And one more post for this week:

A fun interview with Cindy Wolfe Boynton at Literary New England, where we talk about kringles, sisters, and writing. Here's the link (go to about 4 mins in for Three Good Things): tiny.cc/zm

Book Trailer for Three Good Things!

This week's blog is the book trailer for Three Good Things. Please take a look and share with your friends, mothers, daughters, sisters, and book clubs. . .

http://bit.ly/SSnB5I

In Celebration of "Late" Bloomers, Also pub'd in The Huffington Post!

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about age. In particular, my age, now on the flip side of forty. Maybe it’s because a New Year is upon us.  Or perhaps it’s because every time my four-year-old meets new friends on the playground, the first question they ask each other is not, “What’s your name?” but “How old are you?” As if revealing your age is a secret handshake in the toddler-plus crowd. So long as you’re not a baby, you usually have an “in.”

The other night when I was putting my son to bed, he reminded me that he was turning five in June. I told him it was fine by me if he stayed four. “Nope, five,” he confirmed. “Then I’m going to kindergarten,” as if he could hear my heart breaking. When he asked how old I was, I lied like any mom worth her age: “Twenty-two.” In less than a beat, he exclaimed (and I quote verbatim): “Holy cow! I didn’t know you were that many years old.”

My husband and I joke that we’re “getting old”; we’ve both thrown out our backs at various times, and though he continues to play hockey and I try to run a few times a week, we’ve had to face the fact that we’re no longer young whippersnappers. When my mother was my age, I was a sophomore in college. I have a four-year-old.  It’s enough to make my head spin.

I’m also probably hyper-aware of my age right now because I have a debut novel out this month. Most debut authors are in their twenties, right? There’s the New Yorker collection of writers, 20 Under 40, after all. So, I have to wonder: what about those of us who are debuting on the flip side of forty?

Ironically, I can recall the struggle of trying to be taken seriously when I was an associate book editor in my twenties.  I didn’t like it, but the truth was, I still had a lot to learn.  Age brings a multitude of experiences – and with it, I now understand, comes perspective. If I had written my first novel when I was younger, it would have surely been a story with circumscribed borders, a limited perspective, a fair dose of naiveté.

That’s not to say great writers don’t appear in their twenties and thirties –to the contrary, they most certainly do. But for me, I needed the years after college -- the years of living as a single girl in the city, then as a wife and stepmom, and finally as a new mother -- to gain the necessary perspective to tell the story that I do in Three Good Things. I could have never written, for instance, the chapters of the younger sister, Lanie, who has a ten-month-old baby, without being a mom myself. I also don’t think I would have so readily identified with the older sister, Ellen, who tries to start her life anew by opening a kringle bakery, if I’d imagined her when I was younger. And let’s be honest, with age comes a stage in life (and, we hope, some financial stability) that allows us to take a chance on writing, to take that leap because we’re suddenly all too aware that life is short.

On her website, Claire Cook tells the inspiring story of writing her first novel in her minivan while she waited out her kids’ sporting events (http://www.clairecook.com/). She was forty-five.  And she shares some illustrious company. I stumbled upon the following post by the wonderful Randy Susan Myers that lists debut authors over forty : (http://www.randysusanmeyers.com/2012/07/debut-novels-by-writers-over-40/). I was surprised to learn, for instance, that Paul Harding, author of Tinkers, was 42 at publication, or that Sue Monk Kidd, author of one my favorite novels, The Secret Life of Bees, was 54 upon her debut as a novelist (though she'd published memoirs before that). Or that Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote her first Little House book in the series when she was 65. It’s enough to give the rest of us hope.   

And now we can thankfully turn to Bloom (http://bloom-site.com) to read about noteworthy authors over forty. Sonya Chung, founding editor, described her motivation for launching Bloom in a recent Huffington Post article: “The truth of it is that the majority of writers take a lot of time to write their best book, that detours happen, and sometimes those detours can be very fruitful.”  I was reminded of this again as I was reading a review of Katrina Kenison’s newly released memoir, Magical Journey.  Our lives are all journeys; what we make of them is up to us.

