tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-87676838312775022712024-02-07T10:46:10.664-08:00don't you know who I am?molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.comBlogger138125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-3741364509254663442018-07-16T13:24:00.000-07:002018-07-16T13:24:00.193-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>How to go on a Writing Retreat and not lose your mind.</b></h2>
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<b>1. </b>Low expectations. Non-writers might imagine some sort of serene and meditative experience that produces at least hundreds of pages if not a book. Writers will expect multiple games of Words With Friends, an endless layering of bad feelings: guilt, shame, fear, boredom, panic, anger, regret. Repeat. Writers know that no matter the beauty of your setting-mountains, ocean, lakes-you will feel trapped, sad and grow to loathe the landscape.</div>
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<b>2. </b>An escape plan. Do not isolate yourself (Remember <i>The Shining</i>). Do not welcome being completely "off the grid" (see Words with Friends, above). Do not underestimate your need to read about your neighbour's friend's sister's breakfast. Also, you need to Google-Writer's Retreat-Want to die. </div>
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<b>3. </b>Don't cleanse. No to the Whole 30, veganism, going off sugar, coffee or anything like that. Don't drink because you'll get morbid and possibly violent (See <i>The Shining</i>, above) Bring books that make you laugh written by people entirely unlike you to reduce jealousy, paranoia and depression. Bring magazines featuring unhealthy recipes-no supermodel/published writer who looks like a supermodel/no Virginia Woolf. (Trust me)</div>
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<b>4. </b>Don't answer your phone if it's 1) your 90+ mother-"How is your little book?"2) Your ex-husband-"I can't believe how much I'm enjoying parenthood this time," 3) Your son-"Where are my socks?" (He's boomeranged home) 4) Your husband-"Where are my keys, when are you coming home, the cat wants to talk to you."</div>
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<b>5. Finally, </b>remember this: no one WANTS to go away alone to write, like no one really wants to go off sugar or jump out of an airplane or do Cross Fit or run a marathon, or read Proust or learn a new language. They want you to do it. They want you to suffer and feel lonely and unloved. They will say-"Oh I'm so jealous! I'd love to do that!" Trust me: They are lying. You are a canary in a coal mine. You are suffering for all mankind.</div>
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-57100639781108575442018-04-12T06:03:00.000-07:002018-04-12T06:03:00.628-07:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So...my first memory of surgery was an appendicitis attack at 11. The night before I was crawling around on the kitchen floor, groaning, and my mother said, "Don't drink baking soda. If it's appendicitis you will die." Then they left for a dinner party. I was about to down a full glass of the stuff when my sister said, "You shouldn't drink that. You could die." The next day I had emergency surgery-memories blur but getting shaved down there hurt my feelings terribly and I consumed about ten cookies prior to anaesthesia but didn't'get sick. Later, I broke my arm, my shoulder, my elbow, wrist and had carpal tunnel surgery, etc. And two lonely, sad, abortions where I lied about someone waiting to take me home and left the clinics grieving, but aware that a drug addled, drunk, depressed mother would not be preferable to that sad, selfish pain.<br />
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December 27, 2016 I fall down the stairs holding all our bags attempting to escape my mom's house without waking her up. That worked but I severely hurt myself, breaking my leg and ankle and necessitating a 12 hour drive back to Chicago in a splint, on morphine and other drugs and in agony. We saw one surgeon who said, "I can't do this. It's a very serious injury. Don't google pilon fracture." Of course I immediately googled the thing and words like fusion, amputation, permanent damage, permanent nerve pain swam before my eyes. I had a 4.5 hour surgery January 4th in Skokie Hospital. They mistakenly sent my husband away so I couldn't say goodbye, they mistakenly neglected the morphine pump until I screamed for 6 hours and in the morning the head of the hospital apologised and some volunteer who kept nodding as I described the night of neglect and terror handed me a small blanket which she called "a caring blanket." Fuck you I didn't say.<br />
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3 months of not walking, colouring, staring out at the grey Chicago winter followed by a year of brutal Physical therapy and endless pain. So now, next week I'm going back to have the hardware removed. I have many screws and a bracket in my ankle. I am quietly terrified but also hopeful. I joined a FB group called Pilon Fractures Suck and I read about the rare few of us with this stupidly awful injury and feel gratitude mine isn't worse. It's bad enough but some people are really suffering and won't recover fully.<br />
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So, what have I learned, am learning? We are brutal to the slow, the handicapped, the elderly, the hurt. I have an amazing husband, son and friends. I LOVE swimming and will have that exercise to last me the rest of my life. I need to forget the neglect, the yelling, the sense that I was ruining someone's day by needing help, by my inconvenient injuries. It is deep in the pathways of my brain, lying on that cold kitchen floor alone, leaving the abortion clinic alone, recovering alone. Drinking to hasten the darkness. This isn't my reality anymore, I am loved, I am safe, I will recover and, hopefully, stop limping.</div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-39364775429704627272018-03-09T06:09:00.002-08:002018-03-09T06:09:37.401-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>FORGIVENESS
and TEACHING</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span>I
have been teaching writing, English and Literature since I received my MFA in
Fiction Writing in 1990. Some of the Universities where I have taught creative
writing, composition and literature include Brooklyn College, The College of
New Rochelle, Rutgers, City Lit (London), University of Texas, SMU, Oklahoma
State, Columbia College Chicago, Loyola, and DePaul University. I was the Metal
Works English teacher for Senn (CPS) and taught creative writing, Honors
English, Journalism, AP Literature, level 4 English, at Evanston Township High
School for 9 years and a long term subbing job at New Trier. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US">I have coached,
supported, tutored and taught any number of other writers, some adult, some
children.My students have included members of a Chicago gang (Latin Kings),
refugees from the Bosnian War, Haitian immigrants, African-American middle-aged women returning to get their degrees,very privileged and
well-prepared students, ESL students placed in my class despite their lack of
basic English, gifted and struggling students, struggling with life students,
druggie students, angry students, hurt students, several Asperger students and
many slacker students who may or may not have skills in English, needy
students, depressed students, bi-polar students and students who changed my
teaching which is all my students. What has happened in the lives of my
students while they studied with me? They had babies, got married, got
divorced, had a parents die, had a friend murdered, had a nervous breakdown,
won competitions, lost games, plagiarized, cheated, hid in my classroom, got
arrested, became emancipated minors, fell in and out of love and discovered
they are writers.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span><br />
<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>What
have I learned over these many years? Unconditional love, intellectual
development and forgiveness. I love my students for their anger, their
rebelliousness, their pride,their grade grubbing, their indifference to grades, their
kindness, their modesty, their snarkiness their happiness and depression, their thoughtfulness
and their self-absorption, their fear, their intensity, their
surfer/skateboarding attitude, their diligence and their ambition.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzNCjyPmcXAe_LK44drUGcy9xDcEyswouCS3-R0VFIrk-UjAq0XOoFNnAXGAA5fhdBCJtZ8c9pUKS2N4z05qF-ZsrryLOJld2hNh0N_s_PFQJqpH6i98jsM3jelOF25l_d0m2Hxt48MQ77/s1600/AVID08081016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1587" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzNCjyPmcXAe_LK44drUGcy9xDcEyswouCS3-R0VFIrk-UjAq0XOoFNnAXGAA5fhdBCJtZ8c9pUKS2N4z05qF-ZsrryLOJld2hNh0N_s_PFQJqpH6i98jsM3jelOF25l_d0m2Hxt48MQ77/s320/AVID08081016.jpg" width="317" /></a></div>
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<span lang="EN-US"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">Over
the years I have attended an Institute on teaching AP Literature, won a grant
to study Digital Storytelling, attended a class in Studying the Short Story at
the University of Chicago, attended a Workshop for Teaching Poetry Out Loud,
studied in Adolescent Literacy, presented at </span><span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "cambria";">ASCD-“Integrating Creative Writing into the English
Writing Curriculum.” NCTE-Whole Language Institute-Presented on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Creating a Writing Culture</i>”, IATE
Conference – <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Willa Cather and the Memoir</i>,
IATE Conference <i>Usi</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><i>ng</i><i> Creative Writing in
the English Classroom, </i></span>Keynote Speaker-Literature For All of Us : <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beaten into Literacy,</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> published three novels, any number of essays, written a screenplay and wrote hundreds of pages of curriculum. </span>I constantly seek out ways to challenge
my teaching, stay abreast of current pedagogy pertaining to adolescent literacy
and to read as much as possible.<span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"> </span></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "cambria";"><br /></span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "cambria";"><span style="mso-tab-count: 1;"></span>And
then there is forgiveness. I accept late papers, I accept real life, I accept
heartache, headache, illness and family trauma. Talk to me about what has
happened, send me an e-mail or talk to me during office hours. I will do
everything possible to help you succeed, triumph, excel, show up, and I will
forgive you carelessness, tears, anger, disappointment and lying. Just show up
so I don’t give up because I believe in you. And I want to teach you to tell
your story. Understand that having two languages is a gift. So is your depression, your anger, your resentments, they are gifts if you channel them into action, into compassion, empathy and understanding. Take those set-backs, the low grades, the social snubs, the racist, sexist, biased behaviour and spin them into gold. I will support you. I will thank you for being brave enough to come to my class. I won't stereotype you because you're an athlete, a cheater geek, a musician, an immigrant, a boy or still deciding. We don't demonize or silence in my classroom. Trust the process but be sure there is a process. Don't be thoughtless, inconsiderate or unkind. </span><br />
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "cambria";"><br /></span>
<span lang="EN-US" style="font-family: "cambria";">Don't worry if you hate me. I don't actually care. I'm your teacher not your friend, mother, or peer. I have seen nearly everything, I have taught nearly everyone. I won't give up on you. I'm your teacher.</span></div>
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-23647635879895713792017-12-31T13:10:00.000-08:002017-12-31T13:10:07.341-08:00My Writing Professor <div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I went to Brooklyn College in 1989 to get an MFA the same year my first novel was purchased by<br />
Harper& Row. It was a little awkward because I started an MFA program with a book deal but I was assured I was still welcome.<br />
<br />
The two professors, Peter Spielberg and Jonathan Baumbach were in charge of fiction writers. Both of them seemed like a dream come true, a dream I had deferred for a very long time since I was the daughter of a semi-famous literary critic/novelist and was afraid to reveal my writing hopes. I had been out of college for ten years. I was also in recovery from alcoholism, had lost my beloved eldest sister in a horrendous accident and had subsequently started drinking again, got married, beaten up, left my husband and started to rebuild my life in such a depression I told my shrink every week how I planned to commit suicide. But I didn't. I obtained a decent job in publishing and then was fired by a fiend who flattered me to the heavens while stealing all my ideas. She was exactly the age of my dead sister. She broke my heart.<br />
<br />
I chose CUNY because I had no money and was told Brooklyn College was a good place to get an MFA. Jonathan would run the first semester as a workshop class and I would meet with Peter privately. They would switch the second semester. Except I never did switch because Jonathan was so inappropriate with me in our class I felt humiliated, betrayed and guilty. He used to ask me if I had a boyfriend during workshops, whether the protagonist in my writing had a boyfriend, he used to stop class to tell me I looked good and he used to call me at home but I always hung up on him. He would stare at me while discussions were held and gradually I began to realise his obsession was serious and I didn't know what to do.<br />
