Woolston Magic, Part 1

My son has gone to school at the same elementary for five years. He did kindergarten twice. (We just couldn’t reconcile eventually having to send him to high school so freshly 14.) The only parent friend I have at Broadwater I made because she lives around the corner from me. And we met during the summer.

I am not a joiner.

I have an inflated and warped perception of the PTA. I pay my dues. I help with vision screening and bake sales. But I never – seriously never – hang out with the other parents. I may smile at someone as I wait on the playground before my kids get out of school. If I’m standing next to you in line at the ice cream social, it’s possible I will say a few words. But at the core, I am not a joiner. I get the same feeling at Hannah’s dance classes and at Little League. I don’t fit in. Or, at least, I don’t think I do.

I’ve identified the problem: They’re grownups and I am a 12-year-old in a 35-year-old body.

So when Mrs. B., Zach’s teacher, asked me to help out with a little writing thing in her classroom on Fridays, I was thrilled. I love being in my kids’ classrooms. And now I was going to get to combine that with this other thing that I love. Sign me up. But when she told me I’d be volunteering with another parent – another writer, like the real kind, who gets paid to do it – I got a little nervous. What if he found out that not only was I not a real writer, but I was also 12?

I met him the afternoon I communicated my conditions of surrender to the Universe. You remember, when I said I wasn’t going to try to force anything to happen, that I was just going to focus on writing and let the Universe do the rest?

I was sitting on a bench waiting for my kids to be dismissed when Chris walked over and sat down right next to me. Zach and his son had been in the same class for the past four years. I had never even said hi to him. It was absolutely not personal. I’m just not a joiner. It’s my natural instinct to isolate in uncomfortable situations. School of any kind automatically fits into that category.

“So, you’re a writer?” he asked me.
“Well, yes, I am. I finished my first novel last year.”
“What’s happening with it?” he asked.
“Well,” I replied, remembering my recent conversation with God, “it’s written.”

Then he comes out with this:

“My wife just got her second novel published. You should talk to her.”

What?! My mind screamed. You’ve got to be kidding me! “I don’t need you,” I heard God say, like a sassy teenager. “I got people EVE-RY-WHERE!”

Blythe writes YA novels. Dark and beautiful YA novels. If you’ll remember, there was a time I thought perhaps I did too. I went home that day and ordered her first book, The Freak Observer.

Chris writes a column for the LA Times and does freelance travel writing. He provides our Friday morning classes with the structure that 3rd graders need.

“Here’s what a lead sentence looks like,” he’ll say. “And here’s the organized manner in which you build off of it.”
“Well,” I counter, “I just get a really cool idea I like and then it just sort of...” then I wave my arms around like a crazy person to help make my point.

We’ve formed our own little nerd posse. I’m excited. Maybe some time in the future we can get in a brawl with the PTA. I like to envision us crossing the playground jauntily, snapping our fingers and pushing up our glasses as we danced toward them

“You’re always alone.” Snap, snap, snap. “You’re always disconnected.” Snap, snap, snap.

A couple weeks into our Friday morning writing intensive, Chris met me on the playground with this:

“I have something to talk to you about. My wife just got a call from her agent. They’re looking for a young, talented, unpublished author to do this YA project.”

Not. Even. Kidding. I don’t know what I was more excited about – the fact that I was considered talented or young.

“You’re lying to me right now,” is what I said. I don’t think my new friend knew quite how to handle that.
“Um… no,” he said, looking at me like I was nuts. “Blythe will email you with the details.”

I got that feeling in my throat. You know, the tight one where you kind of want to squeal but you’re a 35-year-old mother picking her two children up from school with all the other parents around and no one would understand, so you don’t.

Blythe sent me the information. We batted a few emails back and forth. She’s lovely, and I’m excited about that. Here is a snippet of her loveliness: I thank her for sending this my way, especially since she doesn’t know me from Adam, and she says she knows I’m Zach’s mom, and that’s quite an accomplishment.

*sigh*

She gives me some direction about sending a writing sample and I take the direction. I figure, this literally fell into my lap. It doesn’t smack of “trying” at all. It’s just me taking the action that’s in front of me.

And then I make sure I write that day. For three hours. 10 minutes of dealing with agenty/publishy/selling/possible rejection kind of things is the spiritual equivalent of three good, solid hours of writing. That’s what it takes to combat the impending yearning/desperate/aching thing. And then this incredible thing happens.

I actually let it go.

I don’t check my email any more often than I normally do. In fact, while grateful for the opportunity and grateful for some kind of cosmic confirmation that I’m still on the right path, I don’t care really how that turns out. I only care that I still wrote that day, that I didn’t get caught up in the waiting of it all and that I have these two new friends.

More on Blythe in Woolston Magic Part 2.