P.O.V.

     Sometimes I feel a little self-conscious that this blog is so darn personal (minus my nytimes.com plugs and my mentions of favorite snack food products.) Of course, I remind myself that it is a blog. Blogs are avenues of navel gazing. We all know that. I read other people's blogs so that I can get a glimpse of their lives and feelings and all that. My blog is public, and for the most part, I like it that way. Someone with whom I have a legal relationship feels that public blogs are dangerous, that I'm courting pedophiles. I do not dismiss this concern. It's something to consider. Of course, I always figure that the only people reading this are either a) related to me, b) friends with me, or c) friends of my relatives or relatives of my friends. 

     I've analyzed just why I want to keep this public, and the obvious answer is that I like it when people read my entries. Plain and simple. I like being read. Should I be ashamed of this?

     I've wanted to be a writer since college. During my Aggie years, I wrote weekly for the student newspaper. Those late nights and long days were some of the most vibrant moments in my life. We all loved the heady feeling of seeing our words in print. 

     After college, I started teaching. When I returned to grad school at night, I managed to publish just a few things - a short story here, a church article there. I went through a great flurry of sending out articles and honed my query letter skills. Then quite a few years later, I started writing articles for a local magazine. That was a great opportunity to write on a deadline, to learn how to cold call strangers, to revise for other people's expectations. I kept that up pretty regularly until I started teaching full-time last year. Now those articles are fewer and farther between, simply because I only have so much brain energy available to me during the semester.

     Right now, my writing energies find outlet on this blog. Blogging offers a particularly pain-free avenue to finding a readership. Since I hope one day to publish a book, it figures that I like having an audience. I am very mindful of what might feel inappropriate, and I try to stick to what I feel/know/perceive. That may partly account for the self-centered tone of this blog. In my attempt to keep *some* people out of it, it may  appear that I'm hogging all the words.

     Oh, well.

     A few months ago I wrote that I had learned so much from the divorce that I felt at times I would overflow with insights. Many of them are small, specific to certain situations (here's what NOT to say on a long road trip!) or subtle. Still, I learned them the hard way, and they are all the more precious for that. I expressed a wish to pull the lessons out of the air and write them. I've managed to do that just a little. I have more that I want to articulate. The act of subduing my thoughts into words has an energizing and clarifying effect. For example, I was spinning in a low mood death spiral a few days ago. I was able to pull out of it only after I sent out an S.O.S. call to my friends and wrote about my insecurities here. 

     When I turned 30, I had such a hard time with the transition to a new decade, and the reason why might not be what you'd think. I wasn't worried about gray hair or wrinkles or general falling-apartness, or the idea of being a grown-up or taking on more responsibility or having fewer years to salt away a retirement account. No, I was paralyzed with sorrow (at least for a couple of hours) because I had not written as much as I'd expected/wanted to by that age. By the time 31 hit, I was over it, I think. The birthday train chugs along and usually there's a celebration at the station. But I still want to write what lurks in my mind ... and to achieve a measure of success. That's the truth. Here's the other truth: writing is a ton of work. The novel in my dreams is like an oversized sleeping bag, and when I try to pin it down, I feel that I'm trying to stuff it into the mental equivalent of a ziploc bag. The structure bedevils me. 

     But blogging has helped. It puts my seat in the chair. Writing is as much about a seat in the chair as anything else. It also conveniently archives my ideas. I'm famous for forgetting things (and then, ironically, remembering completely useless, trivial things).

     Here's something I don't want to forget: how my children are taking all of it. 

     As a divorced parent, you worry about your kids. How are they going to take it? How are they going to adjust? Will they be permanently damaged? Will they feel like they have to choose? Will they ever be capable of committing to a relationship? Will they get divorced too? The fact that these questions are mostly unanswerable does not quiet them.  

