Joan Bauer's Journal

Merry, Merry

    My email is clogged with last minute offers from companies who swore up and down that their free shipping ended at midnight last night, but now they've reconsidered.  My house is a mess and in four hours it cannot be a mess -- it cannot.

    I'm not sure about this one present I bought. I hope the gift card I got for another doesn't seem impersonal.  I was at a store where a salesperson wanted to take the sweaters I had gathered and put them at the register, and I said no -- I'm not sure I want them, but this store is filled with desperate shoppers and someone might take them and then where will I be?  My To Do list with the vast number of things that will not get done has Ha Ha!!  written across it. I didn't bake this year -- I feel bad about that.  And, really, I shouldn't be writing this blog because I have to get one more gift.

    My heart is racing as I rush through the world. I love this time of year.  I love Nat King Cole singing in the stores and the Salvation Army ringing the bells, I love the wrapping, and I actually learned that it is possible to wrap a gift when you have misplaced all four pairs of your scissors.  You use a steak knife, and, depending on your personality, your teeth. I mean, who knew?

    It's Christmas -- the lights are on, the grace is amazing, the chorus of angels is singing.

    Merry, Merry Christmas, friends!

    May the Light of this season warm your hearts and shine bright in the year to come.  

Thoughts on Hope: from my speech at ALAN

    I Googled "hope" the other day.  I found a special hope formula for 70% off, a Hope TV Channel, a Hope Finance Program, Bob Hope, an official Hope website, and Wikipedia really went to town on hope, talking about the history of it, how to measure it, recognize it...
    There are millions of "hopes" to click on.
    I'm not sure what that will do for a kid who's close to the kind of despair that's a game changer; or a kid who's being abused at home or somewhere else; or a young reader who has a colossally dark secret that's crushing her; or a boy who feels close to doing something dangerous because he's got so much anger inside; or a regular kid who feels confused and wants to try to understand a little bit of what you do with a conflicted heart.
    It's so easy to toss hope around like a beach ball.  "Wheee!  Here it comes!"  And it just so happens that last week when I started working on this speech, we had a tsunami of complications hit our family.  It was, in a few of those places, quite easy to not feel too hopeful about much good coming out of these things.  In the midst of that, I sat down to work on these remarks, and as I did, I remembered an image that has so captivated me -- and I think it's a true visual of how a try to breathe hope into my characters lives.  And into my own life as well.
    In Asian pottery, there is a method called "golden seams," specially created by craftsmen to mend cracked ceramics. Instead of trying to match the color of the pot to make the crack less visible, they decided to flaunt the flaw by repairing it with lacquer mixed with powdered, flecked gold. It dries bold and shiny, the cracks fill in with gold. Brokenness made beautiful and more valuable.  
    That's what I hope to do -- use gold paint around the broken parts.  Humor certainly is a way to help life go down easier.  In my novel, Almost Home, a girl loses her home -- she's there when the sheriff comes.  How can lightness come in the midst of that?  Her mother is a southern belle wannabe who insists that her daughter always write the perfect thank you note.  And Sugar Mae Cole is a poet and she writes about wanting a home that won't go away with people who really think she's something.
    In Close to Famous, a girl who simply can't read decides to give it one more try.  In Hope Was Here, a girl wants to live with hope so much she changes her name to Hope as if to say to the world, "Call me what I want to become."  Seeds of hope planted in a story.  A touch of gold paint to illuminate the cracks and make them beautiful.
    Who are these kids we adult writers dare to create, as we limp back into our pasts and dust off the boxes we've put away?      
    Where do they hide their wounds?  
    What's their biggest strength?
    What's the thing about themselves they just can't see?
    What are the rules they live by?
    How are those rules challenged?
    How do they find their voices in this very broken world?
    What do they long to see made better?  Ah, that's the door to their hope.  Right there.  
    Now, how do they get on the road?  How do they put shoe leather to their dreams?  How do they learn to talk the talk a little, step outside their comfort zone, and go for it?  
    Here's the lovely thing about hope, it's really quite selfless, it's happy to take a back seat in lots of situations.  It partners in all kinds of moments and doesn't take the glory.
    Take courage -- you don't step out and do something brave without a hope that it could be better.
    Or truth -- you don't speak the truth without hoping someone will get it.
    And my heart goes to Hope Yancey of Hope Was Here, this courageous girl who wears her name like a flag.  Sometimes that flag crashes to the ground, but she's willing to have it be her identity -- that's how she wants to live.  
    We need to show kids what living with hope looks like, how it hides in all kinds of places -- how it's not really meant for exceedingly happy times.  Hope is built for the open sea with the sharks and the wind that's about to knock over your boat.  Let's not relegate it to a Hallmark card with kittens wearing sunhats -- let's take this thing out on the open road and see what it can do.  And if we're teaching a book, let's look for the hope and point it out, and ask kids, Where do you see it?  Where is hope in the building blocks of courage, sensitivity, and friendship?
    Hope is in the soil.  You dig in a garden in the spring and there are the earthworms dancing, they're preparing the earth.  Man, it's a good thing!  That's what hope does; it's there underneath when we don't even think about it, waiting for us to discover it, waiting to make our lives richer and better, waiting to reach out a hand to a kid who is more broken than we could ever know.  
    Years ago, I spoke in Youngstown, Ohio -- a girl came up to me; she took my hand and started to cry.  "Mrs. Bauer, I just need to tell you.. I read your book..."   She couldn't finish.  I was getting ready to speak to a group about humor in my novels, and now this girl was overcome by tears.     
    "Honey, tell me -- "
    "I think I read it 50 times.  I had leukemia, I read it every time I had chemotherapy.  Mrs. Bauer, I don't have leukemia anymore."
    Now I'm crying and the humor crowd is coming in.
    But, that was okay.  
    Hope is a glorious mess of inconsistencies.  It shows up places it has no right to be: at gravesites and horrific accidents -- how dare thing thing come?   And yet it does, sitting down on the couch with sorrow and pain and depression and lost love and terminal illness and anger and so much, so much.  We ignore it at our peril!   And here's what we tell the kids -- here's what we show them in our stories.  Hope isn't a feather,  it's an anchor.  It's not a butterfly, it's a 900 pound gorilla that's come to throw it's weight around.  It's the golden seams glistening off the paintbrush of a gifted artist outlining the cracks and the brokenness and saying, Look how it can be put back together -- more beautiful, more unique -- shining out bold and true.    
    So, we can say to trouble when it turns out the light:  "Go ahead.  Give it your best shot.  Guess what?  I glow in the dark and I am beautiful!"
    Hope is a game changer.
    May our eyes be open in new ways to the young people we teach and mentor.  And may we hold this hope out to them so they can see ahead to a better day.

