The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Mother's Day Revisited

Saturday, May 16, 2009

Mother's Day Revisited

Mother's Day Eve is not a very well known holiday, but I was thinking it should be made more official last Saturday on Mother's Day Eve. Son #1 had gone bowling with friends, Son #2 was watching youtube videos in his room, and Only Daughter was creating a Mother's Day novella.

Even our Malaysian houseguest had agreed to stop watching Deal or No Deal and Wheel of Fortune as they had begun to drive me nuts.(Is there a channel dedicated to these shows? They seemed to never go off the air) We rented The Commitments and he kept leaning forward and turning the volume up to figure out the English inside their thick brogues.

So he was challenged, the kids were all occupied, Maisie had had a bath and was subdued and damp in the laundry room, and the cats were all in different napping spots. It was one of those rare, calm moments in the house. I sat on the couch. I thought about doing something productive, maybe even sneaking off to write a little bit. Yes, I thought, that will be my Mother's Day present to myself: an hour or so of writing time. Before going upstairs, I decided to bring some kitchen waste out to the compost pile.

As I was coming back inside, I saw about six young girls standing on the lawn. It was around 8:30 at night. This could not be good. I went in to talk to Son #2.

He explained that their parents had gone to see a show in Atlantic City and they were all sleeping over one of the girl's houses. They were just out for a walk, he explained, but would it be okay if he walked Maisie?

Now my boys offer to walk the dog about as often as blizzards hit Kenya, so I started laughing. "No, she's good. Why don't you stay inside?"

Glaring at me since he obviously had already made plans, he slammed the door really hard after I left. About five minutes later, Emma came to get me.

It seemed Philip was locked in his room. Literally. The door would not open. I got a flat head screwdriver, and managed to slide it under the door to Philip. He got the entire doorknob off, but the deadbolt was still firmly embedded into the doorframe. But at least we had airspace and could see each other.

"MOM, DID YOU DO THIS?" he wailed, "LOCK ME IN HERE?"

"No, it must have happened when you slammed the door." Mind you, we were talking only through the circle where the doorknob had once been.

"I think I'm having a panic attack," he complained.

I looked out the hallway window. The girls were moving around under the trees like ghosts. But Philip was high up on the second floor.

Now, I could have called my husband or Googled locks to fix this problem, but I realized I had Philip, for once, exactly where I wanted him. And it was kind of a holiday.

"Breathe, honey," I told him, "Breathe in and out and you won't panic."

"But I'm hungry. And thirsty. I have to get out of this room!"

Emma got him a juice box and held the flexi-straw up to the open space. She slipped him animal crackers and granola bars. He found a much needed Pepsi bottle after drinking his third Capri Sun (life is sometimes easier for boys).

"Mom, can't you fix this?" he asked again.

"I think," I said seriously, "that you are in there until Dad gets home tomorrow morning. You have some granola bars in there, and you can just use the Pepsi bottle."

"Nooooooo," he cried, "you can't do this."

"Sorry," I said, "but this is probably the best place for you tonight."

While Emma was telling him how he was just like Rapunzel right now, I went out to the lawn and asked the girls if I could help them. They said they were just taking a walk. I stood there smiling until they left.

Then I came inside and put my eye up to the semi circle space I had to view Philip. There he was, playing the guitar, his curtains wide open. Only he could not leave and no one could come in.

It was perfect.

If only it could stay that way.

10 comments:

Bish Denham said...: Oh, that is so like a reverse fairytale or something. You mean old Mom you:) Now, has he learned anything? Like slamming doors can get you locked up?; Saturday, 16 May, 2009
Adrienne said...: Ooh, that couldn't have been better if you'd planned it.; Saturday, 16 May, 2009
Christy Raedeke said...: This really must make it in to a book...it's just so good. I've come back three times to read it today and I'm still laughing.; Saturday, 16 May, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: Hah, Bish, I hope he learned something. I feel like teenagers think they control all the good stuff that happens, but the bad stuff is the adults' fault. He really didn't get out until the next morning, so he had plenty of time to think...

I don't think the best stuff is ever planned, Adrienne. It's like that phrase, "You can't make this stuff up." You really can't. I DO
wonder what would have happened if I hadn't discovered those girls. I would give anything to know what that plan was if he had gone out with the dog.

Glad I made you laugh, Christy. I try never to put their actual experiences into my fiction. I don't feel guilty about swiping thier expressions though. Plus, I enjoyed keeping him as my prisoner just a little too much I think. He knew it, too, so that would really be rubbing it in.; Sunday, 17 May, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: That is just a marvelous story, and it caused me to snort in the university library. A group of girls in headscarves are narrowing their eyes at me...

The best part is that he brought it all on himself by slamming the door in the first place. I agree with you: no need to call the locksmith on this one. What a great Mother's Day present!; Monday, 18 May, 2009
Aiof Murphy said...: Very enjoyable read. You really are an amazing writer. I am reading The Shapeof Water and plan to preorder Light Beneath Ferns as soon as it's available.

Heres a question for a well published writer. Your second book is coming out. Do you ever feel guilty that there are so many folks out there dying to get their FIRST book published and you already have two?; Wednesday, 20 May, 2009
Nora MacFarlane said...: You have the funniest family stories! And I think you are just a hair wicked...; Wednesday, 20 May, 2009
Mary Witzl said...: I'm back here to read this and have another laugh over it.

I echo Aiof's question, but I find myself hoping the answer is No. The guilt might block you from writing more...; Wednesday, 20 May, 2009
Anne Spollen said...: It's actually the kids who are funny, Nora. And they are really funny - only they don't see the humor in their situations at all. It's a different take on adult humor I guess.

Thanks for the encouragement, Aiof. I'm so glad you like my books!

I don't feel guilty about being published, and I am something of an expert on guilt. I DO feel awkward around friends who are struggling, especially when they are working really hard and not having any luck. I'm not sure what makes a book sellable (and if I was I would be a very, very rich woman as I could "fix" everyone's manuscript). So no, not guilty, just uncomfortable sometimes.

Nah, guilt wouldn't stop me from writing, Mary. My only real obstacle is time. I sometimes go a week without any spare time to even look at my current manuscript. That's the true obstacle, and I'm working on changing that.; Thursday, 21 May, 2009
Katie Anderson said...: OMG I am totally chuckling in bed!!! What a story. What. a. story.; Thursday, 21 May, 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.

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