As I’ve pondered what this might look like, Eugene Peterson pointed me in a surprising direction. In a different book than the one I quoted last time, he writes of his journey as a writer, of what he calls “heuristic writing:”

It was a way of writing that involved a good deal of listening, looking around, getting acquainted with the neighborhood. Not writing what I knew but writing into what I didn’t know, edging into a mystery…

Writing as a way of entering into language and letting language enter into me, words connecting with words and creating what had previously been inarticulate or unnoticed or hidden.

Writing as a way of paying attention.

Writing as an act of prayer.

Yes and yes and yes.

I’ve long known that I write myself back to faith when doubt or fear assails me and that part of the reason I write is to hold on to the moments of my life, so they won’t slip away so quickly. I’d never thought of these things as prayer. Now I’m beginning to.

And I’m beginning to see, too, that even when I’m not writing with pen and paper or pixels on a screen, I am writing in my mind, capturing the present moment for a little longer when I hold it with gratitude or acceptance or pleas for mercy. Or all three simultaneously.

Sometimes, I can even move beyond the writing in my mind, the trying to capture in words the sights and sounds and smells and emotions of the moment, and I can simply be in it, me, here, now.

This, too, is prayer. It is prayer that prays itself, without consciousness and without self-consciousness. Perhaps it is the best kind of prayer, because it is prayer not just with my heart or my mouth or my mind, but with my whole self because I am wholly here, wholly alive, wholly now.

Or is that holy?

We walked down to the coffee shop where I write on Friday afternoons. I bought two steamed milks, plain for me, with vanilla for him. We sat at my usual table by the window. He pulled out his notebook. I pulled out my laptop.

I wasn’t sure how well this was going to work, honestly. He’s eight. A very active eight. This is the boy who climbs the windows and door frames, who prefers running to walking, especially in the house, and who delights in wrestling, wrangling, and otherwise harassing his siblings. (And no, even his 18-month-old brothers are not exempt: they are regularly subjected to fake punches on the back, arm, or even in the face.) He fidgets with his clothes or his lip when he’s reading to himself. He fidgets with my clothes or his lip when I’m reading to him. He seems all but incapable of sitting still.

So I was skeptical about my getting any work done at all. But I managed to write a whole host of emails and even work on a blog post.

While my fingers flitted over my keyboard, Jack sat quietly across from me. He sat there for more than two hours. Mostly he stared out the window, but he did manage to write almost a whole page.

As we were walking home in the damp dark of a January evening, he took hold of my gloved hand. “That was fun,” he said. “Can we do it again when we get home from Alabama?”

I squeezed his hand. “It was fun, wasn’t it? And of course we can do it again.”

The rest of the way home, we talked about his book, brainstorming possible dangers for John and Sara as they travel to the chamber of mysteries.

Much to my surprise, Jack worked on his book while we were in Alabama, writing part of the scene where John and Sara meet the obligatory sage who points them in the direction of the chamber of mysteries and gives them the obligatory gift for use in their darkest hour. My son has a keen understanding of the conventions of fantasy stories.

But despite the formulaic nature of this story – he is only eight, after all – he has moments of prose that blow me away.

Just after the obligatory gift scene, Jack wrote one of the best chapter endings ever: as the sage sends John and Sara on their way, he warns them, “The midnight dangers await you if you do not reach the moon cave before nightfall.”

When he read that to me, my eyes widened. You see, I started writing stories when I was six. By the time I was eight, I had progressed from “Candyland in Trouble” – a three-page story about the bullied Candlylanders and their quest to run a frizzy-haired giant out of town – to the eight-page “What Rabbits Do at Night.” They play baseball. (Duh. What else would they do?) Luckily, I ran out of steam after four excruciating innings of singles, doubles, triples, and homeruns, and I ended the story before they could play all nine innings. Thank God.

Let’s just say that midnight dangers, moon caves, and nightfall were completely foreign ideas to me. Even now, I’m not sure I would have come up with the first two. No wonder my eyes went wide.

