Day of the Dead

Halloween scares me.

And it has nothing to do with the year my brother jumped from behind a bush when I was walking back to rejoin my husband after taking my toddler son potty.  Although, that was pretty scary.  I nearly peed my pants.

Nor does it relate to the grotesque costumes that abound: Zombies, vampires, people sporting fake (but very realistic) injuries on their bodies.

My fear of Halloween stems from something far scarier.  On October 31, 2006 my husband nearly took his own life.

He hadn't yet been diagnosed with bipolar disorder, but he had been suffering from depression since late summer.  We'd taken a few trips to a psychiatric emergency room, but at that point we were still waiting to get him in to see someone on a regular basis.  And none of the medications they gave him seemed to be working.  In fact, they were making things worse.

On the night of October 30, my husband and I stayed up late working on his pumpkins for a work contest the next day.  We had purchased a nice little set of carving tools: scoops and various saws and knives.  As we worked, I noticed that my husband kept pausing in his work and examining the implement in his hand.  His eyes had a strange faraway look, and I wondered if, at those moments, he was even aware that I was sitting beside him.

Realizing that my husband was considering how the carving tools could be used for suicide, I quickly counted how many we had and started tracking each one, hoping to prevent him from pocketing any of them.  When the pumpkins were finished, I cleaned up the tools, while my husband protested, insisting that he was fine and he could put things away.

After sending him out of the room, I found a hiding place for the tools and did a quick sweep of the kitchen for anything else that he might find useful.  I had already hidden most things weeks before.  Finally, I was satisfied that he was safe.

I was wrong.

I didn't know about the knife he'd found in the sink before my daughter washed dishes earlier that day.  The knife he had hidden under the cushion of the couch in the living room.

I expected him to be subdued as we prepared for bed, but instead he was oddly cheerful.  When I questioned him about his mood he shrugged his shoulders.  "Tomorrow things will be different."

His answer worried me.  I continued to press him until he finally confessed that he planned to take his life the following day, but he wouldn't tell me how.  I spent nearly an hour reminding him of all the reasons he had to live, of the people that loved him, and how empty our lives would be without him.  Nothing seemed to reach him.

Halloween was the day he'd set as his last day on earth.

To this day, I'm not sure what I said.  But somehow my husband ending up huddled in the corner of our bathroom, crying.  He told me to check under the couch cushion.  I ran out to the living room and found the knife, which I hid.

He insisted on going to work the next day since we had worked so hard on the pumpkins, so I insisted that his father drive him in.  I wanted someone with him at all times.  I picked him up from work and we took the kids out trick or treating.  Then I stayed up with him until after midnight, until the day changed from October 31st to November 1st.

Halloween had passed, and he still lived.

Six years later, my husband's bipolar disorder is controlled, and his moods are failry stable.  But he cycles in the fall, which happens to coincide with Halloween.  And lurking in my mind is the fear that one day he may again decide that Halloween truly is the day of the dead.

Considering Baby Names

My youngest daughter's birthday is next week, and her continual reminders have me reminiscing about how my husband and I decided on her name.

When I was a kid, nothing symbolized summer quite like finding cicada bug skins around our yard--clinging to the gray bricks of our house, slim blades of grass, and the thorny, green Palo Verde branches.  I would grab a sandwich baggie from the house and fill it with all of the skins I could find.  They'd crackle when I picked them, protesting their release from whatever item they clung to.

After several days of carrying my baggie around, the skins became a smashed brown mass that my mother insisted I throw away.  Which I did, right before grabbing another baggie and looking for more skins.

Besides the grumbling roar of thunder during a monsoon, the buzzing of cicadas in the trees has always been my favorite summer sound.

So I told my husband that I wanted to name our baby Secada, if we had a girl (of course I changed the spelling; I'm not that cruel).

I could tell right away that he didn't like the idea.  So we let the matter drop for a while.

We settled on a boy's name months before my due date, but as August crept to a close, my husband still wouldn't agree to name his daughter after a bug.  I tried throwing in his favorite grandmother's middle name for our daughter, but he wouldn't commit.

Until one quiet summer evening.

After putting our three children to bed, we relaxed on the couch to enjoy a few precious moments of peace before pregnancy exhaustion forced me to go to sleep.  As we cuddled, I again approached the problem of a girl's name.

He sighed.  "I don't know."

We sat in silence.  Then we heard a soft rap on the door.  So quiet that we weren't sure we'd heard anything.

We listened...and heard it again, a little louder.

My husband walked to the door and cautiously pulled it open.

A cicada flew inside.

