Lobster Racing

January 11, 2009 By 33 Comments

“When I was younger, I could remember anything, whether it happened or not.”

~ Mark Twain

117865562_17f6d739e93…2…1… GO!

The lobsters skitter across the floor, this time far less interested in playing our little game.  The first lobster abandons his lead, then turns around and starts back toward Daisy.

“Ahh!” Daisy shrieks, backing out from the kitchen and falling into the tiny dining room overlooking an outside garden still showing plenty of color in the crisp January air.  Daisy’s cry isn’t real.  It’s just a cover of the same one she’s been playing for the last twenty minutes… two thirds of the lobsters’ last half hour alive.

“One more time?” I ask.

“Of course,” she giggles.

Daisy hops over the giant sea roach then squats down to adjust the finish line while I herd the lobsters with the wrong end of a broom toward our awkwardly assembled starting gate.

3…2…1… GO!  The lobsters are off for the evening’s final race; the last one of their lives.  The lazier of the two lobsters somehow finds its final wind.  It scratches across the linoleum at a sudden pace we didn’t know it had.  The second lobster appears to take the turn of events personally and recovers his lead by climbing over the first.

The moment strikes us about a mile and a half past funny.  We try to catch our breath, fail, and collapse on the floor in a single breathless heap.

The water is now ready; a rolling boil of a billion bubbles.  I leave the kitchen to the sound of searing air whistling through shell.

I retrieve my glass and head to the sofa.  ”Happy Birthday,” I hear from behind.  I turn around just as the camera’s flash sweeps the living room with a one second swath of light.

“Thanks for the lobster,” I say, raising my glass, “and the wine.”  I collapse on the couch, feeling it for the first time as soon as I say the word.

“My pleasure.”  Daisy falls next to me on the couch, her arm around my shoulder and head on my chest, each of us, smiling as we replay our private version of the last five minutes in the exclusive theater of our own mind’s eye.

The next five minutes felt like a neat slice of forever, though they were the last I truly remember from that memorable evening.  Even those details might have dimmed were it not for the black and white photograph; the one where I’m smiling, slightly off guard, in sunglasses unwrapped just twenty minutes before.  The picture isn’t old enough to be a legitimate black and white, Daisy and I just happened to be in the midst of a phase where we preferred black and white to color, before the days when hues could be bleached with the click of a mouse.

Writer Dad, this story obviously takes place well before you were a writer or a dad.  What’s your point?

I do have a point, I promise, but this is only the first part of a longer tale.  The rest I’ll spill on Friday.  What I will say is that this particular celebration has been elevated to the stuff of legend, at least in the eyes of one particular person; the story now bestowed with the sort of magic found mostly in fairy tale.

Sometimes fairy tales are written down, sometimes they are passed from mother to son or father to daughter.  Sometimes, fairy tales are born from a single moment captured and framed in an old photograph.

On Friday, the rest of the story.  Until then…

Writer Dad

Hire Ghostwriter Dad to help turn your memories into forever.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: ,

Sliding Doors

December 7, 2008 By 122 Comments

“No man ever wetted clay and then left it, as if there would be bricks by chance and fortune.”

~Plutarch

Each of us is the sum of an infinity of thinly sliced seconds, where each one matters, at least to some degree. How could we ever hope to pinpoint that decisive second when things forever changed; the instant the axis of our world shifted and began to orbit in a different direction?

It might be difficult, but can be done.  Tally your life, take it apart, and turn a seemingly impossible task to tremendously simple.

I know the moment my life took its first step down an aisle it would never leave.  I ponder it often.

I pay no mind to the property values of my neighbors or the car I drive.  My family, living, and piece of mind, these are what give my rapture breath.  None would exist without the assembly of moments from this most remembered day.

I was working in a flower shop with my family on the day my life moved from middling to merit mounting.  Our shop lay at the lip of a city I’d scarcely left.  A stranger, a petite lady with eyes like chocolate almonds, had moved to town the previous year.  She had been shopping amongst our flowers for maybe a month.

