NaNoWriMo!

I find myself sounding like my mother the older I get, which I suppose is only natural. I find myself saying "jeez oh pizza" instead of any of the other common expletives I'm sure most other normal 20-somethings use when they are surprised or upset. When the day doesn't go according to plan or the GPS leads us somewhere unknown, I often tell my husband to "think of it as an adventure." Mom had all sorts of little sayings and phrases for my brother and I when we were growing up, and at the time, she sounded like a broken record, but apparently her common phrases made their way into my brain and my everyday conversation, which is fine by me. I think it gives me a cute quirkiness. Haha. One of my mother's favorite sayings, one that is probably quite common among moms in general is "if it's meant to be, it will be." I spent much of my childhood believing that phrase. When I just started college, I actually put a lot of stock in it and became somewhat obsessed with the idea of fate. I wanted to find the signs all around me that would lead me to where I was supposed to go and what I was supposed to do. And I followed such "signs" until I ended up in an unhealthy relationship being lied to by someone I thought I could trust and lying to the people I should have been trusting. And then I realized maybe it was time to give fate a rest.

But even now, after all this time and all the hard lessons, I still have those moments where it seems that the universe is trying to tell me something. And as much as I don't want to believe it, it seems there's an unstoppable force guiding my life in a certain direction. I feel like that kind of happened with National Novel Writing Month, and even though it was a long process to get me here, the universe wasn't about to stop trying until it did.

It actually started last fall when my brother declared that I should just write a book already and stop complaining. Don't remember that? Well, click here and let me refresh your memory.

Anyhow, it was shortly after that that my brother emailed me the link to National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. I still have the e-mail he sent on October 24th (thanks, Gmail for rockin' like that) saying he thought I should give it a try. "Not trying to pressure, just help fester the process," he wrote. I checked it out and thought it was a cool idea and I loved him for pressure/help, but it was starting in six days and I didn't have any ideas for a novel and I had a thousand other reasons not to do it, the main one being I wasn't ready to take myself seriously as a writer yet.

When I first started this blog and my project for my novel, the idea of NaNoWriMo definitely entered my mind, but I thought I wouldn't need any motivation to write at the time. I thought I would be a writing machine. We all know how that turned out.

Then I forgot about it until two months ago when my friend Tod posted on his Facebook that he was considering doing it. And I was all, oh, yeah, that's a good idea. But again, I didn't want to wait another two months to get some writing done. I wanted to write now. But then I didn't write at all.

So then October 19th of this year rolled around, and I received an e-mail from the Writers Group I have been shamelessly avoiding for the past two months of a fellow member who was doing NaNoWriMo and encouraged the rest of us "members" to join in on the fun. And then it finally clicked. It was time to get serious. I haven't written, yet I have so much to write. Why not just spend it all in one glorious month of reckless abandon and get it all out there with the encouragement of 200,000 other crazies who are attempting to write 50,000 words in only 30 days (thanks a lot, lame November, for cutting out the 31st on us).

I don't expect it to be publishable on November 30th. I don't even expect it to make sense come November 30th. But if ever I'm going to write, NaNoWriMo is my best hope for making some progress. And it all seems so easy in my head. I have two hours every day after work before my husband gets home, and I type 80 words per minute, so at that speed, I could have the novel done in two weeks instead of four. Then again, it took me 45 minutes to write my opening paragraph, and I'm still not happy with it. But NaNoWriMo says that this isn't about editing. "Editing is for December" they say. I think that will be the hardest part of all, not editing.

Not to mention, the whole renovating an entire house and then moving before November 30th, being gone to Florida the first and second days of the project, having Thanksgiving thrown in there, too... yeah, those parts will be pretty hard, too, I imagine.

There's always a million reasons not to do something.

(That's not Mom's saying, though. It's Jan's from "The Office." Haha, well, I'm sure it's not HERS, since she's fictional, but I digress.)

I feel really confident about this, though, and really excited. I feel anxious most of all. Ever since I signed up on the web site, it feels like a constant state of anticipation. My toe is tapping impatiently. My knee is bouncing. My pen is constantly being clicked. My hands are braced mid-air, waiting for the gun to go off, for the shout of "Go!" to break through the atmosphere, for the marathon to begin. I can hardly contain myself. I can hardly keep myself from sketching words on a blank page. I'm hoping this is a good sign.

