awoken by a bird and not just by birdsong. Like one that pecked its way through your screen and then perched on the foot of your bed, staring until you woke up. I think The Birds and "The Raven" have ruined me for enjoying birds. {My experience with the robins on my balcony last year didn't help, either, but that doesn't mean I wasn't still smiling when I woke up this morning to birdsong.}

When I took little pug on her morning walk, I didn't wear gloves, and what a beautiful moment it was. Miss Daisy didn't seem as thrilled by this, probably because she never has to wear gloves.

And I know it's almost spring because of these things:

Gentle, golden morning light through sparse trees

Fresh greens—and little petals of white

Flower shoes {aka, shoes that are more stylish than practical}

my closet of happiness

There's just something satisfying and thrilling about filing, isn't there?

I'm not being glib.

When I file, my soul trills, the kind of trilling normally reserved for the first time someone you like accidentally {on purpose?} bumps into you.

I spent part of New Year's Day After surrounded by hanging folders, manila folders, tabs, and a recycling pile. I was going through my spare closet, located in my spare room/craft room/office.

I would like to point out that the closet wasn't disorganized before, but in my little world, there's always room for more organization. And color-coding. And ways to keep track of my life.

There are always more ways to bring my life in line, and that brings me calm, like how you feel when you wake up to a new snowfall and the streets haven't been plowed yet. To me, it always looks like the unbroken white is ready for a story to be told on it.

I didn't decide to re-organize the spare closet simply because it was New Year's Day After, although that did have a hand in it.

As I wrote on New Year's Day, I like to do things that day that I want to enjoy for the rest of the year. This year, I extended that to the whole weekend—the beauty, I guess, of having New Year's on a weekend.

Organization was slotted in for Sunday, New Year's Day After, and as I sat in the midst of paperwork—I thought of it as a moat, which I guess would make me a castle—I decided to create a closet of happiness.

I think that calls for caps: A Closet of Happiness.

Instead of thinking of it as the mismatched, hodge-podge, slash closet {paperwork/fabric/storage/miscellany}, I decided to put in there things that make me happy.

Not so I can sit and stare at it when I'm in a fouled-up mood—willing myself happy by some sort of shrine I've built to that glib-est of words to describe an emotion we all aim for.

I've always, by the way, harbored unhappiness about the word happy. We English speakers over-work it, making it serve as a good wish {Happy birthday!}, as well as a way to convey joy and contentment {a much deeper sentiment than the happy birthday wish you write on someone's Facebook wall}.

Doesn't the word contentment feel better and fuller than the chipper little happy?

I have just decided to rename my Closet of Happiness the Closet of Contentment.

In it are things that bring me calm.

Sewing projects.

Boxes of old letters and cards. I save them all and think ahead to the day when I'm 92 and I read through them all.

Cleaning supplies.

My files. Of course.

The Normandy flag—where I used to live in France. It has two leopards on it, looking very regal and very much like they should be protecting William the Conqueror, that man from Normandy who took over England in 1066.

That Norman invasion is how we got so many French words in English, something I learned in my college language classes. The textbooks from those classes are in the Closet of Contentment, too.

I'm going to show you a picture of my Closet. I believe it belongs on the front of Real Simple. Or that Jesus is smiling down on my Closet—look at that ray of bright shining approval emanating from my Closet.

If you have any questions about what you see, lined up so adroitly in my Closet, let me know. I have a contented reason for everything in here.

i have something to brag about. i think.

A short list of things I am not good at:

1. quick mental math
2. dancing, at least the non-structured kind. I will gladly tango any day, but do not make me re-visit memories of high school dances. Pretty dresses, yes, but bad music I pretended to know while I danced awkwardly with my date, no, never again.
3. bragging about myself

I especially struggle with that last one, which is probably a good thing. Nobody like a braggart. {But braggart is a very fun word to say. And type. Try it. It reminds me of Bogart.}

I'm rather good at bragging about other people. For example:

My sister—it's her birthday today—is one of the smartest people I know. She does a job I don't entirely understand, partly because it's a top secret Air Force job and she can't tell anyone what she really does, but also because it involves physics and I remember just the basics of physics.

