Barefoot With Child

My first Mother’s Day was a celebration of sleeping baby atop Poop Mountain.

Sherwood worked graveyard shift. He offered to “watch” the napping baby while I went to church. He didn’t mention that he would be napping while watching.

It’s a little reported but true fact that napping babies wake up. Napping husbands who work the graveyard shift not so much.

Our eight month old woke up. His father did not. Our eight month old, unable to rouse his father, entertained himself by sketching, smearing, wiping, trailing, painting, and possibly ingesting through his ear-holes—poop, his own. I came home from church to a Mother’s Day tribute of poop-encrusted child, napping—once again—on an artful poop mound. The nursery smelled like a scene from the movie Slumdog Millionaire.

I cried.

Three more children quickly followed. They also tended to poop. I cried a couple more times—off and on. They cried.

Then they laughed and brought me wads of flowers ripped from the ground, trailing roots and dirt. I taught them to read the great books of their people, and sacrifice for the good of others, and dance the dance of duty versus personal fulfillment. Mostly, I raised them not so much to kiss me but to kiss their children.

For this, I am accused by my silly, short-sighted, materialistic society to be a do-nothing, stay-at-home mom. I have nine grandchildren and if each of those children have spouses and produce four children . . . well, you do the math.

That first kid, the poop artist, he grew up and went to the Amazon as a warrior. Then he went to Greece, and Spain, and Iraq, and Afghanistan and Texas as another kind of warrior.

This Mother’s Day he sent me a zombie novel, a rifle, and a note:

"To the greatest survivor I have the honor of knowing. In this text lies a story of great adventure. Happy Mother's Day.

From: Your Son--Stay Alert, Stay Alive!

And I earned every word! By the way, I finished a five hundred page zombie novel in three and a half days and harvested a butt load of green beans from my garden, pressure washed a chicken coop, and finished the second draft of an eighty-thousand word manuscript on a new book and . . . . try to keep up . . . would ya’.



Linda (Barefoot and With Child) Zern

HAPPY SPRING FLOWERS FROM THE GARDEN OF L. L. Zern

When I was little I loved cemeteries because of the flowers, not the dead people. I didn't know about the dead people; I was only four. 

Happy, happy spring flowers . . . 

A is for Ameliorate

WRITING MY WAY THROUGH THE DICTIONARY WEEK ONE: A is for Ameliorate

I don’t know anyone who isn’t writing a book, who isn’t thinking about writing a book, who hasn’t already written a book, or having written a book isn’t now planning to write My Book, Part Two—Cash, Check, or Charge. All of which is wildly exciting—also bewildering. It’s a brave new book-writing world. Guttenberg would be proud—also bewildered, I bet.

I’ve written a book—of course. It’s a middle grade, soft cover, work of historical fiction called MOONCALF. It’s literature. It contains no sex, drugs, wizards, or rock and roll. I made $1.68 cents in royalties last month, and I’m competing with 700,000 other titles in my category on Amazon. I have eighteen EXCELLENT reviews on Amazon and only one of them is my mother. 

The problem with everyone, including my poet house painter, writing a book is not the competition it’s the sheer mathematical mass of the competition. It’s like being one oat in a silo of oats or a jet liner at the bottom of the Indian Ocean. Tricky. Very tricky to get noticed.

A writer friend of mine suggested paying for and participating in a Book Blast to ameliorate the trickiness of being one book in the flood of one million plus titles published each year.

I did this and wrote the check. Please don’t ask me what a Book Blast is, because I still don’t know. I think it’s when your book title gets tweeted by a trillion people hoping to win a free _________________ (fill in the blank.) 

It was fun. I got lots of strangers wanting to be my tweety friends and email pals. 

I also got promptly hacked, causing my new email, tweety friends to send me messages alerting me to the hackage. They were very nice about the hundreds of posts advertising weight loss products that appeared to be coming from my fat bottom. They said, “Hey, you’ve been hacked. Fix that would you.” It wasn’t a request.

My book, MOONCALF, was not mentioned.

And so I ameliorated—a word meaning to make better or improve--the problem of someone pretending to be me by changing all my passwords, ninety percent of which I’ve promptly forgotten.

No worries. I press on. My next book Beyond the Strandline is a young adult romantic action adventure that will fit nicely into the already over crowded young adult romantic action adventure genre.

To ameliorate the potential of being crushed under the endless weight of vampires and death game players, I plan to keep my characters naked for the entire book as they fly from spot to spot while hanging from their own personal drones.

No I don’t. Someone’s probably already written that book.

Linda (Better Now?) Zern 

Thank You, Darla Scoles!

