The site has all my old posts, and the “house warming” post on the new one has a give away just in case you need enticement to get over there and re-subscribe!

Thank you for the support and readership you’ve offered me over the last couple of years. Some great things are in store for A Growing Season!

I feel a little obnoxious posting all these links to my own work, but frankly, this is the only way I’ll “save” these since my blog is kind of like my personal and family scrapbook. One would think file folders would do the same thing but apparently they don’t work well for me.

April 25, 2012: Seven of the 14 cast members of LTYM crowded into the largest of the recording studios with Kyle Kellams at KUAF, a highly rated local NPR affiliate. KUAF produces daily and weekend shows about local news and events called “Ozarks at Large.” In this segment, you get to hear Kyle Kellams and seven women talk about motherhood and Sunday’s production of Listen To Your Mother.

One of my favorite blog sources, and a network I belong to, is Arkansas Women Bloggers. They do a great job of capturing the voices of women writers across the state, and I was happy to guest post for them about Listen To Your Mother. It’s a natural fit!

I wrote a story for the relatively new online news source, The City Wire, a few weeks before I actually auditioned and made the cast of this show. The story was fun to write, and in it I tell a bit about the background of the production, its origins, and how it got to NWA. Extra, extra, read all about it!

Fair warning: there will be more posts on the show AFTER it’s over! I hope to see you all there. Stay tuned for the YouTube video if you can’t make the show on Sunday.

Apparently a few other women before me have had the same experience, but they were more creative than I am and came up with this idea to celebrate motherhood in all its glories and horrors. Listen To Your Mother started several years ago in Madison, Wisconsin and has since spread nationwide. This year LTYM found its way to Northwest Arkansas. The show’s founders describe it as a “live production that features live readings by local writers on the beauty, the beast, and the barely-rested of motherhood, in celebration of Mother’s Day.” It was “born of the creative work of mothers who publish on-line ” and each of the local “productions is directed, produced, and performed by local communities, for local communities.”

Okay, whatever. That was the official spiel. Here’s what I actually want to say about this: EEEEEKKKK!!!!! I got picked to be in the cast for this show! I get to read my own writing to a real audience. I made the judges laugh right out of the gate. Consider this my blogging Sally Fields’ moment, “You like me. You really like me!” Fourteen of us will be reading, laughing, and crying our way through our stories. Then it will be on YouTube. The actual performance in Fayetteville, Arkansas will be Sunday, April 29th at 2:00 pm in the Walton Arts Center’s Starr Theater. If you’re in the neighborhood, get tickets now before they sell out!

I’m only worried about three things: will my neck completely blotch out because of the lights and my nerves? What is appropriate dress for this sort of thing? And if I wear really great shoes will I trip and fall on my face in front of everybody? I don’t worry about my words or my performance. That I know how to do.

The other really fun thing about all of this is meeting new writers, finding new stories, making new friends, and just getting to tell a story while making a new one. Or to put it another way, I get to collect a whole bunch of words!

The cast is a pretty amazing bunch of people. We need to be reading the works of these great voices. Each author is linked to her blog or her Facebook or Twitter profile. Check them out!

Cast of Listen To Your Mother Northwest Arkansas 2012:

Shannon Magsam
Jasmine Brown
Kerri Case
Heather Davis
Lela Davidson
Jill Van Trease
Angie Albright
Kyran Pittman
Gwen Rockwood
Stephanie McCratic
Jocelyn Morelli
Misti Pryor
Shannon Hahn
Kelly Zega

The day finally arrived. My teenager is driving. He just has his learner’s permit, so an adult is always with him (that I know of . . . ), but I have just been hit over the head that the driving advice he is getting and that I got when I was learning to drive is just good life advice period.

From his dad: Ignore those passing you and keep your eye on the road you are traveling.

Great advice, Dad! So often we get caught up in those who are going around us or that we are meeting on the road. If we pay too much attention to everyone else, we will stray from where we know we are going. Keeping your eyes on your own path and doing the right thing will serve you well in life and on the road.

From my dad to me and now to my son: Never go at a speed where you feel out of control.

My poor father taught me to drive in a five-speed Ford Fiesta that had a “tricky” clutch. I lurched us down the street and the gravel roads outside of town. My father was one of the most patient people in the world, and I tried every bit of that patience with him. The one piece of advice he gave me when driving that has served me well in so many ways was to stay at a speed where I felt in control. If I was not feeling in control of the vehicle, I would wreck and hurt someone or myself. Boy, was he right. When life is feeling too full or out of control, we need to slow down, assess the hazards, and note where we are really headed. Going too fast or being out of control will lead to a wreck, figuratively and literally.