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<br />
One day his son called me, asked me to meet with him and informed me I was destroying his father's new marriage. Then he asked if we could go out again. I remember thinking, "What is wrong with these people?" but I refused and told him his father's behaviour was awful and I wasn't to blame. I didn't believe that. I felt ashamed and hurt and embarrassed. I went to my other teacher with whom I had private sessions and informed him of what was happening in the workshops. I discussed the situation with my workshop classmates and discovered they thought I had encouraged his behaviour. I wasn't a child, after all. I was in my early thirties and should have been able to handle things. But this was professor, my father was a professor and anyway, I was a slut. The other professor reacted by offering to keep seeing me privately. We wouldn't have to switch. if I had been forced to see Baumbach privately, I would have left the program.<br />
<a href="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSuZSfXDP3tHORpu-BHxBrfpkoZwI9RBq2XqOfsrifLtIFTfKSWmA" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img alt="Image result for molly moynahan images" border="0" class="rg_ic rg_i" data-src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSuZSfXDP3tHORpu-BHxBrfpkoZwI9RBq2XqOfsrifLtIFTfKSWmA" data-sz="f" height="209" jsaction="load:str.tbn" name="VmPLK73Ac6NSKM:" src="https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcSuZSfXDP3tHORpu-BHxBrfpkoZwI9RBq2XqOfsrifLtIFTfKSWmA" style="height: 162px; margin-top: 0px; width: 310px;" width="400" /></a><br />
When Noah Baumbach's debut film came out I was gobsmacked. Here was his father and here was a student and here was sexual harassment and yet nothing had happened, no one had helped me, I had felt guilty and also gas lit-like am I imagining this? A few months after I received my MFA I was waiting for a date on Union Square and Jonathan appeared with his wife. "You look like a prostitute," he told me. I was wearing a short skirt. I had nice legs. I was 33.<br />
<br />
I'm still a writer. I have no idea if he ever understood how betrayed and hurt I was by his behaviour. I so longed for a mentor, for someone to help me be a better novelist and possibly learn how to write a short story. I was still grieving for my sister, recovering from a violent marriage and dealing with my demanding, grief-stricken parents. Instead I was degraded and blamed for damaging a marriage.<br />
I told one person the truth and was given a solution that required silence and deepened my sense of myself as a provocateur.<br />
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-19548259771273269622017-11-10T07:23:00.000-08:002017-11-10T07:23:24.092-08:00Writing and Depression<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
So, on the phone yesterday I was sobbing to my mother that I was so sorry not to be able to manage Thanksgiving in a traditional way, creating that perfect meal, because I was "struggling." I am struggling. I know it's hard to be a writer, challenging to be sixty, the world is in such turmoil, I broke my leg and can no longer spend hours working out, I am trying to be an effective teacher, reading essays blah, blah. I have so much, a wonderful husband, a lovely place to live, an amazing son, friends and yet there was this feeling of helplessness, despair, denial of all things good, indifference to love and the only word that occurs to me is "selfish." My 92 year old mother is so kind. She can be so kind when you need to know you are loved.<br />
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I google "long-term-sobriety and suicide" and Robin Williams' face appears, Philipp Seymor Hoffman, David Foster Wallace, men with stunning success and sobriety and talent and people that loved them and yet they let go. I'm not going to let go. I think I inherited this darkness from my father, along with the passion for writing and possibly some of his talent. and the drinking, the anger, the black-outs, the unforgivable cruelty of my rage. And so I stopped 34 years ago this December 22. And I went on. I published 3 novels, moved a number of times, divorced, married had a baby and divorced and married again. I have lived at a distance from my immediate family. I was betrayed at job I gave my heart and soul to but I rallied and started a company and then last Christmas I sustained a serious injury from a fall. Spent months without my usual depression fighter of exercise.<br />
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But I've recovered from most of the break. I swim hard 3 days a week and yet, darkness hovers. I feel hopeless and then I feel guilty. And then I feel hopeless and guilty and afraid and ashamed. i think it's called depression and it's genetic and it has very little to do with other people or success or failure or age. I drank so much because I felt it, I've fended it off for so many years it feels like a marathon of care taking and activity, and exercise and constantly reminding myself that I'm lucky and spoiled and most people are suffering so many terrible moments in war and hurricanes and domestic violence (I have experienced that) and yes my best friend died and my sister and maybe that's enough. But then I sit through yet another AA meeting and feel lost and disconnected and sad and guilty. I recently finished a memoir and one published has said no but I've been here before. I had a novel that people loved and reviewed and I wanted to kill myself. There, I said it. It would be funny if it wasn't true. Maybe writers are flawed, deprived of the usual will to survive.<br />
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I have an appointment with my doctor today. After that I may go swimming just because that seems to help so much. I'm exhausted with fending this off. But I won't embrace the pain either, I don't want to let go of any of this beautiful, perfect world, my boy, my husband, my sister, cheese, swimming and yes, writing. I write to live as well. I think Joan Didion said that after a zillion terrible things happened to her. I write to keep living, hoping, embracing the world.</div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-67538451934458634692017-08-24T15:07:00.000-07:002017-08-24T15:07:48.166-07:00Mean girls and sweet girls nothing changes<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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So I went to my elementary school reunion and it was amazing. I was able to talk to the friend of a friend who was run over when we were in eighth grade, Amy sat next to me in Home Ec and was incredibly sweet. She used to help separate me from the dress I was making and invariably stitched to myself. I was a terrible sewer. the dress basically dissolved on my body during the fashion show. Amy was killed and her desk stayed empty for the rest of the year. I didn't talk about it. She was a new friend and anyway, my parents were busy. But this woman at my reunion had been there when the accident happened and she had been a close friend and attended the funeral. It was very healing to speak to her.<br />
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Another woman, she of the tight pants and the heavily applied makeup, was also there and just like in elementary school was in a clique-I mean who has a clique when they are sixty but sure enough she had that same crabby expression and I steered clear of her. maybe she had changed but it didn't see likely. I recall wanting to kick her in third grade and I still wanted to kick her.<br />
However, the majority of my ex-classmates were absolutely wonderful.<br />
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I'm thinking about this because I recently discovered a friendship had gone south and of course, I blamed myself. I'm not always that tactful (no!), patient or aware of when i may be too judgmental or just plain snobby. However, I believe I have been subjected to a middle-aged version of mean girls, women who close ranks around some sense of themselves as special making sure others recognize they aren't. Why does it hurt so much at this stage of life when I have a wonderful husband, a great, adult son, all sort of positive relationships in my life, achievements, etc? I have no idea.<br />
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Maybe it has something to do with the death of my father, the current political environment, the loneliness of marriage which is a unique characteristic of that institution. One thing I know, I need to stop trying to be friends with mean girls, to care about whether they like me or not, to remember some of the other people in my life who have been there for me through my broken leg, my slow recovery, my lack of tact and who are never, ever passive aggressive, cold or cliquey. My need to please other people is another version of manipulation and Al-Anon teaches me "What other people think of you is none of your business." </div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-52867482873316116202017-07-18T08:26:00.000-07:002017-07-18T08:26:23.688-07:00Fill your face, plump those lines, do whatever<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Growing up my model for femininity was a stunning mother who stuck her head under the kitchen sink to wash it, sometimes with dishwashing liquid, walked around with nary a touch of any makeup, who dressed for parties or important client meeting, she was an architect, like a rock star. <span id="goog_36861473"></span><span id="goog_36861474"></span><br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIR9D3ez8nowHX8rIJu5w16L56_vUdvTecAjrSd10EVIsxM1epqJQ0Iyje9fcRIA18JjnCbYMK0bhIv0DAuR7Q0PFDqu4rBvg_Axq4XORtxEfKO4JYPu1rsHnYqy2ufQhwGis1OKIkawNn/s1600/50party0019.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1036" data-original-width="1514" height="218" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIR9D3ez8nowHX8rIJu5w16L56_vUdvTecAjrSd10EVIsxM1epqJQ0Iyje9fcRIA18JjnCbYMK0bhIv0DAuR7Q0PFDqu4rBvg_Axq4XORtxEfKO4JYPu1rsHnYqy2ufQhwGis1OKIkawNn/s320/50party0019.JPG" width="320" /></a>Me with a shovel in my mouth. Beautiful woman with wicker basket is mom.</div>
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And so I grew up, born in 1957 completely confused by the images around me, Raquel Welch (big boobs), Twiggy (don't eat), Julie Christie (brilliant and gorgeous), the Bond girls (wear a bikini and carry a dagger in your teeth). I always wanted to be pretty, nay, beautiful and every time I achieved that goal, almost without exception, I was hurt, sometimes in a small way, attacked by jealous girls at a country club, in a major way, raped, in a false way, first marriage, suicidally miserable yet a beautiful bride. Beauty came with starvation, such unhappiness and violence, being the pretty one made men at work behave in an awful way, made a professor stalk me, made me confused, sad and yes, occasionally, happy.<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzeXMXoPNdRlqp1hXNCZVgjDtRyf6DtCSKy_fLiv8Qiatd4OAZjJPcek3HsQAQInSiDoz05OH1Es61gDcTOAKd81VaImSQi2QgSRZC3HUfrui7x0BHVG3QIMMXzy4Lhu8nqP74EVRpeHdM/s1600/50party0002.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1038" data-original-width="1492" height="222" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzeXMXoPNdRlqp1hXNCZVgjDtRyf6DtCSKy_fLiv8Qiatd4OAZjJPcek3HsQAQInSiDoz05OH1Es61gDcTOAKd81VaImSQi2QgSRZC3HUfrui7x0BHVG3QIMMXzy4Lhu8nqP74EVRpeHdM/s320/50party0002.JPG" width="320" /></a>Sunbathing on a rock at 15.</div>
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Happiness was a result of lovers who possibly entered my life from a physical attraction but stayed because they actually cared about my feelings, respected my intelligence and found the mixture of narcissism and self-loathing balanced itself out enough to create someone they could stay with. </div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwjimnuVFm3wkIHQat-t7M1KZ9eaoAEyFBmt2-PIHhU0-SDldKKY2eyFVk8pyvo0mHMeyVJKishtexjOC9UUK8YUYBtxvIdB05qmc4KkYAVuaCbH_5cm-7rWIKgzXF-PHD8xrspM5_ktjg/s1600/rag+curls.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="539" data-original-width="364" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwjimnuVFm3wkIHQat-t7M1KZ9eaoAEyFBmt2-PIHhU0-SDldKKY2eyFVk8pyvo0mHMeyVJKishtexjOC9UUK8YUYBtxvIdB05qmc4KkYAVuaCbH_5cm-7rWIKgzXF-PHD8xrspM5_ktjg/s320/rag+curls.jpg" width="216" /></a>Me, in rag curls.</div>
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And so we grow. we grow older, wiser, kinder and sometimes, sadder. After I had my son I forgave myself. I looked back at photographs of myself, trying to be a sexy actress, a normal actress, a person in publishing, a writer. I was thin, thin, thin and thought I was fat, fat, fat. And never good enough. Still getting tons of attention from men but my husband wanted me to go back to the thin, exhausted girl he met in NYC and I was now, finally, a mother. Why should I keep up that whole exhausting, dispiriting race to be the most beautiful woman in the room? I had experienced that and it meant nothing. mainly that people didn't talk to me or other people's husbands tried to</div>
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pick me up. It was lonely and stupid. Me, reading in a miniskirt.<br />
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My chef, friend, son who helped me forgive myself for everything.</div>