I think for our next writing date, I’m going to pick Jack’s brain, see where he comes up with stuff like that, and if he’s got any more like it. Then I’m going to steal it.

Writer-mama turned word-thief: now there’s a midnight danger.

But she didn’t look past the cover of the book. If she had, she would have seen that it’s not just illustrated. It’s adapted. Usually this is a euphemism for dumbed down. And boy, this one is.

I’ve read the original Anne books half a dozen times at least. I’d read them again, but the last time I read them, shortly before Jane was born, I promised myself that I’d wait to read them again until I could read them to her. We’re getting close.

When I showed my mother-in-law that the book she’d given us was adapted, she said, “Well, you could still read it to her. I’m sure Jane would enjoy it.”

Maybe Jane would. But I wouldn’t – because it’s not just the story that I love. It’s the words themselves. L.M. Montgomery’s language is rich and evocative, her sentences complex, her humor delightfully understated.

The adapted version dumps all of that nuance and beauty in favor of ease of reading. I hate that.

Here, for example, is the first sentence of the adapted version:

Mrs. Rachel Lynde was a busybody who lived in Avonlea, a town on beautiful Prince Edward Island off Canada’s Atlantic coast.

This grossly violates rule number one of good story telling – show; don’t tell – and it reads more like a geography lesson than a story. Bleh.

Now here is the first sentence of Montgomery’s book (it’s long, I know, but please read it; it’s delightful):

Mrs. Rachel Lynde lived just where the Avonlea main road dipped down into a little hollow, fringed with alders and ladies’ eardrops and traversed by a brook that had its source away back in the woods of the old Cuthbert place; it was reputed to be an intricate, headlong brook in its earlier course through those woods, with dark secrets of pool and cascade; but by the time it reached Lynde’s Hollow, it was a quiet, well-conducted little stream, for not even a brook could run past Mrs. Rachel Lynde’s door without due regard for decency and decorum.

Yes, it’s complex. Yes, it might be hard for young readers to read on their own. But the language is so interesting and paints such a vivid picture of that brook and, more to the point, of Mrs. Rachel Lynde that it’s worth whatever extra effort is required to read it.

I tire of publishers thinking that children (and adults, too) are too stupid to understand rich, complex language. I tire of finding books that spoon feed children as if they are imbeciles. I tire of bland generic prose posing as a “classic.”

Why do we even need these easy reader versions of classics? Why fill a child’s mind with paltry language that only serves to create an appetite for more paltry language? Why not simply wait to read the original until she is old enough and mature enough to appreciate it?

I first read Anne of Green Gables when I was twelve, and I fell in love with it – with Anne, with the language – and went on to read all eight books in the series.

But my best friend growing up – her father read it to her when she was six, and she loved it, too. Kids can hear and understand language that is too complex for them to read on their own.

So if a parent wants her child to read Anne of Green Gables (or whatever classic she loves and wants to share with him) when he’s six or seven, why give him a shoddy adaptation to read on his own? Why not give him the real deal, and read it to him yourself? You get to share the words of a story you love with him, and you get the bonding experience of reading and enjoying it together. What’s not to like about that?

I figure when Jane’s six, she’ll enjoy Anne as much my friend did (only one more year!). If I could find an unabridged illustrated version, I bet she’d enjoy it now. But until someone publishes that book, I’m willing to wait.

But, even though I’m not hawking a jeep today, I am selling something. And selling it cheap even.

You see, I have over 900 copies of a certain book sitting in boxes in my basement. I would love to see that number dwindle. I would love to have those books out in the world being read instead of moldering in a cinderblock room.

Since Advent begins in just over a month, I thought now would be a good time to peddle some books on the church year. Through the end of November, I’m offering them for $3 each, including shipping (unless you live outside the U.S, in which case we’ll have to talk).

If you already have a copy, thank you thank you thank you. If you don’t, well then, you really should take me up on this offer. And you can buy more than one: they’d make a great gift, especially at this time of year (not to mention this price; did I say three dollars?).

