Monday Must-Reads (November 3, 2014)

Photo: Linda Nylind for The Guardian

Happy Monday. This weekend had me pulling out the down winter coat--the one that looks like a sleeping bag it's so long. But that's okay. I was warm and if I could go back in time I would tell my seventh grader self Who Cares if Coats Make You Look Fat!? Warmth matters more.  Also, other than the sleeping bag-coat, we celebrated Middle's birthday with family tonight. She'll be ten in two days. Double digits. That's something pretty special. Anyhoo, here are a few reads I wanted to share with you this week.

For the introverts. My people. In case you weren't sure: 12 signs you are an introvert.

Girl who escaped Boko Haram talks about captivity...

Just browse Target? Is it even possible to shop ethically on a tight budget without looking like a smelly hippy? from Jamie the Very Worst Missionary.

What I want you to know about having a child with Down Syndrome from Rage Against the Minivan.

For those of us trying to hard: How I do it all (not).

Oh! I almost forgot! The Kindle edition of Dear Boy, is on sale through November 6. Only $.99 on Amazon. Don't forget to snatch one up if you haven't already!

***Heather Weber is the author of Dear Boy,: An Epistolary Memoir.

"Dear Boy, is a brilliant and unusual memoir of distance and absence--the absence of a beloved brother from his sister's life and the absence of healthy mothering that, over the years, drove brother and sister apart. Weber deftly shifts point of view so that, piece by piece, readers gather the sum of confusion and loss. Yet there is so much love and forgiveness in the narrator that, in a way, each character is redeemed. I'm moved by this life, this telling of it." --Fleda Brown, author of Driving with Dvorak.

THIS WEEK: The Kindle Version of Dear Boy, is only $0.99!

Hey readers! Amazon is promoting the Kindle version of Dear Boy. You can pick it up for only $0.99 today through August 14! Happy reading!

Dear Boy, (Epistolary Wednesday)

On Wednesdays, I write letters...

Dear Boy,

Your wife has remarried. I officiated the wedding.

You’ve been gone six years this month* and it was time, it was time a long time ago, for her to move forward from the chaos of sudden widowhood-while-mothering-an-infant. You left so quickly, at such a terrible moment. And in that family, for all who were close to you--but particularly for her, I imagine--your leaving was like a tornado spiraling through the neighborhood, ripping tree trunks from the ground, lifting houses off their foundations and plopping them down again, askew. It takes so long to make those things right again, and some things, like the trees, never are. Of course, if they fall in the right season, full of seed, they will produce new trees, young and green but not so mighty all at once.

She was full of life, your bride. Full of energy, radiating glory on the wedding day: blue hair extensions, a silver circlet on her head, an excess of pearls and silver jewelry and tattooed sleeves that were artsy and gutsy and not gaudy.

You would have loved her. 

Also, your daughter. She was so tired by the end of the day, flopping about in a white flower girl dress, her dark tresses all aflutter, as she threw her body against her cousins on the dance floor as if to rest against them while the DJ played “Rockin’ Robin.”

She is so much her-mother-and-you.

You would have loved her, too.

Old enough to be aware but perhaps not present to all of its significance, someday she may look back on the white-gowned ceremony as the day her family became complete (because she can’t remember when it was complete before), with stepbrothers and stepsister who adore her, with a stepfather who does the same.

You would love them too, I think. 

He is a good man, this stepfather. His way with children is sweeter and more present than the way of most dads I know. And I trust she will find solace there.

But.

I do miss your way of being in the world, brother. And when they cut that cake, I couldn’t stop myself from flashing on your wedding-cake-smashing eight years ago. Your absence was so loud that your sister and I couldn’t help but hear it. 

My heart was heaven-centered on the day after the wedding, and in these days after our Gramps has died.

And so torn between the dead and the living.

I wonder--where you are—is the tearing less severe? Or is it all the same?

