When I said my final goodbye to the house I grew up in, Thomas was there with his pickup truck, helping me haul two of my mother’s large potted plants from her back patio to our front yard. The rose Dad gave her on their 25th wedding anniversary, and a melange of assorted hardy plants crammed into a large pot nearly as old as me now sit quite happily in our yard, once again being tended on a regular basis, not sitting forlornly in my parents’ backyard, waiting to be disposed of by the new owner of that house.

Thomas and I have often talked about our Victory Garden, and how we’d like it to be. Sometimes, especially when my daughter is around, we discuss how we’d survive the zombie apocalypse, and what kinds of food we’d need to have stored up. Other times we consider how to put in more raised beds, drip irrigation, a water barrel, fix our compost situation (more worms!), and put in new fences. You know, the practical things.

Lately the practical things have been more and more on my mind. We live in a seismically active area, very near to the Hayward and San Andreas Faults, and memories of being stuck without electricity after the Loma Prieta earthquake in 1989 keep me thinking that I really ought to be more prepared. Not for zombies, but for the possibility that my family might need to rely on what we have here at the house if things go bad. My mother always had a large stock of canned goods and bottled water, so why don’t I? While at the store today, I picked up about $20 worth of foodstuffs that have expiration dates in 2013 or later. I figure if I do this every month or even more frequently, I can put together a nice survival kit to have on hand. If we don’t need the kit before the foods expire, we simply eat and replace them. No loss. Add to that the vegetables we already have on hand, and things could be pretty good. I like to think so, anyway. We’ll certainly have more tomatoes than one family could ever need. They’ll likely be turned into soup. I made three batches last year, and that was from only one plant. This season I have six, including four volunteers that grew from the spoils of last year’s crop.

We’re coming into the dry season now, and won’t likely see any rain until later winter, maybe autumn if we’re lucky. I pulled out the last of the winter peas this morning and dug the shoots into the soil to nourish the next crop of whatever I put in there. The few remaining pods I found will be left to dry, in the hope that they’ll be viable for next year’s crop, which I’ll seed in September when the evenings start to get cool. Beans and squash are going into the soil now, a little late for our region, in the hopes that they’ll produce some decent food for our summer table. Last year’s herb plants are thriving, and I’ve set aside several varieties of mint in pots this spring. Our first crop of potatoes is looking boisterously healthy, bushing out of the top of an old metal garbage can. The second crop is just getting started in a plastic garbage can next to it, and will soon be ready for a second layer of soil and seed potatoes to go over the first. I’m aiming for three layers total in this second crop, and by the time we’re ready for that last layer, the first crop will be ready to harvest. With good planning and a little luck, we’ll be able to fill the first can again at that time, and establish a third crop as we head into autumn.

The snail harvest has gone remarkably well. They still show up, but not in such large numbers as they did a few months ago. Not only can they not fly, but they are terrible swimmers, especially when I dump them in a bucket of old beer. At least they die happy.

When I studied French in junior high, I could see how bits and pieces of French were the same as English. A hot dog is a hot dog is a hot dog, but there were other differences that gave me pause. How could a noun have a gender? And how could one possibly guess what it was without intuitively knowing the way a native speaker would? Why is a men’s shirt feminine, and a woman’s shirt masculine? (The more I meet people who work in fashion, the more this actually makes sense). I believe there was a time when English observed the masculine/feminine rule as well, but can’t remember where I learned that from, so I can’t vouch for it. Post a note if you can, please!

Learning German was the same, only it seemed something of a language of communal words. A single noun could be pieced together from three other nouns, making a difficult-to-spell word that made perfect sense by explaining itself in true German fashion: cleanly and efficiently, but without the elegant finesse of the French. Honestly, I prefer French as much for the musicality of the language. German is not musical. Italian is. Spanish is. But German is not. Nor is Flemish, not really. We hosted a Belgian exchange student when I was in high school, and she refused to speak Flemish, even though she’d been required to learn it in school. It was an awful language, she told me, whereas French was beautiful. I agreed, but resolutely never spoke French in front of her for fear of saying something incorrectly or with a bad accent.