Here's a re-enactment of a conversation we had at Thanksgiving, complete with my inner monologue:
In Kamiah's Head: I like her t-shirt. It has a kitty cat on it. Since we are so divergent in what we wear, I should compliment her on her clothing choice.
Kamiah: Ooh, your shirt is cool.
Sister: Thanks! Funny reference to Schrodinger's cat, eh?
In Kamiah's Head: OMG, who is Schrodinger? Was that the name of the bad guy on the Smurfs? He had a cat, right? A cat who tormented the Smurfs? Does the cat on her t-shirt look anything like a Smurf creation? Why isn't it blue?
Kamiah: [utter silence that lasts for too long, followed by a guffaw] Yeah, funny.
Sister: Yeah, is the cat dead, or what?
In Kamiah's Head: OMG, they killed something on a children's show??!!?
Sister: Ahh, entanglement.
Kamiah: Hey, think you'll see that movie Tangled? I heard it's the last fairy tale Disney will ever do.
In Kamiah's Head: Please please please please please let her be distracted by that.

{Note: If you remember as much as I do about Schrodinger's cat, you can learn more about it here.}

So yeah, my sister is super smart and does lots of super top secret smart things in the Air Force. She may or may not also have a cat. It might be dead. Which is sad. But happiness: it's her birthday today!

But I still struggle to brag about myself.

Right now, I have some brag-worthy news, but my dang Midwestern modesty is getting in the way.

Therefore, I'll simply bulldoze through the modesty with my directness: I submitted some of my writing to a local literary journal, and it got accepted.

There, that wasn't so bad, although granted, that wasn't bragging so much as simply announcing.

But yeah. I'm getting published.

There's a publication party tomorrow, which—and you're under no compulsion to know this—is my birthday {yes, my sister and I have back-to-back birthdays—two years and five hours apart}, so I'm thinking of this party as a birthday party all for me.

I hope they have those little smokies. Ooh, and maybe a cheese tray. Perhaps some sort of cake, as well.

I submitted four pieces, but I don't actually know what they accepted. Perhaps all of them. Perhaps just one. I'll let you know. In a non-bragging sort of way.

In a helpful sort of way, here are links to what I submitted, should you want to review them and think, 'Would I publish this?'

{This thought is especially helpful if you're a publisher. Let me know if you are, and I'll save you a piece of cake from my birthday party/publication party. That's my way of bribing you.}

delayed pleasure {a poem}
tell me again {another poem}
about my mother's tattoo {a funny, funny piece about, obviously, my mother's tattoo}
some like it hot {about the time i learned i'm not a handyman}


I have to admit, there is a small part of me that would like to brag, so I'm going to put it in small type. Maybe you won't even read this, and then I don't have to feel guilty for bragging.

Oh my word, oh my word, oh my word! Someone who is not my mother read something I wrote and decided it was pretty okay!

And they want other people to read it!

I know it's just a local thing—it's called the Prairie Light Review, by the way—but does that even matter? You have to start somewhere, right?

I'm going to be officially published, and on my 29th birthday, which seems like it must be significant somehow but I don't want to try to think too hard about symbolism right now.

I also don't want to think too hard about other people who had published a lot more by their 29th birthday because comparison is a1a) not really part of bragging, b2b) never helpful {unless you want to help yourself into a cranky mood}, and c3c) certainly not appropriate on your Birthday Eve.

So yes: I'm getting published, and I'm a little smile-y about that.

Thank you for letting me brag a little bit. Also for reading my stuff. Yeah, especially for that.

a caramel christmas. but first: shouting.

I have one more way to interpret that original question—what is it about a little bit of light that fills us with such wonder this time of year?

It's the Hallmark Channel interpretation. The Hallmark Channel brings the Currier and Ives print to life and then plays it on repeat from Thanksgiving to Christmas. Lifetime does this, too, and I think ABC Family is also playing Christmas movies non-stop.

The Hallmark Channel symbolically represents the all-Christmas-all-the-time view that has taken over, and it makes us think that Christmas is about more.

For the entire month of December—no, let's admit it, the Christmas "season" starts before Thanksgiving and perhaps even before Halloween in some stores—there's a shouting match for our attention: BUY MORE, SPEND MORE, DO MORE, BE MORE, MAKE MORE PERFECT MEMORIES, EAT MORE, DECORATE MORE.

We start to think we must make room in our hearts for Jesus—and room above the hearth for a 52-inch TV. Because if we don't buy that as a present, then we don't really love whoever thinks they want that.

If we're not careful, Christmas can become nothing but noise as we listen to those shouts for our attention and money and time.

-----

Christmas is a time when we can more distinctly feel the pull in disparate directions.

