NaNoWriMo 2013 Participant

I #amwriting again of course

Yesterday was November 16, and that has been a special day to me for 20 years now.  It is the anniversary of the day my husband and I stood in front of the Judge and promised to Love, and cherish the 6 month old boy who had been ours since his birth Mom handed him to me when he was 14 hours old. Adoption Day has been a joy. A celebration of the world recognizing what we already knew. But this year we are lonely for him, he's grown and working on a Crabbing boat 400 miles away from home, and I still celebrate being his Mom.

but writing means needing to reward myself with apple custard pie

 But it is also National Novel Writing Month.  I love November for the rush of typing a novel with all the emphasis on the story and non of the worry about editing it until later.  Some of my books have taken 13 years to edit so the intensity of jut doing story, while hundreds of thousands of others encourage and challenge me, is delicious freedom.  Writing is lonely, and has to be, to allow me to hear the soft voice of characters who live nowhere else but in the point where my fingertip meets the keyboard. For now

lots of fog and that is both in my mind and in my yard

 Usually I am good at this month long dash, but sometimes it doesn't work.  This year it is working, but not according to the rules so I am going with it and joining the group who call themselves nano rebels. I am still trying for the 50,000 words in a month, but with two books competing for my attention.  The third in my Duffy Barkley series is now at 60,000 words but didn't start here. I just can't stay way from it when something exciting comes into my mind for that story.  The other book, the new one, is a story of two boys facing destructive volcano eruptions 1901 years apart. But it uses the same device to communicate between times as I used in Double Time On The Oregon Trail.

snuggling the dog can count as work if I'm plotting the story

I work better with this guy in the house

 So Life is all about words on paper here this month, but of course it isn't. Today was proof of that.  My husband was just home after 48 hours away at a music festival, I got up early to write and brewed a 12 cup pot of lovely coffee all over the counter and the floor in my kitchen, so mopping happened. Then It is my sister-in-laws birthday and then My brother texted me about Christmas plans and a friend wants to come visit and someone else needs me to substitute teach and another friend needed to talk.  Family is hurting, to angry or celebrating, and actually all three. Life doesn't stop just because I have A NOVEL TO WRITE FOLKS!

And you know what, I'm glad it doesn't. I love so many people and I am not the best at letting them know sometimes, but They let me know, even when the timing isn't convenient, that good times and bad times, lonely or not. I'm not alone, even though it feels like it.

Good night

Thankful For Family This November

Mom and Dad

My Mom, Her Aunt and Grandmother in Wyoming

Dad & I

So all over facebook there are people posting about the things that they are Thankful for, at least one a day for the month of November.  I did that last year but a lot of it just came down to one thing.

My husband's parents at their wedding

 And it wasn't a thing. What I kept writing about in my list was the people who are my family and friends.

When I was a child, Family was My Mom and Dad and I, living a long way from any other relatives in Cheyenne, Wyoming.  I thought family was a rock solid, unchanging concept.

Great Grandma Emma Lafferty Slack and I

Then when I was only a couple years old, we moved diagonally across the state from the South East corner to the North West. Back to the part of Wyoming where my Mom's family had long roots.  Suddenly I had Grandparents and great Grandparents and Aunts and Great Aunts and cousins by the dozens and I was happy with the change.  Adding more family was great.

And we added more.  When I was nearly 5 we adopted my baby brother, and when I was 12 another brother was born and more cousins came along and family was a growing, entity.  A wonderful circle of loving security.  I am grateful for those years.

Of course they couldn't last.  Sooner or later everyone learns that family isn't permanently growing, sometimes it is losing members too.

My cousins divorced, My great Grandmas both died at age 98 and another 18 year old cousin died of cancer, and another, favorite cousin came home from the marines safely only to be killed by a drunk driver.  Then my Mom's Dad died of Cancer before I graduated from High school.

And  I grew older and moved out and my home was just a converted garage with my 19 year old boyfriend in it.