My children grew up as I did, with a mother who explained the roots of words as we drove on long car rides, watched movies, or read books together. We were taught to ask “what does that mean?” when we didn’t know, which is a big deal when you attend a highly competitive school district in the US, and fellow students relish any reason to belittle someone who doesn’t seem to understand what’s going on. In high school I stopped looking up words for my vocabulary tests and simply made up definitions on my own, based on my knowledge of the words and their roots. My teachers were either impressed, or marked me down for not giving the Webster’s definition word-for-word from memory. Why would I need Webster’s, I asked, when I had already learned that word at the dinner table in second grade? (Answer: because when you actually read a dictionary, you learn more than just the one word you were looking for. I do, anyway. Your results may vary.)

But back to Latin and its wonderful building blocks. I was breaking down a larger word into its components recently to show my son how it went together recently when he asked “Why don’t other people do this? I’ve tried to tell my friends how to do it, but they don’t get it. It’s like they can’t see how the pieces go together.” Why indeed? I blame the decline of Latin language classes in public schools, but it’s far deeper than that. As a society we’re not taught to take things apart and look at the components anymore. If a toaster breaks, it is thrown out and replaced. A generation or two ago it would have been dismantled and repaired. Our disposable society has gone so far as to throw away the better components of our language, and it hurts me to the core, especially when I read a poorly written blog and offer to edit for the writer, only to be told “I do all my own editing and it’s just fine, thanks.” No it isn’t, because otherwise, why would I be contacting you?

Kanji-based languages such as Chinese and Japanese are wonderful to me. Once you can wrap your head around the base meanings of individual pictographs in Kanji, the rest comes together in a set of blocks not so different from those in Latin-based languages. It’s elegant and efficient, and quite beautiful. They are also incredibly complex when all you are familiar with is the Latin alphabet. I attempted Russian once upon a time, but got bogged down in learning Cyrillic. Lithuanian was slightly easier, if only because the alphabet was familiar. The rest of it certainly wasn’t. Despite being half Lithuanian, I didn’t have the first notion how the language worked. I’d never heard it before, but once I did, I was hooked.

So after all that, how did I end up with a son who refuses to go to school? He’d rather sit at home and debate the merits of a free market economy and the rate of human evolution over breakfast. I’m torn between feeling like a bad parent for not getting him to school on time, and impressed that he can even discuss these topics at all, let alone as coherently as he does. And language, always language. He’s good with it. He knows how to use it, manipulate it, turn it his way, and sometimes even trip over it. He’s smart, but hasn’t read the dictionary like his mama has. Google can only get you so far, young grasshopper.

*Either learn or leave.

I have an occasional job working as a catering assistant to a chef. He’s mellow, relaxed, and immensely fun to work with, and so is the other assistant on our three person team. The work is fast paced, noisy, and challenging, and by the end of a dinner shift I’m ready to sleep. Some nights I drive home and sit in my car, listening to nothing, allowing my mind to wind down and slip gently into the dark outside, bringing it in. I know that when I open the door, the dogs will greet me, and Thomas will ask me how my day went. It’s comforting and familiar, and gives me a sense of grounding.

On school days, we’re up early. Dogs fed, tea made, Thomas packs his lunch and I wish him well as he heads out the door. Then there’s my son to deal with, and the daily struggle to decide whether going to school is truly any better for him than doing an online school where he can work at his own pace and not have to deal with what he calls “all the drama” of his peers. He needs silence more than most, and I want to respect that as much as I possibly can. Still, there’s always the worry in this mother’s mind that I’d be doing him a disservice by allowing him to stay home. We’ve tried it before, in 6th and 8th grade, and it didn’t go as well as planned, mainly because we didn’t have a plan. I’d just lost my parents, my partner, and any sense of stability I’d ever had. I was a terrible homeschool parent. My daughter managed to graduate from a district-supported high school homeschool program, and she did it a year ahead of schedule. She’s a go-getter, my girl, and not one to let things stand in her way. She is rarely silent, and even in her quieter moments, one can almost hear the wheels turning in her mind. She’s got a razor-sharp wit and no time to waste waiting for those who sit idly by.

During the day there is the soft click-and-tap sound of my fingers on the keys of my laptop, the snoring of one elderly dog, and the incessant high-pitched whimpering of the younger dog as she watches people walk past the front yard. We live close to the main street in town, so we get a lot of passersby. Even quiet days can seem noisy sometimes.

