May 14: Vague Depression, Daughter's Trip, Little Princess

Although he had confided in his father about his decision regarding the seminary and it was hardly a secret in their household, Robert could not bring himself to tell his mother about his doubts, for the young man truly believed that one of his jobs in life was to seem independent.  So even though he suffered through many a bad day, even after talking it over with his father, when a vague depression came over him, as if he already knew about his true future, and wanted to rest his head upon his mother's lap, to feel her reassuring hand on his head, he kept his feeling bottled up inside--at least around her.

Robert Ives is a young man struggling with very adult issues for the first time in his life.  He is not going to college.  Or getting married.  Or starting a new job.  Robert has decided to devote his life to God.  He's terrified and confused, and, even though he craves his mother's attention, he can't bring himself to admit it.  He's growing up.

My daughter is going on a class trip tomorrow morning.  In sixth grade, it was a day trip to Mackinac Island.  Seventh grade, a couple of days at a survival camp.  This year, it's Great America.  Tomorrow, I will drop her off at 4:45 a.m., and she will climb on a bus and head off to Chicago.  Without me or my wife.  Wearing a tee-shirt that says "Class of '19."

Yes, I know I'm being melodramatic.  My daughter will be back in the bosom of her family around 3 a.m. on Saturday.  She will be crabby and tired, and she won't want to tell me about what she did over the past 24 hours.  She will get home, climb into bed, and proceed to sleep for the next 12 hours.  Maybe she'll get up to go to the bathroom.  I may slide a pizza under her bedroom door about noon.

My daughter is a good kid.  She studies hard, gets straight A's, and reads all the time.  On weekends, she goes to church on Saturday and Sunday (sometimes with a little grumbling, if not outright hostility).  And she's going to be a high school freshman next fall.  She's already talking about getting her driver's license.

Yes, I'm feeling a little nostalgic for the times my daughter would lean against my chest and let me be her daddy.  These days, when I wake her up in the morning, I have to announce to my wife, "I have released the Kraken." 

Saint Marty isn't ready for his little princess to turn into a prom queen.

Not this kind of prom queen

July 9: Hard Work, Keeping at It, Confidence

Andy also found that his spirit was calmed by hard work.  He gravitated to the college newspaper, the Cornell Daily Sun.  One of only two dailies published by an American university--and also Ithaca's only morning paper--its eight pages even carried national and international news, complete with an Associated Press feed that came in every night via the telephone line.  It seemed sophisticated.  Andy's long-running connection with the paper raised his status until by his last year he walked across campus with unprecedented confidence...

The "Andy" in the above paragraph is E. B. White.  When White entered Cornell, he was given that nickname by his fellow students, and he embraced his new identity with relish.  Gone was the shy, sickly young boy.  Instead, "Andy" White was smart, talented, and full of confidence.


Sometimes I have that swagger and confidence, too.  I believe that I'm a good writer.  Talented, even.  Other times, I suffer from incredibly low self-esteem.  My poems seem derivative, sentimental.  I dwell on my failures instead of my successes.  Writing is a difficult avocation.  It sort of depends on acceptance.  Yet, more often than not, a writer receives rejection instead.

But you keep at it.  Keep sending out manuscripts to publishers.  Keep entering writing contests.  Keep sitting down with a pen and paper.  Keep writing.  Confidence comes with experience.  I know good writing.  I know when I write something good.  However, getting published is 25% talent and good writing.  The other 75% is simply luck.  Stephen King's wife rescued a manuscript from the garbage and forced him to finish it.  The manuscript turned out to be Carrie.  Luck.

At the moment, my confidence is at a low ebb.  Despite that fact, tomorrow night, I will submit more poems for publication.  Keeping at it.  That's the whole game.

Saint Marty is rolling the dice.

C'mon, daddy needs a publisher

May 31: Dragging Chains, Ghosts, Nightmares

This might have lasted half a minute, or a minute, but it seemed an hour.  The bells ceased as they had begun, together.  They were succeeded by a clanking noise, deep down below; as if some person were dragging a heavy chain over the casks in the wine-merchant's cellar.  Scrooge then remembered to have heard that ghosts in haunted houses were described as dragging chains.

The cellar-door flew open with a booming sound, and then he heard the noise much louder, on the floors below; then coming up the stairs; then coming straight towards his door.

A terrifying little moment preceding the appearance of Jacob Marley's ghost at the beginning of A Christmas Carol.  Charles Dickens knew how to play upon the fears of his readers.  For me, there's nothing more frightening than this scenario:  knowing some unseen threat/creature/force is coming to get you.  Scrooge has to sit in his dusty room, listening to the approach of Marley with growing dread.  For me, it's the literary equivalent of hearing the theme from Jaws, knowing that the shark is somewhere in your vicinity.  DA-DUM.  DA-DUM.  DA-DUUUUMMMMM.

Fear comes in many shapes and sizes.  There's the faceless fear demonstrated in the above passage.  I would call that fear of the unknown, one of my particular specialties.  Then there's more tangible (still irrational) phobic fears:  rats, spiders, lightning, Nicholas Sparks novels, Justin Bieber songs.  Another kind of fear is generated by watching scary movies or reading scary books.

My daughter has been suffering from the latter these last few nights.  It seems my older sister thought it was a great idea to watch a film about demon possession with my daughter last Friday.  Since Sunday, my daughter has appeared at the foot of my bed, begging me to come sleep with her because of nightmares.  Last night was the first night of uninterrupted sleep I've had in four days.  I'm tired.

Yup, I grew up watching stuff like this

I'm not against horror movies or books.  Quite the contrary.  I grew up watching the British Hammer horror films in all their blood-drenched glory.  I was weaned on Stephen King novels, from Carrie onward.  I even read the loathsome Firestarter.  I am a fan of this brand of fear.  It's harmless and fun.  If you're a teenager or adult.  Not an eleven-year-old girl who's into ballet.

There's really no point to this little diatribe.  Fear happens.  Whether ghosts in the wine-merchant's cellar or bill collectors pounding on your front door, we all are afraid of something.  I have an entire wing of fears in my psyche, the largest room reserved for the Ghost of Change Yet to Come.  Fear can be healthy and useful (gun-wielding muggers  and rabid dogs and clowns), or fear can be limiting and detrimental (new jobs or new people or new chocolate bars).   Fear eventually drives Scrooge to become a new person:  kind and generous and good-humored.

Today, fear is driving Saint Marty to a two-liter of Diet Mountain Dew.