Anyway, I’ve never ‘officially’ learned to sew though I’ve tried it and I even have a little Kenmore Beginner Sewing Machine but I only used it once– it intimidated me! All those knobs and bobbins and things.

My mother was an avid sewer. She spent hours in dim light, slouched over her machine. Her foot on the peddle like she was Speed Racer. Making everything from placemats to dresses to hats to shirts made of terrycloth (for me–yes, I was a trend-setter).

The rattle of the sewing machine is right up there with the dishwasher and clothes dryer when it comes to nostalgic sounds of my youth.

She also cussed like a sailor when she sewed. She’d rip seams apart like a serial killer and throw whole bolts of fabric across the room. But when she really got into the groove of her sewing she was lost for hours, cigarette in the corner of her mouth.  I remember watching the Playboy Channel through the lines, the volume down, while she sewed, her back to the television.

One time she sewed through her finger and the needle broke off–still in her finger. It had just nudged the bone. She called the doctor and he told her to pull it out with a pair of pliers! So she did. Then she downed a glass of White Zin and went back to the prairie dress she was making.

Anyway, this class I’m taking is called “Getting to Know Your Machine” and that’s what I intend to do. Oh, and we are making a tote-bag! Could it be any gayer? What I’d really like to do is use my sewing machine for my collages– I’d like to sew/put stitches on paper (<—like this cool blogger). For those of you who sponsored me in the Blazing Laptops Write-a-Thon, you might get your collage or postcard with some fresh stitching on it!

I wonder if, tonight at the class, when all of the sewing machines around me are buzzing, I’ll get that sensory perception? Might need to stop by the Station Bar after for a glass of White Zin!

Lovely here– snow fell yesterday and we went to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I misread the website for the museum– thinking that the Costumes of Edith Head was an exhibit, when in fact it is a film series. So we walked around the museum and saw some Toulouse Lautrec and an exhibit about music, Seeing Songs which included this funny, endearing video installation featuring about thirty videos of people singing Madonna songs all at the same time.

I’ve been keeping warm, wearing Ted‘s silk long underwear and his puffy winter jacket. Also, this super warm (and, don’t you think, fashionable) Cowl’s Neck that I bought from Etsy seller Pip Robins. She makes them all herself and they are expertly tailored and chic. I’ve been getting lots of compliments. Well, ok, I’ve been complimenting myself but I did get one for my Sister-in-Law (Ted’s brother’s wife) who loved hers too. If you want to treat yourself to a New Year’s treat, I suggest checking out Pip Robins’ etsy store.

Ted and I walked around Cambridge. And, of course we stoppe in at the Harvard Book Store–where I could

spend hours, days. We then cut through Haah-vaad, Ted’s ole alma mater. It was just getting dark and the lights made the whole place glow like an old oil lamp.

Ted’s family is wonderful and we celebrated Christmas last night, whereupon I was given two lovely sweaters for Vermont. I think tomorrow, though I’ll need to go out and get one more pair of thermals and also some gloves and long wool socks, just in case.

Ted gave me Joyce Carol Oates’ book on writing: The Faith of a Writer–Life, Craft, Art, which I read a few of the essays last night.

One of the essays is called “The Writer’s Studio” where she muses on her writing space.

“The precious room-of-one’s-own. The private place, the sanctuary. to rephrase a famous remark of Robert Frost, our private places are those that, when we seek entry, we are never turned away.”

and also:

“Rarely do I invent at the typewriter (a Japanese-made Swintec 1000 with an approximate ten-page memory, printing capacity, storage for disks), and virtually never do I try to foce anything into prose in this way. I need to imagine first, purely without language; and then remember.”

I myself find it hard to invent at the typewriter, though I do it more now than I did in Grad School, during my MFA. I’ve always used notebooks to plan, sketch, and outline.

**I did a search for Swintec 1000– very cheap machine! I wonder how well or how it works

I was quite a liar as a child, though I like to think of it as more honing my story-telling skills.

I lied to my third grade class , telling them that I had a monkey (and this became an essay, “Son of Kong,” published in Pindeldyboz in 2006).

I had a penpal when I was in 4th or 5th grade (inspired by Big Blue Marble, no doubt). She was about the same age, lived in NYC and was an actress (I believe she was an understudy in “Annie,” or so she said…). I was so envious of her accomplishments that I wrote her and told her I was going to be in an upcoming episode of General Hospital. My sister, Andrea, found my penpal’s response in my bedroom and said to me one day: I’m looking forward to seeing you on General Hospital, Bobby!

Doh!

I asked my class to try to analyze, maybe at the end of their free-write, why they told the lie, or rather, what it really meant.  Was there some deeper meaning? Some back-story?

Then a few of them read their piece out loud.

One student read a moving story of how in the 1960s his beloved teen-aged older brother was in a car accident that permanently debilitated him. In order to protect his brother’s tough-guy, ladies-man reputation he lied and told his classmates that his brother had been involved in a fight, protecting someone’s honor and that was why he was in the hospital.