**This speech was recently publihed in the ALAN Review Fall 2014

 

The Eggs

I adore eggs -- I eat them, I collect them. I love what they symbolize -- new beginnings. And every now and then I'll open a book or a drawer and an egg will be there. Not the chicken variety -- the small ones I've cut out of paper and written on when I was stuck.

I want to be a writer, but it's not happening.

My daughter's stomach keeps hurting. What do we do?

I am so angry at (fill in the blank)...

Then I tuck that egg away as a prayer, as a hope for things to be made right. I'd read of this small way to deal with concerns and anxieties years ago. What is so wonderful about finding an old egg, is that it doesn't stink at all -- time after time I've smiled and seen how the problem was resolved. 

It is not possible to finish this book!!!!!!!!!

Sure it is. My 12th novel, TELL ME, just came out this fall.  May we find the eggs we've tucked away and remember how far we've come.

My Toe

A few days ago I stubbed my toe, which hardly seems like the stuff of blogging, but then it turned purple and I limped a little, and it hurt a little, but I had things to do, so I kept limping and it got better and I thought -- ah, Joan, see, you didn’t have to get an x-ray.  These things work themselves out. 

The next day I overdid it and my toe started to hurt and I started thinking of dire toe problems and rethought that x-ray, but life got complicated again, and I got to the walk-right-in-emergency-care-office after it closed.  By now I felt like my toe had swelled to the size of a zucchini.  I mentioned this to my husband who said, “It’s the size of a baby carrot, like always.”  “Maybe something profoundly grim is happening inside, “ I said.  “You know, some kind of intense clotting.”  My husband touched the purple parts of my toe, and said, “No, it’s not. Try not to think about it.” 

So I thought about an article I’d read about procrastination that suggested that people hyper focus on the small stuff when they are actually avoiding the big stuff.  And I wondered, since a toe isn’t all that big, if there was some deep, all-encompassing thing that I was avoiding?  I decided to make a list, and came up with four pieces of big unfinished business. This caused my toe and the one next to it to begin to throb.  Then the big toe on my other foot began to ache in solidarity as I was forced to look at my life.  And being a writer on deadline, it occurred to me that some day I could use this in a story. It’s just so encouraging to see where a toe can take you.