So wish me luck. I'll do my best to keep updating on my progress, if for any reason, to just keep myself focused and motivated. They say sticking through it until the end and reaching the 50,000 makes you want to yodel--"And we're talking the good kind of yodeling here," they promise. And I love any reason to yodel!

Crown Royal on ice...

Two weeks ago, as dance class was wrapping up, Dr. Love (so our instructor likes to be called, though I'm 99% sure he is NOT a doctor) gave us a preview of another routine we would be learning later in the session. He said it was to a song called "Crown Royal" which made me beam uncontrollably. I didn't know the song, but I'm guessing if anyone saw my ridiculous grin, they probably would have imagined it was my favorite song of all time. It wasn't the song, but the liquor that had me smiling from ear to ear. The mere mention of that specific beverage was all I needed for my own little moment of personal serenity that Monday night.

Crown Royal is very significant in my family, and no, not because we're a bunch of alcoholics. In fact, I'm not sure there's anyone who actually enjoys drinking it. Out of my immediate family, at least, my husband is the only one I know of who will pour himself a glass on a weekday night, usually after a hard day of work and usually when there's no beer or wine in the house.

It was a holiday recently, maybe our engagement dinner at my mom's house last year that I ventured out and bought my first bottle. It would have to have been a special occasion for sure, because that's the only time our family drinks it. And we drink it on special occasions because my grandpa drinks it on special occasions, or most accurately, drank it on special occasions.

Without fail, every Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, and Easter, we were always at Grandpa's, indulging in a loud, large potluck with all my aunts and uncles and cousins in attendance. Aunt Beth would always bring the betty salad. A sports game was always on the television in the living room. We'd always hold hands around the kitchen table, all 40 or so of us, and recite our prayer together. And all the men would always gather in the kitchen for their favorite ritual, a shot of Crown Royal while the womenfolk took pictures and cheered for them.

Most of the time, I was in the basement playing with my cousins during this event, though saw plenty of performances of this ritual while passing through to get another glass of Mountain Dew or to sneak a cookie before dinner, but it's not like I understood what was going on anyway. And when I was old enough to understand, I still didn't find it interesting enough to ask anyone why they bothered with it.

When I was finally at the age that was legal for me partake in such beverages, it hadn't occurred to me to ask to be involved in their ceremony. Even as an aspiring feminist, I didn't even bother pulling out my equal-opportunity card, questioning why it was only men and why couldn't the women join in. I just accepted that it was always done this way and I never had the motivation to mess with the tradition.

Then my cousin Jamie married Courtney, and she threw a big wrench right into the tradition. I thought it was a Christmas Eve, but it would have been any such holiday occasion that the men got up to do their ritual shot of Crown Royal and Courtney got up off the couch to go join them. No one had asked her to go, not that I noticed anyhow, but she was a spontaneous, outgoing kind of person, so I wasn't surprised that she would include herself. In fact, if my husband's family had had a ritual like this, I probably would have hopped up and partaken just as Courtney did, whether I was asked to not.

On her way to the kitchen, however, she turned back to me and said, "Come on, Jenny, let's go." I don't remember if I even bothered putting up a fight or making an excuse. But eventually, I ended up in that kitchen with a shot in my hand, surrounded by all my uncles and the patriarch of the entire Gotha establishment, toasting each one of them and entering a rite of passage my brother hadn't even had the privilege to experience yet.

(My brother was absent that night, the reason now escapes me--hell, the specific holiday and specific year escape me, so what did you expect?)

In hopes to be able to write more extensively on the subject of the Crown Royal tradition in what hopes to be my book, I turned to my mother for answers on all the questions that surrounded this age-old ceremony. Come to find out, my mother had the exact same mindset as I did; it never occurred to her to ask why it happened, it was just the way things were done. But she said that Crown Royal was more expensive than Seagram's or Canadian Club, so it was only reserved for holidays and Friday night card games. My grandparents were quite the frugal pair, but still knew how to have a good time.

It is funny to think back on the tradition and how it evolved over my lifetime, how my cousins eventually got old enough to take the shot, how their wives eased into the ritual themselves, how I, the baby of the family, finally got my chance at it. At my wedding, we handed out Crown Royal shots and my grandfather got up and told me he loved me, and we all had a shot together, aunts, uncles, cousins, in-laws, everyone. It is a moment I will never forget.

At his funeral, towards the end of the night when most people had cleared out, and with the undertaker nowhere in sight, good old Courtney grabbed a stack of Styrofoam coffee cups and we all filed silently out of the back door into the parking lot, where my brother revealed from behind his back the majestic purple bag. We passed it around, splashing some into our cups, and I raised my glass, swallowed hard, and then said, "To Grandpa."

