I came across a book yesterday about birth stories. It was a collection of essays meant to convey the beauty of the experience while also owning up to the horror. The premise was that women’s heads get filled with ideas of soft music and dim lighting, their partner standing by their side saying encouraging things, and then the doctor or midwife says “push,” and the baby slides out.
While the baby will come out by hook or by c-section, many of us get only the briefest moment of relief before someone is stitching us up in a place the good lord never intended for sutures and our nipples start cracking. The book sought to right this wrong by injecting a healthy dose of reality.
I believe someone also needs to prepare women for middle age. In recent years menopause came out of the closet, but most of this talk is more medical than experiential.
What I’m interested in is how it feels in the years between youth and becoming an innocuous wrinkled sensible-shoe wearing senior citizen. I’m curious to discern if I am the only fifty-something-year-old woman who woke up to find herself invisible at the very moment I have finally acquired the confidence to be seen. I do not mean physically seen. While I have no quarrel with the myriad fabulous-after-fifty fitness and style gurus, that’s not what’s on my mind.
What is on my mind is how to elevate the wisdom and humor of women who have lived through some stuff, who have lost and gained the same twenty pounds over a decade, and who have finally acquired the insight to eat the damn cookie and get on with it. Getting on with it is the superpower of middle-aged women.
As a kid, I called it the Marley Tyler Moore Show. I might not have been able to properly pronounce it, but I sure did love it. It’s likely I missed the context of half the jokes being only 7 or 8 when it aired, but this didn’t keep me from looking forward to its weekly broadcast. With the loss of Cloris Leachman yesterday, it leaves Betty White as the only female cast member still alive. Let’s play a game and put together a revival of the show, with Roomers as the cast. I would audition for Mary, not because she was the star, but because my hopeful and slightly dingy personality is the closest match. It was Rhoda I loved most though,with that brash voice and one liners. I’ve always loved a loud mouth. 𝙒𝙝𝙞𝙘𝙝 𝙧𝙤𝙡𝙚 𝙨𝙪𝙞𝙩𝙨 𝙮𝙤𝙪 𝙗𝙚𝙨𝙩? Everyone gets cast, even if we end up with three Marys and no Lou Grant. If you are too young to remember the MTM show, I’m assigning homework: go watch it because it’s comedy gold. Throwing my hat in the air, Leah
Thanks for visiting the Bonus Room! Where is here, exactly?
Here is my author blog and platform.
Here is a space to share stories, yours and mine.
Here is somewhere those stories will be received with love and acceptance.
Here is a place I hope we will occasionally laugh until coffee comes out our noses.
A bonus room is a southern house plan extra, a room that cannot be defined as a bedroom because it does not have the full number of outlets the building code requires. The bonus room often ends up being used as an extra gathering room, man/she cave or, most subversively, a bedroom (southerners don’t like to be told what to do and will tell you exactly where you can stick your building code). My novel feels a bit like a bonus room too – a romance that doesn’t want to follow the strict rules of the genre.
I opted to call this site The Bonus Room, because it suggests community and surprise. Writing has been a surprise to me, that I like it, that make-believe characters take on a life of their own. Writing has also forced me to find community as the idea of a tortured writer in a garret works only if the writer is a) tortured and b) a genius. I am neither.
I’m a new writer, with a few chapters of a novel written and miles to go before I can type “the end”. My dear friend Carla Vergot, a terrific author and my writing mentor, has been poking me to get started on this business of building an author platform. I’ve had a thirty year career in bookselling and distribution and I am acutely aware that it’s a noisy world out there. A publisher would rather build on an audience already established, sometimes turning down an author without a strong social media following. I’m an introvert’s introvert, so this should be an interesting journey.
I have loved stories for as long as I can remember. Books have always been a source of comfort and a compass to navigate a world I often find confounding. Before I could read, my Dad would read to me. I checked out A Fly Went By from the library repeatedly (an early clue I would grow up to be an adult who needs to be surrounded by familiar and well-worn things). My Dad, bored of the book and tired after a long day, would often try to skip a few pages. I always busted him. My father ultimately won the battle, switching it up so I would ‘read’ the book to him, while he took a nap.
If you’ve found this site now, the good news is that I do not yet have a book to exhort you to buy or review so we can have a little fun. If there will be a theme to this site it will be stories, how we experience, understand, and tell them.
I know the one thing which took up the most mind share for you this week was the question “is she still working on a novel”? After a recount and a round of lawsuits, I’m prepared to answer that yes, I am. You can now stop watching CNN around the clock.
Part of my process* has been to absorb whatever I can find about the craft of writing. My current obsession is plotting.
It turns out that when it comes to putting together plot, there are (by the seat of their) “pantsers”who have only a few key details when they plunge into writing, and planners who put together a fairly detailed outline before writing anything.
