Joan Bauer's Journal

If

My water heater reached it's expiration date.  I never think about my water heater.  I don't go down in the basement, look at it, pat it, and think, ah, here's my water heater.  I had forgotten it was eleven years old, and had over-reached its ten year warranty.  But then I took a shower and there was no hot water, and it was a necessary shower, so I soldiered on, and of the many life lessons I learned that morning, this was the first:  A frigid shower is an excellent way to cut back on caffeine.   

So, after my heart rate had returned to normal, I called my husband at work, who had showered earlier than me, and I asked him if he'd had hot water.  Yes.  Go into the basement, he said, and check it.  Well, you know, I'm grateful for machines of all kinds, but I don't really know how to check them.  But I went down and there was water all over the basement floor because the water heater that I had ignored for years was now acting out, so I knew enough to call the plumber, Joe, and while I was waiting for Joe to come I thought about leaks and how we can't always know they're about to spurt out, but sometimes we can if we pay attention. I wondered what else was about to leak in my life, I wasn't sure, because leaks don't always announce themselves. But then Joe came.  Truly, I like Joe, he gets right to it, which is what you want in a plumber, but my old plumber back in Connecticut was a philosopher.  He saw that a leak wasn't just a leak, a clogged toilet was so much more than disgusting.  He had a theory on everything including why children throw toys in the toilet -- it's a call for help, he told me, they have unmet needs.  I'd always thought it was because they were sick of the toy, but this man had five kids, whereas I only had one who had always respected the boundaries of indoor plumbing. 

I needed a new water heater, and for it to get into the basement I had to find a key, which caused me to search through three drawers and find earrings and people's phone numbers and many other old keys. The key I was looking for was right there where my husband had said, the last place I looked, because I was sure he was wrong.  But the padlock had gotten rusty, so the door was harder to open, and then I wondered what other things in my life had gotten rusty, and several things came to mind.  I did get the lock to open, I did get a new water heater.  I scratched this down on an envelope, I suppose, in the end, leaks remind us to pay attention...and remember the if...

We all have those ifs: If I hadn't showered early, if I hadn't called my husband at work, if we'd been out of town, if Joe hadn't come right away.  And then I thought about the bigger Ifs: If I hadn't seen that growth on my grandmother's back. If I hadn't called my friend when she was sick and needed help.  If I hadn't gone on a last minute vacation with my friend, I never would have met my husband. If I hadn't gotten nauseous, absolutely nauseous, when a well-known pediatrician said my daughter needed serious surgery, and if we hadn't gotten that second opinion that said she didn't...well...there are too many to mention. There's so much to be grateful for in this good, complicated life. 

Feathers

My good friend gave me five peacock feathers and I have them in a vase in my office.  I'm always stunned when I look at them because the color and the design of each is distinctive.  I picture a peacock strutting around, tail open wide for all the world to see.  I've always felt these birds get a bad rap for being proud and haughty -- I think they've got healthy self esteem.  They know they've got something beautiful -- and to keep it hidden, I mean, what good is that?  It reminds me of when I was younger and battled crippling self esteem issues to the point where I refused to take part in the high school talent show.  I was asked to give a speech I'd done in speech class that everyone thought was very funny.  But, no, I said, I couldn't.  And the night of the talent show?  I sat in my room kicking myself. 

There's a fine line between pride and confidence.  I make lists constantly and one of the ones I make every now and then is called, THINGS I'M GOOD AT.  I don't have to keep a THINGS I'M BAD AT list, because those are written across my eyeballs.  But when I pay attention to to the things I can do well, I have a much better day and according to my husband, I can be downright adorable.  That's letting my inner peacock come out, just a little, although it irks me that male birds get all the bright plumage. 

I'd feel differently about peacocks if they were constantly preening in front of mirrors and sucking in their stomachs, but actually, the thing of greatest beauty they possess is behind them. That puts things in perspective. So, shake out your feathers, strut your stuff a little, and feel good about your very best parts.  

 

 

Vroom

I have a photograph of a baby duck that my daughter took a few years ago.  I was with Jean at the Brooklyn Botanical Garden when she caught the magic moment of a duckling swimming past lily pads, leaving a ripple in the water behind her (I've decided the duck is a girl).  And this is one small, determined duck, clearly on a mission, going where no duck has gone before.  Jean calls the photograph "Vroom" -- an excellent, action word.  Those who vroom do more than move forward or run, they rev their engines and blast off.  And a duck who vrooms is a very special beast.  Ducks speak to me -- metaphorically, that is. Years ago, I ended a book with a duck who entered the last scene and showed what it meant to be a survivor.  

I have put my new book to bed, Close to Famous (available in February 2011), and have begun another novel.  Perhaps that's why I am thinking about the creative path ahead of me.  I keep wanting it to be straight and clear -- it never is.  But, I still must begin with as much power and surety as I can muster. The German poet Goethe wrote, "Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.  Boldness has genius, power, and magic in it."  Power is released when we start something -- it's less about feeling, less about inspiration, it's about getting in the water, stretching our wings, and taking off across the pond.  We've been made for that, you know.

