Oh, Those Crack-Smoking Badgers

If your average college band concert and Cirque du Soleil ate a bunch of Wisconsin brats and then got completely piss-drunk on Capital Brewery Wisconsin Amber at the Ice Capades, the UW Varsity Band Spring Concert would be their cheese-curd loving beer-soaked streamer throwing pyrotechnical Love Baby. On crack.

But I’m getting ahead of myself.

I grew up in Wisconsin, just outside of Madison, which means that I spent many a crisp fall day in the 1980s and 1990s at Camp Randall Stadium with my dad. (Incidentally, I was there at the October 30, 1993 Michigan game, but I wasn’t crushed. Badger fans know what I mean.) Of course, it also means that I spent many a fifth quarter polka-ing to the Bud Song (“When you say WIS-CON-SIN, you’ve said it all!”), doing the chicken dance, and waving my arms to “Varsity,” all in the stands of Camp Randall, all with my dad and thousands of other Badger fans.

And yes, I know all the words to the song, “If You Want to Be a Badger (Just Come Along with Me).”

I realize that this may come as a surprise to those of you who know me well. After all, I’m the girl who tried to console a boyfriend watching his hockey team lose in the last two minutes of the third period, “Well, they could still win! They have a whole nother quarter to play still!”

Yep.

It may come as even MORE of a surprise that I love Badger games. Love them. I love tailgating before hand, even when it’s freezing cold and you have to hold your brat in gloved hands and eat it fast before your sauerkraut gets icy. I love eating peanuts in the stands and dropping the shells into the hoods of the people sitting in front of me. And I love love LOVE doing the polka and the chicken dance in the bleachers and pretending I know the words to “Varsity.”

So, when I got the offer of free tickets to the UW Varsity Band Spring Concert this year, I jumped at it. Okay, to be honest, I probably – no, almost SURELY – wouldn’t have gone if one of the two Featured Guest Soloists hadn’t been my BFF Nat. But he was, and he got me tickets, and naturally I felt like the best person – indeed, the ONLY person – to be my date to a Badger Band concert at the Kohl Center was my chicken-dancing, polka-ing, Bud-song singing Mega-Badger-Fan Dad. Yes, I spent my weekend going to a band concert with my dad. Yes, I am awesome.

I didn’t really know what to expect. For one thing, I’d never been to the Kohl Center before – in my mind, it had only recently opened. Turns out it opened ten years ago. Well, I feel old. Anyway, it’s giant, and of course before the show there were like 10,000 people milling around outside as I tried to figure out a) where to pick up our tickets, b) where to find my dad, and c) wait, ten years? Really? I had a couple of cell phone conversations of the most annoying kind with my father (“Where are you? I’m standing by the C gate. Where are you?”) and finally put my foot down and announced that I wasn’t moving and he would just have to find ME when none other than Nat McIntosh himself walked right past me, carrying a (an?) euphonium. So of course I freaked out a little and jumped up and down and he said something about a Jumbotron and all of a sudden I GOT IT, I got that he was playing this huge giant solo concert for the 10,000 people milling around the Kohl Center, and I would have gotten shy but he was running late so I just hugged him good luck and waited for my father.

Our seats were way at the top of the first level of the Kohl Center, which provided a pretty good view of the huge giant space. We settled into our uncomfortable chairs, talked a little politics, reminisced about polkaing during Badger games in the 80s, and then the show started. And it was weird.


First of all, the UW Band Director Mike Leckrone flew in on a flying cheese wedge. A GIANT flying cheese wedge.



I thought, “OH. MY. GOD.”



From his giant flying cheesewedge, Mike Leckrone threw cheddar wedge hats to the audience.



I thought, “This is what the rest of the world THINKS happens in Wisconsin. I did not realize that this actually IS what happens in Wisconsin.”

And then I laughed for about ten minutes, while the band played some rousing Wisconsin-type music. After that, Nat came out and wowed the audience with his solos (including his famous “Warrior Comes Out to Play” which made my dad start talking about Robert Bly until I shushed him and whispered, “LISTEN. MULTIPHONICS.”)



Nat was great.



Also, he was broadcast on not one but THREE JUMBOTRONS, which I must admit was a little intimidating and I started wondering if he’d actually want to hang out with me after the show. I mean: Three. Jumbotrons. What do I have to offer someone like that, other than constant repetition of the joke “That’s what he said”? I comforted myself with the fact that I’ve known Nat since he was 16 or 17 and I could always hunt him down and loudly tell him about himself as a teenager if he tried to ditch me.



After Nat’s solo, the show got really weird. Weirder than flying cheesehead weird. I swear to god.



The drumline warriors came out and played percussion while fighting ninjas…..



A small child took over the band for a while….



There were streamers...



...lots of streamers...



Mike Leckrone flew through the air. Did I mention the fact that he’s 71? 71. And he did flips. Wearing a sparkly sequined silver vest.



And then he did battle with Bucky Badger. In the air.



I am not even making this up.



What this had to do with band music I don’t know. And really? I don’t care.

Because it was awesome.



The best part of the night was when Nat and Mark Pender, the other Featured Guest Soloist, played a duet, partially because it was great, and partially because it was directly preceded by Mark Pender telling 10,000 people about how much he liked my BFF Nat and how he wanted to be BFFs with him too.

After the show, Mark Pender smooched me (on the cheek; I’m not a TOTAL jumbotron slut). This is my latest claim to fame. Next time you watch Conan and see him go crazy and run through the audience singing and screaming until Conan yells, “Pender! Pender! PENDER!!” just think: that dude smooched Molly. Yep. I was pretty excited about it until I learned that his nickname is “The Loveman.” All right.

So, to sum up:

UW Varsity Band Spring Concert: Spectacle! Spectacle! And POLKA!!

Mark Pender: The Loveman. A man who loves… to smooch.

High School Friends on Jumbotron: Weird. Be ready to Blackmail.

My dad: Even though he’ll constantly interrupt you to ask your opinion on Obama, Clinton, and/or your sister’s new job, he’s still the best UW Band date there is.

Nat: Does multiphonics! On a SOUSAPHONE!

And also: a darn good BFF. Because after all, he was on three jumbotrons and got FOUR STANDING OVATIONS FROM AN AUDIENCE of 10,000, and still didn’t try to ditch me after the show. Now that’s a real friend.

PB at the Funeral (in memory of Aunt Marg)

I’ve been working on this entry for a couple of days now, and it’s been a difficult one to write. It’s a funny story with a sad background, and I think sometimes in the middle of such a giant loss you feel not only like you'll never laugh again but also like maybe you shouldn't, as if in this new and strange landscape built around this hole in the sky it's simply not okay to laugh anymore. Luckily, I come from a family full of laughter, and one of the greatest gifts my family has given me is the ability to find the humor in even the saddest situations.

So. The story begins the night before a funeral.

I spent the first half of last week in Peoria, Illinois, following the death of my aunt Margaret Sellers, who was the oldest of nine kids and one of four women in my family with the same name as me. She was my father’s sister, eighteen years his senior (he was the baby of the family), and was like a grandmother to my sister and me all our lives. Her death seemed sudden, even though she’d been in and out of the hospital for years; she was one of those people who was so bright in life that her absence was absolutely impossible to imagine. I spent the night before the funeral expecting to see her, and only after a moment’s search of the room would I remember that she was gone.

After the visitation, we all gathered at her house to eat and drink and tell stories and hold hands and work through the process of accepting her death together. I was sitting on the floor in front of the fireplace when my cousin Linda, Marg’s oldest daughter, came to sit with me and reached for my hand. “Molly,” she said, “I want to ask you to play a part in the ceremony tomorrow.”

I assumed she was going to ask me to read something. I’m good at reading. “Absolutely, Linda. I’d be honored. What do you need?”

“We’d like you to carry the gifts,” she said.

I gave her a blank look. “Um………”

I didn’t want to sound like an idiot, but seriously, I had no idea what she was talking about. Gifts? At a funeral? For who, for my aunt? I imagined carrying brightly wrapped presents down the aisle of the church and laying them on the coffin. “Um,” I said brilliantly, “…….….. gifts?”

“You know,” Linda said. “The host.”

