Life Beyond our Eyes (Republished with Revisions)

What I wouldn't give to see this incredible night visitor on an evening stroll through my woods. I hear them, and know they're there. But I have never come face to face with a great horned owl. Recently, an animal trainer came walking through those woods with me. We looked over the great pond that dips beyond the large rock in the back of yard. We scanned the old craggy trees, the half snapped pines, leftovers the recent series of storms. It was daylight, a typical gray day; the landscape was bleached with a coating of fresh snow. Colors were few; the hillside was pretty stark. But, to my imagination, the sights and sounds of the many creatures that populate the woods existed nonetheless. Faith is believing without seeing.

"I'll bet you have more than a few owls around here," he said. Woods, water, and open fields. Of course there were owls. How could there not be?

Today is the second day of March. My mind is filled with possibilities, the greening of spring to come. I smell it at times in a waft of air that comes through in the evenings when I walk my rather huge puppy around the yard. I hear it in the trees in the mornings as birds skitter to and fro and call to one another, more and more arriving each day. The light of a new dawn, reds and yellows, rays of great hope reach far into the morning sky. Faith is believing without seeing, I tell myself. Change...transformation is afoot. And yet, I struggle this year, and of course I know why. The rhythm of life has changed. I'm not sure what's hit me, and where in this year I am.

Two weeks ago, I had the great honor of enjoying the company of a group of third graders that I'd really only met once before. I'd planned a simple lesson in listening and writing, one with great possibilities, I thought. And then my good friend, the teacher I was stepping in for, handed me another plan. I'd told her not to feel compelled to write plans, I was happy to develop my own. But...she held in her hand Jane Yolen's wonderful, Owl Moon, which was and is an old favorite of mine. I love to entertain serendipity when it steps into my teaching life, so I grabbed it and moved with the kids to a cozy spot in the room.

"We have special blankets, you know," one pretty charming brown-eyed student said. Well, of course, I did know. Our students in Newtown have been gifted beyond belief!

"You'll definitely need them," I said. "This is a story that is perfect for snuggling."I was surprised when they came back and pushed into the blankets in twos and threes, I thought they'd each have one. This was so much better, I thought. I loved seeing them tucked into each other, their eyes eager and ready to read.

And so it began, a reading, like so many others, so many times before. My career has the wingspan of an owl, the years, but perhaps not the wisdom. I never tire of the books I read, each time I treat myself to that first-time reader experience, the love that each book and every story deserves.

I read this one as breathlessly as I could, treading lightly through the pages, setting a tone, so that we could walk through these woods with this father and daughter combination as if our skin had slipped inside theirs. You could've heard a pin drop.

"You know, Mrs. Lynch...someone did see a great horned owl the night it happened," a young boy said.

"It," chorused a few. They were immersed in the story, and didn't get it right away. But then, in seconds, they did. And of course, nothing else needed to be said.

It. Yes, we know. It. 

The room grew even more quiet.

"What do you think about that," he asked.

Me. He asked me. And he really wanted to know. So...in that serendipitous moment, I didn't think twice. I looked at him confidently. I knew then, and I know now what I believe. I was not about to shirk my responsibility here. I didn't go all preachy, and I didn't try to analyze them.

"Well, I think that Nature gives us wonderful signs, if we watch and listen and stay tuned in. I think that incredible owl sighting may have been a sign that everybody, all of them and all of us, are going to be okay."

Kids want simple answers and they're looking for hope. I don't want to promote false hope, but I do want to give them some of what they need. Simple, short and from the heart. That's it.

Since that day, I've had time to pause and wonder about my response. I've done all kinds of reading about the phenomenon of which I spoke. On the cold October day when my sweet sister was buried, the most beautiful yellow butterfly landed and lingered on her coffin. Every one of us saw it, and our eyes lingered there. To this day, we talk about that butterfly. Yellow was my sister's favorite color, it was our symbol of hope. I never researched any of that. I just chose to believe.

This owl...and the bluebirds that people have also been telling me about, are our symbols of hope. Our opportunity to look to the future with a generous spirit. The bluebirds are the symbol of transition and spiritual awakening, a craving for innocence, or so its told. The owl, we've often heard, was the symbol of wisdom. But recently, I've discovered so much more. In the Indian totem they represent a spirit that can "pierce beyond the veil that separates the physical world from the spirit world. They filter out light from the darkness. They remind us that both, light and dark, can exist at the same time."  

And then, there it was, again. On a cold, cold night in the middle of winter, just months after our world felt like it'd come to an end, the sound of an old owl pierced the darkness. And then another, a different owl answered the call. It filled me with that spirit of all that is and can be made right again. To me, nature itself gives us signs of the total vibrancy of life, the hope that can shine forth as we all move from the horrible IT to the wonderful US and THEM together, light and dark, living alongside one another, the physical world and the spirit world never separate, but together all along. Faith is believing, but not seeing.

