Mary Wagner's Open Salon Blog

Gone Fishin'

Thu, 10 May 2012 22:05:11 -0400

My youngest son eased the SUV backward down the shallow mud slope, putting the wheels of the trailer a few feet into the water. The channel leading to the lake seemed not much wider than the row boat, and I stood a few feet to the side, out of the way and out of trouble. I was in thoroughly unfamiliar territory, both metaphorically and literally—I had absolutely no idea where we were. Not that it mattered, since for the next few hours, I was entirely in his hands. It had to happen some day.

We were there on the edge of his favorite lake, putting an aluminum rowboat into the water, at my suggestion. Begging, in fact. Fishing had taken hold of Robert with a vengeance this summer, coinciding with the triumph of getting his driver’s license and being able to haul a boat and a trailer behind his small SUV. I had soon turned a little envious of his water-borne adventures with his high school buddies. Okay, the part about getting up at five in the morning for a good start didn’t hold any charm for me. But in overhearing snatches of conversation here and there, I formed the wistful impression of hours spent soaking in the grandeur of nature, sunrises, sunsets, loons, ducks, occasional fish caught and released, moonlit excursions under star-studded skies that involved more relaxing and talking about life and politics than actually fishing but still sounded heavenly.

And so I bugged him to take me fishing on one of the last mornings before school started up again. We set a date and hoped for good weather. At the appointed Mom-friendly hour, I drove up to the house bearing bug spray, sunblock, and nice ’n’ greasy McDonald’s breakfasts for the both of us. Climbed into the front passenger seat, and settled in for the ride. He’d been busy already, industriously packing fishing rods, tackle boxes, a cooler full of drinks, nets, a carton of juicy nightcrawlers, and life jackets.

This was definitely his show. He competently pushed the boat off the trailer, parked the SUV, and held the boat steady for me to climb into. We poled our way off the mud bottom and down the channel until the boat started to float on its own, then paddled through an ocean of shiny green lily pads fringed by rushes and tall grass. The last of the lily pads finally behind us, we floated out into wide open spaces. Only a few feet deep, and tiny in comparison to other recreational lakes in our county, this pond nonetheless had rustic charm to spare. Only a few houses ringed its shoreline—nature reigned supreme. Too shallow for larger boats and “personal watercraft,” too difficult for access for more than the true die-hards who didn’t mind getting muddy to get there, this was a lake for those few who REALLY treasured peace and quiet and, dare I say it, utter serenity.

Great blue herons, standing four feet tall on long twig-like legs, spread their six-foot silver wings and floated along the perimeter of the lake, slow and measured wing-beats indicating no hurry, no worries. Their necks arched back in graceful S-curves, and narrow heads perched regally above their chests, their long legs trailing behind like a ballerina’s arabesque. Unseen but still present, sandhill cranes clacked musically from the sidelines, and Canada geese passed, honking, overhead. A pair of ducks shot airborne across the lake, all speed and business, like turbo-charged Mini Coopers compared to the herons’ languid touring cars.

Wind riffled the crystilline water’s surface, and we passed over forests of strange vegetation below, some plants with leaves curled upwards like submarine calla lilies, others with riots of long, furry arms reaching upwards and crossways, chenille yarn for fish and mermaids to fantastically knit. A damselfly perched casually on my knee, and I let him sit, undisturbed. The weather was perfect. Sunny, no clouds above but a small handful scattered at the horizons. Light wind, enough to both keep us cool and move the boat, but not enough to rock it.

He set me up with a casting rod, starting with the basics: an earthworm on a hook, with a plastic bobber attached to let me know if a fish started to nibble. Later in the morning I graduated to an artificial lure and left the bobber behind in favor of the thrill of the chase. He upgraded to a “buzz” lure, hoping to land a northern. I surprised my son—nice to still be able to do that every so often—by casting respectably from the get-go. All those hours spent horse-training decades ago, lightly cracking a long-handled whip to snap the air just behind my gelding’s haunches as he dutifully trotted in circles on the lunge line, were good for something.

We sat, and drifted, and casted, and occasionally motored to new spots, and detangled our lines from the weeds they snagged in. We landed four feisty bass, two apiece. I marveled at how beautiful of a day we’d lucked out with. And I marveled, too, at how lovely it is when the roles get reversed, and I could sit back and enjoy the ride.

There’s inevitably a tipping point—or there should be—when you look at the kid you have raised from day one, through diapers and ear infections and teething and bruises and homework and late-night trips to the E.R., piano recitals and back-to-school shopping and driver’s ed, and realize that they can do some stuff on their own.

For my older son, that moment came when he was eighteen and I flew to Germany to visit him for a weekend. He was spending several months there as a foreign exchange student. I not only spoke no German, I barely knew which end of the country he was living in. I’d started listening to a “German for Dummies” CD in the airport lounge before takeoff from Chicago, then gave up twenty minutes later. Too late to pick up the language then. So for four days a few thousand miles from home, I took all my cues from my son. He navigated the trains, gave me a walking tour around the neighborhood and the town center, picked a café where we had coffee and ice cream, warned me to keep my purse closer to me when we sat so it would be out of pickpocket range, navigated all the signs and directions and bathrooms and menus, and translated more than adequately at an impromptu gathering of my German cousins before we left.

