With extra maple syrup

Bloganuary: What’s your favorite meal to cook and/or eat?

I think we’ve already established how I feel about cooking dinner.

That being said, I do have some favorite meals:

  1. Lubia Polo: This is a Persian dish I’ve tried to replicate without much success. I spent an afternoon watching my mother-in-law prepare it, writing down her every move, asking her questions. I’ve attempted my sister-in-law’s version as well. And again, something’s missing. There’s some magical Tahmaseb ingredient that the rest of us simply don’t possess.
  2. Kashke Bademjan: This is another Persian dish, but I’ve only eaten it at restaurants. It’s an eggplant/garlicky concoction that also serves as an appetizer. I love it. I hope to grow some eggplants this year and try making this dish myself.
  3. Breakfast for Dinner: Pancakes, in particular, but all breakfast foods are invited. There is nothing like breakfast for dinner after an especially rough day.

Hot pizza on a rainy day

Bloganuary: Describe the happiest day of your life

I decided to filter this prompt through the advice in Our Town by Thornton Wilder. If you choose to revisit a day, make it an ordinary one.

It was late spring, a weekday, back when my kids and I were taking karate classes together. The weather was warm enough not to need jackets, so we didn’t bring any to class.

A storm blew in while we were doing roundhouse kicks. After class, it was still raining hard. To wait out the storm, we decided to skip along the covered sidewalk of the strip mall and order take-out pizza for dinner.

Except, when the pizza was ready, it was raining even harder.

Pizza in hand, we debated. Go for it and risk soggy pizza or wait and content ourselves with cold slices when we got home?

We were too hungry to wait. We hunkered over the pizzas, cardboard boxes hot against our palms, and raced for the car. After a few steps, we were soaked through. By the time the three of us were secure in the car, we were laughing.

Maybe it was the endorphins from karate, or the promise of pizza, or that it was so close to summer vacation, but we didn’t stop laughing for the entire drive home—or when we had to race inside through that same downpour.

After we toweled off and hung up our karate uniforms to drip dry, the pizza was—somehow—still hot. It was nothing more than franchise pizza, but we ate and laughed, laughed and ate.

I don’t remember what happened before karate, and I’m not sure what we did for the rest of the evening. But this window of time is something my kids still mention in conversation, even now.

I think this is how those important life milestones should feel but never quite do. It was a burst of pure joy, pure living that can’t be manufactured.

You simply must trust that life will give you some of these moments.

Hot pizza on a rainy day after karate class doesn’t sound like the ingredients for the happiest day of my life. But if I had to pick one day to go back and live again, it would be this one.

The green, green grass of home

Bloganuary: Do you have a memory that’s linked to a smell?

After the war, after we left Kuwait for Saudi Arabia, after everyone started calling it Operation Desert Sit, I had the chance to drive into King Khalid Military City.

At the entrance sat a patch of lawn that was so green, so lush, so potent that its scent sliced through the desert air. It struck us—physically. All of us craned our necks, exclaimed, and inhaled deeply. Whoever was driving the Humvee nearly veered off the road.

This perfect bit of golf-course grass was so opulent that it was practically obscene.

And after all the waiting, first in the desert and then in King Khalid Military City, I remember stepping off the plane and being hit with that same sort of extravagance of a German spring. Never mind that we landed at Rhein-Main Air Force Base, in the heart of industrial Germany. Never mind the jet fuel in the air or the exhaust from the buses waiting for us.

It was like walking into a wall. The scent of vegetation was so thick you could touch it, taste it. When I finally returned to my BOQ, I wanted to leave the windows open. My rooms faced a small preserve within the city of Darmstadt. It was so calm, and peaceful, and green. But, compared to Saudi Arabia, the air felt so cold, so damp, so heavy.

I had to content myself with staring at the greenery through the glass. And I did so, for hours.

Published: Field Manual for Waiting

Yesterday, I received my author copies for Issue 29 of the Blue Earth Review.

Isn’t it gorgeous?

It’s been my aim, for a while, to get a piece accepted in this publication. This might seem like a random goal, but I had my reasons. A handful, actually.