*Want to know the rest of the story? You can read more about me and the Boy here:

#19: When it Doesn't All Depend on Me, Random Nature Sightings, and My Grip on Reality

I was sitting in bed two weeks ago with whatever feverish yuck had been floating around my house this year, and I was musing at the ways in which life has been so interrupted and yet everything's okay. January and February were supposed to be my busiest months of the year. And they are, to some extent. But half the things I thought I would have to do, I haven't had to do. This is because of insane levels of snowfall, a cancelled class, and volunteers stepping out of the woodwork at church to relieve some of the burden. We were a church plant just 8 years ago, which means that there haven't always been a multitude of volunteers to help with things like teaching classes, organizing spreadsheets, developing curriculum. Now there are more and it warms my heart like nothing else.  And here's another thing that makes me smile. I was at the building last night teaching a class while my friend Christi taught a parenting class. When I walked past the classroom, I could hear group discussion buzzing and crescendoing with the excitement of parents who felt like they were on to something.  Afterward, a woman I'd just met breezed out of the classroom with a grin on her face. "Looks like you're having fun," I said (or something like it) and she said, "I AM! That was great!"

A tree full of robins in a snow storm
outside Ghurties, the frozen yogurt shop.

That is a miracle right there. That parents of children of all ages would drag themselves and their offspring out on a cold February night (despite the demands of homework, dinner, jobs, sports and music practice) and actually enjoy what they are learning about being good parents. Yeah. That makes my heart sing. What's more is that I have almost nothing to do with it other than emailing Christi twice a year to set a class date, advertising in the program, and answering email inquiries.

*

There was a night this month when I was laying in bed listening to Tiny cough cough cough cough. I myself had a headache and could barely function at nearly 10 p.m., but I decided we needed cough medicine or she'd never make it through the night. So I packed myself up for Walgreens. Sleep deprived and knowing I was on the verge of sickness, I started whispering prayers. Please let her sleep. Please stop the coughing. And then my mind turned to my church to-do list. If Tiny was sick tomorrow, I wouldn't have time to get everything done. Then: Babysitter for class! Need babysitter! I was reminded again of the need for a sitter for an event I was conducting in five days. I called one sitter and fired off emails earlier in the afternoon to five potential sitters but hadn't heard back yet. So, I continued to wander and ramble in my prayers about needing this or that, sitter included, as the car crunched through the snow-crusted streets.

When I stumbled into Walgreens, the clerks looked at me like I was crashing a party I wasn't invited to (and found me in an aisle a moment later to inform me they were closing), but in between walking in and getting kicked out of the drug store, I walked right past Grace.

Grace was first on the list of sitters I'd contacted.  "Did you try to call a little while ago?!" she asked. I did! I had! I told her. And Grace said she would babysit. Odd timing, a prayer answered right in the middle of the chaos of yet-unanswered prayers. Uncanny, nonsensical, but relieving all the same. The palpable weight of my to-do list, of sick children, of emails unanswered lifted a little because of that one moment of grace, further proof that it doesn't all depend on me.

And it can't all depend on any of us doing it all perfectly, right? I mean, something's got to give. Case in point: there hasn't been a moment in four weeks when everyone in the family has been completely well. The children have missed a combined 3.5 weeks of school. Mark and I are each missing at least some work time daily. I'm telling myself it's just a marathon. Just a very long race and we have to pace ourselves. Go to bed early. Let some things slide. Dinner, for instance. (Can't they just eat bread?!?) And then I'm leaving Mark (poor man) for a whole week for AWP in Seattle because of that book thing. Oh, so let me segue:  Dear Boy is going on the road. Actually, it's going Media Mail to a friend's house in Portland and then it's driving with her to Seattle to sit in a ginormous convention center among hundreds (or thousands?) of other books. But Seattle is where so many of the RWW alums and faculty will be, so I'll be in good company and so will the book.  And speaking of good company, I am making my way through the other Ovenbird authors' books and they are phenomenal, and the more impressed I am the more honored I feel to have been named among them. We have Judith (Ovenbird's founder) with a lyric novella-length mediation (The Circus Train) on memory and language in the context of a cancer diagnosis, an almost pre-posthumous memoir, if such a thing could exist.  And then Sandra Swinburne's The Last Good Obsession is meditation on fiction as it relates, in a memoir-like way, to her own life, to her own psyche, to her own history. It is smart, so smart, and so engaging.  I highly recommend. Tarn Wilson's The Slow Farm is forthcoming and I'm so, so excited for it's arrival!

