Posts from — December 2010

Cream-based drinks on special at the virtual bar today: Baileys and Mudslides and … whatever else is milky and sweet because it is the final day to submit a post to the Creme de la Creme and ensure that it’s on the list when it goes up January 1st.

Sure, you could always submit your post on December 16th, and plenty of people do, but I can’t promise those posts will go up in the first round.  They’ll probably be added to the list some time in early January.

So what are you waiting for?

While we all drink and go through our archives and ask the other patrons at the bar what our best post of the year was (and I’m sorry, but everyone has a best post.  Or a best of the worst if you’re going to put yourself down and want to look at it that way), I’d also like to thank you for all the good wishes and book purchases for Life from Scratch.

Even though I’m completely sober (look, I’m pouring drinks with a steady hand), I got very weepy-in-my-beer reading through the comments and seeing the book sale rankings on Amazon.  Thank you.  I really can’t thank you enough.  And I can’t wait to hear what you think.

Deep breath.

It has been almost two months since we met, bitched, cried, comforted, and caught up each other on our cycles and lives. Pull up a seat and I’ll pour you a drink. Let everyone know what is happening in your life. The good, the bad, the ugly. My only request is that if a story catches your eye, you follow it back to the person’s blog and start reading their posts. Give some love, give some support, or laugh with someone until your drink comes out of your nose.

I have a ton of assvice in my back pocket and as a virtual bartender, I will give it to you unless you specifically tell me that this is simply a vent and you do not want to receive anything more than a hug.

So if you have been a lurker for a while (or if this is your first open bar), sit down and tell us about yourself. Remember to provide a link or a way for people to continue reading your story (or if you don’t have a blog–gasp!–you can always leave an email address if you’re looking for advice or support. If not, people can leave messages for that person here in the comments section too). If you’re a regular at the bar, I’ll get out your engraved martini glass while you make yourself comfortable. And anyone new, welcome. I’m glad you found this virtual bar.

For those who have no clue what I’m talking about when I say that the bar is open, click here to catch up and then jump into the conversation back on this current post.

So have an imaginary cocktail and tell us what is up with your life.

Mary Alice from Ace of Cakes (on Food Network) says, “Life from Scratch and its plucky heroine, Rachel Goldman, is just the right amount of smart and clever with a healthy dose of self-doubt, humor and sass thrown in. This is chick lit for smarter than the average chicks. Melissa Ford has created a clan of characters I can relate to, who make me laugh out loud and hungry for dinner.”

Stephanie Klein, author of Straight Up And Dirty and Moose says, “All journeys worthy of anything begin with wine and end with a meal. Life From Scratch does just that, adding heart and laughter to the recipe.”

And Sarah Pekkanen, author of The Opposite of Me says, “Melissa Ford’s debut is a thoughtful, sensitive examination of the choices that give shape to our lives – and how sometimes, the happiest endings can be found in the most unexpected of places.”

Which is just a long and immodest way of saying that Life From Scratch goes on sale this week.  In fact, you can order it right now and people already have.  The image is currently botched on Amazon, and please don’t believe the incorrect delivery estimation on the paperback entry (it will ship pretty much instantly, and yes, you will have it before Christmas), but who cares because damn it, my book is on sale.

So imagine having box after box come for everyone else in the house, and then one day, a box arrives and you think that it’s for someone else, but then you see your name on it.  And then you see it’s from your publisher.  So you open it and see a big stack of your book.

And you stand there, reading your own words and think about how at one point, the book was just an idea you had back in December 2008 while you were walking across a parking lot.  And now it’s December 2010, and a publisher liked your book enough that they invested in it, and cultivate it and brought it to life.

So, anyone want to read my new book, Life from Scratch?  You can also get it on Kindle.  And on various other sites and e-book options rolling out soon.  If you do read it, please leave your thoughts in a review on the Amazon page.

I cannot thank you all enough for (1) reading it and (2) being with me — start to finish — through the whole journey.  There is a character in the book, Arianna — a single mother by choice whose son came after years of IVF and loss — and the way she’s there for Rachel; that’s the way y’all are there for me.  So consider her an amalgamation of all of you.

If you never read Coraline and don’t want to know one smidgen about the book (I am being careful not to spoil it), don’t read these posts.  They are about infertility, but they springboard off the book.

It’s not only the creepy other parents that are hitting close to home as I read Neil Gaiman’s Coraline.  When she needs to gather courage to go find her real parents, Coraline tells a story about a day when she went with her real father to explore a dump area.

