–by Tracy Lucas

I’m tired of worrying. Life is hopeless.

I draw enjoyment out of the little things I’m supposed to (my son’s laugh, the fact that I woke up breathing again today, the taste of warm cookies and cold milk), but I have this choking sense of mortality lately.

My body is getting older and starting to betray me.

I’ve treated it like shit. It should.

But the lack of surprise doesn’t change the fact that my visible decay scares the hell out of me. There are random grey hairs. Wrinkles like leather on my knuckles. Carefully-guarded cellulite spots. Stabbing joint pain where there didn’t used to be, stress headaches brought on by even happy sounds and good music, floaters in my eyes, and favorite foods I suddenly can’t stomach.

I’m fucking aging.

And I don’t want to.

I know most folks here probably don’t listen to country music (and I don’t ALWAYS, so don’t look at me like that), but there’s a song to tell you about. It’s a fairly old one, mid-90s, I think. “Back When We Were Beautiful“, by Matraca Berg.

Lyric snippet:

“I don’t feel very different,” she said, “I know it’s strange.
 I guess I’ve gotten used to these little aches and pains
 But I still love to dance;

 You know, we used to dance the night away
 Back when we were beautiful, beautiful, yes.”

 ~~~~~~~~~~~

“I hate it when they say I’m aging gracefully
 I fight it everyday. I guess they never see.
 I don’t like this at all,
 What’s happening to me…”

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This is what time is.

There is no coming back. No waiting.

It’s all now, and it isn’t promised.

I could get hit by a bus tomorrow. Lightning could strike; it does that sometimes. Maybe there’s cancer in my veins and I don’t know it yet.

I’ve always thought I would die young, in fact. I’ve long dreamed it. I think I even know how.

But now I have a son. And who’s going to tell him shit if I’m not around? Who will tell him my grandfather’s secrets or what he said every night at bedtime or why I make carrot bread at Thanksgiving, and where the recipe really came from? How will he know the games we played and the dozens of etched anecdotes that came before his cognitive capabilities, if I’m gone?

And I will be. We all will be.

Our bodies are each disposable, and there’s no avoiding it. It could be now, it could be later, or we could all go together in some massive disaster-moviesque blitzkrieg extravaganza.

I don’t know where the time goes. I’ve been desperately grasping the holes where it used to be, clawing to save bits of burnt straw.

I wish I could leave myself behind in notebooks, which has been the goal, but really, who will care? There are notebooks the world over we’ve never read, and never will. We’re too worried about our own selves. We don’t have time to learn each other fully on only one trip through.

Everyone wants to be remembered.

Everyone we’ve forgotten wanted that, too.

But time is so, so limited. And we break.

There’s nothing to do with our time but share it.

Ever.

–by Tracy Lucas

I’ll make this brief.

I read two news stories today that piss me off as a professional, as a parent, and as a human being. Because you know what? I am all of those things at the same time.

Story one: Teacher gets fired for having a blog and sharing her opinions.

No, that’s really about it.

She vented about her life, moaned about her students’ indifference to education once in a while (though never by name), wished things were a little different in her place of employment (which she never shared the location of), and basically made jokes, exaggerating her troubles and stereotypical student personalities to the whole seven Google followers she had.

The blog is still live and well here and appears to have last been updated after her firing but before the inevitable media explosion.

Point one for the opposition; okay, yeah.  This is the Internet, lady. It’s dumb to think no one will ever figure you out, and I mean, hello, you used your first name and included a picture of your face. I’m not going to argue that her blogging topics were in good taste.

But still.

Story two: Teacher is forced to resign after posting pictures of her European vacation on her “Friends Only” profile in Facebook.

Why? She was holding a glass of wine.

Not topless. Not with a bong in her hand. Not with a headless fellow tourist mounted on the hood of her car.

Just smiling with some stemware, and now she’s unemployed. (The oh-so-questionable picture itself is here, if you want to peek.)

So here’s what everyone’s asking: does having a job in education preclude the right to random bitching that the rest of us enjoy on the Internet?

Note that I didn’t say, “Hey, were the blog posts and wine photos good and responsible ideas?” or “Would you want your child’s teacher to be a stripper on the side?”

But really, this seems like such a cut-and-dry First Amendment thing to me.

I like our First Amendment. I use it a lot. Besides, if we didn’t have it, we wouldn’t have awesome videos like this:

–by Tracy Lucas

When I was a kid, I was weird and lonely. My friends were my pets and my toys, in that order. Looking at my kids’ toys now, though, I think something big has changed.

Girls’ toys, in general, are role-playing items. They’re all related to honing future goals and practicing for adulthood. As female kids, we get dolls to raise, Barbie dolls to aspire to be, cooking centers to pretend we’re parents, dress-up clothes to imitate how we want to look or whom we want to emulate, and makeup to fine tune our obviously-lacking faces.

Boys, on the other hand, I mean, yeah they’ve got their Spider-man outfits and a few action figures, but other than that?  Come on. They get trucks, building blocks, comics, puzzles, chasing games, physical stuff, and sporting goods.

They get toys for them to use as children.
We get toys to know how to become adults.

I’m not saying that these are strict lines; of course, they’re not. Personally, I was a tomboy mix and had Legos, Construx (loved me some Construx!), Hot Wheels, and robots to build. Then again, my parents were cool like that, and again, I was a geek. I don’t know how everyone else’s childhoods went. Wasn’t there for those. (Tell me about them! I do want to know.)

But when I shop for my kids, things are very different. Between Bratz dolls (exhibit one, exhibit two), kid lingerie (no, seriously!), and Disney vanity (seen Miley from the still-running Hannah Montana show lately?), there are more weird adult themes automatically built into toys than I ever remember seeing before. Even the kid shows on TV are little much. Watch one. See how many outright references to sex there are in the average Nickelodeon or Disney show. You’d be surprised.

The corporate bigwigs are sexing everything up.  Even Strawberry Shortcake has gotten in on the act. This site (though it’s a little outdated) says that the Care Bears, the Teenaged Mutant Ninja Turtles, and the Warner Brothers characters were slated for changes, too.

Every generation thinks the one after it is doomed. I get that. I’m old, and this makes it true. The scandal in my grandmother’s day was that kids were reading stupid dime novels instead of playing outside. Her kids wanted their kids (us) to read books instead of watching TV. Those kids (us again) want our kids to come watch TV with the family and put the stupid video games down.

I know it’s all part of a dumb, normal cycle.

But just to humor me, entertain my premise and check these out. This is one of my daughter’s My Little Pony dolls:

And below is one of mine, same brand, from the ’80s:

See the difference?

Which one of those is kinder? Which one do you figure would sell you out and throw you under the bus for stealing her boyfriend?

When I played with dolls and all the accoutrements,  I was one of them. They were my friends or my family or my students or my neighbors, depending on the game, and they were a faithful legion. The pony pictured above, in particular, was a favorite (thus, the reason I still have it on my desk), and wasn’t stick-thin or super made-up with mascara and funky highlights. I always attributed her personality as being shy, introspective, insecure, understanding. She was kind and comfortable. She was warm. She knew how to sit back and take it in. She was on my side.

She was on my side.

The newer dolls, ponies, pets, etc., all seem to be the cool kids. They’re all either emo or slutty.

I’m far from being a prude. I want my kids to have a healthy sexuality, and I don’t expect them never to grow up. That’s not the point. It’s just sad to me–and pretty damn clear–that our toys, growing up, made us feel included, and the ones I’m seeing on the Wal-Mart shelves seem intentionally designed to exclude.

They’re the crowd you can’t sit with at lunch. They’re not approachable; they’re sophisticated, and you can either change to match or get over yourself, because they’re not waiting around for you to figure it out. They have dates, and clubs to be at in half an hour.

When I played dolls, I kept a single “mean one”. We all taught her better, using Full-House end-of-episode conversations of niceness or Lego prisons or random violence and banishment to the yard.

I remember a couple of years ago having to break it to my then seven- or eight-year-old younger daughter that no, she didn’t need the new doll with the belly chain and sequined halter top. No, I didn’t care that she was pretty. Wasn’t happening. Not from me, anyway.

And all this sounds judgmental, and I hate that. Having a closed mind is the last thing I want to include in my parenting style. Toys are just toys. We’re not talking about buying my teenager a stripper pole, for crying out loud. Let’s be real.

Still, this bothers me.

I don’t know which flavor is better or worse. Just because my toys are older doesn’t mean they’re somehow more emotionally responsible, and I’m not saying they are.

But compare what you see.

One is Paris Hilton, and the other is Jennifer Aniston.

Which is your kid planning to be?