 

September 11th

The strongest emotions we have as people are hate and love.  Both, if we open ourselves to them fully, will change us and the world around us.  Of the two, I believe love is the stronger, although it might not make nearly as much noise as hate and it certainly won't get as many headlines.  Today in New York is as beautiful a day as it was twelve years ago.  I'm in my garden.  I love working with flowers.  I've come to believe that beauty is in this world to remind us of the good.  I pull down a high branch with huge pink blossoms and look at the bright center of these flowers, the petals still sturdy in September.  I think about the September eleventh of twelve years ago.  I can't capsulize the time, that would trivialize it, but if one theme has stayed with me all these years it's about being  a peacemaker.  Not someone who just loves peace -- we all love the absence of conflict -- but someone who rolls up their sleeves and says I'm going to get in there and try to make a difference.  Sometimes hope feels a bit out of reach, we have to pull it down and look at it closely.  Today, may we do that.  Pull it down, look at it square and work with all our hearts for a better, more beautiful world.  

 

My Pseudonym

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm letting the world know that my next novel will be written under a pseudonym -- either J. K. Bowlings or Erasmus Breach, I haven't picked the name yet, but it's best to speak the truth now because in this news-in-a-nanosecond/Wiki leaks age, someone will find out.  Surely, we all know this.    

It's possible that Nordstrom's would find out first -- prior to this AM, I'd not thought of Nordstrom's as a key info source, but according to the NY Times front page article, Attention, Shoppers: Store is Tracking Your Cell, it appears that Nordstrom's cares so much about who walks into their stores that they were gathering cell phone data on everyone.  

I discussed this pseudonym issue with my daughter who said, "Mom, it would kill you for people not to know you wrote a book." She's right, I suppose, but there's something quite lovely about cloaking one's literary self in a cape and writing, writing as if it were your first ever book.  But growing up Lutheran as I did, I think the guilt would kill me, and the advance would not be as big, and as Abraham LIncoln said, "No man has a good enough memory to be a successful liar."  And if I was in the presence of someone who had read the pseudonymous novel and was unfairly critiquing it -- I would have to Say Something. Silence would not be an option.   

It's too bad that you just can't slap a pen name on a novel without having to build up the ruse. I thought of spelling my name backwards as a fun party joke, and Naoj Reuab does sound like a fascinating character, but here I am.  Joan.  Writing away.  I feel so much better coming clean. 

**Here's the link to the Times piece.  

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/15/business/attention-shopper-stores-are-tracking-your-cell.html?ref=todayspaper

 

Father's Day: Episode 1 "The Gerbil"

I was looking under my couch trying to find my glasses, when I remembered a time, maybe 25 years ago, when my daughter's gerbil Lassie escaped. We'd looked everywhere for this rodent to no avail and Jean had left for first grade in tears.  

"If you find her, you'll call the school, right?"  I promised I would.  Jean sniffed, "Because she's little and can't fight back."  

I stepped over the lettuce I'd put on the floor as gerbil bait and looked at my husband who was lying miserably on the couch.  The day before he'd had his tonsils removed and you know how these things go.  It occurred to me that Lassie might be holding out for the good stuff. I added endive to the lettuce on the floor and heard scuffling under the couch my poor husband was on.  I knelt by the couch, looked underneath, peered into little gerbil eyes and actually said, "I've got endive."  Lassie considered this, then scurried out.  I tried to grab her and missed, but Evan, thinking quickly, scooped her up.  Lassie, thinking quickly, bit Evan's thumb through to the bone, causing Evan to shriek in pain, his tonsillectomy so wretchedly raw. Into the cage Lassie went with the endive as Evan flopped on the couch holding his throat.  I called the school and in one of the great moments of education the principal got on the loudspeaker and announced to every classroom K to 5:  "Jean Bauer, your father has found your gerbil."  

You can't ask for more than that from your elementary school, or from a father for that matter.  Happy Father's Day, Evan!  You always get the job done.  

A Different Mothers Day

I’m in Chicago, it’s Mother’s Day weekend.  I won’t be with my husband and daughter on Sunday, and my mom died a few years ago, I’m here for auditions for the reading of SQUASHED The Musical, the most fun new venture -- a musical of my first novel, SQUASHED, the book that got me started in YA, the book I wrote after a car accident, neurosurgery, pain, and absolute despair.  I didn’t know what I was doing writing that first story! I’d never written a novel, I hurt like crazy, I was unsure, but my character Ellie Morgan -- she was sure.  I heard her voice, I let her show me, I gave myself to her story, and let her quest to grow the biggest pumpkin in Iowa be my quest for doing something big and bold.  SQUASHED was wonderfully reviewed, and now it’s got a new voice, a musical voice, and I’ve found my music after all these years.