For my oldest daughter—the “training baby” we mother’s have the hardest time cutting the apron strings on—the moment came watching her as she addressed a crowd of about twenty five hundred students from an auditorium stage at a convention she’d helped to plan. For the younger one, it came at the end of a long day at the office, a hundred fifty miles of highway under my belt, and an awards banquet we’d attended that evening where she’d received a scholarship. As I sat on living room sofa of her new student apartment, the “guest room” where I would sleep the night in comfort just ten feet away and her cat watching warily from the sidelines, she kicked into maternal comfort mode. Let me get you a cup of tea, she suggested. Would I like to watch “Sex and the City?” I put my feet up on the coffee table and accepted my new place in the world. It felt good. And now it was time for my “caboose baby.”

Three hours after Robert and I first poled and paddled our way out to the middle of the lake, it was time to make our way home. He expertly located the tiny break in the identical stands of tall grass rimming the lake, and navigated us back up the channel to the spot where we’d left the car. Grunting and struggling mightily, he wrestled the boat—usually a two man job—by inches on to the back end of the trailer. I stayed out of the way as he balanced on the trailer and manhandled the full load, then tentatively worked the winch at his direction when the time came. Gear unloaded and boat buckled down, we slowly made our way home and back to reality and routine. “Thanks honey,” I said, “this was just…beautiful!”

The school year has started, the house is again quiet, and autumn is settling in. A few sugar maples have started to brilliantly catch fire and drop their leaves already, signaling an encroaching end to long days spent outdoors in shorts and sandals. There’s no more talk about the need to get up at five in the morning to get that boat in the water. I can already anticipate breaking out my snowshoes after a good blizzard this winter, and we haven’t had the first frost yet.

The march toward the dead of winter is inexorable, with fixtures of hot chocolate, snowdrifts, crackling fires and frosty windshields on the horizon. But no matter how cold it gets, and no matter how few hours of daylight we have for months on end, it won’t take much to get my mind back in that boat. If you see me with a far-off stare and a smile on my face this winter as the winds howl outside and the snowflakes fall like cotton, chances are…I’ve “gone fishin’.”

"Heck" is on Kindle!

Mon, 16 Apr 2012 19:04:47 -0400

Just add coffee..and sigh! I'm happy to share that I finally managed to upload a full-color version of my second book, "Heck on Heels," to Amazon's Kindle Store, where I've priced it at $2.99. The paperback sells for $14.95. Here's the link to check out a free preview, some very nice reviews, and a description: http://www.amazon.com/Heck-Heels-Balancing-Chocolate-ebook/dp/B007T15AYY/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1334617527&sr=8-2

This is my second essay collection, which originally came out in paperback in 2009. It's the only one of my three books that contain nature photographs, and on the printed page with only black and white to work with, the pictures were good...but relatively small and therefore underwhelming. Still, the book managed to earn an Indie Excellence Award and make ForeWord Review's list of finalists in the magazine's "Book of the Year Awards."

Now, with advent of color e-readers and folks being able to download e-books to their iPads, the time seemed right to reissue the book, but this time with full-sized photos, and quite a few more of them, and in color to boot. (Of course if you don't have an e-reader that has a color screen, the photos still look pretty darn good in greyscale!) I'm aiming for a "portable serenity zone" here. In other words, with a good cup of coffee (which for me of course includes chocolate and whipped cream) and these photos and essays, you've got a serene place to escape to...even if you're sitting on a city bus.

This was an entirely new chapter of my "self-publishing" adventures. Up until now, I've simply busied myself with writing words, and left the formatting to the folks on the publishing end. This was a VERY different experience, particularly for someone who is a technological idiot. I swear often that I will never make it out of the twentieth century.

But I had lately been thinking a LOT about the question, "if 'Heck on Heels' was going to be the very best book it could be, how could it get better?" And the answer, of course, has always been...WITH BIGGER PHOTOS, AND IN COLOR. Nothing, however, that I would ever achieve in a paperback edition. Lessons learned:

(1) Make sure you read all the way to the end of the Kindle Direct Publishing instructions before trying to upload your book.

(2) Who knew there could be such a bedeviling difference between "insert" and "copy and paste" when it came to including photos in a manuscript?

(3) If you have spent three days beating your head against a wall trying to create a "searchable table of contents" and you still can't figure it out... one of your children can do it for you.

Please check it out! Like it on Facebook, Tweet it on Twitter, tell your friends who own Kindles and iPods! And by all means, if you read it, I'd love to hear what you think about it.

www.runningwithstilettos.com

Over my shoulder...

Sat, 7 Apr 2012 11:04:31 -0400

While my family situation and concerns haven't changed since I first posted my "Health Care Manifesto" essay in August, I found it very interesting this morning to find that the same essay, posted on my "Running with Stilettos" website, has picked up a half-dozen views in the last day or so from some wing-nut hate-filled website called "Americans Who Hate Obama." Now THAT'S a readership I can do without.

http://open.salon.com/blog/runningwithstilettos/2011/08/16/health_care_manifest0

Book of the Year finalist!

