BREAKING SPRING

Nudity. Wild demonstrations of testosterone fueled rooster crowing. Uncontrolled eating, drinking, and merry making. Occasional incontinence. Unadvised physical feats of leaping about, followed by crying, screaming and a high probability of projectile vomiting. Episodes of naked gyrating.

Spring break?

You’d think so but no. It’s a weekend with the grandkids.

Many in society look on the nude, naked, uncontrolled, incontinent merry making of spring break as a right of passage for college types and a few convicted felons—incognito. They look back on their own nude/naked incontinent merry making with fondness, when they can remember it; sometimes it’s just flashbacks.

Which is confusing to me.

When you’re a twenty-year-old frat boy, it’s cool to poop your pants.

When you’re a two-year-old baby boy, it’s disgusting.

It makes no sense.

I watch the wild, raucous spring breakers on television, and think that if I saw my nearly adult kid swilling alcohol through a tube, I would stop payment on the checks immediately. Let them pay for their own emergency room bill and penicillin.

Then I watch the endless, tireless efforts of my grandchildren learning to walk, and think to myself, “Now that deserves our investment.”  They cling to furniture, fingers, and their own hands. It gives them courage. They teeter on uncertain legs. They totter trying to manage wobbly first steps. Then they fall. And fall. And fall. They are under no influence but their own, dogged persistence.

Over and over and over and again . . . they fall . . . and get back up.

And then they GET BACK UP and try it all over again until they can walk. It’s quite inspiring to watch. They never quit. Never. Over and over and over again . . . until they can walk.

Of course, our society calls having children “a punishment” or a “twenty year life sentence” or says of them that “they ruin a women’s body” or “they keep you from doing stuff” like traveling to Panama City for spring break where you wind up unconscious on someone else’s beach covered in starfish. 

I guess. 

Of course, when those children, who’ve ruined your body and punished you with their presence, are twenty you can send them to poop on someone else’s beach.

Irony.  It’s everywhere.

Linda (Spring Fling) Zern

    

    

WHY I READ

Author Linda Zern gives a few words on how reading became and why reading is so important to her:

"In the beginning, I read because I had to figure out what those two crazy kids, Dick and Jane, were up to with their dog, named Spot.

Then I read because the words were everywhere: cereal boxes, road signs, billboards, newspapers, and the instructions on the back of the Jiffy Pop popcorn. The words were everywhere. And I could READ them. It may have been the magic of ordinary things, but it was magic.

After that, I realized that the Reader’s Digest people had filled our house with edited, condensed volumes of . . . well, everything else from Michener to Buck. Those books were condensed—like soup—just add reading, so I did.

For a long time, I read to escape. Enough said.

For an even longer time after that, I kept right on reading because 1) it was one of the things I could do when I breastfed 2) it was cheaper than jet skiing 3) and it kept my mind from atrophying into tapioca.

In the time that followed, reading became a habit that enlarged my soul, filled my mind, dazzled my dreams, and acquainted me with the world as it might be, could be, should be, would never be, but wouldn’t it be cool if it was—in a sparkle unicorn kind of way? I kept right on reading, until I ran out of the kind of books that I wanted to read.

Now I read to know what to write, always keeping in mind all the lonely little girls out in the dark places who turn to books for comfort and company and to figure out what Dick and Jane and that silly dog named Spot are up to."

You can visit Linda's website at: http://www.zippityzerns.com

In Defense of Sad Endings

I wrote a book with a hard ending. Mooncalf is a work of historical fiction for middle grades. It is set in the mid-60’s, halfway between the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Dr. Martin Luther King. America was racing the Russians to the moon. Skirts were short; hair was long. Schools in Seminole county, Florida, were still segregated. After reading Mooncalf, one reader told me, “I liked Olympia and Leah so much. I just wanted them to go off in the orange grove and start a babysitter’s club.” Spoiler alert: That’s not how it ends. Comments from readers have included: “I cried.” “I was so angry.” “I was crushed. You warned me, and I was still crushed.” “Shocking.” “It didn’t have to end that way.” One young woman refused to read the book, having heard that it had a sad ending. She doesn’t do sad endings. As an author, I sometimes wonder if I should have softened the blow, written a happier ending, given the readers a way to dream away the reality, but then I listened again to my readers. Tears. Anger. Shock.  I knew then that it was exactly as it should be.  In the world of my childhood, little girls of different colors did not go off and organize inter-racial glee clubs. We learned the hateful lessons our adults taught us and we cried.