“Oh,” I said, nodding. “Right. Of course.” (The host? That’s…. the wafers, right? The eucharist? Why do they call it the gifts? And how would I carry it? In a basket? Balanced on a plate? I had a brief flashback to a potluck in third grade where I carefully carried a big molded jello salad all the way down two whole flights of stairs only to catch my foot on the second-to-last step and fly through the air, landing right on top of the beautiful, smushed jello. I’ve been a little nervous about carrying things ever since.)

(Also, did I mention I was raised Unitarian Universalist? And the service was to be a full Catholic funeral mass? And pretty much my entire family – except, of course, my dad – is all Irish Catholic? And other than the part where everyone goes to the front of the church to get communion and I stay in my seat, I remember almost nothing about the Catholic masses – and Catholic funerals – I’ve been to in the past?)

“So,” I said. “Uh……….. what would that involve, exactly?”

Linda said, “It’s very easy. You and Stevie just carry the gifts up the aisle and give them to the priest.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sure. Absolutely. I would be honored to.”

Linda patted my hand and looked away, her eyes glistening. “Good. It will mean a lot to the family.” I squeezed her hand back and we sat in silence for a moment, cousins reunited in sorrow, listening to the murmured conversations from other rooms.



“So,” I finally said, still holding her hand. “Um. You do know that I’m not baptized, right?

“Oh,” Linda said. “Hmmm.”

“So… is that a problem?”

She thought about it for a moment. “Well,” she finally said, “we’ll give you a one-day pass.”

“Cool,” I said. “Because, you know, I wouldn’t want my heathen ways to interrupt the mass or anything.”

She smiled at me. “We believe in baptism by desire.”

I glanced across the room, where my Unitarian step-mother was talking about architecture with my Catholic cousin, and my (at times fervently) atheist Unitarian father was fiddling with his briefcase. In high school, my sister briefly rebelled against our parents by announcing her imminent conversion to Catholicism. Once I met a friend of my mother’s and he asked her eagerly, Is this one of the PBs? I looked at her to explain and her friend said, Pagan Babies like it was totally obvious, like that’s the only thing he could ever imagine Megan or me being called, as if my mother had never referred to us by our first names, ever, when talking about us to her friends. I said, Yeah, I guess so, and my mother laughed and squeezed my shoulders and called me a PB for the rest of the day.

“I think my parents are pretty proud of my pagan-baby status, actually. My mom brags about it all the time….”

Linda seemed to be getting a tiny bit impatient. “Really, all you have to do is renounce Satan.”

“Oh!” I said, smiling broadly. “Well, I think I can manage that for a few hours at least.”

“Great.”

“Cool.”

There was a long pause.

“Um,” I asked, “so… how do I know when to carry the presents?”

Linda looked at me.

“I mean gifts?” I asked. “The little crackers? The body of Jesus?”

My cousin sighed. “Just follow Stevie. He just went through confirmation, so he’s an expert.”

“Okay, cool,” I said. I had a feeling that any more questions would get me cast out, not only of the funeral, but possibly of the extended family. “Great.”

*

Twenty minutes later, I sat down with my cousins Stevie, an eighth grader, Lindsey, a sophomore in high school, and a friend of theirs, who were sitting out on the sunporch. “Hey dudes,” I said. “Hope I’m not interrupting.”

“No problem!” they said. “We’re just talking about our shoes!!”

I laughed. “Cool. So… I’m supposed to carry the gifts tomorrow? With you, Stevie?”

Stevie looked guarded, as if hedging his bets against a trick question. “Okay.”

“So… I’ve never done that before. What do I do?”

Lindsey smiled brilliantly and said, “It’s really easy! You just have to carry them and give them to the priest!”

I nodded. “That’s what I heard. But how do you know when to go?”

Lindsey’s friend said, “It’s right after the Homily!”

“Cool,” I said.

They seemed happy that they could help me. I reached down to scratch my foot.

“So……… when is that, exactly?”

The kids looked concerned. “Um….”

“I know,” I said apologetically. “My sister and I weren’t raised Catholic. Don’t tell anyone.”

Lindsay’s friend thought for a moment, and then said, “Basically, as soon as the priest is like, ‘Blah blah, lord hear our prayer!’”

“Awesome.” This is why I love kids. They give you straightforward answers, and even if they’re secretly pitying you for being such an addled adult person, they’re usually nice about it. I figured I could chance a couple more questions. They’d understand. “You guy, what if I mess up?” I looked at my cousin, the eighth grader, the same age as the kids I used to teach. “I’ll just follow you, Stevie. I heard you were an expert.”

Stevie shrugged and said, “Well….”

“I’ll just watch you, okay? Maybe you should sit behind me, and then you can pinch me when it’s time to go.”

He smiled a little, and his sister Lindsay said, “I’ll stand up and point to the back of the church.” She demonstrated, standing up and waving like a traffic cop. We all laughed.

I said, “Make a big sign that says MOLLY -- GO NOW!”

The kids giggled. “We’ll just stand up and yell.” Lindsey waved her hands in semaphore, and traffic directed me toward the imaginary back of the church, and all the kids yelled, “NOW!!”


*


The next day, we sat in the car for a half-hour helping my father to re-write the eulogy. I watched the rain slash against the windshield as he sat next to me crossing his pen through lines and my step-mother added her thoughts from the backseat. Ducking in the rain, we ran across the street to Saint Mark’s where ushers stood outside with their giant black umbrellas. I stopped in the entrance of the church and saw my uncle and automatically looked for my aunt before remembering why we were there. And then I saw Stevie sitting on a bench near the door and he looked very solemn and grown-up in the way that teenagers do when they’re wearing suits, but he gave me a secret smile and I smiled back.

I held it together until my mother showed up. Even though she’s been divorced from my father for almost two decades, she still made the four hour drive south for the funeral, because Aunt Marg was like a mother to her. She hugged my cousins and my uncle and told them all that she’d loved Marg very much. She cried, and I cried, because I always cry when my mother does. She doesn’t cry very often. I stood behind her and watched her hug my cousins and introduced my younger cousins to her because they’re all gorgeous and in their teens and twenties and she probably remembers most of them as chubby toddlers.

And then the ushers ushed us and Lindsey gave me a watery smile. I sat with my mom a few rows behind Aunt Marg’s kids and grandkids, and looked up at the green columns and soaring ceilings of the church. I was overwhelmed by kinesthetic memory, the kind your body holds onto without any help from your mind or heart. Suddenly my skin and lips and hands and teeth were all remembering the last time I’d been in that church, at the funeral of my little cousin who was killed in a car accident just days before his twenty-second birthday. I remembered sitting in approximately the same place five years earlier, watching the somber young men in suits who should have been Jimmy’s groomsmen, not his pallbearers. We sat in silence for a long time and then there was music and the priest talked about death and life and I thought of all the things you think about at a funeral, all the funerals you’ve been to before and all the people you’ve lost in your life and all the people you’ll lose in the future, and how you never knew one heart could hold so much hurt and still keep functioning. As one of my genius students said, “It’s weird at funerals. Like there’s nowhere you’d rather be but at the same time there’s a thousand places you’d rather be.”

It was like that.

I thought of all the things I’d always meant to ask Aunt Marg about but had never gotten around to asking her, all the things I should have told her last time I saw her, not even important things, stupid things like Thank you for the birthday cake you made me that looked like a bunny and Thank you for letting me bring my recently-rescued dog into your house when I was twenty-two and thank you for letting him sleep next to me in the bed in the Ivy Room and What was my dad like when he was a little kid? and What was it like to be a girl in the 1930s and 1940s, not just any girl but a Backes girl, what does it mean to be a Backes and how did you raise such nice kids and did you know that I’ve always planned to name a daughter Margaret Mary just like you? And I thought about how my mom was younger than I am now when she first came into this family and I thought about how she told my uncle that she always appreciated the fact that he and Aunt Marg let her bring her big gross dog into their house when she was in her twenties and they let me do the same thing when I was in my twenties, and I cried.

Next to me, my mother wound her arm around my shoulders and squeezed me against her, and I thought about how it’s a good thing that she’s immortal because if I ever lost her I wouldn’t even be able to walk anymore.