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And now? I'm sixty. Last year a slightly younger women than me going through a painful divorce leaned forward, pointed at my forehead and suggested botox. Yes, I was offended but I am also loved and really sort of okay with the stuff I<br />
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see on my rare visits to the mirror, age spots, a few wrinkles, skin tags, whatever. It's actually interesting and my god I feel lucky to be alive, healthy, surrounded by love. And love is ageless. I feel free, slightly dazed and filled with gratitude. Wisdom is experience with some understanding of what has been not a perfect but an incredibly interesting life filled with beauty: sunsets, babies, kindness, grief, happiness, forgiveness, dreams.</div>
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-31792963279140392112017-07-02T06:57:00.000-07:002017-07-02T07:29:39.171-07:00How did I get Here?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<strong><span style="font-size: 16px;"><span style="font-family: "helvetica neue" , "helvetica" , "arial" , sans-serif;">Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. Carl Jung</span></span></strong></div>
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So, here I am in the house my mother designed, commuting to where she is in a sub-acute rehab facility telling </div>
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myself that the fact that she has stepped forward and now fills the outline my father created, constant worry, guilt and sadness is basically inevitable. Years ago a teaching mentor who was a Jung therapist in her retirement told me that if you have a problem student and you get rid of them (transfer, graduation) another will simply step forward to fill that space. So really, it's about you and your ability to cope with difficult people and recognize what parts of your self is being revealed through strife.</div>
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I am impatient, stubborn, loath to ask for help, rarely want to change my mind and I'm constantly searching for reasons to be alone. My mother likes company. She likes telling people what to do and she believes she is always right. She is also 92 and has a broken leg and a brain that seems unaffected by age except when she freaks out as darkness approaches. I hear her voice on the phone as darkness approaches and I am thrown back to childhood terrors, my father drunk, my mother pleading, barely able to breathe, hurt, angry, fear filling every cell of my body. </div>
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<a name='more'></a>I am 60 and have been sober for 33+. I am not her and I am not unaware that I have learned so much by sitting in twelve step meetings, my ten years of therapy, the daily reprieve of not drinking to kill my feelings, something I did from the age of 15 to 27. I have a grown son who never knew his mother drunk, in danger, angry, cruel. No, I wasn't perfect and made any number of mistakes in the past. But I was a good mother, I'm a good wife and I feel good about my life. Still, that hand reaches to grasp my own, a hand that is cold and cruel, desperate and dangerous.<br />
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I wanted this to be funny, to be about how I've taken the moments of this visit and turned them into amusing stories. But I can't. i am here. I am her daughter. She needs my help and then I go home and find my way again.</div>
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-63214829355344896702017-05-03T13:23:00.000-07:002017-05-03T13:23:19.813-07:00On turning 60<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
I will turn 60 in twelve days. Years ago I attended a birthday party for a woman turning forty, a gorgeous woman with a handsome husband who lived in a really nice loft in Tribeca and from my standpoint at twenty-eight I thought, "Jesus, poor thing, she's so old." It was puzzling and slightly annoying to me that this woman was so beautiful and so happy and her husband seemed to adore her because she was so old. Old. I was 37 when my son was born and they had phased out the term "geriatric pregnancy" but they still recommended I have an amnio and the size of that needle and the cruelty of the indifferent doctor who nearly took a phone call halfway through (back in the day when phones were on walls). I was terrified of miscarrying because I was so old. I published my first novel when I was thirty-four and wasn't described as young. And I was so young. So unaware of how long life could be, so filled with shame at my "success" which was as ephemeral as my status as the youngest child, as brief as the first time I told a man I loved him and he said it back and I discovered how painful, how perfect it was to be loved, to be desired, to be left, to grieve to live.<br />
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And now I am past the age of my parents when they lost their eldest daughter for they were 58, she was 32, I was 26 and a completely neurotic, miserable mess. But I was young. I had an older lover and enjoyed placing my then flawless skin next to his and noticing how smooth, unblemished, perfect I was-and yes, I thought, forever young. But then my sister was killed, my parents aged, my father had a child with another woman and she was younger than me, far younger than me, so much younger that when I saw a picture of her I thought it was me but it wasn't. We both look like my father with impressive eyebrows and dimples.<br />
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Now, many things have changed. I no longer view forty as old, I no longer think I am going to succeed because I'm young and I no longer regard my life as something to be confronted but rather I see how much is behind me, distant in the rear view mirror and I want to spend the time remaining in a meaningful fashion, helping my beloved grown son be a good person, cherishing my husband, my sister and yes, my mother. My father died four years ago and the pain has lessened but not disappeared. he was my first critic, my first editor and before he died my sweetest supporter. My sister and me are finding a way to love one another without all the turmoil. After all, we are old and bickering sisters are funny when young but alarming in people my age. I recall a fight in an elevator, the two of us screaming at each other, I was working for her at the time, and then the elevator opened, acting like we were best friends. I don't have the energy to fight or dissemble like that anymore. Maybe Mick Jagger can still strut at 70+ but I'm no longer young no matter what my 91 (almost 92) year old mother says.<br />
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-87279224766386812662017-04-02T08:10:00.001-07:002017-04-02T08:10:24.664-07:00My Pilon Fracture or how I broke my leg/ankle and learned to color<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Loving-kindness has never been my way. My
childhood nickname was “the bison” and my horoscope sign is a bull. I am
tenacious, persistent, stubborn, intolerant of whiners, nappers,
procrastinators and anyone who slept past 9am or didn’t immediately jump to
their feet to clear the table after dinner. When I was clinically depressed I
wasn’t given the sort of depression you see in movies with tons of sleeping and
sitting and staring out windows but the kind that shocks you awake at 5am,
sends you running at 6am, cleaning at 7, to work at 8, constantly in motion,
unable to rest. My therapist told me it was called an “agitated depression” and
nodded sympathetically when I expressed my sadness that even with overwhelming
grief and anger I could not give myself a break.</span></div>
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<span lang="EN-US">So, here I am staring at 60, recovering
from a fall I took on December 27<sup>th</sup> 2016 when I was hustling my
husband out of my mother’s home in New Jersey so we could make the 12-hour
drive back to Chicago. I decided it would be more efficient to carry ALL of the
bags down the stairs and when I lost my footing and fell, all of the bags, all
of the weight landed on my left foot and ankle and leg resulting in a very
serious injury called a pilon fracture. And yet, the first thing out of my
mouth was, “Don’t wake up my mother” and the next was the suggestion we attempt
to make it to Pittsburgh before we went to an emergency room. Despite the
incredible, awful pain I spent most of the trip back to Chicago trying to
figure out ways to rearrange my life so this brief inconvenience would be just
that. Well, guess what? It’s April 2<sup>nd</sup> 2017 and I’m learning how to
walk again.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">What have I learned in the past months of
sitting in our condo 24/7 with my leg propped on pillows? I will never make fun
of people who enjoy adult coloring books again. I am not a candidate for opiate
addiction having run though many Percocet, Norcos, Tramadol and finding them
uniformly icky. I’m a drunk with a bit of cocaine thrown in to prolong the
agony. Sober over thirty years taking pain meds was a coherent, constructive
and necessary decision. Did it feel good? No, sadly, no. I understand why
people stopped calling and visiting. I had absolutely nothing to add to the
conversation. I was sick of myself so how could I expect my friends to stay the
course? There were a few exceptions especially my incredibly supportive, kind
and hand working husband who tolerated a weepy, angry, lamed wife.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Walking hurts very much especially first
thing in the morning. My body is an alien, out-of-shape entity that hasn’t
actually lacked muscle since I was a fifteen-year old soccer player. Exercise
has been a constant comfort and of all the things I missed during this winter
it was moving my aging body through space and sweating hard, becoming
breathless because of the sprints I had just finished, finding my inner athlete
and briefly leaving the middle-aged woman behind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span lang="EN-US">Now, it’s about patience, small victories,
gratitude and acceptance. My formerly muscular calves are a sad testament to
how quickly one’s body can forget all those years of walking, running, elliptical,
classes, stairs chosen instead of escalators. And yet, I love this body, this
woman, this survivor, this leg that now displays a small pile of screws and a
piece of metal documenting the folly of impatience and hubris.</span></div>
</div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-52519267249246984002017-01-01T07:08:00.000-08:002017-01-01T07:08:57.403-08:00Ouch: An injury memoi<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"><span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;"><br /></span></b></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At
three I was adorable, alone, smashing glass milk bottles on the front steps of
our rather posh London digs. Lots of literary friends, the Amises, the Gales,
poets like Larkin, etc. Tons of booze except I was three and according to
family legend the drunk Scottish doctor stitched my knee up, one eye open. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">At
six in Sandycove, my birthday, across from the 40-foot where that guy cooked
his kidneys and Joyce had his tower. I was given my first petticoat and felt
obligated to hang upside down to share. Fell and gashed my chin open, several
stitches and then back to the party. </span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">In America,
1968 rough year with wild oldest sister and constant catastrophes, fall off the
roof, break my arm, appendicitis, lemon pudding/napalm burns all the skin off
my leg. I am yelled at for inconveniencing everyone. </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Long
pause. I am a barista in NYC before coffee shops and I am doored while biking,
undiagnosed broken hand. Have baby-72 hours of labor, constant carpal tunnel
but I am healthy. Then, bikes-bag caught in wheel, broken elbow, hit speed
bump, broken shoulder, fall in Maui, wrist, elbow and finger.</span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">And
now this-fall down my mother’s stairs at dawn to return to Chicago-“I think I’m
really hurt. We have to leave. Don’t wake up my mother.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">Pilon
fracture. Surgery. </span></div>
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I will be off leg for 2-3 months. Son is vaguely sympathetic, tortures
me, husband is bewildered and sorry and yells a lot. Cats freaked.<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-size: 14.0pt; mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt;">2016
was a heart breaker.</span></div>
</div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-22749235182528226222016-12-03T15:54:00.003-08:002016-12-03T16:04:09.199-08:00<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
It's been a while. The election flattened my spirit in so many ways I wondered for the first time in ages whether writing stuff made any difference. Of course it doesn't but what choice do I have? So, I'm teaching English Composition this January at a well regarded Catholic University in Chicago. In order to construct a syllabus I perused a number of other instructor's syllabi and was surprised and frankly dismayed at the number of opinions and judgments masquerading as helpful suggestions contained in these documents. One instructor's syllabus is nearly twenty pages long and advises students that he has other jobs and may not be thinking about their particular issues after class. Is he kidding me? Why would any college freshman care about what some middle-aged pedant was thinking about if it wasn't about her grade?<br />
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<br />