I was surrounded by serious music growing up -- my mom was a jazz pianist -- that woman could swing. She had such a gift, such a love for it.  My sisters and I danced around the dining room table as Mom played.  I’m convinced there’s a great jazz band up in heaven.  I played the flute and Mom and I would play duets -- some of my best memories were standing at the piano doing that.  And here I am with this musical in the works and she’s not here.  It’s the one hole in the show.  I know, she’s in the soil of it, I know she handed me her love of music like a baton.  She told me to study the piano -- I didn’t listen -- why didn’t I?  But I’m listening now -- I need to get better on the piano, so much better, but every now and then I’ll play a deep bluesy chord and I know that my mom played that chord with everything she had.  

It’s easy to hold back on trying something bold and new -- oh, I’m too old, or too busy, or not old enough, or whatever.  For years I had carpel tunnel and couldn’t play an instrument, but those days are over, and when the stirrings came a few years ago to start writing songs, I could hear the melodies in my head, and I stepped out, so cautiously at first.  I found the nerve to sing one of those songs for a musician friend.  I waited for his eyes to glaze over, but they didn’t.  I waited for him to back out of the room when the song was over.  He didn’t do that either.  He encouraged me.  Keep going, keep at it, you’ve got something.  We need encouragers in our lives!  My husband, my greatest encourager, wouldn’t let me quit.  Keep going.  Okay!  I felt bolder and now here I am about to listen to singers audition for the SQUASHED reading with my collaborator, Jeff Bouthiette, head of Second City’s music training program. We wrote this show together.  

I can see my mother grinning, pounding out the beat with her mighty left foot, giving herself to the music.  You’ve got to give yourself to a thing, and let all it is and all you can bring to it come out.

How very cool to have a mother who taught me that.

When It Hurts

I had a dumb accident two weeks ago,  browning a chicken in a 450 degree oven; my wrist touched the heating element and...well...it was a bad, bad burn.  I iced, covered it with antibiotic cream, non stick bandages, picturing the scar that would come. Day after day I slathered it with ointment, kept it covered, protected, so protected. 10 days passed, it wasn't healing. My pharmacist looked at it: "You have to take the bandage off, Joan.  It needs air to heal."  I was afraid to do that, afraid it would get wounded again somehow, but I took the bandage off and in one day the scab formed, the redness reduced.  Each day it's gotten better.  And I thought of the hurts we get in this world, physical and otherwise -- sometimes we overdo the medicine and the bandaging, we don't want the air to get anywhere near the injury, but getting out there again can be the best thing for that.  That's when the real healing begins.

This Week, Mom

I started crying for no apparent reason yesterday.  Was it the mess in the kitchen?  Not enough to warrant tears. Was it was concern about someone I love? I didn't think so. But of course, it was Palm Sunday, the beginning of Holy Week, the week my mom and I shared more uniquely than any other.  She died a few years ago, and there's something about this time when the shadows of the years, and the decapitated chocolate rabbits, and the awful Easter hats, and the music, the glorious music seem to come and sit with me, just like my mother would sit at the piano and I would grab my flute and we would play Easter hymns together.   

I found a tiny painted box that she'd kept in her dressing table -- in it are odd buttons she'd been meaning to sew back on.  The things we mean to do.  It's good if they can be contained in a small, painted box -- we know where they are at least -- when they're all over the map of our lives, we try to grab at them, but there isn't time to do it all, to have it all, to sew it all back on. 

This week, Mom, I remember your beauty, I remember how whenever I would start a new novel you would pick up the phone and ask, "What are you going to do to the mother this time?" I remember your brilliance as a jazz pianist, you could have gone pro, but you became a teacher to take care of us.  I remember how you went back to grad school to get your masters degree and sat near the piano and did your homework wearing earplugs.  I remember how you celebrated the seasons, no matter what, and how Easter was your most happy day.   

I suppose every button has a story, every Easter egg that has been lost for years and suddenly appears behind the sofa has a tale to tell of overcoming, I suppose that no one can tell the full story about one's  mother, we never get it all. How could we?  But this I know -- it is a colossal blessing to be the child of a survivor who struggled with everything she had to become a prevailer.  This week, Mom, I'm particularly remembering that.