I feel sort of shilly writing this post. I’m not a salesperson. If I had to live on a commission, I would die. Of starvation. Or exposure.

But I risk shilling because it would please my husband no end to see the number of books in our basement shrink. He’s not so keen on the box wall I’ve erected down there. (See how selfless I am? Thinking of him instead of myself?)

Seriously, though, friends, I would love to get this book into your hands, or the hands of your mom or friend or neighbor or pastor. I think it’s worth reading (I wouldn’t have spent a year and a half of my life writing it if I didn’t), and I hope it will deepen your relationship with Christ and your connection to Christians who have observed these seasons for the past two millenia.

I’m offering it to you for the cost of shipping as a way of saying thank you for your faithfulness in reading my blog. Your reading supports my writing: in the humbling face of boxes of remaindered books every time I go downstairs to toss in another load of laundry, I can laugh (most of the time), largely because you all encourage me so much simply by reading my words.

And if you feel inclined to shrink the number of boxes of remaindered books in my basement, that would also be very encouraging. Very, very encouraging.

So if you would like a copy or two (or ten or 80 or 900), please send me an email and let me know how many you’d like, if and to whom you’d like me to inscribe them, and your mailing address.

Let the book binge begin (I hope).

We have a photo of her on my parents’ property outside of Fresno, California, the summer she helped my parents plant dozens of sunburst locust and liquid amber trees. Grandma’s leaning on a shovel, her booted foot pushing the blade into the soil. And she’s wearing a skirt.

When I was old enough to notice the difference between her—she was always put together in a skirt with a collared blouse and a blazer to match the skirt—and my mother, who wore jeans and gypsie blouses, I asked her why she never wore pants. “Slacks,” she declared, “are mannish.”

And my grandma was a lady through and through.

She was also a Christian through and through. She and God were on a first name basis.

As a child, I thought God asked her for advice: “So, Ila, there’s a sticky situation in town. What do you think we should do?” And Grandma, who served several terms on her town’s city council and was active politically into her 90’s, would tell him. And probably, God did it.

*****

I was six years old when my grandma took me shopping for a new outfit to wear to her church the next day. She bought me a pantsuit.

I didn’t want the pantsuit. It was itchy, especially in the heat of a central California summer. And surely she, the perennial wearer of skirts, didn’t want her granddaughter in a pantsuit. Perhaps she was trying to placate my mother, who loathed the froofy dresses Grandma always bought me.

Whatever the reason, I came home from the department store with a peach polyester pantsuit that she expected me to wear the next day. And because Grandma expected it, I wore it.

The next morning she came into the bedroom as I was putting on the pants. I had just stepped into the legs, but my feet were planted firmly on the bottom few inches of the hem. So I jumped into the air and simultaneously pulled up on the waistband to get the pants above my ankles.

Grandma was horrified. “That’s no way to treat your new clothes, young lady!” She swatted my behind. “That’s a brand new outfit. Don’t you ruin it before you wear it a single day! You put that on like a lady and not like a barn animal!”

She watched until I had the pants pulled on properly—no jumping this time. “People work hard to buy nice things for you! Don’t you treat their hard work like dirt!”

I wanted to stick out my tongue at her. I wanted to tell her I hated the pantsuit and I hated her. But I didn’t dare.

Even when she left the room, I didn’t have the guts to stick out my tongue or say I hated her. I picked on her best friend instead, since he seemed less powerful than Grandma.

“I hate God.”

*****

As the years passed, Grandma’s body slowly betrayed her. First her legs stopped working, and she had to shuffle her way around in a wheelchair. Then she could no longer shuffle, and she had to be pushed.

“I don’t understand,” she told me once, her voice sad, almost hurt. “I pray and I pray for healing.” She sighed. “I must not have enough faith.”

She, who was on a first name basis with God, not have enough faith?

I struggled to find words to say, no, no that’s not true—to say, it’s not about faith, Grandma—to say, sometimes God says no and we don’t know why. But I was a teenager, and I didn’t have those words then.

