Extra, Extra! Read All About It.

I’m opening a long-closed blog door, peaking inside, breathing in dust. I’m calling out to see if anyone answers. If they don’t, it’s because they’ve moved on, as people often do in long abandoned rooms.

Annnnnnyway. I have a new website and I wanted to let my friends know about it.

Full disclosure: I’m almost finished with a novel I love, and it will enter the world before too long. It’s got all the things I’m interested in woven into its fabric, i.e. sisters, sons and daughters, jealousy, violence, school shootings, God.

The website is a more “professional” Internet home, though, Lord knows, I’m not the professional type. The website itself in its baby stage, but there’s a way for people to stay connected to my work by signing up for my newsletter on there. If you do, I’ll send you a short story I wrote. It won a prize I’m pretty proud of.

So, but this is the kind of thing I hate to do–mention my writing in a “join my email list” kind of way. But this is how it is, now, folks.

This is how it is.

If you’re still reading, and you feel like it, head on over to hannahvanderpoolbooks.com and sign up for my newsletter to stay in touch. You’ll be the first to know when my book baby takes its first wobbly breath. I’ll also be sending out free stuff (fiction) once-in-a-while. Oh, and news.

It may be that I’ve written all of this for the sake of that little mouse over there in the corner. If so, I hope mice like to read.

Love,

Hannah

Since Then

June was insane.  I finished a draft of my third novel by writing every day for thirty days, no excuses, including weekends (I logged about 40,000 words).  During ten of those days, my husband was singing in California, leaving me to parent our 12, 13, and 14-year-old on my own (read: forage for brightly colored foods like pop ice and cheese and binge-watch old episodes of House while the kids played too many video games when they should have been sleeping).

(Photo by my son, Ivan)

By the time my husband finally came home in early July my youngest sister and her three kids were already visiting our home to celebrate Independence Day.  Then, suddenly, my grandmother passed away, and my middle sister and her three kids drove thirteen hours to join the rest of us during that hard time.  The last seven days are a smear of lipstick and tears.

And, to quote Sarah Mclachlan, I’m so tired that I can’t sleep.

A few things come to mind: 1). Life happens in contractions.  There’s the normal we get bored of and there’s the pain we resent.  2). We don’t appreciate the respite without the strain in-between, and 3). You can still get a lot of stuff done in chaos, but you’re always glad when you managed to work ahead and can somewhat avoid that I-can’t-feel-my-feet feeling.

And then there’s this.  God is always good, even when life isn’t.

The One Percent

As I type, my daughter lies sleeping next to me.  We’ve been up since 5:00 A.M, stuffed stray shoes in backpacks, filled coffee mugs one last time, because my sister and her kids left to return to their home in VA while our town still slept.  They were with us for over a week, a blessing we didn’t anticipate because we hadn’t counted on the winter storm that painted our city and theirs in clean, thick white.  We couldn’t have been more pleased.

We did a lot in our eight days of togetherness–a little homework, a lot of Netflix watching, video game playing, late night giggling, drawing, even poetry reading.  We took turns cooking our favorite comfort foods and tossing paper plates and napkins into a continually popping fireplace.  We stared at one another’s messy hair and naked eyes and smiled comfortable smiles.

We are rich in family.

I told all six kids that after they’d piled into one room to spend their last night together.  Rich as Croesus.  Not everyone is.  And just like with material wealth, those who live in abundance should seek out those who don’t, in order to bless them in small or big ways.   My prayer is that some of what filled our house this week will spill over into other lives that intersect ours–to pay it forward, somehow.

In the meantime, I’ll keep warm this winter from inside out, my heart stoked with the orange embers of sister love.

The Invisible Tie

My sister is coming to visit tomorrow, and it’s at just the right time.  It’s always at the right time–one I can hardly plan and didn’t know I needed until after she arrives.  Then she parks the van, and the kids tumble out,  and I realize I almost wasn’t making it before but that I didn’t know it.

And then I feel that jolt, you know the one, when you jerk in bed because you think you’re falling off the edge, and your heart is left racing at something that never happened.

Sometimes my heart races when she and I are sipping coffee in my kitchen because, what if she hadn’t come right when she did?  But then I tell myself it’s just a bad dream. Because she always comes when I need her.