Seriously, sometimes I wonder whether most of us recall our youth at all. This leads me to a bout of self-examination where I try to remember ever giving my son any useful advice besides he should be kind and not get arrested. Also, I'm pretty sure I suggested he make his bed often and not to go out with depressed girls. He didn't listen to those last two and he has been arrested but he's kind when he isn't making fun of me. My parents had tons of opinions but very little practical advice. I recall being advised about posture, reading, and trying not to be fascinated with sub-par people. Also, they were vehement in their defense of the poor, the disenfranchised and that all humans should be treated equally no matter their race, economic status or religious beliefs. Actually, the last one isn't true because my parents, lapsed Irish Catholics, had a secret aversion for Protestants based on genetic loyalty and a general contempt for organized religion. They also were staunch supporters of eating breakfast and coffee. They loved their coffee-ground from beans, Melitta filter, drip etc. I understand the coffee thing but the Protestant thing is bad. Once I was talking about a potential boyfriend and I saw my parents exchange a look when I mentioned his surname. It occurred to me they would prefer I dated an axe murderer to a Protestant. <br />
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<br />
<br />
Maybe I don't believe in the right things. I once had a student challenge a grade I gave him in Honors English and after listening to him whine for a bit I said I'd give him a better grade. He looked pleased but then he said, "Mrs. Moynahan, you don't care, do you? You think grades are stupid. You just randomly decide that something is an A or a B." It's true, I fear. I'd start out all goal-oriented and clear, 'norming' the essays until I just couldn't read another sentence like, "Macbeth is a tragic hero because he's sad and he isn't afraid of his wife." If someone made me laugh or forced me to think, they usually received a better grade. If any of my ex-students are reading this I will deny everything. Anyway, you knew I was that kind of person. I wanted you to be happy and not to worry too much. The students who get the 20 page syllabus guy will do everything in their power to please him and he'll still think they are unworthy of his great intellect.<br />
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People tell me things. The other day a man at the Christmas tree place told me he ran ultra marathons, was 60, had just been married for the first time, his wife was Jamaican and made excellent jerk chicken, he was happy and needed to lose a bit of weight. Then my husband came back with the receipt for our tree. Once a cab driver pulled over and turned around and told me he was sure his wife was cheating on him back in Russia, she had once cheated on him with his younger brother, he didn't like most Americans and I had beautiful eyes. Luke was very little and when the driver burst into tears he was scared so we got another cab. "Mama," Luke said, "everybody tells you things." I told him that was because I was kind and that he shouldn't marry a depressed woman and he should always make his bed. I didn't bring up getting arrested because the previous week I had told him about all the terrible consequences of drug addiction and when I ran out of ideas he looked at me and said, "What's a drug?"<br />
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-24069201290617975782016-10-26T10:49:00.000-07:002016-10-26T10:49:04.870-07:00How to be Mean<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I was listening to a report on Twitter a social media thing I find utterly baffling but occasionally fun when I get compliments and followers. Anyway, the report said that one of the reasons Twitter is less savage than some other social media sites is because of the fact that you have to identify yourself unlike the trolls who go around saying stuff like, "<b>You're Fat</b>" or "<b>I can't believe you know how to breathe</b>" as a helpful comment after someone writes something or posts a picture on the Web. Anonymity is helpful to mean people. But why are they mean? Do they have mean parents? Are they a genetic anomaly?<br />
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Remember Slam Books? Unless you're like 50+ I'm sure you don't. Slam Books were these Notebooks that had some one's name on each page or across a double page and people wrote stuff about that person without (mostly) signing their name. This could be a good thing if you had a crush on someone but not such a good thing if you were, like me: mouthy, had an English accent, a mother who cut her bangs crooked, an enormous vocabulary, a habit of having my wrap-around skirts fall off and a default mechanism that made me face off bullies. Other girls, nice, quiet girls, would have sweet comments like "You're so cute" or "I like your hair" or "You're sweet" but my comments were a different sort. "She's so bossy, loud, stuck-up, weird, ugly." </div>
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Although I loved my bad girls heroines-Jo from LITTLE WOMEN, Ann from ANN OF GREEN GABLES, Pippi from PIPPI LONGSTOCKING, I secretly longed to be Amy (blonde, meek), Ann's friend (brunette, sweet) or anyone else but Pippi, the Pirate Queen. But I wasn't. However, I also wasn't mean. I didn't leave hurtful, snide, snarky comments about people. When we had a weird sub I tried to be helpful. If there was a birthday party, I invited my whole class. If someone was upset I'd try to help them.</div>
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<img src="http://media4.picsearch.com/is?gHHRfroxCiRevMB4B9_B0mmH0z1Xrrn-BWHWXIs1FSQ&height=190" /><b>Amy stealing Laurie from Jo. Mean.<span style="background-color: blue;"><span></span></span></b></div>
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Trump is mean. He talks about weight, looks, physical attributes and disabilities. he teases and mocks and derides. Meaness is a squinty thing, it makes the people who practice meanness seem small and awful. I can be aggressive or tactless although I try not to be. Mean children are just sad. I'm pretty sure their parents hit them which always struck me as super mean because look at the size difference, the psychological power a parent wields. if a big bully hits you there is no shame in defending yourself. But if your mother spanks you, can you bite her on the leg, kick her in the stomach? Probably not.</div>
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I was a nice teacher. I may not have always been coherent or organized or even effective but I was always kind, Why? Because life is hard and really, how important is it whether a kid can write a perfect thesis sentence when you make them feel bad? I always tried to find something positive to say or tell a kid I liked their kicks or their jacket or something. Raymond Carver was rumored to be very kind. I think it shows you understand so much you don't have to belittle someone else for their lack of knowledge or talent.</div>
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As a book reviewer I always looked for a positive comment except once and I'm still slightly ashamed of that review. The author had been enormously successful but this book wasn't good and it used tons of cliches and false truths to make its point. However, I didn't need to be quite so bitchy. Luckily I am so unfamous and unimportant it didn't really matter. The author probably didn't read it or if they did they thought, "Who's this catty nobody who didn't like my book?"</div>
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Maybe this is all about being the youngest. My oldest sister could be super mean and so could my dad. I adored them both but fear also entered into the relationship. Both of them were genuises. Possibly I'm not smart enough to find my inner meanie. I'm not sure. Still, I think we can all be a little nicer to each other especially to the old, the young, the slow, the lost and the vulnerable.</div>
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-10018829135365166822016-06-22T14:01:00.002-07:002016-06-22T14:01:57.766-07:00Stop saying "judgy"<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>Me being "judgy" because I spend 17 hours a day sitting zazen.</b><br />
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JUDGE: To regard something as good or bad.<br />
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You know what? Being able to tell the difference between good and bad is a positive thing.<br />
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Synonyms of JUDGEMENTAL include: critical, censorious, disapproving, disparaging, overcritical...so, that's not so great.<br />
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Who made you an authority? Well, no one. But unless you have chosen to remain utterly neutral, to have no sense of kindness or cruelty, don't care about children, old people, animals, and the environment, you'd better step up to the plate. Yes, if you see someone yelling at a confused old person at Walgreens and they are clearly losing their shit, intervene with something soothing yet effective like, "Do you need help?" Who cares if they think you work at Walgreens? Would it kill you to impersonate a low wage worker? This is not "judgy" the new favorite word of people who believe utter obliviousness is their constitutional right. Hey, I get it. I lived in Abu Dhabi for a few months where Good Samaritans are frequently arrested for trying to help someone victimized by an Emirate driving at 100 MPH whose Lamborgini has been dented. I was nearly arrested for pointing out the horrible conditions for the guest workers who weren't Westerners.<br />
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Well, this isn't the UAE and we are all equal so maybe consider doing something.<br />
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Today in the gym locker room I overheard the following conversation.<br />
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Woman #1-Are you pumping?<br />
Woman#2-God yes. All the time. I make so much milk, it's ridiculous!<br />
Woman #1-Best for baby, right?<br />
#2-Yes! I mean, I know he'll never have allergies or be a criminal and he's definitely going to be a genius.<br />
#1-Absolutely. My children were never sick.<br />
#2-My four year old is immune to everything.<br />
#1-Breast feeding is just natural.<br />
#2-Yes, yes it is. Mother who don't are missing so much.<br />
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Me-Hey, not to jump in but you understand some women can't breastfeed and if a woman who couldn't breast feed overheard this conversation she would probably feel terrible. My son wouldn't breast feed and I was devastated. I had to have someone help me understand it was about feeding the baby not my breasts. Anyway, I'm sure you meant well.<br />
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They didn't mean well. Also, I'm pretty sure they thought I was an interfering bag. <br />
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Walking upstairs I thought to myself, should I have kept quiet? Well, maybe but you know what? That's not how I was taught. I was taught to try and make the world a better place. My mother complained to a manager when the pregnant cashier had no chair, my sister protested the Vietnam war in high school, my father did everything in his power to get a radical African-American Professor tenure because it was the right thing to do.<br />
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It isn't "judgy" to tell someone you don't like their behavior. And by the way, judgy isn't even a word. Stop using it. Put it in the same place as impactful. And yes, my family was extremely judgemental.<br />
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-6704772738725187262016-05-19T12:32:00.001-07:002016-05-19T12:40:48.554-07:00HOW TO BE HAPPY<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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Happiness is elusive, abstract, glimpsed in the rear view mirror while we continue to move forward, admiring that stunning sunset, yet determined not to pull over. This morning I thought of Cafe Des Artistes a beautiful restaurant on the Upper West Side of Manhattan where I was lucky enough to have several meals, once with the late Harold Brodkey who told me being a novelist was punishment and another with the British publisher of my second novel who pronounced me talented and adorable which coming from a 60 year-old man who loved my work was nothing but flattering. I was poor, living as a tenant in a rent-controlled apartment but New York City was my neighborhood and I was young, hopeful and strong.</div>
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There was a meal, a picnic, with a boyfriend that featured cold roast chicken and fresh bread that I still recall as the best meal I ever had in my life because we were so in love and I was wearing a white sundress and he was planning our future which consisted of lots of sex and lovely meals and adorable children. We parted horribly, tragically, bitterly. I have struggled to get another novel published after the third. I think the British publisher may be dead now given his propensity for rich meals, wine and cigars. Cafe Des Artistes has been shuttered. And yet, my memories serve to remind me to register happiness even if the glimpses are so rare and fleeting.<br />
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Twenty-two years ago my only child was born after seventy-two hours of hard, back labor. I remember in the early morning of the third day of pain the thought that while I was relatively young, thirty-five, I had experienced happiness and while I so wanted to be this child's mother, I could accept death without anger. And then he came and opened his sapphire blue eyes and I forgot all that acceptance. Every disappointment was erased in that moment. And last week he graduated from college, mortar board askew in his typical jaunty fashion, my ex-husband and I briefly reunited to see our son receive his diploma.<br />
