On a Wednesday: Part Two

Several Wednesdays have passed since Harper’s first day of school, and I still sit and write while the girls are away. Though every time they leave, I am very tempted to go to the gym and run. Truth be told, it’s not because I am extremely disciplined that I walk up the stairs to write.  It’s because I have been up since 5am and there is no coffee in my system as of yet.  So I go upstairs for the coffee and it works out well that I happen to like sitting while drinking my coffee.  And since I’m sitting, I may as well hold a pen. And since I’m holding a pen, I may as well point it at a piece of paper. And, well, you get the idea.

Today the writing is going well.  I re-worked my Victoria’s Secret post and submitted it to a Mother’s Day writing contest. I think the essay is still funny, but there is a seriousness to it, too.  I like trying to tie together funny and serious together. My other writing projects are stacked in a pile and I’ve dabbled with them a bit this morning as well.  “In the zone” seems an appropriate term to use for you March Madness fans.  Isn’t that a sport’s term? Or maybe it has something to do with driving.  I get confused.

Again, don’t get fooled into thinking that I’m disciplined.  I’m keeping myself busy until I know the mail has arrived.  You see, every day since the end of January, I have been looking forward to the 11 o’clock hour in hopes that when I open our mailbox there will be something from SPU, preferably something large, because good news comes in large packages, right?  Today I wait until 11:45 because I know for sure the mail will have arrived, and I need to go to Target before I pick up the girls for school. It’s easier to compare prices, features, quality of items without Thing 1 and Thing 2 by my side.

Okay, fine!  I want to buy lip gloss.  For crying out loud.

Nothing’s in the mailbox that I’m interested in, so, shoulders slumped, I walk to the car and head towards Target, a place that I’m ashamed to admit, tends to cheer me up. So I’m in the cosmetics aisle and goodness gracious I should’ve brought a basket, but I’m interrupted from doing so because my phone is ringing.  At first I think it’s a text, but the vibrations continue so I fish it out of my bag and hit ignore because I don’t recognize the number.  I go back to looking at lip glosses.

It’s getting close to the time I have to pick the girls up, so I pay for what I found and head out to the car.  I take my phone out to call Jesse because I’m sure he’s going to want to know about my lip gloss purchases, and I notice I have a voicemail.  I think to call Jesse first, but on a whim I check my voicemail.  It’s the director of the MFA program for Creative Writing at SPU.  He says he “has some news.”

So I call him back and listen to him tell me that I have been accepted into the program.  I am officially a graduate student.  A writing graduate student.

The fact that I was looking at lip glosses when he first called seems to reveal who I am perfectly. You see, when I was old enough to be asked the question, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” I would say, “Doctor,” or some such appropriate answer, but what I really wanted to be was a Luv-a-Bull,  the half-time dancers at The Chicago Bulls’ basketball games.  And then, as I got older, and took many a trip to Oak Brook mall I thought, “It would be so cool if I could get paid to go shopping.  Like, this could be my job.”

But I also like Flannery O’Connor, and Joyce Carol Oates, and sometimes, after having read a good story I can barely move for fear that the words will leave me. And I got into a fight with a clerk in Borders once because I told him Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood should not be in the fiction section.  I would knock on professors’ office doors long after the lecture had ended and want to talk more about Frankenstein or Beloved or whatever book we were reading that had crawled into my lip gloss loving, always looking for a reason to dance self.

It seems right that these two worlds merged together at Target.

I needed to pick the girls up from school but picked up some donuts so we could celebrate together.

“Why do we get donuts?” they ask.

“Because I have some really good news!”

“What is it?” Harper gasps.  I think she thinks I’m going to tell her I’m taking her to Toys R Us.

“I am going to be a student!”

Blank stares. I can hear cars rolling out of the parking lot.  A piece of tumble weed rolls by in the field nearby.

“What kind of a student?” Maya asks.

“I’m going to learn how to write stories.”

“Mama, writing stories is really hard,”  Hadley tells me.  She takes a bite of her donut and asks, “What if you don’t know how to spell all the words?”

And Harper, her mouth full and frosting all over her face says, “Mommy, make sure when you go to school that you don’t say, ‘butt.'”

I pull out of the school’s driveway and think I have just about everything I need to start this next phase.  Now what to wear to school?