Every time she passed our vibrant displays and rounded the corner to enter our doors, I’d abandon my knife, rush my phone call, or attend to some trifle that could have easily waited, had it not been in her vicinity.

Our store was in prep until ten, but she always showed up about a half hour early.  “Do you mind if I buy a few things that are already put together?”

She also knew precisely what to ask.

“Of course not,” I’d say, the words always falling behind a smile.

It was my job to keep the early birds away, but she spent enough for me to slither through rules without consequence.

Her visits grew earlier and her totals kept climbing.

I was helping her to the car on a beautiful October day, a fraction less than a month after our eyes first locked.  My arms saddled with blossoms, I saw her sashay to her space from behind a bundle of fully bloomed roses.

I blushed, squeezed by, then laid the blooms across the passenger seat of her red (orange) pickup, Texas plates in a California lot.  I arranged the bunches then turned to face her.  Her enormous coco pupils pulled my hazel ones toward them, like ore to magnet.

I cannot recall the length of this moment, only that a single bird sang and that the perfect note felt like an epiphany.

She slipped something between my fingers.  “I’m going to go broke if I keep doing it this way,” she said.  Words flew from her mouth as though escaping.  “Call me sometime, and we could talk longer, over a cup of coffee.”

Still in the dusty aftermath of my previous liaison, I said,  “I’m just at the end of a relationship.  I’m flattered, really, but I don’t think I’m ready.”

She said something then that only clinical dementia could ever steal.  “Life’s too short to be unhappy.  Think about it, then call me.”

All fifteen syllables sounded like a smile.

I did call, though two weeks drifted from the calendar.  I wasn’t playing games, only intimidated by the strength of our obvious and unexpected bond.  I found my fortitude and made up for my missing days.

I picked up the phone around 9:30 on a Friday night, the first week of November.  We talked until the sun was almost a promised fulfilled.

Monday, she left on business, but her absence did nothing to dim our exchange.  Each day after work, we exchanged words across a land line until far past midnight, each minute driving an already expensive hotel phone bill closer toward outrageous.

It was worth every single copper faced Lincoln.

She tore into town that next Friday, not even stopping to change.  We met at a Mexican restaurant in the same center as the flower shop.

That long week was prologue to my present day; a now that can be easily traced to a single moment.

The house we live in was agreed on in twilight as the two of us held hands.  A boy and a girl wait for stories each night at bedtime, snug in the cradle of my lap.  They were baked in her oven from our special recipe.  Our living is made in tandem, because she is yin to my yang and we’ve found ourselves happiest with the fewest possible pauses in conversation.

Our most intimate moments together would have never happened without her strolling into the store, slipping me her card, or telling me life’s too short to spend it even a sliver less than happy.

I often ponder the sliding doors of my life, and all those trails never taken.  Which crossroads would have dropped me somewhere else on the day my fate was delivered?

It is impossible to know.

What I do know is that I wouldn’t trade my fate for affluence beyond imagination.  There is no other life, be it prince or king, that I’d exchange for mine.  I already live a life of abundance and can draw a time line and place my pointer on the precise moment that brought it to me.

Writer Dad

Writer Dad can write as beautifully for you. Click here to hire the best ghostwriter on the net.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: , ,

Finding My Friday

November 17, 2008 By 47 Comments

How can a society that exists on instant mashed potatoes, packaged cake mixes, frozen dinners, and instant cameras teach patience to its young?

~Paul Sweeney

Life never unfolds exactly as expected.  Hoping it will is only swatting at fog.  Days transpire, weeks disappear, and we are often engaging our best when we simply catch up, and catch our breath.  We keep our eyes fixed on what’s coming and then accept it when it does; remain thankful for all we have that works well, and arrange to change what doesn’t.

We cannot stop life from happening.  It goes on every day, with or without us.  It follows us everywhere, surrounding us everywhere we go, no different from the air we breathe.

