More Laptop Woes

My brand-new laptop, replacing the laptop the jealous dog destroyed, has bitten the dust. I am reduced to time-limited use of library computers until the replacement arrives this weekend. Once it does and I get it all set up--all over again!--I will have a post about AWP in Boston with over 12,000 writers, another about Deborah Miranda's incredible new book, and another Writers of Color post with Luivette Resto, Heid Erdrich, and Patricia Spears Jones. *summons the laptop gods now* "Hurry, hurry/Bring my new laptop to me."

Working Snow Days

Angela Carter at work--Could be my office!

We’ve had blizzards back-to-back here lately. The city shut down—no buses, no trash pickup, no mail, no school. My husband was home from work the whole time. We even lost power for a while. So it’s been about a week or so of snow days around here.

On snow days like these, no one goes to work, except the few people who staff emergency services and the city’s snowplows. Ninety-eight percent of the residents are not at work, but home on an unexpected vacation. Even though faced with over two feet of snow, most have a festive, holiday mood, reminiscent of the mood we all had as schoolchildren when schools called a snow day.

Except here and in other writers’ houses. A snow day is just another work day to us. We have deadlines and can’t afford to take off just because the snow has piled up so high the back door won’t open. Snow days are simply another distraction. 

It’s hard to always be working when other people are playing. Even when the work is the writing that we love, our vocation, our calling in life. Still, we feel a little aggrieved that we’re still tied to our desks when everyone else in the whole wide world is getting to play. At least, I certainly do.

I’m luckier than most writers in this situation. My husband is an editor, publisher, and writer himself. He does not expect me to amuse him when he’s home if I have work to do. He’s perfectly capable of amusing himself. But it’s hard to stay at work when he’s out there and I could be in the midst of a delightful conversation with him. He’s such a joy to talk to about a million different things. When we first started dating, we used to stay up until the wee hours just talking on the phone. After twenty-five years of it, talking with him is still one of my favorite things to do.

He went back to work today finally. The snow’s still in massive piles outside our house, and the car Is hidden under tons of it. The buses are running, however, and he rode one in to work.  I felt as if the house and I gave a deep sigh of relief and fell back into the normal. It’s not that I didn’t work while he was home for snow days. I did. Not as effectively or productively as usual. It felt like I was writing with part of my attention not fully there. But write I did—and I know I can make it as good as what I write on good days when I go back through revising. But it was writing under a kind of strain, and now that’s over.

What do snow days mean for you? Have you had your fill of them and, like me, are you oh-so-ready for spring?

Thundersnow On Its Way!

The weather forecasters are up in arms today, predicting a major blizzard for our piece of the country. Heavy snowfall, sleet, and ice—even thundersnow that will cause the snowfall to increase to 3” per hour. Kansas City and its surrounding communities are rallying the snowplows and salt trucks and preparing to absorb some major overtime among their drivers and operators. Grocery stores are being denuded of basic food supplies (and some not-so-basic). Liquor stores are doing a brisk business. Those who haven’t already got snow shovels, de-icer, etc., are besieging the hardware stores.

Schools are planning to close, many already publicizing closures. Colleges are debating closing—most of them will make that decision, not being stupid entities. UMKC where my husband works (and I used to for many years) probably won’t since it’s ruled from afar and the system offices are south and east of here and not nearly so threatened by this winter storm. Over the years, we’ve seen UMKC stay open when even the mayor’s office and police were asking businesses to close. *sigh* Ben will probably leave the car at home and take the bus to and from work if the streets are really awful. Even though our public transit system leaves so very much to be desired.

Children are ecstatic! Parents are frantic, trying to arrange for childcare or to take some leave time to take care of them while they’re home for a snow day. Weather nuts come to verbal fisticuffs on weather blogs over whether the snowfall will be 10” or 12” or whether KC falls on the southern or northern side of the line which will divide snow and sleet from sleet and ice. People with driveways on a steep slope decide to park the car on the street in hopes of not having it snowed in for a week or so.

People with mobility issues begin the countdown to dread. Steps that are normally not a problem with a walker or cane—or just grabbing the railing and stepping carefully—are about to become ice-covered, snow-packed mini-ski slopes, no matter how much de-icer is used. I’m trying to make it out of a bad flare triggered by cutting and dragging tree limbs from a big, old elm a previous windstorm downed in our yard and the street in front of it. (In Kansas City, just stick around and you’ll see every kind of weather possible.) So I’m really not looking forward to the weather conditions every single professional forecaster is predicting for us. (Here in KC, the weathermen seldom agree on anything!)

I predict that I’ll be stuck in the house until my front steps and walk can be cleared to the non-icy concrete, which may not happen for a week or so. Fortunately, I have many warm handknit shawls and blankets and many toasty handmade quilts in the house to keep us warm if we lose power, which is almost assured if we have bad ice. I also have lots of handspun yarn to knit with and plenty of fiber to spin—not to mention a book to write—so I should be fine.

