2015 – Page 8

Traditions can develop out of the most unlikely situations. My family has a tradition around the holidays to play the movie “Elf” everyday from Thanksgiving until Christmas Eve, which is generally reserved for the non-stop marathon of “The Christmas Story.” Our children even named their creepy elves-on-the-shelves, which we would reposition every night for everyone’s amusement, Ralphie and Jovie after characters in both movies.

And, at my work, we have a tradition on campus that marked its 39th Anniversary today as the New Year has finally ushered in a new semester. We call it, The Oldtimers’ Breakfast. Past and present teachers fellowship over pancakes served up with a smile by the men on our staff. Some of these former teachers come hobbling in with their stories of the good ol’ days when they used to ride their horses to the ‘new campus’ when it was just a handful of classrooms in a swampy field long before our tradition had begun. Now over 80,000 cars drive by us on any given day.

Even my wooden pointer has this murky patina to it that rivals any antique. It came with the classroom. I wield it with pride because I know that I’m holding onto years of other teachers’ memories, even as I create my own. The original school house is over a century old and sits as a monument just up the road from where our current campus is located, but even our newer campus is so old now, it has become irreparable.

Next year’s breakfast will mark the end of yet another era in our school’s history as an inevitable move is set to take place in the fall of 2016. As long as our school bears its original name in our new location, we are still the same ol’ school, and we’ll all continue to gather together over breakfast and swap stories about our many experiences. We’re an awkward family of strangers brought together by a common denominator…our love of teaching.

I don’t mind the impending move. It’s long over due. You can be assured, though, my pointer’s coming with me. And, eventually, I’ll hand it off to someone else when I come hobbling in to get my fill of a plateful of pancakes someday.

January 5, 2015July 8, 2019

Brooke E. Wayne: Romance with a Kiss of Humor

Living Present Tense

I tend to live in the Future. Most people live in the Past. Not me. I plan for everything with my endless To-Do Lists and fine-tuned Schedule of Events Calendar. There is always something happening soon, and, I assure you, I have meticulously prepped for its arrival. But, sometimes, things don’t quite go as planned.

A couple of weeks ago, I had bought a box of macarons and a bottle of pink ‘champagne’–both prominent elements in my novel that I’m about to pitch. My plan was to partake of these scrumptious delectables as soon as I finished editing the novel in its entirely–query and synopsis included–in about a week per said scheduled event.

Then, I did something yesterday that I had to do. I departed from Scrivener and took on Microsoft Word for Mac to satisfy a particular submission requirement. Now, if you have no idea what Scrivener is, then jump to the next paragraph, but, if you do, then, you know. Oh. How. You. Know. It’s the most genius and complicated friend or foe known to any writer. In summary, the export did not go well.

After shedding a few tears from battling saving and renaming the file, bizarre margins, and pop-ups that made no sense to me–just to name a few angsts–I clamped my computer shut and sent it up stairs to serve a time out for the rest of the night. Instead of sulking about possibly missing my deadline because of the countless hours I would need to wade though instructional videos to figure out how to fix my growing list of problems, I decided to live in the Present Tense.

I marched into the kitchen, grabbed the box of macarons, started passing them around to my family like a fish monger, and handed over the bottle of ‘champagne’ for my husband to uncork for me. It was time to celebrate. It didn’t matter that things weren’t going as planned to me anymore. I was done. Maybe my manuscript still had some editing needs and creating a .docx submittal was going to provide me with all kinds of valuable lessons in patience to solve them in my near Future, but, nonetheless, I was finished, and I had been for weeks. Why hadn’t I acknowledged it, yet? What was I waiting for?

The future is always going to be out of reach for me, yet I still clamor towards it with my explicit plans. But, yesterday, I went all spontaneous on myself, and, by the end of the night, I was laughing instead of crying. Maybe the ‘champagne’ helped, but still. We had a party, and it couldn’t have come at a better time than in the Present Tense.

January 2, 2015July 8, 2019

Brooke E. Wayne: Romance with a Kiss of Humor

2 Out of 3 Trees Agree–Christmas is Over

A lot of wailing and gnashing of teeth happened earlier today as we dismantled the decorations and packed up the Christmas trees…two out of three of them, at least. The pink one gets to stay. It became our shrine to all things girly during a season of more dramatic colors after my young daughters begged me to buy it for them when they saw it on the shelf among all the garlands at Target. I admit, I was just as thrilled to bring it home as they were. It’s a dinky, little, sparkly statement piece that begs for attention, so we doted on it like a princess. Being a mere two feet tall, she traveled well, migrating between two bedrooms, mine and the girls’. Wherever we were hanging out, we brought her along and found a way to help her fit in.

Today, we dressed her up in heart-shaped ornaments and tucked her into the corner of our dining room, insisting that she should stay awhile as Valentine’s Day is just around the corner now, and the occasion wouldn’t be complete without a festive Christmas tree in disguise. Letting go of Christmas is never an easy accomplishment, especially in this household, but we managed today to make the best of it by convincing ourselves that our little, pink princess still belonged.

The whole situation reminds me of the editing process. You know the one precious scene that you doted on for weeks…the one that you adorned with fancy words and kept close to your heart as you tried to fit it in somewhere because it was just too cute to delete…yeah, that one. But, no matter how much you want it around, everyone else wants you to get rid of it because it just doesn’t belong in the story anymore. Only you just can’t quite give it up yet, so you cram it in the corner of a polished chapter and change it up a bit, hoping no one will mind.

I am in the process of adjusting my manuscript’s word count (READ: gutting scenes I’ve vested hours into crafting) and collaborating on which sparkly, little princesses get packed up and put away. It’s a painful process with plenty of wailing and gnashing of teeth, just like earlier today. Letting go of something we adore is never easy, but just like the other two Christmas trees, the edited material may find its way back into another season of writing someday. For now, though, I will keep editing as needed by the light of our little, sparkly, pink tree, at least a little while longer before I finally put her in a box in the garage once and for all. (Then, of course, I’ll unpack the gumdrop tree, as soon as Easter rolls around.)