While they were there, her father screamed at her to run and she ran up the hill.  Her father stayed behind for a moment.  It turned out that they had disturbed a wasp’s nest and the wasps had come out to sting.  Her father told her to run and then stood there, making sure that the wasps were attracted to his body rather than hers, and only ran when there was space between them so that the father was stung instead of his daughter.  She received one sting and he took almost 40.

During the escape, he dropped his glasses and needed to return to get them.  He explained that bravery wasn’t standing there and taking the stings in the first place, because that was simply an instinct.  An animal reaction of a parent protecting his child.  He made that decision on auto-pilot, therefore, it wasn’t bravery — it was just a person doing what he needed to do in the moment.

What was brave was returning to the hill to get his glasses when he knew the danger there.  That he was scared and went back for his glasses anyway because it was what he had to do.

Chew on that for a moment through the lens of failed treatments or trying again after a loss or continuing with the adoption process.

There is a Hebrew song — Kol Ha’olam Kulo — which is one of those songs that every child knows from camp that comes from a Nachman of Breslov quote and is translated as:

The whole world is a very narrow foot bridge, and the main thing is walking across it without being afraid.

I’d like to amend that by saying that it is totally fine to be afraid — it is healthy to be afraid — but it is incredible what we can do even while terrified.

Disclaimer: I am midway through the book, and these are my thoughts midway through the book.  I may have a very different reaction to the book once I get to the last page.

Had a most annoying experience this week when I needed to get a new cell phone (I wrote about it over on BlogHer if you want to hear the whole sordid tale) — a cell phone which I love and have named Pippa.  At least, I think she’s a Pippa.  The name sort of came to me on Thursday and my first thought was, “oh, is that supposed to be the name of a character in a future book?” and then my second thought was, “no, that should be the name of my cell phone.”

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You know those places where you have 3000 things to say, but you don’t really know what to say about them?  I’m in one of those places.  I had this crazy week, but I don’t really need to talk about it.  I’m days away from having a new manuscript finished and edited.  And I’m absolutely mentally obsessed with it, thinking about little else.  But that’s not really interesting to talk about.  I walked into school one day and the Wolvog was crying and I couldn’t comfort him because it would have been inappropriate to jump in and give him a hug because it was during a lesson.  And seeing him cry without being able to bend down and hug him was one of the hardest things I’ve done in a while.  But there’s not much more I can say about that.  I mean, it just is.  That moment just is and the new manuscript just is and my crazy week just isn’t that comment-worthy.

I have read a bunch of posts and comments lately around the Internet that have annoyed the crap out of me — none, thankfully in our community (just wanted to add that before y’all get all paranoid).  Most of them were of the my-way-is-the-only-right-way-to-do-something-and-everyone-who-doesn’t-do-it-my-way-is-WRONG ilk.  When I start thinking about how much I want to reach through the screen and throttle the writer, it makes me think that it’s time to step away from the Internet.  Or at least stick with the Creme de la Creme posts.  I have never gotten cranky reading those.

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Instead of the Weekly What If: what are you not talking about?  What subjects in your life are only worthy of a sentence and not much more?

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This is the last weekend before the December 15th deadline for the Creme de la Creme.  Just saying.

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And now, the blogs…

Exploring Chaos has a very raw post about what was said mid-cycle.  I can’t lie to you — it’s a hard post to read.  It’s a painful post to read.  But I’m glad she wrote it because as I read it, all I could think was that there was someone else right now who is going to read this post and feel less alone.

Flotsam has a post about the way the blogosphere has changed.  And even though the woman ends the post mid-thought; leaves us hanging until part two with literally the thought unfinished, I still found the post gripping.

A Little Pregnant has a post on TodayMoms responding to a psychologist’s comment about why people experiencing infertility should adopt which came from another TodayMoms article which already starts with an offensive title: “IVF vs Adoption: Which is Better?” (Did your head just explode as mine did?  Wait — did you want to crawl through the screen and throttle someone?  Step away from the computer!)  Back to Julie’s response: I thought it was level-headed and well-written, making the point that family building — like so many things in life — needs to be a personal decision and stating that one way of doing things as “best” often makes people want to kick you.  Hard.

Lastly, I end the Roundup with a post by Awful But Functioning saying goodbye to Elizabeth Edwards.  You will not be able to read this post without crying, especially when she admits: “A week or so after that post I went to my first candlelight ceremony at Children’s, and perhaps it was presumptuous of me, but on one of my scraps I wrote “Wade.” Elizabeth Edwards would never know, but I figured she took time to write my daughter’s name, the least I could do was the act of writing out her son’s.”  Seriously, read Tash’s whole post.

Goodbye Elizabeth.