We never know how that first drift will flutter the next, so it is paramount that we regard our moments as each a possible precursor to the last; forever holding our head in the now, while never forgetting to flick our eyes at the horizon and whatever prize we’ve placed beneath, while understanding that there are few things we can simply compel to happen.

When big things happen suddenly, there is often unreasonable cost attached.

Like a tsunami, or avalanche.

Life, at its best, happens bit by tiny bit.

Does the caterpillar know what he will one day be?

Probably not.

One thing Daisy’s always said, though only now am I hearing it in the way she’s always meant it: “We mustn’t ever skip our steps.”

I love our modern world, but when I can download nearly anything I’m in the mood for, and less than a decade from losing the nearly altogether, how can I remain humble while looking patience in the eye.  More important, how can I teach this to my children?

There’s an order to life, and to most things we say we want and are willing to work for.  Skipping even a single step, often means misunderstanding or misapplying something in the future.  If we consider we’re here only once, this seems precarious and unnecessary.

My biggest one to grow on during my twenties was patience.  Fortunately, life saw fit to outfit me with the ultimate foe of an impatient man: first a girl and then a boy.

I’m more patient than I used to be, but I still have a million miles to meander.

Last Friday, I was in the middle of telling Daisy about my brand new idea – the new one.  This was the one that would change everything, allow us to scale our next summit, and plant a flag deep inside all future possibility.  A good fifteen minutes had passed since the last idea and, since it was getting late, it was perfectly possible that a better idea would not arrive before the dawn.

“Sweetheart,” Daisy said.  She put her hand on my forearm to stop me from pacing, then pulled me down on the couch beside her.  “You need to find your Friday.”

This last week saw me celebrating my new life as a full time writer by piling even more onto my ridiculously heaping plate.  I tackled the week as though the Romans didn’t get it done in a day by choice.  There’s something to be said for working hard and using every minute, but it’s something else when your minutes are misapplied.

We will find our success.  It will happen because we are willing to wake up and give our best every day, but doing my best doesn’t always mean doing my most.

I found my Friday, and fortunately, my Saturday and Sunday sailed into the sunset right behind.

Writer Dad

Sean Platt is a ghostwriter for hire, specializing in ebook design and press releases.

Namas Daisy has a lesson from the geese.  Both Daves and Tara are getting fit in front of the whole internet.  Check out their awesome new blog, BLOG TO FIT.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: , , , , , , ,

No, No, No! I said, “I Didn’t Want to be a Chooch.”

August 27, 2008 By 123 Comments

My problem lies in reconciling my gross habits with my net income. 

~Errol Flynn

This is an exciting time in life; my family on the brink of a shift.

Most of it’s wonderful, but like any move from blue ribbon to better, there’s little reward without any stairs to climb.  

Sweet isn’t near as sweet if you’ve never known sour.

Some of the vinegar in the emigration to full time writer, is this long middling, when the idea of being a chooch frequently worms its way between my ears, lays eggs, then wiggles down my spine to settle where I sit. 

Psst… Writer Dad.

Sigh.  Yes, incessant voice inside my head?

Most readers don’t know random Italian slang.  You only got yours because you read the forward to Mario Puzo’s, “Fortunate Pilgrim.” (Not that you actually read the book.)

Oh, incessant voice.  Good point.

A chooch, according to Italians, is someone who allows their family to fully indulge in their eccentricities, even though they don’t lay a single crumb on the table. 

I’d rather have teeth breaking through the skin on the side of my face. 

I love writing.  It’s harder than breathing, but easier than doing the dishes. 

If I can carve out a living for myself, and my loved ones, by letting my fingers dance across these keys, then I’ll bow down and count myself as one of the lucky ones.  But I can’t stand the idea of pouring over piles of syllables, belaboring every single page and paragraph of a novel that might take another year, and designing rhymes that no one will ever enunciate, when there’s a stack of bills that need to be paid (and quickly). 

If I’m a writer, than my responsibility is to not only produce content that makes me smile, my family proud, and audience happy, but that also puts food in our tummies and fattens the college fund. 

