Packing

I can't remember the last time I worked this hard. My sister's house isn't huge but it has lots of nooks and crannies for storage. And they were all once filled to capacity and slightly beyond. There were a lot of things packed before I arrived and yet …

Many, many more boxes have been packed and stowed and there is still more to go. I've moved and in the early years had to do it all myself. I've helped Joe move and, inadvertently, Matt as well. Moving across the country (or state) is far different from moving down the street. I've always had an abundance of help moving far distances.

The exhausting part has been the weeding out of the essential from the non-essential. And then selling off the non-essential. One garage sale was held a few weeks ago and a second was held this past week. We had departments set up with the neighbor's garage as the furniture show room and the patio as the seasonal section. The greenhouse was where we put the extra clothes but we ran into a problem when we found the dresser also full of clothing.

There was a craft section, several bookcases full of both hardback and paperback books. We set up an electronics section near the plug. There was a children's center, linens, crafts, kitchenware, and candles. Tons of candles. The clothesline was hung with the flag banners and wind socks.

They came in droves. They came by the bus load I believe. The first day of the sale, Gulf Road was blocked and everyone was directed right past our signs of a garage sale.

Vini. Vidi. Visa. They came. They saw. They shopped. We sold items ridiculously cheap. Dresses (and they were all very nice dresses) for $1. Mom's suits, beautifully tailored and cared for were $2. Christopher & Banks sweaters were $1. Hard cover books were a quarter and paperbacks were a dime. Everything must go.

But of course, it didn't. So we took all the remaining beautiful clothing and donated it to a shelter for abused women. They help these women complete their education and get some job skills and then dress them for their job interviews and get them started on a path to success. It is a wonderful concept.

Then a woman from the Humane Society came with her grandson and great-grandson and took the rest of our items away. The Human Society is having their own rummage sale with proceeds going to protect their animal friends.

My sister made thousands of dollars during the two sales. Enough to pay for getting the remaining crap moved across the country.

Of course she didn't do it alone. Mary Jo brought the doughnuts and the laughter. Rose and Roseann have been the most incredible friends. I have never seen two woman work so hard and so long in such an altruistic manner. Days in the heat – lugging furniture in an out of the garage, depending on the cloud cover. Arranging and rearranging items in an effort to better market and sell off the stuff. Bringing tables to help display the crap and packing up the stuff to get ready for the Humane Society's pick up.

All this was overwhelming. But it's not all. They will be back to help with packing the big truck. And after that, I will be able to tell the story of Thelma and Louise and Louise driving across the country.

And So It Begins

I have officially begun my sister vacation. It is a working vacation. I will be helping out with the packing and sorting and moving and unpacking. It sounds like a lot of work. But with three of us, it will be less.

They picked me up from the airport and we stopped for something to eat on the way home. We had a quiet evening. But we did manage to sort through a couple of boxes of stuff and get it ready for either moving or a yard sale.

It seems so odd that I will soon have no place to call home in Elyria. Even when Mom's house was sold, I still had a home here. I've always had a home here. Ever since I was born. Here.

We are on to the next adventure. We three sisters will be separated by hundreds of miles of geography and less than a hair's breadth of heart. No matter how far away on the globe, my sisters are one button away on my phone. One click away on my computer. Close.

Even far apart, we are close. I can't imagine warring with my sisters. Even the one who snuck into my closet and wore my clothes or ate my personally purchased chocolate. Certainly not the one who gave me all the 'shit jobs' while we baked thousands of Christmas cookies. Nope. These are my sisters. My lovely, wonderful sisters.

And we get to be together working and driving across the country. Four weeks of work and fun. Four weeks of playing games, telling stories, and laughing. Four weeks. Far too short a time.

For My Son

"Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous and dreadful." - Samuel Johnson

Some astounding news from the medical community is something I've known for a long time. They have found, much to their amazement, that admitting an error makes the patient less likely to sue. For a long time, it was thought that ignoring the issue was a way to not admit any wrongdoing and hopefully avoid a judgment. They were wrong.

I watched one of my favorite surgeons make an error through no fault of his own (IMHO). He had asked the anesthetist to not paralyze the patient as he had to check nerve response. The anesthetist went on a coffee break and did not tell the relief person about this request. The relief person gave a paralytic agent to the patient. I have no idea why. I was on my own coffee break at the time.

Because the surgeon had no idea his request had been ignored, he tested a band, which did not respond, and so assumed it was the tendon sheath and not the neural sheath. It was the nerve and it was severed and it was a bad thing. When the original anesthetist returned to the room, he advised the surgeon about the paralytic agent. The mistake was then discovered and we tried desperately and futilely to repair the nerve.

