Lunch and Heartbreak

Hi.

Remember when blogging first became a craze and everyone was doing it and everyone was reading everyone else and there was no Twitter or Facebook or Buzzfeed quizzes to find out which cheese/shoe/fictional character you were? There was only your "feed reader" with dozens (or hundreds) of blogs that you tried to check every week. And we were all writing (and reading) about each others' lunch and heartbreak.

I say "everyone," but blogging was still new enough that it wasn't the pervasive thing it is now, and to be a "blogger" was still an interesting or odd or embarrassing or empowering label. Remember that? 

It's not that I'm not feeling particularly nostalgic about those times, I was just thinking about how blogging used to feel both more intense (higher quantities) and less intense (lower stakes). Nowadays, for me, at least, blogging often feels too cumbersome and heavy. I'm a creative writer, so I want the stories I tell here to be good. I'm a freelance writer, editor, and teacher, so I want the posts to be engaging and useful. There's a lot of pressure to write something interesting and sharable. Showing up just to say "hi" and tell you what I had for lunch or what's breaking my heart these days doesn't seem like enough.

But sometimes, lunch and heartbreak are what's on my mind. Sometimes, I don't want to blog so I can tell you a great story or teach you something. Sometimes I just want to say: "Hi. For lunch today I had last night's leftovers: gluten-free pasta with homemade roasted tomato sauce; grilled chicken topped with basil, prosciutto, and provolone; and sauteed kale, because I do love kale, which has nothing to do with its hipster popularity, I just like it."

And I want to say: "Hi. My heart has been breaking lately from all the usual suspects big and small: war, racism, death, lost friendships, people's lack of clean water, disease, economics, misunderstandings. Sometimes I have to sit outside and stare at the green trees to remember that I'm mostly fine and that I need to stop sweating the small stuff all the damn time because it's draining and pointless to sweat the small stuff when the big stuff is also chipping away at your joy. Does it really matter if my neighbors shake their heads at the weeds-as-tall-as-me that are growing in the front of my house? Should I really be fretting over how much I didn't accomplish today? Does it do me any good to feel anxious most of the time because apparently I've developed a sort of anxious auto-pilot that constantly runs in the background? The answer to all of these questions is 'No.' There's enough true heartbreak to go around without all of these little ones piling up in the corners of our psyches."

I'm not saying that blogging was better before. I'm not even pining for the days of lunch and heartbreak posts. I just wanted to say "hi," and to remind myself that not all online interactions have to be well-crafted essays or meaningful sales pitches or pithy status updates.

Sometimes, you just want to connect. Sometimes, you just want to say: I ate this. I'm worried about this. I'll be okay, and I hope you will be, too.

Some Stories for the Weekend

Right this minute I'm sitting on an airplane, 38,001 feet above the ground, somewhere over Montana, near Flathead and Lolo National Forests. WiFi! On a plane! So many modern marvels at once! (Also, how much do I love-love that there is a place called Lolo?)

I'm headed to Portland, Oregon, this weekend for the Soul Sisters Conference. I'm leading two sessions this weekend, one on the power of storytelling and another on writing into the heart of your stories. Since these are topics that I've written about in one way or another many times, I thought I'd share some posts from the archives for those of you who couldn't make it to Soul Sisters.

First up, some stories. I'll be opening my storytelling session with a new story, one I haven't recorded before. But in the spirit of in-person storytelling, I'm reposting several stories that I have recorded.

"The Saddest Dog Story in the World" (audio)

(To listen to the story, click on the arrow in the media player below, or click on "The Saddest Dog Story in the World" underneath the media player to open the file in a separate window.)

"My One Thing" (video)

(Can't see the video above? Watch it on Vimeo.)

My One Thing

I made this for you....

{"My One Thing," a story-talk from Jenna McGuiggan. Can't see the video above? Watch it on Vimeo.}

Later this week I'll post the behind-the-scenes stories about this video.

