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Randy Pausch – The Last Lecture


He’s dead. I wrote about him last year when his “last lecture” was first making the internet rounds. Ironically I ran across his book Thursday when I was at Chapters. I didn’t buy it though. I don’t really need a book to remind me to live my life fully. Like Randy and his family, I discovered that through experience.

His death is a timely reminder to us all that life will not wait for us to create the perfect template or get the kids raised first or for us to “get over” whatever traumas and disappointments that hold us fast. 

Happy Birthday Louise Brown, From an IVF Mom


I hadn’t thought about blogging again until August but my novel is going so well (I am on a second revision and well ahead of schedule) that when I ran across this article on the first IVF/test tube baby, Louise Brown, I decided I had a few things to say.

I didn’t realize that Louise and BabyDaughter had birthdays so close together. Ms.Brown was born thirty years ago today, and BabyDaughter six years ago this coming Sunday. They only thing they have in common, aside from gender and being Leos, is that they were conceived outside of the uterus. Ms. Brown’s parents experienced infertility due to blocked fallopian tubes. Will and I had trouble due to the fact that his yet undiagnosed terminal illness was destroying his sperm.

Too much information you say? You forget where you are. You also likely don’t know someone who has endured the infertility road to parenthood. We can speak/write with ease, and at length, on reproductive topics that leave the average person squirming.

I remember when the news about the first “test-tube baby” broke in the fall of 1978. I was in 9th grade. It was religion class with Sr. Mary Judgemental*. She yammered on for half the class about the end of civilized society as we know it and the coming of the Brave New World before breaking us into small groups to discuss little Damienette and her nose-thumbing parents**.

In an interesting twist, I clearly remember being quite relieved to discover that science had finally come up with a way to help couples have children they might otherwise not have. Interesting really, given that twenty some years later, I would be half of one of those couples.

Sister was appalled by my lack of moral compass. Clearly I was in need of spiritual retooling. Thankfully I had her***. But she didn’t change my mind about IVF. I thought it then, as now, a good thing.

In 1978 the world yakked on about the possible ethical problems of IVF, and it needed to do so. The potential for abuse and discrimination certainly existed. Today with post-menopausal women using IVF to perform end runs around Mother Nature’s time limits and couples with means by-passing traditional baby-making for reasons that aren’t tied to infertility, the fact that the world gave a nod to ethics and morality when Louise Brown’s birth became widely known should be seen as a good thing.

Without Louise, there would be no BabyDaughter. That is reason enough for me to celebrate the day and wish her a long and happy life.

 

*Sr. Mary Judgemental went on to even more spiteful heights after a summer trip to the Wailing Wall brought her even closer to spiritual enlightenment. The low point of this was reached during my senior year when  classmate showed up during open study hall one morning to show off her new baby and Sister refused to even look at the child because she was “a product of sin”. As a product of sin adoptee, that didn’t sit well and I wish I had been the person I am now because I would have given that woman a piece of mind she’d still be chewing on.

**According to the Catholic Church, which actually turns a blind eye to most things it professes to abhor, infertility is “god’s will” and faithful couples will just suck it up and accept – adopt perhaps – and be good little puppets.

***In the end my time spent with Sr. M.J. helped me begin to define my differences with Catholicism and organized religion in general. If it weren’t for her, I might still be one of the “faithful” who plop down in the pews every Sunday and holy day and then ignore teachings during the week. I would rather object and abstain then be a hypocrite.

Organic Writing is My Hump Day Hmm


Damyanti wrote recently about the difficulty of tapping that deep well of creativity that supposedly flows like a well-stocked lake inside all writers. Simply cast a line and reel in the idea and the words to express them will follow along behind like obedient children.

Anyone who has ever fished, or had children, knows that submission of this sort is a fantasy. Fish fight and children have minds of their own. And so it is with writing.

Sometimes the ideas are not as plain as the nose on our faces. Though for me, my nose is only plainly apparent when I search out my image in a mirror.

Words and phrases do not also flow out my fingertips either. Just in case you were wondering.

Writing is something that I do. Have done. Ever since I was a child, the ability to spin a tale or bring life to an idea or simply arouse emotional response via words on the page has been mine. But I can’t say that it came any more easily to me than the ability to hit, catch and throw. Some of the aptitude was gifted but the rest was practice.

There is a quote cited from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert ( a book I find trite and a cheat, given the privileged circumstances surrounding its writing) that exhorts us to:

“let go and sit still and allow contentment to come to you”

The parallel to writing is clear. There are times in the creative process a writer, or any other type of artist, can’t force or hurry up. But I am beginning to realize that this doesn’t mean one quits working all together while the muse goes wool gathering.

I am not a big fan of free writing. That stream of consciousness crap of which those who buy into the Artist’s Way nonsense are so fond. Meandering is just that and though occasionally a writer will stumble out of the maze and back onto the path this way, it isn’t a productive way to achieve much except by accident which is apparently okay with a lot of writers.

Blocks are agonizing. Knowing you are sitting on a great story while it refuses to hatch is frustrating. But who ever said that writing wasn’t work?

Okay, people who don’t write reference the idea a lot.

It reminds me of the Dire Straits song, Money for Nothing. The attitude that art is somehow a cheat and artists are cleverly dodging “real” work.

Thing about writing, being a real writer, is that it isn’t glamourous. It’s not living in Italy. Or traveling to an ashram to find the enlightenment that has always eluded you.

Enlightenment, like the muse, is within and it’s only through hard work that both are revealed.