Miracle Street

Growing up in Ontario, California, Christmas was an occasion to celebrate. 

My dad loved Christmas and would decorate the house with multi-colored bulbs. He would put Christmas movies on all week. Santa Clause Conquers the Martians, Rudolph and A Christmas Carol, of course, but Miracle on 34th Street was always my favorite. The black and white version with Natalie Wood as Susan, the little girl who doesn't believe.

There was always something magical in the way my dad celebrated Christmas. With homemade Pillsbury donuts covered in sugar. And eggnog which us girls refused to drink. Candy canes and fudge. Christmas music on the stereo. Dad clearly believed in Christmas and the power of intention. He even somehow, someway, opened a bar, a tavern called "The Big O", that he always dreamed of owning. It was all his while it lasted.

In Miracle on 34th Street, there is also something magical when Susan hears Kris Kringle speak Dutch to a little girl. Susan starts to believe and when Kris refuses to disavow Christmas to Susan's mom, she almost fires him. She changes her mind when Mister Macy praises the "new" Santa.

Kris tells her, "Christmas isn't just a day, it's a frame of mind." Kris also believes in the magic of "imagination". 

Most adults refuse to believe in magic. Kids believe. Kids know that they can be anything and anyone if only they believe. 

It took me fifty years to believe in the magic. I don't have kids, couldn't have kids, so I have to find and rekindle the magic in myself. 

And now, at fifty, I finally believe. I believe I can be anything and do anything. If only I believe. So I do.

Rain

There is rain falling outside. I can hear it splashing against the house. It has been raining for hours. It is hard rain. Fast rain. I light my meditation candle. 

Rain has always made me want to stay home. To cuddle under a blanket and drink coffee all day. 

Rain makes me think of how, as a kid, it rained much more than it does now. I remember walking to school with an umbrella in elementary school. The rain sloshing my feet. Jumping in puddles. 

Rain makes me remember our house growing up. The one with the pool that the bank took out from under us. I remember swimming in the pool when it rained. My parents yelling at us later that we could have been hit by lightening. 

Rain makes me think of grief. Of funerals. 

Rain makes me melancholy and it makes me shiver. Kinda like life at times.

Today

Today is the first day of the rest of my life. I'm gonna be present and enjoy it. 

I usually have a "to do" list an arm long. I'm efficient. Task orientated. On track. Responsive. My job as a deputy public defender demands it. 

But I'm throwing that away today. I'm gonna live, be and do. 

Yesterday, I got home from work and fell asleep at 6 o'clock! I just fell into bed exhausted. My day starts early you see. I was up at 5 am doing a final edit on my book. 

So by the time I got to work at what some still consider "early", I was wide awake and ready. I was so busy I didn't even take a break. I worked through lunch eating my cheese and crackers box at my desk. 

Suffice to say, when I got home last night, I was beat.

No more. Every day is precious. I'm gonna take a breath. Many breaths. Every day. There is no hurry and no need to stress and "rush" through life. 

Your work will get done. It will. You are a doer but you are not a robot. Just live. Every day. Live with the wonder of life in your eyes, as if today is your first day here. Make it matter. 

Let me repeat that: Make it matter. 

Visualization

It's 6:30 am. I'm writing this after doing my early AM social media posts for my new book which is available for preorder. My book/novel/memoir, "Tales of an Inland Empire Girl" took over a decade to write, almost 15 years in fact.

I remember visualizing it in a class at a summer writing workshop called VONA many moons ago in the Bay Area. It was after my dad had passed, in my first or second VONA. 

The writing teacher had us make miniature books, almost like tiny dollhouse recreations. We put a picture on the front and the title of our book and wrote some words inside.

More than a decade later, my book has the same picture of me and my sisters that I visualized so many years ago. The title changed many times (I think back then the working title was "Stories from a dysfunctional IE childhood") but the substance has always remained the same. 

I always knew I wanted to write a memoir/novel (what should I call it? A rose by any other name...) about my childhood in the Inland Empire. 

I wanted it to be full of love of family, and filled with adventures along with some comedy and tragedy. And I wanted to capture my father's character. 

Also, I wanted it to be a collection of short stories. I wanted it to also be about "place" and memorialize the Inland Empire the way James Joyce did with Dublin. Why not aim high?