We love all those that were left behind, separately, differently...the ones we knew, and the ones we never had a chance to know. Our lives now, are entwined in ways no one could've dreamed or expected. But we do live on, many of us in faith...in the knowing that what we see here and now is only a minuscule part of all that there is!

Chasing Rainbows...and Promises too!

Call me naive. Or...better yet, Pollyanna. But, I'm gonna keep on plugging for rainbows, for My Little Pony, for the Easter Bunny and even for good old St. Nick. And I'm even going to go on promoting the Jolly Green Giant and any other fantasy that has the American child at its heart. I've taken the Sandy Hook Promise. I've promised myself, I will welcome all people and their views, into my life. I will not be deterred.

Chasing Rainbows? You bet. And I think the rest of the world should take it up like it's a full-time sport. If you haven't seen our little starry-eyed Newtown singers, you need to! They are the promise of today, tomorrow, next week and all the years to come. They are the answer to all that's transpired in our sweet little town. They will be our future, and their eyes are focused on us.

Sandy Hook School was the place where I cut my first tooth in the teaching field...well, in reality, I did that a few years before in Bridgeport, CT, teaching hearing impaired kids. At that time, there was a horrible assault on a little sandwich place I frequented, a mob killing, they said. When I was in college, there was an armed robbery in a Subway sandwich shop...the gunman came in just as I made my way out. At the time, I blocked that out completely, and just moved on with my life. After all, this was Bridgeport. And everyone knew crime was a factor there. Horrible. I was twentyish, invincible, or so I thought. I put it outside myself and kept it there. That was how I dealt with my fears.

When I moved to Newtown, CT, I was literally chasing a rainbow. At the time, I had two kids, a dog, and a husband, trying hard to make it in his career. I had a third child and, like many, needed to re-enter the workforce to make ends meet. I was lucky enough to be hired in Newtown, and eventually find my way to that cream-puff school, tucked into a little nook in Sandy Hook. I loved every minute of my time there and so did my three kids!

I loved the parents who were also struggling, two breadwinners to make ends meet. We had the Jolly Green Giant Fair, an annual event with quilts and cake walks and a real giant that kids waited to meet much like they'd waited for Santa! Green footprints were painted along the drive, and as the bus pulled in, little eyes widened anticipating the Giant's arrival in Spring. Kids were thriving...there were cub scouts and brownies, sock hops and potlucks. Life was centered around our kids. And so it's been all these years.

After the recent events, the horror that was inflicted upon our little school...and more importantly the little kids and the wonderful adults who served them, the outpouring of love and good wishes, of luminaries and teddy bears, of crayons and chocolate kisses, the letters and cards...and the prayers, hope began to dig its way back into the heart of our community of Newtown. Intentions and ideals have begun to re-emerge. The Newtown Memorial Fund and the Sandy Hook Promise sprang forth to help our town rebuild. Therapy dogs and a torrent of social workers, counselors and school psychologists have populated our schools. And people here have begun to make a choice about how they will remember and honor those who died, and how they will begin to heal and rebuild their lives.

What is happening here is nothing short of a miracle. I'm not kidding. Like never before, the creative genius of a town is jumping on board. People are coming up with visions for that future. They're setting aside their own political beliefs, their need to be heard, their deep-rooted opinions, and they are opening their minds to what will be best for our kids. You see, here in Newtown, we're repainting our rainbows, and we're setting our sights on love. If nothing else happens here, we'll still know...that our kids watched us and saw that our hope could re-emerge and we could love one another in a way that would transcend this brutal mutilation...because even though the unthinkable happened, we will honor them always through our actions, not our words. And now, all we want for our kids is for them to know love, to hope and to regain that ability to feel safe, a day at a time, like never before.

And now? We need to transcend Newtown...and embrace all our children. Saftety is not a privilege, it is their right. We need to begin again all over, chasing rainbows in Chicago, in Bridgeport, in Los Angeles, in Boston and New York and Dallas, Texas too. Childhood is that one place where human joy and hope is born. Let our babies keep their fantasies. All kids everywhere are entitled to their wonder years.

~~In rememberance of my dear friend Anne...whose courage I never doubted for a minute! Not a day goes by...that I don't think of her and of them all, of the parents and the siblings, the neighbors and friends. Love is all I know, and that is how I choose to live my life for them.

Hanging on Dreams

I am a daydream believer. I busy myself in work-related minutia, but even in the midst of my most ultra-focused days, there are small spaces where my mind takes a small unaccounted for journey. I've always been this way. And thankfully now, I know I'm so not alone. Writers and storytellers, artists of all kinds are just like me. We live half our lives with our heads somewhere in the clouds.

