Career Day

Somewhere around the third grade, on Career Day, when all the other kids were standing up and saying they wanted to be either a policeman, or a fireman, or a ballerina, I decided I wanted to be all three.  I didn’t want to limit myself to just one occupation.  I wanted to be everything from an astronaut to a monkey trainer.   That left me with only one career choice.  I would be a writer.

My classmates looked at me as if I’d just announced I wanted to make a living euthanizing puppies at the pound.  By now, I was used to being a little outside the pack.   I’m not saying I was friendless, but I played alone a lot.  Still, the other kids had learned I was good to have around when it came to imaginary role playing games.   They knew who to come to when they needed a storyline for Roy Rogers or Tonto and the Lone Ranger. 

My desire to make a living using only my imagination and my highly developed skill at hyperbole persisted throughout elementary school and into high school.    My father was an itinerant college professor and we moved around a lot  - throughout the Deep South, Wisconsin, and Oklahoma.  I was always the new kid trying to fit in, the outsider looking in, the breeding ground of all neuroses, angst, and future artistic endeavor. 

I attended public schools in the days before Ritalin was routinely prescribed for bright, imaginative students who had trouble paying attention.  This was in the 1960’s and 1970’s when a public school education still meant something, back before Self-Esteem became the cornerstone of learning.  When my high school English teacher, Charlie Chesmore, called me an ignoramus and a sloth for coming to his class without first reading A Midsummer Night’s Dream, he wasn’t too concerned about my delicate self-esteem.  The result of this public humiliation was that I showed up the next day having read the play in its entirety.  Go figure.

I went to college to learn, not necessarily to get a degree.  I took creative writing and literature courses from enthusiastic professors who taught me to be a good reader, and, consequently, a better writer.  Somewhere around my junior year I realized that if I spent any more time studying the great writers I’d be too paralyzed with insecurity to write anything myself. 

I left school, married, had children, worked a series of meaningless day jobs, and wrote.  I wrote essays and short stories, which were never published, and novels which, eventually, were.  It hasn’t been easy.  Still, when I think back to that third grade girl who stood up on Career Day and told the class she wanted to be a writer, I’m not sorry for the choices I’ve made.  It seemed so simple then – just a matter of putting a few good stories down on paper and making them all fit together.  Years of hard work, rejection, and perseverance later, I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Booze and Bad Decisions

My youngest daughter was recently home from school for fall break.  She goes to college in New Orleans (as did my older two) and she’s acquired that slightly jaded, sophisticated air that the city seems to impart.  Been there, done that, dude.  This is a city, after all, that boasts drive-through daiquiris, karaoke laundry mats, and over 150 festivals a year, all of them involving copious amounts of alcohol.  Temptations are plentiful.  Local law enforcement tends to sport a relaxed attitude toward alcohol consumption (you can drink in college bars with only a school ID regardless of the legal drinking age of 21) and it’s not illegal to walk the streets carrying a cocktail “to go” cup.  For students who’ve grown up in the Bible Belt or the Midwest or even New York, it’s an eye-opening experience.  You either learn to hold your liquor, or you become a raging alcoholic.

I generalize, of course.  The truth is, even as a frumpy, middle-aged woman, I love New Orleans.  I love the history and the culture, the French joie de vivre, the emphasis on good food, good booze, and good company.  Where else in the country does Happy Hour begin at noon on Friday and extend into the wee hours of the night?  New Orleans gave us jazz but it also gave us the Sazerac, the Hurricane, and the Ramos Gin Fizz. 

Despite their urban sophistication, I’m always apprehensive when one of my college-aged children comes home from New Orleans.  Chattanooga, for all its revitalization, is still primarily a small town.  With small-town police officers who take their roles as defenders of public sobriety seriously.  Cabs are hard to come by after a night of heavy drinking.  The downtown bars close at 2:00 p.m. but the free electric shuttle stops running at 11:00 p.m.

We thought when we moved off Signal Mountain into a two bedroom condo downtown that it would make it easier for everyone.  Easier for our adult children to party with their friends and take a cab home and easier for us to sleep knowing they were only a few short blocks away and could get home safely.  Unfortunately, it hasn’t worked out that way.

Jordan’s first night home, she walked into a bar where there were literally “only six people I didn’t know.”   A good time was had by all and at 2:00 a.m., the time she had told me she’d be coming home, I woke up.  I won’t go into the angst of being a parent waiting for an adult child to return home after midnight.  Suffice it to say, my father used to wait up for me.  And now I wait up for my children.  It’s crazy, given the fact that in New Orleans they probably don’t get home before 4:00 a.m., but you see, I don’t know about it, so I sleep like a baby.

