It seems the conclusion of a day often lands far from its beginning.  Ask any writer.  As in every good story, a writer’s characters are changed by outside influences, by following their hearts, by participating in life.  So it goes with every writer.

We change.

Every episode or scene we write pulls at our elbows until we agree to follow it to its reckoning.  By the end, someone is different.  Someone loses.  Someone wins.  There is a turn of heart, or a dampening of feelings.  We learn to love.  We find revenge.  We are burst open like spring buds of hope, or crushed under the weight of circumstance.  But always … ALWAYS … there is change.

I’ve generally considered myself my own first reader.   Unless I’m working on a nonfiction nuts-and-bolts piece that requires specific structural guidance from point A to point B, I’m usually that la-de-dah, fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants writer.  I like it that way because I’m excited to know what will happen next.  It drives my husband crazy that I don’t outline my fiction ahead, but I’ve found it a troublesome waste.  No matter how immaculate an outline I manage to produce, it seems each character suits up in the morning and gives me THEIR agenda.   It NEVER seems to work the other way around.  It’s like I take dictation … then do my best to turn the words into something I’d like to read.  It seems to work well that way for me and my dear little writer’s right brain, as well as, for producing all those little moments of change my characters crave.

If now I could only convince that beautiful rightward brain of mine to pop out a perfect 5-page synopsis by tomorrow’s deadline.

Unfortunately, all my characters are on summer holiday and I’m left to swelter over every writer’s agonizing question when we’re at the end of the day — WHO ARE MY CHARACTERS AND HOW DID THEY … CHANGE?

I’d like to know who took my Wilson.  It’s okay to come clean with me.  I promise I’m not litiginous.  But I want to know … WHAT DID YOU DO WITH MY WILSON?

The last I know, I trotted my dear dog into the groomer’s yesterday.  “He’s got a couple of little matting places next to his nose,” I confessed.  “I’ll pay extra to have you ease them out,” I offered.

Two and a half hours later, I came back to claim my dog and they presented me with a LAMB instead.  A poofy, top-knotted, ear-shaved LAMB.  I calmed myself.  “Okaaaay,” I said in my best oh dear! voice.  “What happened to his ears?”

Groomer:  I had to shave them.

Me:  I see that.  Can you explain?

Groomer:  Well, they were matted.

Me:  No.  It was his NOSE that had a teensy little matted spot.

Groomer:  Oh.  Well, he looks good doesn’t he?

Me:  This is so not a Labradoodle cut.  You made him look like a … a … FOOFY DOG.  He looks like a lamb!

Groomer:  Well, his ears will grow back if you don’t like it.  In the meantime, I’d suggest you put sunblock on them because they don’t have any hair and he’ll burn in the sun.

Me:  Swell.

So, the good news?  Wilson’s classmates in Puppy Class think he’s a rock star.  And now he keeps trying to mount poor Scarlett the Retriever to show how studly he is without ear hair.

The bad news?  He still looks like a lamb and Dan’s wondering why we got charged eighty dollars for someone else’s dog.

The other day I was asked to explain how … or more specifically, why … I wrote a story about Alzheimer’s disease from the inside-out.  From the thoughts and viewpoint of a woman trapped in such a gripping disease.  Why didn’t I just write something simple … like a mystery, or a story about sea monkeys or something?

To put it bluntly, All the Dancing Birds was a story I had to tell.  Certainly, writing about the distasteful subject of Alzheimer’s disease wasn’t easy — especially from inside the mind of a dementia sufferer.  This wasn’t your practical, run-of-the mill story.  I didn’t REALLY know how I was going to pull it off, but from the floor of my gut, I knew it could be done.  I even fought my writer’s group over it.  “You can’t do this,” was the cry.  “It MUST be told from some other viewpoint … omniscient maybe, or at least from the viewpoint of another central character,” they pounded.  “What will you do when your main character is a vegetable?” they whined.  “When your story’s voice is voiceless?”  They had a good point.  I think my ears fell off my head, though, because I didn’t listen to the collective practicality of this good group of readers and advisers.

I simply continued to plod ahead … each week presenting more improbable writing. More imagination.

One day after a particularly brutal session of continued assertions that an Alzheimer’s story MUST be told ABOUT the victim, rather than FROM the victim’s voice, I was nearly convinced that it couldn’t — or shouldn’t — be attempted.  As I packed up my pages, my mouth most likely turned down with defeat for having wasted precious weeks on a project that was unlikely to be successful, one member of the group, a rather quiet woman who conspicuously hadn’t joined the chorus of naysayers, sidled up to me.

“Do it,” she whispered to me.

“What?”

“Do it.  It’s beautiful.  Keep going with your story just like it is.  I need to know what your heroine thinks about, especially as she gets sicker.”

“You do?”

“Yeah.”  Her voice began to shake, her eyes teared up.  “I’ve just been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s and I need to know how it’s going to go for me.”

That woman looked at me with eyes that no longer wanted to know about mystery whodunits, or about Sci-Fi, or Chick-Lit.  She didn’t want to read ABOUT crazy Aunt Jane … she was about to BECOME crazy Aunt Jane.  She wanted to know that someone was writing a story from her viewpoint and that her family might one day find understanding from such a story.

