Month: August 2020

Life

Nothing to do

Mary C

As a parent, there are very few words that pain me than when my teenager says …but there’s nothing to do. Or, what can I do? Or, I’m bored. Reaching back into my own childhood, those questions and statements would be met with a list of chores guaranteed to keep you busy for days and would teach you that uttering such phrases to your parents was a very bad idea. To my chagrin, that does not work with my own kid.

Since we are all new to the land of The Cape, we don’t have a handy list of things to do when the weather isn’t cooperating. And so we Googled it (or more precisely asked Siri) when presented with overcast and rainy weather on our second day here. The list was good but it required us to be in “normal” times and not our current social distancing, everything’s closed state of being. It sent me back to our second summer visiting Delaware when he was barely three and we were unlucky enough to presented with four consecutive days of rain and very little to do outside of shopping at the nearby outlets. You can imagine this isn’t a three-year-old’s idea of fun. Fortunately we had packed a dvd about farm animals and we watched it non-stop until our eyes were bleeding but it kept him occupied. When we couldn’t take it any longer, we packed up the car with two days left on our week’s rental and headed home.

That’s where my thoughts were drifting yesterday afternoon, not even twenty-four hours into our trip as I stared into a pair of sullen eyes. The kids is addicted to The Office and even episodes of that would no longer placate him. Let’s go for a ride, I said. Always an option regardless of the weather and so we jumped in the car and headed to explore what lay beyond our very “boring” room at the Inn. We hunted down a shack selling lobster rolls and the best clam chowder I have ever tasted. We drove a little more but then I remembered my quest to visit the nearby bookstore and so entered the address into my mapping software and guided my husband on what turns to make.

When we arrived at the sparsely stocked new/used store they both looked at me with a look that may have said $%@& but I gently pulled them inside and said I’d buy them anything they desired if we could have a few minutes of peaceful browsing. The store does not accomodate more than one family of browsers so we had to wait our turn at the back of the store until the others had been checked out. In the end, the visit netted three new/used books and at least two happy people (me and my husband, in case you didn’t guess). I bought a book that has over 100 people waiting for it at the library both online and hard copy and the book seller warned me I wouldn’t be available for family interaction for the next day or two until I finished it. This sealed the sale for me!

We did not come up with any other options about spending the rainy day but somehow we mananged to survive and today the sun is gloriously shining for a beautiful day at the beach. We made it to the other side. At least for now.

MC

books

Book browsing vacation

Mary C

This morning I’m dreaming of the past where bookstores, mostly independent, peppered the retail landscape. Once upon a time I had several choices in the city I now live and then one by one they quietly shuttered as they gave way to the super stores. Borders, Barnes and Noble and another chain called Media Play. And then the last ones standing were Barnes and Noble and one independent. Having so many choices was something I never took for granted as I gave all of them my love. A Friday night browsing with a friend in tow or even on my own was a great way to start the weekend, in my opinion. So many books, so little time.

So now when I’m visiting a new town, I’m drawn to seek out the local bookstore, hoping it’s not a Barnes and Noble and I usually find success. For the past 10 summers we’ve been vacationing on the Delaware shore and a trip wasn’t complete until I found my way to Rehobooth’s Browesabout Books. I’d tell the others to walk along the boardwalk without me while I perused the shelves for something new to read even though I had loaded up my Kindle for the trip. To my nose, the scent of a bookstore is the most beautiful aroma in the world.

I Googled bookstores this morning and three independent’s popped up within a short distance and looking at the map I see Cape Cod is peppered with them! This is a book lovers haven. But how will this work in our current COVID climate? Can you just walk into a bookstore and browse these days? I have yet to visit one in person since mid-March when lockdown began but I’m not going to be able to pass up the opportunity to at least try to visit the one in walking distance and make a purchase no matter how small. To me it would be a national crisis to let these gems close down due to financial insolvancy.