There’s a type of silence I can swim in, one so deep that I flow into a theta state and just drift for a while. Sadly, that is most often interrupted by a barking dog, yowling child, a client on the phone, or simply the need to be somewhere else, doing something else. Life happens. This post took me a week to write due to interruptions.

I have found comfort in meditating in a noisy crowd. When I was younger, I’d have panic attacks, unable to focus on any one thing. Now I know how to find a quiet space within myself and tune out external distractions. It’s taken practice, and I thank my training in kyudo for that. Zen meditation can do so much, but does require practice. While driving I do the bare minimum, just three or more deep breaths to calm myself. Driving in the greater San Francisco Bay Area requires huge amounts of patience, so it is worth whatever effort I can put into it; a few deep breaths go a long way to stop me from clipping the bumper of someone who has just cut me off for the third time in two minutes.

Breathe. Dream. Rest. Count to ten. All good advice, and each has taken me years to even begin to understand. There are so many benefits to silence, meditation, and inner quiet. Maybe that’s why the dogs nap so much?

It’s been a bit of a strain on my otherwise happy liver lately. I didn’t take up drinking alcohol until my 30′s, and I’m still not entirely comfortable with it. Sometimes I wonder if approaching middle age means I’ll start acting like the teenager I never was, and I worry for my safety, if not my sanity.

Last night I watched sadly as the hostess poured the rest of my third glass of wine down her kitchen sink. It was time for us all to go home and she wanted some peace and quiet in the house. She also wanted clean dishes, which I did help with. I’ve poured plenty of wine down the drain in the past year or so, mostly because I’m not very adept at choosing a good wine yet, and Thomas seldom drinks with me. Most often I’ll keep a bottle of wine that didn’t start out well, or didn’t get consumed while it was still good and has since turned into a bad house guest. It will sit in the fridge until I stir fry or sauté something simple that becomes something gorgeous with the addition of a little so-so wine.

My parents were not big drinkers, either. Dad would have a beer before dinner, and Mom would enjoy a glass of wine with the meal. Afterwards, Dad might have a glass of cognac, but I never once saw either of them indulge to the point of being drunk, much less tipsy. Okay, once, but only once, I do remember seeing Dad get tipsy. We were on vacation on the East Coast, closer to his home region than Mom’s, and maybe he felt comfortable. The warm, humid evening air and rising fireflies, two things my sister and I had never experienced on our native West Coast, probably relaxed him to the point where he felt just one more glass was fine, and it was. He was a little silly, a little lose, and that was actually somewhat refreshing, considering how uptight and straight-laced he could be.

My parents’ influence certainly played a part in how I felt about alcohol growing up. My brother’s influence helped as well, but in a completely different way. He was an alcoholic who started drinking at an early age, and at 12 years older than me, was seldom around as far as I can remember. I have very awkward memories of him and his sometimes inexplicable behavior, mostly because it was shielded from me. As the baby in the family, I was protected as much as possible from his drinking. I have a faint memory of the last time he was allowed to babysit me; friends of his convinced him to go to a house where they could drink and party, and he brought me along. I was two years old, terrified of unfamiliar people and places, and ended up hiding out under a pool table in the living room of the friend’s house, where eventually I was retrieved by my parents.

All through my childhood, teens, and twenties I believed drinking was the worst possible thing I could do to myself (besides drugs, which I still don’t do, primarily because I’ve inherited my father’s hypersensitive nervous system which even pharmaceuticals mess with too much), and I was fortunate to socialize with a colorful collection of geeks and nerds who knew how to have a good time while being entirely safe and legal. It wasn’t until I was doing some hypnotherapy sessions in my early 30′s that I hit on an even deeper trigger for my alcohol phobia, and within a session or two it was gone. The concept that I could have a few drinks and it wouldn’t kill me was liberating.  Putting this into practice has taken a few years, though. Family gatherings with my sisters are still typically dry, as are most evenings here at home. Negotiating compensation for doing some editing work on a friend’s website included the offer of drinks at his bar, but this was countered with my exclamation that as a tiny person, I also have a tiny liver.