*

For a leader development program at church, I've been reading the book LEMON Leadership. "LEMON" is an acronym for a bunch of leadership styles, and of course, the author seems confident that these are the only leadership types worth studying. While that remains to be seen, I've been strangely comforted by the description as myself as a strong "M" (for "Manager") with a good helping of "L" ("Luminary"--an ideas person, a philosopher really). What took the cake, though, was this sweet little graphic I stumbled upon that illustrates the different types' varying grips on reality. Don't mind if I quote from it: "Managers have what I call the Reality Index set to True North, to center. They have the most grounded sense of what is real....The Manager is the sane one at the party." Growing up the way I did, I've often called my sanity into question. And also, I work with other ideas people, and people strong in entrepreneurship and networking--you know, those who aren't always obsessing over the implications of each and every micro-decision. Sometimes I worry I'm a little too Debbie Downer-ish and, obviously, us Managers need to share our perspectives without stifling the enthusiasm of other leaders-types. BUT, this little Reality Index just made my day, maybe my decade. So, thank you Brett Johnson. True North, Baby.

A Post in Pictures Signifying Many Gifts and One Sorrow

It's Christmas time in Iowa City, and sweaters wear trees. I'm super glad about this--a reason to giggle when I walk downtown through wintertime slush. You should see all the sweaters on all the trees, each with their own 70s-inspired pattern. Some hippies were very industrious. This Christmas I'm trying to be less industrious than them. I'm thinking about rest in the face of sacred cows such as The Holiday Photo Card, featuring all Webers, clean, smiling and otherwise in tact. And it's hard enough to let my left hand know that my right hand is not addressing all those envelopes this year, harder to articulate it in writing here. And that there are people who mean the world to me that I am just not. buying. gifts. for.  Because it's just so much frenzy, too much all at once. I'm trying, instead to sit still sometimes, in scenes like this one:

Yes, that's a pile of laundry you see behind Tiny, and a bag of groceries that is yet unpacked. Tiny is delighted by all the chaos left haphazardly around the kitchen. And her delight is a gift, it really is because it encourages me to pause and appreciate small and unexpected things, like joy over dirty laundry and empty baskets. And--how's this for a segue?--this guy is a gift, too. That's John, my friend and graphic designer for my 

book. He's pretty talented, and spent hours and hours and hours fine tuning my cover while I spazzed about details of alignment and shadows and brightness. Yeah, he should win an award. And he's also a great photographer too, and has taken most of the good pics you'll see of me and the fam on the FB and the blog. If you're in the area, you should look 'im up. 

Now, this here is a family tree. Not mine, but the one belonging to my half-brother, Henry, about whom said book was actually written. When he died five years ago, I knew, in theory that there were multitudes of relatives on his father's side (other than his own half siblings and dad), but I never thought about them as real people with names and memories and sorrows like my own over losing the Boy. This month's most surprising gift was the flurry of Bertka relatives who began buzzing on FB about the book, contacting me to introduce themselves, and to claim me as one of their own. It's been bittersweet, but more sweet than bitter, to hear their memories, to see their faces and family resemblances, and to know their stories with flesh now on skeletal plotlines. So, Rita, Mike, Mary--and of course, Naomi--I thank you. (And as I write this quickly, I know I must be leaving out others--it's a big family, as you can see!)

But here's the sorrow this month. My book, my beloved darling, has been literally misaligned by the printer. Many of the copies are produced with lines all aslant (see the bottom line of text--it's much more noticeable in person). It's depressing and left me a bit numb after unpacking sixty copies at my home yesterday. The printer will replace/refund any defective copies purchased by any individual or vendor, but it's still a sadness to know that some are going out into the world all askew. The manufacturer is investigating the problem at their production sites, but these things take time, as you know. If you buy a copy and it comes to you like this, it probably will do me and the book some ultimate good if you ask for a replacement. In the meantime, you could read the free kindle version that comes with purchasing the paperback book on Amazon. 