 

From the Heart

I had one of those moments the other day when past and present morph together.  We live in a house built in 1875, and the man who owned it before we did and restored it himself, was driving down our street.  I didn't recognize him at first. He looked at me and I looked at him and then I remembered.  My husband and I invited him in to see the place, and I wish I could describe his face as he was walking up the steps.  I apologized profusely because the house was cluttered, and I explained why it was cluttered, and that I had big plans to do something about it, but he didn't care about that.  And really, I didn't either.  

He stood in the hall and looked up.  "I almost got rid of that molding," he said.  "We had such trouble making this work."  We love it, I told him.  He walked into the living room, shaking his head and grinning: "You wouldn't believe what this room looked like -- we had so much smoke blowing out the window when we were doing the repairs, the fire department came."  He walked to the fireplace and put his hand on the mantel.  In room after room, he told us the story of fixing up the house -- the parts that were easy, the ones that were hard.  He was honest, too -- "I should have done that better," he said in a few places.  It was an emotional time.  He still loved this house -- he'd put his heart into it.  We got to the guest room and that room is always filled with memories of how my friend came and helped me decorate it -- she had her van filled with wonderful things -- what a lovely, long weekend that was.  We talked about our families and what the last seven years have been like since he sold the house to us.  And when he left, I thought, his heart will always be in this place.  Any time we put our heart into something, I think a part of us is carved into the work.  What a colossal difference that makes.

The Grind

Years ago my daughter had a rock polishing set. We put the rocks in a canister, plugged it in, and it would turn them over and over, endlessly and loudly. The worst part was that the process took two weeks (not mentioned in the ad campaign) -- two weeks of incessant grinding.  After a few days of this, I was becoming a desperate person. We put the machine in the basement, but I could still hear the grind. We finally put it in the garage, covered it with something large to dull the noise, and let it go to it's heart's content. At the end of two weeks the rocks were smooth. 

It makes me think about tough times -- the kind that grind on and on. Frustration builds, the pain gets louder, it seems like nothing is happening -- surely, the process is just there to make us crazy. But there is smoothing going on, too; there is change happening, if we are patient enough to wait out the process. And all of that makes me think about love -- not the Valentine variety with hearts and chocolate. But the kind of love that grows between people in hard times. True love takes time to get polished. I don't think Hallmark wants us to think about that this week, although there's something to be said for a Valentine that reads:  THIS HAS BEEN A LONG, LOUSY MONTH, BUT I STILL LOVE YOU. And so, I wish you much love this year -- the kind that's made more beautiful by the ever-present grind.  

First Step

There's a bakery I pass occasionally with a sign in the window that reads: YOU KNOW YOU WANT ONE. As marketing approaches go, it's brilliant because, of course, I do want one -- actually, I want two or three. And the recognition of this makes me want one even more. So I stand across the street and have this war within myself. Do I cross over -- and it doesn't work to tell myself, I'm just going to look in the window. If I get close to the window, there's no turning back. There are often several women across the street looking at this window, too. The lure of it is like a clarion call -- come closer, you know you want one.

I wonder how I would react if the sign read:  YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO EXERCISE. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO GET UP EARLY. YOU KNOW YOU WANT TO READ MORE; TAKE A CLASS; KEEP YOUR OFFICE NEAT; PUSH THROUGH YOUR FIRST DRAFT, BLOG DAILY (OR ALMOST DAILY); GET TO KNOW THAT NEIGHBOR ACROSS THE STREET; VOLUNTEER; GO ON A TRIP WITH FRIENDS; STOP COMPLAINING FOR ONE WEEK; START BELIEVING IN YOUR AUDACIOUS DREAMS.  

Sometimes dreams, especially the big ones, can be so hard to embrace. Who are we, anyway, to think we could ____. But, I have a short test to determine if a big dream is genuine. Have you had it for years? Do you keep giving it up and it keeps reappearing like a cupcake in a bakery window? Would your dream hurt anyone? If so, think again. Would it use your gifts? What's the first step you can take to test it?  

Okay, take that first step.

Put Me Back

It was the last day of a three day writing conference. I had time for one last, quick question. A shy boy in the back raised his hand: "Mrs. Bauer, looking back over your entire life, do you have any regrets?" Whoa! How do I answer that out of the hundreds, thousands of regrets I'd piled up over the years? I'd even managed to goof up a couple of times that very morning. He waited. "Well, I guess one of the biggest," I told him, "is that I always wanted to be a entirely different person. I was a sensitive, creative kid and I couldn't take satisfaction in that. I was always looking in other people's mirrors to see how I was doing. I kept using the wrong markers, kept comparing myself with people I wasn't like at all."  