And we all brought our glasses to the center and then downed the potent liquid. We all shivered, but smiled proudly with our mouths open to let out some of the sting so that it might float up to heaven.

When Chris returned from the NASCAR race in Bristol with his dad, we presented me with a gift of a Crown Royal t-shirt that he had bought from the Matt Kenseth trailer. I almost broke into tears. To think, I didn't think there was anything he could bring me back from the NASCAR race that I would enjoy, and here he brought me the most perfect gift of all.

It's a shame "Crown Royal" the song has nothing to do with the whiskey. In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a song my grandfather would not approve of. Dr. Love designed all the moves around the words of the song, so he is constantly reciting all the vulgarity over and over again while he is showing us sequences. There's a high school boy in the class, and after one such explicit lyric, the boy said, "That's nasty!" And we all chuckled.

But just knowing what the song is called makes me smile at dance class anyhow. And I told Dr. Love I would be sure to wear my shirt next week so I would be dressed for the occasion.

Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of death.

I'm not sure how or why I got onto Barnes and Noble's e-mailing list. I haven't bothered to get myself off of it because sometimes they send me good coupons, but I happen to live in a city with lots of library options, so I very rarely buy books, especially ones I haven't read, which I realize might sound weird and might take all the fun out of reading for people, but for so many years of my life, I had books taking up space on a countless number of shelves, books I never read or intended to read, books I attempted to read and hated, so I've decided that I will not spend any money on a book that I'm not sure I will love (holy run-on sentence, Batman). Therefore, most of the time, I get a book out of the library, take it for a test spin, and then, if it tugs at my heartstrings and makes me catch my breath, I go out and spend the money on it so that it may rest peacefully on my bookshelf not wasting space but serving a purpose. Although, chances are, it may sit there the entirety of my life never having its binding broken open, because I rarely read books twice.

At any rate, shortly after I spent that long weekend at home with my mother while my husband was on a father-son trip, I got an email from Barnes and Noble that caught my eye. My mom and I had just seen "Eat Pray Love" in the theater, which I loved (but mostly for the part where they're describing how Italians talk with their hands because it was SO TRUE), and the subject of the email was "Powerful and Uplifting: A Mother-Daughter 'Eat Pray Love'." So quite unlike myself but driven by curiosity due to current events, I actually opened the B&N email to find a book recommendation for "Traveling with Pomegranates" by Sue Monk Kidd, who some of you may know through her unmistakable novel-turned-movie "The Secret Life of Bees." I am unfamiliar with that work, only know of it by the trailers I've seen during commercial breaks on television, so the fact that she had penned that particular piece was really of no interest to me. What caught my attention, however, was that not only was it a memoir, but it was a shared memoir, alternating essays written by herself with essays written by her daughter.

Naturally, I looked it up on my city's library catalog to see if this was something I could borrow first to see if it was even worth my time. And I found it currently in stock sitting on the shelf waiting for me. And then my husband came home from work and asked if I wanted to go to the library to look for instructional books on how to lay hardwood floors, which he plans on doing in our new house. It was like it was meant to be.

And it was meant to be. The book, while I still have a third of it yet to read, has been such a delight and I plan on buying myself a copy, as well as a copy for my mother and mother-in-law, because I feel it is just too good not to share. I mean, it takes place in Greece and France, had oodles of Greek mythology in it, and I feel it has a rather accurate representation of my current relationship with my mother and is relevant to the periods we are both in in our lives.

But what I seem to like most is the constant presence of the Virgin Mary and what Mary means to these women and all women in general.

I've never been very religious. I've tried to be religious many times in my life, and sometimes I've tried harder than others. I still want to be religious, but haven't quite come to terms with how to do that yet. But I've always felt a connection to Mary. I've always found her to be the most interesting character in all of Christianity, and yet I feel like she is constantly overlooked. Which is perhaps why I like her even more. It's like her and I have a little secret that no one has quite caught onto yet.

I know it all started when my grandma died. I was only five at the time. But ever since then, I've always associated my grandma with Mary. I guess I thought they would get along very well in heaven. Everyone always said my grandmother was a saint. So I guess this was my way of making her one. Besides, I was five. What I knew about death and heaven was so very limited (not that I've learned all that much about it since then). I knew who Mary and Joseph and Jesus were, I knew they were in heaven, and now I knew my grandmother was in heaven. So I suppose it was only natural that I put them all in the same clique up there.