I'll tell you...

How it was the result of many months (okay, years) of thought.

How I recorded it in a white box theatre in New York City.

How there were two cameras, professional lighting, and a film crew, oh my!

How I was talking to a group of women who totally heard me and had my back so I could be my own shiny self.

How I put on extra make-up, and then wished I had put on more.

How bummed I was when I found out that my skirt, which was the most interesting part of my outfit, wasn't going to be in the frame.

How I've forced myself to watch this video several times through and name what I love about it, even when I don't love what I see on screen.

And how this whole experience has reminded me that I love being on stage -- and pushed me to seek out more stage time.

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I share stories, specials, & inspiration several times a month.

Small Expectations (an Everyday Essay)

winter multiple exposure (Diana F+)

This post is part of the "Everyday Essays" series. See below for a description of the series, and read others essays here.

From the warm corner of the couch I see the girl tromp her way to my front door. She's suited up for the snow in black snow pants, boots, a pink-and-black checkered jacket. Her shoulder-length brown hair frames her face under her dark, knitted ski cap. She knocks. I answer. The girl looks to be about 11 or 12, but I'm not always the best judge of age in kids. 

"Would you like me to shovel your driveway?" she asks.

I look at her and her shovel (is it kid-sized?), and then at my driveway, long and wide. She is earnest and confident. I imagine her snowboarding down a mountain. She looks like a girl who would snowboard. She looks like the kind of girl I'd like to have been. The kind of girl I'd like to be.

"Sure," I say. "How much?

"Hmm... five or ten bucks?" She shrugs one shoulder, like it's no big thing.

"Okay."

"Okay, I'll knock on your door when I'm done."

From the window, I watch her push the shovel into the five inches of snow covering my driveway. I watch her slip backward just a bit, the bulk of the snow against the shovel making her lose her footing. She's too small to do this whole thing, I think.

I open the door again and tell her just to do the left side so I can get the little Honda up it. I tell myself we can leave the right side snowy, since our SUV is sturdy enough to navigate it.

"Just the left side? Okay," she says.

She keeps shoveling. She picks up steam. The girl's a champ. I look up again and see her taking a thirty-second breather, propping up her wrists on the shovel's handle, staring up at the sky, her back to my house. What is she thinking about? Will she use this money for a ski trip? To buy Christmas presents? Does she know I'm watching her from this side of the glass? From this side of childhood?

She clears off the left side in no time and I realize that I underestimated her. I think about telling her to go ahead and do the whole thing, but I feel too guilty.

As promised, she knocks again, and I hand her a plastic zip-top baggie filled with a five dollar bill, a one, and four dollars in quarters. I'm out of bills, but I have plenty of quarters. I could have paid her fifteen if she'd done the whole driveway.

Instead, I just say, "Thanks!"

She leaves, and I wonder: Would I have told her to clear just the one side if she'd been a boy?

An hour later, when I'm sure she's not in the neighborhood to see me, I go out and shovel the right side myself. If she can do it, so can I.

** ** **

About Everyday Essays: At least a few times a week I jot down notes about something -- usually a small moment, detail, or thought -- that I want to write about. Most of those ideas stay frozen as notes and never bloom into essays. Everyday Essays is my new writing practice to allow some of those notes to move beyond infancy. I've decided to share some of them with you here, even if they're still half-naked or half-baked. The word "essay" (as is almost always noted when the form is discussed) comes from the French verb essayer, which means to try. The essay is a reckoning, a rambling, an exploration, an attempt. Think of these Everyday Essays as freewriting exercises, rough drafts, or the jumbled, interconnected contents of my mind, which may or may not take root and grow into longer (deeper) essays.

Gradbabies

image from by dno1967

You can also listen to this story here.

I saw my aunt and uncle in the grocery store the day before Easter. We met up at the end of the jam and jelly aisle, in an open area near the meat counter. I waved first, since it seemed inevitable that they'd see me. It had been at least a year since I last saw them, and I wanted to give them plenty of time to recognize me out of context.

