Thankful Thursday #48

This week I'm thankful for...

• three day weekends
• writing over breakfast at a local greasy spoon
• my little one who beaded a bracelet for me, complete with purple sparkly dolphin bead
• surviving another round of  parent teacher conferences
• the little girl on the swings who was writing in her notebook and pumping her legs at the same time
• vacation
• Edgar winner, Charlie Price, who asked me to show him some of my pages even after I busted his chops all afternoon at the local Author's Fair.  Charlie accepted his Edgar with grace and humility.  I have a lot to learn from him both on and off the page.

Letters to Little Ones: Coming Back

Dear Little One,

Sometimes you make me want to tear my hair out.  Not all of it, but some of it.  Not all of the time, but some of the time.  I have a feeling you feel like tearing your hair out some of the time, too, because navigating the world with autism is tough.  I know that and surely you do, too.  This is why instead of tearing my hair out, I breathe and you breathe and then we breathe together until we figure out a way to get from one thing to the next.

Disclaimer: This is a stock photo.

Lately you've been yelling at me.  Strike that.  You've been yelling at me all the time.  It's partly because anger is one of two emotions you understand, but also because you don't have a firm grasp on voice modulation.  When I point out that you're yelling and that you may not realize it, you shift into a somewhat calmer voice for a sentence or two until you forget and start yelling again.  And then I remind you again.  And so our dance goes, a halting two sentence two-step.

Little One, the occasions when you've spoken softly of your own volition are a rarity I can count on one hand.  And I do count them because every little success matters.  You speak in whispers when you're afraid, like when you slipped your hand into mine at the field trip where we watched dancers, white like angels, and you told me you were afraid that the devil was going to come out next.  Scary stuff worthy of your whisper for sure.

Today I reminded you that you'd have a guest teacher for the next couple of days and that we'd see each other again after Thanksgiving vacation.  You misunderstood and when we hugged goodbye, you whispered, "You're leaving?  I'm not going to see you again?"

My heart broke into brittle pieces, Little One, because you are so afraid of your loved ones leaving you.  I assured you I'd be back and we'd see each other again in a few days and you whispered, "I don't like this."  I could hear the fear in your voice.

Little One, I'm not leaving you.
Even when you make me want to pull my hair out, I will come back.
Even when I have to take deep breath after deep breath, I will come back.
Even when you spend the whole day learning not to yell, I will come back.
When you come to me with anger, or frustration, or fear, I will do my best to come back with patience, consistency and love.

Know this, Little One, you are worth coming back for.

It breaks my heart that someone you love doesn't think so.  And it tears me to bits that you associate loving with leaving.

And so I will spend the rest of our time together this year proving that I will always come back to you.  I will always come back for you.

Little One, I will always come back because of you.

Love,

Mrs. McCauley

Thankful Thursday #47

image courtesy of vejauan365.com

This week I'm thankful for...

• the awesome shark socks my little brother gave me.  The fascination I have with sharks cannot be contained in a week and now my feet can celebrate all year long.
• Terry's vanilla pancakes on a Sunday morning
• when the message at church hurts so good
• when spin class takes everything out of me and then some
• parent teacher conferences being two thirds of the way over
• Christmas colored Cadbury mini eggs
• taking my little ones to see Momix Dance Troupe
• early morning pillow talk
• a three-day weekend!

Fall Back

The trees drum my window pane.

The rain taps Morse code on my roof,
A storm is whispering its secrets to me,
Reminding me to fall back, fall back,
Fall back to sleep for a blessed extra hour.

The clock's red numbers blush at 4:36am,
Everything in the house is hushed,
Against the sound of the storm and your snores filling the air between us,
I close my eyes and fall back, fall back
Fall back into your arms.

You stir ever so slightly and I press into you,
Watching your eyelids flutter as dreams play in your mind.
I know the topography of your face like I know myself.
I kiss the scar beside your eye and fall back, fall back,
Fall back through decades of memories with you.

I watch ruby minutes flicker by,
You wake and tease me about stealing all the covers.
We giggle and wrap up in arms and legs and blankets,
I lie awake with gratitude for this extra hour to fall back, fall back,
Fall back in love with you all over again.

Photo by Martin Kenny of the gorgeous photo blog seenobjects.org

Thankful Thursday #46

This week I'm thankful for...

• the awesome birthday present I received, especially surprising being that my birthday is in July
• the pumpkin one of my little ones sewed for me in his sewing class
• the Cake Pops that same little one brought me.  Come to think of it, I received the Cake Pops and the birthday present on the same day.  Did someone switch my birthday without telling me?
• the fresh smell of clean sheets as I slip into bed
• steel-cut oatmeal
• pedicures
• driving with the top with the seat warmer on.  Hello, Fall!
• waking to the sound of wind chimes
• Terry, who took care of me while I was sick all weekend.  That guy did the laundry, changed the sheets, did the dishes, rented me a movie, rubbed my back and asked hundreds of times if I needed anything.  It's so lovely to be taken care of.
• Designer Bruce Mau's Incomplete Manifesto for Growth.  So much of it applies to my writerly life.  Shoot, so much of it applies to my regular life, too.
• Another year of NaNoWriMo madness!

Letters to Gramma: You'll Never Guess

Dear Gramma,

You'll never guess what someone asked me for today.  Never in a million, katrillion, quadfillion years.

I was quietly checking my e-mail this morning while walking to work.  And there it was staring at me in my inbox.  A request from another teacher.