Of course, too, there was the song that they played at her funeral. I don't remember anything about the funeral. I don't remember anything about her sickness or her death. I sometimes think I do remember, but I'm pretty sure it's just the stories that people have told me that I remember and not the actual events themselves. But there is this song that is very common in Catholic churches, especially in the spring, called "Hail Mary, Gentle Woman" that was played at my grandmother's funeral. It's a terribly sad, but beautiful song. My brother hates it... he says the harmony is annoying. I think he either hates it because he's not a woman and doesn't have a connection to Mary or he hates it because he remembers it being played at the funeral (him being 9 at the time and fully capable of remembering) and it makes him sad. And while I myself don't remember it being played at the funeral, what I remember is that every time it is played in a Catholic church to this day, my mother (and aunts, if they are there, too) break down into sobs. And now that I'm old enough to be the kind of sentimental where I cry at happy endings of movies and sappy songs on the radio, I am usually sobbing in the church pew right along with them.

Still, it wasn't until I spent some time in Italy that my infatuation with Mary was brought more to the forefront. As Catholicism is the official religion of the country, Mary is everywhere. She's in the churches, in the museums, but even just on the street corners and painted on apartment walls. I would say the point in my life where I respected religion the most was when I was living in Italy. And perhaps it was when I was the most spiritual.

Because I was "studying" in Italy (technically, I had already graduated, so the classes I didn't care about so much as the whole being in Italy thing), our group went to every single museum in Florence and saw COUNTLESS paintings of the Virgin to the point where they all started to look the same and frankly were starting to get a little boring. But when we got into the Uffizi, I saw a new portrait of Mary that I couldn't take my eyes off of. It was called "Madonna of the Chair." I've posted it at the top of the entry, but I'm not too techy with this whole blog thing yet, so I couldn't get it to go where I wanted it to go. But you can click on it and make it bigger.

ANYWAY, I just thought Mary looked so HUMAN in it. So many other paintings she's depicted as a saint or as royalty, which she is and deserves to be depicted that way, but she was also human, and I think it's the human aspect of her that makes her so appealing. I mean, the woman gave birth in a field, people, with a man she wasn't even married to. I'm married, and my husband is capable of a lot of things, but I don't think I'd let him birth my baby in the middle of g.d. field. And she raised the SON OF GOD. Like, she had to put him in time-outs when he acted up and had to protect him and take care of him. And she had God to answer to if she didn't do her mothering job right. But this painting, it doesn't feel like a painting of Mary and Jesus. It feels like a painting of a mother with her son. She's got a loving, protective grip on him. She seems to know she's gonna have to let go of him, but you can tell she doesn't want to. And all the while, she seems to be giving a look to those watching her that says, "You mess with my baby, you mess with me."

Later in the trip, our leader/instructor took us to an artisan shop to show us that things are still handmade in Italy and that generations of families stay in the same business, and I found that exact picture buried in a pile of plaques, outlined in beautiful gold paint, handcrafted in that very shop. Now I don't know how popular this image is in Italy. But the Uffizi is just ONE museum in Florence and it alone has thousands of paintings in it. What are the chances I would that painting in an artisan shop down some isolated alley? Like it was meant to be.

My mother took a tour group over to Italy the year after I had lived there. I couldn't afford to go with her, which broke my heart. She asked if she could bring anything back for me. I said the only thing I wanted (besides nutella gelato) was a necklace with Mary on it. And in an artisan shop that sounded much like the one I found my Madonna of the Chair in, she found the perfect, most absolutely beautiful Mary cameo and she bought it for me. I still wear it all the time over three years later.

I wear it as a reminder of what I want to be. I don't want to be the next Mother of Christ. I can't be the next virgin mother. That ship has sailed. But Mary, despite being saint royalty, was once a very human woman, a hard-working woman, a proud woman, a woman who did what she had to do without complaint. And from what I've heard about my grandmother, she was a lot like that, too. If I can be half the woman my grandmother was, I would consider my life a success.

Gentle mother, peaceful dove, teach us wisdom, teach us love.

Sometimes I worry that this book is going to be an epic failure, that no one is going to want to read 200 pages about death and grieving, that no one will care about my life or my grandfather's life. But "Traveling with Pomegranates" isn't all happy-happy. In fact, it's mostly not. And yet I can't seem to put it down. After all, death and grieving is a big part of what makes us human, no?