Sisters

I wake up to a fast heart because there are minutes over coffee that I’ve already wasted,

and I can’t remember what day it is.

So I hurry on a wrinkled cardigan I grabbed off the floor (I’ve stopped picking up around here),

and I find you in the middle of the kitchen, with crazy hair and childhood eyes, and

you’re sipping my memories with careful lips.

You see that my face is blotchy, that I look like something from the future, but I don’t mind,

for once.

Because my future will have you in it, and we’ll sink together as we listen to

Dvorak and watch Wheel of Fortune, in three of those gliding chairs.

Some of My People

Sister, me, sister.  Each a perfectly good reason to take a writing break.

Eyes Wide Open

We have family staying with us for several days.  There are sisters and kids everywhere,  lots of goodness and extra pairs of shoes by the back door.  Since I’ve been out of sync with my routines for weeks now, I’m tempted to get antsy when I think of the days ahead, though I love each person under my roof.

I’m tempted, I say, but I’m determined not to give in to the feeling.  Because I’m understanding, more and more, that life is just a handful of breaths–and that God and people are the only real things when it all comes down.

Routines should serve us and not the other way around.  So the thing I’m going to do this week, if I don’t do anything else, is to look my people in the eye.  I’m going to be here, listening and remembering, not writing my novel in my mind, or grumping about the watercolor days.

I will stay awake.

Earth

This morning I returned to earth at 9:21 a.m.  The sounds of a made-in-the-eighties cartoon pressed through the doors of my bedroom, elbowing past the hum of my floor fan, and tapped my subconscious on the shoulder.  One of the dogs had curled himself next to me, wedging me on my side.  I suppose it was my tingling right arm that brought me back in the end.  I felt for the dog’s back and pushed him over, sitting up halfway. I blinked away eleven hours.

The first day of getting back to things.

It has been eighteen days since I’ve truly slept, paid attention to the kids, written, or been quiet for that matter.  I’m worn.  Every day I’ve spent with family (first husband’s, then mine) has been a gift.  I am reminded that, other than my faith, my family is really all I need in the end.  And if I had the choice to surround myself with my sisters and their children on a more permanent basis, I would.  I’d wrap them around me like a mink coat, aware of the luxury.

But I am a girl who longs for quiet, who craves routine.  These things are important for my long-term survival.  I’m ready to slip back into the familiar warp and weft of my life, such as it is.  Ready for the odd moment of fruitful nothing.

Husband leaves for Africa next week so life won’t be strictly normal in the days to come.  But I will spend many night hours staring and thinking hard and writing when he’s gone.  When he arrives home he’ll recognize me.  I’ll have put myself back together, one word at a time, and returned to earth for a longer stay.

Small Things

I believe God heals people because I’ve seen Him do it.  I believe he releases persecuted people from prison because it’s happened to friends of friends.  He does big things, and I know that he does small sweet things, too.  So why am I always surprised when he blesses me in the most minute ways?

I’m trying to adjust to life in the US.  One of the things that’s been hard for me to deal with is the difficulty of finding clothes to wear that don’t make me feel uncomfortable.  I wore kurtas in India, long, blouse-like tunics that hit about three inches above my knees.  They’re beautiful, hide everything, and feel uber-feminine.  I liked them.  Ok, not the orange, paisley ones with silver sequins, but most I loved.

Since our return to the States I’ve not been able to make myself wear shorts.  Not that I think shorts are bad.  I just can’t make myself do it.  I trust I don’t need to reiterate my issues with swimsuits.  Even little t-shirts make me feel weird.  So I was hoping that today I could go shopping with my sister and find tops that would be pretty and make me feel comfortable in my skin again.

But wait!  Plot complication alert.  I hate shopping, and we don’t have a lot of money.  And we had my sister’s 2.5 year old with us.  And I had a short window of time before picking my kids up from music camp.  It was a dicey hope at best.

I had $100, 1.5 hours, and a ridiculous sinking feeling to bring to today’s outing.  But what I left the store with were 7 American-style kurtas (!), three pairs of earrings, and the ridiculous exhilaration of someone who spent $99.54 with tax.

It’s not a big thing.  It’s small, I know.  But then I also know how it was a direct blessing from the Lord; how today he reminded me, yet again, that he cares about small things, too.