The Blue Earth Review is Minnesota State University, Mankato’s literary magazine. I grew up in Mankato, my father taught at the university for 28 years, and my daughter recently received her Associate of Arts degree from there.

It is a literary magazine, however. Normally my writing does not skew literary. I’ve only submitted there once before, with a piece I thought might fit. (Clearly, it didn’t.)

This time, I submitted a piece I wrote during a class I took this past July on writing about grief.

“Field Manual for Waiting” is written in the second person, present tense, and ties together two events that occurred 30 years apart. (And yes, where else am I going to send something like that but a literary journal?)

I’m pleased the piece was a runner-up in the creative nonfiction category of their Dog Daze contest. I’m really pleased with the production values. Again, this little journal is gorgeous, and I’m glad “Field Manual for Waiting” found a home there.

The fine art of public speaking

Bloganuary: What fear have you conquered?

When I was sixteen, I decided—somewhat out of the blue—that I couldn’t go through life being petrified of public speaking.

Because I was petrified. And I knew that other people would expect me to talk, especially as an adult. Because that’s what adults did. They talked.

So I joined our high school speech team.

Nearly every weekend during the season, I’d hop on a school bus and ride with my teammates to wherever that week’s tournament was. I’d read my piece three times. At the end of the day, I’d dissolve into a puddle.

At first, I was terrible. Really, really terrible. I’d rank the lowest in each of my rounds (a 5 on a scale of 1 – 5). I was okay with that because I wasn’t doing this to win a prize.

But a funny thing started to happen. By the season’s end, I was pulling in solid 3s each round, with a scattering of 4s or even a surprise 2.

The following year? I started at the 3 and 4 ranks and inched my way up. I earned an honorable mention at one of our big tournaments hosted by our rival high school and actually placed third in another.

I didn’t go to the state tournament, but then I didn’t want to. I’d accomplished what I set out to do, and I was no longer the participant everyone felt sorry for in each of my rounds.

And many years later, I wrote a novel based on these experiences.

Make no mistake: I still don’t like public speaking. You won’t see me joining Toastmasters any time soon. But I look back on that sixteen-year-old and marvel at how she could’ve been so prescient … and brave.

Trains, planes, and automobiles

Bloganuary: What is your preferred mode of travel?

When I lived in Germany, I loved taking the trains and trolleys and the U-Bahn. So easy. So convenient. Many of my friends enjoyed driving (way too fast) on the autobahn. What sticks in my mind is the phrase fünf kilometer stau. The inevitable result of driving way too fast on the autobahn.

But even catching the U-Bahn or a trolley downtown felt like a mini-adventure.

And the night train from Moscow to St. Petersburg? Well, that definitely was an adventure. It was also far less nerve-wracking than the flight into Moscow on Aeroflot.

And yes, the stories are true; the passengers really did applaud when the wheels of the plane (successfully) touched the ground.

But not a real green dress, that’s cruel

Bloganuary: If you had a billion US dollars, how would you spend it?

Ideally, here’s what I’d do:

After ensuring my immediate and extended family was settled and secure (and paying my taxes), I’d set up a foundation to manage the rest. I’d look for places and organizations that are doing the most good in the world and support them.

As I said, ideally.

Would I do that if a billion dollars suddenly landed in my lap? (Figuratively speaking—literally, that would probably kill me.)

I don’t know. But history (recent and not so recent) is filled with cautionary tales of people who have (or had) extraordinary power, or fame, or wealth. Some may look at that situation and say: those are good problems to have.

Again, I’m not so sure that’s true. I’m not convinced I could be an exception to all that history. I’m not talking about money can’t buy happiness platitudes. Because having enough resources for safety, security, and comfort is vital. And I’m acutely aware that not everyone has those things.

This brings me back to why I don’t need a billion dollars. That being said, it might be different if I had a million dollars:

I, for one, plan on welcoming our dinner-cooking robot overlords

Bloganuary: What chore do you find the most challenging?

It’s not that I find cooking dinner exceptionally challenging. I’m just disappointed that, despite the fact it’s 2023, we haven’t found a way for AI to do it for us. Where’s my Star Trek replicator that will make me some tea, Earl Grey, hot? I ask you!

