If you’re a reader who enjoys my writing, you’ll probably want to know why I won’t be so active on social media for the foreseeable future. In my Thanksgiving Facebook post, I wrote that our existence is short and capricious, and that both good and bad can change in an instant. The reason I wrote that is because two days before, on Tuesday, the ‘instant’ had already happened for us. Things in the Davis household are going to be very different going forward. On Tuesday afternoon, my husband was driving home on Highway 99 from Yuba City where he’d gone to pick up a pecan pie. You might remember this highway from one of my previous posts, when I wrote about my adventure hauling two … [Read more...]
Sure, Boo
Hubs is the only one of four brothers who inherited their father's beautiful gray eyes. He got his generosity from the same source. His biting sarcasm? Um...I'd have to say that's from his mom. The genius IQ is from both parents. Overall, not a bad set of genes, but one thing he did not inherit was his dad's remarkable ability to fix things. Nope, that trait was passed to his older brother. For Hubs, it skipped a generation and went straight to his sons. For the most part, he accepts this limitation, but every now and again, he decides to make an attempt, the evidence of which is scattered throughout our living space: a part he bought for something that's still broken, a nifty … [Read more...]
Maybe a Meteor
Last night, in a way that seemed out of the blue (which, knowing him, means he's been thinking about it) my husband asked me a sobering question: "What would you do if I were to die tomorrow?" First of all, were we celebrating his birthday. I was all dressed up, I'd cooked one of his favorite meals, music was playing, we still had drinks in our hands. And, then--bam--that question. I waved my drink, and made a flip reply about pool boys. He smiled briefly, and said, "We don't have a pool." When I said "I'll build one," he got very serious and asked, "Could you afford one? Do you even have an inkling of an idea of what your net worth would be and how you would handle your finances … [Read more...]
An Honest Life?
Today, I calculated that, based on the average lifespan of a female born and living in the USA, I have fewer than 5000 days left on the planet. And that's barring any possible illnesses that could cut those days down, considerably. It wasn't for any morbid reason I calculated this. I'm not afraid of death, but I am afraid of not living to the fullest while I'm still breathing. Too many people don't, in my opinion. They're afraid, of what I don't know. I've never known. At age 14, when I first absorbed what the word "mortal" means, I promised myself that if I had no choice but to die one day, then I wouldn't be one of those who are afraid of anything new or different, … [Read more...]
A Spectacular Fail
I was raised to get married and have babies. Being female, that was to be the sum of my life accomplishments. They were the typical expectations of women for the time and place I was born, and it was tough going for me when I rebelled against them. I had to defy my parents in order to go to college, I became a pariah when I got my first divorce, I got worried looks when, married again, I held off having a child until I was over thirty, and the worry turned to judgement when I chose to have only one. My mother was annoyed, not proud, when I earned a teaching degree. My husband was annoyed, not proud when, after he relocated us to Greece, I quit a life-sucking job he wanted me to … [Read more...]
“a renaissance of wonder…”
A thrilling moment for me in my writing career was to discover that my first published poem appeared in the same issue of New Press Literary magazine in which there a poem written by Lawrence Ferlinghetti. I'd read about the Beat Generation of poets and rebels who founded a whole new way of producing literarture and who used their platform to promote many progressive ideas. I dreamed that one day, I'd visit City Lights bookshop in San Francisco, the bastion of their independent thought and creativity. City Lights was the inspiration of Peter D. Martin, who first used 'City Lights'—in homage to the Chaplin film—in 1952, as the title of a magazine, publishing early work by such … [Read more...]
Rise Up, Again
"...[We learned] how to cook and bake and do all kinds of crafts. We cleaned our houses and fixed things we’d been meaning to take care of for years. We gardened. We learned how to use Zoom... We got creative with masks. We hid our smiles, but learned to smile with our eyes..." ~ Laurie McLean Though Laurie, who is the founder of Fuse Literary Agency and the Director of the San Writers Conference, wrote this for her writers, her words above will resonate with everyone. This was the year of change, all right. Much of it was not good, not good at all. But, we sure did learn. One of my newest colleagues is an actor who just turned twenty-five years old. His profession keeps him in … [Read more...]
Here’s a Thing to Tell a Daughter
Today I want to talk about something I've never talked about before. It's important, but I should warn you, it's not sexual, per say, but it has to do with female body parts. So, now you know that, you might want to move on, but if you have a teenage daughter, you might want to keep reading. The internet can be a wonderful tool. There's oodles of misinformation at your fingertips--a false story travels six times faster than a true one on the world wide web--but with a little patience, a little digging, you can discover and learn all kinds of things you won't learn from sitting in your house, everything from what NASA discovered most recently, to how to make chocolate cake using … [Read more...]