And the whole time – crying, leaning against my mother, wiping my eyes with paper napkins I’d grabbed out of my dad’s car and shoved in my purse before the funeral – I was also watching Stevie, and worrying about carrying the host. Because this is how my mind works: put me in a church on one of the top ten saddest days of my whole life, and then give me a task that involves carrying sacred objects in front of a churchfull of people, and the whole time I’m mourning my aunt I’ll also be worrying about that molded jello plate in third grade.

What if I tripped? What if I tripped? What if I tripped?

And maybe I wasn’t raised Catholic and maybe I don’t believe in exactly the same God as they do, but I believe in the beauty of my family and the sanctity of love, and Lord, I did not want to screw up Aunt Marg’s funeral by tripping down the aisle and sending the holy bowl of Communion Wafers flying through the audience members like rice at a wedding.

So of course I tripped.

As it turns out, cute little maryjane crocs are not the best shoes to wear when carrying Communion Wafers down the aisle at a funeral, because if you’re really focused on not dropping the little gold dish they’re in, your crocs might just catch against the marble floor and make you trip. And I was, and they did. Just a little. Just a little tiny instant of almost-tripping and then half-skipping down the aisle but it was enough to make me smile in embarrassment because of COURSE I tripped, if there’s anyone who’s going to trip at a funeral while trying to deliver Communion Wafers to a very nice priest, it’s M. Molly Backes.

It was only a very tiny trip, but it was enough to make me pink-cheeked as I followed the example of my adorable eighth grader cousin and dipped my head at the priest and then hurried back to the pew where my mother sat. I flung myself in next to her, relieved at least that it was over, and I whispered to her, “OH MY GOD, I TRIPPED!”


She squeezed my hand reassuringly, and whispered back, “I was just shocked the Communion Wafers didn’t burst into flame in your Pagan Baby hands.”


*





So I guess the moral of this story has something to do with finding the humor and absurdity in all parts of our lives, not just the obvious ones. In fact, you could probably argue that those moments of laughter in the middle of heartbreak are exactly what define our species. That -- even in the face of death and the certainty that we will eventually lose everyone we love and even the world itself – we still fall in love, we still hang on to hope, and we still laugh: this is what makes us precious, and absolutely human.

And I have to believe that wherever Aunt Marg is now, whether it's heaven or our hearts or the kindness and generosity of her children and grandchildren or all of the above, she's certainly laughing.



*************************************************

Margaret Mary Backes Sellers, 9/20/27 - 4/18/08

*************************************************

The Perfect Job (Please Don't Snipe Me)

Oh my goodness, I have so much news.

All through January… and February… and March, I felt like I couldn’t blog because I only had two thoughts in my head: 1) Oh my god it’s so effing cold I want to die, and 2) No, seriously, it is SO COLD and WHY GOD WON’T IT STOP SNOWING? Therefore, it was an effort to blog about anything that didn’t directly involve complaining about how cold and dark it was, both outside and inside my heart.

But!

Now it’s SPRING, and I have tons of things to tell you about.

Most exciting: I have a new job! One I’m very, very excited about and which took absolutely no hemming and/or hawing on my part to accept – in fact, I was worried that I’d come back from vacation and find that they didn’t want me after all. But they did. So. As of yesterday, I’m the new assistant to the director of StoryStudio Chicago, and I am sooooo excited about it. First of all, StoryStudio is an amazing place that offers tons of writing classes in fiction, memoir, creative non-fiction, and business writing. There’s always something incredible happening there, and it’s always full of people who are really excited about – and want to talk about – writing! You know what a nerd I am for talking shop, so getting to work with a whole bunch of writers is a dream come true for me. In fact, I’ve been in the Advanced Writer’s Workshop at SSC since the end of last summer, and it has been endlessly helpful to me. So I know firsthand what a fantastic place StoryStudio is.

Second of all, my new boss – Jill – has been the leader of my writing workshop & my teacher as long as I’ve been at StoryStudio, so I already know that she is fantastic. In the great tradition of my life, I have another smart, strong woman to work with, and I couldn’t be happier. AND she is very committed to making sure that I work on my novel, and don’t let my job get in the way of my book. (What? Do bosses really say things like that?)

Thirdly, a huge part of my job will involve my favorite pastime…. blogging! About writing! And books! I swear to god, doesn’t it seem like they invented this job at the Perfect Job Factory? I’ll try to post at least one blog entry a day, so when you get bored at work – or you really just miss me – you can check out the StoryStudio blog Cooler By The Lake. Oh, and when I’m not blogging… I’m working on Facebook, and Myspace, and LinkedIn, and generally just trying to strengthen and support our writing community. For real. That’s my job.

I’m thrilled, because the search for balance between writing and teaching has been a challenge in my life for years. I remember, when I was maybe seventeen, telling someone that I knew I’d always write and I’d always teach, but I didn’t know exactly what that would look like, and it wouldn’t necessarily be teaching in public schools or even teaching in a formal capacity at all. Hell, for years I played with the idea of becoming a minister (am I allowed to start that sentence with the word “hell?” Maybe there’s a good reason I didn’t head down that path…). This chance, to work with the development and organization of a writing school and a community of writers, seems like it will be a fantastic chance to prove to myself that the balance can exist!

Okay, clearly I’m a little giddy here, so bear with me. Luckily, the Perfect Job doesn’t pay a whole lot, so I don’t have to worry about any envious existential crisis snipers coming after me. Seriously, you could probably have the perfect job too, if you were willing to be ass-broke while all the people you graduated with were texting their assistants from their iphones about the new houses they’re buying for their gorgeous perfect children and their independently wealthy spouses on their chartered jets with their six weeks paid vacations and maxed out 401Ks and full health benefits including dental, vision, acupuncture, massage, hang-nail emergencies, and bad hair day coverage.

But still: the perfect job! For me!

I ALSO have to tell you about my birthday, and Nadia’s wedding, and the Fun Nuns in Barbados, and the Gran Fiesta we had here this weekend… not to mention all that’s coming up in the next two months! But for now, I’m off to eat spaghetti and submit myself to Firefly Inculcation, so that next time I see you, I can tell you all about Inara and Val, or Amena and Mal, or, you know. Those space folks.

Until then… see you at The Cooler.

Travels in Chicago and Abroad....

Yesterday, my mother came down to Chicago and hung out with me for the day. Ostensibly, she was here to help me pack (which she did) and take me out for my birthday (we went to Zia! New Mexican food in Chicago! Best of both worlds!) but actually we spent the majority of the day driving around the city looking for baby hats. It's a long story.

Anyway, even though tromping all over the city with my mom was fantastic, and the sun even came out for a few minutes here and there, the highlight by far was "Mamabackes's Tour of Homes (and everyone who was stabbed when she lived there)" in which she drove us around Old Town and Lincoln Park, showing us all the different houses and apartments she lived in when she lived here in her twenties. Every apartment came complete with a story like, "Oh, and that house three doors down? That's where a pregnant lady was stabbed in the stomach and pushed out a third floor window..... and that place had the BEST Italian bread! ....Where that bar is used to be our laundromat, where my neighbor got stabbed and then he was so scared he had to borrow my German shepherd for the night.... did I tell you about the ladies who used to make big plates of fried chicken and spaghetti at that church?.... and over there is where your cousin got stabbed in the neck......"

It was awesome.

I made her give me a similar tour a few years ago, when I was here taking a summer class at Second City, but I didn't yet have any frame of reference for the city, so I didn't really understand where we were at any given time. Yesterday, I saw that she lived in a pretty close range, and after taking the Armitage bus every day for six months, I am all too familiar with the area where the pregnant lady was stabbed. Luckily for pregnant ladies, and probably unluckily for local color, the area is now mostly full of ladies who are far too rich to do anything so undignified as get stabbed in the belly. The back, certainly.

I love hearing my mom's stories and trying to imagine what Chicago was like thirty years ago, even as I learn what it's like for myself now. Because my parents both lived here when they were my age, this place sometimes feels a little bit like an ancestral home. In a nice way.

So thanks Mom. You can tell me about walking your dog and people getting stabbed any day.

In other news, I'm heading off to Barbados tomorrow for my college roommate's wedding. Five of us lived in a house senior year at Grinnell (White House, for you Grinnellians) which we called "The Funnery Nunnery -- the last stop before hell." We were the Fun Nuns, also known as the Bad Habits. We're reconvening on the beach for a week of nuns in the sun, which will likely culminate in some sort of leaving the sisterhood ceremony. She may be leaving the sisterhood, but she'll always be our sister. Awwwwwwww.

