To the Maple Grove Fire Department: Heartfelt thanks for your heroism tonight.

My neighbors across the street lost their home to a devastating fire early this morning. As my husband, my daughter, and I stood outside, watching the fire rage, more and more neighbors stumbled out of their doorways (most in their pajamas), my daughter said, as she often does, precisely what I was thinking: “I always see this on TV, people standing around watching a fire burn, and wonder, ‘Why are they doing that?’, but now that I’m standing here, I think I understand it–it’s so terrible, so awful, but I can’t stop looking at it.”

So terrible, so awful, indeed.

I have a terrible cold, and had taken 2 Nyquil before going to bed. Normally, I’m a very light sleeper, but I heard nothing. What awakened me was that I was having trouble breathing from my cold and my throat was aching, so I got up to get a drink and try to clear my head.

In the bathroom, I could see colored lights flickering on the blinds, and hear voices yelling outside. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating (did someone put LSD in my Nyquil?), but when I peeked through the blinds, I could see emergency lights flashing in front of my house.

I raced down the stairs and looked out the front window: the house across the street was engulfed in flames. There were fire engines and police cars scattered everywhere; the street looked as though a giant had been playing Rescue Heroes and had left his toys where they lay. My hands flew to my mouth in horror, and I raced back upstairs to our bedroom and woke up my husband.

“Eric! Wake up! The neighbors’ house is burning! It’s burning!”

He sprang out of bed and followed me downstairs. The two of us stepped outside to find out what was going on. Terror was gripping my heart as I searched the darkened silhouettes of the “civilians” wandering the sidewalks watching or huddled in silent, stricken groups on the corners. Were they okay? Had they gotten out in time? Thankfully, we found out almost immediately that the family was safe, and that the fire department had also evacuated contiguous neighbors for safety.

But I couldn’t tear my eyes away from the flames. They were so terrible, so much brighter and fiercer than anything I could possibly have imagined–and so incredibly swift. Within minutes, the peaked structures of the roof were gone; the windows of the ground floor of the home were flaring a blinding, bright blue–an unearthly light I’d never seen before which left me shaking in my slippers.

We, the neighbors, watched helplessly as the firefighters battled the blaze, and shared bits and pieces of knowledge we’d managed to glean from others, trying to answer the questions that were racing through all of our minds: Was the family safe–always the first question asked by newcomers joining the huddles. How did this happen? What started it? Did their fire alarms wake them? Do they need anything–blankets, clothes, a place to shower or stay?  What can we do to help?

The smoke was thick and viscous–almost a living entity itself, somehow separate from the fire. Even now I can smell it on my clothes, my hair.

I was worried about our two sons, soundly sleeping in their bedrooms–not that they were in danger, because they weren’t at any time, thank God–but I was worried that if they awakened alone in our house, if they heard the sirens and the firefighters’ yells, saw their windows glowing orange and yellow from the flames across the street, noticed the flickering red and blue lights flashing patterns across their ceilings, I was worried that they would be afraid. I entered their bedrooms repeatedly, trying to resist the urge to pick them up and carry them out in my arms–knowing that if they could sleep through this horrible sight, they should, but needing to wrap them in my arms and feel them safe there.

A news camera arrived on the scene and began interviewing neighbors; I slid back into the house, not wanting any part of that. I was ashamed of myself that I could not turn away from the scene, and yet, I watched, still.

I walked down the street a ways with some other neighbors who had told me that the wetlands and the back of the burning home were ablaze, but the smoke struck me in the face, making it impossible to breathe. As I covered my mouth and nose with the collar of my sweatshirt and turned back, I thought God, what the firefighters must be enduring. What the family must have gone through to get out.

I saw a new neighbor I did not recognize taking video and pictures with his cell phone. I was repulsed, even as I was thinking about doing so myself. What was the matter with me? Why didn’t I just go back inside?

Because there, but for the grace of God, go we.

That’s really what I think it was, at least for me. I looked at the front of their house, so like my own (the houses in our neighborhood all have a distinctive similarity somehow, even though we all try to put our own stamps on them and proudly tout the names of the different house styles); I saw the flames in the front window and saw my own office, burning.