It’s just part of my DNA to equate vacation with books and the pull of a new bookstore to discover is too strong to ignore. I’m anticipating the jingle of a bell as I open the door to the discovery of a new world and it’s a music I long to hear.

MC

Writing

Keep (Free) Writing

Mary C

After months and months of daily writing on 750words.com, I abruptly stopped a week and a half ago. Blog ideas were coming to me and I was feeling inspired and thought my creative dryspell had gone bye bye. But it was more like that writing had helped me gain momentum and in order to keep it, I needed to keep going. An object in motion stays in motion, right? Stopping writing, the ideas began to dry up again.

So once again I’m free writing in the mornings but instead of slogging through what’s happening in my current life, I find that I’m drifting back in time, digging into old memories – some good and some not so good. In one of my AA meetings, we read a passage called Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow and it’s all about staying in the day but for us writers, that’s a tough place to remain. We like to drift.

In anticipation of vacationing on Cape Cod (a place I’ve never been unless you count a rainy March weekend on Nantucket), I’ve been picking through the vacation memories of my young life when my parents would pack the station wagon with the seven of us, a tent and a mix of warm clothes and bathing suits for a week in Wells, Maine. I distinctly remember needing the warm clothes more than the bathing suits even though it was the middle of summer because the nights were very cool in this northern U.S. city. I don’t have memories of enjoying the beach but we must have.

That stream of consciousness led me to places and things I’d forgotten about as I remembered how we spent our free time on those trips. Cards, Yahtzee, truth or dare. I was the youngest of five at the time and probably no more than six with the oldest of my siblings between thirteen and fifteen so there was a wide range of experience for when someone chose truth. I did not have any secrets back then and what a nostalgic place to be. A time with no secrets, shame or regret.

So here we are, embarking on brand new memories, in a brand new place, something that doesn’t happen to me (us) often these days as quarantine has turned life upside down. What will I pack, what books will I bring and what will the car snacks be for this three plus hour ride to the Eastern seaboard? We’re leaving in a little over an hour so there’s no time to spare.

Keep writing.

Life

Untamed

Mary C

Did you happen to read Glennon Doyle’s recent book, Untamed? While I have been familiar with Doyle through the years, I never got around to reading any of her other books. She popped up in my consciousness through authors I am keenly interested in – Elizabeth Gilbert, Brene Brown and of course, Oprah. If Oprah likes you, you are gold, right? But somewhere between the time I discovered her and sort of knew who and what she was about (life struggles included anorexia, alcoholism, drug addiction and unplanned motherhood to name a few) to her writing the book Untamed, she seemed to have undergone a complete shift in thinking.

Continue reading “Untamed” →
Life

Empathy for lives lost

Mary C

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Life just got incredibly hard for four families in my community. No longer are worries about finances and social distancing and lack of toilet paper on the forefront of their minds. My interest in reading the obituaries in the local paper doesn’t usually send my morning into a wave of saddness because if you see one young person in the pages, it’s occasional at best. Today there were four. Thirty-one, thirty-one, twenty-five, twenty-three.

Continue reading “Empathy for lives lost” →

Life

Music For Life

Mary C

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Music has always been a big part of my life even though I wasn’t born with talent as a musician myself. Unlike with writing, I have never been bothered by lacking this innate aptitude many others enjoy and I’ve taken up my lot in life as an enthusiastic fan. From an early age I was blessed to possess my very own compact turntable and I collected 45’s of my favorites so I could play them ad nauseum. My first favorite song ever was You Never Promised Me A Rose Garden by Lynn Anderson (remember Hee Haw!) and I think I made my family crazy playing it over and over and over until YMCA and then Funkytown took its place. By the time I was nine or ten, I graduated to full albums and collected everything by Shaun Cassidy, Leif Garret (my secret boyfriend), the Jacksons and the Osmonds (I liked Jimmy but he wasn’t a big star like his other siblings). 

