Posted on

grief erupts slowly.

It isn’t the anniversary of her death.

Nor is it fall, the season I usually start to feel her absence.

But, grief doesn’t run on a calendar, so that I can cross off weeks or months until the fog lifts. Grief rises to the surface, intermittent, unpredictable, like bubbles in a bed of lava.

I’d had an argument. One that couldn’t be dissected on my own. In the car, I reached for my cell phone and thought, I’ll call her quick. It’s been a while.

“We had a fight,” I would tell her. “What am I supposed to do?”

Then, the rise, the burst, the sting. I put the phone down and placed my hand back on the steering wheel. My chest sank in a long exhale. My head floated.

It’s early this year, this hurt. I’m not ready.

I count back, almost nine years ago, and remember. The look on my husband’s face when he had to say the words: your mother died. The shock. The quiet, as I shut out the world for a while. The first time I smelled her favorite brand of perfume at the mall; I laughed in horror, because my mind flashed back to the funeral home. Months later, in a store fingering votives, I could have swore she was standing behind me. Once, at a conference, a woman approached her friends and started talking about dinner. In my peripheral vision, she looked like my mother. With my ear turned, her southern accent mimicked my mother, too.

When confused or full of doubt, I still look for her. I will her to visit me in my dreams. Or, I pick up the phone without thinking. Even after so long, the loss still upturns my heart and mind. So much, that I sit down, write another story about her, and try to rehash those last conversations in person and over the phone.

Why did I say that? Why did I hang up so fast?

And, where do I go from here?

Posted on

The Science of Writing

I came upon this article from Real Simple Magazine the other day, where Jonah Lehrer writes about the science of thinking. He mentions indecision, which leads to panic, which I relate to well:

  • I can’t decide what I want to cook for dinner (because, really, I don’t want to cook dinner). Then, the kids ask the dreaded question: what’s for dinner? I panic.
  • I fall into half an hour of quiet time. For twenty minutes, I consider the pros and cons of doing this, that, or the other. Then, I realize I have ten minutes left to start and finish whatever I decide. I panic.
  • I want to insert a third bullet here, because I think three is better than two. But, I can’t decide which anecdote fits best. Oh, boy.

With interest, I read Mr. Lehrer’s 10 tips to streamline my thinking and rid me of constant doubt. At one point, he suggests I “consider alternative points of view.” So I did.

I re-read his article through my writer’s eye and honed in on a few correlations between the science of thinking and the science of writing:

He says, “Tap your emotions.”
My writer’s mind translates, Don’t just regurgitate them into a journal, channel that resentment or frustration or elation into a good story.

He warns, “Don’t think under pressure.”
My writer’s eye twitches. Pound out and publish that blog post too quickly, and you’ll spend the rest of the night in bed staring at the ceiling, in a panic.

He suggests, “Be skeptical of your memories.”
My writer’s mind preaches, If working on a “he said, she said” memoir, start wearing a wire. Even if your brain falters, your digital recording won’t.

He encourages, “Go ahead and daydream.”
My writer’s brain fantasizes, Write like you’re getting paid for it.

He advises, “Think about thinking.”
My writer’s head nods, Write about writing.

Then, my writer’s eye squints, And get back to rewriting that novel, missy.

Posted on

Emily Post Uncovered

EtiquetteI pulled out my copy of Emily Post’s Etiquette* today. I referenced her in my blog introduction. And while I’m not researching manners, I am easily offended, by people like the dentist or nurses in the doctor’s office or PTA presidents.  I wondered how more of her etiquette discourse might translate from 1922 to 2009.

I admit, I judged this author well before I ever read her. For years, mention of Emily Post threw me into flashbacks of meals at my sorority house.

Every Sunday we had a formal dinner. We were strongly encouraged to dress up and attend. Most of us showed up more for the house boys who served us, than for the food. One Sunday dinner, a visiting alum–or Emily Post groupie perhaps–gave a captivating presentation on the mysteries of the salad vs. dinner vs. dessert fork. On another occasion, my fellow sisters called me out to run around the table in my formal dress, while they clapped and sang an embarrassing reminder to “keep your elbows off the table, Christi Craig!” I assumed Emily Post set out with one purpose: to transform young sorority girls like us into proper women, “best society,” as she calls it in her book. After too many Sunday dinners, and several Women’s Studies courses under my belt, I left the sorority house and slammed the door on Emily Post.

Then, today, I read her definition of “best society”:

Best society is not at all like a court with an especial queen or king, nor is it confined to any one place or group, but might better be described as an unlimited brotherhood which spreads over the entire surface of the globe, the members of which are invariably people of cultivation and wordly knowledge (p. 2).

I fell into a moment of silence. I thought she only went as deep as cloth napkins and formal invitations. But, here she speaks against separate camps, in favor of “unlimited” brotherly love, and for international relations. A little further into the chapter, she says, “etiquette must, if it is to be of more than trifling use, include ethics as well as manners” (p. 3). Emily Post should be required reading in Political Science, I think: politics and etiquette, etiquette in politics.

I’m sure, well into the book, Ms. Post dives into details on when to wear gloves, how to serve tea, and how to behave in public. Still, I imagine that reading Etiquette could be like an archeological dig. Underneath all the niceties, I may find evidence of the true Emily Post: the woman behind the fan, the woman with her hat off and her hair down, the woman who wrote about manners in order to publish her own philosophy on life.

* Post, Emily. Etiquette. United States of America: Funk & Wagnalls Company, 1922.