I looked at the second floor bedroom window, sheets of fire whipping up through the roof, and pictured my daughter’s room engulfed in that terror.

I thought of my neighbors’ panicked flight through a darkened, smoke-filled house–Do you have the girls? Where is the dog? Where do we go?–and I could so easily imagine it being me.

I think that is why I stayed, why I watched, and why I feel compelled to write about it now. It was so close, so very close, and so terrible, and my heart aches so deeply and ferociously for their loss, even as I breathe deep sighs of relief for them that they did not lose more than they have.

It is growing lighter now, and I just looked out of my office window, from which I have a clear view of the sun beginning to rise. I remember, when we first moved into our house, that the homes across the street had not yet been built. For those first few months, I would rise early and watch the sun come up over the wetlands, and I complained as the frames for those houses went up and eventually blotted out the sunrise.

This morning, I can see the sunrise creeping over the horizon again, see a wan sun beginning to rise through those blackened, smoldering beams that are all that is left of the second level. I wonder if, when the sun rises, it will seem as bright as the fire did earlier.

My heart feels heavy with guilt–guilt that I watched;  guilt that I could do nothing to help, just stand by and watch a whole lifetime of memories vanish into the smoky sky; guilt that my house is still intact; guilt that I am writing about it all.

I know that I was not alone in watching–our whole neighborhood did. And when we finally returned to the house, I looked out the back windows of my house, and in the darkness, could see in each of my neighbor’s houses down the street, a light on in every house. We were all awake, we were all shaken.

Because there, but for the grace of God, were we.

This is a great neighborhood we live in–I know that in the morning, we will pull together to make sure that all that is needed is provided. I am sure there will be clothes, meals, transportation–assistance in all ways large and small. It’s just the kind of neighborhood it is.

But for now, before the sun is fully up, I am guilt personified.

Friday, April 2, 2010

I hadn’t realized how hard I’d been holding my breath about that admissions letter until it was all over, and now that it is, what a relief. I am back to work with a vengeance, and it feels good.

I’ve put together multiple agent submissions, written a magazine article, sketched out a project with a freelance client, finished Chapter Five of my current manuscript The Water Bearers (working title–also thinking of Sprite as a possible, too), pulled together the content for the PEN newsletter, and shipped two short stories off to three different literary contests.

I’ve also fielded four rejection letters, one of which I believe has set the Guiness World Record for Fastest Rejection Letter Ever by a Literary Agent (what was that, Nathan, less than an hour?) I am unfazed, which, as it turns out, is the delightful side effect of being beaten down by the grad school thing–I have developed a thicker (obscenely thick) shell now, so taking those letters in stride has become much easier.

After all, tomorrow is another day–and there are other agents, other publishers, and digital technology is, after all, creating a publishing revolution which I’m finding very intriguing for its possibilities. Just call me Che from now on, I guess.

I am deeply indebted to the kind words of family, friends, and fellow writers, all of whom basically said the same thing (though some of them did it in language which I can’t reprint here.) Thank you to all of you for supporting me and cheering me on.

I’m back on track and raring to go, because Winston Churchill told me to “Never, never, never, never give up.” And I won’t.

Stay tuned.

The waiting is finally over, and Tom Petty, as it turns out, was wrong: The waiting was not, in fact, the hardest part. That honor belongs to being rejected, again, for graduate school. Sigh. But that sigh is actually good news, because it’s a signal to you all that my old pal Magilla has finally gotten his big fat butt off my chest and I can breathe again. The downside is that he couldn’t wait to crap all over me with the disappointing news before leaving.

All things considered, I’m in pretty good shape today. If you’ve been following my blog, you know that I’ve been working on my rejection post for weeks now, just in case–so that’s a good thing, I was really prepared with what to write this morning. I will confess to having had a rough time of it last night–I spent some quality alone-time in my closet, crying my eyes out where my children couldn’t hear or see; had ice cream for dinner; and stayed up ’til the wee hours of the morning watching Jim Caviezel and Richard Harris in The Count of Monte Cristo. Now there’s a guy who really got screwed–after the first hour of that movie, I felt so much better about my own travails.