So: I'll see you when I get back! Have a great week!

March: The Book You Should Have Told Me To Read

Last fall, I wrote about my lifelong fondness for Louisa May Alcott’s timeless Little Women. I may have also mentioned, once or twice, my deep and profound love for reimagined stories. If you know me well, you also know that I love song covers – same basic concept. You take someone else’s story (or song) and spin it in a slightly different way. When you’re successful, you gain the ring of truth in your own story, set as it is in a world already established, and add depth to the original.

Knowing all this as you do, how is it possible that NO ONE has thought to recommend Geraldine Brooks’s exquisite book March to me? Come on, Bloglandia! Where were you? You made me wait until my father just happened to pick it off the book table at church a few weeks before my birthday? In 2008?? When it won the Pulitzer Prize TWO YEARS AGO??

You guys!

Even MORE troubling than this gross oversight on the part of everyone I know are the blank looks on the faces of the people I’ve recommended this book to in the last few days:

Me: OMG, I just read this fantastic book.
Book-Loving Friend: Oh, I love to read! What is it?
Me: Geraldine Brooks’s book March. It tells the story of what happens to Mr. March when he goes off to the Civil War. It’s so good!
Friend Who Actually Might Not Be That Much of A Bibliophile After All: Who?
Me: Mr. March. You know! Marmee’s husband? Meg and Jo and Beth and Amy’s father?
Friend I Previously Considered to be Literate: (blank look) Uh… who?
Me: You know, like Little Women?
Friend Who Clearly Hates Books and Maybe Isn’t Actually My Friend After All Because How Can I Be Friends With Someone Who Doesn’t Know Who Marmee Is, I Mean Really: Oh yeah, I never read that book. Should I?

People!! I expected this kind of nonsense from my students, but from my friends? From adults? From the WRITERS in my workshop? You can’t not read Little Women!

I’m serious. Go read Little Women, and don’t come back until you can tell me what Teddy Laurence has in common with Sir James Chettam. I’ll wait here.







Okay, from here on out I’ll assume you’ve now all read Little Women. Isn’t it great? Don’t you love the part where everything’s just awful and Beth has scarlet fever and Marmee’s away in Washington and the girls are all by themselves, trying to keep poor little Beth alive, but then Marmee comes home and Beth can breathe and THEN Mr. March comes home on Christmas and everyone flies to him and smothers him in hugs and Amy falls at his feet and hugs his ankles and the girls make him go around and tell them how they’ve all changed in the year since he left them?

Ever wonder how Mr. March changed?

Geraldine Brooks did. In her splendid March, she tells the story of what happens to Mr. March during his year in the Civil War, doubling back in the narrative to cover his youth as a traveling salesman, his courtship and marriage to Marmee, how he won and lost his fortune, and why he decided to leave his four little women and his wife for the grueling hardships of war. Just as Louisa May Alcott drew on her own family to craft her novel, Geraldine Brooks turned to the journals of LMA’s father, A. Bronson Alcott, to fill in some of the narrative gaps, lending historical and familial truth to the figure of Captain March. Additionally, Brooks peoples her narrative with familiar figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson, Daniel Day, and Henry Thoreau, with whom the Alcotts themselves were acquainted.

As the best retellings do, March adds layers of pathos and depth to the pages of Little Women, its shift in perspective bound to change the way you read the homey scenes in the March home forever. After what he witnesses on the battlefield, the carnage and the cruelty, how can Mr. March possibly come home unchanged? And yet, the story of his family is clearly the story of the women, who focus on their growth and development without allowing much room for their father to do any of his own.

I don’t even like historical fiction, and the Civil War is by far my least favorite period of time to read about – and yet – I love this book. I read so much and so quickly that it’s rare for a book to strike at my heart. Even more rare are the times I find myself looking up from a page in quiet thankfulness, almost disbelief, that this book is SO GOOD and doesn’t lag or lose my interest at any point. March defied my every expectation.




It was folly to let him go. Unfair of him to ask it of me. And yet one is not permitted to say such a thing; it is just one more in the long list of things that a woman must not say. A sacrifice such as his is called noble by the world. But the world will not help me put back together what the war has broken apart.

It's supposed to be spring. SPRING!

An Open Letter to the State of Wisconsin

Dear Wisconsin,

How’s it going? Things are pretty okay here, I guess. I mean, Illinois is all right and everything, even though we used to make fun of it a lot. Those were good days, huh Wisconsin? Remember? Those long lazy days of summer, when it seemed like everything was funny and nothing could go wrong? I know you’re one hundred thirty two years older than me and everything, but our age difference never seemed to be much of a big deal, back then. We were pals.

Wisconsin, I have a confession. I took you for granted. I know I did. I didn’t realize how much I cared about you until I left. I went off to Iowa and though – I know this is hard to hear Wisconsin, but it’s true – though Iowa is very lovely in its own way, and will always be dear in my heart, it was YOU that I missed, Wisconsin. Did Iowa introduce me to deep fried cheese curds and beer baseball? Does Iowa have a cave full of smurfs and towns full of trolls? Can Iowa brag about its Circus Museum & Mustard Museum? No, Wisconsin. That’s all you. Iowa doesn’t even have a professional football team, babe.

I tried to make it work, Wisconsin. I came back to you, remember? I came back. We had a whole summer full of five mile walks at midnight, the Milky Way spread thick over the quiet cornfields, wildflowers by the sides of the highway, bobbing with fireflies. Music on the Union Terrace, the colors and textures of the Farmer’s Market in June, ambling through the prairie grasses of the biggest dog park I’ve ever seen… the hills of Lacrosse and the Mississippi bluffs… Picnic Point in autumn, with merlot and burgundy leaves overhead and orange and gold at our feet…. You, Wisconsin. It was you I loved.

Okay, okay, I know I left again. What can I say? New Mexico had a certain je ne sais quois. It was exotic, all those lavender mountains and wide open skies. I never left you for very long, though, did I Wisconsin? I came back to you at least twice a year, and believe me, I thought about you a lot. Look, New Mexico’s gorgeous, but it doesn’t have your trees, Wisconsin. It doesn’t have your gorgeous autumns or your velvet summer nights. All that humidity we used to complain about? Turns out it makes for some pretty fantastic early summer mornings, the mist rising off the lake…. New Mexico doesn’t even have lakes, baby.

Look, Wisconsin, it’s always been you. You’ll always be the one I come back to. You’ll always be the one I’m talking about when I talk about home. But honestly Wisconsin? I have to admit that I’m getting pretty tired of this winter shit. I know, I know, you’re in your rebellious phase. I get it. You’re trying to punish me for leaving you. Last winter you rubbed your mild winter in my face with your 55 degree days and your sparkling turquoise lakes as I flew out of Madison for the tundra that was Albuquerque, and this year, now that I’m back, you’re nothing but snow and ice. Just like your heart, right? I get it, Wisconsin. You never were very subtle with your metaphors. But seriously, enough. Enough.

Wisconsin, it’s spring. It’s March 21, Wisconsin. It’s Easter. If you weren’t in such a snit today I would be with you RIGHT NOW, Wisconsin. That’s right! I was going to drive up today and hang out with you all weekend, did you know that? Until Monday, Wisconsin! I always spend the holidays with you, Wisconsin, you know that. Of course I was going to spend Easter with you. But no, you had to be all 8-10 inches of snow, winter driving emergencies, winter weather warnings, Dane County Sheriff’s office sending out memos begging people to stay off the roads if at all possible…. And then you drag Illinois into it? That’s pretty childish, babe.

I’m losing my patience here, Wisconsin. Look, of course I love you, but if you’re going to be nothing but winter from October 1 to April 1, then maybe it’s not worth it anymore. No, this isn’t an ultimatum… I’m just saying, Wisconsin, that… you know, I’m still friends with New Mexico, and I could always go back. I could. Cause babe, I really don’t need this right now.

Give me some sunshine & I’ll reconsider.

