Author: Judy Hanawalt (Page 12 of 23)

The kids  are coming home for a football game today. We’ll have two daughters, one son, one son-in-law, a boyfriend and a girlfriend here. Soon the house will be full and noisy, the dog will be leaping and whining with joy, and I will be cooking and eating, laughing and talking, then hurrying off to the game.

Afterwards we’re going to a local brewery to celebrate our victory (or, drown our sorrows), then  home for  Halloween festivities–caramel apples, spiked cider, pumpkin carving and maybe a scary movie (Alfred Hitchcock is my limit of scariness).

I’ll have candy ready for any trick-or-treaters that come, but with the 45 steep, dark stairs up to our front door, very few actually ring my doorbell. Usually it’s only the kids on the street that we know and later, teenagers with pillowcases bulging, rounding out their candy haul.

I’m dashing off a post today to finish off my 31 Days Challenge to post every day in October–I did it!

It was fun, it was a challenge–I was really dragging at about day 22–but it has been well worth the effort. It has helped me get past perfect-post anxiety, both in content and in proofreading (if you get my posts by email, I’m sure you noticed some typos before I caught and corrected them). To get them posted by midnight I had to hurry up my editing and just hit “publish.” A few times it was literally at 11:59 pm.

At the end, I find myself back at the beginning. My little nest is again full and busy today, but it will be quiet tomorrow. So, today I will enjoy my family, and tomorrow I can get back to reflecting and writing. It may not be every day, but it will be steady.

In the guest room closet, there are two big plastic bins: our costume boxes. They hold an assortment of hats, masks and clothes that we use for dress up days at school or any time someone needs a costume.

We pulled them out at the beginning of this week for my high school junior to cobble together outfits for Spirit Week.  The contents were spread over the queen-size bed and picked through every morning as he was putting the finishing touches on the day’s look.  I put them away today.

There’s a top hat, beard and tuxedo jacket that made a great Abraham Lincoln one year, and a rubber mask that looks like an old man–so realistic it’s creepy. There’s a tall green Goofy hat, a Jack Sparrow pirate hat complete with dreads, and Mickey Mouse ears from a Disneyland trip.

Three graduation gowns are in there, a red one, a yellow one and a black one from various graduations. My husband brought back a kimono from a trip to Japan; it has never been used as a costume but I keep it  because it would be a great one. A pair of white, feathered angel wings folds in half to store flat until needed.

There are three cowboy hats–two foam and one wool–a leather vest, bandanas and a cap gun.  Martial arts gear–two gees and various color belts–ended up here when they were retired from active use. There’s a billowy bridesmaid’s dress,  a girl scout vest full of badges, and two pairs of suspenders–one in a yellow preppy print, the other in red sequins. The yellow and red striped socks and  shiny beads with peace signs are gone,  currently in use for the final day of Spirit Week.

As I folded and tucked the contents back into their storage boxes, I pictured some of the great combinations that had been made from these pieces, and the fun we had transforming ordinary items into creative outfits.

The contents have changed over the years, from gowns and shoes, used almost daily when the girls were playing house with their play kitchen, to capes and masks for super heroes swooping around the house, to the strange combination of things now.

I’ll keep my costume boxes around for a while–at least until everyone graduates, and maybe longer . You never know when that pink kimono or  a graduation gown will be just the right piece.

Writing for so many days in a row is hard. This month of writing has been like a mental Jenga game. I have ideas and experiences in my mind, and I push them a little to see if they move. If they are solid, stuck in the pile, I keep tapping and nudging other ideas until one moves, and I can pull it out.

Then I start to write, and the memories flow and I start to see things differently. I begin to untangle how I feel and what matters to me. There’s a tall tower of stories as we near the end of 31 Days, and I’m still pushing on those blocks. Today, none of them seem loose enough to push out.

There are more stories and experiences I could write about, but today the words aren’t coming, the sentences are clunky and dry. Those stories aren’t ready to be told yet.

This is new. My full nest has occupied so much of my emotional and physical energy for the last 28 years that I never thought to nudge my thoughts and memories to see if they would come out in words on a page.

There were certainly plenty of words throughout those busy years, so much talking and listening and reading. Those were the stories that started stacking up in my mind, to be pulled out later, in no particular order it seems, the blocks in my mental Jenga game.

Some writers can’t help but write; they have stacks and stacks of journals and stories and poems. I have liked writing, and done it when I needed to communicate–emails, Christmas letters–but I never could maintain a journaling habit, or took the time to sit down and write just for the sake of being creative.

What I love about writing is the words themselves, the way the right words in the right order can create an image and communicate an idea in a way the captures a truth or a memory. Any form of them feeds me; I have been content to absorb them in listening and reading, and to share them in talking. Until now.

Maybe it’s because there are fewer people around all the time, less talking, less listening, and the stored up words and stories are starting to come loose. Maybe it’s that I want the stored up words in my head to be written down in case I don’t ever get a chance to tell them; I want to capture them for those who might want to know them.

I’m an observer, a gatherer; I’m not a person of quick, decisive action. I’m comfortable with indecision, always waiting as long as I can to make sure I have all the information. I’m a believer in waiting to see how a situation unfolds.

I’m not great in emergencies, I need time to think before I act. When a crisis arises, I’m the one saying, “Let’s take a step back.” When I say I have to think about something before deciding, I’m not trying to avoid commitment–I really do have to think about it.

In the relative quiet of my half-full nest, I am finally able to take my own advice to step back and evaluate the experiences and stories and words that have made up these beautiful, messy, crazy, fun years as the mom of a large family. I can move to a different perspective and see the connections, the patterns and the threads that run through our lives and tie us together.

Now is the time to write.