Stumbling up the stairs last night after the third evening out in a week without Thomas, I peeled off my party dress and tumbled into bed next to his warm, sleeping self. As a school teacher, he can’t afford to bounce off to late night events the way I do, and I miss his companionship. As I snuggled in, he rolled over and wrapped himself around me. The room gradually stopped spinning, and we talked about the stories I’d heard at the party, who was or was not there, and the latest in the small but growing social sphere of my world. Once the chatter quieted down, he reminded me in his own way that he had missed me, too. I slept soundly after that, and had happy dreams.

For Thomas, here’s a live version of the song we heard on the radio this morning.

Behold the evidence:

Dogs were walked, weeds were pulled, plants were purchased at the local nursery.

It was a good day.

The sound of snail shell hitting the fence is a juicy thwack. The sound of oxalis being ripped from the soil is a pulling, tearing, soft and dirty sound. It is also very satisfying.

The dogs sit in the sun, not moving very much, unless a small child comes by, and then they’re all wagging tail (Daisy) or placid stare (Cindy). The parent will be reassured that the dogs are friendly, and the child will tentatively pet one, then shy away. Bye-bye, puppy. Good doggie.

Potatoes are sprouting. Lettuce is holding up. The herbs, my old standbys, are doing very well. After a week of rain, the soil is soft enough to pull a bucketful of weeds every day that I can, and there will always be more to do. Once the soil dries out and we lose our rain for the next several months while the weather heats up, the oxalis will die back (don’t be fooled, it’s just biding its time to come out and HAUNT YOU with its showy yellow blossoms and cheery clover-shaped leaves. So pretty! BUT IT’S A LIE. The damn stuff is invasive and chokes everything else out, except for the calla lilies, and that’s only because they’re tall and just as stubborn as me).

There is dirt under my fingernails. Dirt in my hair, on my eyelashes, between the dogs’ toes. Sandy, silty soil of the island on the bay.

I pick baby snails off the snow pea plant in the back garden. I rub the peas clean and chew them. They’ve been on the vine too long and are tough and stringy, but still satisfying. The green onions have sprouted, and the garlic looks amazing. The chives, once hidden by the monster tomato plant I grew last year, are now reaching high for the sun and dancing in the breeze.

The beastly fig tree Thomas has been trying to kill for years is sending forth green leaves on willowy branches off the stumpy, scarred trunk on the other side of our neighbors’ fence. I can see two small figs already.

The front lawn, shared with the house next door, is a shambles. Nobody cares. We hate lawns. I am slowly, methodically tearing out the front landscaping so I can plant vegetables. This may or may not be practical, but I’m determined and as stubborn as a calla lily.

From the downstairs “office” I can see both the front and back yards. This little corner of the house bumps out in a sort of semi-bay window. The light is kind, not glaringly bright and not too dim. Thomas and I still haven’t decided on whether or not I can stay in this space and how exactly we’re going to manage whatever decision we agree to, but at least I’m getting work done for now. He is stubborn as the old fig tree, growing through a fence where it’s not wanted. But I want that fig tree, even if it never grows any ripe figs. He could take it out tomorrow and I’d miss it, but it’s just a fig tree. This room is just a room. A snail is just a snail.

But it still can’t fly.

The first word I read–and I clearly remember this–was a STOP sign. I was probably 5 years old, and so proud. By age 7 my reading skills came into question until I had my eyesight tested and was given glasses. Within a year I was reading at least two grade levels ahead of my peers, and the gap widened as I was exposed to bigger libraries than our tiny grade school had. My eyesight corrected over time, I ditched the glasses, and kept reading. I also wrote, but was told my writing was “not correct” because it was stylistically different from what most teachers wanted. My Creative Writing teacher loved me, probably because I could write anything I wanted for her. She kept my faith in writing alive through junior high, even though she nearly failed me out of French. Pardonnez-moi, Madame Ross, j’étais un étudiant terrible. 

And now, 20+ years later, I’m still struggling with how to write for others who may be judging me. I worry about my online image, especially when I see posts deriding those who are public with their opinions, such as this advice from BranchOut:

5 Tips to Clean Up Your Online Identity

2. Be Positive

• Post positive news articles, comments and industry insights

• Negativity can be a turnoff for prospective employers

• If you want to make political or religious statements, always be respectful of others’ opinions

Tip: If a random person who has never hung out with you reads your tweets and posts, would they think you are someone they would want to employ?