My son?  He’s only two. If his possessions are any indication, he’s planning to be a badass.

But that’s a whole ‘nother blog post.

–by Tracy Lucas

I’m a little jealous of people who marry their first loves.

The first time you love, you’re invincible. The outside world falls away. Your pairing and your faith are all that matter.

My own first true love, like almost everyone else’s, disintegrated into oblivion via fireball. It went horribly, despicably sour, and stayed that way. (It was quite the Lifetime movie type of deal. No, no details here. Sorry.)

But you lose something serious when that happens.

You lose the lack of sight.

Never again are you able, or at the very least, willing, to believe it couldn’t go sour.

You never again make that other person all you need. You reserve something aside.

It’s never complete again.

I adore my husband. I plan to be with him and no one else until I die, and I choose him all over again every morning.

But if he left me?  If something happened and I left him?

We’d both be fine. We’d hurt, we’d grieve, and we’d get over it. That’s what you do. We’ve both done it before. We know, deep in the back of each of our minds, that we’re each theoretically replaceable.

And that’s a sad way to live.

I wonder what it’s like for the happy high-school-sweetheart people who’ve never known the fallout.

Do they realize? Do they live entire lives wrapped in invincibility?

And I wonder, too, what they think of the rest of us, living practically and loving the humans instead of ideals.

I really don’t know whom to pity more.

–by Tracy Lucas

I’m having the hardest time being a wife lately.

I don’t have creative energy and love at the same time. They seem to be mutually exclusive.

Either it’s dishes or dharma; laundry or literature. I can’t seem to (pardon the pun) marry the two women I intend to be.

I have a good husband. Not in that serf-ish, settling, he’s-the-practical-guy-to-partner-with way. That’s not a weak disclaimer or pathetic cop-out, either.

I actually like him. I picked him on purpose. We’ve been friends the whole time, which has been a while now, and there’s no one I’d replace him with.

I don’t regret.

It’s just not smooth.

I turn out all of the lights and dig out my favorite old Oasis tune to get me in the mood. I poise my virtual pen, head swimmy and universal, and I feel the back of my neck swell with tingling veins of…

See?  Fuck. He just snored.

Mindset gone.
Words, vanished.
My head’s fallen off again for the company I keep.

And the kid wants something to drink.
And the cat’s crying for food.
And practically speaking, I should be asleep.
I have work to do tomorrow.

Electricity will have to wait.

Meanwhile, I’ll grow another day older, another day away.

–by Tracy Lucas

I’m having the hardest time being a wife lately.

I don’t have creative energy and love at the same time. They seem to be mutually exclusive.

Either it’s dishes or dharma; laundry or literature. I can’t seem to (pardon the pun) marry the two women I intend to be.

I have a good husband. Not in that serf-ish, settling, he’s-the-practical-guy-to-partner-with way. That’s not a weak disclaimer or pathetic cop-out, either.

I actually like him. I picked him on purpose. We’ve been friends the whole time, which has been a while now, and there’s no one I’d replace him with.

I don’t regret.

It’s just not smooth.

I turn out all of the lights and dig out my favorite old Oasis tune to get me in the mood. I poise my virtual pen, head swimmy and universal, and I feel the back of my neck swell with tingling veins of…

See?  Fuck. He just snored.

Mindset gone.
Words, vanished.
My head’s fallen off again for the company I keep.

And the kid wants something to drink.
And the cat’s crying for food.
And practically speaking, I should be asleep.
I have work to do tomorrow.

Electricity will have to wait.

Meanwhile, I’ll grow another day older, another day away.

–by Tracy Lucas

My kid’s two. That means he butchers words. A lot of them.

His vocabulary is actually pretty extensive for his age, so I’m not going to complain. But among my favorites additions to the Lucas lexicon are “that really tared me” (scared), “crouw-patch” (no freakin’ clue), “moly-moly-moly” (merrily, merrily, merrily, as in “Row Your Boat”), and the one all kids seem to eventually come up with, “lasterday” (well, okay, that one’s kinda obvious.)

They all invent that last one. Seriously. I’ve helped raise several people’s kids, and every single child I’ve known has created this word anew on his or her own, without influence.

It’s obviously important archetypal programming hard-wired into the human brain. Or something.

Lasterday should totally be a word.

I digress.

Thinking back on my own formative years, there are words I thought I knew and have found out later that I completely don’t. Didn’t. Whatever.