The only thing in their cart so far was a 10 pound bag of potatoes. Later on I'd see them picking out a ham. Until a few years ago, we all used to gather for Easter and Christmas at another aunt's house. But it looked like everyone would be cooking for their own this year.

"Anything new?" my aunt asked.

I gave the standard, "Not much," and then remembered something new, a growing rarity these days: "I'm going back to school."

"Oh?" my aunt said. "That's interesting."

"When am I gonna be an uncle?" my uncle chimed in.

I knew what he meant. "You're already an uncle," I said, trying to sound good natured. "And you're a grandfather! What more do you want? To be a great-uncle?"

"He's that, too," said my aunt, referring to my other cousins who started babymaking a few years ago.

"That’s right!" I said, keeping up the lighthearted banter just a bit too loudly. "See, you don’t need me at all."

We talked for awhile longer, but the subject of me going back to school never came up again. Nobody wanted to know where or why or how or for what. After that conversation, I wondered how many other people are thinking what my uncle, always the outspoken one, actually said.

Me: I’m going to grad school!

Others: When are you going to have a baby?

At a family visit a few years ago, I stood beside my grandmother while we watched a scene unfold around the clan's newest infant. I'm not overly close with my grandmother, and she's not an overly talkative woman, but I know she loves me. After minutes of silence, she turned to me and said, "Well, your mother wanted to be a grandmother, but I guess that's not going to happen now."

I found this curious for several reasons, the main one being that she is my paternal grandmother: my father's mother. Unless she and her daughter-in-law had developed a strong bond recently, or my mother was much more grief-stricken about my childless state than she's let on, I couldn't imagine this was an actual conversation the two of them would ever have.

I didn't know what to say, so again I played the jester. I gestured to my younger brother and said, "Hey, he could have kids!"

I don't know why my grandmother assumed kids were out of the picture for me. I can't recall ever discussing with her my angst and ambivalence about becoming a mother. And this was just a few years ago, when I was in my late 20s or very early 30s and still spry enough to try for a little spring chicken if I so chose.

All in all, I'm thankful that I don't get much pressure from family or friends about my childlessness. For now, this is what makes sense and works for me and my husband. People generally respect that. But every so often, someone slips, and I wonder how many people are questioning my choices. That happens to everyone, I suppose. At some point, we just need to stop worrying about what family, friends, or society think of the path we choose.

A friend recently told me, "I'm so tired of trying to manage my image with my family." For sure, that can be exhausting work, full of subterfuge and half-truths. Personally, I've never really felt the need to do that, especially outside of my immediate family. Most of them have never really known me, but only because we run in different circles, not because I'm hiding anything.

While I was growing up, my parents, brother, and I often spent Friday nights at my great aunt's house in the country. This was on my mother's side of the family. There was always an elaborate spread of food for an evening meal, well after dinner time. It felt so decadent to eat after dark. Summers were the best because the table was covered in delights from my aunt and uncle's garden: sliced bright-red tomatoes, deep green bell peppers, shapely spring onions.

When I became a teenager, those visits became less fun, as do most things at that age. This was during my mandatory dark and twisty phase, in which I was trying to embrace the writer within. I remember sitting on a wooden stool at the little bar island in the kitchen, apart from the family merriment in the living room, and writing something along the lines of: These people are my relatives, but I do not feel related or relevant. It was my way of realizing that you can't choose your relatives, but you can’t hide from them, either.

Most of the people from those Friday night gatherings are far away or gone now. Unlike my dad's side of the family, which is teeming with new life, my mom's side has only seen two new additions. If anyone should be worried about my procreation habits, it would be them – if there were anyone left to worry.

As I settle into my third decade, I have a growing hunger for family and relative connections. But I'm also not ready to throw my own eggs into the ring just yet. When I am, I guess we'll all have something to talk about.