Part of my charm, I believe, and while I may lack genius I do have charm, is that I don’t claim to have the one right answer. I know I am only one voice.

I try, believe it or not, to never forget that. I try to be humble about the good fortune I have, being the one who controls the medium. Merely because I chose a career in journalism doesn’t mean I am the smartest one in the room or the one with all the right answers. What I do have is control of the megaphone. What I lack in genius I make up in stamina and discipline. That’s where being a journalist comes in. Not everybody has the stomach to turn their backs on most of life in order to produce the same column every day, five days a week for 10 years. That’s a particular skill that journalists have. It takes a particular life situation as well as temperament: not too bright, not too many other obligations, a radically simplified home life, a bit obsessive.

I “bit” obsessive? A bit? I’d say it’s more than that, but maybe that’s because my focus is more on editing than writing. Yes, I am obsessive. Very. I need space to think, to be creative, to play my music and see a nice view outside my window.

Today I took the initiative and commandeered the downstairs room, the one which has stood vacant the past few months since the last renter moved out in November, the one which I occupied for two weeks in January while Thomas and I weren’t speaking to each other, the one with a significant amount of storage space… I swear, that enormous closet was calling me, luring me in with the promise of having all my shop boxes OUT OF SIGHT and neatly tended. Running my businesses from one corner of the living room, the bedroom bookshelf, and my daughter’s room upstairs seemed ridiculous. So today, while Thomas was out, I moved everything in.

I scraped old paint of the dingy windows and cleaned them the best I could. I vacuumed an inch of dust out of the carpet, until my vacuum cleaner started making funny sounds and smelling weird. The dogs watched me for hours as I cleaned and sorted and arranged. I put up the paintings my mother loved that I’d had to stash after moving in last summer. They simply didn’t suit the rest of the house, but they look lovely in the new “office”. There’s a beautiful desk the last tenant left behind, and I’ve filled it up with books, pictures of my family, and papers that were previously sitting on top of a table in the living room. It feels good to have a place I can call my own. A place with doors I can close or leave open, depending on my workload, the weather, or my need for privacy.

A new client I met with on Friday expressed his frustration with finding time to write. Even talking about it seemed to cause him some stress, as for him it meant shutting everything else out to find uninterrupted silence so that he could even think about writing. As a business professional with many obligations, he found that wasn’t such an easy task. No calls, no emails, no texts, no family or friends… I can sympathize.

There’s a reason I’ve taken to being a writer/editor/journalist. I prefer being alone in a quiet space with natural light and just typing away. And I can do that, pretty much any day of the week, for at least an hour or so at a time. Many people in business today can’t; they simply do not have the option to shut down and focus. I do, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything.

It was never my intention to make Thomas angry. I hope that over time he’ll find this an agreeable arrangement, and allow the office to remain my space. I’ve been here for eight and a half months, and still feel like a tenant most of the time. It’s difficult for someone who craves stability to share space with a chaotic force such as myself, but he’s made an effort to accept me for who I am, I believe. Still, there’s a disconnect that stands between us, and it’s not been easy to deal with. Maybe this jarring change will spark the conversation that leads to more mutual understanding.

I hope so.

That’s where I am now. On standby in the great airport of life. Sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it?

Between the three AWESOME book ideas that I’ve been asked to work on (none of which is going anywhere, much to my disappointment), the magazine I’m working on (the 65 & 57 Degrees Spring 2012 issue), and various articles I’m pitching this week, there are words flowing. My writerly friend Alex, who has been a writer far longer than I have, told me today that he’d recently tossed out over 80,000 words… the equivalent of an entire book. He wasn’t satisfied with where the story was going, so he dumped it. And he didn’t sound too pleased about it, which is hardly surprising.