Love and kisses,
Molly

The Mysterious Elderly Gentleman

By Mamabackes

When I got home from work yesterday, 15 year old Zeke was not at the back door to greet me. About half of the time he seems to hear the car or otherwise sense that I will be opening the door and is there waiting. I let Basil out of his crate and went to tell Zeke that it was time for a walk. When I left the house nine hours earlier, Zeke was sleeping peacefully on the couch, but he was not on either the couch or the loveseat. I went upstairs to look for him on his bed and he was not there either! I did a frantic search of the entire house, including the closed bedrooms and closets, under beds and in hidden corners and Zeke was no where to be found! I thought maybe Molly had been homesick and had driven up and taken him for a walk but that didn't make any sense. Then I (seriously!) thought that Zeke had died while I was gone and the creatures from his planet had landed in the back yard and retrieved the body of their king to take back home.

Finally, I went to the basement and found Zeke disoriented, sleeping on a pile of dirty laundry. I do not believe that he has ever been in the basement before, and I can't even imagine how difficult it would have been for him to make it down the cement stairs when he has such difficulty with the carpeted ones. I don't know if he went looking for a quiet place to die or he got lost looking for cheese. He was unable to climb up the stairs by himself so I carried him up. Once he was back in the kitchen he started bugling his moose call and jumping in the excitement of being readied for a walk, all thoughts of demise banished, for now.

Love, Mama

A Letter to My Students

Recently, spies at my old school informed me that some of my former students thought to google me. Apparently, they found this blog and came back with the information that A) Ms. Backes is writing a book! [True] and B) Ms. Backes has friends!! [Also true, and how flattering that it should come as a surprise to them. Reminds me of Valentine’s Day a couple of years ago, when my students were shocked to hear that I had managed to find someone who wanted to date me.

George: Are you married Ms. Backes?
Me: No.
Dan: Do you have a boyfriend?
Me: Yes.
Haley: YOU have a BOYFRIEND??????????
Me: (dryly) try not to sound so surprised.
Haley: You must be a LOT more exciting outside of school.

Anyhow, yes, children, Ms. Backes has managed to trick several people into being friends with her over the years, and yes, she’s probably more exciting outside school.]

As usual, I can’t resist the chance to hang out with students for a bit, so if you’ll forgive me, this next part is for any kid I was ever fortunate enough to work with, from the current 8th graders who are clever enough to google me but wouldn’t actually talk to me when I was there in December (hi 7th period!) to the now-in-their-mid-twenties folks who were in the first theater class I ever taught, in the mid-90s.

To My Students

Hey you guys,

I miss you! You probably don’t believe that, because you remember all the times I threatened to make you pay for my therapy bills. You probably assume that when I think about you, I think of all the giggles and whispers I was constantly shushing, the big round zeros in my assignment book I was always nagging you to complete for me, the notes full of middle school drama I liked to confiscate and pretend I was going to put in my imaginary book Whuz UP: Linguistic Particularities in Colloquial Pre-Adolescent Discourse. Of course I remember those things, and many more, believe me. But really? When I think of you guys I don’t think of picking up your candy wrappers after I expressly told said no food in my classroom, or of buzzing the office to send someone to find you when I knew you were ditching my class, or of washing my board for the third time in one day because you just couldn’t stop yourselves from drawing little doggies with circles for paws next to your name and basketball number, even when I hid all the chalk.

What I remember best are the times you made me laugh.

I have hundreds of pages of funny things you said, hundreds of snippets of conversation and quotations that made me laugh then and make me laugh still. I kept the stories and drawings and notes and cards you gave me, and over the years I’ve gone back to them, and they’ve helped me to face another day of whispers and candy wrappers. I miss the way you could always take me by surprise, how you were always far more clever and sly than anyone gave you credit for, how pleased you seemed when you could make me laugh out loud, even if it was for something ridiculous. Especially then.

I miss reading with you. A few years ago, some teachers and I were talking about what we’d do if we won the lottery, and of course the general consensus involved closing the school and moving to Mexico, but I said if I won the lottery I’d keep coming to school, I’d just stop giving grades, and turn my classes into writing groups and book clubs. We’d just hang out together and write stuff and read books together and talk about why we liked them. The best days in class were the days closest to that model: last year, when we pushed all the desks back and sprawled out in a circle on the floor together, or the year before, when we did nothing but read The Diary of Anne Frank for two weeks straight, no tests, no journals, no worksheets. We just read and talked. The time we did Nanowrimo together and did nothing but write novels for a whole month – that was awesome. The year before that, when we picked a country in the world and wrote a story about someone who might live there, with the understanding that ninjas can live anywhere. So fun.

You guys were also my favorite people to be around when things got sad and hard. Those of you who were in seventh grade in the fall of 2002 (and will be graduating this year, my goodness!), after the one year memorial service we had on September 11, you guys talked to me about the whole terrible event, and you helped me to keep faith in the goodness of the world. Or the following spring, when my cousin was killed in a car crash, you were the only people I could talk to, because you were the only ones who didn’t feed me BS about it. All the grown-ups gave me platitudes like “It was his time” and “He’s in a better place now,” until I wanted to scream. You guys just looked at me and said, “Are you sad? If my cousin died I would be really sad.” I was, and you were the only ones who just let me be sad without trying to gloss over anything. Thanks for that.

We talked about some tough stuff over the years: the Holocaust, the KKK, Hate Crimes, homophobia, racism, sexism, violence, fear, September 11, the Birmingham Church bombing, slavery, Matthew Shepard, Columbine, Hurricane Katrina, the deaths of people in our communities, suicides, addiction, alcoholism, domestic violence, murder, rape. We kept tallies of how many times in a day we heard people using racist or sexist or homophobic epithets (and it was a LOT). You asked me why Hitler hated the Jews and then you told me about who you hated, two weeks later, and I tried to make you see that your reasons were just as dumb as Hitler’s were. We talked about Matthew Shepard and you brought me articles from the local newspaper about a similar Hate Crime that happened in our own town. Most of you made an effort to stop calling people fags and using “gay” as a synonym for “dumb” – at least in my presence. You wrote a lot about yourselves, and tried to find your own voices in spite of the fact that middle school pushes you to conform. You thanked me for giving you permission to be weird. You took my suggestion to use your imagination and ran with it. You came back from high school and told me that I would be proud of you: you’ve dropped a lot of the posturing you had in middle school and now you’re much more of an individual.

I am proud of you guys. I’m proud of you all. Don’t forget the things we talked about back then. Be weird and wonderful and creative. Be yourselves. Be kind to everyone, even the freaky kids. Don’t listen to gossip, and don’t spread it. Don’t let other people make up your mind for you. Judge everything for yourself, and always keep an open mind. Let yourself be surprised. Remember the power of language, and please call people out when they use racist or sexist or homophobic language in your presence. Be thoughtful and true to yourself. Keep reading. Keep writing.

Thanks for all the awesome times we had together, the great discussions and the games of Silent Desk Tag. Thanks for making me laugh. You guys were the funniest and best students a teacher could have.

Keep being awesome.

Love,
Ms. Backes

My Little Pony: Princess Mononoke

Last night, we watched Hayao Miyazaki’s film Mononoke-hime, or Princess Mononoke, which – according to Wikipedia, at least -- is the third most popular anime film in Japan, after Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. For good reason. Princess Mononoke is beautifully animated and presents a tale of complex moralities in the struggle between the Humans and the Forest. Like Harry and Voldemort, it seems, neither shall live while the other survives. Only Prince Ashitaka, an exile from a long-lost tribe, understands the need to make peace between the two groups.

I have a deep-rooted (and totally irrational, I know) distaste for anime, which stems from this show Belle and Sebastian that was on Nickelodeon in the late 80s. I hated that show, and I’m not sure why. It’s about a little boy and his giant dog (a Great Pyrenees, probably) who live in the French Pyrenees – yes, the central plot focused on a dog, and still Young Molly could not love it. It was the weirdly moving mouths and eyes and the occasionally poorly-synced sound that bothered me. Also, as I recall, the kids were always climbing mountains and freaking out about something or other, and whenever they freaked out about something, their mouths opened and shut like lampreys. I hated that.