I can turn the lights on and off by myself. Thank you very much, Alexa. But why must I cook dinner?

Every.

Single.

Night.

And it isn’t even the prep time or the cleanup. It’s that it goes by so quickly. You do all this work and all this cleaning. For what? Five or so minutes of eating?

Granted, I may be doing the eating part of dinner wrong. I realize that I don’t need to inhale my food like I’m in the dining facility, and a drill sergeant is clocking my every bite.

Sometimes you really can’t take the Army out of the girl.

It’s why I prefer to bake. The same amount of work, but the results hang around for much longer.

With that in mind, I think I’ll go make some cookies.

Of brass rings and other dreams

Bloganuary: How do you define success?

So, I started this prompt maybe three or four times? Each time it was all: delete, delete, backspace, delete.

I think success is so hard to define because we often conflate it with happiness. You can have all the success in the world and still be the most miserable person on the planet.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this lately because writing is tied up with publishing, and publishing (whether traditional or indie) is tied up with success. What happens when the brass ring of publishing success only makes you momentarily happy?

You reach for another.

And another.

And another.

And maybe you don’t question whether these are good things to reach for, whether they make you happy or successful.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not advocating that people abandon their goals and dreams of success. With the correct alignment, success might help you gain happiness (or at least contentment).

But I’ve been asking myself what makes me happy, what makes me feel successful. I’m working to filter the external, those things that are someone else’s standards, and capture my own.

And that might be a moving target, but it feels like a good one to set my sights on.

The book that almost wasn’t

Bloganuary: Has a book changed your life?

So they didn’t specify a book you’ve read or a book you’ve written, did they now? The short answer is yes. Yes, a book has changed my life.

The longer answer is a bit more complicated. Some of you might know that my first (and only traditionally) published novel was The Geek Girl’s Guide to Cheerleading. This was a book I co-wrote with my writing BFF Darcy Vance.

Some of you might even know the story behind that story. What you might not know is how Darcy took my “final” draft of GGG (as we referred to it) and started revising it. After I had shelved the novel. Without my knowledge.

Her intentions were nothing but good. She wanted to show me that the novel was marketable. All it needed was some glittery eyeliner (as she called it), like a simple shift from the third person point of view to first*.

Once she revised the first three chapters, she sent them my way.

Reading a story you’ve written in someone else’s voice is, at best, disconcerting. At worse, it can feel like a violation. Darcy was hoping I’d see what she was doing and carry on with the rest of the novel.

And yes, I could see what she was getting at, but I wasn’t into it. I felt the novel had run its course, and it was time to move on to something new. I was, actually, working on something new. So those first three chapters became this awkward thing between us. While it didn’t destroy our friendship—although it certainly could have—there were some cracks in its surface.

Then Darcy’s son was diagnosed with cancer.

Darcy lived in Indiana, and I was in Minnesota. It wasn’t like I could stop by with a hot dish, offer to do the laundry, or help out in any way.

Except. There was a way I could help. I knew it deep down in my gut. There was.

I pulled out those first three chapters and took another look. I decided we could revise Geek Girl together. And if we sold it, Darcy could use her part of the advance to help with medical bills.

Because she was right; Geek Girl did have potential. It had even more once we started working in sync. Darcy changed the point of view (which must have been a slog, but she claimed it was a distraction she needed at the time). We would pass scenes back and forth, refining the prose until it wasn’t my voice or her voice but the main character Bethany’s voice. We worked on it all winter long.

In the spring, while Darcy and her family were seeing specialists and her son was having surgery, I pulled together a query letter. I sent out a couple of waves of queries. We had an amazing response rate, secured an agent, and a year later, a publishing contract.

And all that was wonderful, but not nearly as wonderful as learning to put my ego aside. Not nearly as wonderful as working with Darcy, over IM, in marathon revision sessions. Not nearly as wonderful as having her as a friend, of being able to help her, of learning that her son was cancer-free.

There are days when I miss her so much and wish she were still here. There’s so much I want to tell her. I’m a better writer because of her. I like to think I’m also a better person.

And that’s the story of how a book changed my life.

*This is not simple.