My advice: The world is full of idiots and jackasses.

Idiot drivers are just clueless and not clear on the literal rules of driving and the general social etiquette of being on the road with millions of others in potentially deadly machines. Their ignorance is dangerous, though. We have to always be observant and careful in our own driving and in life, but also be cognizant that others may not be as observant as we are.

Jackasses do know what the rules are but just don’t give a damn. They don’t care about the consequences of cutting off others, running red lights, exceeding the speed limit by too much, passing in no-passing lanes . . . they are out for themselves and don’t care who gets in their way. Sadly, we run into these people all the time, and they are the reason for all those professional development trainings we go to entitled, “How to Deal with Difficult People.”

My philosophy in life has always been that I expect to look out for myself and for everyone else. Driving is no different. We’re all in this together. When we don’t look out for each other, people end up needing the jaws of life to remove them from the wreck.

Photo courtesy of Flickr, Adrien Nier

My brother retorted, “He must be dead or he would have reached out and smacked you for saying that.”

We laughed together through our tears.

To many this must seem irreverent, and perhaps it is. For us, though, it was a momentary respite from a long week of waiting for my father’s body to be returned to the United States from Mexico where he had died suddenly of a heart attack. Our laughter in that moment carved a path through our grief.

My father would have approved of this irreverence. In fact, my family has always laughed at what others deemed inappropriate moments, including, or perhaps especially, during family funerals. My most vivid and cherished childhood memories center on the laughter of our family and family friends. I eagerly anticipated every visit to my grandparents’ homes or visits from friends in our home because it would mean the rooms would be full of laughter. Even if I wasn’t in the same room, I knew all was right with the world, if just for the moment, if I could hear the grownups laughing.

Now in what would be called my “mid-life” it is still the laughter of my friends and family that sustains me. It’s just about the only thing my teenage son and I can do together right now that doesn’t involve what he considers nagging on my part and what I consider rudeness or disobedience on his. The key feature of all of my groups of friends is our ability to laugh together over something wicked, catty, or self-deprecating. I live for the times I can have a beer with a friend and we can laugh until we both snort or threaten to spew beer across a table.

From State Library and Archives of Florida

I believe in the power of laughter. It unites people as well as breaks down the barriers between us. Laughter is a mental palate cleanser. A genuine laugh consumes the body, releases anger, anxiety, and suffering. Like a finger gently nudging the needle on a broken record, it forces our thinking out of its ruts and grooves, forces us to skip ahead to a new thought. Laughing is not only the best medicine, it may be our only defense against the assault of everyday living. As Mel Brooks once said, “Laughter is a protest scream against death.”

My belief in laughter extends to me also. Years ago I realized that taking myself less seriously and laughing openly at my own foibles and faux pas opens me to more genuine relationships with my family, my friends, and my colleagues. My college students used to come to freshman composition each semester with such fear. The moment I began to make them laugh is the moment I began teaching. The same holds true now with the people I work for and with. When I defuse their anxieties and make that crucial connection with them, they can see that the world does not have to be such a scary place. A laugh is the moment when we begin to open up to each other.

If laughter is the path we carve to seeing each other more clearly, that sustains a quality life, then surely laughter is the sound of peace.

Image courtesy of Iconspedia

I’m tired of hearing the stick-in-the-muds say that social media and the online world is alienating us from real human relationships. I wish I had kept a log of the myriad ways social media, Facebook and Twitter in particular, have enhanced my life and either generated genuine relationships or enhanced already existing ones. Strangers have become my acquaintances; acquaintances have become friends; friends have become family–all through this “meaningless” world of social media. I have seen people reach out online and sensed their trouble. I had the opportunity to show support, first online and eventually in person. Social media has made me a better friend, and I have had that support returned to me in abundance. I have networked online in ways that only would have been possible in the flesh through years of networking events, so my professional life has been enhanced as well. I know that my business colleague is a new parent, that she has just returned from a fabulous trip overseas, or about any number of other life-changing moments. This conversation begins online and offers the seeds for a face-to-face conversation later. It accelerates relationship building and offers others the chance to know me better as well.

Then there are just the plain ol’ fun things that happen, especially on Twitter which now boasts over 175 million registered accounts. Twitter makes it simple to connect with such a variety of people across the world. One day I had a question about a Tweet from NPR celebrity Scott Simon. So I asked him the source of his information. He answered back! I’m connected to writers in New York and farmers across the country. I get to converse with people interested in what I am. I also get lots of local, national, and international news from Twitter.