“Gesture” is a big one. I’ve always known the meaning; no biggie there. But before I’d ever once heard the word spoken anywhere audibly, my younger sister got the game Guesstures, which we played once in a while from then on out. I learned to pronounce the spinoff word first, and still can’t for the life of me say the right one. Ever.   If I’m talking aloud about how someone moves, I’ll say “mannerisms” or “nuances” or “method of physicality” or any other thousand things just as dorky  to keep from having to look like an idiot as I stumble over “gestures.”

If I’m writing?   “Gestures” shows up in a second, bitch.   Best believe. Represent.

But anytime I’ve ever come to a place where I have to say the word aloud, there is a very noticeable pause as I methodically sound it out first. I  rationalize the name of the game in my head. Guess = guessing game = guesstures. Must be the other one. Then, and only then, I speak. It takes a great and intentional effort to make it leave my lips.

Usually I’m standing alone again by that time.

I’ve never had a stutter, but I wonder if it works the same way. One widely-published and very intelligent writer I know who says he stuttered as a kid blames the huge vocabulary he now has on the necessity of using synonyms for words containing his trigger sounds.

Can’t compare it, I’m sure, but I admire his workaround.

I wonder if, as writers, we’ve all figured that trick out eventually. Can’t spell “chief” without checking, and don’t have a dictionary or an iPhone handy?   Suddenly he’s a “tribal leader.” Can’t remember the abbreviation for Mississippi or Missouri?   Hey, we’re in the “vicinity of Vicksburg” or the “Midwestern counties surrounding St. Louis.”

It works. We make it.

Another word I consistently cannot spell or say correctly is “infinitesimal.” Again, ever. Thanks to spellcheck software (yes; absolutely, I cheat), I use this word all the time in my stories.” I just don’t read it aloud to my critique group. I say, “I can’t say that,” and someone else does. And I feel like a moron.

I have met people in my life who honestly, as adults, believe that people  have “ideals” about how to do things, are on “death roll”, and get poked climbing a fence made of “bob wire”.

(Of course, in the end, I can’t say that’s any stupider than my not being able to say “gesture”. I have no room to judge, I suppose.)

What words get you?   How do you get around it?

–by Tracy Lucas

We’re rearranging my kid’s room in the aftermath of that which is Christmas.

Among the haul, he got a play kitchen, a talking truck as big as he is, a train set with eight feet of track, and half a million other toys. The newly-adjusted number of worldly possessions our two-year-old now has is ridiculous. His belongings no longer fit on the shelf we’ve bought him.

Yeah, we’ll get rid of some stuff.  It’ll get pared down once everything settles back into a routine again and we see which old things he’s outgrown and what new toys are taking root.

(By the way, Freecycle is a great way to connect with folks in your own area who could use your former possessions. We love it.)

But I’m a mom, and I’m sappy as hell when it’s time for new steps.

Every time we change anything, I get all emotional about it. It doesn’t even have to be big stuff like his starting preschool or potty training or preferring his friends’ company to mine. Be it mixing up the furniture floor plan of his room, penciling another notch higher on the door jamb, or even having to throw out a threadbare pair of footie pajamas, I get weird.

I want his little days to stick around.

I’ll be good with the diapers leaving. (That’s a lie. I’ll cry then, too. I’m such a wuss.) But I know things are meant to change and life goes on.

Life does that.

That’s what it’s for.

I’ll get over it.

What’s the most difficult is the precipice. That one, dangly moment when everything could change, swinging one way or the next into the unknown. One day it was Way X, and from this point on, it’s going to be Way Y. There comes a moment where both are visible, even slightly so, and you have the option of moving forward or hanging back.

I have that problem with writing, too.

I always want better things to come, but I never want to leave the warm and comfortable spot I’m already sitting in.

I always think that whatever I’ve most recently written  is probably crap, and I therefore don’t want to show anyone. My older stuff is just as hard to share, because I’ve learned more since I wrote it and I’m convinced you’ll be able to see just what needed improvements and which parts suck the most.

You’ll know I’m full of shit and you’ll smell me out.

The only work of mine that I tend to like has either A) already been (ouch) released and somehow garnered an overwhelming amount of unexpected praise, and is thus outwardly validated, or B)  been something I wrote a month or two ago and have polished but not taken a chance on showing to others in the light of day.

It’s reworked, it’s a little old but not too distant, and it’s not been risked.

But just like kids, it doesn’t do any good to raise and nurture a chunk of writing and just leave it lying protected in the drawer. The point is  to  share it, to have it be  read, to make it strong and then let explore on its own two feet.