In my real life I am undoubtedly a pantser, but the version of myself who is making up a story is more uptight. The idea of wandering in the writing wilderness for a hundred pages and hoping I come out with a plausible narrative is more risk than I can handle. While outlining does not guarantee that my novel will be well-received, or even good, it will at least hang together in the shape of a book, which is something.
Learning to plot and outline at 52 years old has been strangely exhilarating. This is the stuff that made my younger self go glassy- eyed with boredom, but on the backside of my life it’s a relief to know not only can I learn new skills, I can also learn new behaviors.
More than anything, this journey has given me hope and something to look forward to. I’ve fully leaned in, something I’m generally reticent to do about anything.
If you are on your own journey, writing or otherwise, I’d love to know and cheer you on. If you’re feeling stuck and shy about sticking your toes in new waters, I completely understand, and I hope some element of my own writing journey gives you permission to take a chance. I have no success to brag about at this point, but it turns out that doing something brave is rewarding, whatever the outcome.
With love and fingers stained with Cheeto dust, Leah
* Now that I’m a serious writer it’s important that I adopt writerly words like “process” because writers are always asked about this when interviewed. I will need to hone my answer because obviously the truth – which includes giving into every distraction, flailing, and salty snacking – is not suitably inspiring.
My mother raised me to be a ‘nice girl’ – to be polite and modest and to keep my legs closed.
The #metoo movement has both impressed me and made me deeply uncomfortable. Until today I could not have named the source of my discomfort. Of course I believe women should have complete control over their bodies, that no one should be forced to choose between employment or education and personal safety.
While watching the Jeffrey Epstein documentary, I said to my husband that the Farmer sisters should have known better than to put their trust in him, that anyone could easily see that he had predatory intentions. I said that. Me: a woman, a sister, a friend, a mother to daughters and a person who was in a sexually abusive relationship for most of my thirties.
I know where my judgment comes from: I have internalized the idea that if a woman was taught better, was shown better, is not financially dependent on her partner, that whatever transpires is unworthy of sympathy, no matter the horror or pain or fear. I believed this even when the woman was me.
What my analysis misses is empathy, for myself, and by extension, for any woman who has raised children and gone to work, and cooked dinner while lugging around a bowling ball of shame and regret.
The circumstances surrounding shame do not need parsing into piles labeled ‘unavoidable’ and ‘avoidable’. Shame, however it arrives at our door, will kill us slowly with doubt, anxiety, self-destructive behavior and an unkind internal monologue on repeat.
The #metoo movement is important, but I believe it’s also incomplete until we muster love and compassion for ourselves and every woman regardless of the details of her story. It is incomplete until we are willing to stand up for a woman simply because she’s hurting and in need, and because, in that moment, we have strength and she does not.
The gang I work with has started hosting weekly virtual tea times as a way to socialize.
I have a reputation for being socially averse, so I decided to join as a step toward reversing that perception. Virtual gatherings are perfect for introverts because it’s a simple click of the mouse to be free from small talk – sorry, my connection dropped! Also, you can wear your pajamas which, introvert or not, is pretty awesome.
Everyone began discussing bread baking and the intricate and healthy meals they’ve made from scratch featuring ingredients I’d never heard of. I, meanwhile, have baked nothing, not so much as a bag of microwave popcorn (baking snobs, please don’t fill my feed with comments arguing this is not actually baking), and until recently thought quinoa was pronounced kwi-noah.
I decided I should be baking too, but hand-to-god I Googled “recipes that start with cake mix” because that’s as from-scratch as I get. I did find some awesome cake mix chocolate chip cookies, but like any true artist, I added it to my “artisan baking” Pinterest board for further contemplation. Art will not be rushed.
Watch this space for further quarantine tips and tricks, including step by step instructions for my eco-friendly strategy of using the same coffee mug for a week straight.
Note: If by some miracle you are reading this and you are not a close friend or were not (strongly) coerced by my Mother, a little background. I lived in Ann Arbor Michigan until I was 41 years old. In 2010, based on a job offer and a need to support my two children, I moved to Tennessee. My understanding of the south up to this point was based on an amalgam of reading Faulkner, the movie Steel Magnolias, and a trip with my father as a kid, my clearest memory of which is eating chocolate chip pancakes every morning for breakfast.
I am often asked the question, “How do you like living in the South?” While this question seems straightforward, it is actually incredibly nuanced, requiring me to consider who is asking and the delivery.
Version 1: Asked by someone of superior intellect and education who does not live in the South.
Translation: “Isn’t everyone down there a little touched from all the inbreeding?”
Short answer is NO. The complete answer is that people in the South are more interested to know who you are, who/where you come from (I have been asked, more than once, ‘who my kin are’), than where you went to college*. They care whether you can tell a story, because, unlike in the fast-paced world of the north, people in the South will actually stop what they are doing and listen to you. The currency in these parts is sweet tea, biscuits and storytelling. The south will forgive you for a lot of things, but not for being a bore.