Today’s fun adventure from Twitter came after I re-tweeted a quote from William Faulkner about writing. A poet replied and asked about my interest in writing. He then sent me a poem with the agreement that I would send him a piece of writing in return. I’m posting it here as my part of the deal. As a poem, I really like it. I love the form and the exploration of someone’s “First Thoughts.” What I love more is that a stranger sent me a poem, and I can tell him publicly that I like it by posting it on my blog . . . which I will Tweet and post to Facebook.

Thank you, Heron Lloyd Tait for this poem. Follow him at @twttwit on Twitter. Follow me at @AngieAlbright.

First Thoughts©

The words, all six,
to which he surfaced
“good morning love,
I got awake”,
were first proof
the heart beats,
the cortices respond.
wished his love
and him did he
on that new day,
the best of life
as life can give.
her first meal,
he hoped, already down
and her resolve
to take on the world
now as palpable.
as for him,
ablutions complete,
he opened, would
make and take his
usual brew of nature’s
buds’ now homologous stew.
he’d hie about to impart
some clout to the world
he saw as at once beautiful,
simple and simply
complicated. aren’t
they lucky, opined he
to have part and share
of this piece of universe
where so diverse a product
of  darwinian selection
did call home?
whence the thought
of self may roam,
as well, thoughts
that we be more
than some in
accomplishments
and deeds, or, indeed,
less than some we may?
whichever!
enjoy the thoughts,
he wished her,
her dreams as well
on this day bestowed
by Him to them,
whether their perception
made Him or Her
man or mannequin,
or game or gnome
on this fertile, for thought,
complicated, unforgiving,
save by Him or Her,
particle of universe.
forsake the thought,
though, that being
be complete without
the complementary
being or thing ethereal.
his wish of her inclusion
of him in her thoughts that day
conceded the possibility
that this could be
the only contact, one
with the other, made
till then when the
traverse begins anew
of their fiery orb.

Heron Lloyd Tait
April 19, 2011

My son is also very typical in the ways he relates to me. We have moments of blissful, funny, in-depth conversations, and then there are the other 23 hours, 45 minutes of the day where getting even the most trivial information (like what he wants for dinner or whether he has any homework) from him is painful for both of us. All the child development experts espouse the need for open communication between parents and teenagers. I agree wholeheartedly, but it just isn’t easy!

In the spirit of “meet him where he’s at,” I have resorted to texting my son. This strategy works. He will “talk” to me and tell me things by text that he might not tell me face to face. This is also a successful strategy for this child who splits his time between my house and his dad’s.

A couple of months ago I texted him while he traveled with another parent and fellow team members to a distant basketball game. I wished him luck and said the requisite mom thing, “I love you.” Amidst several of his peers, he replied, “I love you too.” This exchange wouldn’t have happened face to face and certainly not openly in front of his friends.

More recently, he texted me on the first morning of my new job. He had stayed overnight with his dad, but on his way to school he remembered it was my big day. He said, “Good luck today broski” [sic]. (I can’t explain why he sometimes calls me “broski.” It is some form of “bro” and meant to be funny. This seems like one of those things we might laugh about a couple of decades from now. Or not.)

Have I caved to my son’s addiction? Am I enabling him? Maybe, but I will do whatever it takes to keep us talking through these sometimes difficult years. Thank goodness we have the unlimited texting plan.

I thought being a single parent would be a nightmare. Instead, though sometimes hard, it’s been joyful beyond measure.

I thought leaving teaching was possibly the dumbest thing I’d ever done. Instead, it was very wise.

I thought leaving my director’s position at a domestic violence shelter would be devastating. Instead, it’s been healthy–physically and mentally–and it has brought blessings to me that I could not have imagined.

What if the very thing you fear the most is not something to be feared at all? What if your better life and better self are actually on the other side of the terrible, rotten thing?

Blaise with preschool friends Keldrick and Channler

In cleaning out and organizing old files today I happened upon an envelope full of goodies from Blaise’s preschool year at Georgia Southwestern State University’s child development center. It was the best preschool experience a child could have had. I have to laugh, though, because there was no way we could have known how prophetic this picture would be 11 years later.

1. Notice all the dishes on the floor? Yep, still happens. The boys are playing in the “house center” and apparently have no concern for the stuff in it.
2. Blaise is cheesing it up and waving at the camera. He still can’t take a picture without making a face or a joke. He’s a ham and has been since Day One.
3. He was BEST friends with the two boys in this picture. He has always run in packs and his groups of friends are still so important to him.
4. I miss my little boy.