After the case the surgeon went out and immediately talked with the family and explained the nerve damage and possible repercussions. He did not blame anesthesia. It was ultimately his responsibility to make sure that his nerve testing was on active nerves. He was devastated by the error and I had never seen him so upset with himself. Not anesthesia, himself.

He told the family what he could do to help them. As soon as the patient was awake enough to understand, he was told about the error. The patient did not sue the doctor. His admittance, repentance, and apology did not mitigate the disaster, but they did help to keep the whole thing out of the legal system.

The integrity of the doctor was overwhelming. I've never respected a man more thoroughly than this young doctor.

Making a mistake is bad. Even when other people help you make the mistakes, it is still bad. They are mis takes. Actions taken wrongly. Bad things.

I have made many mistakes in my life. There are many times when I have also made good choices, sometimes through pure stupidity or dumb luck. When I have made a mistake, I have been mortified. This is not something that should be happening. I should not make mistakes. I should not ever, EVER HEAR ME? make a mistake. I, and I alone in the world, should live without error. Isn't that a stupid way to feel?

I've made mistakes and then tried to cover them up. That does NOT work. It makes things worse rather than better. I have had to swallow my pride to salvage my integrity. I have had to admit my frailty, my humanness, my relationship to the common man trudging across the dusty plains of Mother Earth. I am not perfect. I am no better than the lowest, stupidest, foulest creature. I made a mistake. Shame, shame, shame.

Eventually I raise my head and notice the world carrying on without me while I wallow in self pity and self denigration. My mistakes have been minor. Relatively speaking. I've never started a war, even if I've started a fight. I've never slaughtered millions, even if I've been acerbic and cutting with my remarks. I've wasted money that could have been used in far better ways.

But the most important thing I've done is learned from my mistakes. I've tried to learn from other people's mistakes as well because I don't really have time to make them all myself. (Someone else said that first, but I'm not looking it up to see who.)

The only people who don't make any mistakes are the people who do nothing. If at first you don't succeed – try, try again. There are many proverbs telling us how to overcome the sense of failure after making a mistake. Edison mentioned that all his errors while trying to create a light bulb were not mistakes. He had learned 10,000 ways to not make a light bulb.

Denying an error, continuing on as if nothing happened is disingenuous. Owning up to a mistake, rectifying it, taking the necessary steps to stop the damage, and most of all learning from the experience takes courage – and integrity.

Sound and Fury

If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? – author unknown. The philosophical question was probably first posed by some 20th century thinker. It asks about the relationship between event and observation of the event.

Can something exist without being perceived? Is there a sound if there are no ears to hear it? That is the philosophical conundrum. Or maybe it is whether or not the unobserved world behaves in the same manner as the observed world. Perhaps Schopenhauer's cat knows. Maybe, instead, it is asking if there is a difference between what actually is and what seems to be.

To paraphrase: If a writer writes something and no one reads it, is that person still an author?

Is the act of writing what makes someone an author or is it the act of a second person reading the written words? Do I write if no one reads? Do I speak if no one listens?

The act of writing leaves a more concrete trail than the ephemeral waves of sound produced by compressed air. The transient sound is here and then gone, unrecorded. Producing written works leaves a more tangible effect. There are words on paper or screen. As I punch at various keys on the board, letters appear on the screen and eventually there are words, paragraphs, essays, stories, letters, any manner of written work.

By writing a grocery list, I have placed letters that symbolize words onto a paper in order to remind myself to get cream of mushroom soup when I go to the store. Does this simple act make me an author? Is an author something more than someone who writes words? Is there some community to the word 'author' that is lacking from the word 'writer?'

Of course the list is written. A spreadsheet is written as well. Does creating a spreadsheet make one an author? Is it only specific types of writing which causes the scribbler to turn into an author? Or is it that someone else is reading what has been scribbled?

Does that mean that if I give the shopping list to my husband so he can remember to purchase the soup, I am now an author? Or if a spreadsheet is attached as a file and sent to co-workers, does the creator become an author?

What is the difference between writer and author? A writer writes; does an author auth? Does one only become an author after so many people read the words produced? Do they have to be specific forms of words? Is it the act of remuneration?

According to the web, an author is:
1. The writer of a book, article, or other text.
2. One who practices writing as a profession.
3. One who writes or constructs an electronic document or system, such as a website.
4. An originator or creator, as of a theory or plan.

This doesn't mention any relationship between writer and reader. Without the reader, what use is the writer?

Tell Me a Story

Children have been asking since the dawn of time to be told a story. Today, with television and DVDs rampant, they will sometimes also ask to see a movie. These are two different things.