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My third novel received an excellent review in the Sunday New York Times. I opened the page expecting anything else, mediocrity, doubt, derision and was given such encouragement it was almost painful. I remember thinking, don't forget this feeling, hold on to this joy but it was a matter of minutes before I became anxious and also resentful because I felt I had not been supported by my publisher well enough and also people would probably hate me for my success.<br />
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I turned fifty-nine this week and am fully aware I can no longer count on my life continuing to change if I don't grasp every opportunity to be happy, to fail, to be afraid and to create. Knowing how lucky I have been to have danced with my best friend in Paris, a friend who died of a brain tumor two years ago, to have published three novels and made my writer father proud, to have mothered an independent, strong, good man, to have known great love, pain, remorse, disappointment and, finally to accept that this life is a good one. When I was little and lonely I read certain books over and over. These included <i>Little Women</i>, <i>A Tree Grows in Brooklyn</i>, and <i>A Member of the Wedding</i>. Each of these novels was about happiness and great loss, disappointment and failure. But in each there was also hope, faith in love and a belief that life is a miracle. Our breath is taken by the sunset because darkness hovers. <br />
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-59991128803769806962015-11-28T13:22:00.001-08:002015-11-28T13:22:23.250-08:00Going back and driving on the right<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<b>I started this on my trip to Ireland with my mom two months ago.</b><br />
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Sitting with my mother on a bench at Sandycove yesterday I felt the weight of years passed and also the moment, this moment with her. She has been my best friend and my worst enemy, cheering me on during the darkest days, making hurtful remarks when I was feeling too happy, reminding me of my clay feet when I was trying to soar but then remembering to say something so kind and loving that no one else would be able to equal. And here we are. Driving through awful traffic while she murmurs helpful suggestions that addle my jet-lagged brain even further and then offering anything to help.<br />
I suggested this trip knowing it would not be easy to squire my strong-willed 90 year old mother around Dublin and environs but I also knew it would be in its own way, perfect.<br />
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Her mother was hateful, legendary but mean, mean as cat piss as my mother would say. She threw frozen washcloths in my face when I was little, separated from my parents who'd gone to Mexico with my oldest sister for too long. And she was mean to my mother who produced beautiful Thanksgiving dinners and was snubbed for it, never paid attention to my mother's incredible talent as an architect. She told me the whole family was going straight to hell, when I was eight and traumatized by my father's drinking, my sister's scoliosis and my parent's brawling. Yet, she served as a brilliant nurse in WWI in France, bombed in the Dardanelles, brave and unflinchingly a comfort to hundreds of dying young men and later to multiples of women having babies in Boston, suffering from postpartum depression.<br />
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<b>Today is two days after Thanksgiving 2015.</b><br />
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Recently I finally read <u>Travelling Mercies </u>by Anne Lamott. I loved it. She can be a little corny but her emphasis on love and forgiveness is needed badly these days. Today I received an email from someone who was very close to my sister Catherine at college, someone I never spoke to who knew our family and its shattering after Catherine was killed. Her voice is lovely but also reminded me vividly of the days, weeks, months and years after Catherine disappeared and I was lost. At 26 I wasn't prepared for the complexity of grief and the way one thing seemed to cascade into another until I wondered whether I would ever wake up without the feeling that something was terribly wrong and I didn't want to open my eyes. Her son waited for his mother to come home while I searched in dark places for an answer to my prayers.<br />
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This morning, reading the memories of my sister from her college friend I felt a long forgotten panic. I remembered going to her house and finding clothes she had stolen from me and denied, sitting down in those same clothes sobbing that she could have anything I owned if she would only come back. Cleaning her kitchen and seeing the notes she wrote on the wall by the phone. Recognising that life is so incredibly fragile, short and often wasted in fear, recriminations and shame. Being reminded of that sadness has reminded me how happy I am to be alive, how much I love my friends, my mother, my sister, my niece and nephews, my ex-husband, my dear husband and son. I love life. I hope for peace and healing, for an end to the terror and the shame of violence. But this Thanksgiving I will happily embrace this moment. It's all I have.</div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-37246712049304686212015-08-25T07:04:00.000-07:002015-08-25T07:04:26.720-07:00A Dream of Home<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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During the summer of 1977-78 I travelled from Dublin to Vienna to Venice, Florence and then Corfu, Athens and onwards to Spain, ending up in Paris. I had a Eurarail Pass, travelers checks earned from movie extra work, a Thomas Cook timetable and until Greece several traveling companions who ended up leaving Corfu as they were impatient and a bit mean and the owner of the taverna where we were staying invited me to remain and suggested they go. The owner, an American named Michael had bought a half share of a taverna located in Vatos. As we boarded the ferry from Brindisi, a couple of fellow backpackers, whispered the name, "Vatos" and then, "ask for Michael". I woke up on the deck of the ferry to witness the mountains of Albania rising out of the mist and found myself feeling a deep sadness and a sense of discombobulation so intense I took out my passport and stared at the photograph to remind me of who I was.<br />
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I had been gone from the United States for almost a year, a year where I learned first how to live again, second, how to remember that there could be pure joy in sharing ideas with brilliant professors, Reading ULYSSES while each and every day included a bike ride along the route Leopold Bloom travelled, third, that friendship and love was possible again after losing my best friend to a car crash and my boyfriend to my own insanity and infidelity. Dublin, the west of Ireland, three Norwegian roommates, an unhappy man from Zimbabwe and a girl from Malahide had saved my life. Last year we scattered that girl's ashes into the Irish Sea, her husband, her son, her sisters, her friends and I cast roses after and I thought again, how lucky I was to have met her and deep breath, to be allowed to go on. How I had loved and fought with Gabrielle Reidy who never failed to assure me I must remain alive.<br />
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Corfu was a blur of beaches and tavernas and drinking until the ex Vietnam veteran arrived and late one night invited me into the olive groves to lie down next to him, listen to how many he had killed as a Marine machine gunner, listen to his declaration that he would never return to the United States, make love to someone whose pain and sadness and rage had rendered him almost inhuman but oh so handsome, so sad, so perfect for a girl who loved the Heathcliffes of this world, lost, sad, angry men. My father. The Marine had so much blood on his hands, he told me, he would never atone.<br />
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After two months of wandering I ended up in Paris with Gabrielle who was selling newspapers outside of the Jeu de Pomme, sharing an attic flat with a miserable girl with an eating disorder so profound she was nearly transparent. We sold our Herald Tribunes like Jean Seberg in <u>Breathless,</u> dumped the left-overs and took our francs to a tiny Vietnamese cafe where we split a bottle of wine and planned our night. Her mother had died that spring, still heartbroken but looking forward. We went to terrible nightclubs, flirted for drinks, danced to Saturday Night Fever and took the metro home, back to back sleeping, happy with just each other. Gabrielle was determined to convince me not to go home.<br />
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Home. The United States, New Jersey, Rutgers where I had been so unhappy I drank every day, studied hard because I wanted my parents to leave me alone, wandered around alone because my boyfriend had left me. But I was, as my Irish friends never failed to remind me, an American. I loved and hated my country, so guilty, so heroic, so excessive, so conflicted.<br />
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I took the train to gatwick, ignoring the news that told of the discount airline Laker's demise and the week-long line to buy a ticket. I had no choice. I had exactly $100 and no way to contact my parents. I followed the line down the mile that snaked through the airport and joined what turned out to be a cross between a music festival and a mad carnival. We smoked weed, played cards, gave interviews, exchanged personal stories as the night fell and we slept in heaps together.<br />
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I walked out of the terminal at Kennedy with my massive backpack, propped myself against a wall and fell asleep. When I woke up my father was standing there, the car at the curb, somehow he knew when and why and how I'd come home. </div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-60544476535245479102015-06-26T06:43:00.004-07:002015-06-26T07:00:28.657-07:00Textiles, text, weaving the world.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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In weaving class yesterday I went to the back of my loom and tried to squint at the previous weeks work. I was worried that my hitherto "intuitive" yarn choosing might be lacking a connection with the previous yarn pulling and this could jar or fail. As you weave the piece rolls up upon itself and you can only look at sections.<br />
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My teacher paused as I was doing this and I found myself explaining that when I work on something long, very long, like a novel, it usually takes years. And there are many pages behind me as I move forward and sometimes I get afraid, very afraid, that I have moved into uncharted, incoherent, random territory.<br />
"What do you do then?" she asked.<br />
"I go on," I said. "Somehow, and this is the whoo-whoo stuff no one really wants to hear, it works."<br />
She looked at me, at the weaving and tapped her chest and said, "Because it's you, and you are choosing. Also, you <b>are</b> following a pattern."<br />
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Well, this is true. I am following a pattern called Honeycomb and it repeats. Endlessly. The same thing is true of writing a novel. Your characters appear, they talk, they have bad times, they get happier, they lose things, the circle is endless, like life but there is a pattern because really, nothing is random.<br />
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However, there are no guarantees that the pink will work well with the green as it fades into blue but these are my colors, the shades I see as I fall asleep at night, the memories I have of sunsets and risings and my childhood in New Jersey, the sunset setting in our kitchen window before everything became terrible and I was just a happy little girl who loved her parents.<br />
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Writing and weaving share other traits. Dressing the loom is challenging, the selection of warp threads, the measuring and the preparation require that other side of the brain, the right side which I normally allow to happily slumber unless it's time to bake something complicated or write an invoice. I used to welcome balancing my checkbook because it forced me to add and subtract. However, it rarely balanced, sometimes there was more, sometimes less. I lived in that gray area which has been eliminated by online checking. My weaving teacher is a genius in that she knew immediately I was a student who would zone out on the bits that focused on numbers (how wide, how long, how many ends per inch?). She told me to work intuitively and I was deeply relieved.<br />
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When I start a novel I begin to live in the world of my character and see things through her eyes. I imagine how she might react to good news, stress, who her family is and what they want from her. I usually put her under pressure yet I try and maintain an overall goal of happiness. She has a dark side and a good sense of humor. These are her colors-dark blue, teal, purple, lighter blue, streaks of pink and green. The path I place her on isn't smooth or straight but we are together and we do our best.<br />