It circled the room before settling on our ceiling fan.

My husband looked from the bug to me and then back at the insect.  He shrugged.  "Okay, we'll name her Secada."

He re-opened the door, and with a flutter of wings, the cicada flew out the door.

Unbelievable, but true.

Even more unbelievable:  my little Secada bug turns 11 on Wednesday.

Longing for some old-fashioned writer's block...

When we were first married, my husband and I lived in a tiny little town on the northern border of Nevada in a small studio apartment.  My husband worked anywhere from 12 to 20 hours a day doing set up for banquets at the local casino, giving me hours and hours to do nothing but write.

I would sit at our table with my word processor (okay, at least it wasn't a typewriter--I'm not that old!) and work on my current project until my lead character managed to get herself into a jam I couldn't get her out of.  Writer's Block.

My word processor was just that--a word processor.  It didn't have any games to distract me from my character's dilemma, no Internet to look up a possible solution.  Just a blinking cursor.

Inevitably, I'd start working on a different writing project.  Usually around chapter nine (I have a lot of unfinished projects from that first year of marriage that all end at chapter nine).  And again, I would write for hours and hours until I ran into another wall.

And then I'd stare at the blinking cursor for hours.

I miss those days.

Now, writer's block is far worse than a brick wall.  It comes in the form of seven demanding children, a house that seems to always need cleaning, and fickle technology that decides to break at the most inopportune times.

My hours of endless writing (or staring) have shrunk to about two hours a day. Around 1 pm, after the cleaning is done and after walking my kindergartner to school. That is, if my three-year old stays with his first movie choice and decides to watch the whole thing.  But most days, I manage a sentence or two before he changes his mind and takes another ten minutes selecting a new movie, or he needs to go potty, or he wants a snack.

Or wants to sit on my lap.

But when I finally get him settled, playing quietly and watching his movie, just when I get rolling on my writing, the garage door bangs open and my teenagers come home.  My overly loquacious teenagers.

They pull the bench up from the table so they can sit beside me as I type, filling me in on every minute of their    
seven or so hours of seminary and school.  After two minutes, I abandon the writing and give them my full attention.

When at last, they turn to their school work, disappearing into the depths of their rooms, the front door swings open and my elementary school children pour through the opening.  Snack, homework, reading with my kindergartner, and sorting through papers occupies my time.

And so goes my two hours of writing.

I love those kids, but sometimes I yearn for some normal writer's block!

Baring the Writer's Soul

Few professions require people to expose themselves the way writers do.  Sometimes, like now, knowing my newest manuscript should have arrived at the publishers for review, I think posing in a skimpy bikini might be easier than allowing someone else to judge my writing.  At least in the bathing suit I would be judged by physical standards, things I can change.  But in my writing...well that's me.  I can't write without infusing part of my soul into the work.

Maybe that's why, as a writer, I find taking criticism to be as easy as eating Brussels sprouts--not only do they taste bad, but they smell bad, too.  When someone likes my writing, that person likes me, because I am part of the writing.  And when they don't like my writing...maybe that's why family members don't make very good critics--they have to live with us after all.

And revisions?  Revising a manuscript is like taking a deep look inward, facing the parts of you that you don't like, and having the courage to cast them aside.  It hurts.

But writers do it.  I do it.

Why?

I'm not sure.  Perhaps it has something to do with holding that novel in my hands, my name across the front.  Or reading that one review that says I did something right.  Whatever that something is, it drives me to keep writing, to keep baring my soul...

And, as I move the mouse to click the "publish" button, to keep wishing I had chosen to model bikinis.

Scripture Squiggle: Alma 28:13 (Of Roosters and Temptation)

"And thus we see how great the inequality of man is because of sin and transgression, and power of the devil, which comes by the cunning plans which he hath devised to ensnare the hearts of men."


I've mentioned Chanticleer, our attack rooster, before.  Here he is strutting his stuff in front of the chicken run like he owns the place.

He doesn't, but not for lack of trying.

Whenever I load the kids into the van to go somewhere, he stands at the gate crowing at us, his fathers fluffed up to make him appear bigger and scarier (I think he just looks like one of the fat biddies on my Fluffy Birds game).  If one of us heads into the garden, out to the play yard, or anywhere he deems his territory, he comes running--a crowing, fluffy bird-ball, that, I will admit, gets my pulse racing when no fence separates us.

We started using our green push broom to defend ourselves because it happened to be nearby.  But lately we've learned that nothing else can successfully keep Chanticleer at bay.