Tue, 3 Apr 2012 08:04:46 -0400

Just a short note here this morning to share that my third essay collection, "Fabulous in Flats," made the list of finalists in ForeWord Reviews' annual Book of the Year Awards! This book is doing pretty well (crossing my fingers here that my luck holds), it was named "Published Book of the Year" a few months ago by the Florida Writers Association, and was a finalist in the Chicago Writers Association's contest too.

You can check out part of the first chapter and the back-cover comments from some wonderful authors who very kindly "blurbed" the book for me, at the iUniverse page, http://bookstore.iuniverse.com/Products/SKU-000470528/Fabulous-in-Flats.aspx

I would love to hear about other authors' experiences with self-publishing, which is how I've published all three of my books. I have REALLY enjoyed many facets of the experience, though it's been a journey of learning-by-doing every step of the way.

Spring Equinox

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 19:03:11 -0400

The sun is sinking low in the western sky, on a perfect track with the road I live on that runs in a straight line from east to west. This is the time of year that folks around here usually keep snow boots and shovels in our cars in anticipation for yet another snow storm, but the temperature is still a balmy seventy-something, another in a string of perfect summer days...in March. I put pansies in planters outside the other day, for heaven's sake.

The hair is still damp on my neck from the exertions of dragging a large assortment of trash trees, woody vines, and jumbles of branches that sport wickedly deadly thorns into one larger pile for burning in the back yard later. Yes, the chain saw came out early this year. And when warm weather hits, I know from experience that there is only a small window of opportunity--between when the snow melts and the grass is dry underfoot, and when the trees and shrubs fill in with leaves--to make headway on trimming back nature's encroachments. Only a short time when you can look into the trees or bushes preparing to hang in to the driveway, and see what else they are tangled up with. The deadfall from a winter storm, the vines holding them fast to the tree standing behind, the outstretched arms of thorny things that, if you do not take care, will leave your bare arms looking like you've been wrestling with a circus lion.

I have another, larger pile of things to burn in the front yard. This will light quickly, since it contains some pine branches and the balsam fir that was the Christmas tree. But I'm exhausted from the dragging, and have no wish, without the man in my life beside me, to start a bonfire and tend it into the wee hours of the morning. The goddess of firetending in me will just have to wait for another day. There are things that are better shared, and standing under a dark sky full of stars bright as diamonds while sparks and cinders waft upwards, is one of them. So I've rented the animated film "Puss n Boots" to watch this evening. Like I'd ever get the man in my life to sit still for THAT one!!

Though I won't lack for company, with the dog and the two cats vying for attention when I finally settle in on the sofa. Lucky is the dog, and one of the cats is Meatball. Meatball belongs to my older son, but has been living here for the past seven months. He has the personality of a stalker, the vocal ability of a bird, the conversational ability of Jay Leno. I just with I knew what the heck he keeps trying to tell me all day long. But one thing that really makes him stand out in a crowd is the fact that he like to go on long walks in the woods with Lucky and me. I come home after work and, now that it's daylight, I've got Lucky and the Meatball both hovering at the front door for me to get into my hiking clothes and take off down the path. You haven't really experienced the joy of cat ownership until you've seen a short-haired cat with black and white markings like a milk cow come flying across the countryside to catch up wtih the pack like a cow pony heeding the rustle of a feed bucket. Yes, today's walk was utterly splendid too.

I love the spring equinox, that tipping point where the days finally start to outweigh the nights, a few minutes at a time. I know a lot of people get excited about the first day of summer, but for me, by the time we've hit June 20, it's all downhill after that. The days get a wee bit shorter, and despite the looming heat of summer, the calendar reveals that winter is just a foregone conclusion. I left the house earlier than usual this morning, because I needed to drop my car off at the dealership to check on a mystery problem. As the country road I drove on turned east on a curve, I suddenly spied the rising sun. It was a bright fuschia, and glorious. And as I rounded the curve, I could see it gleam off the surface of a smaller east-west road amid arching trees, and I remembered what day it was, and the perfect symmetry of such a sunrise aligned with our meager attempts to put our own human stamp on our surroundings. It was almost enough to get me to backtrack and take that side road, just for the worshipful experience of driving into the rising sun. But duty called, and the fact that I needed to get to work somewhat nearly on time kept me on course. But as I drove, I stole glances to the east, and as I passed through hilly and beautiful terrain, I noticed that the fuschia glow of the early sky reflected pink off the surface of the small lakes and streams that I passed by. It was magic.

Tomorrow, the day after the equinox, will be just a tad longer under the sun than today, and so on and so on. I don't know how long this glorious weather will last. I know that there are thunderstorms forecast for the next several days and so I won't be meandering through the woods with Lucky and the Meatball, or starting up any bonfires with confidence. But I'll be thinking back often to that fuschia sunrise, and the way it gleamed off the surface of the water, and conjuring this day often if the season turns back to the snow and the cold that we have every right to still expect.