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So, how does it all work? Well, sometimes it doesn't. I have a stack of unpublished, rejected novels and while each has their pleasing parts, everything working well together, somehow the choice of pattern or color or the way things match and clash just doesn't work. However, when it does work it isn't about structure or planning. It's a matter of knowing, hoping, daring, believing and taking a risk, adding that fuchsia or deep purple, continuing into the unknown because there is that promise of beauty.<br />
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-36043573999413686422015-05-28T06:00:00.000-07:002015-05-28T06:07:44.661-07:00Groucho and Me<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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<span style="background-color: black; color: white; font-family: Times, Times New Roman, serif;">On the second day of the Creative non-fiction writing conference, I totaled my car. I think it was my fault. I think I might have started to turn right on a green and the light turned red while I was turning but I don't know. Two cars hit me. One, a huge jeep with two guys (bros) on their way to play golf. The other, a hysterical girl who kept screaming, "This is my boyfriend's car!" That was the extent of the drama. A gentle, nice policeman arrived and asked if we were all okay and didn't react when I couldn't find my driver's license which, as it turned out, I had left in Chicago. After I tried to drive we realized my car was completely wrecked and I parked it, called the insurance people, arranged for a tow and then walked over to where the writing conference was just beginning with trays of bagels and other things, people expressing happiness about listening to the speakers and possibly getting chosen to do a pitch in the pitch slam. I think I was in shock. The shock replaced my initial sense that somehow I didn't belong in this group of people-these writers-and that the chances I'd learn much were slim to none. This feeling came for several different directions. First off, I'm a novelist who occasionally writes and publishes essays and of course, this blog. Second, after receiving an MFA in fiction writing from Brooklyn College in 1990, I was determined only to be paid for my work, never to pay. Third, Groucho Marx-<span style="line-height: 18px;">"I refuse to join any </span><span style="font-weight: bold; line-height: 18px;">club</span><span style="line-height: 18px;"> that would have me as a member." I was channeling my father. My wonderful, terrible, funny, slightly bitter daddy who I absolutely loved but sometimes understand was not the best role model for a writer. Or maybe he was.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18px;">When I was in sixth grade both my older sisters went off to a hippie camp that my mother called "that place you go to smoke pot, screw and learn to hate your parents." My father was a professor at Breadloaf and I was briefly, an only child. It was 1968 and thing were, to put it mildly, </span><span style="line-height: 18px;">tumultuous. Breadloaf was full of runaway nuns, famous writers, wannabes and then there was my dad, literary genius, ground zero for not playing nice. Any Breadloaf tradition that smacked of cronyism, self congratulatory bonding or simply was rather sweet like croquet, he rejected. He rejected the notation that he should befriend the famous writers unless he liked them and he refused to attend the pre-dinner cocktail parties held for the faculty. I had a glorious time attending a naked version of some ancient Greek play multiple times, singing with a Madrigal group and watching the astronauts walk on the moon in the "Barn" with a bunch of other "fac brats" my parents and everyone else who wasn't off having affairs or writing. We had our own traditions-our cabin in the woods was called "the house of the 3 bears," coming down the hill in neutral, my dad would wait for the last possible moment to put the car in drive sometimes making it all the way to the dining hall. I remember that summer as incredibly happy. I had both my parents to myself and I belonged to all sorts of groups. But I know the stronger voice belongs to my father; if they want you, they must be worthless.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18px;">Let's face it, there were some losers at the writing conference. There was a man who told me his book was about complexions whose pitch made absolutely no sense and why he'd pitch me, a car crash survivor who had no platform, remains a mystery. But there were other who promised fascinating stories crafted with elegant and powerful words. I took a 13 hour Greyhound bus ride back to Chicago and stared out the window watching the landscape of America, thinking about my dad. He grew up poor and spent a year in an orphanage. He went through Harvard and then taught at Amherst, Princeton and Rutgers where he spent most of his career and published numerous novels, critical essays and was a frequent contributor to the New York Times Book Review. I am a completely different member of this club. I married missing the opportunity to have a tenure track teaching gig in creative writing. I followed my journalist husband from New York to London to Dallas to Chicago where we divorced and after a few years of adjunct college life I returned to school and became a certified English teacher. High school teaching was challenging and wonderful and awful while the administration was mainly awful.</span></span><br />
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<span style="line-height: 18px;">My father died last year. He taught me never to give up, not to settle, to be unstintingly critical of myself but to teach with love and kindness. He gave me the gift of humor, of intellectual curiosity and an inability to suck up to power. We are outsiders, outlaws, possibly outcasts. But, like Groucho, I prefer it this way.</span></span><br />
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-7646154823778856552015-04-04T11:35:00.000-07:002015-04-04T11:35:02.831-07:00The Easter Bunny has risen and other tales of a leavened Seder.<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
Easter was great. We were allowed to eat candy, my parents went to town with our baskets, there was no angst or disappointment or excessive drinking associated with this holiday; as absolutely lapsed Catholics we took no part in any of the tragic associations of cruxifixction and the weirdness of resurrection, our holiday was about bunnies and robins and daffodils and jellybeans and daddy announcing, "The Easter bunny has risen" over our leg of lamb dinner.<br />
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Lest you think my parents had successfully renounced their religious indoctrination completely note that the three of us were named after saints and we were all christened and when I asked my mom why, she said babies that weren't christened ended up in a corridor which I suppose became limbo and somehow none of those babies went to heaven. But we were told there was no heaven and no hell so it made no sense like my baptized name being Mary Ellen while everyone called me Molly. My mother merely said Mary Ellen was the "proper" name meaning a saint's name. I lay in my unheated attic bedroom with my hair frozen to the pillow and considered those babies in baskets left in those hallways and the impropriety of my name. I was in a dramatic spy phase and I wanted to be called Natasha or Isabella or Veronica but I also was very confused about god. I had made the mistake of telling my sister Catherine I thought the lady who held the torch for Paramount Pictures was god. She thought this was great because I thought god was a woman. In second grade I thought George Washington was possibly god because his portrait stared down at us from the wall and I wasn't sure who he was.<br />
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Anyway, Easter was all about spring and running around barefoot and a jellybean hunt which I never won because I was the youngest. Catherine, my oldest sister, lacked the candy addiction and so after we consumed all of the chocolate and marshmallows by dinner, she would offer her stash, one piece at a time, for a price.<br />
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And then there was Seder. It seemed to me no one had religion in my fancy private school but in retrospect I understand it just didn't matter what with all the drugs we were trying to take, the drinking, the social blood letting. I never attended a Bar or Bat Mitzvah and wasn't entirely sure what Jews did aside from the incredibly funny and famous Jews my parents knew who also never went to Temple. Or maybe they did but temple in Princeton was sort of like Alcoholics Anonymous, plenty of people attended but no one talked about it. So, when I had my first serious boyfriend my freshman year at Rutgers I also had my first roommate in my first apartment and both my boyfriend and roommate were Jewish. My roommate's parents had yanked her out of Ithaca college because she was dating a goyim. My boyfriend's mother referred to me as the shiksa whore while my boyfriend called her a Nazi bitch and my roommate continued to date non-Jewish boys. The thing was, I was completely ignorant, ignorant of all religions, left to figure it out on my own so I had basically ignored it all. Except I was taking a class on Milton and thought Satan was a sex god from <u>Paradise Lost</u>.<br />
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My boyfriend's mother had only met me once when she arrived at his apartment one morning and since the door was unlocked and his bedroom door was sort of open, she had appeared at the side of our bed holding a brisket and shrieking because we were naked. It was hot. We were naked. His little brother and father stood in the doorway staring while his mother yelled all sort of things in both Yiddish and English or maybe it was all English and her north Jersey accent made it hard to understand. In any case, I actually had to request privacy to put on my clothes and then, since she was still yelling, I fled. So, this was probably the origin of the "whore" label.<br />
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So when his mother invited me to Seder I was thrilled. My mom had made me this adorable dress, black velvet, slightly low cut with a sash that tied in the back. I looked like an adorable Alice-in-Wonderland with white tights and those little black Chinese shoes. My hair was thick and straight and fell to my waist. My boyfriend assured me my outfit was perfect even though his mother and aunt would be wearing polyester pant suits and my clothes would mark me as the shiksa whore she knew I was. Also, I decided to bake bread as a suitable dinner gift. Yes, leavened bread. I had never had a Matzoh or a bagel or heard of that story about the bread. So, I baked bread. When I told my boyfriend's room mate he started to say something but my boyfriend punched him and he shut up. We were driving to North Jersey and they were in the front seat while I sat in the back in my black velvet dress, holding my bread.<br />
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We dropped off his room mate who gave me a look full of pity and then we knocked on the door of his childhood home. His mom and his aunt answered the door with his little brother and father and some other people in the background. His mother's pants suit was aqua and his aunt's was pink. I handed the bread to his mother and she looked down and screamed. She threw the bread at my boyfriend and turned around and announced to the rest of the guests, "She gave me bread!" After that, nothing really worked. Over dinner we were reading the part about the good Jew and the bad Jew and when ever the bad Jew was mentioned everyone looked at my boyfriend and his mother sobbed. I kept drinking the Manishevitz which was awful but it was alcohol. Over the brisket, his mother went into full scale hysterics and his Uncle Saul pulled us aside and said, "Take her to a diner," and he gave my boyfriend a twenty.<br />
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I sat in the diner in my black velvet dress and sobbed. My boyfriend called his mother a Nazi and we ate cheesecake. When my mom called me the next day and I told her about the bread she sort of inhaled and then said, "Oh honey." She put my father on the phone and he said, "Haven't you read the bible?" Well, of course I hadn't. I spent my childhood reading Dickens and D.H. Lawrence and Virginia Woolf and Dostoevsky and none of those people told me about the bread thing. "No," I said. "Well," he said, "you should read it." But, I never did. However, I read all of <u>Moby Dick</u>, <u>War and Peace</u>, <u>Middlemarch</u> and <u>Paradise Lost.</u> I never wore that dress again.</div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-9117067511147042422015-03-22T16:33:00.001-07:002015-03-22T16:33:40.957-07:00My Life in Spas<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
My first experience with a spa occurred just after my first novel sold. I booked myself into a spa in a place called Neversink, NY in the Catskills. You took a bus from Port Authority to where you were picked up in a van and driven to a bucolic spot where they starved you to death. Not really but sort of. The place was full of models deemed chubby by agencies like Ford who were on about 250 calories a day and spent most of their time in the sauna talking about food. In fact, everyone at this place obsessed over food and talked about food probably because there was so little food. The most calories you could have during the day was 900 and you had to insist you'd be hypoglycemic if you ate fewer. My roommate had been in residence for a month. She was a zaftig, miserable looking person of about 30 who barely left her room and when I woke up in the middle of the night I could hear her munching something under her covers like a squirrel. It was unnerving and sad but also made me feel slightly better about myself as I lived in Manhattan, was in a 12-step program and therapy and I was depressed. I felt like a Woody Allen character. But, at least I didn't eat under my covers.<br />
