The Former Anne Spollen's Author Blog Is Being Retitled to "Notes from Living Upghetto": Post Graduation

Sunday, July 4, 2010

Post Graduation

That's Coco, one of the kittens Emma got last year. She's a lot bigger now, but I still think she is one of the world's cutest cat sleepers. Maybe her posture is a metaphor for the end of the school year. Kids seem so exhausted by the end of June.

Christopher didn't get much of a chance to relax. He graduated and at eight o'clock the morning after his graduation, he began a college summer program. Remember I'm the mom who always told the kids they could sleep over OUR house; I never really let them sleep over or go to camp or do any of that normal stuff. So I just paid the price when I dropped him off.

He made me swear not to cry or embarrass him in any way in front of his new roommates, so I cried before and on the ride and in the parking lot. Then I was cool. Really cool. We organized his room and took a walk around campus and went to the orientation barbeque. Still cool. So what if it felt like someone was ripping my lungs out? I acted like Christopher was going for one of the sleepovers finally at someone else's house.

It was almost time to leave and the counselor suggested I show him the laundry room. I was explaining how to work the machines when he looked at me, then at his I Touch. He had been looking at that device all through the orientation and all through my advice lectures and all through the long, boring introductions to things like the bursar representative and the tutoring center hours. I finally said,

"Christopher, you have to pay attention. I'm not driving down here just so you can do wash."

He looked back at his I Touch and said, "I was just thinking how great it would be to have a Mom app on my phone." Okay, so corny. But it did me in. I got to that line, then I started crying. Fast forward: he's doing fine, and he brought home a huge load of dirty laundry. I have him until tomorrow, but I'll be cool when I drop him off this time, Mom apps and all.

And in other good news, one of Philip's friends is in the process of making a website for Light Beneath Ferns. I haven't seen it yet, but I will later on tonight and I'll post a link to it here. They may not want to learn how to do their own laundry, but teenagers come in handy in a lot of other ways.

It's a little harder to get to the computer with everyone home, so I'm a little more behind than usual, I wanted to wish everyone a Happy Fourth!

13 comments:

Anonymous said...: Happy Fourth to you, too -- I just emailed you about your novel. It rocks!

-Kelly; Monday, 05 July, 2010
Jemi Fraser said...: A mom app - I love it! Got me teary eyed for you :)

It's tough letting them go - even for short stretches. Good luck with it all!; Monday, 05 July, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Thanks, Kelly! Glad you liked it; I just sent a reply.

He'll be home on July 15, Jemi. Not that I'm like counting or anything -- and if we could patent a Mom app, we would never have to work again!; Tuesday, 06 July, 2010
Unknown said...: Love Coco!; Tuesday, 06 July, 2010
Adrienne said...: Now I'm almost sorry I taught the kids to use the washer...I want to make sure they've got a reason to keep coming back, dirty clothes and all.

Love your new look!; Tuesday, 06 July, 2010
Glynis Peters said...: It is hard, but be proud you can let them go. They are strong enough to cope in the world, because you taught them well.; Wednesday, 07 July, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Thanks, Cynthia. Coco is a really mellow kitty; everyone loves her. Her sister, Cami, is the exact opposite.

Thanks, Adrienne! Do you mean the blog or the bangs?

I'll bet they come back with dirty clothes even if they become expert at laundry.

I keep thinking it's more like he's away at camp, Glynis. I'm not brave enough to think I've let him go...but yeah, I know what you mean.; Wednesday, 07 July, 2010
Shannon said...: I want a Mom app! Christopher's SO lucky he can drive home and drop his laundry off. But I get a good deal: I trade my Mom-does-laundry rights for things like acutal seasons, imagination inspiring weather (I.I.W.=RAIN), real trees (not supplanted Austrailian eucalyptus and shrubby fat things), and amazing views. I believe I'll get a good deal. (Except when it starts raining non-stop, and my California instincts kick in and I automatically start saying things like, "OK, it's been two days, I'm done with this weather now!") But the good thing about doing my own laundry is I have this cool pop-up laundry basket (which is much more fun to play with than it is to actually sort the laundry).; Thursday, 08 July, 2010
K.C. Shaw said...: Awwwwww, maybe the "mom app" thing is a little bit corny, but it's totally sweet. I hope he's having a great time.

That's an adorable kitty picture. :); Thursday, 08 July, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: I sort of talked/bullied Christopher into a close-to-home college at least for the first two years, Shannon. Luckily, it had everything he needed for now and a generous financial aid package. That's great that you are going to have seasons; so many folks here out in the East talk about moving to California for the wonderful climate. No one has ever really mentioned any downside to living there aside from the cost of real estate. I never thought of it that way, so thanks for the new persepective!

Yes, K.C., normally, I wouldn't have fallen for the "mom app" but he was still flush with cash from graduation and he had just eaten, so I knew he was sincere (food and money or both are the usual teen requests) Plus, it just came ten minutes before we had to say goodbye. I think my response surprised him.

Yea, Coco is our kitty calendar girl. She gets into the cutest postures. This is one of my favorites of hers.; Friday, 09 July, 2010
Mary Witzl said...: I did all of that last year and it was so AWFUL! It was bittersweet to see all the other parents looking anxious, shuffling around red-eyed and snuffly with their kids' belongings.

We've got our Eldest with us now, traveling around in Turkey. We'd almost forgotten what it was like doing job lots of laundry and having to wait 30 minutes for the bathroom.; Saturday, 10 July, 2010
Anne Spollen said...: Ha, red eyes - I wore big sunglasses.
It really is awful, especially when there's never really been a separation before.

Boys don't take that long in the bathroom, Mary - you sort of wish they would; ); Sunday, 11 July, 2010
Anonymous said...: How sweet. I'm a teacher and I cried at graduation. I couldn't help it thinking how grown up my students were.

I can't wait to see the new website.; Monday, 12 July, 2010

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.

***