So the very fact that Princess Mononoke won me over says a lot for it; it’s good enough to charm an ardent anime disliker. What I loved especially about the film -- other than the gorgeous animation and the extremely charming character Yakul the red elk – was the complexity of the characters. No one (other than Yakul) is all good or all bad. Lady Eboshi (voiced in the English version by Minnie Driver) is the leader of the Human settlement Irontown, and though she thinks it would be a fantastic idea to kill all the animals in the Forest and cut off the head of the Forest Spirit, she also takes in lepers and buys the freedom of girls in brothels. Moro the wolf goddess (voiced by Gillian Anderson) wants to eat Lady Eboshi’s head and generally thinks that Humans should probably all be drowned like kittens, but she also takes in a human girl and raises her as a daughter, and will do anything to protect the Forest. It’s never easy.

The only part of the movie that gave me pause was the ending. Billy Bob Thornton and Minnie Driver manage to cut the head off the Forest Spirit, causing it to turn into a giant black ooze that searches the forest for its head and turns everything it touches evil or dead. Suddenly, the fight to stay clear of the black ooze becomes a matter of life or death. “Don’t let the ooze touch you!” people scream, running from its inevitable path.

The scene would have been very dramatic, probably, if it hadn’t reminded me of another animated movie: My Little Pony: The Movie. That’s right, Miyazaki’s lovely, classic film reminded me of a wretched example of cinematic prostitution existing only to sell more toy ponies, one which to this day is on record for being one of the weakest grossing feature films ever.

My film studies major sister will probably have a coronary at this comparison. Miyazaki… and Hasbro? Seriously?

Yes, seriously, and Megan, here’s why: I know you remember My Little Pony: The Movie, because we definitely rented it from Mr. Eddy’s video store more than once. Perhaps you recall the plot, which involves an evil witch making a PURPLE OOZE which covers PonyLand and which turns everything it touches grumpy and pessimistic. Miyazaki = Black Ooze, turns you evil; My Little Pony = Purple Ooze, turns you cranky. Just as the final scenes of Princess Mononoke have everyone running away from the Black Ooze, much of My Little Pony: The Movie involves ponies, dragons, flutter ponies, and some human kids (notably named Megan and Molly, which may explain why my sister and I watched that movie more than once) running away from the Purple Ooze. The Black Ooze destroys the Forest and Irontown; the Purple Ooze destroys PonyLand and the Dream Castle. The Black Ooze disappears when Ashitaka and San give the Forest Spirit’s head back to him; the Purple Ooze disappears when the Flutter Ponies come do “Utter Flutter” and free the Rainbow of Light, which attacks the witches who made the Purple Ooze and drops them in a volcano. Okay, so the denouement isn’t quite the same, but still. The Oozes and their effects are eerily similar.

After watching Princess Mononoke, I’m eager to see Miyazaki’s most popular film Spirited Away, which I actually promised Lisa I’d see years ago. I’d probably even see Howl’s Moving Castle, I was that enchanted by Miyazaki’s work. Still, you’ll be hard-pressed to convince me that Hayao wasn’t watching My Little Pony: The Movie with his grandchildren when he worked on the script for Princess Mononoke. I guess I’ll hold my judgment here, but if Spirited Away ends with Utter Flutter freeing the Rainbow of Light... well, Hayao Miyazaki, I got your number, and I’ll count it in tiny purple hoofbeats.

Go Rest, Young Bear

I've gotten a couple of panicky emails asking where I am. "You haven't blogged in FIVE DAYS!! Are you alive??"

I am. I haven't. I'm sorry.

Here's the thing: the high -- the HIGH -- in Chicago today was 10 degrees Fahrenheit. I don't want to know what the windchill was. The sun was actually out, which was a nice change, but still? Twenty-two degrees below freezing is goddamn cold.

As it turns out, the HR people at my old job changed their minds once more, and they decided to make the job half what I did when I was there and half what I never want to do anywhere, and so once again the universe made that decision for me. Thanks, universe! Anytime you need help making a decision, I got your back.

So this week: no reason to leave the house (with the exception of a fabulous breakfast with my dear friend Kate Cannon on Monday) -- really really cold outside -- aaaaaaaannnd, our internet's broken. Therefore: peaceful hermitage. ("Till old experience do attain /
To something like prophetic strain...." Am I right? J-Milt? Cynthia knows what I mean.)

I've been sleeping a lot, shifting in my bed to absorb what sunlight I can find. For a while, I assumed that it was seasonal depression, back with a vengeance now that I'm firmly entrenched in this midwestern darkness. It came to my attention recently, though, that spending the winter snuggling doesn't necessarily mean I'm depressed. It seems I could also be a bear.


Given a choice between seasonal affective disorder and being a bear, I choose bear.






So dear reader, be assured: it's not that I'm too cold to blog, or too sleepy, or too busy revising my novel. Nope. I'm busy being a bear.

Corporate Waste

Subtitle: Things I've Thrown Away This Week (Not Including My Heart)

On Tuesday, I spent the entire day making thirteen copies of a 60-page binder. 780 pages, plus all the binder tab pages (65). And the cover pages, 13. So... 858 pages.

This comprised about two, two and a half hours' work, and tons of paper cuts. The company paid approximately sixty dollars to have me do this.

At the end of the project, it turned out that the binders the project manager bought for the reports didn't match up to the hole-puncher we'd used, so the 65 page report didn't fit into the 13 brand new binders. The project manager looked at me, and I could see the thought "Redo" flashing in his eyes. Instead, I talked him into going into the supply closet for different binders. We found six binder that worked, and he ran off to order more of the same binder from the office supply company, to be delivered the next morning. The company paid about $25 for me and probably about $50 for him to take this hour plus just worrying about binders.

Then I boxed up four of the binders we had and fed-exed them off to the east coast, two-day delivery. It was a large box: let's say, what, $15, $20 to ship it?

The next morning, as I waited for the office supply delivery dude to bring me the new binders so I could finish up the remaining binders, a morbidly cheerful email appeared in my outlook inbox. Turns out that the big boss had made a "few changes" to the reports. Guess what: all 858 pages had to be reprinted. And the few changes included some extra stuff, so this time it was closer to 900 pages. So: the 858 pages from the day before? Landfill. Another two hours on the company's clock for me to print new copies of 900 pages, punch them, and put them into the OLD binders. Another $50 that the company paid to re-do a project. Neat. Once those were finished, I got to box them up and fed-ex them across the country. A new box went to the east coast, to replace the four we'd sent the day before, this time overnight. Total fed-ex cost probably around $50.

All this for a 65 page report of which the board will probably read about four pages, and maybe, maybe skim four or five others. And did I mention that everyone gets a PDF file of the entire document as well? So clearly, they really need a hard copy sitting in front of them. Not to mention the fact that as soon as the meeting's over, the report will become obsolete and worthless, and the entire thing, probably including the binder, will go right into the landfill. So ultimately, another 900 pages in the earth.

That was Wednesday.

Thursday, I only had to make three reports. I spent all morning looking up the correct files, printing them, collating them, punching holes (with yet another kind of hole puncher) in them, etc etc. Each report ended up being about 100 pages, plus the tabs, so about 324 pages total. Half-way through the day, the vice president directing this project changed his mind about half the files, and of course they all needed to be reprinted and repunched. The old files, of course, were tossed. Fifty pages in the garbage. Later that afternoon, as the frantic executive assistant and I were trying to finish the books to the exec's specifications, the exec walked over and demanded more changes. "This should make your life easier," he said. Turns out, half the book is unnecessary. 150 pages: garbage. Then it turns out that one of the three books is for him, and he actually doesn't need it, so actually you can just throw that away if you don't have time to do it... another fifty pages. Oh, and this file has been updated, so it has to be reprinted and re-inserted into each of the three -- no, two! -- books. Forty pages more, garbage.

All total, more than three hundred pieces of paper in the trash, all for, again, a report that someone in the suburbs may or may not actually read. And ultimately? Land fill.

Of course we fed-exed them over there... and did I mention that I spent most of my day working on this single project? As did the EA. Between the two of us, the company probably paid between $250 and $300 in labor to produce these two stupid books.

Today I get to stuff 200+ envelopes with promotional marketing stuff, six pages in each envelope, all of which will likely get thrown away before anyone even looks at it. More than a thousand pieces of paper... hours of labor stuffing envelopes and printing out stupid "personalized" cards... which might yield, what, one account?

Total for week (so far): 3,300 sheets of paper in the garbage.

And I'm just one drone in this office, and it's just one office on this floor, which is just one floor in the building, just one building in this city, which is just one city in this country, which is just one country in the world. If I, in five days, personally oversaw the dumping of 3,300 sheets of paper....