And there it is. And now I must go to preschool to pick up Tiny, and then it's off to dance class--hers, not mine.

Perfectionism, Self-Worth, and Why We Write

Is it okay to take a moment to say that perfectionism is killing me? There are a lot of checks a writer must make before a book is finalized, and in my case--because us Ovenbird authors retain more control than usual over the interior--there are a lot of checks. But honestly, everything's looking pretty good right now. It's just that the anxiety of there being some sort of unseen problem with the book is almost overwhelming--it's almost enough to keep me from ever stamping my approval. Sometimes, I have to tell my OCD-self that my editor-self made an editorial decision that is just, simply, out of my hands. Tough luck. Deal with it. This is a collaborative effort, after all, between editor-, artist-, and OCD-me.

That aside, I've had a few readers purchase the Kindle version (thank you!) and I've already heard back from some of you (mostly friends and extended family). You are reminding me that I opened wide a window to my life that doesn't normally get cracked in the day to day. Obvious, yes. But when you spend so much time objectively and robotically proofreading a manuscript, you might forget that it's about something; you might forget that what it's about has to do with things that move people, things that make people feel connected with you in a way you weren't even thinking about when you wrote those things.

Now, in truth, there is a corner in my mind rooting for this book to make some sort of impact, some kind of (splash is entirely. the wrong. word.)...maybe what I mean is that I am hoping it will color the world in some way, if only by hue or tint--some shade (nuanced is fine) that reveals its having been here. I'm rooting for a plop into the pond that will send ripples (minute ripples are fine!) to the farthest reaches of the water. And, let me be perfectly and shamefully honest, if those ripples did happen to shimmy all the way over to Oprah's living room, I'd be ecstatic.

But forget about books and writing for a moment: don't we all feel that we want our very existence to make ripples that reach the far side of the pond? To find out, at the end of the day, that we made a difference, that we made some contribution that shifted the landscape of a soul or altered the dialogue of a community or a world? That Oprah would find us interesting and meaningful enough to sit us down in her living room and ask, ask, comment, ask, offer her two cents, mention Nate Berkus, and, when it's all said and done, give us a car? 

I remember Anne Lamott describing the faulty expectations of insecure writers that, once they were published, self esteem would arrive by phone, fax, and mail. Thank God I didn't publish in my twenties because I'd be an absolute basket case after having found out that a book in print wouldn't do anything to soothe my raging need to BE OKAY. So, if it's not self-esteem we slightly less neurotic versions of ourselves are after--what drives us? What do we want? Conversation? Dialogue? The catharsis that comes by storytelling? Or, to be so dramatic: the healing of the world?

I don't know. I really don't. But, like any author, I hope this book is widely read. I hope it matters to strangers.

On the Occasion of the Boy's Birthday, an Excerpt:

I'm told that Ovenbird Books' new web site should be up and running in the next week or so, and Dear Boy is set to release shortly thereafter in print (so many considerations in the first stages of founding a press and its first releases!). And, ironically, today is the Boy's birthday, in honor of which I'm posting an excerpt, the memoir's opening letter:

Dear Boy,     

I wrote you an email last year, addressed to your tattoo shop. Did you ever get it? It was about our cousin’s wedding—you were invited, but she didn’t know where to send the invitation. You know, your house really was out in the middle of nowhere. How many houses are there in that tiny town, anyway—five? And a church? And some railroad tracks? And just a little bit up from the churchyard, that narrow country road where you landed after flying out of a car.

You never saw this house I live in, and you’d been living in your home for years before I ever visited. We weren’t too busy, but were we scared to act like brother and sister? Today I was thinking that it’s still July, a few weeks before your blood marked the gravel with a great brown stain, but the leaves on the silver maple in my front yard have turned sunny gold speckled with mildew. Meaning the accident already happened. Too late for me to ask you how the distance between us unfurled, why your once-tight grip on my hand loosened into a flat, retracted palm.