Greg and I at 19

My wedding finery! just an hour after the JP married us

and then I was moving farther away, and the boyfriend became a husband and my family expanded to include all his, in-laws and nephews were great to add in. But all too soon there were days of driving between my family in Wyoming and us in Ashland, Oregon.

When My family came to visit Ashland, Oregon where I was in College

 and a month after we graduated from college in Ashland, my Mom's mother died.  I didn't like this part of family.  The losing ones you loved part hurt.

My Brother and parents at Niagara Falls

 but life moves on even when there is pain and the good years came back and my brother and I and my husbands sister were busy adding babies to the family and life was noisy and exhausting and wonderful.

Greg and I during our term as exchange students in Beijing

Some of the best years

 but all too soon my Dad, who loved being a Grandpa, was dead of esophageal cancer, as was one of my cousins.  My Mom and brothers were changing and moving on, and we heard from them but didn't get to spend enough time together, and family expanded to take in a Day care Grandma and day-care babies who lived with my babies from 7 AM to 5 PM every day and were more like siblings than friends.

Lance and my Mom after Dad died of Cancer

My Maternal Grandma and I

 And still life moves on.  My Mom is aging and her memory becomes confused. Talking to her on the phone is difficult and a strange trip into fears and confusion.  She had to move out of her house this year and my Brother Lance had to give up his 19 year job to move with her. Now in DC they are farther from me than ever, but closer to my brother Brett.

My youngest son and his lovely girlfriend

My sons are grown up and the family home is more a revolving door with people in or out and me never quite sure if it will be empty or full.  There are new children in our life, great nieces and nephews, a grandchild on the way, the babies of extended family. Life filling in the gaps because a vacuum is never allowed to remain

My oldest son working on a crab boat

My Brother Brett and his New wife

 So the family I am grateful for this year is not the one I loved as a baby, not eve the same one it was last November, but still, yes the family and friends are the part of my life I treasure the most.

Mom and my brother Lance

The Undying Apple Tree

 We moved into our house in the spring of 1996.  In the side yard, visible from the window where I stood to wash dishes by hand as the well had not enough pressure to make our dishwasher function, was an old, leaning apple tree in spring blossom.

The tree leaned, but it was enormous, as thick as my husband's waist and sturdy inspite having woodpeckers drilling holes through the bark in several places.  My children loved to climb it and I had high hopes for bounty in the fall.

But of course as the fall came on, I was overwhelmed by the amount of apples it produced , and never learned what variety they were in spite of having taken the apples to several farmer's markets and asking the experts.  The apples were huge, and red with green and yellow mottling and both crisp and sweet but with enough tartness to create a wonderful pie and a delicious applesauce.  I canned so much applesauce, but with a couple growing boys, we went through it quickly.  Still there were more apples and that brought the bears, so then there were large piles of applesauce like bear scat in our yard each October.

but after several years the apple tree fell, and I went into mourning.  I had planted a couple other fruit trees in the intervening years, but 10 years after I planted them they were still tiny and barely producing fruit, and the small trees in my neighbors orchard were still small trees with only maybe 40 apples each, and suddenly I realized my giant had been much older than I had thought.  125 years ago my property was a redwood logging company camp. filled with bunkhouse cabins and train tracks.  Now I was thinking the apple tree might have dated from then.

Towering over the apple tree is a redwood, so a redwood cone fell into the branches of the apple tree

 The next summer the apple tree still produced apples and the woodpeckers loved the rotting wood, so I enjoyed both the birds and one last season of fruit

Except it was never the last season and now 7 years after it fell, I have found that some of  the branches which were driven into the ground as it fell, seem to have rooted there and this worthy old tree seems to be setting itself in for reincarnation.  It appears as if this tree is like the tree in the old kid's book, a true "giving tree" that never quits. This year the harvest was more bountiful than ever and I'm excited to see if the bear returns as well.

Some picked last week, 2013

what the tree looks like this year