Maybe it’s no coincidence that one my favorite childhood books was Leo the Late Bloomer by Robert Kraus. The story was a comforting reminder that we all blossom in our own good time. And maybe forty-something isn't "late," per se. As Tessa Hadley, author of Married Love and Other Stories, says so well on Bloom: “Eventually you find your own house and you let yourself in your front door.”

May we all find our own houses, our own front doors, in our own time. ~

Look Up

The stockings had been hung by the fire with care; the presents were opened; the carols sung. It was a lovely Christmas, despite – or perhaps because of – our attempts to limit presents to five per person this year. My mother had flown out from Wisconsin, a first, to spend the holidays with our family. There was much to celebrate and be thankful for. The house still smelled of balsam, and a fire burned in the stone fireplace near the dinner table. We’d played multiple games of Bananagrams, Bingo, and Candyland. You might say it resembled a Norman Rockwell holiday.

And yet, to be honest, I was feeling cranky, a post-holiday out-of-sorts, whose source I couldn’t put a finger on. It wasn’t that my jeans had grown uncomfortably snug over the past week or the usual sibling squabbling that comes with the vacation infusion of togetherness. It hadn’t snowed, and so I couldn’t blame my crankiness on cabin fever either.  But my husband put his finger on it one night at the dinner table:  “She’s not happy until it snows.” And, bingo: he was right. We’d been missing a snow-covered holiday, heavy flakes drifting down, the sound of shovels scraping and wind howling – what I’d grown up with in Wisconsin.

When I was little, I used to imagine myself as Laura Ingalls Wilder, snug in her house made of dirt and sticks, snuggled under blankets, the bed warmer and wood fire the only sources of warmth in her makeshift home on the prairie. Perhaps I had a flair for melodrama, but it didn’t seem too far a stretch as I lay in my bed in our small Midwestern house that backed up against a small woods. I imagined wolves howling, lurking outside, and enjoyed the safety of our home even more.

Boston had been snow-free, and now it was December 28. The weathermen were forecasting a storm for the next day, but I remained skeptical. Too often the prognosticators got it wrong, the snow never arriving, or even worse, switching over to rain. My four-year-old, like any child, shares my love for the white stuff, and had been asking when he’d be able to stomp around in it.  “Maybe tomorrow,” I tried to reassure him, but when towns west of us lit up on the weather map with storms and still we saw nothing, we sighed in disappointment. Then, suddenly, a few flakes drifted down, and my son was dancing what we dubbed “the snowdance.” Imagine the disappointment when the flakes turned to rain later that night.

So, when I rolled over the next morning and heard him yelling and singing, “Hallelujah,” his four-year-old expression of pure joy, I knew that Christmas had finally arrived.  And, indeed, a thick blanket of white shrouded our front yard. Soon enough, we were bundled up, shoveling, sweeping, running and tossing snowballs around. This was the good kind of snow – wet, heavy, perfect for snowball packing.  I followed him into the back yard on the fresh expanse of white and we plopped down to make snow angels side by side. We flapped our arms and legs, and he told me to “Look up!” When I did, I saw the tree branches above us, the long limbs coated with snow, crystalline icicles hanging from above. Beautiful. How often, I thought, do we forget to “look up”? How often am I busy looking at the computer, checking my cell phone?

“Look Up.” It seems a good resolution to go into the New Year with. I will try to remember to enjoy the refreshing chill of a brisk wind, the rescue of soft snow. And when our minister ended service this morning, reminding us to “Go where there is no path and leave a trail,” I couldn’t help but smile. My son and I had done just that this morning, in our backyard, in the embrace of that wonderful thing called snow.

 

 

 

 

 

A Sunday of Advents

1. Hope.

Sunday began with a wake-up call from our son at 7:17 a.m. This was typical. As soon as he rolls over in bed, one eye open to the world, he likes to get the day started. He is only four, and for him every day promises to be as good as or better than the day before. He is hope personified. “What will we do after that?” has become a common refrain in our house. To his ambitious mind, we never have a long-enough list to fill the day. My husband mercifully got out of bed to cook breakfast while I slept in. When I came down to the smell of coffee brewing, they had already played three rounds of “Zingo!” and were now into “Pop Fly,” another great invention for the under-five set, where a beanbag thrown at a lever launches miniature balls into the air at surprisingly soaring heights. I sipped my coffee and watched, thinking and planning for the day ahead.