If you tracked my random lapses back to my early classroom years, Mrs. Pastorini and Mrs. O'Grady and all the rest...they all had the same thing to say, 'Lacks focus...a hopeless daydreamer. Hard to keep her on track.' My poor dad always had to listen to that. But no matter what, he always believed in me. He encouraged me with his words and pointed me in the direction of my dreams.

At night, I'd race upstairs, hop into a warm bath and slip into my flannel jammies and wait. Sometimes I'd wait a good half hour lost in my little girl thoughts. My dad and his nighttime stories was what I was waiting for. When the waiting grew long, I'd hop out of bed, kneel up on my low window sill. I'd stare out at the moon and the stars and listen to the crickets below.

I'd think about how when I grew up I would have a little girl, and that little girl would have a horse she could ride every day. I'd think about making her grilled cheese sandwiches and pink lemonade. And I'd think about how some day I'd be a teacher, and I'd stand in front of a class and tell kids all kinds of stories, and how I'd teach them to paint and draw and write letters and words in their books.

And then, my waiting would end...and I'd hear my daddy's uneven footsteps on the stairs. My heart would just about beat outside of my chest. When he got to the landing, he'd say, "Is there a little girl waiting in there?"

I'd scurry under the covers, and bury myself deep underneath. I'd stifle the giggles and keep myself as quiet as a bug. My dad would come in and feel around on top of the covers...and then I'd just burst. There was no way I could keep it all in. He'd sit down on the bed and tell me his stories...of horses and fairies and places far, far away. He'd let me kneel up and feel his starchy collar and sniff his sharp-smelling cologne. I'd pull the pens out of his pocket and click the points in and then out. And when our  time was up and the storytelling was done, he'd tuck me in and pull the covers up under my chin. And I'd look into his eyes and wait. He'd get this little sideways half-serious grin on his face.

"So let me see now...who is the prettiest girl this side of the moon tonight?" My dad's brogue was thick...but hardly noticeable at that time to me.

"Just this side of the moon?" I'd say.
And of course, he'd rub his chin and uncross his leg. He'd shake his head and string me along.

"Well," he'd say, "I guess...I'd have to say the other side of the moon to be fair."

And then I'd play my part, "Well, me, of course!"

He'd wrap his arms around me and pull me in, and say..."Well, we knew that all along."

And then he'd be gone, down the stairs, taking them one at a time, until I couldn't hear him anymore, and I was left in the dark with my dreams...the horses and lemonade and pictures and notebooks filled with letters and words.

And today? There are no horses, but there have been babies and grilled cheese and lemonade. I've been telling my stories and teaching kids to understand the letters and words inside books. I've filled up notebooks upon notebooks with my own words and stories, too. And I've just about finished another manuscript. And I still have so, so many hopes and dreams.

I may not be the prettiest girl this side of the moon for real...my dad, after all, had a very prejudiced eye! But I do love to tell stories just like him. And because his belief in me was so very strong...I've held onto those well-imagined dreams!

If You Give a Mouse a Fribble...

Friendly's and Fribbles. Oh my gosh, the memories that conjures up inside my head. But when I think about Fribbles (mine were vanilla), I can't help but see the small squared sandwich, the hamburger too. That burger, to me, was something to die for with it's slightly red middle encased in a warm grilled cheese. Who thought of that anyhow? Marrying my two faves: the grilled cheese and the burger in one little warm house. Yum.

Today...MacDonald reigns. And honestly, it did back then when it was just emerging too. We had no burger joints, no shakes, there really was no fast food. It was all slow and freshly prepared and without a doubt much better for you. But then Friendly's came along, and the high school crowd jumped right in. Friendly's had booths, and you could linger over a shake, and that was exactly what we needed back then.

I think about all the high school dances and our trips to Friendly's and the Knotty Pine (Diner) too, and my friends, Debbie and Diane talking late into the night. I remember recapping the evening and almost never wanting to go home. I think about our mini-skirts and boots and our bell bottomed blue jeans, the music, the strobe lights and how giggly and fancy-free we were. In one short year, we'd be off at college and what an enormous shift that would bring.

The point of it all, though, for me as a writer, is the transition of thought to idea, of idea to emotion, of emotion to time travel and how the clear and authentic details resonnate in me. Emotion drives scenes, but details live in the underlayers beneath. Drilling for those strong, authentic details and tapping into the emotions that live there is always the hardest part for me!

I guess the lesson here, lies in the Fribble...not just any milkshake, because mine had a very wide straw. It was frothy and smooth with just the barest lump of vanilla cream (icemilk actually, I think). That Fribble, in its wide clear glass sat on the table...waiting between many long sips, while Deb and Diane and I pieced together all those moments of our life. And once that long, laughable slurp was taken, once we'd picked up our keys and headed home, we'd forged a formidable alliance that no boy, no other group of gossippy girls would ever want to deal with!