I wanted it to be in YA/child voice, in present tense mostly and scene driven, and dialogue heavy with echoes from all my favorite writers growing up, especially Judy Blume and SE Hinton. It is all that. It is what I imagined and more. It went through so many iterations. 

I never imagined it would take this long, but that's the way it goes. The point is, it's here. Finally. 

And I'm over the moon my friends. Over the moon. Dreams come true, they do. If you wish hard enough and visualize and do the work. Promise.

Dramarama

When I was 20, I took a writing class at Chaffey College, and a teacher told me my fiction writing was too romantic and melodramatic. 

His comment destroyed me. I didn't write another piece for years. 

At 50, looking back, I wish I knew then, what I know now. 

Everyone's voice has value. If you're dramatic, be dramatic, it's who I was and who I am. I grew up reading Harlequins.

As a kid, I would always imagine writing sequels to my favorite books. I imagined myself into stories. As a young adult, I wrote poems full of angst.

That younger voice is what I try to recapture now. Of course, I temper the drama with comedy and tragedy. But that romantic and dramatic side is still in me. It's what makes me who I am. 

My husband will sometimes say I'm a ham or a drama queen, and I am. But I'm also a writer and it was merging my writing and my performance side that really helped me elevate my readings and feel comfortable on stage and doing a video podcast and public speaking.

So my end thought is this, be you. Do you. I am romantic. And dramatic. Always. That's where the magic is friends.

5 am again

It's 5 am. Again. Every day, the sun rises and every day, I try and write.

Today, I am working on this blog and on a long project about my trip to France to see my long lost cousin a few years back. I always have a few writing pans in the fire.

My book took so long because of my process. Typically, I write stand alone pieces. It's just my thing. The last few years of my life were putting my child and YA pieces together and synthesizing them into one long work. It was so fucking hard. It was probably the most difficult thing I've ever done. At times, I didn't think I could get it done. 

So instead, during Covid, I started a monthly podcast interviewing other writers which was actually a good thing. It inspired me and was more productive creatively then just cleaning my house to distract myself from the arduous task at hand and my fear of failure. 

This summer, with health issues looming and anxiety about my own mortality, I would chant, "I'm the little writer who could." Then I would hum the ant song about perseverance to myself (one that I first heard on Laverne & Shirley as a kid) and sit down every weekend, butt in chair, and work. It took a few months, but not as long as I thought once I focused. I just did it. 

In August/September, I edited it one last time, took out more repetition, wrote an afterword and threw in my poetry at the end for good measure. My editor/publisher was happy I was done. He'd been waiting so long. He's a good person, a fantastic editor and writer, and most importantly, patient as a saint.

That book, Tales of an Inland Empire Girl, comes out in January. It was finished through a combination of real fear that I would not ever "finish", coupled with the realization that I had just published a chapbook about public defense without over working it. 

What seemed so hard at first, was just me standing in my own way. Over a decade, I'd written the pieces. And edited them over and over. Workshopped them. Agonized. So the hard work was done. I just needed to let it sing. 

Fear is like that. Fear of success is a real thing. As long as you're still "workin" on something, no one can criticize it. "It's still a draft," I would always laugh. "My albatross."

Well, it's no longer my albatross. 

It's real, it's finished (after a final proof) and it's lovely. Nothing is perfect you see. But this book, I know this, this book is as good as it gets for me. I am satisfied. And I realized that, in the end, that's all that fucking matters.

Awake

I feel as if I'm finally awake. These last weeks recovering have made me see life differently. I appreciate the moments.

Something has also happened with my relationships. They feel truer and deeper. 

Perhaps, showing my own vulnerability has made me more human to my family and friends. At times, I can be a bit much. I know this.

And sometimes, I get stuck. Last night, or I guess this morning technically because it was 2 am, I awoke and crawled out of bed. I've had issues in the middle of the night since my surgery. I sat in the guest room thinking, which is always dangerous.

Chewbacca licked my face and so I kissed his head. Then I thought to myself, get outta your head girl. Just start the doing again. Be in the moment and be free from anxiety. Write, work, love and live. That's your goal. Your mantra.

What I've awakened to is the realization that life is now. It's everything. Even now, writing this, I'm here. I'm doing. I'm being. And as long as I'm me, and true to who I am, nothing else matters. 

The body is our form, but our soul, our consciousness, that's who we are and why we're here. So I'm just gonna be here. Right now. 

Can you "see" me? I hope you do because I see you.