She came to live with my parents, all her earthly belongings crammed into one room of their house. She lay in bed or sat in her wheelchair.

When I came home to visit from Seattle, she smiled and called me Kathy. We still don’t know who Kathy is, or was. But Grandma did, and she was always glad to see her.

To see me.

I see her, too, not as she was in those last months, her strong body inert, her quick mind hazy. No, I see her digging holes on our property in Clovis, wrestling trees into the ground, her sturdy black-heeled shoes supporting her as she worked, her skirt swishing at her knees.

*****

I wrote this post as part of The High Calling‘s most recent Community Writing Project, Word Portraits, hosted by Jennifer Dukes Lee.

Here then are five reasons I’m a good writer.

1. I can sit still.
I stole this one from Ann. I never thought of this as a skill that was useful except maybe in school if you wanted to be teacher’s pet (which I did). After graduation, however, it seems not such a useful thing to be able to do, unless you’re big into meditation, which I’m not. Not that I wouldn’t like to be. I just spend most of my days with four children who like to shout indoors, climb the window and door frames, and take all the Tupperware out of the drawers, multiple times a day. Meditation? Not so much.

But I can sit still. Like right now. Only my fingers are moving as I type this.

What’s more, I like sitting still. And I’m good at it.

It’s not enough to make a writer of me, but it’s a pretty big step just to get your patookiss to the chair and keep it there.

I can do that.

2. I haz grammar.
My mother, God bless her, made me diagram sentences every summer of my childhood. She’d buy a big consumable grammar book, and I’d have to work through it before school started again in the fall.

So, while every one else in English class was struggling to get their subjects and verbs to agree, I was busy writing compound-complex sentences with multiple nouns and verbs (like this one) and rarely having to even think about whether they agreed because I just knew, thanks to all those summer workbooks.

And knowing how to construct words into all different kinds of sentences is a huge boon to a writer. Sentences are kind of important, you know?

3. I love learning.
Granted, there are things I couldn’t care less about, but I don’t worry about those. In the areas I find interesting – history, geography, literature, nature, food, writing craft, education, theology, spiritual disciplines, and Christian formation – there’s more than enough to keep me going for several lifetimes. So I go deep. And deeper. And then I come up and share a rich tidbit I’ve found with anyone willing to listen. And then I dive back down for more treasures to share.

4. I can laugh at myself.
I realize this might not at first blush look like a writing strength, but I’ve found it invaluable as I blog. If I can’t laugh at myself, who will? Okay, so people might, but if I couldn’t join them, I’d be a very unfun person to hang with, and none of you would be reading this right now because I’d be mired in the muck of self-importance and self-pity and who wants to read that? I mean, unless it’s poking fun at my tendencies toward self-importance and self-pity? And in order to poke fun, I have to be able to laugh at myself. Otherwise, I’m just laughable.

5. I write slowly.
Okay, so I don’t really think this is a strength; I’d just like it to be, since it’s the way I am. I’d like to think that the world needs people like me, who aren’t super quick on the uptake, who take a while to process new information, who actually bother to process it, mulling over it, chewing on it, digesting it.

I’m like the boy with the yak in the Tibetan tale, plodding on toward Lhasa, slowly, one foot in front of the other, while the world around me is like the racing rider on the horse, leaving me in the dust (or, rather, snow).

When I feel like I’m never going to make it as a writer, I remind myself of Wendell Berry, who still uses a typewriter (so far as I know). When told computers would make him a faster, more efficient writer, he said, “I don’t want to be a faster, more efficient writer. I want to be a better writer.”

Me, too. And that means writing slowly, feeling my way toward what I truly want to say. It may also mean that I will get left behind. I’m coming to be okay with that (mostly). I figure, I can’t be the only person like me, so us slow folks will find each other and saunter on down the writing road together.

We might even make it all the way to Lhasa.

*****

Another act of shameless self-promotion: Faith Village ran my “One of Those Days” post on Monday. Woot!

I ask, “So, I’d like to hear what everyone’s favorite part was.”