Another New Dawning: Keeping the Writing on Track

This morning, I sit here with my cup of hot coffee and I look out the window to see a fresh blanket of snow has covered the ground. I hear the plows out there scraping the roads, paving the way for the morning commute, but I'm not worried about that right now. I know I have an extra ninety minutes to write. Some mornings I journal, mostly to get anything that's playing in my head out there on the page. I want no distractions to defeat me in my work.

But this morning, I'm free of distractions...pretty much anyway. I did check in on school closings, and so I was aware of the morning headlines too. But I didn't linger. I had my assignment in mind.

Setting a deadline has been a great thing for me. It's given me a purpose and forced me to look at things I'd never looked at before: word and page count specifically. I never wanted to be so glossy, so caught up in the specifics of pushing forward like that with my book. One of my writing partners has been nudging me along, though. She's given me a deadline for the first time with this book. Last time we sat down together, I told her I didn't think our deadline was realistic. I mean really...the end of February? C'mon. I have a full time job to do.

She stood firm. I objected...you have this book almost written, I said. You know all your plotlines, your writing comes out perfect from the start. She laughed at me. Yeah, right, she said. Who has it all figured out, really?

I was thinking about that today...as I approached my own work. I realize the pitfall I'd taken and stayed in for years. The US and THEM theory. Others look so great, so polished, so complete. It's been my critic living large and well-inhabited in my brain. I haven't been working, really working on a regular basis, producing pages...I'd been back-tracking again, trying to polish and perfect. So today, as the dawn was breaking, I was pushing my seven not-so perfect pages out there. And I found, just like  I always have, that a lot of gifts come when characters are placed in an uncomfortable situation and allowed the time to interact. Tonight, I may change it up a bit...but tomorrow, I know, I've still got to push forward if I want to make some kind of reasonable point of completion on this.

Life, writing...go figure; an actual deadline would be the thing to get me unstuck! Progress, not perfection is just what I need.

A Welcome Stranger in the Woods

What will inspire you in 2012? Notice...I say 'will.' Are you thinking ahead, standing still or living in the moment like me? I like to live my life in minutes and hours, but sometimes even I have to plan ahead, pack a bag, take a leap and prepare for what's to come.

I've been told writing is like driving in a snowstorm. Sometimes you can only see as far as your headlights will allow. But more often, we can see inklings beyond the headlight's rays, and that is what we are called to do.

If I were to hold up the mirror to myself as a writer, I'd have to say, I've been forging ahead and standing still at the same time. Writing requires a deep well of unrelenting thought. Characters have to be wrestled to the floor, shook out and torn apart almost until they bleed. Sounds graphic and torturous, right? Well...the process itself is. I am haunted and enthused, delighted and annoyed and most often plagued by that awful gnawing doubt that keeps me paralyzed in procrastination, stuck in the quicksand of thought.

Right now, I'm forging ahead. I'm inspired because I've forced myself to revisit and remap my characters' goals, motivations and desires. Instead of writing into a snowstorm, tangible images and ideas have begun to emerge again. And unlike this beautiful stranger in the woods, the patterns and ideas are no longer a big surprise to me. So, just for today, I'm grabbing on...and letting that little bit of inspiration carry me!

Cynsations: Helen Hemphill to Serve as Director of Highlights ...

Cynsations: Helen Hemphill to Serve as Director of Highlights ...: Helen Hemphill is taking over the directorship of the Whole Novel Workshop for the Highlights Foundation in 2012 and has an amazing lineup...

I came across this posting today, and couldn't help but think about my time at Chautauqua last summer. I made so many connections with really special people, like-minded in a creative way. Helen Hemphill was my mentor that week and I was fortunate to learn a great deal from her. At the time, one of my point of view character's narrative was written largely in verse. Helen helped me to craft my writing  in short visual bursts, rather than stretching the narrative out in a thinner elongated way. She encouraged me to read and study Shark Girl, by Kelly Bingham, a colleague of hers from Vermont College. It's a wonderfully well-written novel, which apparently received a great deal of acclaim from the faculty there.

Since my time with Helen, I've come to gather all sorts of ideas and thoughts about my work. Over the course of the past year, I've taken all that I've learned and turned myself inside out for a bit. I've hunkered down and really tried to see what it is that I envision for my work. The character I'd written in verse, was not really resonating with me. I found she was sounding just a little too cryptic to me. So...back to the drawing board on that one. The good news is nothing in writing is ever lost. I know for sure that verse character has another home in another book that will inevitably have its day in the sun.

I highly recommend Chautauqua and the Highlights Foundation Whole Novel Workshops. The mentorship is strong, the workshops are deeply meaningful, and the food is beyond belief!