Poetry is a Kind of Lying by Jack Gilbert

Poetry is a kind of lying,
necessarily. To profit the poet
or beauty. But also in
that truth may be told only so.

Those who, admirably, refuse
to falsify (as those who will not
risk pretensions) are excluded
from saying even so much.

Degas said he didn’t paint
what he saw, but what
would enable them to see
the thing he had.

(from famouspoemsandpoets.com)

What lies have

YOU told?

That’s me, second from the right, in the blue vest and (of course) tennis shoes. Me and the other boys from my Sunday School class, circa 1979–thirty years ago, St. Alban’s Episcopal Church in El Cajon, California.

My hair is so shiny blond, like a Breck Girl Ad.

Here’s a memory: I was an acolyte at the church. I wore the robes, the cross. Lit and snuffed out the candles.

When the congregation said “Holy, holy, holy” it was my job to simultaneously ring the bells.

The first time I had to ring the bells I practiced outside of the church for at least an hour before the 8 a.m. service, ringing them over and over and over and saying holy holy holy. My mother was setting up the coffee and punch and cookies for after the service (either that or she was working with the altar guild, setting up the wine and wafers). My wrist began to ache but I wanted to get it down.

Finally, Mrs. Treat, the wife of our priest, Father Treat (they lived at the church), came out in her slippers and housecoat to tell me to “please stop, God doesn’t expect perfection.”

The reason they decided to write about me is that I have an essay just out in a new (World Famous) Chicken Soup for the Soul book. This book is called Divorce and Recovery: 101 Stories about Surviving and Thriving after Divorce.  No, I haven’t been divorced, but my mother divorced my father, and I wrote an essay about it a few years ago. I don’t remember how I found the call for submissions for this; maybe It was online? I’m not sure. But I submitted the essay on the Chicken Soup website which is very comprehensive and easy. The next thing I know they wanted it for their upcoming anthology.

The Chicken Soup for the Soul folks are always looking for essays for upcoming books, they pay, and they are some of the most organized, friendly editors i’ve ever worked with. It was a pleasant experience and one of the easiest, quickest turnovers for a publication i’ve ever had.

I was surprised, though, when I got an email from the CSS publicist saying there was a La Jolla Newspaper that wanted to profile me for the piece. After a couple more emails I finally spoke to the reporter, Maria Connor, also a very nice, very smart person. I think i’m a bad phone interview, though; I kept saying ‘umm.’

Anyway, she put together a good, concise write-up, and included the sweet picture of me and my mother at the beach, circa 1970.

As well as this very airbrushed picture of me from a few years ago.

To read the online version of the article click here. It tells you a little bit more about the essay I wrote.

If we’d stayed in San Diego we probably would have gone to happy hour on Friday, and then maybe hung out with some friends again on Saturday or Sunday, and caught up on the shows we’ve Tivo’d. But instead we were in Arizona– we didn’t leave the house really until Sunday for a few hours to see a high school friend of Ted’s and to drive through Tempe, AZ where I had gone to college/undergrad (ASU).

My sister needed me, and I wanted to see her. I wanted to make sure she was going to be ok. And I believe she is. Allyson is four years older than me, so growing up– especially when I was a teenager– we often felt we had nothing in common. She was so ‘adult’ to me. But I love the relationship–the friendship– we have now. We can talk about just about anything. We have husbands whom we love and who love us and care for us. We talk about books, movies, TV shows. We, amazingly, talk about politics– something we never did growing up. We both have a hope for the future with Barack Obama as our president.

When I was in Arizona this past weekend I was visited by tiny flashbacks, scenes from my life, our life together.

–I remembered being eleven or twelve and the smell of clove cigarettes coming from under Allyson’s bedroom door.

–I used to sneak into Allyson’s room to look in her Hope Chest– where she kept an old quilt handed down by my grandmother, books by VC Andrews (Flowers in the Attic, anyone?) and Playgirl magazines.

–I would sit on Allyson’s Hope Chest (after raiding it) and listen to her albums on a stereo– fascinated by Fleetwood Mac (and the highly sexualized cover for Rumors), Blondie, AC/DC.

Growing up, Allyson was such a mystery to me: she was older, wiser, worked a full-time job by the time she was seventeen, had a serious boyfriend, took care of my middle sister and me after my mother died–including the bills, the sale of our house, the insurance, social security for me, grocery shopping; she was only 20… I didn’t fathom, at the time, just how much she was doing, how much was thrust upon her at such an early age; it’s only something i’ve come to understand later.

She doesn’t see how strong she really is. How much of an inspiration she has been to me.

Here is a picture of Allyson, my best friend Bjarne, and me, Universal Studios, 1979.

We’re lifting a van.

And my sister Andrea, then Allyson, and Me (in the faux leopard print bathrobe, of course), Christmas circa 1978, and Allyson, as a child, probably about 1967 or 68.