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Writing My Way Through the Dictionary

Editing Essentials is a core English class at Rollins College taught by Dr. Lezlie Laws. It’s a tough class that makes people cry and say bad words. I think it made me bust out one of my fillings, but I can’t prove that.

Dr. Laws has the knowing of a lot of things about words and dashes and nouns and grammar and where all that stuff should go in a sentence. It’s a great big grammar laden world out there, and she loves it and she makes her classes love it too . . . mostly . . . well, the ones who don’t hiss out gypsy curses under their breath. She also loves her dog, yoga, protein, and happy creativity. About the time you think that the dentist will not be able to save your fillings, she likes to give her students a pep talk or two. Thank God. 

In a recent pep talk, Dr. Laws shared the thought that we should, once in a while, read a page or two of the dictionary for inspiration and ideas.

Love it. The idea. Not the dictionary. 

So in the spirit of creativity and dictionary inspiration, I’ve decided to write my way through The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language. Or as the introduction to The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, “Good Usage, Bad Usage, and Usage” by Morris Bishop relates, “Much of our formless, secret thought is, to be sure, idiotic.”

Inspiring? Right?

One essay a week, based on a word from the twenty-six letters of the English language chosen at random from the dictionary . . . unless it’s a really stupid word and then I get to call “do over” one time or maybe twice. And from that word I will take my formless, secret, idiotic thoughts and craft them into an essay of dazzling wit—also grammar and dashes.

What? It could be fun, also funambulist, a word meaning one who performs on a tightrope or a slack rope and isn’t that a great way to describe trying express yourself anytime anywhere?

Linda (Tightrope Walker) Zern 

Better Than a Toddler

Our one-year old granddaughter tried drinking water out of a plastic bottle for the first time by wrapping her lips around the opening, throwing her head back like a college student on spring break, and chugging harder then a drunken sailor. Water exploded over her head. Forgetting to un-tip the bottle as she pulled it away from her mouth, water gushed down her chin to cascade like a waterfall over her dress until it soaked her socks.

“Hey, I drink water just like that!”

 It’s always exhilarating when you recognize yourself in the rising generation.

 “I know, and it’s horrible.”

My husband sounded forlorn and a little sad as he stumbled away from our extremely damp granddaughter. Avoiding direct eye contact he seemed less than impressed with my connection to our posterity.

Grabbing a bottle of water that advertised being pumped from the bowels of a fresh water spring located under Mount Olympus and decanted into a plastic bottle designed by a computer, I threw my head back and guzzled, throat convulsing. Water squirted from my nose.

“Linda, do you have to drink water out of a bottle like that?” He grimaced, looking away.

“Like what?”  I swiped the back of my hand across my dripping chin.

“Like you’ll never get another drop of water again for as long as you live—and eternity—like the water bottling industry has just announced that all the water in the world has been teleported to the moon. Seriously, it drives me crazy.”

Tipping the bottle back, I gulped until the sides of the bottle collapsed.

“Like that.  Good grief, woman, take a breath,” he said, clawing at his own throat. “ Why do you throw your head back like that? You drink like you can’t trust gravity to work. Just let the natural elements of the universe help you.”

I let my head drop forward as I gasped for the universal element of oxygen. I had a cramp in my neck.

“I don’t throw my head back.”

 He smirked.  “You throw your head back, wrap your lips around the entire bottle opening, and squeeze the water into your mouth like you’ve just dragged yourself across Death Valley.”

He picked up a bottle of spring water pumped from the original Fountain of Youth with minerals added for flavor. He prepared to demonstrate.

“Here! Let me show you how to do it properly.”

Then Sherwood Zern, husband, lover, and friend, put his lips daintily to the rim of the bottle, gently flipped his wrist and sipped water while keeping his little finger extended.

I thought he looked like a sissy llama at the watering trough at the zoo, but I had to admit he had a definite flare that I quite possibly—lacked.

The problem now is that I’m so self-conscious about the way I drink water from a bottle, I have to hide in the corner at the gym so that all the other sweaty, thirsty water drinkers won’t mock and point. It’s like finding out you can’t dance after a lifetime of dancing in public—a lot—and it makes me wonder what else I can’t do better than a toddler.

Linda (Bottoms All The Way Up) Zern

A GREAT BIG, HUGE, GIANT THANK YOU to all the FANS of MOONCALF

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Halfway to Tech Dead

Last night in my English Literature course, the girl next to me pulled one of those amazing I-gadgets out of her book bag. She began to tap away on her high tech marvel while simultaneously checking in on Kim Kardasian’s Twitter update and downloading a sales flyer for knock-off designer shoes. 

I looked down at my workspace. Out of my ten-year old book bag, I had pulled a clipboard with a legal pad and an assortment of pens, highlighters, and a Sharpie marker (I love them.). I might as well have pulled out a dried piece of animal hide and an inkpot. I stacked my textbooks in a pleasing configuration while simultaneously counting my writing instruments.