At 2:00 a.m. the first of many texts arrived.  Don’t worry, I’ll catch a cab.  Followed by, The cab isn’t coming.  I’ve called twice, and then,  I’ve walked to my friend Kelly’s house, and finally, There’s some guy here who says he’ll give me a ride.  The last one caused a frenzy of return texting.  Don’t catch a ride with a stranger!  Where are you?  I’ll come get you!

Twenty minutes later, she was home.  This was at 3:30 a.m. and I’m the first to admit, I don’t do well without my eight hour beauty sleep.  The screeching was long and sustained.  No doubt the neighbors enjoyed every minute of it.  She, for the most part, was fairly sober and handled my display with a blasé smirking that further enraged me.

“Mom, I’m an adult.  You can’t wait up for me anymore.” 

Eventually, I ran out of steam and we both went to bed.  The next morning she awoke, sweet and contrite, and apologized for texting me eight times over a two hour period.  She had thought that by texting me repeatedly, she’d be putting my mind at ease so I could drop back into a peaceful slumber.  Apparently, she had been “overserved” at the bar (said with a giggle), and the decision to text had been a bad one.  She had not caught a ride home with a stranger (I’m not stupid, Mom) and her ride had not been drinking (Seriously, Mom, I’m not stupid), and I really shouldn’t wait up for her anymore because she wasn’t a child.  She was an adult.

I could only look at her and remember my own father sitting in his wing back chair in his robe, his eyes bleary, his hair standing up in outraged peaks around his face while I argued with boozy breath that he shouldn’t wait up for me.  I wasn’t a kid.  I was an adult.

“You won’t know what it’s like until you have a child of your own,” he’d said.

Forty years later, I get it.

Old Maids of the Mist

I recently went to Canada and Niagara Falls with a group of women I’ve been friends with since grade school.  We’ve known each other for forty-five years and managed to keep in touch, which is pretty remarkable when you consider how disparate and scattered our lives have become.  We grew up in the same small college town, went to grade school, junior high, high school, and the first few years of college together.  Three of us left home and went out into the wide world, while two stayed behind and raised families in the same small community where we’d grown up.

A few years ago, after twenty-five years spent raising families and struggling with careers, we reconnected on Facebook.   Since then, we try to get together every year for a girls’ trip.  The amazing thing to me is how, despite our many differences, we’ve managed to remain friends.  As an adult, I have a tendency to gravitate toward women who dress like me, read the same books, watch the same TV shows, have the same social and political beliefs.   The old “birds of a feather, flock together” syndrome.

But other than our shared childhoods and experiences raising families, there’s not a lot my four hometown friends and I have in common.  A former athlete, a cheerleader, a writer, a sorority girl, and a flighty giggler, I’m not certain if we met today we would even be friends.  So what is it about childhood that makes us so much more willing to embrace others different from ourselves?  Do we simply become lazy, or less willing to compromise as we grow older?

It was in sixth grade that I first met Zona.  She and I were both “new girls,” having moved into town from somewhere else.  I was a tomboy and played mostly with the boys on the playground.  She was prissy and was the first girl in sixth grade to shave her legs.  I didn’t dislike Zona; if anything, I felt sorry for her because she was bad at sports.  All the same, I realized that we probably wouldn’t be spending a lot of time together.   

One morning I walked into the girls’ bathroom to find Zona standing at the mirror teasing her hair.  I watched, fascinated, as she deftly moved a long-handled comb through her curls.  We were still standing there when Ruby Mays walked in.  Ruby was six feet tall and had a deep voice and shoulders like a linebacker.  When Ruby asked you for your lunch money, you gave it up.  I was terrified of her and did my best to avoid eye contact, slinking into one of the opened stalls.   Ruby stood in the doorway, watching Zona with an unreadable expression.   Without warning, she stuck out a large, hairy-knuckled hand.

“Hey,” she said.  “Let me borrow your comb.”

Zona stopped teasing her hair.  She tilted her head and stared at Ruby in the mirror as if giving her request careful consideration.  Time seemed to stop.  My bladder sagged.   Give her the comb, I telepathed frantically.  Just give her the goddamned comb.         

 Zona turned around, her expression thoughtful and pleasant.  “Ruby, I hope you don’t mind,” she said.  “But I don’t let anyone use my comb.”

Ruby’s big fist shot out and caught Zona on the chin, and she went down.  She lay on her back, staring up at the fluorescent lights, blinking.   Ruby helped herself to the comb and then tossed it back to Zona as she went out. 