More and more often I open my mouth to express and opinion or talk about something interesting I’ve learned, and the listener says “you should write an article/book/blog post about that!” Sometimes this surprises me, sometimes it doesn’t. I often ask myself how I would write about whatever thought is buzzing around in my head in that moment. Once my headphones go on and my iPod gets turned up, that’s it. I’m oblivious to the world around me for a few loose hours. I type, I edit, I muse. There’s so much to be written, and I truly want to be the one to write those words, but the issue that so often comes up is how am I going to be compensated for my time, research, and effort? Watching the publishing industry implode like a burned-out star collapsing in on itself is sometimes amusing (Evolve, people! Evolve!), sometimes depressing (No one will ever make a living at this the way they did 10 years ago), and sometimes uplifting (OMG. She made how much self-publishing? There’s hope!), it’s still a rocky ride here on the periphery. I have a job, yes, but it’s not enough to live on. It brings me amazing perks, including meeting some of the most interesting people I’ve had the great good fortune to meet in many years, but there are no conventional benefits. I do not get compensated for whatever it costs me to get to an interview. I am not eligible for health care. I do not even get paid until the issue is in circulation, which is typically months after I’ve written my article(s), edited everyone else’s, and proofed the issue.

I love my job, I really do, and I enjoy working with the people I work with. No complaints there. I would just like more of it. In the old days of the early 2000s, one could intern and work up to a higher position, then on to a bigger publication, and while this is still generally the case, these days we have the ability to jump the hurdles and skip through the hoops in a way that wasn’t possible before. Drastic changes in publishing have enabled EVERYONE AND ANYONE to write something, have it published, and put it on the market. That doesn’t mean everyone and anyone should be doing this, simply that they (we?) can. While I enjoy the same freedom every other blogger does, I have to wonder if it’s such a good thing. The market will have to correct itself at some point, right? When the barriers to being in the marketplace are removed, the product available is devalued, which is where we are now. I don’t know if I can sit still long enough to see that turn around.

Another concern about all this freedom of speech on steroids is that if anyone can see what you or I post, that means there may be people reading who have the power to judge and affect the outcome of our lives. If an errant tweet can keep you from crossing borders and a blog post can get you fired from your job, that’s a kind of censorship, isn’t it?

Isn’t it? No? Oh. That’s interesting. No wonder it’s difficult for me to even begin writing sometimes. The fear of saying something that could hurt me or those close to me at some point in the future is enough to weigh anyone down.

There must be some balance between the ability to spew hate speech with impunity and the fear of being punished for having a life that deviates from the “norm”. We’ve struggled with this throughout history, but now that our thoughts can spread like a virus from one side of the globe to the other in a matter of–well, no time at all, really–it’s a little worrisome that we still haven’t sorted this out. Maybe we can’t. Maybe we shouldn’t. I don’t know.

I have been told I often appear upset or angry, when what I’m feeling is merely focused, or relaxed. I wasn’t aware just how different my inner feelings were to how the outer view is perceived until I spent some time living with my sister Sara, and observed how her face does the same thing. I had to stop myself from asking “why are you so upset?” at times she was simply thinking something through. We are introspective to the extreme, and it shows.

My son is deeply introspective, reaching depths even I cannot fathom. His face has a softer countenance, one that can mask his turbulent moods. He’ll be 15 in a few days, yet is unafraid of holding my hand or leaning in to rest his head on my shoulder when I feel a bit lost in how I’m raising him. We fight, we argue, we debate, but in the end we love each other dearly, and would be lost without one another.

My daughter is a wild spirit, forever moving away from me since day one, but always returning, as if attached by a bungee cord. We both welcome the space between us, but look forward to our brief times together. She is a bright spark, a mad dash, a vibrant wildness. At times I can hardly believe she’s mine, but then yet another stranger will remark how alike we look, and she and I will laugh. She has my eyes, but her wit is so much sharper.

Then there is Thomas. At breakfast this morning, he improvised this:

A Man’s Grace

Now I sit me down to eat,
I pray the Lord my soul to keep.
If I die before my meal is over,
I pray my wife consume it in wonder.

The recitation was followed by a boyish grin as he tucked into the veggie omelet and mug of tea I’d set before him.

He is at times jovial, serious, loud, boisterous, kind, silly, stubborn, sarcastic, withdrawn, wistful, and a laundry list of other adjectives I could come up with, given enough time. I’m still learning who he is and how to listen to what he says and doesn’t say. Learning a new person involves learning a new language, and it takes time. Lots of time. There have been days I felt tempted to give up on the lessons and move on, but the thought of leaving those warm arms that wrap around me at night dissolved my resolve. He is patient, forgiving, honest, and vulnerable. At night he steals the sheets, but gives me the blankets.