Another favorite column, published in the paper a couple of years ago.
I’m sitting in my minivan with a Diet Coke, a book (never
leave home without a book), my laptop, and just enough dark chocolate to keep
me happy but not feeling too guilty.
Maybe a little guilty.
It’s Saturday. My
kids are attending a church youth activity, so I’m just waiting in the parking
lot. I already ventured off to do my
Costco shopping, but I still have almost an hour to wait. It’s pouring buckets
outside. A sudden creek running down
the pavement between the cars changed my initial thought of, “Maybe I’ll go
inside and see if I can help.” No.
When I was a teenager, I never would have guessed I would
enjoy writing on a computer. I made it
through college with my trusty electric typewriter. I loved the challenge of
writing a paper, beginning to end, one time through. The sentences and paragraphs have to be
well-planned when you know you can’t go back and make changes. One idea in the wrong place, and Bam! Start over on another sheet of paper. Talk about a rush! Do nerds have extreme sports? Yes we do.
When I started dating a boy my senior year who owned a computer
(the only one in his apartment complex), for months I refused his offers to let
me use it for writing essays. Computers,
I reasoned, fell in the same category as day planners. The truly creative needed neither.
I finally gave it a try, and never went back. Goodbye White-Out, hello cut and paste! Also, I married the boy. The computer was not a drawback.
When I was a teenager, I never – ever – would have pictured
myself with a personal computer on my lap, in my car. This is not how I envisioned my grownup
self. I pictured me…with ten children, all
out exploring the woods near my house, some with books in their hands, while my
lumberjack husband tended trees in the forest.
(I liked the idea of a lumberjack, but never the associated destruction. Maybe a forest ranger?) Meanwhile, my housekeeper, Alice, would do
the laundry and tend dinner. And
me? I’d be by an open window, dressed in
something soft and flowing, my electric typewriter clicking out my latest
romance novel. Diet Coke and chocolate
nearby.
I got halfway there. Still
working on that novel. I had five kids, I’m at this moment wearing soft, loose
sweatpants, and while I don’t have a housekeeper, there’s a job chart for the
kids posted in the kitchen. That’s
something. Also…my computer geek
sweetheart both plants trees and cuts firewood.
I’m a lucky, lucky woman.
I read one of those Facebook memes recently: “Don’t give up your day dream.” Get it?
Like don’t give up your day job.
I like it. Sitting with my laptop
in my van, the back productively full of groceries, my usefulness as a mother
secured as I sit and wait to complete chauffeur duties, I feel pretty successful. I think the teen me would be okay with
it. My daydreams are still intact.
When I’m done writing here, I’ll switch to the other
document I have open: a romantic story I’m working on that whisks me far from
parking lots and errands and whatever. Modern
mom, dreamy girl. That feels right. Thank heaven for minivans and laptops, and
daydreams.
The rain is holding steady, and the wind is picking up. Still
a long wait for the kids. I don’t mind
it. I’m a princess perched in her tower,
an authoress weaving stories from inside a deceptively common minivan.