2. Peace.

A brief sojourn to the small church up the hill afforded one hour of uninterrupted time. Evergreen wreaths dotted the high walls and a single Christmas tree bowed its branches in the sanctuary. A place for gifts for the needy greeted us. When the minister asked for names of those in need of prayers, it became clear that more than a few of us were fighting our own battles during the holiday season: caring for sick parents, sick children, a wayward teen. As we shook hands during the Peace greeting, we bucked each other up, whispered comforting words. And when our minister lit the second candle of Advent, he spoke of the importance of peace not only in our world but in our own homes, in our families. He reminded us that the very definition of serenity is none other than peace.

3. Joy.

A few hours later, grandparents, parents, cousins, and brothers all sat in a row watching their granddaughter/ daughter/cousin/sister perform in a holiday concert in a magnificent hall. Our anticipation was kept in check by the reminder that this was a high school performance after all. We shouldn’t expect too much. But we were still hoping (that first candle) for some holiday cheer, an invigorating song or two. What filled our hearts when we listened to our girl and her classmates sing a gorgeous, intricate holiday madrigal -- right after a bell choir performance and before another girl’s stunning rendition of O Holy Night? Joy.

4. Love.

Often the holidays seem to mean more stress, more bickering between siblings, more plain-out exhaustion. And surely those moments have appeared and will reappear as we near the 25^th. But on the drive back home, all the children nestled into their seats, the melodies of the Christmas concert still dancing in our heads, what my husband and I felt was one of those rare moments that you can actually take and cup in your hands, like water. How lucky we are, how blessed to all be together, to have an afternoon that was filled with music – and that fourth candle of Advent, love.

It was a good reminder for me: from the Events of the season come the Advents, the arrival of hope, peace, joy, and love. May yours be filled with all the advents you desire.

 

Weighing In Before Thanksgiving Dinner

It used to be that my brother would step on the scale before and after Thanksgiving dinner to see how many pounds he’d gained in one sitting. While I’d never dream of doing the same, we all got a good laugh. One year he tipped the scale to an excess of seven newly packed-on pounds – a record. We chalked it up to a particularly tasty Thanksgiving, one where my mom had cooked not only the turkey but also her traditional side of sweet potatoes and cranberries, homemade stuffing, gravy, buttered carrots, any number of sweetbreads, and of course, her signature pumpkin pie.

When we were young, we’d try to circle around the table, everyone saying what they were thankful for, before someone snuck a piece of turkey. There were homemade place cards, placemats, and some years lopsided construction paper turkeys. Eventually childhood enthusiasms gave way to a new tradition of the Turkey Trot run; my dad and brother would brave the frigid Wisconsin temperatures to pound out three and a half miles before dinner. Later, when my brother and I left for college and I stayed out East, our family Thanksgivings spent around the table together became less and less frequent. More often than not, the phone was our welcome connector across the miles.

The past few years, I’ve tried to emulate some of our traditions within my own family. I make my mom’s sweet potato/cranberry recipe; our family watches the Macy’s Thanksgiving parade; one year my son and I cut out construction paper turkeys, the imprints of our hands decorated with colorful feathers. The fact that he pronounced to his dad that he’d just finished making his “chicken” did little to dull my spirits.

But this year, like last, there will be someone missing around our proverbial table: my dad. And while I know the passing of a year should make a difference, know that the actual Thanksgivings I spent with him had grown few and far between, it doesn’t make his absence any less felt. It’s something that I know more than a few friends have had to struggle with in recent years, this realizing that we’ve come of an age where no one, not even our parents, is invincible. A reluctant recognition that the shape of family changes, even if those for whom we’re grateful does not.

My dad would have been the first to remind us how lucky we are, how much we have to be thankful for. He was an easy mark for any charity, always willing to lend a few extra dollars. I can’t count how many times an old-fashioned letter would arrive in the mail from him, penned on a piece of complimentary stationery he’d received for his donation to the Salvation Army, Unicef, a local food bank. He could find many problems with the world, but really, his heart was made of gold.

I suspect this year, when it came to his turn at the table, he would have said he was grateful for our family, small and large, for the blessings of the food before us, the roof over our heads, the kindness of friends. It was the little things. He would have made a comment about how glad he was to have Obama in the White House but would have asked God to help our President help those who need it most.