[a moment of silence]

The roundup to the Roundup: I have a telephone named Pippa.  There are a lot of things in my week only worthy of a single sentence.  What in your week is only worthy of a single sentence?  Last weekend before the Creme de la Creme deadline.  And lots of great posts to read.

If you never read Coraline and don’t want to know one smidgen about the book (I am being careful not to spoil it), don’t read these posts.  They are about infertility, but they springboard off the book.

People have often told me that I would enjoy Neil Gaiman’s books, so I started two this week during my stint at the library.  And they’re right, at least insofar as Coraline. (It’s taking me much longer to get into The Graveyard Book, which I checked out on the Wolvog’s account, and I’m hoping this doesn’t screw him up when he goes in this week to take out his umpteenth book on care of guinea pigs — do you think he’s trying to send me a hint?).  It is wonderfully creepy in the usual wonderfully creepy sense — rats crawling over bodies, neighbours with invisible mouse circuses, and — of course — doors which sometimes open up into strange, dark worlds.

It is also making me squirm in the not-so-creepy sense.  In the hitting-a-little-too-close-to-home sense.

Take, for instance, the premise of the book.  Coraline, pretty much ignored by her parents, finds a door in their new house which leads to a similar-yet-different world where her other mother and other father are waiting with good tasting food and lots of toys and love galore — waiting for a little girl just like Coraline to heap on all of their love.

Do you see what I mean by discomforting?

“We’ve been waiting for you for a long time,” said Coraline’s other father.”

“For me?”

“Yes,” said the other mother.  “It wasn’t the same here without you.  But we knew you’d arrive one day, and then we could be a proper family.”

I’m not sure what Gaiman’s experience with infertility has been if at all (according to Wikipedia — and I take everything written on Wikipedia as incontrovertible fact — he has three children; but you never know how families come about), but these first encounters with the other parents feel very familiar to me.  As in, they feel like me, perhaps without the button eyes.

There is a scene where they show Coraline a false memory of her real parents being thrilled that they are rid of her and can finally do all the things they wanted to do but were held back by having a child.  The other mother says,

If they have left you, Coraline, it must be because they became bored of you, or tired.  Now, I will never become bored of you, and I will never abandon you.  You will always be safe here with me.

Back when I was a teacher, I had a conference with a student’s parents that I was told by their child were fairly absentee.  During the conference, I mentioned the tiny comics the boy always drew, and they looked at each other blankly.  I kept saying, “the comics, the illustrations, the ones he does in that notebook that he carries around.”  They had no idea.

I went home and cried to Josh, “they have a kid and they don’t even know him.  They’re not even grateful that they have him in their life or interested in who he is.  And we’re the ones who can’t have a child?  And they can procreate?  If he were my child, I’d know about the comics.”

I said this hundreds of times during my years as a teacher.  I would see parents who I deemed unappreciative.  And it’s hubris to think like that; to think that you’d be different if you were the parent.  That you’d be perfect and never get bored and never yell.  You’d appreciate every single day you had with that child and always know what is important in their life.

After all, I was a damn fine teacher and babysitter.  Everyone commented that I had infinite wells of patience.

I wanted a child so badly, that I started looking at all other parents as the people who took my child, my space at the parenting table, as if there were a finite number of parents in the world.  I would look at their tantruming child and think, “if they were mine, they’d be happy.  If they were mine, they wouldn’t be lying on the floor of Target, sobbing loudly.  So how come that person can be a parent and not me?”

There is something about the other mother in Coraline, her insinuations that she would be different if she could move into the spot of real mother, that hit a little too close to home.  Because I’ve thought these things before.  And while this book may be labeled a tale of horror because of the crawling rats and blank, button eyes, for me, it’s scary to take a step back and reexamine the thoughts I had back when I was sitting behind the teacher’s desk, conferencing with parents, and coveting so badly that I would make any promise to get out of that pain.

Those promises are unkeepable.  Most parents are doing the best they can do.  And even grateful parents grow bored sometimes or angry sometimes.  Even parents who care a great deal miss the fact that their child is drawing tiny comics during school hours if their child chooses not to show them the notebook.  That infinite wells of patience can dry up when the right conditions present themselves.  And the world can’t all be pancakes-for-breakfast and lullabies-at-night forever.  That real life gets in the way of the fantasy, and that most parents are just trying to balance it.  As best they can. Under the circumstances.

This post is for everyone who is at their wit’s end today.  This post is for everyone who wonders if they could really do any better if they were the parents.  This post is for everyone who is still waiting; still coveting; still hoping that a child walks into your life.

Disclaimer: I am midway through the book, and these are my thoughts midway through the book.  I may have a very different reaction to the other parents once I get to the last page.