Early one evening, as I walked out to our garden where my husband was watering, I passed Chanticleer.  The rooster was pecking at bugs a good distance away, seemingly calm and nonthreatening.  As I pulled even with him, I spoke to him in a quiet voice.

"Finding any good bugs, Chanti?"

The stupid bird jumped at me.  No warning, no puffed up feathers or crowing, just an immediate, leaping attack.

Fortunately, I managed to kick out at him, catching him in the chest and knocking him backward.  But almost immediately he attacked again.  We stayed that way for several minutes as Chanticleer jumped and I kicked him down until my husband noticed what was going on and came running over with a large two by four.

He swung at the bird, and Chanticleer turned his attention to him.  He continued his dancing attack, only with a new partner.

After my husband landing three or four strikes with the board, my teenage son walked out the back door.  He saw the rooster leap at his dad, realized the wood did not deter Chanticleer, and grabbed the broom resting next to the door.

My son hadn't even gotten within four feet of Chanti when the bird saw the broom.   He ran as fast as he could back toward the chicken run squawking the whole way.

I landed direct kicks on the rooster's chest, and my husband got in some pretty good hits with the board, but only the broom, which hadn't even touched him, scared Chanticleer away.

The green push broom was Chanti's weakness.

Even my little five-year old can chase Chanticleer away from his toy construction truck worksite with one wave of the broom.

Although we had to discover Chanti's weakness, Satan already knows ours.  And he uses them against us as easily as we wave the broom at our rooster.

Fortunately, unlike our attack rooster, we can recognize our weakness with the help of the Lord, and thus Satan's attacks on us, and learn to overcome them.

Scripture Squiggle: Matthew 25:29

"For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath."


Not wanting to have my talents taken away from me, but rather wanting to increase them, I've decided that for today's blog, I will participate in LDS Publisher's writing prompt.

So, here is what I came up with:


Hilary paused in her sweeping and raised her head slightly so the gentle autumn breeze could dance across her wrinkled face.  She closed her eyes as the cool fingers of the wind caressed her cheeks, listening to the crinkling sound of cottonwood leaves skittering across the patio.

Time to start planning my winter trip to Phoenix.

After a moment, she hefted her broom and returned to her task of clearing the red brick patio of dust, debris and gathering leaves. 

Red brick?

Glancing at the skyline, Hilary saw faint purple mountains in the distance, framed by the faded blue of the desert sky, not the tree-lined ridges that pushed close to her small house in Oregon.  Directly in front of her was the gray wall that separated her son's swimming pool from the rest of the yard, not her round, above ground pool sitting open on the welcoming green lawn.   She released the broom, watched it fall and clatter onto the red bricks, not her wooden deck.

Her legs felt weak as she shuffled over to the wooden picnic table by the door, its checkered table cloth held in place by a variety of large rocks.

Phoenix?  How long have I been here?

She couldn't remember.  She tried and tried and tried, but she couldn't even remember what she had done the day before, or what day it was, or whether she'd had grapefruit or French toast for breakfast.

 

At least I know my name.  Hilary Grosberg.  And I'm...I'm...how old am I?

Hilary leaned her elbows on the table and rested her forehead on her hands.  She breathed in short, panicked gulps, and her heart began to pound a crazy rhythm against her chest.  Then she felt something furry rub against her leg.

"Beast!"  She scooped the gray tabby kitty onto her lap.  "You always know when Mama needs you."  She stroked his soft fur, enjoying the humming rumble of his purring.

The cat raised his head, looking at Hilary and mewed.  She held him up so she could gaze into his blue eyes.  "Now, Beast..."

Blue eyes?  Beast's were brown.

In disbelief, Hilary set the cat back down on the ground.  He rubbed his head against her leg a few times, but when she didn't respond he sat back to lick his paws.

Hilary stood up and walked slowly to the door that led to her room at her son's house.  She paused with her hand on the knob, her attention caught by a pile of rotting boards shoved in the corner against the fence that lined the property.   With her free hand, she touched her wrinkled, weather-worn cheeks, her coarse gray-white hair.

Crumbling.  Useless.  No better than a pile of forgotten wood.

Scripture Squiggle: Doctrine and Covenants 76:22

"And now, after the many testimonies which have been given of him, this is the testimony, last of all, which we give of him: That he lives!


President Monson, our latter day prophet adds his testimony of the Savior: http://www.lds.org/liahona/2012/04/he-is-risen-a-prophets-testimony?lang=eng

Because Jesus suffered for our sins and overcame death, we all have the hope that one day we can live again in his presence.  Knowing this makes the trials and tragedies of this life so much easier to bear.  May this knowledge fill our souls with peace.