I don’t want to be the guy who goes to his garage with three drunk buddies and plays off key oldies, mouthing off about one day getting a gig, while his family’s inside passing a tub of popcorn and saying, “Where’s Daddy? 

I want to write. 

I want to write chapter books for my children, and a love story for my wife; something funny and tragic for my mom, and maybe a western for my dad.  Perhaps I’ll pen something dark and quiet, cynical and sweet for my sister. 

I can’t wait to write a book on raising children or running a pre-school, and I’ve got an awesome idea for a sci-fi novel.  I’ll probably start on it as soon as I’m finished with the book being written right now. 

I don’t need a Costco sticker covering up the last letter in the title of my tome, but my time must amount to something. 

I just can’t stand the thought of being a chooch.

Writer Dad

Disclaimer: Daisy does not endorse this post. I have read it to her three times. One had this really hilarious ending that was far better than this one. But I digress. Daisy doesn’t think that I could ever be a Chooch, and poses a strong objection to the word, especially when used in relation to myself.

If you enjoyed my words, please subscribe.  I promise I’ll be back tomorrow.

If you liked that, you’ll probably love, “Here’s a Macbook, Go Make a Million,” “Sink or Swim,” or “Your Baby’s Born in the Rough Draft. You Raise it in the Rewrite.”

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Here is a Macbook, Go Make Your Million.

August 12, 2008 By 99 Comments

Great things are not done by impulse, but a series of small things brought together.

~Vincent Van Gogh

It’s a year and a half ago, on my birthday, and Daisy hands me a box.  It’s rectangle, about the size of a coffee table book.  

I look at the box, pick it up, and measure it against possible matches in my head.  

It can’t be what I think it is.  That’s impossible.

I open the box.

GASP!  

It’s beautiful.

I pet, then remove the gift from its shell.  I place it in my lap.

“We have to return it,” I say.

My heart skips a beat as I speak.  I can tell that Daisy’s has done the same.  

“We can’t afford it.”  I repeat the message in different words, just in case they had fallen out in the wrong order the first time.

Daisy looks at me, silent.  I know that she wants me to be excited.  I can feel her desire to see me jump up and down, and break into a garish smile.  She wants to hear me shouting in glee.

“I have to return it.” My voice is almost a whisper.

Daisy then uses a word said less often between us than the word flabbergasted.  ”No,” she says.  ”You deserve this.”  She takes my hand and places it on top of the gift.

I run my fingers across the lid and then I lift the screen.  Twenty-six letters stare at me from three neat rows.

“We can’t afford it.”

“We can’t afford not to.”  

This is my logic she is using.  Flawed, of course, but I’m listening.

“Go on.”

“Your brain needs to be busy.  This will take you anywhere you want to go.  Please don’t fight me.”  Her sentences are short.  She doesn’t want to argue.  Neither do I.

“Write a book, make a million,” she adds.  She does not say this then with the certainty that she will nine months later, but the seed is planted.  What she means in that moment is that I can do anything I want to and, dollar for dollar, she just handed me the finest tool in the world.

After a brief exchange where I was reminded whose retirement was cashed out (Daisy’s) to buy the house, and who decided how to spend every penny (Writer Dad), I conceded.  It’s eighteen months later, and I am thrilled to report, Daisy was right.  

If I paid two dollars every day from that day until now, the Macbook would be paid for.  That’s less than a cup of coffee.

Today is our anniversary, a perfect time to acknowledge the amazing person who brought us all together.  

Daisy and I have been married for seven years, holding hands for eleven.  It’s a bit of time, but compared to my grandparents who were married for three quarters of a century, it’s really just the first few buds to bloom on the branches of a freshly planted tree.  

In that full year plus a decade, Daisy has never doubted me.  Whenever a crazy idea tumbles from my mind, her first question is always,

“What can we do to make it happen?”  

Most recently, when I said that I thought it was time for us to write full time and take a machete to life’s jungle, she bought fifty spiral notebooks from Target at ten cents each and piled them around every room of our house.  ”Don’t let your ideas get away,” she said, kissing me on the mouth.  ”You’re brilliant.”