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Because I was at a spa I took every class offered and did the 6 mile hike in the morning followed by water aerobics, dance aerobics, jazz aerobics, yoga and weight aerobics and more hiking. After a few days a girl came up to me and asked if she could follow me around. "You do everything," she said. "I'm so inspired by you." Well, I wasn't all that nice. I had just signed up for graduate school and my father had called me a loser. I had a book deal but no one even knew I was writing a novel and I was feeling very confused about the direction my life was taking. I wanted a baby and I didn't have a boyfriend, I wanted a career and I was committing to an MFA program that had little status. "My fiancee won't marry me unless I lose twenty pounds," she told me. That did it. I told her she was crazy if she allowed her future husband to treat her so poorly. She agreed and decided to get a herbal wrap instead of joining me on the hike.<br />
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After two days of no coffee I got a headache so terrible I thought I had a brain tumor. The yoga instructor made me a bed in a darkened studio, gave me a massage and turned off the lights. I slept for three hours and woke up believing I had found the meaning of life which was sleep. My average night in Manhattan was 4 hours. I was a nervy, caffeinated New Yorker who felt herself competing with models and famous MFA graduates and who desperately wanted her father's approval. Also, I lived above a Greek diner open 24 hours and all night the ghostly voices of the waiters ordering eggs and cheeseburgers and bagels floated up the air shaft so it felt like I was in a room surrounded by thin men in black pants with order pads stuck in their belts. I began to understand the meaning of life was eschewing sugar and caffeine and working out 6 hours a day. Even the squirrel in the bed next to me no longer disturbed my slumber. I was reborn.<br />
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The way out of Neversink was a bus stop outside of a General Store. After 7 days of the spa, I went inside and bought a 10 oz cup of coffee and a giant Hershey Bar. Those models were being paid a lot to stay skinny and unhappy. No one cared whether my hip bones jutted forward or my clavicle was prominent. I had one pair of jeans that had fit me when I embraced an eating disorder plus a clinical depression and the very thought of nourishment was anathema. I was no longer that girl. I was a well-rested graduate student with a book deal. </div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-67358137630444717672014-12-30T14:22:00.000-08:002014-12-30T14:22:09.491-08:00New York City: The Last of my bad boyfriends<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
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I just had a 6 day visit to New York City that reminded me of meeting up with an old boyfriend after years of separation. It was so seductive, so sexy and interesting and filled with endless possibilities but those possibilities were already filled or they were never real and our time together, magical as it was, is basically over.<br />
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My old apartment on 69th and Broadway. Chester (cat), Jim (roommate)<br />
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Christmas 1985 I have hit a low point beyond comprehension. In February of that year my eldest sister was killed by a drunk driver, I had a nervous breakdown with wonderful aspects such as a complete cessation of eating and sleeping. I was put on all sorts of major drugs and advised to commit myself while I dropped 30 pounds and eventually met a person I would agree to marry without knowing or liking him. We both worked in the electronics department of Abraham and Strauss where I walked like a zombie and signed papers for which my embezzling boss would later spend years in prison. I hoped the husband would beat me to death and he nearly did. I returned to alcoholic drinking in May 1985 and kept it up until December 22 when my best friend threw the violent husband out into the snow, I told her what had happened and then I told my father, returned to AA, left the husband after he threw me down the steps of the subway cracking my head open, got an order of protection and divorced him, paying $75.00 to Jacoby and Myers, a law firm that advertised in the subway. I met a female attorney when I was returning from the assault in the subway who advised me to immediately go to family court and get a restraining order. He threw my furniture out on the sidewalk and I moved away from that awful neighborhood, the last stop on the D train, Sheepshead Bay where no one ever spoke to me and we had screamed at one another and he had punched his fists into the wall above my head.<br />
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After that, I found an apartment with a professor at Columbia who turned out to be a raging alcoholic and once introduced me to her graduate students during a party she was given as "Molly, who goes to AA." I locked myself in my tiny room in her messy apartment and cried myself to sleep. A week later I went shopping for a winter coat with my mom and when she vetoed my choice of a cool black coat for her choice of a gray loden catholic schoolgirl coat she said, "I'm buying this." At that moment, a la Scarlett O'Hara I told myself, "As God is my witness, I'll never let anyone push me around again."<br />
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I quit my job working for a married ex-boyfriend who'd lied about his marriage, applied to several publishing houses and found a bedroom in a one bedroom with another sober woman who had just drop-kicked her boyfriend. We each had a room with a tiny kitchen in-between and a tiny bathroom. It was 69th and Broadway and it was heaven. We were both newly sober, single, depressed but happy to eat our pints of ice cream and watch our tiny back-and-white televisions and eat take-out salads from the Koreans and pizza. We were happy to have the other person near and we worked and went to meetings.<br />
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I was hired at Random House for almost no money and worked for two editors, Mary Ann Eccles, the sweetest woman in the world and Christopher Cox who wasn't very sweet but was part of the gay rat pack that included Edmund White and other famous literary figures all of whom have since died of AIDS except for White. Hilton Als who is now a featured <i>New Yorker</i> writer was our messenger and I spent my days xeroxing and fetching stuff and buying Chris six-packs while he worked late at night. I was broke and incredibly happy. I had a few terrible dates and then swore off men as they all seemed to morph into my ex. Twice weekly I crossed Central Park to the east side where I saw a therapist to whom I had been recommended. I introduced myself in our first session by warning her not to get too fond of me because I planned to get sober and then commit suicide. I was done, I told her. I couldn't try to live anymore. She didn't react like my mother (screaming) or my father (sneering) or my friends (frightened) she said she understood, I should go to AA, take the pills she prescribed and call her before I killed myself. I agreed. We talked about my sister for one session and then my family and my childhood for the next 9 years.<br />
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New York was such a mess in the eighties but I still loved it. I loved the homeless man who lived on my grate and the lower east side junkies and the wild disparity between the rich and the poor, limousines and people begging, women in fur coats and barefoot people. I moved from Random House to Bantam Doubleday Dell where I worked with a woman who was friends with Springsteen and Jan Wenner and Clay Felker and Yoko Ono and Wendy Wasserstein, who once edited Hunter S. Thompson and was completely cool and funny. I had an expense account and became an Assistant Editor. I took all my friends to lunch at the Sherry Netherland and Cafe Des Artistes and I bought one or two novels and spoke to writers and gradually realized that my true secret was I was a writer like my father, not an actress or an editor or an agent. I loved her. She was the age of my oldest sister. I loved her and she totally fucked me over and fired me and told people I had quit. I cracked her Tiffany cup and I threw away her mail and she stood in my cubicle and said, "Now you can go write your novel."<br />
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Which I did. I was devastated and broke and got a horrible waitressing job in a fish restaurant where I leaned on the bar and wrote in a notebook. I got another waitressing job and then I was asked to work for Louis Wallace whose clients included Don Dillelo and Joan Didion and I joined the Actors Studio and wrote and wrote and then I woke up one day and realized I didn't want to be in publishing, I was a writer and I applied for the MFA program at Brooklyn College and was accepted. I quit the Wallace agency and Louis was mean to me and when I told my father he said I was a loser and the night before I left for a trip to a really cheap spa where they starved you I got a message from this woman who was a literary agent who had asked to see what I was writing and I had given her 300 pages of what I called my "thing" and HarperCollins wanted to publish it and now I was a novelist.<br />
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I went away and detoxed in upstate New York, getting the worst headache of my life going off coffee. On the bus ride back to NYC I ate a giant chocolate bar and drank a huge cup of coffee. My answering machine was full of messages from my agent and now I had an editor and a marketing person. I went to Zabars and bought a coffee cake and turned off my phone and sat in my apartment on 69th and Broadway and thought about my sister and a friend who had also been killed and how this book would probably hurt my parents a bit and my living sister and definitely the married ex-boyfriend and I wondered how I would manage to remain nice when I was rich and famous. Finally, I told my mom who was really quiet and then she said, "We didn't help you at all." and then I told my father who was quiet and when I told him about all my anxieties he said, "Try to be happy."<br />
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<br />So now I was a novelist in New York City and I felt like my dreams had come true. I broke up with a hideous boyfriend and slept with this awful shoe designer who would later go to jail on tax fraud who actually gave me a pair of shoes after we had sex and before he called me a taxi. I didn't know how to promote myself and I didn't know how to become part of the literary Mafia and I didn't own a computer so I had to retype my MS three times.<br />
<br />
One morning I walked in Central Park and came upon a massive pyramid rising out of the fog and a homeless man came out of the same fog and we marveled at what later turned out to be a prop from AIDA but seems to have materialized just for us. I was on my way to tell my therapist about my book deal and to cry about wishing my sister could know I had finally made my dream come true.<br />
<br />
"This city is like Oz," the homeless man said. "Anything is possible."<br />
I nodded.<br />
"Let's touch it and make a wish," he said.<br />
So we did, I wished that I would deserve the life I had been given, that the phoenix that rose from the ashes would never sink again.</div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-47642682730385867862014-12-19T12:22:00.001-08:002014-12-19T12:22:53.511-08:00Daddy said even years were better but...<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
2014 sucked. My father died. My dear friend died. Many innocent people including children were slaughtered by a murdering gang of thugs who said they did things in the name of god a la, the Nazis, the Manson Family, Bosnia, northern Ireland, rogue soldiers and all the rest who killed, raped, hurt, stole with the excuse you had a spiritual or political agenda but really you were just insanely wrong.<br />
<br />
I was raised a heathen. Our religion was literature, education, political engagement, humor and family loyalty which is weird because my mom always made fun of people who invoked their families as their ultimate authority. She also made fun of things like rituals and traditions which makes me think my parents probably saw these things as ways that people separated themselves by clinging to their Menorahs, Christmas trees, prayers and pledges. We celebrated Christmas passionately but our presents weren't wrapped. We each were given a chair with our stuff piled on it. As a result, I craved wrapping paper, ritual, religion and pledges. I lived in a Buddhist monastery part-time for a few years and welcomed the mixture of serenity and terror that Renzi Zen Buddhism inspired in me. I loved wearing the robe, bowing and chanting and crawling occasionally. However, I used to return to my cell, make coffee, eat chocolate and read Vogue Magazine so some part of me wasn't fully committed.<br />
