Saying Goodbye to Dragons

I have shamelessly stolen my son's artwork (from when he was about 14) for this blog post. I hope he won't mind, but I'll find out soon enough. When he was a Buddha-bellied tyke with a bowl haircut, he had a fascination with dinosaurs and dragons. So when we moved into our rat-infested, cob-webby house, which we had blindly bought at a sheriff's auction, I figured after emptying and gutting the place I'd decorate my kids' rooms in a way that was uniquely them. My daughter got a mural with blue sky and green rolling hills dotted with sheep and horses. In my son's room, I stenciled a chair rail border of 2" high green, fire-belching dragons.

Those tiny dragons were there for ten years. Until this past spring, when we discovered he had allergies. So we ripped out the carpet, put in new wood floors and I woefully painted over those dragons - all 68 of them. There was something very symbolic about the process. A rite of passage not only for my now 18-year old son, but for me, as well.

After we packed him off to college, friends would ask, "Don't you feel like an empty-nester? Miss your kids?" Well, yes... and no. He was so stoked about going, how could I possibly have regrets about it? People used to ask me something similar when we raised puppies and they went off to their new homes. "Aren't you sad to see them go?" Um, do you know how many piles of poop 10 8-week old puppies make on a daily basis? Okay, kids can be messy, but not in that way.

The point is, I know if I've planned my litter, socialized it and done my best to hold out for good homes, things are going to turn out just dandy. I'll get reports for years from beaming owners about the fabulous things their dogs have done. If I've raised my kids right and given them the good sense to be able to go out into the world and make their own way, it's actually kind of exciting to nudge them from the nest, see them take wing and know that in time they're going to be okay. They might even do good things and make me proud.

It's like that with writing books. I labor over them for years. Eventually though, I have to let them go. I'm about at that stage with another one. I alternate between feelings of apprehension and excitement. What if someone hates it? What if someone loves it so much they want to make a movie out of it? Part of me wants very fiercely to keep it to myself and stay safely connected to the characters so I can go on living in their world. But a bigger part of me knows there comes a time when I need to trust in the universe and share it with readers.

The difference between kids and books is that there's always another book to write. I've run out of kids. And I have so many more books to write...

Until later,
Gemi

Simple rewards

(Note: Henceforth, my progeny will be known as ‘Fritz’ and ‘Donna’. These, of course, are not their real names, but their chosen pseudonyms, so that their mother may blog about them without their names popping up on Google one trillion times. The deal is I can only say things that are true and I must keep the mention of embarrassing incidents to a minimum – which is not to say they would ever do anything to embarrass themselves or their fine parents. They are, after all, perfect children, by sole virtue of the fact that they’re mine.)

Kids. They eat a lot. They cost money. They’re a LOT of work. Nowadays, mine are both taller than me – and they’re better at a lot of things than I am. I would not dare challenge ‘Fritz’ (still trying to get used to that) to any sort of memory game. The kid can store 80 gazillion gigabytes of data in his brain, alongside five entire play scripts written in Shakespearean English. I would not challenge ‘Donna’ to a racewalking competition because she would scorch my butt and all I’d have to show for it would be shin splints. I would not dance in public next to either of them, because they are Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers graceful and I dance like Elaine from Seinfeld.

How many thousands of hours did I spend driving them to the studio or theater, to races or soccer games? Or standing in the wings during a performance, costume change in hand? Or shivering in the stadium stands during a track meet while being pelted with sleet, when their first race was at 9 a.m. and the second one not until 3 p.m.?

In truth, it doesn’t really matter. It’s what my parents did for me, and theirs for them. It doesn’t matter if the kids remember to say ‘thanks’ every time I do something for them. Sometimes in life, it should just be the doing that gives us joy.

“The reward of a thing well done is to have done it.” (Ralph Waldo Emerson)

Until later,

Gemi