I suppose this is one of the reasons I write the kinds of characters I do -- not perfect kids, but ones, for the most part, who have figured out there's something they can do that has meaning for them and for others. I'm wired to fall into the old hole, but a few years ago I had a new headshot taken and the photographer said he could touch it up just a bit. Just a bit sounded okay, until I saw the finally retouch. He had given me perfect skin, taken out my laugh lines, adjusted my teeth, I looked fifteen years younger. I looked like an actress on a soap -- any actress, actually. I'd lost my personality, my character. "Put me back," I told him. He was shocked. "Put me back. That's not who I am." I cling to that memory as I walk through this world bombarded by retouched images.  It's so easy to turn something real into something it was never meant to be.  

Dancing with Words

When I was in school, I wrote all the time -- short stories, essays, poetry, songs, greeting cards. I had a few poems published in my high school literary journal. I was on fire with the love of writing. Over the years, sometimes that fire has gone out. It's usually when I'm too busy or too stressed to remember that I love what I do. Deadline pressure can kill the flame, wanting more to happen than is realistic always drops me in a sinkhole. But here's what I've learned.

    To be a writer of any age, you have to love words.

    So play with them, toss them around and see what they can do.

    Be a crazy kind of reader, too, the kind who gets so excited about a certain sentence that you just have to read it out loud to someone.

    Think about stories -- why they work and why they don't.

    Take risks with your writing.

    Know your characters until they seem real -- actually, they have to be real (almost) because there's a point in the process where they will begin talking to you. This does not mean you need medication. It means you need to listen, and eventually, you'll learn to talk back.

    Develop your style and your voice. An artist paints with a brush, you paint with words.

    Don't be discouraged by criticism for too long.

    Editing is the key to the writing process. Listen to it. Be challenged by it.

    Revision is your friend.

    Keep practicing -- it's like playing scales on the piano, like batting balls over the net in tennis, like rehearsing lines for a play -- the better you get at writing, the more fun it is.

So many things can put out the flame. A big one for new writers is focusing too much on getting published. I had someone write me and announce, If I don't get published I'm going to throw up! It feels like that sometimes, I know. Being published is great, but don't make it an all-consuming goal. You'll lose the joy of dancing with words. Keep dancing!

**Adapted from Joan Bauer, TEEN READS: Student Companions to Young Adult Literature by the great and glorious Alleen Pace Nilsen, Greenwood Press.

    

Cracked Pots

My daughter Jean called the other day and said, "Mom, I have a metaphor for you." Instantly, my writer's heart was stirred because Jean doesn't mess around when it comes to a metaphor. She and her husband had just been to an exhibition of Japanese ceramics in D.C. where she learned of the "golden seams," a special method created by Japanese 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 gold. The result is wonderful, as the golden repaired cracks make the piece seem more unique and valuable.

I began to think of the places in my life where I felt cracked and broken; places I just wanted filled in so no one could see there had been an injury. And yet, what I've learned from dealing with those cracks, injuries, disappointments, setbacks, and times of grief and discouragement is far more than I've ever learned from any time of ease.

I guess without my knowing it, they'd been sealed tighter and stronger with a bit of gold. And gold doesn't just show up, it has to be discovered, then mined, then melted by a torch in a place so hot it's called the crucible -- that's what filters out the impurities. Then there's more time in the heat, a cooling off, and, finally, a hardening. 

May we look at our cracked pots with new eyes, celebrate the golden seams, and be colossally grateful. 

Going Deeper

A few birds are singing in my yard and I'm thinking, easy for you to chirp away -- have you seen the headlines? My yard is covered with snow from our big storm. I've got work to do to get ready for spring and I don't much feel like it. I had big dreams for my garden this year -- I was going to bring in a landscaper and get an arbor built. With the economy, that's not going to happen. For a minute I think nasty thoughts about greedy bankers and how we're all paying for the monumental money mess they've created.  

This is a time when we need to adjust. Work is changing, life is changing. It's a lot like winter -- bare branches on bare trees, everyone waiting for the ice to melt. But I like to think that underneath the surface of our lives is a place that is teeming with life and dreams and new beginnings. The biggest trees have the biggest roots. The trees that withstand the fierce winds and storms have roots that plunge deeper under ground. It's easy to look at the world right now and not think much at all about thriving. We're surviving, we're adjusting, we're making do, we're disappointed, we're angry, we're scared. We've never faced something like this before and most of us don't feel ready.

But maybe we are. I try to think back on what I've faced in my life. My dad was an alcoholic -- I learned to separate myself from his disease and still love him. I was a waitress -- I learned to smile when I was irritated and survive the extreme demands of breakfast rush when I was the only waitress who showed up. My dad died tragically -- I learned to keep going. I've moved from place to place, overcame a serious car accident, said no to toxic relationships, dealt with great disappointments, kept believing when I was hopelessly stuck on a writing project, forgave people I never thought I could. I've learned how to live in New York City during and after 9-11. 

You've got your stories, too. We need to remember them and tell them to ourselves and the people around us as we go forward. We've not seen a world like this, that's true. But that could be said of living through the Sixties, or 9-11, or whatever personal tragedies we've faced. The headlines are grim, but we're not wimps. We've got serious roots, and thank God for them. So let's stretch them even deeper and stand strong against the storm. We did it before, we can do it again.