The spiritual. The familial. The shopping-al. {Not a word, I know, but I liked the parallel I had going there with the -al. I guess I could've used the word financial. Eh, too late to take it back now.}

The last thing you want to feel during Christmas is stretched so thin that people can see through you, and that is why I encourage you to approach Christmas as if it were caramel this year.

Yes, caramel. Because:

1. it's malleable: I'm going to sound really trite here, but Christmas takes on whatever shape you give it. You don't have to stick with certain traditions, and you can buck expectations {especially self-expectations}.
   
   You don't have to craft your own Christmas cards and have them mailed by the first week in December—if you don't want to. You don't have to decorate—if you don't want to.
   
   You can watch every Christmas movie ever made—if you want to. You can give up something for Advent—if you want to. The point is to shape Christmas as you want it.
2. but it can also be hard: Hard as in difficult or hard as in rigid. The difficult part we don't need to get into: holidays come with baggage, even if you don't travel anywhere {lame joke}. Let's look at the rigid, as in rigid boundaries. It's important to put up a good fence or wall or some other kind of protective barrier around what you want to do to enjoy Christmas. This may mean that you don't say yes to every party you get invited to—but instead say no knowing that you shouldn't socially max yourself out.
   
   It's okay to say no sometimes. Some people have trouble believing that, particularly during the holidays when you're supposed to be happy and friendly and cheery all the time, at all costs to your own little soul.
   
   Because of your little soul, trying hard to truly celebrate Christmas, you do need a bit of a hard edge to your boundaries.
3. it's made out of basically one ingredient: Christmas can be simple: friends, Jesus, family. What's the one thing about Christmas you enjoy so much?
4. but you can make it more complicated by adding other things to it: Please scroll back up to the part where I talk about how it's okay to say no to stuff during the Christmas season. When you start trying to please everyone, from your boss to Martha Stewart to Good Housekeeping, you start losing track of how Christmas is supposed to be fun.
5. it's a challenge to get just right: I don't know anyone who's figured out the best Christmas balance and been able to stick to it every year. Every year, we all need reminders of how to truly celebrate without wanting to slowly pull our own teeth out because that might be less painful than this blessedly exhausting holiday season.
6. but when you do, man, that's sweet: Literally sweet, in the case of caramel. And in the case of Christmas, you know what moments I'm talking about. The little or big ones where everyone gave a contented sigh at once. The time when you were little and you woke up at 3am on Christmas morning, peeked through the curtains, and saw a bright shining star that looked like it could be the Star of Bethlehem. Whatever sweetness is to you, look for snatches of it this Christmas.
7. and even if you don't get it right, you most likely still have a good story about you leaning too close to the pan, staring at the sugar, waiting for it to turn the right auburn color, talking to it and demanding to know if it's done yet: Not to sound too much like your mom here, but you can always learn from bad experiences, and later, you may even be able to laugh about them. A bad Christmas does not mean you're a bad person with a bad family and bad friends and a bad dog and bad hair. It just means that you get to try again next year to have a good Christmas.

Merry Caramel Christmas!

it's beginning to look a lot like christmas

"After Thanksgiving, pumpkins just look out of place," I said to my sister and brother-in-law the day after Thanksgiving.

We were driving by a house in Burlington that had a row of pumpkins out on the deck. A day before, they were just-the-right-thing. They were appropriate and festive, but 24 hours later, they looked wrong to me.

"Are you going to blog about that?" my brother-in-law asked from the back seat. It must've been something in my tone that tipped him off. I said that pumpkin thing with a twinge of Kathleen Kelly in You've Got Mail when she's talking about autumn in New York City and she gets excited over Scotch tape.

Anything that sounds like a rhapsody on a completely normal thing is probably going to end up as my next blog post.

{Also, Sid has clearly picked up on my trick of testing out material on people I know. If I get a good response to something I say, I write about it. If you want me to stop writing and you know me, stop being enthusiastic, laughing, saying things like, "Oh, you should write about that!"}

As soon as Thanksgiving is over, I make the mental transition to Christmas. We're talking as soon as the dishes are clean and the leaves are taken out of the table so that it's back to its regular size {and not stretched to seat 10 people}—I'm ready for holly-jolly.

Given my demand that no Christmas decorations appear until after Thanksgiving, I know that I'm expecting too much of society. Slash expecting too much of myself.

For my demands to be met on a society-wide level, we need an army of elves or perhaps just a very committed group of volunteers, propelled by Christmas spirit and sugar and/or caffeine.