So it’s scary. Risk it anyway.

Sometimes the simplest act of release changes everything—in a good way. Sometimes even in a way so amazing you can’t imagine it.

The universe likes to throw some weird shit at you now and again, but it always first requires trust. Movement. Faith and gumption.

If you’re not letting go, you’re going to end up with a forty-year-old virgin living in your basement. And no one wants that.

Besides, if you release it into the wild and it turns out it  WAS crap, it’ll just make your next stellar piece look that much more awesome in comparison.

Right?

So what are you waiting for?

–by Tracy Lucas

I can’t think of a parenting slant to this, but here are the words I want to say today.

I just heard that Cami Park died.

I didn’t know her. We never crossed paths even once.

Apparently, she was a writer. She moved in these circles.  After a multi-layered Google search session, I realize I should have known her. She wrote some amazing stuff.

She was good.

There have been a plethora of condolence posts on Facebook, and many of the friends we appear to have had in common are really missing her today.

Word is getting around.

I’ve always wondered how that would work. If I were to die, for example, how would anyone know? So many of the people in my online life are impossible to connect back to the folks I know. My mother, my siblings, even my husband—none of them would know how to log in to any of the social sites I use, nor even be aware of places like Fictionaut and Goodreads and the handful of Ning networks I hang out on.

Maybe I’m childish. Maybe I’m naive. Fine.   I still choose to believe that these connections we’re making are real. Maybe not flesh-and-blood, come-to-my-house-to-visit real, but real nonetheless.

There have been times I was devastated over something, and a Twitter buddy was the one to pull me out of the funk or make me laugh. Blog feedback from total strangers has given me strength to keep going on some of the toughest days of my life. Facebook links have gotten me jobs, introduced me to people to admire, told me I wasn’t alone, and caused happiness.

Real happiness.

Maybe that’s stupid. I don’t know.

But I think we know each other, and I’m sad one of us is gone today.

I wish I could have known to know her.

Photo by Stasi Albert

–by Tracy Lucas

Anytime I see this question in one of those legacy journals  at the bookstore or philosophical posts on a “mommy forum” (gag), I have the same answer.

What do you want for your children?

Personally, I want them to be: a) sincere and b) creative.

That’s my answer, every time. Sometimes I forget one or the other, depending on the day. If my toddler has just painted the bedroom in oatmeal (yes, that’s happened), “creative” may not be at the top of the list in my mind.

But these two qualities, above any other, are all I want.

I realize that I’m something of a liberal, and that I’m setting myself up for disappointment in hoping my son becomes a rock star heartthrob and my daughter becomes the professional photographer slash ghost hunter slash Bigfoot-discoverer she currently wishes to be. They’d have to rebel and be accountants or something, just for the sake of the regular rites of passage. They can’t out-shock me any other way.

But I’d be not-so-secretly glad if they end up weird like me and my husband.

Fuck that. I’d love it.

I’d prefer they be more comfortably paid, perhaps, but that’s another blog post.

I want them to be original and independent. I want them to know themselves, and not bother with the fake stages we all seem to go through as teenagers and sometimes even adults.

Maybe that’s because I’ve tried to be other people in my life. I’ve paid those dues already, and normal doesn’t work for me. Oh, I’ve held waitress, sales clerk, office lackey, daycare teacher, fast food drive-thru guru, and probably ten other equally glamorous titles. Most of them included cleaning up other people’s used food, and it taught me a lot. I’ve kept those lessons.

Sure, some were more bearable than others. Not all of them sucked. But in the end, what I want to be is a verbal artist. A wordsmith. Known outside of my house for phrase-twisting, whether or not I ever get rich off it.

I want to be a writer.

I need to be.

That doesn’t mean I can always (ever?) write worth a single half-shit—but I lie awake at night sometimes thinking about it. I practice. I submit. I work, I read.

I want my children to have something of that drive in them. I don’t care if they hate the arts; that’s fine. I’d love them to be able to tell me that.

Just know who you are.

It took me too damn long to find out, and I see my job as helping them get there sooner. You miss so much life that way and their lives matter too deeply to me to allow any one of my children to live as the wallflower their mother was.

And then, of course, ya gotta wonder—

Is that what our very mothers wanted for us?