Families are fiercely loyal to one another here. They go to church together, take vacations together, live together. When I tell a northerner that over the last 4 years we’ve lived with some combination of our adult children, the response is almost cartoonish – wide eyes bugging from their head. Southerners don’t blink an eye and often play some kind of one-upmanship, announcing that they built an extra wing on their house for their adult children or that they’ve had their adult kids and grandkids with them for a decade and isn’t is just the best?
So yes, it’s different in these parts, but it has nothing to do with low intellect.
*note on college…what does matter is which college football team you root far. I mean, it MATTERS.
Version 2: Asked by someone of liberal beliefs and/or anyone of a faith other than Christianity or atheists.
Translation: You’re in the Bible Belt for chrissakes. You, a nice Jewish girl from one of the most liberal and progressive cities in the country if not the world – how can you stand it (also implied is that perhaps I’ve become disloyal to the cause of equal rights for all, freedom of speech, freedom to love who we love, and the right not to get mowed down by an AK47 in the grocery store)?
About the Christianity thing, I know it seems improbable and possibly like I’m trying to assimilate. I did try assimilation once – see previous posts on misguided and short marriage to a Baptist – and I learned it doesn’t work.
I got sober in the south (go figure right? Home of some of the most brilliant drunk writers of our time). One of the AA steps is ‘came to believe that a power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity’. It doesn’t have to be god-with-a-capital G, but that’s what worked for me. It’s not that I had some kind of glitter-dust conversion, but rather that the people who loved me to sobriety and subsequent sanity, shared their stories not just of faith, but of battling for it, of feeling left-behind or shunned by God, faith being used as a club, and yet the miracle of sobriety brought them back, and even more amazing, these same people now shine the love of God onto the most desperate people you’re likely to meet; active alcoholics.
I know what you might be thinking, “That’s sweet, but Christians are also responsible for great hate and war and division and shaming, so your story is nice and all, but puh-leeze girl, wake up.” I will not, nor do I ever dispute that point. What I will say is that assholes can be found wearing a cross or a Star of David or no adornment at all. The fire-and-brimstone evangelists are just your garden variety assholes with a cause.
Christianity, for me, is about living out a life of love, turbo-fueled by the Man Upstairs.
Version 3: Asked by Democrats, Independents and moderate Republicans.
Translation: Trump country
I knew my vote wouldn’t do any good here in Tennessee, that Trump would take the state, but I voted so as not to have blood on my hands. Although the country was stunned by Trump’s win, I was not. Here’s why: Trump sold an idea that the little guy matters. Before you write these voters off as dumber-than-dirt, consider a version of this voter who is not a red-neck with a confederate flag flying from the back of his truck.
Consider a cousin-in-law of mine who has worked hard her entire life, raised a family, is raising her grandson, whose husband is willing to work (desperate to work, in fact) but who struggles to keep a job long-term as plants and factories close all around them. For them, Make America Great Again is nothing to do with hating immigrants or being a right-winger, and everything to do with a desperate desire for an America where you could get by on hard-work alone. What makes Trump so sinister is that a large swath of his supporters are people he would never cross the street to help.
So ok, the Trump thing is hard, really hard. I will concede that one.
I woke up this morning with a burning need to write. This has never happened to me. Ever. I’ve tiptoed around writing most of my adult life, as a reader I’ve worshiped at the feet of writers, but I’ve never felt compelled to write with the force I did this morning.
Here’s a true story – for the past two weeks my face has been covered in an ugly rash. It looks like the worst case of acne you ever had as a 14 year old. Yes, I saw a doctor and he declared it ‘contact dermatitis’, which near as I can figure is doctor-speak for ‘there’s no telling what you’ve gone and gotten all over yourself but it won’t kill you.’
This might sound insane, but I’m pretty sure this rash is caused by pent-up angst which, having flooded my internal systems, is now spilling over to the outside.
I’m not going to declare that today is the day I commit to regular writing because….well….check the dates of my previous posts, separated by months and even years. I will say this, based on hard, heartbreaking, and repeated experience: anxiety thrives in the dark corners of your brain, it seeks them out, builds a fence around itself, and then taunts you like an angry monkey. There is no key to this fence, you can’t climb over it or under it. You can muffle the sounds of its taunts with food or exercise or booze or bad relationships, but you will never silence it until you find a way to flood that corner of your brain with light. Once you do this you will see that what you thought was a mighty fanged monkey is actually a mangy stuffed animal with cymbals that can only make noise if its batteries are charged.
You know what to do in this situation. You do the same thing your parents did to you and you did to your kids, and parents will do until the end of time – you pull the battery out, declare the toy to be broken, dry the child’s tears, distract him with something else (read: quieter), and then roll along.
My form of taking the battery out of the monster is writing publicly. Maybe yours is something else, it doesn’t matter as long as it brings you peace.
The Bonus Room 