Too late now—but death demands an account. The closer the death, the more detailed its demands. And all this accounting I must do with you, Boy, is like sending a hundred years’ worth of birthday cards and getting none in return. But so it will be. I have no other way to speak to you.

#16 , In Which I Interview Myself about the Book and Matters of Truth and Memoir

I love how my mentor and friend Fleda wrote an interview with herself about her latest book, No Need of Sympathy. She's a fab writer, by the way, and many of us could learn a thing or twelve from her. For instance, I learned last week that conducting an interview with oneself is indeed a possibility and, not only that, a worthwhile venture. In praise of Fleda, I imitate:

I ran into my Self in my sunroom where I like to sit on the couch with a laptop (or two), my cell phone, a bottle of water, and whatever books I am currently reading. She wasn't busy, so I struck up the following conversation.

Heather: Hey, so glad to see you here. I've been noticing all this activity on Facebook about a book you have coming out--Dear Boy, An Epistolary Memoir. What's that all about? I thought you were a pastor?

Self: Yeah, I know. Crazy, right? Well, three years ago I actually completed an MFA program in creative writing at the Rainier Writing Workshop. Great place--great people. And my creative thesis has become this book, Dear Boy, that is being released by Ovenbird later this year.

Heather: So, what does "Epistolary" mean? I notice that word trips people up now and then.

Self: I know--it's an uncommon usage of the root word--epistle. Think about the Bible and the Pauline epistles--the letters Paul wrote to various groups of believers: so, epistolary has to do with letters, and at least half of the book is written in letters to different people in my life.

Heather: Wait--are these real letters? Letter that you saved from correspondence with family members?

Self: No--see, I borrowed the techniques of fiction to tell this story. The letters are made-up, but when they combine with parts of the book that are in third-person narration, they tell this story about my relationship with my brother (who died five years ago) against the backdrop of other complex relationships and dysfunction in our family.  It's also, in large part, what I call a "grief book."  Not that I think it's a guide for grieving people or anything like that, but I think there's something universal to the story that people who have suffered loss or are currently grieving will be able to relate to.

Heather: I know you're a very spiritual person and pastoral ministry is a very important part of your life. Is this a book that will help others?

Self: I think people could make a lot of honest assumptions about the kind of book that a "minister" would write--that it is, by design, intended to point people to God or give them insight about living a more God-centered life.  But I don't know if this book will do that for anyone. It wasn't written with that in mind. What it is is an honest picture of a part of my life, written during a season where I was experiencing some of the worst heartache and having to wrestle with questions I'd never had to wrestle with before. I don't pretty up any of that in the book, but I do think that there is a lens that I, as the narrator, offer--one of compassion to those who have hurt me. One of forgiveness.

Heather: So, there are people to forgive in this story?

Self: Sure, but the book doesn't use language like that.  There's the woman who raised me--my mother. One of the tricky things I and other memoirists have to work out is that the telling of our stories intersects with other people's stories by default. I did everything I could to protect her identity as much as possible because it's important to me to honor her in that way. She's just another human being who deserves to face the world on her own terms without anyone else interfering. I don't want the telling of my story to get in the way of that.

Heather: But why write this book and publish if there's a chance that this could hurt someone?

Self: That's a tough question, and I'm not sure I have the right answer. All I know is that I feel like it's the right thing to do. I have this faith that it's the right thing for an artist to tell the truth as best they see it and in as compassionate a way as they can. All of us writers have to grapple with the fact that truth and art can hurt. There are even those parts of the Bible that cause me excruciating anguish to read--like in Judges when an innocent woman is raped all night long; then her body is cut apart and distributed to all twelve tribes of Israel and used as an excuse for civil war. That's the kind of thing that you read in the Bible about God's "chosen" people and think, How did this get here?  How are we supposed to react to it? Why did the Biblical narrators put it there? What do we do with that? I think Dear Boy also begs that question of the reader: when evil happens--when people hurt us--what do we do?