I am an associate professor of human services at a regional Midwestern university. I am also a writer of fantasy and romance, hoping to get traditionally published. I have one husband and am owned by four cats.
What could I give up for the sake of harmony? Arguments. These are the things that most disturb my otherwise harmonious life, yet I have trouble letting go of arguments.
In my opinion, I’m right, this is important, and you better back down. Simple, right? Real life doesn’t work that way. My husband insists he’s right, and not only is he wrong, but a disaster will ensue if we follow his direction. So we argue.
What if I gave in and said, “you’re right?” We’d probably die. I’m not kidding — there was the time with stacking the duraflame logs in the fireplace when they clearly had a carbon monoxide warning not to do that.
Not all our arguments are life-threatening, though. I suppose I could give in for some of those.
My life is not very exciting. I don’t have any big vacations to get excited about; no momentous occasions. We didn’t have a big party for my 60th, and that’s the last milestone before I retire in about 5 years. The events of my life are mundane, and I have seen them before. I’m going to Lincoln, NE for an internship visit tomorrow. I will go to New York Hope in late July/early August (somewhere in there). I will probably go to Kansas City for Thanksgiving. There’s just nothing that I’m that excited about.
I think it might be my age. At my age (61), things can get pretty mellow. Life is not a rollercoaster ride anymore. It’s more like a road trip to an accustomed place — nice, but not new grounds. The terrain is pretty even, the travel smooth, the scenery familiar.
The thing I’m most looking forward to is getting more writing done on my latest book. I’ve finally found a book that wants to be written, and I’m having fun with it. Not a bad thing to look forward to.
I was born with a high-frequency hearing loss. It didn’t manifest the way people typically think of when they think about hearing loss. I could hear most sounds, but those in the high frequencies of human speech — p, t, and d; f, s, and x were indistinguishable, especially in a loud room. My family thought I was just not listening.
I was not diagnosed until college, when I had access to an audiology lab on campus. There my hearing loss came out. High frequency losses weren’t treatable by hearing aids back then, and the audiologist said I was compensating well, so there was nothing to be done at the time.
By ‘compensating well’, they meant reading lips, which I really don’t do well. They meant asking people to repeat themselves. I do that very well. They meant sitting out of conversations because I couldn’t hear them, or nodding and playing along. I do that a lot.
My hearing has gotten worse. The rest of the frequencies are catching up with me because of age. I now don’t hear in crowded spaces at all, and have trouble catching up with social events. I tend to avoid social events because of this. It causes me pain sitting in conversations and missing things. It’s like being left out even when sitting in a group.
I am facing a social activity today with great reluctance. Too many people to pay attention to, too noisy a space. I will have to go and pretend to hear, and then say ‘that was fun’ even though it was a trial for me. We haven’t gotten past “we need to get you a hearing test” in discussions about getting me hearing aids. I am so frustrated.
I don’t have a single favorite genre of music. As a Boomer, one of my favorites is 70s Singer-songwriter music, because it’s what I grew up with. It was soundtrack music that I remember listening to on the car radio or on the little transistor radio I got for my birthday one year. I get rather nostalgic while listening to it. 80s music followed me throughout college, and I have a fondness for that too.
Folk music became an interest to me in college, when I had a friend who got me started on that. Pirated tapes and my walkman became my companions while walking. I especially liked folk revival like Steeleye Span and Renaissance. I listened to a lot of Celtic folk as well, having gone to Milwaukee’s Irishfest one year to listen to DeDannan and Capercaillie live.
I developed a liking for Baroque music at the same time. Since then, I’ve branched out to classical music in general and modern classical/classical adjacent in particular. I have become enamored of Minimalism, such as Philip Glass and Max Richter. I listen to a lot of Olafur Arnalds and Johann Johannson.
Now and again I listen to swing music. It’s a great genre on the road; not so great for naptime. Occasionally I listen to funk music or gamelan just because. I’m an eclectic listener. Sometimes I surprise myself with what I want to hear. Apple Music has been a godsend for my musical tastes because it contains a lot of everything, and I can listen on its subscription-based model without having to buy everything.
I don’t go on long vacations often. My husband and I go yearly to Starved Rock State Park for Christmas, sometimes a couple days for a writing retreat, a couple days for a conference (which I count as vacations because I go somewhere). Long vacations don’t happen much.
Once, however, my husband and I journeyed to Chicago. We traveled by Amtrak to Chicago over a Thanksgiving break and spent a few days there. We stayed at the Allerton, a nice old Chicago hotel, roamed around the Mile, ate in the Walnut Room at what used to be Marshall Fields (this is a Chicago joke; nobody calls it Macy’s). Visited Water Tower Place, walked along the river walk, and had Thanksgiving dinner at a nice restaurant overlooking Navy Pier. We went to a Broadway show (in Chicago; it happens), visited the Museum of Science and Industry, and stopped by a BIG Apple Store. It was Chicago for tourists.
The Chicago I explored in the mid-Eighties didn’t exist by then. I once dated someone from Chicago, and we spent weekends with two weekend bus passes and $30 in pocket change. We would wander around the city, eat ethnic restaurant food, and explore, largely on foot. The places we went were long since closed, or I would have taken Richard to Meyer’s Deli for the wondrous European candies or that Persian restaurant nearby. But my Chicago trip was superlative for the Christmas atmosphere and the sights.
I have a different definition of romantic than I think most people do. For example, I don’t find common gestures such as giving a bouquet of roses romantic in and of themselves. The first quality of being romantic, to me, is thoughtfulness. Experiences that speak to the other person are romantic. At one point in my life (I was much younger) I didn’t want roses, so my boyfriend brought me purple flowers — all sorts of purple flowers. Lots of purple flowers. That was romantic. He also once filled my room with balloons like a balloon pit. That was also romantic.
Romance can be found in emotional connection. One of the most romantic stories I’ve heard was a couple’s trip to Chicago where everything went wrong. They ended up being escorted out of a bad neighborhood by the cops and watching the rain rise over Lake Michigan. The laughter is what made it romantic.
Romance is very personal. It has to do with being in that place with that person uniquely. It doesn’t need to be a big gesture, it just has to be made with the other person in mind. A notion to share, a sensitivity to the other person. A little originality. It should engage positive emotions. It shouldn’t be a big, embarassing gesture (unless the other person likes those. They probably don’t.)
So my notion of romantic is not quite the norm. It’s the thought that counts, but the thought really has to be there.
I do not feel optimistic for the future. There seem to be so many things to worry about — climate change, the degradation of our political system, the loss of social security … I’m not a pessimist, but these are pessimistic times.
I have been writing on a novel that has been, simply, lackluster. I don’t like the main character well, it’s writing slow, and the drama comes too late. Everyone’s sitting around talking. There’s no love story. There’s no tension. Writing it is an exercise in tedium.
Richard suggested I’m writing from the view of the wrong main character. And he’s right. Much of the main story, which in the current novel is written as a side story, is the relationship between the human Alice Johnson and the Archetype William Morris. Alice is an anthropology grad student who is persistent in following her suspicions that William is not what he seems. William doesn’t want to be discovered, but he is falling for Alice. And they have a rocky relationship, given William’s trauma and Alice’s persistence. All this in the backdrop of beings that cannot afford to be discovered.
I still don’t know if there’s enough tension in this one other than William and Alice, who eventually have the daughter Anna Johnson, later to be adopted by Arthur Schmidt. She is the main character of Whose Hearts are Mountains, which explores the mystery of her birth. But there is something to hold onto, something that might keep me writing.
Words Like Me 