Several young folks flipped open their amazing computering machines while simultaneously looking for an outlet. Power cords began to creep and crawl over every available service seeking the mother ship of power sources. A scuffle broke out over the last plug. A couple of the students posted an update on Facebook about the viscous lack of cheap, available electricity created by magic solar panels, attached to windmills, powered by Keebler elves. 

On the way to school, I was informed via my car radio that studies show that Facebook users over fifty years old have a harder time adjusting to changes on the social networking site than the average two-year old. I scoffed. Then I scorned. Then I yelled at the radio.

“It isn’t that I can’t figure out the new face of Facebook. It’s that I don’t want to. I don’t have time to figure out the new Facebook, because I’m halfway to dead. My time is precious.” I balled up my fist and shook it at the invisible radio waves floating around in space.

In the car next to me, a teenager type flipped open a cell phone with her chin, punched in a series of numbers with her nose, and then weaved into my lane of traffic.
“Hey!” I yelled. “Go kill someone your own age. I’m ALREADY halfway to dead.”

Later, in my Major English Writings night class our professor informed us that in her day classes it was becoming harder and harder for her to find students who had heard of the book of Genesis in the Bible, let alone anyone who had read it. For a minute I felt smug. Then I felt sad. Then I wondered if for all our technological advances we are becoming a people without a culture or a past or an identity.

And here I sit halfway to dead and me without an I-phone or I-pod or I-chip in my brain . . . and my husband stole my Kindle. All I have is fifty years worth of everything I’ve read, experienced, lived, learned, touched, done, and loved—way too much to Tweet.

Linda (No-Tweet) Zern 

Country Living!

Fresh air, sunshine, and horses are the best way to beat writer's block, cure pimples, stretch brain cells, and lose ten pounds. Okay, maybe not, but it is fun.

Tracker (My five year old grade quarter horse gelding)

The author in her natural habitat!

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D is for Disclaimer

Once in a while, in the interest of pure, clean, sparkly honesty, I like to post a bit of a disclaimer, concerning my essay writing. NOTE: Don’t let the word essay make you itchy. Essay is a fancy word for bit of news or gossip or story that I might tell you “over the back fence,” as if we shared an actual fence and you were in the backyard while I was in the backyard and our kids were playing together under the clothesline.

Social media is the new back fence where it’s possible to “chew the fat” with one or a viral number of your closest most intimate friends. “Chewing the fat” is the act of having a chatty, amiable conversation with someone, preferably over the back fence.

So here’s the 411 (an expression meaning information or knowledge):

MARRIAGE DEAL: I’m married to Superman. Enough said.

FAMILY DEAL: Superman and I have four grown, married children, ranging in age from “no way I have a kid that old” to “no way my baby is that old.” We also have ten grandchildren ranging in age from “when did Zoe Baye start her own duct tape pillow business” to “quick catch Scout Harper she’s making a break for the door.”

LIFESTYLE SETUP: Superman and I live on six acres in a part of Florida known as rural. We have some horses, a couple of dogs, a bunch of bunnies, a coop full of chickens, and a pregnant goat. We spend our time driving to the feed store to purchase groceries for one and all.

SOURCES FOR ESSAY TOPICS: All of the above.

DAYTIME ACTIVITIES: Mowing, burning, chopping, edging, planting, tending, pruning, grooming, riding, shoveling, digging, mulching, weeding, picking, growing . . . oh, and I also write stuff: essays, E-books, manuscripts, chapter books, illustrated books and stories, short and otherwise.

NIGHT TIME ACTIVITIES: Listening to coyotes howl and doing homework.

IMPORTANT TO KNOW: I exaggerate for fun and laughs. Hyperbole is my middle name.

BLESSINGS: Folks who have read my writing and responded, so that I don’t feel like I’m talking to myself over the back fence while chewing the fat.

POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY: Don’t pick my pocket, and I won’t pick yours. Period.

IN THE BEGINNING: My essays started as little stories that I told my mother, while sitting on her side porch, at the end of the day. I’d share this or that little thing that my kids had done or said, and I found that I enjoyed the telling more if I could make her laugh. Laughing at the mania and mess and mayhem put a fine bit of ending punctuation on another challenging stay-at-home, homeschooling kind of day.

Then Al Gore invented the Internet, and I took to the virtual super highway like a cheetah chasing warthogs—kind of. Mostly, I just stumbled around social media trying to remember clever passwords designed to thwart the efforts of hacker chicks in Beijing. Sigh.

I still like making people laugh, and cry, and think though, especially over the back fence while our kids and grandkids play under the clothesline.

Linda (L is for Laugh) Zern