It hurts my heart to think about it. I keep picturing a tiny koala bear, snuggling into the crook of a tree, with a single tear sliding down his adorably sleepy face.

And then of course there's the small matter of the poor, rural school that was my home from 2003-2007, where the photocopy and/or risograph machines were broken more often than they were working, where I often had to spend my own money to buy extra paper and pencils for the students, where I had to write worksheets by hand onto overhead projecter sheets and have kids copy them into their notebooks because the xerox was broken or the school was out of paper or we couldn't afford to buy a new thing of toner, or or or..... In 2005, when we did Nanowrimo, the principal bought every one of my students a brand new notebook, and it was the biggest deal. They felt SO special. For some of them, it was the first new notebook they'd had in YEARS. Our district was so poor that the school board decided to save money by keeping the hallway lights turned off during the day. We didn't have many windows, and the dark hallways made the school feel so cold and unhappy.

Man, does our culture have its priorities screwed up.

Coming from there -- a rural school so poor we couldn't afford to turn the hallway lights on when the kids were there -- to here, where hundreds of dollars are wasted, daily, for impossibly stupid reasons -- it's hard not to feel anger at the unfairness of this world. It's a global society, and yet this marble corporate office feels like a whole different planet from the dark desert middle school I came from.

And yet, those kids, the ones so poor they never had their own notebooks until the principal bought one for them, they're the ones who will be suffering when the planet finally decides it's had too many binders and too many status reports dumped beneath its crust.

It kills me.

My Favorite Holiday: Lupercalia!

Glad tidings to you on this most joyful of holidays: Lupercalia! Woo hoo!

In Ancient Rome, Lupercalia was the festival celebrating the wolf who mothered Romulus and Remus, the most famous feral children in history. The festival of Lupercalia involved sacrificial goats and dogs, wiping blood on the faces of naked boys who then ran around in goat-skin undies whipping girls with goat-skin thongs.

Sounds a lot more fun than a measly box of chalky candy hearts, if you ask me.

Whether or not Lupercalia was an ancient ancestor of the modern Valentines Day seems to be uncertain; in my research I've found arguments on both sides of the issue. Either way, Lupercalia was a pastoral festival, celebrating and promoting fertility. Although it seems that we are currently locked into an endless winter hell (I heard on the radio last night that yesterday was only one of four days all month that it didn't snow!), this morning when we walked out into the wan morning light, something in the air seemed to hint at spring. To hint very very very vaguely, but to hint nonetheless. Though it's probably too cold for naked boys to run around the town square, I like the idea of celebrating fertility in this seemingly dead time. It reminds us that death is necessary for rebirth, and that this endless winter gives the earth a chance to rest and renew itself for the spring that will come... eventually. Celebrating the cycles of life and birth and rebirth feels much more important, much more sacred and real, than celebrating a multi-billion dollar marketing machine that tells us to define our worth by the number of singing cards we get.





... but on the other hand, my valentine left Pride and Prejudice on DVD for me this morning. Would I trade Colin Firth for a festival of wolves and sacrificial goats? Aye, there's the rub. Mmmm... Colin Firth.

I guess we could compromise. We'll meet half-way.

Okay, executive decision: next year we're celebrating LuperColina, and we'll snuggle with wolves, dress in goat skins, whip each other, and watch Colin Firth dive into a pool of water again and again. Best of both worlds.

Happy Lupercalia!

Even Better Than Summers Off

Everyone knows that one of the best things about teaching is summers off. When you're stuck in marble corporate hell, losing brain cells by the minute, slaving for your five personal days, summers off seems like some sort of fairy tale. Forget the fact that teachers commonly work sixty and seventy hour weeks, forget the fact that grading papers at home is one of the least fun activities in the universe, forget twenty minute lunches at your desk with a bunch of smelly tweens staring at you and asking if they can use your computer to download ringtones with their grandma's credit card number that they managed to memorize even though they still can't seem to get the difference between a noun and a verb, forget No Child Left Behind and idiotic co-workers and administrators telling you to "teach smarter, not harder," and parents demanding to know why you're not teaching eighth grade English in exactly the same way they were taught eighth grade English in their one-room school house with Mrs. McCreavy who hit them, forget bus duty and terrorism drills and lockdowns and parent teacher conferences and professional development plans and lesson plans and gradebooks and homework and knife fights outside your door and students getting arrested and curse words carved into your furniture and gross dads hitting on you and spending your own money to buy pencils and paper for your classroom and choir concerts and dances to chaperone and kids trying to sell you stuff to raise money for 4H and band and rodeo club and being told on a daily basis to fuck off and hearing the words faggot and homo and wetback fifty times a day and other teachers talking about you to students and your wallet getting stolen out of your classroom and other teachers crying and the heavy sense of overresponsibility that pushes you to yet another PTA meeting or board meeting or training session and no sleep and dreams about school and Sunday afternoons in the classroom trying to catch up.....

Still.

Summers. Off.

I've been thinking about this a lot lately, seeing as how -- as it turns out -- I actually hate having a job. Given the choice between having a job and not having a job, I pick NOT. Summers off. Remember that? Ten weeks of not having a job? (Actually, I always taught summer school, so I'd only get like six weeks off, but still: six weeks off.) Believe me, I haven't forgotten the fact that by the time you hit summer, you feel like you need every single second of that break to reset your mind and recharge your spirit, because without those summers off you probably wouldn't come back next year, and if you did, it might be awfully difficult to get through the year without "accidentally" driving right through the bus pad one day after school and taking as many anklebiters down with you as you can, because by god if you're going down, so are they. Really, summers are crucial in keeping students safe.

Still, you know what would be even better than summers off?

WINTERS OFF.

I would go back to teaching in an instant if I could teach March - November. I would gladly fill my wardrobe with professionally appropriate sandals and shorts-that-look-like-skirts if I knew that there would still be five or six hours of daylight after I got off work. Summer? It's hot out! It would be comfortable to teach in a nice air-conditioned classroom, and on nice days we'd take lots of field trips to the big tree outside where we'd sit in the shade and read the classics together. Ethan Frome's a lot more palatable in the summer, when the frigid cold and depression of winter all seems like a bad dream! Teach Ethan Frome in February? Fantasize about driving into a tree. Teach Ethan Frome in June? Have a meaningful, empathetic discussion about the depths of the human heart, and then meet up with your buddies for frisbee and margaritas after school!

If schools had winters off instead of summers, snow days wouldn't be a problem, and students wouldn't miss precious days of standardized test training to the whims of the weather. Family vacations that used to happen in July? Take them over Christmas! Stay a month! Go somewhere warm, have fun! Everyone knows that the five weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year's Day are almost worthless in the classroom anyway -- why not just take that time off, and let the students learn in the long, lazy stretches of uninterrupted summer time?

I miss teaching. Of course I do. I miss kids and autonomy and the freedom to do whatever you want on any given day and the moments when someone really gets it. Right now, though, it's not quite enough to win me back; I'm too happy with all the extra time and mental space I have to work on my writing. But believe me, if, rolling out of bed on a 9 degree morning, hours before the sun even thinks about showing up for its allotted one minute a day, if I could say to myself "If I were teaching right now, I wouldn't have to get up until March...." I would be back in the classroom in a heartbeat.... or rather, in the number of heartbeats it takes to snuggle my way through the last two weeks of February.

Poorpourri

Our house smelled weird. Was it the smell of winter coats drying, of the pile of laundry that should have been done a week ago, the lingering scent of microwave popcorn that ALWAYS burns, or the two bad mice who do nothing but bite each other on the face and poop? Maybe it was the boys below us who like to smoke and spill beer and pet dogs and let smelly homeless musicians crash on their couch; maybe it was that the trashcans in our alley are under two feet of snow and so garbage bags tend to stay in our kitchen longer than they should; maybe it was the simple fact that it's February in Chicago and the windows have been shut tight since before Halloween. In any case: weird. Not bad, exactly... but not good. Definitely not good.

We're not starving to death, yet, but we're living pretty close to the line here, and we can't afford to drop thirty bucks on candles every time the house smells a little weird.