     I have tried to be both forthright and careful with my kids. I frequently express my admiration and concern for their dad. I praise his strengths (good rhythm, great baking skills, a mean football arm) and do everything I can to smooth the transition between Here and There.

     The kids have had some tough times, but seem to be mostly okay. I take what I can get. I worry a bit more about my darling daughter because she internalizes her feelings and worries silently. My son, he lets it out. His temperament is more similar to mine. I trust that if he's having a problem with something, he'll let it be known. And now, having heard his explanation of the divorce to friends at school, I have greater reason to believe he's going to pull through.

    It was just a few Fridays ago that I heard his explanation. I was having lunch with him in the school cafeteria, as is my custom on Fridays. I love talking to the other boys at the table ("You're the only girl we would ever let sit at this table," one pointed out kindly to me.) and listening to their rambling tales of weekend plans, game strategies, favorite foods and feats of strength. Graham mentioned to another boy that he was going to his dad's house.

      "So you and Graham's dad don't live together?" asked the young man.

      "That's right," I said.

      "Why are y'all divorced?" he asked, pressing on into wildly personal territory.

      "Oh, that's a long story," I answered. "Tell me about your AR book, why don't you?"

      The boy would not be put off. He asked more questions. I continued to not answer. Finally, Graham turned to him and said, "I'll tell you what happened."  This made me sit up. I was very interested in Graham's take on the demise of our 2 parents/2 kids/2 cars life. Here's what he said:

      When my parents were married for one week, they went to the animal shelter to get a cat. There was a beautiful gray cat in a cage. She kept swiping her paw at them and meowing. They thought she was picking them. They took her home from the animal shelter. She is a Russian Blue cat, so they wanted to give her a Russian name. They thought about Sasha or Alexei because my Aunt Marni told them that name, and they picked Alexei. I call her Lexei or Lex. I really like to call her Lex. 

     One week later, my dad's friend Ben came over and he had a little kitten in a box. My parents said, Oh no, we already have a cat, but the little kitten liked Lex and Lex started to lick it and they slept together on the couch. My parents decided they would keep the new kitten. Here's what's weird - that new kitten was also gray, but was not a Russian Blue. THey named her Bobbie Batista after someone on - "What was the station, Mom?" - after someone on CNN because the new kitten looked like this news lady. 

      Then awhile after that, maybe years and years, my mom brought a Persian kitten to Texas from Minnesota and that kitten was named Schuler. Schuler rode on an airplane. He was a very nice boy, and the other cats weren't mean to him. Then I was born, and I guess I stressed out those cats because Bobbie and Schuler started peeing in the wrong place. We had to find new homes for those two. I guess we found new homes for them when my sister was born. There is no way they could have handled two babies. They loved me as a baby but I think my crying must have scared them. Then we had just Lex at our house. 

      But there was a kid at preschool who was giving away cats, so we got a new cat named Harper. We named Harper after my Papa who died. Harper was so cute but Lex hissed at her a lot. Then we moved out of our house, and took Lex and Harper with us, but Harper kept leaving. She still lives by our old house. She didn't want to come with us. She lives with Miss Linda now. We still drive by and wave at her.

     Knight did want to live with us. We got him from our friends. He was a stray cat who was eating all the food from their cat. We took Knight home. I named him Knight because he is black like a panther. It's like Night and Knight. But we do have the 'k'! He is my brother. Now we have another kitten because our friends had three kittens in their backyard. She is like Harper but my sister can't decide on a name, so we call her Little Girl. So we have three cats. Wow, that's a lot. Three cats live at our house, but my dad didn't move with us when we came to the new house. He got an apartment, so that's what happened.

     The other little boy wasn't even paying attention by the end, but I was choking back laughter and tears. It was poignantly special to see inside my son's mind. The story of his parent's marriage was really the story of our pets. Perhaps the story of the cats points to his feeling that a family is a rotating cast of characters. Some arrive, some leave, but we love whoever's there at the time.

 I sure do love these two.