So what will I do now, you wonder? Well, unlike last year at this time, when I had placed every single egg I had in the grad school basket only to watch the U dump them all on the ground and stomp on them, this year, I have other plans. I’ll continue slogging along with my graphic design certificate. I’ll continue shopping my current manuscript around to publishers and agents–I’m actually contemplating making a rejection slip-collage as my new hobby. I’ll start massaging my network a bit more aggressively.

Above all, I will continue to write, because, as my dear, long-suffering husband reminded me last night, writing is what I love to do, and I am good at it, and at some point, all the rest will fall into place.

That sweet husband of mine reminded me of something else last night, something I had long forgotten. In the “olden days” when I was a teacher, my colleagues were encouraging me to pursue my master’s in education. I told them I couldn’t–that I had hated my education classes too much to sit through any more. “But you love teaching!” they countered. “Yes,” I replied, “I love teaching, but there is very little in those education classes that has anything to do with the love of teaching. If anything, those classes were designed to make students hate the profession.” Hubby asked me, in a gentle way, if it weren’t possible that sitting through three years of writing classes, then, might not have the same effect on my love of writing.

I thought about what he said this morning as I sat down and re-read an interview in one of my writing  magazines with author Meg Cabot. She said, “[A] random guy I met at a party [she eventually marries said guy] told me not to study creative writing because in his opinion studying creative writing sucks the love of writing out of you (he was a creative-writing major, so he said he would know)…I followed his advice…Instead, I had the love of art sucked out of me.”

Would grad school have sucked the love of writing right out of me? The world will never know, I guess. This whole experience has certainly sucked the love of graduate school admissions processes out of me, to be sure–oh, and let me just say, for the record, I think the university should have to reimburse me for the admissions application fees (both of them) as well as the exorbitant GRE fees (not to mention the therapy bills I incurred while trying to pass the math portion.) It doesn’t seem right for them to keep my money, somehow…

So, today is another day, and I will survive. I did last year, and I will this year. As Meg Cabot also said, “If you really love what you do, you should just be doing it because it’s what you love…don’t give it up just because people are saying you suck…”

Thanks, Meg, I needed that, because I really do love what I do, and I will keep doing it. Thanks for following along, everyone.

Even though I still haven’t heard anything yet re grad school, and thus still have my old pal Magilla on my chest (this morning, he’s playing a leisurely game of solitaire ), today’s post is not actually about grad school admissions: Today’s post is about gratitude.

Yes, gratitude.

Last night, I went to go see a production of Mamma Mia! with my daughter and woke up this morning to one of the show’s songs playing in my head, “Thank You for the Music.” (This was a welcome change from the energetic drum solo from “Sing, Sing, Sing” which Magilla has lately been thumping out on  my chest. But I digress.)

As I went about the business of getting ready for my day, the song  played continuously in my mind. I borrowed the CD from my daughter and popped it in on the way to class, belting out the lyrics at the top of my lungs (and probably frightening drivers around me): “Thank you for the music, the songs I’m singing, thanks for all the joy they’re bringing; Who could live without it? I ask in all honesty, what would life be? Without a song or a dance, what are we?” Ahh, music. Is there anything better?

The show’s music, based as it is, on the songs of ABBA, holds particular significance for me. ABBA was, you might say, the soundtrack of my childhood. My mother was an enormous fan of ABBA, playing their music almost continuously. I remember so many times bouncing around the living room with her and my sisters, laughing as we all sang along to “Waterloo”  and dancing with her to “I do, I do, I do, I do, I do.”

I watched her with a keener eye as I grew older and she, more often, sang along to those songs by herself. I wondered what long-ago starry night she was remembering as she listened to “Fernando”, experiencing those first thunderous realizations that my mother had actually been a whole and entire human being before me, with dreams and memories and a life that had not included even the thought of me. My imaginings often tended to the wild and dramatic–probably something I inherited from her.

Other times, there was no mystery as to what was going through her mind as she listened to a particular song. After her father died, I would often come upon her, standing silently in the living room, listening to the song “Chiquitita”: “You’re enchained by your own sorrow; In your eyes, there is no hope for tomorrow.” I remember on one such occasion wrapping my arms around her and holding her tightly as we swayed slowly to the music, feeling that song forever being imprinted in my heart as a permanent accompaniment to grief.  