So the other night, determined to change the prevailing odors of these winter-closed rooms, I whipped up a batch of Poorpourri, using only stuff I already had in my kitchen (because I try not to go outside unless I absolutely have to. Have I mentioned how cold it is? And it WON'T STOP SNOWING. I heard on the radio the other day that in the first eight days of February, we've only had eleven minutes of sunshine. ELEVEN MINUTES. I hate winter!)....

Ahem. Anyway. So, Poorpourri:

-- Water
-- Some chunks of an apple that was too little and mushy to eat
-- Apple Spice Tea bags
-- Lots of cinnamon. Tons.
-- Some nutmeg
-- Some sugar

Bring to a boil... and simmer for as long as you want. Add water & cinnamon occasionally. I ladled the mixture into smaller bowls and set them in other rooms until they cooled off, then dumped the cooled mixture back into the original pot.

It worked GREAT. My house smelled warm and rich and applecinnamony for days. When I walked in from the snow/rain last night, the house smelled so yummy and cozy that I almost -- almost -- appreciated the snow outside, wanted to curl up with a good book and watch the snow fall past the yellow streetlights on Western, and didn't even mind the sounds of my smelly neighbors playing the same eight-bar bass loop over and over for an hour. Such is the power of Poorpourri.

Girl Friday, Temping in Corporate America

Maybe I shouldn't admit this, what with my expensive liberal arts eduation and my yay, feminists! break the glass ceiling, bitches! leanings, but... there is a part of me that really enjoys playing Molly Backes, Girl Secretary. (Does that need an exclamation point? I think it does.)

Molly Backes, Girl Secretary!

I like walking downtown in the raven black crowds of thin, hungry young people in their clacky heels and their pretentious bags. Ideally, I'd wear nylons with a seam up the back of each of my legs which disappears snugly into the heel of my two-toned pumps. I'll wear a jaunty hat and red lipstick and keep my fingers pertly arched over the keyboards, my perfectly groomed eyebrows raised and ready. Give me some office supplies: I will amaze you with my clever efficiency. Give me a letter to type: I will correct all your poor grammar and dangling participles. Give me a stack of invoices to file: I will file them alphabetically and chronologically, both. I will put sticky notes on everything. I will go the extra mile. What's that, Mr. Smith? You want me to explain the process through which a bill becomes a law while you renew my faith in Goodness and the American Spirit? I'm ready!

The beauty of temping is that it allows you to play work -- and even get paid! -- without actually having to work. I spent today on the 28th floor of a skyscraper downtown, putting labels on folders, alphabatizing things, um... typing... infused all day with the last-week-of-a-crappy-job attitude: this has nothing to do with me! This job in no way impacts my life! I am floating far above the drama and office politics, looking down with pity on you poor saps! Look at me, I have a visitor's pass and a temporary log-in! I'm free!

It reminds me of when I "worked" for my dad, over winter break one year in college. I'd show up to his office late, hung-over, wearing the same clothes in which I'd been dancing with strange men at some gross State Street bar mere hours before, and then delude myself into thinking that I was absolutely making an impact on his life by re-organizing his entire filing system. I was making an impact all right... wasting his secretary's time by allowing her to get me coffee and help hide my hangovers from my dad. Thanks, B, wherever you are! Haven't forgotten you!

Obviously, if this were a real job, I'd be mourning the slow erosion of my soul, watching the grey skies above the city with desperation. The office supplies wouldn't say, "Look how cute and efficient you can be" so much as, "How many ways can you slit your wrists with a paper clip and a pad of sticky notes?" I would get increasingly angry about petty things, like how is it that Jim always has a diet coke in his hand and yet he NEVER thinks to refill the fridge? Am I the only one in the building who knows how to brew a goddamn pot of coffee?

I'm sure I'll end up with one of those jobs soon enough, where the antics of my idiotic co-workers are enough to drive me absolutely insane, where I'm so annoyed that I'm even dreaming about how much I'd like to push them through one of those picturesque 28th floor windows.

But for now, for now... it's Ms. Backes Goes to Washington, it's Corporate Barbie on the Town, it's an endless month of Take Your Daughter to Work Day, with a little less coloring. With just enough fun... and just enough cash... to keep me coming back.

The Grueling March of the Rewrite

I love my friends and family, and I’m relatively certain they love me, but lately I’ve been noticing a similar glazed expression in their eyes whenever I start talking about my novel. So, they say nicely, you’re… rewriting it? The unspoken word hangs between us like an impolite body odor: Still?

Yep. I am.

My favorite friends, the ones who are most likely to buy me a beer and maybe even some French fries when we go out, say, but we liked it so much already! It’s wonderful! What could you possibly have to do on the manuscript, still?

And I say, sadly: so much. So much.

Rewriting is a tricky endeavor. The first draft is a dizzying, careening, gleeful car chase through the countryside, in which you can follow any whim, whip around any corner, run stop signs, cut through backyards, hit birds and cats without slowing – anything goes! It’s great!

In the second draft, you go back over your route and see that it is quite mad, and there is a much more logical path to follow if you want to get from here to there. Your first dash showed you all the awesome little sights and secrets you wouldn’t have found otherwise; your second draft figures out a way to include all the best parts without hitting quite so many dead-ends. The third draft starts looking at themes and character motivations and story arcs and attempts to tidy up all the loose ends and unfired guns and pull everything together in a lovely, cohesive manner. Any subsequent draft after that is cosmetic, maybe looking at the language itself, maybe finding a scene here or there that could be tighter, cleaner, better paced, more interesting, prettier, whatever.

The fifth draft of my novel was good enough to get me an agent. My agent, who is wonderful and brilliant, who writes me little notes and sends me pictures of stick figures doing dances, loved my fifth draft, loved the story and characters and setting, and suggested a number of cosmetic changes: explain this character’s motivation, give me some backstory on this thing, make this moment a little more complex. So I did; I spent a month reworking, rewriting, adding a few sentences here and there to lighten, to darken, to color and shade and enhance.

And then…. we came to the seventh draft, and my agent and I had a big heart-to-heart, and we decided that a major plot point was problematic. This plot point, which drives all subsequent action in the story, actually hijacks the entire story, and after it no one has much room to think about anything but its aftermath. And that, we decided, is kind of a problem. Because the story isn’t about that one plot point, and yet, due to the nature of the moment, it must be. So… time for another re-write.

In order to take out the pivotal moment in the plot, the entire book must be reshaped. Good news: the story will be much more subtle and interesting and unique without it. Bad news: attempting to do this will be like assembling a turducken – the bones must be removed and the shape of the thing must be recreated and refolded into the larger structure of the real story. As it turns out, this will be incredibly difficult.

In the end, though, it will be great. Last night I finished re-writing the first chapter for probably the sixth time, and when I was finished I had a chill up the back of my neck. I stepped away from the computer gingerly, carefully hitting the ctrl+S and closing out the document, feeling as though I’d managed to get to exactly the right place by sheer luck and magic. Of course, it wasn’t luck or magic, it was months and months of hard work, it was hours of agonizing over character and motivation and plot, it was brainstorming with Ali and a bottle of champagne on NYE, it was workshopping the chapter at Story Studio and reading it out loud to myself, to Natalie, it was phone conversations and g-chats with the beer-buying friends who love me and love the story and who don’t quite seem to trust me not to fuck this up. But finally, at last, there it was, and it struck all the right notes, and it set the right tone, and it was exactly, entirely, at last… perfect.

In a moment I’ll open that document again and re-read it, and knowing me I’ll tweak some sentences, switch some words and re-think this one paragraph that I think needs to be there but doesn’t exactly fit, but finally I feel like I’m in a really good place with it, and in a few more days I’ll be finished with this turducken draft, and I’ll send it off to my brilliant agent, who will either have a little dance party in her office or write me a long letter about why it STILL needs a lot of work, and the march will continue.

Last fall, my future BFF John Green said that of the final, published draft of his wonderful book Looking for Alaska, only 10% of the original manuscript survived. “The challenge of the book, ultimately, was not writing it, which was easy, but revising it, which was hard.” He described writing a book as a lengthy game of Marco Polo: “I spent four years sitting in a basement, writing, saying Marco… and years later, I got an email from a reader, and basically all that email says is… Polo.”

So that’s what I’m doing with my life right now. That’s where I am. And even though it’s hard, agonizing, maddening work, I’m confident that the story will be better in the end, which makes it all worth it.