The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Of Birthdays and Normal

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Of Birthdays and Normal

Today is my birthday, and we celebrated last weekend when my husband had a rare Friday night off. A close friend of mine came for a visit and bought me a freezer (I know, you are clearly middle aged when you are happy about receiving appliances), but she did it so I could expand my garden. And of course there was cake, chocolate and sinful, and I actually hid the last piece from the kids.

When the kids asked me what I wanted for my birthday, I told them I wanted to do something entirely NORMAL as a family. I wanted all of us to spend time together and not have it be at all weird.

"Impossible," my oldest said, "it's us, remember?"

But they agreed to do whatever I chose for the night.

"For one night, I want us to be normal. I want to go...bowling."

The kids gasped. But a deal is a deal, so off we went, all five of us to Thunderbird Lanes. And things were normal until we went to rent the shoes.

"You do what?" my daughter asked the man, "you wear someone else's shoes?" She backed away from the counter. "That is too gross. No. I'm not doing that. I'll just watch."

"They clean them," I said quietly, "I'll bleach your socks when we get home."

She shook her head. "Mom, they don't clean anything here. Look around."

I looked up in time to see the boys sprinting to the door. It turns out that Lynne was there. And they can't be ANYWHERE where Lynne is because, you know, they said, and it's way too complicated because of the myspace thing and what happened when Philip broke up with Devon and how her best friend got suspended, and just forget it, Mom, it's too hard to explain but we CAN'T be in there until she leaves. We CAN'T.

Well, fine, I told them. What do we do now?

"We're only five minutes from the beach," my oldest suggested.

"It's dark out and it's about 26 degrees," my husband pointed out.

"We could just go there," Christopher suggested.

So we did. On a cold, dark February night, we drove around the beach town where we swim in the summer and stood by the bay for a few minutes. It was cold and silent, but beautiful in a spare way. At least we were all together.

"Is this normal, Mom?" Emma asked.

"For us, it is." That's when my oldest put his hand on my shoulder. My 17 year old puts his hand on my shoulder as often as Haley's comet flies by so I looked up.

"Mom," he said, "I've decided what I want to do after I graduate."

I was still stunned by his gesture, and even more stunned by this sentence. "Christopher, you're going to college. You mean you picked a college?"

"I'm going to college later. After I graduate, I'm going into the Navy. I've thought about it for a long time, and I've decided."

The Navy.

I'm the Mom who calls the bus company when the bus is five minutes late, the one who doesn't go to the orthodontist's office without Neosporin and Tylenol in my pockebook, the one who never lets her kids sleep over anyone's house who isn't a blood relative.

The Navy. War. Distance. Danger.

But it made sense: my son's reluctance and final refusal to attend college night, the brochures that I thought were coming to the house unbidden, his lifelong interest in military history and war memorabilia, his strange request to go to the beach. We have always talked about the serious stuff at the beach.

"So are we normal?" Emma said, running over to me, "because I'm freezing and I want to get back into the car."

"For us, I guess," I answered.

10 comments:

Adrienne said...: You got more than cake to digest...

Happy Birthday!; Friday, 20 February, 2009
Carrie Harris said...: Wow. That's quite a birthday gift.

Having said that, I still can't help but giggle at the pink spandex. I'm sorry; I just can't help myself.; Friday, 20 February, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Yes, Adrienne it was. More like heartburn than digestion...

And yeah, Carrie, I saw that picture a few weeks ago under Detroit bowling and I copied it. I really have to get to Michigan one of these days.; Friday, 20 February, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; Friday, 20 February, 2009
Anonymous said...: Hey, I'm going to be visitng my aunt in Atlantic City on that weekend. I can come to the booksigning and meet you! -Trish

(from over Christmas); Friday, 20 February, 2009
Marcia said...: Happy birthday!

It sounds like your son has been thinking about his decision for a long time. I wish him all the best.

Somebody BOUGHT you a freezer?; Friday, 20 February, 2009
TerriRainer said...: My oldest nephew went into the Navy last fall. It beats the heck out of Army or Marines...much safer IMHO.

:) Terri; Friday, 20 February, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: I know how you feel: my daughter joined the Army Cadets a few years back and I had to ferry her to rifle practice and back. It felt so weird. I second what Terri says about the Navy, though!

Wish I could go to your book signing!; Saturday, 21 February, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Great, Trish! It will be good to meet you. May's Landing is between Atlantic City and Philly, so that should work out. (And thanks for all your thoughts on the 'emo stuff')

Yup, Marcia, someone bought me a freezer. She's a good friend and I think she got sick of watching me restack the fridge freezer every time she came. She's also fairly affluent, and affluent folks tend to SOLVE their friends' problems. I, on the other hand, excel at sympathy.