And when I look around the dinner table this Thanksgiving, hosted by my in-laws in the historic town of Plymouth, I’ll surely think of my whole family and all that I’m grateful for. But most especially, I’ll think of my dad and how the holiday this year is both heavier and lighter because of him. I won't need the scale to tell me.

How a Five-Year-Old Put Me in My Place

Yesterday afternoon, one election and one hurricane later, my son and I enjoyed an unexpected blast of summer at the park. Like so many other families, we kicked around the soccer ball, played hide-and-seek, tag, anything that allowed us to linger a bit longer in the sunshine. You could tell that there was a collective sigh of gratitude among the parents: for our kids’ safety, for the balm of a New England fall day, for having weathered the storms of the past weeks.

Nicholas and I gulped in the warm air, wiped our sweaty brows, and stopped for heavy swigs from our water bottles after a marathon soccer game. Eventually, a few of his friends joined in and I retreated to the sidelines to chat with other parents, comparing notes on the recent high winds and flooding. When the kids tired of the game and gathered around the monkey bars, they, too, began to trade stories of what had mattered most to them in the wake of our collective storms: Halloween candy. I listened as one boy boasted he got one hundred pieces, another seventy-five. Nicholas himself had scored forty-five pieces, which he’d proudly lined up on our window seat. As the Halloween tales made their way around the circle, one cagey five-year-old stopped and looked at me. “Hey, we came to your house for trick-or-treat,” he said.

I was secretly pleased to be remembered. I must be one of the “cool” moms, I thought with a warm smile. I felt a surge of love for this little boy. Already I was mentally arranging a play date for him at our house.

“Yeah,” he continued. “You gave us licorice.” His voice carried a slightly accusatory tone.

“Oh?” I said. “That could be. We gave out lots of stuff. Kit Kats, Butterfingers, M&Ms, licorice.”

He shook his head, as if about to call me out as a liar right in front of his now curious pals. “No, I’m pretty sure it was licorice.” Big, wondering eyes looked up at me.

“Could be.” I tried for diplomacy; I really did. “Lots of times I like to throw in licorice with another treat.”

He stared at me. “Just licorice.” His disappointment was palpable. I felt the need to defend myself, if not for my sake, for my son’s.  Surely we gave out plenty of good stuff. Maybe not whole candy bars like some of our neighbors, but we didn’t shirk when it came to Halloween.

“And isn’t licorice delicious?” I tried again. “I love the red kind. But some people really like black licorice.” The kids eyed me skeptically.

Ever since I was a little girl I’ve loved red licorice, all kinds. The tried-and-true Twizzlers that you can peel off with a satisfactory tug, the longer whips that you can curl and twist onto your tongue, even licorice pipes held a place in my heart. They seemed so grown-up and whimsical at the same time. So maybe I harbored my own little addiction to the red stuff. Perhaps it played a role in my decision-making in the candy aisle, but what parent doesn’t let his or her own preferences influence the final pick?

Still, it never occurred to me that we might get a black mark on our house for handing out this particular treat on Halloween. I assumed such scorn was reserved for folks who gave out home-made popcorn or a single lollipop or, even worse, toothbrushes! Dispensing licorice with an assortment of other choices didn’t seem like such a travesty. But then again, I hadn’t been five in a long time. What did I know?

When we were walking back from the park, I asked Nicholas if he liked licorice. “Yeah,” he said, then ran off ahead of me. Once home, I pulled out the tub of week-old candy, determined to prove my theory once and for all: kids still liked licorice. I unwrapped a miniature three-pronged Twizzlers and handed it to him. He took a bite, then gave the rest to me. “I think I’ll have the M&Ms instead,” he said.

And there, writ large in his chocolate-smudged face, was the truth: I’d become the mom who hands out old-fashioned trick-or-treat candy, the kind that no kid really likes.

Next fall, with the election and the hurricane a distant memory, I’ll remember this tall truth as I cruise the aisles in October. I’ll stuff my cart with treats of the chocolate variety. But don’t be surprised if a bag of Twizzlers gets tucked in underneath.

This time, though, it will be just for me.