Tiffany says, “That’s hard. There are so many.”

I say, “Okay, maybe not favorite, but memorable. A scene or image that sticks in your mind.”

Janice says, “At the beginning, when Kit jumps out of the skiff into the water to rescue Prudence’s doll. I can just see her shocked face when she realizes the water is cold.”

I love that scene, too. I’d been pondering it for days. As a writer, I think it’s brilliant, because it does so much:

• it shows the difference between the world Kit’s left behind in Barbados and the one she’s entering in Puritan New England;
• it establishes her character, her naivete and impulsiveness and kindness toward those who are smaller and weaker;
• it reveals Nat’s bravery and kindness and willingness to flout the opinion of others;
• it introduces John as a sympathetic, if timid, soul;
• it causes Goodwife Cruff to hate Kit, and Prudence to adore her
• and it sets in motion many of the book’s later events: Prudence’s adoration leads her to come to the school where Kit is teaching and leave posies on the doorstep, the first in a long chain of events that leads to the book’s climax.

All in one short scene.

Elizabeth George Speare is a master of economy, repeatedly using a single scene or even a single image to many ends.

And her characters are so real, so compelling, and so likeable. Even Goodwife Cruff is sympathetic; in our discussion, Tiffany said Goody Cruff was the character she most pitied because she was so miserable and spiteful and didn’t have to be.

Speare wrote only four novels. I’ve read them all, and they’re all excellent, well-written, well-researched, vivid, compelling, and memorable, which is why two of them (including this one) won Newbery Medals, and one won a Newbery Honor. For these four books, Speare was awarded the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for her books’ substantial and lasting contribution to children’s literature.

Whenever I read Speare’s books (and I do, again and again), I take heart. Her children were in high school before she was able to write her first novel, Calico Captive, in her late forties. Then she went on to write her three Newbery books.

So there’s hope for me, for the novels that simmer in the back of my mind. If I could be like Speare and leave a literary legacy of four excellent and enduring books, I’d be exhilarated.  (But first, I probably need to abandon my annoying aptness for alliteration and assonance.)

My first thought was, A free retreat at Laity Lodge? What do I have to do? I clicked on the link and quickly read the overview and requirements.

The retreat is at the end of this month. Presenters include Gregory Wolfe, editor of Image, on whose fine mind I have a teensy weensy crush. Also, Jeffrey Overstreet, award-winning author of the Auralia Thread books, who’s been kind enough to have coffee with me a couple of times and also do a blog interview with me.

And Laity Lodge? My former pastor went there for a week to study with N.T. Wright, and couldn’t say enough good things about it. And the Chrysostom Society, whose members are to me the glowing inner circle of great Christian writers, meet there twice a year, and since I not-so-secretly long to be invited to join their ranks, Laity Lodge holds a sort of aura, like the mandorla of light (or pink bubbles) encircling a saint in old paintings.

So, yeah, I want to go on a free writing retreat there. All I have to do is blog about why I want to go, and I’ll be entered in a drawing. A drawing? I can write garbage, and I’ll have the same chance as everyone else? Sign me up!

But as the days went by, I began to have second thoughts. The babies aren’t weaned yet, so leaving for three days would mean I’d have to wean them.

Also, Laity Lodge is in Texas, which means I’d have to fly. By myself. I hate flying. I especially hate flying alone. Without Doug or the kids to distract me from my fear, I’d probably have a nervous breakdown somewhere over Utah.

Then, too, the retreat is the same weekend as our church’s men’s retreat, and I promised Doug he could go. He’s been so tired, so in need of a break from work and 24/7 parenting, and I want to give that to him.

Clearly these are signs from God that I’m not supposed to enter this drawing.

When I told my friend Cindy this, she rolled her eyes. “We’ll cover it, Kimberlee. If you get a chance to go, don’t let the men’s retreat stop you. We’ll find people to watch your kids.”

My sister echoed this. “Honey, that’s what grandparents are for. Call John and Peggy and schlep the kids off on them. It’s just for a weekend. They’ll recover.”