I went over and helped her up.  She seemed genuinely surprised at Ruby’s reaction.  “Why did she do that?” she kept asking.  I stared at her, grinning in appreciation.  I had never seen anyone stand up to Ruby Mays and it occurred to me that despite her shaved legs and prissy ways, Zona had more courage than anyone I knew.  Certainly more courage than me.

Years later in Canada, while arguing with Zona about politics, that scene with Ruby resurfaced.  And it occurred to me that the spark of courage, the knot of stubbornness that I had admired all those years ago in Zona was still there.  Despite our profound, and sometimes violent, differences I could still appreciate that aspect of her personality. 

Forty-five years later, we still have a connection.  And I’m a better person for it.

I'm More Brilliant Than I Look

My fifth novel, The Sisters Montclair, has recently launched and I’ve been visiting a lot of book clubs.  I’m always slightly apprehensive at these face-to-face meetings, because I have the impression that Cathy Holton in Person, is somehow less impressive than Cathy Holton the Writer.  Looking around at the polite faces as I drone on about some event that colored my last novel, I often wonder if I’m on the verge of putting my listeners to sleep.

Flannery O’Connor once complained, when discussing an upcoming television interview, that she was afraid she’d stare blankly at the camera and utter such memorable lines as “Huh?” and “Ah dunno,” to the interviewer’s questions. I know exactly what she meant.  On the page, writers can make themselves sound witty and erudite.  We have the advantage of that most essential tool of good prose; the rewrite.  We can sit in a darkened room for days constructing and reconstructing one line until we get it perfect.  To a reader it may seem that our perfection is innate, a lucky coincidence of fate and natural-born talent, but I can tell you it’s actually the result of a great deal of hard work and determination.  It takes a lot of effort to be funny, or philosophical, or blindingly lyrical.  Any writer who tells you otherwise is bluffing.  There are few geniuses among us.  Most of us are just competent liars with a good work ethic.

At a recent book club meeting, an admiring reader read out several lines she had bookmarked in one of my novels.  

“Did I write that?” I deadpanned.   Much laugher.  (Occasionally, I can be entertaining.)

The truth is, I remember that passage very well.  I must have worked on it for weeks, rewriting, deleting, rewriting, circling back with a frenzied determination that only a true obsessive compulsive could appreciate.  But in the end, I wrote something that was good, something that I can be proud of for years to come.  A passage that makes me appear, to the casual reader at least, like something of a literary genius. 

Now if only I could rewrite my personal appearances. 

Birthday Club

I’m in a birthday club that meets monthly for lunch.  We’ve been doing this for over ten years, long enough to get to know each other pretty well, to be completely free and comfortable around one another.  Which is a beautiful thing.  And much cheaper than therapy.  When we first started getting together our children were younger and we were always harried, barely able to spend an hour without having to jump up to go collect a child or hurry back to work.   Now our lunches can drag on for close to three hours, long enough for our waitress to go off shift and the restaurant to empty and the busboy to stand yawning in a corner.

          We are beautiful, self-assured, completely natural women, meaning there’s not a size two among us.  We’ve lived long enough to be comfortable in our own skins, to accept the sags and wrinkles and wobbly thighs that come with being mature, natural women.  So far, we’ve resisted the siren call of plastic surgery. 

          I tell you all of this because my husband always asks with astonishment, “What do you find to talk about for three hours?”  

          Here’s a sample:

          “I ran into Lucy Dillard.” Eye roll.  “She and Jack are getting ready to go to the Bahamas and she was bragging about having her bikini area waxed so she can wear her new thong.”  (We hate Lucy.)

   “I tried some of that Nair stuff once.  It was so painful, y’all.”

   “Is that the stuff that smells like rotten eggs?”

   “See, if you wear a swim skirt you don’t have to worry about hair.”

   “Not unless it hangs down below the edge of your skirt.”

   Laughter.

   “When Scott and I were going to Mexico on that business trip last year, I went to Target and bought one of those cute little elastic waist skirts that go over your suit.   It was in a zebra print, which for some reason I thought was stylish.  Apparently I was wrong.  Anyway, by the third day the elastic had stretched out so bad one side hung down lower than the other, which made me look kind of like a wounded zebra dragging a leg. Trust me, it was not a good look.  So I just pulled on a pair of shorts and told Scott he better not say a word.”

   “Did y’all hear they’re coming out with a line of Spanx swimsuits?”

   Much excitement here.

   “I tried one on but the problem is it squishes the fat from your waist down over your hips which is not really a good look either.”

   “Kind of like a reverse muffin top?”

   “Exactly.”