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My parents and most of my family went to Harvard. This was a source of pride but also not. God forbid you claim Harvard as your Alma Mater except in the most casual of circumstances. You were not to sport any Harvard memorabilia or refer to your time at Harvard except in a very minor almost embarrassed way. We were bog Irish but aristocrats in our intellect and achievements. My father was a Gauss lecturer at Princeton, a recipient of numerous Guggenheims and an accomplished novelist and literary critic. My mother graduated from Harvard Architectural school and studied with a student of Walter Gropius. Still, we rarely mentioned these things except in passing. Maybe this is the reason why I referred to myself as a teacher when I was invited to a publishing party right after my first novel was published. My companion did a double-take and said, "She's also a writer," and I grimaced.<br />
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Supposedly the Irish believe if you praise your child too much the fairies will abduct them. I never worried about that idea as the compliments I was granted as a child were usually from strangers or other people telling my parents how well I played soccer, directed a play, performed or wrote. They rarely attended any school event and I rarely invited them. The reviews tended to be negative, "What a terrible play!" or non-existent. Oddly, I didn't feel unsupported. Just not entitled. And yes, a bit hurt.<br />
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I went to everything my son did and usually cried. He banged a xylophone in kindergarten and I wept. He was a royal child in "The King and I" which I saw twice and wept. He played guitar at a local club and I wept. It's weird how much I cry when I see my amazing, talented son in public. I realize he takes our support for granted because he was raised to expect his parents to always be there if they could. I hope I'm not crying for myself and those empty seats I used to see when I was in a play.<br />
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I assumed my parents were too busy and had better things to do than cheer on my efforts which inspired me to expect very little which has proven helpful in some cases and harmful in others. I am always impressed by the self-confidence of those I would deem less than perfect. Usually they had parents that found them charming, brilliant and gorgeous when the truth reveals something else, obnoxiousness, stupidity and, as my dear grandmother would say, 'a face like a foot'. Ah, there's the key, a grandmother who had no time for nonsense, who told you you were too fat and promised a lifetime in hell for your lack of mass attendance. This meaness was filtered by my mother and almost none was passed to my son. I'm glad of that. If your mother doubts your talent it makes it hard to take risks. But I have always taken risks and sometimes fallen hard, sometimes soared.<br />
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I'm not sure what this has to do with murdering terrorists but I think it's connected to this idea that there's a ladder and only certain human beings are allowed to climb it to heaven or that place with all the virgins or whatever it is that makes you believe you are entitled to be cruel, wicked, inhuman and savage. You aren't right. You just have a gun while they are trying to learn things. You listened to the loudest voice when really no one knows a single thing about why we are put on earth except I choose to believe it is to be kind and not proud, accepting and not judgmental. I don't believe things happen for a reason because there is no reason that could satisfy what occurred in Pakistan, in Newtown, in Nigeria and on a smaller scale my friend's brain tumor. My father's death had nothing to do with god. He was sick and sad and 88. It was time. I miss him terribly.<br />
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-72613558799993240912014-11-11T11:47:00.002-08:002014-11-11T11:47:50.663-08:00How to raise a successful person<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
First, forget about your own childhood. Remember your parents didn't know it wasn't okay to let you paddle in a tidal river before you could swim, leave you in a Christian Science Camp while they went to Europe and left no contact information, drive you around while drunk, get drunk and say horrible things, tell you there was no way in hell you'd ever make it at writing, acting, marriage or motherhood because you were a selfish, talentless, moron with the bad taste to fall in love with art or that stupid boy. You aren't your parents. Relax. Get pregnant. Don't read the manual that tells you about the 200000 things that could befall the fetus before you even know you're pregnant. Go off coffee for one day and then go back on. Just don't drink too much. Don't speak to that macrobiotic, vegan, yoga, cross-fit instructor whose self-taught and completely comfortable telling you all kinds of things about your pregnancy even though she's/he's childless and not a doctor. In fact, he/she never graduated from college. Take some vitamins, do some yoga, do lots of kegels, put your feet up, whine a lot, gain weight, wear your husband's clothes, avoid blogs and awful stories about two-headed babies. make a birth plan with a play list and a menu of snacks, read it to your midwife and your husband, give birth in the hallway or maybe not. Give birth like me after 72 hours of labor listening to Enya and attempting to rip your husband's face off. Marvel at the gorgeousness of your child. Hand him to his father. Eat a box of truffles.<br />
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Try to breast feed. fail. Have a hundred people give you advice. Call your mother who tells you to give the baby a bottle. Give the baby a bottle, pump your milk, wave at the guys on the scaffold watching you pump your milk. Watch a strange version of Russian porn while you pump your milk. Feed your baby. When he is splayed out across your body ask the midwife if there is something wrong. Be happy when she tells you he is the most relaxed baby she ever met. Ignore unbelievably awful people who ask you why you didn't breast feed. They will go to hell. Take your baby to Switzerland when he is 3 month old and balance him on luggage. Hand him over to French day care woman you can't understand and go skiing. Nearly kill yourself skiing off an Alp and as you are air born imagine that little face. Survive. Go cross country skiing.<br />
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Tell your baby all your ideas for novels, movies, plays, television shows. Tell your husband you don't think the baby likes you. Cry and try to make your baby respond to a conversation. Go back to work part-time at a job you get by attending the interview with your baby and crying about how bored you are and how sick you are of the baby. The baby will smil because he is an imbecile. Miss your baby while you are teaching. Tell your baby a joke and when he laughs you realize he is an angel. Your angel.<br />
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Get separated and survive. Work out a parenting plan, dress your kid in rapper underwear because he loves 50 Cents. Don't worry that he will be a gang banger. Get him a skateboard and watch him try to do a kick flip 50 times. Accept the blame for jinxing him by watching. Watch. Read to him every night and sing Leonard Cohen songs about dysfunctional relationships. Take your kid to Mexico and Michigan and do all sorts of things like snorkeling and zip lines and swimming and feel sorry for yourself because you don't have a grown-up to talk to. Make friends with awful people with kids. Let your kid watch Sponge Bob, Full House, Bob, bob and Bob, and a bunch of other stupid TV shows. Let him eat orzo and parmesan cheese and broccoli every night. In front of the TV. Take him to McDonalds and Chucky Cheese where you eat Sushi and correct essays. Work. Write. Publish a book and dedicate it to him. Make up with your parents. Let him go to the playground. When you enroll him in an all-girl hip-hop dance class let him drop out. Get him Guitar lessons and a math tutor and therapy. Recognize he is wild like you were and brilliant like you were but more so. When there's no room in gifted let him hang with the non-gifted.<br />
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Go nuts when he gets drunk and then stop. Get help for yourself and love him so much you accept that he is awful. Stay friends with his father. Remarry a wonderful man who likes and will love your kid. Pray to something to keep him from doing the sort of things you did once. Forgive him. Laugh at his jokes. take him to "Hustle and Flow" and deny you want him to become a pimp. Take him to a movie about gang violence in Chicago and pretend you don't see him cry. Be nice to everyone even though he says you're crazy. Try not to cry when he graduates from middle school, high school and you drop him off at college. Cry. Understand that this is his life and from the sidelines you will be the mothership and that has to be enough. Keep writing.<br />
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molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8767683831277502271.post-7530353438227173832014-10-10T06:47:00.001-07:002014-10-10T06:47:35.028-07:00How to Grieve: What were those 5 stages again?<div dir="ltr" style="text-align: left;" trbidi="on">
First, tell someone your father, mother, cat, friend has died and have them tell you how their mother, father, dog, neighbor died several years ago and how it made them feel. Find yourself comforting this person despite the fact that you are the one who suffered the loss. Tell them how sorry you are. Hang up the phone or continue shopping or walk away. Walk away.<br />
Next, you are in yoga and doing downward dog when you remember how much you miss your father, friend, sister and suddenly your legs weaken and you are in child's pose wondering whether crawling out the door will upset people.<br />
After yoga you buy a cookie. You walk home and your mouth is full of dust. You recall how the funeral director handed you your father's ashes and you sat in the car with him in the box and told him how much you loved him. Years earlier on your way to a reading for your new novel your father told you how proud he was of you. You hand your mother the box and she sits there with it on her lap. "Sixty-eight years" she says quietly. You go into action and suggest a movie, dinner, TV, a walk. She looks up at you and says, "He was my sweetie pie. He was everything." You sit down and shut up.<br />
Next, you take your cat to the vet, the awful cat who loves your husband and the x-ray informs you this cat has swallowed a needle. It is a huge needle in a small cat. You agree not to operate and your husband is suddenly in tears. He rushes out the door and after you assure the vet you don't want to be there when Fatty dies, you follow your husband. A week later a plaster of paris imprint of Fatty's paw arrives with the date he was executed. "They must have already given him the shot," you say, handing the paw to your husband. "Otherwise, he would have scratched their eyes out." Your husband glares at you and you are sorry. His heart is broken and that is sad.<br />
You open Facebook and there is a picture of an ex-boyfriend. He was your first boyfriend after you got sober and the first man you let touch you after your violent husband. He was kind and you were grateful to him for his understanding your crazy family and your bruises. He has died of a brain tumor. You don't know what to feel. You haven't seen him in years. You went to the MTV New Year's Eve Ball with him wearing your dyed Betsey Johnson wedding dress and that was your first date in sobriety. Someone threw beer on you. You are sorry.<br />
Years earlier you were at work and your mother told you a woman from high school, a fabulous, wild woman had succumbed to AIDS and a fire. She was a junkie and you loved her. Once you were meant to be going to a party and she took you to Harlem when Harlem was Harlem and she scored smack while you sat in her car. You were scared and angry. She has died without marrying or having children or ever having an I Phone. She would have loved an I Phone. You are at work and you hang up the phone and follow your boss to a meeting where she takes credit for all your work. You remain silent. It doesn't matter.<br />
Your sister has been hit by a car and after a week, she dies. You are very sick. You stop eating for a long time. You have panic attacks and you snort cocaine and you cry all night. Every night. You can't sleep and you are alone which is good because when you see your parents you need to act normal. You are not normal. There is a pain in your chest you think is cancer but a shrink tells you it is your broken heart and writes you a prescription for Nardil and Elavil. You look in the PDR and you see this combination causes death. You are glad. It doesn't but you sleep for 48 hours and when you wake up she is still dead. You marry a jerk. You divorce and get better.<br />
Last year your son, the child who holds your life in his hand nearly kills himself and others. he has flipped his car 4 times and calls you from the hospital. He is on his way to jail but he is alive and unhurt. You, on the other hand, can't talk. You, on the other hand, are close to suicide. You see him briefly and then you move to Abu Dhabi where you have the worst job of your life awaiting you, some fabulous friends and months to recover from the possibility of losing this life that you made, this baby that you carried, this boy that you cherished, this teenager that you nagged. He tells you how sorry he is and you nod. He is still alive. You will survive. You do not have to grieve. This time.</div>
molly moynahanhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10277877294537046741noreply@blogger.com0