And so I quit the group.  I wrote the story.  It was recognized and awarded by the Pacific Northwest Writers Association.  Several agents have recently indicated high interest in it.  It’s on its way!

And aren’t we all just Dancing Birds, trying to find our perch in this world?

Dorothy had it right.  There IS no place like home.

After a lovely four-day conference in beautiful Seattle, where I met some of the brightest, most accomplished and articulate writers, agents and editors, it was nevertheless good to be home again.  Even with winning a significant award in Poetry and receiving agent invitations to view my most recent manuscript, I still wasn’t insulated from that schoolgirl feeling of being homesick midway through Camp Wonaribbon week.

It’s good to be home.

Home is where we can be productive and giving, where we can be restored, welcomed, where we can be ourselves.  Home is where we wash our clothes, cook our meals, dust our furniture. It’s where we keep our paintings, our pets, our latest thousand-piece puzzle spread across the dining table, our good china and our unmade beds.  Home is the outward expression of our inner landscape, a statement to the world of who we think we are, or who we’d like to be. That may seem a trivial purpose, but to some, a touch of beauty and self-expression, however humble, is a need nearly as basic as shelter from the rain. Home is where we can be exactly who we are without holding back and without apology.  Those who live with us may not approve in every detail, but at least they’re not surprised. They’re used to us and that’s comfort beyond any measure of price.

And so I’m home.

Home is also the one place where we connect.  Where we love.  Where we yearn.  Yesterday I learned my nephew is having surgery one day this week (not sure which day) to determine if he has testicular cancer.  My sister’s best friend is being scanned and tested this week (again, not sure of the day) to determine exactly where her body is hiding some miserable life-altering cancer.  I also learned a musician friend and colleague has been diagnosed with an acoustic neuroma that will soon steal her ability to hear the music she so loves.  Today we received news that a golfing buddy of my husband was struck by lightning on the golf course yesterday and was airlifted to the Maricopa County burn unit in critical (but stable) condition.  Typically, he didn’t know what had happened or even what year it is, but he knew his current golf score!

Yes.  I’m home.  With all the mess and all the beauty that defines this tornado of a thing called home.  I traveled to the Emerald City, I won my award, I pitched my story, then I clicked my heels three times and now …

I’m home.

It occurred to me today that I completely missed an anniversary of sorts — the fourteenth anniversary of the removal of a brain tumor.  Kind of a big day in this little woman’s life.  I’ve never before missed marking the day – July 6th.  It’s now seven days past; I only just remembered this morning.

I’ve been distracted recently, though.  Distracted by cumulonimbus clouds that form themselves into sculptures of dragons and tall-hatted faces, giving our normally flat desert a sense of height and depth which keeps me fascinated for whole hours at a time.  I’ve been distracted by bunnies that hold tea parties in the yard across the street, twitching ears at one another and lunching on the little purple flowers that make the mistake of hanging low like dainty bunny dishes.  Distracted by the shape of sleeping doggies down the hallway leading to my writing room.  By Chaucer … and a tin of Medjool dates.  Yes.  I’ve been distracted of late.

It’s good I forgot my anniversary, though.  It means I’ve finally overcome the trauma.  I’ve at last reconciled myself with the little holdovers from brain surgery — making certain my legs are gathered correctly under me before heading down a flight of stairs; touching the chair with the backs of my knees before allowing them to fold downward, lest my backside ends on the floor rather than my intended target; combing my hair in such a way as to cover the scar that sits on my head like a girl’s headband; allowing myself grace and mercy for those small moments when I forget a word or I name something incorrectly.  The other day, I noticed our rose garden in full bloom.  Look at all the loves, I said to my husband.  I meant, flowers, but nevertheless, the word my brain selected was fairly appropriate.

So it’s all good.  Some things are okay to forget.

Still, when I remembered this morning, I made certain to send a kind thought to the brain surgeon who saved my life and helped me — after fourteen years — to continue to remain a member of a very select group of people whom I refer to as the “True Brainiacs.”

(If you’d like more information about brain tumors and such, see the ABTA tab at the left side of this page.)

We have a swimming pool in the backyard.  Don’t be jealous.  It’s a pain in the patookie!  Especially for Dan whose daily routine includes scooping, brushing, filtering, measuring, testing, muttering under his breath at the inhumanity of it all.  Monthly, the pool gets backwashed with all its innards cleaned, Vaselined and renewed.  Like I said, it’s a pain in the patookie.

Except … beginning in July when the pool becomes like bathwater; when the wifey pokes one toe in and proclaims it finally warm enough to luxuriate in its healing essence; when Scarlett the Golden Retriever considers it her private spa, spreading dog hair across its surface and down into its nether parts for the male human to pick, hair by hair, out of the pump; when Wilson the Labradoodle lounges poolside like some metrosexually groomed Sphinx.  When the pool actually gets USED.

This evening we swam.  Under a spreading red desert sky, we swam.  Plop.  Plop.  Plop.  Doggie feet breaking the surface,  our faces spread into smiles.  We swam.