I want them to take down and properly deal with all fall-related decorations, which should be left up until Thanksgiving. Leaves in yards count as fall-related decorations.

Simultaneous to that, I need this little elf/sugar army to paint the town red. As in Santa Claus red, but it should be done tastefully. By that I mean according to my tastes.

No inflatable anything in the front lawn, but especially no inflatable snowglobes.

Nativity scenes should not be made of Disney characters. That's just confusing for the kids, who are trying to remember that Jesus isn't Santa Claus; we should not put on them trying to remember that Jesus isn't Mickey Mouse.

Every house should have a light theme: blue, white, multi-colored. Pick one kind and stick with it.

Those light-up deer—you know, the wireframe ones with twinkle lights on them—are acceptable.

There are other rules, but I won't get into them. I don't want to seem too demanding/judgmental/unappreciative of other people's Christmas cheer.

All of these strong opinions on decoration come out of an intense love of Christmas, its traditions, and the build-up of the season.

They also come out of an intense desire to welcome and appreciate and savor every season, especially the holiday season. I take great joy in anticipation, but as evidenced by my pumpkins-are-out-of-place thought, I incline toward a rush to move on.

Get to the next season.

The next celebration.

I don't like that inclination, that headlong fling, picking up speed as I race down the hill, falling forward into the next.

Does anyone else do this? Work so hard to appreciate the moment—and then jump ahead to the next?

I'm making an early new year's resolution to not do that this Christmas season. I will appreciate the build-up and the wind-down. I will not always be thinking of forging ahead, as if my being depended on newness.

To begin, my Christmas traditions, created several years ago to slow me down as the build-up to the holiday threatens to make me go too fast...

• Watch The Mary Tyler Moore Show Christmas episode from the first season while putting up the tree
• Meditate on the Magnificat at least 3 times a week
• Read the Christmas story every week
• Read A Miracle on 34th Street, the version I got from my aunt when I was 8, the one illustrated by Tommie DePaola
• throw a Christmas cookie baking party {this year's party might be expanded to include crafts}

{Note to self: take down fall decorations tonight.}

take comfort

It's the first of the month, and I can't help but think of my friend Lauren, who is, most likely, sitting in a cafe at this very moment reading the newest issue of Real Simple.

I know this because that's her tradition. She subscribes to Real Simple and so she gets the next month's issue two weeks or so in advance. And then she saves it until the calendar page flips.

I've never discussed this particular part of the tradition with her, but in my head, when she pulls that magazine out of the mailbox, days and days before she will actually read it, she doesn't even deign it with a glance. She averts her eyes, shoves the magazine to the bottom of the mail pile and becomes quite taken with everything else that came that day: bills, flyers, the passing paper of daily life.

I see Lauren wanting to crack open the magazine, just take the littlest peek. Especially at this time of the year—when November's issue arrived in mid-October, who wouldn't be giddy to think ahead to that very autumnal feast of Thanksgiving, followed quickly by ornaments and wrapping paper and gift lists you should get started on in, say, mid-October?

But she doesn't.

She gives herself a treat every month, right there at the beginning of the month. She schedules a bit of break in her busy life, and from the outside, it's just this small thing.

It's a magazine.

It's a Starbucks in suburbia.

It's learning new uses for old things and plotting easy weeknight meals.

It's just a cup of coffee, surrounded by other people who are busy, too.

Oh, but it's more than that, and Lauren, more than anyone else, has taught me joy of everyday ritual. She's a mentor of mine in that way, although I'm sure, as she's reading this, she's laughing out loud, a practically-shouted "HA!" She thinks she doesn't have anything to teach me, but we all have something to learn from the people who criss-cross our lives and criss-cross our hearts.

Lauren is the kind of person who, when I told her that the flowers on my balcony weren't doing so well this year, said, "Oh, K!" That's what she calls me, an abbreviation usually preceded by that OH, which makes it feel like she's constantly reassuring me. I like that.

"Oh, K!" she said. "Maybe this is just your year for mums. Maybe your garden will be best in the fall."

And just like that, I laughed. I felt better about my flowers, and I started to anticipate {more than I normally do} fall. Maybe it would be my year for mums. Such a thing to look forward to!

Lauren has mastered this, this looking forward to what other people may classify as mundane. And that means that her life is filled not with the mundane {although inevitably, there are slices of it here and there} but with small flashes of anticipation. It's all in how you see what's coming your way.