I wasn’t convinced. The whole weaning thing combined with the men’s retreat just seemed to scream at me that the timing was wrong.

But last night while I was brushing my teeth in the dark of the bathroom, a flash of clarity nearly knocked the toothbrush out of my hand. The babies and the men’s retreat are excuses. Even my fear of flying is an excuse. They’re just covers for deeper fear.

The sorry truth is, I am very, very afraid of stepping out of the comfort of my little world. Here, in the midst of my family and friends, my rhythm and routine, I am competent and confident (mostly).

But at Laity Lodge, I won’t be the center of attention like I am at home, the hub around which my small world revolves, my kids like so many planets around my sun. No, I will be part of the Oort Cloud.

Surrounded by other writers, gifted writers, writers who are going somewhere, or who are already there, I will feel two of the things I most hate to feel: inept and self-conscious.

Imagine the conversations I’ll have when brilliant writer after brilliant writer asks me, “So what do you write?”

Well, I wrote a book on the church year, but, uh, it’s out of print. Maybe I shouldn’t say that. It’s kind of a conversation stopper.

So how about this: I write two blog posts every week! Hm. Somehow that lacks a little…je ne sais quoi.

Or maybe: I have this novel I’ve been working on for the past eight years, and I’d like to get back to it. Someday, you know, if I could just stop having babies. Or is that unprofessional?

Perhaps I could punt: Mostly I write about my kids. Want to see a picture?

Of course, I could avoid such awkward conversations altogether and just hide in my room or, when I have to come out, pretend to be invisible. You know, keep my head down and not make eye contact, come late to the sessions, sit in the back, and leave early. Sort of like my freshman year of college all over again.

Neither option is particularly appealing. I’d rather spend the weekend single parenting.

And yet – if I could just get over myself, I know the retreat would be good for me, a stretch outside my cozy world of home, a chance to embrace the writer part of myself that gets subsumed in the mother part of myself, to let my inner writer play on the main stage for a few days.

So even though I’m afraid, I’m entering the drawing. After all, I don’t want to live my life in fear.

(But secretly, I’m half-hoping I don’t win.)

photo of the Tarantula Nebula, captured by ESO’s New Trappist Telescope TRAPPIST/E. Jehin/ESO

More, he knows tools. He reads magazines about tools. He knows which tool works best in any given situation. And if he needs a certain tool that he’s read about but doesn’t yet own, well, he goes out and buys it. Sometimes he buys it just because it’s cool.

Now, I’m not handy like John is. I can tell the difference between a Phillips and a flathead, and I know how to use a hammer and a drill. But really, that’s about the extent of my toolishness.

As a writer, though, I’ve got some serious toolage going. I just don’t use screwdrivers and drills. My tools are words. And I want to be with my tools the way John is with his. I want to have the exact right tool I need for any given situation. So, like John, I collect all kinds of random tools so I’ll have what I need when I need it, or, more often, just because the tool is cool.

According to the OED (that’s Oxford English Dictionary, for you non-writer types), there are over 600,000 words in the English language. Most of us have a working vocabulary of fewer than 3000 words. I did the math, and that means we use less than half a percent of the words that are available to us!

And that means there are a whole flipping lot of words out there that we could be using but aren’t. And since words are the tools of my trade, I feel it’s my bounden duty to collect and learn at least some of the 597,000 words we don’t use.

So I keep a notebook just for that purpose. When I’m reading and I run across a word I don’t know, I jot it and where I read it in the notebook (e.g., appentency, When Children Love to Learn). Later, when I have a dozen or so words, I go back and look them up.

At book club last night, we discussed The Count of Monte Cristo. Let me tell you, there’s nothing like a 19th century novel to increase your vocabulary. I came across twenty new words in reading that book. Twenty!

There were a lot of Turkish and Arab words because of the Count’s affinity for that part of the world, words like chiboque, yataghan, bey, and bournous. A chiboque is a Turkish smoking pipe, a yataghan is a Muslim double-curved sword, a bey is a Turkish governor, and a bournous is a cloak with a hood (you’ll want to remember that last one).