When October hits and temperatures once again cause the pool to be just another water nuisance, Dan will once again spend his mornings muttering and fussing about.  Until then, I’ll be sporting the hair-in-a-ponytail, wet-dog look so prevalent in Phoenix.  The dogs will constantly be half wet, and Dan will at last find pleasure in keeping his family — his pack — in their daily swimming enjoyment.

It rained last night.  Great heaving drops filled with lightning and sound.  The dogs did well.  Dan and I were enthralled.  At one point, we had 167 lightening strikes in ten minutes.  It was spectacular!

I woke this morning wanting to paint my writing office a soft grey-green, like the desert gets after a rain.  Instead, I cleaned it.  Organized it.  I hung a large cork board on one wall where I can story-board my current novel.  Next to it, I hung a charcoal drawing of me done in New Orleans’ Washington Square before Katrina.  Before the Great Flood.

Then I moved the furniture in the den.

Then I painted my toenails.

Then I wished for more rain … only because the desert plumps and becomes beautiful with rain.

Waiting.  Here’s how you do it:

(1)  Go to the store, aimlessly walk the aisles.  Pick up a bag of potato chips, open the bag, stand in the aisle and eat one chip, put the bag in your cart.  Pay for it.  Throw the bag away on your way out.

(2) Lay on the living room floor with your dogs.  Consider shaving their hair off because it’s too hot in Phoenix to lay with hairy dogs.

(3) Stand in front of the thermostat.  Curse it for it’s inattentiveness to your needs.

(4) Wander.  Mutter.  Look at yourself in a magnifying mirror to see if you’ve gotten any new wrinkles.  You find one.  Mutter about it.  Wander again.

(5) Answer the phone.  Hello.  Have you heard anything yet?  No?  Okay.  Call me when you hear.

(6) Go back to the grocery store.  Buy another bag of chips.  This time, eat them all.  On your way home, wonder if Twinkies and Ripple still taste good together.

(7)  Stand in front of the phone.  Wait.  Wait.  Damnit, wait.

It’s Sunday, 10:30 a.m.  I’ve been awake and up since the sun was invented and I’m sure it must be time — somewhere in the world — for a glass of wine.  A GYNORMOUS glass of wine.  I’m settling instead for a Strawberry Yogurt and a good cry.  I haven’t been able to sleep and  tears come easily to the sleep-deprived, and wine sounds good to the helpless.

Three days ago my sister called with news that my nephew has a bad growthy thing in his private part.  A Lance Armstrong thing, they’re thinking.  He goes to the surgeon on Tuesday to schedule a biopsy and whatever else may be needed.  My nephew lives in Florida; I haven’t seen him since he was four years old and not allowed to have private parts.

My sister asked me to say a Novena right before she asked me why Catholics pray to folks who were most likely boiled in oil three thousand years ago.  I shrugged.  Beats me, I answered.  I told her I’d say a Novena, which I haven’t done since I did one once on a lark 20 years ago and got back just about what I gave it — not much.  This time I’ll give it something.  I dug out an old book of Saints and Novenas from the 1950s when Catholics were into that.  Women wore hats to church too, but that’s another story.  I thumbed through the pages looking for the Saint of Private Parts, but in the end settled on someone whose picture didn’t make him look all wild and googly-eyed.

I’m doing the Novena.

But mostly I’m thinking about a scared young man and his mother who can’t do anything but knot a hanky in her hands and ask her non-churchy Catholic sister to say prayers and light candles.  I’m so bad at this.  What I do better than anything is to Google about growths in one’s nether-region.  To educate myself about options and treatments.  To eat yogurt and wish it was a big old cup of wine.  To stare outside at a few clouds and wonder — IF I sent a good thought into one of them —  would it make it all the way from Arizona to Florida by Tuesday morning?  That’s what I’m good at.  Googling.  Staring at the sky.  Wondering.

But waiting for whatever news may come?  This is more than hard.

Here are my feet.  My happy, happy dancing feet.

I don’t love the UPS guy in any way like I love my husband, but yesterday I luuuved the UPS guy for delivering a NEW LAPTOP and I loved my husband more than describable for surprising me with it.  I suppose Dan felt guilty because he has a laptop with all its portability, while I’ve been fastened to the Big Boy computer in the front room where the summer daytime temperature reaches a thousand degrees Fahrenheit by nine in the morning and only escalates through the day.

But picture me now.  It’s morning.  I’m seated at the kitchen table with air conditioning fluttering across my shoulders.  Later, I might move in front of the TV with a cool glass of iced tea tableside.  This afternoon, you might find me at my favorite coffee joint.  You know, the one with the big tables and comfy chairs where I can join all the other peeps tapping at their laptops.

I’m trying very hard to keep my feet still, but every now and then, they simply break into the Happy Dance.  Kind of like that Hans Christian Andersen story, The Red Shoes, about a woman who can’t stop dancing.

Nah nuh nah naaah, Nah nuh nah naaah, Hey heeey, Nah nuh naaah.

P.S.  The picture above isn’t really of MY feet, but rather a photo courtesy of Brand X Pictures.