She gets excited by Mondays because they mean a new week is beginning and you never know what may happen in a week.

Her favorite holiday is New Year's, not because of the crazy party, but because it's all about looking ahead and dreaming about what the year could bring.

When she comes to visit me, she doesn't need to be taken into the city, out to a swanky bar, charmed by the theater. What she wants is to see what my daily life is like here in this niche I've carved out for myself. She wants to meet my friends and hang out at my favorite cafe and go grocery shopping.

{This makes planning for her visits very simple.}

There's that Starbucks ad campaign going right now: Take comfort in rituals. For a country looking for familiarity and connection and reassurance {my positive spin on the current election season, which will, thankfully, be over tomorrow}, that slogan pulls.

It reminds us of the big rituals, our cycles of routine: of children trick-or-treating dressed as fairy princesses and Luke Skywalker and of Thanksgiving turkeys and of mistletoe.

And those do bring comfort.

But it's the little rituals that get us through another Monday, another month, another challenge.

It's stopping for your morning coffee, wherever that may be. It's meeting a friend for a quick workday lunch at a sandwich shop halfway between your offices. It's having a favorite TV show. It's the smell of just-dried sheets and the sound of your furnace kicking on.

It's Real Simple at a cafe on the first of the month.

I just saw that Lauren called while I was writing this; in her message, she said, "It's November 1st, and I bet you know where I am!"

I do. I sure do.

And now I'm thinking: What are small traditions I could create out of the everyday? What are small traditions you could create?

what do you think jane austen should've prepared you for?

I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time during a three-day blizzard my junior year of high school. My family lived {and my parents still live} on top of the Mississippi River bluff in Iowa; unless we wanted to slide straight from the top of the hill and onto the frozen river, there was no way we were getting out of our house.

We all adapted to this in our various ways. My mother, for example, made cheese souffles for breakfast and squeezed her own orange juice—anything to fill more time. With that plan, breakfast took until it was time to start lunch.

And I read. I found Pride and Prejudice on one of the many disorganized bookshelves in the house—most likely sandwiched between a cost accounting textbook and a guide to the best National Park hikes {the eclectic reading of parents who are both accountants and like outdoorsy stuff}.

In a classic—or stereotypical—book nerd moment, I barely stopped reading Jane once I started. I do remember being amazed at and eating the cheese souffle. I do not remember changing out of my pj's, even though reading Jane made me want to wear some sort of empire waist dress.

So there's the beginning. And we can skip over the boring stuff where I read all her other books and got a degree in British literature and visited her house in Bath. {If there had been a life-size wax figure of her, I would have a picture posing next to it. I really would.}

Instead we'll skip straight to: reading early 19th Century romances doesn't prepare you for the reality of the 21st Century, living on your own in a new city and trying to figure out what it means to be grown up {and accepting the fact that the definition can change daily}.

I know that's not an epiphany. If you want to prepare for the reality of the 21st Century, obviously you read lots of self-help books and watch reality TV. Everyone knows that.

What, exactly, did I think my extensive Jane Austen reading prepared me for?

Jane Austen prepared me to be swept off my feet by a guy—but only after I made the careful, well-explicated, and understood decision to jump into his arms and tell him to sweep away.

She prepared me to be Elizabeth Bennet: hard-edged diamonds of words and a sardonic smile and “Why, Mr. Darcy!” in that English intonation of up-down sing-song.

I learned to embody Elinor Dashwood: distrustful of emotional outbursts because they can be like that too early burst of spring. For one day in early March, when it's 65, you're almost able to feel summer's flip-flops. You start to imagine cook outs and afternoons reading in the park and sleeping with the windows open.

Then it snows the next day and winter feels more frigid than before. That's why you don't let your emotions get ahead of your logic, and that's what Jane Austen prepared me for.

She taught me to maintain distance until your footing is sure.

She prepared me for the depth of an “I hate you, I hate you, I...love you” relationship.

She made me demand to be appreciated for my intellect.

I learned that there's joy in small revelations and that the heart can break on even the tiniest of them.

Jane Austen prepared me to face embarrassing relatives, self-centered friends, enemies with smiling faces, unwanted marriage proposals...

But Jane Austen didn't prepare me for this: the life I find myself living and enjoying and appreciating and laughing at {and getting angry at} and wanting more of.

That's all right, of course. And it's kind of nice to have a standard line to pull out when I'm surprised by a turn on a path I thought was straight—or a path I thought I knew so well.