She was not the only one who turned to that song for solace. To this day, almost fourteen years since my mother died, I still play that song, and find my own solace in its message of hope and perseverance: “You’ll be dancing once again, and the pain will end; you will have no time for grieving.”

Every single one of those songs, recreated and reworked for last night’s performance, called to mind a precious memory of music shared with my mother. But this morning, I have added new memories, of sharing that music with my daughter. She squeezed my hand during “I Have A Dream” (“If you see the wonder of a fairy tale; you can take the future, even if you fail.”) We laughed and clapped at “Does Your Mother Know”. I am frightened by how she relishes the character of Tanya, the “Man Eater”. I think about the teen years to come with a barely repressed shudder and wonder what my mother thought when we listened to that same song so many years ago. Perhaps it’s better that I don’t know.

It is “Slipping Through My Fingers”, however, that undoes me every time, these days, and last night’s performance was no exception, especially when my daughter wrapped her hand in mine and laid her head on my shoulder. It was all I could do not to embarrass her and sob openly from the equal parts of love and pain that song calls forth, now that I am watching my own daughter growing up and slipping out of my life and into her own a little bit more each day.

Being filled up like that, through music, is something that happens to me quite often; music has always had a profound ability to move me physically. I remember as a child, listening to one of my mother’s friends sing “O Holy Night” on Christmas Eve and having goosebumps spring up and down my arms. Mom asked if I was cold. When I told her I wasn’t, that it was just that the music was so beautiful, she whispered in my ear that that was a gift, being able to be moved so by music.

Every time I find myself weeping from the beauty of Handel or joyfully belting out an ABBA song, I think of my mother’s words,  about what a gift the love of music is, and I realize how lucky I am. “I’ve been so lucky, I am the girl with golden hair; I want to sing it out to everybody: what a joy, what a life, what a chance.”

So today, I am saying thank you.

Thank you to my mother (and my father, a gifted pianist and organist in his own right) for instilling in me the love of music, and for sharing it with me all my life. Thank you to my hubby, for the tickets last night, which allowed me to spend a soaring, magical night sharing special music with our daughter.

Thank you to my daughter, for being the next generation of girls in our family to dance, and sing, to laugh, and to cry to the music.

And to music makers everywhere, thank you for the music. “Without a song or a dance, what are we? Thank you for the music, for giving it to me.”

Maybe, if I put on a little Brahms, I can even get Magilla to take a nap.

I’m trying. I’m really trying. I know that I should stop obsessing about the acceptance/rejection letter that I almost certainly will receive sometime this week from grad school (Come on, already! You said “mid-March”! Isn’t the 8th close enough?)

I know I’m obsessing. I woke up this morning, and the first thing that popped into my head was the fact that today was March 8th; the second was that it’s now Monday, and a mail delivery day (Wait a minute–is it? Is there some obscure postal holiday I don’t know about? What if there isn’t mail delivery today? I better go check the calendar. And while I’m at it, let me run outside in my pajamas to check that the numbers on my house and mailbox are still readable from the street–wouldn’t want any mistakes on this delivery!)

Sigh. This thing is sitting on my chest like the proverbial 500-pound gorilla. I want to stop thinking about it, but I can’t. After I talked myself back into bed this morning, I lay in bed thinking about the blog entry I wrote last year when I was not accepted, and thinking about what adjustments I would make this year. You see, that’s why this gorilla is so heavy–he carries the weight of a past rejection in his giant, thundering carcass, making it impossible for me to breathe in any hope whatsoever, so this morning, after watching a glittering evening of breathless, teary-eyed acceptance speeches from the Oscars, I lay in bed composing my rejection blog–again.

The waiting goes on. I know it’s almost over, and for better or for worse, the gorilla will be departing sometime soon (I hope–what if mid-March really means late March? Early April? or Gasp! while I’m on vacation and the mail’s on hold? Would they give my spot away?)

Oh, God, Magilla, would you stop bouncing, please? I think I’m going to throw up.