Of course I was highly influenced by my older siblings tastes so by my teen years I was turned on to a wider range of artists including Boston, The Eagles, The Steve Miller Band, Peter Frampton (my older siblings) and The Clash, AC/DC, Yes, U2, The Kinks (my brother, Jeff who was two years older than me). I borrowed their albums and sometimes returned them with scratches, much to their dismay, which probably caused them to hide them on me. My dad was no fan of AC/DC and I recall an incident where he broke one of their albums over his knee due to unwholesome lyrics, I guess. It was the same album I brought to play at our catholic school’s sixth grade Christmas party and I was probably lucky there was no time to play it because I might have been expelled.

High School was a time I came into my own as far as musical tastes went. The early years were Loverboy (my first concert sans parents), The Little River Band, Journey, Tears for Fears, Culture Club and Prince. When I discovered Prince, everyone else took a back seat and I’d play and pause the albums (particularly 1999 and Purple Rain) on my cassette player while I’d write the lyrics in a notebook so I could sing along. Kids these days don’t know how good they have it with the internet as lyrics were not always included in the liner notes. One of my bucket list items was to see Prince in concert and luckily I crossed that off when he came to Boston and I made the six hour round trip trek to hear him from the top of the bleachers. It was a moment in time I’ll always cherish. It’s a good thing my dad didn’t take note of his lyrics as I’d have a lot more broken albums on my hands.

I started to learn about heartbreak as I moved onto college and there would be playlists to recover from these season of life events. Gloria Gaynor’s I Will Survive was the gold standard of breakup songs along with Nothing Compares 2 U, Missing You by John Waite and anything by Natalie Merchant and Alanis Morissette. My last really hurtful breakup was in 1997 and I spent hours driving around listening to Chris Isaak’s Forever Blue (my newest favorite artist after seeing him on a Friends episode) until I was out of tears. Listening to his live rendition of his iconic song Wicked Game (also a good break up song) was the background music of my impromptu engagement in 2002. It was my very first Chris Isaak show, another bucket list event and special memory.

There are many, many other musicians I enjoy and when a song I haven’t heard in years pops up on the random selection feature of my iTunes library, I am often pulled back into the past to relive a time when I played them over and over, the times vivid once again, both good and bad.

MC

Musings

Ode to the Target flyer

Mary C

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If you’re not a newspaper reader, you may not know what I’m talking about. Sometime about the end of March, I noticed Target stopped inserting their weekly flyer into the Sunday newspaper. Honestly, it was a highlight of my Sunday reading experience. Among the bevy of flyers that come with the paper each week, there was just something about the Target insert that stood out. Maybe it was the paper, the size, the graphic design, the way they didn’t cram the space like grocery stores do so you can easily see what’s on display for the week.

Reading the Target flyer, saving it for last, was like prolonging that yummy dessert while you consumed the nutritious protein and veggies first. I’d pull it from the large stack of flyers, it was usually nestled into the front of the comics and I’d give it a place away from the general muck of the other sections so it didn’t get lost. I’d scan headlines, read stories that didn’t require a jump (continue on another page) and kept to the lighter stories of the day.  Hey, it’s Sunday, a day of rest and good news, right?

But then it was time to devote some time to Target. What was on sale this week? Would there be anything we needed to stock up on or think about for a future purchase? Page by page I’d note what were the electronics specials, what new books and movies on DVD were coming out on Tuesday, what season of life it was – summer, back to school, holiday.  I’d scan for the specials on clothing and fitness gear.

Those days are gone along with living our public lives without masks. It doesn’t keep me from hoping there will be a flyer in the current week’s Sunday edition, especially with back to school right around the corner, whatever that may mean. My trips to Target have dwindled whether it’s due to the missing flyers or the pandemic’s lack of needs, I’m not sure. I hope someday it will be back, it just won’t be today.