This massive winter storm is predicted to affect a 500-mile area, so I’m sure many of you reading this are facing similar tomorrows. Here’s hoping you all stay safe and warm. I can’t send material items through the internet, but here are virtual wool and alpaca and cashmere shawls and fingerless gloves (all the better to type at the computer) sent out to all of you!

Comadres Forever

I lost my closest friend, Carolynn, in 2009. She had fought colon cancer with her unique tough fortitude for several years and seemed to be winning. I had to be out of town for a period of time, and when I returned, something had changed. Carolynn was depressed and talking about being ready to die. Now, I wasn’t hearing any of that, and soon her attitude brightened back to its normal state, but not soon enough. As if it had only been her great positive, cancer-can’t-beat-me attitude that had been keeping it at bay, her cancer returned with a vengeance in a final onslaught she no longer had the strength to battle as she’d done for so long. It’s a loss I have never completely overcome.

But her cancer is not what I want to write about. Last night, I participated in a Twitter party to celebrate and promote the new anthology of Las Comadres, Count On Me:Tales of Sisterhood and Fierce Friendships. (Las Comadres is the wonderful group that organizes the National Latino Book Club, among many other great projects.) The talk during this Twitter party (look for its record at #lasComadres #LatinoLit) centered on the concept of comadres, the term that can include special mentors, sisters from another mister, friends of the closest stripe, etc. I ended the evening thinking of Carolynn.

Sometimes things happen in such strange ways that we feel they were meant to happen. A self-taught handspinner with both wheel and spindle, I had tried for years to connect with the local guild. No one replied to emails or snail mails. I met a rep at the Renaissance Fair who gave me an officer’s phone number. When I called, it had been disconnected. Then, suddenly, out of nowhere, someone replied to a letter sent several years earlier with the date and place of their next meeting. I attended, as did another new person who’d just moved from Cleveland to Kansas City. She asked if we could go to lunch afterward since she knew nothing about KC and wanted me to show her around a little.

Carolynn could seem brash and abrasive when you first met her, and I hesitated, not sure I wanted to get involved with this loud person. Fortunately for me, I agreed and led her to a good local restaurant. That was the beginning of a great friendship. Carolynn was without inhibitions, and sometimes she did and said things in public that could make me cringe—because I still cared what others thought and she didn’t. I soon came to see, though, that she had the biggest heart in the world and a wide-open mind thirsty for all the knowledge she could find.

Soon enough, I left the local guild because their focus was not on spinning and they assumed that all members would be suburban housewives with lots of time on their hands, a class I hardly fell into. I was there only long enough to meet Carolynn and forge an unbreakable friendship. But why did I never hear from the guild until suddenly Carolynn would be there, a new person also?

Carolynn was a serious book person and reader. Her house, like my own, was full of bookcases and books. We traded back and forth and bought each other books we knew the other craved as gifts. We talked ideas and emotions and people we loved and worried about. She was older than me and larger than me in physical body and in her presence in the world. She was a total support to me as I went through severe difficulties with my mentally ill daughter. When I was in a toxic situation as a board member for a local nonprofit, it was Carolynn who kept telling me, “You have to tell them no. You have to protect yourself.” Until it finally sank in, and I did just that. That was the wonder of our relationship—we were always completely supportive of each other and fiercely protective of each other.

She wanted desperately to stay alive until my youngest son came home from graduate school. She had always adored him and had a special relationship with Joseph. She tried to hang on, but she missed him by slightly less than two weeks. I had been accepted to Macondo and given the great honor of the Elvira Cordero Cisneros Award in those final months of her life, and she celebrated with me, as she had the acceptance and publication of my books of poetry. She said, “I love seeing your success. I feel like I’ve been working toward it myself.” And, of course, she had. When I considered postponing my trip to San Antonio for the week-long Macondo Workshop, she wouldn’t hear of it. “I’ll be doing it vicariously through you. Don’t worry. I’ll hang on. I’m not leaving without saying goodbye.” But she did. Some things are not in our control, no matter how strong we are.

I have some of her clothes that I wear often when writing. They’re big on me and comfortable, and it feels like Carolynn is right behind me when I wear them. I feel her presence often, even without the clothes. Like my beloved grandmother, Carolynn is one of the ancestral spirits who support me and guide me. Chosen family, in her case. She never got to see me win some major national awards for my poetry or the success with my novel, and she’d have been so excited and as proud as if it were her own because Carolynn was the most caring, generous person I’ve ever known. But I believe her spirit’s enjoyed it along with me. There are times I feel I could pick up the phone and call her, and I remind myself that I don’t need the phone now. Some people are so innately good that they can never truly leave us.

¡Adelante, Carolynn!