Lots of words had Latin origins, vomitorium being my favorite. Honestly, I thought it was a typo. It’s not. It’s a real word for an opening or passage leading to or from the seats in an amphitheater. Who knew? I also like ignes-fatui, which turns out to be the plural of ignes-fatuus (ig-nis fat-choo-us), which is the phosphorescent light that hovers over swampy ground at night. You might know it as friar’s lantern or will-o’-the-wisp.

Other words, like pulchinello (a hook-nosed, humpbacked commedia dell’arte character) and cicerone (a tour guide to ancient sites), were stolen directly from Italian.

And there were of course words of French origin, Dumas being French and all: turbot (we mutilate the pronunciation, though, and say it tur-but, instead of the elegant French tur-boh) and carabineer. The former is a fish; the latter, a cavalryman with a carbine. What’s a carbine, you say? According to Dr. Johnson, it’s a cross between a pistol and a musket.

There was even one word – mandaia – for which I could not find a definition, not even in the OED (!!). As near as I can tell from the context, a mandaia is the Roman version of a guillotine (but please, someone, correct me if I’m wrong).

One of the wonderful things about learning new words is that you can show off, I mean share them, with other people. The people I’m around most often are my kids. Ben and Luke can’t handle ignes-fatuus yet, but we’re working on it. Jack and Jane, on the other hand, delight in using big words.

The other week Jack told Jane not to be a cockalorum. He also, without self-consciousness, used the word “whereas” in a sentence: “Madeline and I,” he told me, “decided that we like the British Harry Potter covers better than the American ones. The American Harry looks cartoony, whereas the British drawings make him look wiser and smarter, like he really is.”

And on Sunday Jane told Doug, “It’s Sabbath, so you can’t use your computer.” She paused. “Nor can Mama.” Who says “nor” these days anyway?

Doug says we’re raising children as freakish as we are. Sometimes I feel bad about that, but then one of my children will use the word bournous correctly (as in, “Mama, the first time you see Voldemort in the movie, he’s wearing a bournous”), and I’ll think, they may be weird, but they’ve got great vocabularies!

FORKS AND SPOONS

Rain beat erratically against the windows of the study, and wind whistled in the chimney, but Sara did not hear it.

“Sara!”

She jerked her head up from her book. Vicki stood in the doorway, her hands on her hips. “I’ve asked you twice already to set the table! I’m not going to ask you again.”

Sara rolled her eyes. She hated it when Vicki tried to act like Mama.

“Get up and go set the table!”

“Just a few more minutes, Vicki, please. I just have to find out if Nancy and Bess and George are going to be okay. They’ve been in a car crash!”

“That’s what you said last time!” Vicki marched over to their father who was sitting at his desk in the back of the room. “Dad, tell Sara to set the table.” She glared back at Sara. “Now.”

Dad took his earphones off and looked up from the papers he was grading. “Sara.” He turned in his chair. “Please go set the table.”

Sighing tragically, Sara put down her book and followed a huffing Vicki to the kitchen. She sighed again.

“Knock it off!” Vicki said. “You think I don’t have a book I’d like to be reading? You’re not the only one who hates this arrangement.”

Sara glanced at the clock above the stove as she grabbed utensils out of the drawer. Mama was late. No wonder Vicki was so crabby. Rain always made her grumpy, cooking always made her grumpy, and Mama’s new job really made her grumpy—probably, Sara thought, because it meant she had to make dinner on the days Mama worked.

Sara dropped her handful of silverware onto the table with a loud clatter.

“Knock it off, Sara!”

“I didn’t do it on purpose!”

Vicki glared at her.

Sara glared back, picked up a spoon, and dropped it onto the table. It clanked several times before lying still.

“You little brat!” Vicki threw down the wooden spoon she was stirring the spaghetti sauce with and rushed toward Sara.

The telephone rang.

Read the rest.