MC

 

Life

Beyond the headlines

Mary C

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We are holdouts on dropping our subscription to the daily newspaper. Although you can get most of your news from other sources these days, especially national news, the newspaper is still a long term habit we’re not ready to let go of. Of course the fact I used to work there and had nearly twenty years to build this habit at half price gets most of the credit for this. Also, for several years after I left, the familiar bylines were like an invisible connection to the people I knew and grew to love. Yes, reporters are a curmudgeonly and questioning lot. The sky is blue? Prove it.

Continue reading “Beyond the headlines” →

Writing

Word by word

Mary C

Writing a book is daunting. I’ve made a few stabs at it but the words don’t come in a way I feel satisfied with. I read other people’s work with longing. And regret. Regret that I can’t pull together a plot or even sentences the way other people can and even though I know it’s not easy for them either (I’m subscribed to the hashtag WritingCommunity on Twitter), I feel like they were gifted with some sort of innate talent that I wasn’t. Maybe it is my lot in life to be just a reader. No, I want to be one of those people where words pour out, a flow of ideas – the story, the magical sentences. I hear these people exist.

I have been writing every day. OK, so it’s pretty much nonsensical words thrown on the page describing the most mundane life moments which are pretty much the same from day to day. This is not “real” writing but for some reason, I can’t get beyond this and promise myself tomorrow will be different. I love when Ann Lamott says to just sit your butt in a chair and write and as I open a new document the words that come to me are bird by bird. However, I don’t have even one bird.

On Monday I forgot to even write. I carry guilt about not writing with me through every day and Monday was the first day in months that I didn’t feel anxious for not having written by the end of the day. Either part of me forgot I hadn’t written or the writer in me shut itself off. Powered down. Unplugged itself. But then when I sat down to write on Tuesday, I saw the gap in days between Sunday and Tuesday and still let myself off the hook from writing for one more day. I was too damn tired and now I have a two day gap.

But I pick up where I left off and write the nonsense from two lost days. And just as I come to the end of my allotted 750 words and as I’m about to get ready for work, a germ of an idea comes. I tag a few sentences at the end of my daily drivel so I have an idea where I left off. But now I have to go and hope for the best for later. Or tomorrow.

Life

Life is weird and good

Mary C

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It’s 8:00 a.m. on a Friday and Starbuck’s is nearly empty, a half dozen tables moved to the front of the store with chairs stacked on top, denote we are living in a new time. It’s chilly (for August) and raining but the three meagerly spaced tables outdoors, under the eave of the building are occupied with the die hard coffee and wifi borrowing devotees who need to be in the vicinity of a coffee shop to write. Today, I am one of them as I wait while my dad undergoes a quick procedure at the hospital before he is released back out into the world. Of course, I wasn’t allowed to go in with him because – COVID.

But sitting here writing in a once bustling shop is a starker reminder of the unusual times we are living in. Weirder than masking up to grocery shop and go to work. There are no tables of early morning seniors or students or business people having a quick early meeting over a cup. The tables aren’t full of writers or readers or others just needing a quick escape from home. This particular Starbucks carries noise in perpetual motion around the room from front to back, side to side, but no conversations are bouncing back to me today. Just the peripheral vision of masked customers waiting 6 feet apart for their name to be called. A quick pick up and run.

School is on my mind these days because I have a rising eighth grader and the memories of a chaotic spring semester of online schooling from home are whirling back to me. What is school going to look like this year? Will there be sports (probably not), will there be a regular school day (probably not), will there be a return to a teen social life (probably not) – or a parent social life?! We are grinning and bearing it as best we can but the teen hasn’t been out of my vicinity (except when I do my fifteen hours a week at my job) since mid-March and I think we both need a break. COVID has changed so much for all of us but we still have each other and the instincts to keep going on regardless, day after day. We are resilient, thank God.

I can’t help but wonder what our country would be like today if we had a different leader who could have given us some real guidance in the time of this pandemic. I will leave it at that as I shy away from political commentary here. The thing I am grateful for is that I only have to worry about today. Sitting here, enjoying a coffee, retrieving my dad from the hospital and getting him back to his loved ones. Life is still good. Weird but good.