Terri, the Marines and the Army terrify me. I'm pushing for the Coast Guard, but so far he's not buying it. BTW, this is a kid who's never even been to summer camp.

It IS weird to do the rifle thing, Mary. My guy has had an Enfield (doesn't fire so only for historical purposes) and a small target pistol since he was about ten. I'm hoping he gets a job at a military museum like in West Point or some place and changes his mind. Maybe change that hoping to praying.; Saturday, 21 February, 2009
Christy Raedeke said...: This post made me cry and now I can't stop. I've got work to do, dammit--write something funny so I can stop crying!

Happy happy birthday. I like your brand of normal.; Wednesday, 25 February, 2009

Books

Light Beneath Ferns

"I have this strange sense that my silence is preparing me for something I can't name . ."

Elizah Rayne is nothing like other fourteen-year-old girls. More interested in bird bones than people, she wraps herself in silence. Trying to escape the shadow of her gambler father, Elizah and her mother move into an old house that borders a cemetery. All her mother wants is for them to have "normal" lives. But that becomes impossible for Elizah when she finds a human jawbone by the river and meets Nathaniel, a strangely hypnotic boy who draws Elizah into his dreamlike and mysterious world.

Only by forgetting everything she knows can Elizah understand the truth about Nathaniel—and discover an unimaginable secret.

Teen made trailer for Light Beneath Ferns.

Order Light Beneath Ferns here.

Foreword Magazine's Review of Light Beneath Ferns

Excerpt from THE SHAPE OF WATER

CHAPTER ONE
I discovered windows one afternoon and after that, nothing was ever the same. They had always been there, of course, glass panes shimmering in the color of rain, but that spring for the first time, I was able to open the windows in my room. For years, the locks had been painted stuck, and during the winter, heat from the radiator beneath my windows finally steamed off enough paint off the metal wings of the locks could be twirled open. Knowing that I could open the windows attracted me to them, and I began sitting under the windows, staring through the glass at the sky. From that position, on a chair in my room, the sky did not seem real; it seemed a place I was making up, so I watched it.
The white wood of the window panes acted as frames so the sky came to me slowly, and the huge openness of its space did not touch me. All the window glass in our old house had wavers and bubbles inside it, so at times the clouds moved like water, melting and blurring until they passed outside of the warp. After a few afternoons of sitting, the heavens seemed too quiet to keep watching so I began watching a small patch of woods next to our yard that housed little more than trees and a scatter of bony, mean-looking rabbits.
I started gazing at the sky and the woods in March when the branches were still wet and it was then, with nothing outside my window but trees and rain, that I noticed a shine inside darkness, I noticed colors glimmering within the darkness of the wood. I watched birds come and go, I watched rain nipple down from buds to the grass. The water dripping from branch edges and leaves created optical tricks; I could see that as I watched leaves melt.
Then one day I ventured into the space outside. I did not think about doing this much beforehand. I simply opened the window and dropped to the ground below, uncertain as to why this should be such a more satisfying exit than simply using the door; my father worked until seven o’clock and I could do whatever I wanted until then. But I liked the solid sound my legs made when I landed. Leaving via a five foot drop seemed so much more a decision than just using a door. The sense of escape made my heart pound, though all I escaped was the soundless spread of moss-colored light inside my house and the silence.
I had come to know silence well during those months after my mother died. When you sit in silence long enough, you learn that silence has a motion. It glides over you without shape or form, but with weight, exactly like water. Its color is silver. And silence has a sound you hear only after hours of wading inside it. The sound is soft, flute notes rising up like the words of glass speaking. There comes a point when you must shatter the silence, when you must shatter the blindness of its words, the blindness of its light. I did this by going into the yard. Once I stood there, in the grass next to the trees I had been watching, I found silence outside as well. But I was happier outside than I had been in the house, so I stayed for a bit. I stood beneath my bedroom window for a few minutes, looking up at the branches and the crooked pieces of sky colliding between the branches. I believed I could identify the scent of the sky as I stood there, a blue menthol fragrance similar to the scent of seawater that sprayed into my face when I first dove into the ocean. That initial scent smelled much more subtle than the ocean’s heavy, fishy aroma, a whiff of salt and mint that warned a more powerful scent would enter my nose just as I approached the water on a dive. It was the scent I dreamed in. And it was the scent of that spring sky as I stood in my yard.

***