Know what she needed?  I'm in fits of giggles just thinking about it.  Seriously, you'll never guess.

She needed to borrow a mini trampoline!  Can you believe it?  A mini trampoline of all things!  I know, I'm dying laughing, too.

In about 0.2 seconds I e-mailed her back telling her she could borrow yours mine yours.

After school she drove me home and on the drive I told her about how you used to "train" for your trips by trampolining.  Sorry to put "train" in air quotes, Gramma, but I just can't say it with a straight face.  We were cracking up just at the thought.

When you died, that's why I wanted your trampoline so badly in the first place.  It makes me smile every time I look at it and remember you bouncing, ahem, "training" on it.  Wait, I'm snickering too much.  I have to stop and take a breath for a sec.

Ahhh.  Better.

After hearing the story of how I came to possess your trampoline, my colleague said she didn't want to take the trampoline because she was afraid something might happen to it.  I told her that's the very reason she should take it.  Something might happen to it.  Something laugh out loud hilarious might happen to it.

You see, my colleague is going to use it in a spirit assembly that involves kids wearing superhero capes and doing silly tricks and eating disgusting foods.  I told her that assembly is just the kind of thing that would've made you laugh.

So you should know that on Friday afternoon a bunch of middle school kids are going to be jumping and bouncing and having a ton of fun on your old trampoline.

And when I get it back I might just take a jump or two before putting it back in the closet.  Gramma, you always made me laugh.  You're still making me laugh.

I love you like crazy,

Alicia

Ready for 30 Days of Literary Abandon

Happy Halloween Day Before NaNoWriMo!

It's mere hours until the festivities begin and I'm all ready for 30 days of literary abandon.  Well, except for the fact that I have no idea what I'm going to write about.  Minor detail.

But I've taken care of the important stuff like:

• the car charger for my laptop is on its way to my doorstep as I type.  We'll be spending lots of time in the car and while Terry fills his brain with ESPN radio, I'm going to be dominating my daily word count.
• report cards-they're all finished printed and ready to roll for parent teacher conferences.
• the all important writing playlist including some gems from Adele, INXS, U2, Polar Boy, Matthew Perryman Jones, Ingrid Michaleson, Bruce Springsteen and, of course, Stevie Wonder.
• laundry, done and all tucked away
• a freezer stocked with quick dinner options

NaNoWriMo: Here I Go!

30 Days of Literary Abandon

NaNoWriMo is a few sacred days away.  November 1st is fast becoming one of my favorite days of the year, excitement bubbling up in my stomach with such fervor that I inevitably wake from sleep in the wee hours of the morning and can't resist typing the first few hundred words before falling back to sleep.

Not that 50,000 words in a month isn't daunting.  It is.  It really is.  It's lump of nerves in my throat kind of daunting.

For the past 2 Novembers I've set out to write 50k words while I play at being a novelist.  Both times I've succeeded, or in NaNo speak, I've won.  I loved both of my stories, but what I love more is who I am when I'm writing 1,667 words a day.  I love being in the practice of writing.  I love how quickly I'm able to drop back into my story each day because my writing muscles are strong and limber.

Creating characters makes me happy.  Seeing where these characters take me is thrilling and often times surprising.  The first year I'll never forget when one of my characters opened a drawer and removed a baby onesie.  And a gun.  Trust me, I was as shocked as you are.  I mean, come on, I'm the biggest anti-gun person I know.  Having never touched a gun in my life, I had no idea how to write about guns.  To the delight of my lone gun-enthusiast friend, I made him take me shooting.  For better or for worse, I can now say I've fired a gun.  Exactly once.

Both years have led me to research a variety of things including:

• the history of LEGO
• rare children's diseases
• handguns and penetration abilities of different bullets
• Biblical references to angels
• POW camps
• the history of high heels
• hospital procedures and policies
• famous libraries

The first year, I dreamed a strange snapshot of a scene and my novel sprang to life from there.  Last year, discovering an unknown safe deposit box that belonged to my deceased father was the thing that birthed my idea.  It was a story just begging to be written.

So, today on October 28th, I'm waiting for my idea to peek out.  Maybe in a dream.  Or a snippet of conversation.  Or a newspaper article.  Who knows where it might appear.  I wait with anticipation, with a pattering heart eager to know where NaNoWriMo will take me this year.

A teensy part of me hopes that on November 1st, my idea will not have shown her face yet.  There's something exciting about sitting down at the computer and beginning to type, implicitly trusting that my writerly brain will follow my furious fingers as they tap out words becoming sentences becoming a story.

NaNoWriMo, here I go!

Thankful Thursday #45

This week I'm thankful for...

• sleeping spread eagle in bed
• the dollar movie theater
• walking through piles of leaves
• hot showers
• reading in bed
• morning music to psych me up for work after a couple of particularly hard work days
• my little one who read this out of his notebook: "I am a fun kid.  I love school."  This was on the heels of a couple of days wherein he lived out the consequences for peppering the playground with a litany of profanity.  It's proof once again that children need those boundaries.

Thankful Thursday #44

This week I'm thankful for...

• walks on the River Trail with friends
• stories from my firefighter friend about fire
• dried mangoes
• growing pumpkin seeds with my class
• How I Met Your Mother
• broccoli cheddar soup
• books that make me laugh out loud
• writing poetry with my little ones
• Terry's cologne
• seedless grapes
• the fact that I'm still wearing short sleeves and skirts in October