 

Pertinent facts – Writer Dad: 7th grade kind of cool, 8th grade really cool, 9th grade total nerd.  Junior year, argument with guidance counselor.  Academic files grow fuzzy after that.

Pertinent facts – Daisy: Master teacher with a specialty in early childhood education.  Multiple recipient of the Teacher of the Year Award.  Has taught on four continents and helped to design curriculum.

Daisy is my biggest cheerleader.  She believes in me with a certainty that could only be described as spiritual. She is always downcast when she believes I’m bored, but I’ve never seen her happier.  This is in large part because, with no less than 1,342 projects swallowing our horizon, my brain has never been this busy.

Thank you Daisy, for conversations that flow like a decade worth of running water.  Thank you for being a tireless mother to our exhausting children.

Parenting well is often rewarding, usually fun, and rarely easy.  Doing it with you is like dribbling a ball.  

Our future has never been more pregnant and, as scary as it might be, there is no one on this Earth I’d rather hold hands with as we jump into the unknown.

Happy anniversary.  I love you.

Writer Dad

If you enjoyed my words, please subscribe.  I promise I’ll be back again tomorrow.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: , , , , ,

Torturing Tranquility Like a Treasonous Prisoner

August 1, 2008 By 23 Comments

Solitude

I admit it, I can be a pretty loud guy.  Solitude is thine enemy.

Although one of my favorite quotes has always been Teddy Roosevelt’s, “Speak softly, and carry a big stick,” I’ve often governed myself more along the lines of:

“Yell a lot and make sure there’s a bazooka bulging from your backpack.”

I try, but sometimes I can’t help it; solitude wasn’t the way I was raised. It’s like spending a lifetime trying to drop an accent, only to have it roll carelessly from your tongue as soon as you’re too exhausted to notice. 

My mom does not believe in solitude.  She comes over for dinner once a week, and as soon as she starts speaking, the sound from her mouth are as though someone has strapped a bullhorn to the end of her chin.  Worse than the volume is the mirror I’m looking in.  

The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. 

Daisy’s the opposite.  Solitude is her eternal lover.  Her dream vacation, as she said just last week, would be a few days on a Tibetan mountain top where no one would shatter her solitude until she granted permission in writing.  

As long as I’ve known her, her need for at least a little quiet falls somewhere neatly between food and water.  

When we first moved in together, I’d come home from work, barging into perfect solitude, jumping up and down like a puppy dog needing to be pet.  She would look up, cross legged on the floor, and whisper, “Don’t you ever need any downtime.”  

I’d say, “You are my downtime, Baby!” (Yes, that is an actual quote.)  

A decade later, things have definitely changed.  Of the countless gifts she’s given me, her absolute love of solitude has to be one of my favorites. 

I’ve never loved silence or solitude more. 

The problem is, quiet is like anything else.  You taste it, you like it.  You like it, you want it.  You want it, you can’t have it -

YOU GET EDGY. 

Last year, when I first started writing, my fingers could keep dancing across the keyboard, solitude or no.  Max would be playing with his race cars (alongside the torrent of requisite sound effects), while Mia was engaged in a series of twirls and pirouettes expertly crafted to capture my the attention of dad, all adding to the crashing symphony from itunes still running in another room.

No problem. 

Now, when I’m trying to write and there’s a plastic bag outside that’s fallen in step with the breeze, I feel like sticking my head out the window and shaking my fist.  Of course, I’m exaggerating.  

A little.  

But there’s no escaping the fact that I’ve become dependent on having some solitude at some point in my day.  I need, and now demand, at least twenty minutes for each one of the Earth’s rotations.  That’s fair, and it’s the only thing that helps me go from this:

 

 

To this:

Perhaps if I could bump my solitude to a couple hours, I could pop out a novel or two.

Writer Dad

 

If you like this post, think about subscribing.  I’ll be back again on Monday.  

Have a great weekend.

Filed Under: Marriage Tagged With: , , ,
Newer Posts »