Sue Grafton's alphabet series began in 1982 when Kinsey Millhone began her sparky, snappy career with A is for Alibi. In 208 pages a crime was solved. Kinsey has charmed many readers and Grafton has become quite successful. Somewhere around the middle of the alphabet, Grafton decided to craft literature rather than write delightful stories. The 2007 book, T is for Trespass, is the latest in the series. The 200 page story is wrapped in 387 pages of prose. I stopped reading around the letter P.

Rex Stout wrote 47 Nero Wolfe books, each one was between 150 and 200 pages long. They are enjoyable. They tell a story. They don't contain extra prose in order to 'show' me anything. They simply, clearly, concisely tell me a story. I like that.

Someone, I have no idea who, told authors to 'show, don't tell' the story. So people shout like fans at a Michigan vs. Ohio State college football game instead of shouting excitedly. For some unknown reason, adverbs are the pariah in the world of words. Splitting infinitives, once a capital offense and now an annoyance only to old grammarians, may have been the lovely adverb's downfall. Gene Roddenberry sent his Star Trek crew to boldly go where no man had been before rather than going boldly, infinitive intact. They weren't traveling around space like Thor marching across Valhalla on a collision course with Zeus on Mount Olympus. No, they went 'boldly' and we all understood.

If a picture is worth a thousand words, Marcel Proust must have written epic films. Remembrance of Things Past is published in a three book set while In Search of Lost Time is six books. The 'lost time' probably went missing while reading Proust.

Why aren't people reading books today? Why, with list after list of best-selling titles, do people think that we aren't reading? But if we agree that young people aren't reading as many books as we would like, we as authors should ask ourselves why. We are raising a generation used to rapid fire images and then expect them to wade through extraneous verbiage produced to make some college professor happy. No wonder they don't read. Miranda can be in love with Reginald without the relationship spelled out in florid and useless prose. Get to the action. Tell the dang story.

The story must be engaging. Literature has its place, but story-telling predates literature by millennia. Both are valid. Shunning story-telling for the sake of literature is just as silly as the reverse. Mark Twain wrote both, but not by design. He wrote stories so well, they became literature.

I like adverbs. I will continue to sing 'Lolly, Lolly, Lolly; Get Your Adverbs Here' from Schoolhouse Rock. I will tell my story with verve and will use all parts of speech as indicated. I will gladly have my characters move through the tale doing this and that and using the language as I would if actually telling the story face to face. I hope readers like being treated with respect. Surely anyone old enough to read will know what 'gladly' means and I don't have to show them through smiling faces lined with happiness.

What Are They Thinking?

This was in Annie's Mailbox on June 2, 2008:
Dear Annie: This is in response to "Snubbed," whose in-laws didn't include the spouses in the family photo at her father-in-law's birthday.

I can do her one better. My in-laws didn't want to include me in my own wedding photo. My husband's parents have all of their other children's wedding photos on their wall, but not one of them includes the in-law grooms or brides. They are only shots of their own children, plus the parents.

I put a stop to that. I made sure I was in my wedding photo, along with my husband, his siblings and parents. — Midwest Wife

Dear Midwest: You're right — not including the spouse in the family wedding photo takes the cake. With all the layers.

What?
They only got one picture of the whole wedding? There was no picture of just the bride and her parents? And the bride with her mother and step-father and the bride with her father and step-mother and the groom only with all the permutations of his family would have ruined the whole day for her?

And the dimwits who write this column agree?

Mom kept a picture of Pam in her bridal gown, me in my bridal gown, and Cheri had no picture of just the bride because it was a newly 'professional' photographer.

What is so horrible about parents wanting a picture of just them and just their child on an important day? The bride poses all over with just herself: looking forward, glancing backwards over the train of her gown, showing off herself and her dress. And somehow this woman is so nasty that she can't allow her husband and his parents one picture without her elbowing her way into it?

Holidays are going to be wonderful for this kind soul. They will revolve only around her. One – okay, this one – can only hope that she has a son or two and gets told on some important day in his life, she isn't permitted to bask in the glow of his contentment as there will be no contentment, only some other person's selfish need to control.

So, when the groom finally tires of this self-centered woman's need to be the star and finally divorces her ass, his parents will remove the picture of the 'wall of fame' parents like to keep. They will have no record of just them and their offspring because this mean and nasty woman could only see the world as it revolves around her and had no idea parents sometimes like to share a moment with just their child.

I certainly hope the woman who wrote this letter learns at some point that even on Bride's Day, she isn't the only person in the world. And I hope her parents-in-law can find it in their hearts to forgive her for being a totally senseless and selfish, mean, nasty, inconsiderate, and vile person.

And I hope the husband will some day come to his senses and explain the universe to his misguided wife. It is NOT all about her.