   If laughter truly is the best medicine, we should all live to be ninety. 

Duck Lips and Book Launches

My new novel, Summer in the South, has just launched and like modern authors everywhere, I’m busy trying to learn the intricacies of social media and internet marketing. Because therein lies the secret to riches and success and break-out novelist superstardom. Or so I’ve been told, by the thousands of bloggers who write about such things on a daily basis and whose advice I vainly and blindly try to follow.

So I’ve built a new website. I’ve set up a Summer in the South Facebook page. I’ve made my first few timid Tweets. (Although really, the whole thing feels so asinine; what do people find to Tweet about? My life is not that exciting. @cathyholton Just found another line in my neck!)

I’ve embarked on the obligatory blog tours, written the obligatory blog posts, learned how to build a landing page and navigate the Amazon author’s page. I’ve comparison-shopped online advertising and marketing pitches, hosted the requisite book launch and book giveaways, sent out the requisite press releases and galleys. In fact, so far the only thing I haven’t done is work on my new novel. Internet marketing is hell on writing.

I need a break.

And what, you might ask, does a brain-dead author do to relax from the technological onslaught of online book marketing? (No, it does not involve vodka.) I grab a pint of Ben & Jerry’s and plop down in front of the TV for another mindless episode of The Housewives of New Jersey….Orange County….New York. Somehow these bitches put it all in perspective. They make me feel better about myself.

Then I head over to Stoopid Housewives for a truly entertaining romp through the viewer comments section. These women are hilarious. They’ve taken the art of “drankin’” and “dishin’” to a whole new level of excellence. They’ve given the housewives names like “Duck Lips”, “Jesus Barbie”, and “Wretched.” I hover shyly, sipping my Pinot Grigio Spritzer and giggling like an eighth-grade school girl.

Which is exactly what I need sometimes.

Parental Guilt

When my youngest child was in kindergarten she used to squint when watching TV. For some reason this annoyed me.

“Stop squinting,” I would tell her and she would oblige, stationing herself about ten inches from the screen.

Now if she’d been my first child, I would have immediately, obsessively worried myself sick. But as she was my third, I went on folding clothes, or making dinner, or doing any of the thousand other chores that having three children under the age of twelve entails.

When she was in second grade I received a rather stern note from the school nurse telling me she had failed her eye exam. I was offended. What was she implying, that I was an unfit mother? Determined to prove her wrong I took my daughter to an expensive ophthalmologist.

“Legally blind,” was his expert opinion. “With astigmatism in the left eye.”

I was shocked. No one in my family wore glasses and only one sister in my husband’s so the thought that my children would have anything less than perfect eyesight had never occurred to me.

When we walked out of the doctor’s office, she in her new coke-bottle glasses, my daughter looked up into the trees and exclaimed, “Look, mommy, I can see the leaves!”

(Insert knife here and begin slowly to remove my heart.) To this day, if I’m ever asked to cry on command, I have only to relive this anguished and guilt-ridden moment to comply.

I was telling this story to some friends over cocktails (only when I’ve been drinking do I tell this one), when my friend, Donna, said, “Oh, I can beat that.”

I was dubious. Donna is beautiful, tall and slender, always stylishly dressed and made up. She’s married to a stockbroker and has raised three handsome sons, feeding them organic meals long before it became the norm. I have always considered Donna to be, well, perfect, and I would hate her except that she is nice and very funny. So I can’t.

Anyway, she was out to dinner a few months ago with one of her strapping six foot four inch sons when she noticed him holding a glass with one of his pinkies stuck out like an English lord sipping tea.

“Why are you doing that?” Donna said. “That looks silly.”

“Oh well,” he said. “Funny you should mention it. Do you remember that time in grade school when I closed my finger in my desk and I came home and told you, and you said, Oh, just put a band aid on it. It’ll be fine. Well,” he held the stiff pinky up for her appraisal. “Now, I can’t bend it.”

“Are you telling me it doesn’t bend at all?” Donna said, horrified.

She rushed him immediately to the only doctor who could see them on short notice which happened to be, ironically, her son’s ex-pediatrician. He examined the frozen pinky and then remarked, sadly, that if she’d brought the boy to him when he first injured it he might have been able to minimize the tendon damage, but now it was too late.

Now whenever Donna sees her son drinking beer with her husband or sitting down to family dinners and holding a glass, she notices that little erect pinky and feels as if he is giving her a middle-finger salute.

I guess the lesson here is that despite our best intentions, we sometimes fall short in the parenting department. And with enough love, time, and psychotherapy our children will overcome their physical and emotional handicaps and forgive us.

Eventually.