Spoiled, and lazy

I haven't posted anything for awhile. To be quite candid, this time of year is a bit of a downer for me. I love summer, love the simplicity of it, love the long days. School starts, and I suddenly find myself drowning in a deep pool of melancholia. The kid's getting older. I'm getting older. The world is in sorry shape, the economy continues to founder in spite of what MSM tells you, and I'm pretty much expecting that in my lifetime, my homeland will be overtaken by hostile forces.

So. You'll see why I've been biting my tongue. Nobody wants to read that sort of thing. I'm the kind of person who sends others scurrying away from the water cooler when I approach.

I'm still in that low place some days, but I had an enjoyable moment recently when I was re-reading an old classic from high school. George Orwell's 1984 is just as appalling and brilliant as it was when I was 16. I was inspired to read it again, along with some other old titles, because I've run into some pretty common, unimpressive books lately. Some have been freebies on my Kindle, so I guess I should have expected substandard sentence structures and flat characters. But still... Somebody, somewhere, published these books. They can't all have been self-published. One of them was so flagrantly incoherent and non-cohesive that I was tempted to look up the author—and was smacked in the face by review after review (by readers, for what those are worth) that sang the praises of this particular woman and her various self-centered, narcissistic memoirs.

Really? I mean, she wasn't absolutely terrible, but she skipped around, she didn't develop anything fully, the order of events was difficult to follow and often left matters unresolved... It wasn't good writing.

I started dissecting other recent books that had disappointed me... and then I gave up because I'd figured out the problem: I'm a former English major. I have taught some of the most amazing authors, after having been immersed in them, and likely because of that I began years ago to expect greatness from the written word. That's not to say I loved all of them, but constant exposure to true talent caused me to raise my standards across the board, regardless of writing style, point of view, or syntax. I'm not a fan of Tolkien, but I can appreciate his flair for description. I never liked Poe, but he could create a macabre setting better than almost anyone. Steinbeck's characters have stayed strong in my mind for decades. Welty painted a warm, slightly uncomfortable picture of the South.

My point is that the classics have become classic for good reason—at least most of them. Those guys and gals could write. They were masters of the language, and they understood that every aspect of writing matters. It isn't enough to be emotive; fantastic word choices won't save a poor plot. Characters I find to be unbelievable will become characters I don't care about enough to finish reading the book.

So you see why I've been spoiled. Poor literature is beneath me. Life is too short. And the lazy part of the post title? I've reached middle age now, and I've grown more choosey about how I spend my time. I've always been a believer in reading a book I love many times instead of trying to read as many different books as possible. These days, I feel even more strongly about that. My favorites? I've revisited them over and over. Some of those more recent releases? There are some great ones, but a whole lot of them are pretty shallow and temporary, and I'm decided that I don't have the energy to bother finishing them once I've determined that they're lacking. Which, according to my way of thinking, doesn't make me truly lazy—just discerning and decisive.

I suppose if I'm going to be spoiled, then this is a more desirable form of it than most.

a feeble attempt

OK, I know I've been an absentee bloglord lately. I actually have been puzzling a story-line over and over in my head. Here's a taste. And if you hate it, and it falls flat, I hope you'll tell me—thus pointing me in the direction of nonfiction forever. Perhaps that's where I belong. I tried writing this in a bit of a countrified dialect, but it just didn't fit. I have no idea if this style succeeds at all or fails miserably. Please, dear reader (all 2 of you), be brutally honest. I need honesty. Honestly.

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"Ma, you should write a book. You should write this all down."

My girl tells me this at least once a month. She thinks people would like to read the story of my common little life. I don't know if they would or not. Honestly, I'm not even sure I'd like to read it—and I know and love the protagonist. I do have some stories to tell, I guess. But I'm not convinced of their value; they're not so different from anyone else's stories, really. Maybe she's biased; I am her mother, after all.

But she insists: "People would read it. They'd like you. You'd be the character they could root for." Perhaps that's true. I surely know about being the underdog, and people are suckers for the underdog. They like to root for the loser, and I've worn that hat a time or two.

My name is Delma, but I'm Del to anyone who knows me. I've been married twice, widowed twice, a mother once and a fool many times. But I'm learning. I just happen to be a slow learner.

When I was a girl, my mother called me her wild child and I was so proud to wear that name. I thought a label like that made me cool; I didn't know I'd end up being a mockery of myself before I turned 25. I didn't know I'd be kicked by life until I needed a saint to make me feel alive again. I only knew, back in the day, that I was young, and pretty, and that I could dance. I could walk into a bar and know just which boy there I wanted to kiss that night. And I'd kiss him, too. There were only a few that got away from me before I let them go, and I like to think they regretted it or were already attached to someone special.

Now, of course, none of that matters to me. If I never kiss anybody again, it's all right by me. And I never did care too much for the other, the part that followed the kissing. But I'll save that for another chapter.

So, my girl tells me to write all this down. She is convinced I'll forget, because she forgets things already and, as she so sweetly reminds me, God knows I am older than she is by a few years. I tell her, "Thea, you forget everything because you never knew it in the first place. You have your cell phone and misspelled words in it and email and calculators, and all your technologies have stunted your brain." She never wants to hear that, of course. She thinks she's all that, just like I did when I was her age. I let her go. She'll come to her senses eventually. All those little toys aren't enough in the end; there's no substitute for having a soul and some peace and love to fill it with.

I named her Althea after my husband's grandmother. I never cared for the name, but it was the thing to do, name your child after a grandma, and my own mother bore the name Mildred—and I just couldn't burden a child with a name that has the word dread in it. So Althea it was. Part of the choice was a last effort, too—one final step in my attempt to please her dad and mold him into a decent man. Like I said before, I'm a slow learner. But I never said I was a genius.

Thea's still a young girl, though, in many ways. She moved out and she works full-time; she studied to be a veterinary tech, and now she gives puppies and kittens their shots and helps the vet spay and neuter at the clinics. She's making money and paying her own bills, so she figures she's unofficial MENSA these days. I just let her think it. She's liable to get knocked flat too, someday, if she hasn't been already. She'd never tell me if she had; she's too proud. We love each other but it's not like that, we're not one of those mother/daughter best friends stories. I never had intentions of making my daughter into a best friend. I can make my own friends.

And I don't choose to do that, these days. I was always a loner, first because I had no choice and then because I did. Now I have the Lord in my heart and that's plenty of company for me. Oh, and I have memories of my Willam.

I guess I should start at the beginning, though. Which means starting with the other one, Delbert. Don't ever marry a man who shares your name. It just doesn't bode well for the two of you.

How to explain Delbert? Well, now, he was good-looking and he had nice lips and he kissed just right, not too much pressure but no slobber. Sadly, it became evident immediately after marriage that his kissing was the best thing about him. We made a handsome couple around town, we both knew a lot of people, we both liked to dance and to have fun. He was always pushing me to "take off that damned dress, Delma, my God you are a prudish sorta girl" but I held tight to that dress. It was all I had. I knew Del had been all around town with every other girl who'd grace his arm prettily and let him have his way. But I figured I was the one who'd stick. I wasn't about to play that dress card when I knew it was the only thing that made me special.

My mother tried to help me see the truth. She listed all the girls Delbert had courted and left, and after he'd come calling a few times and she knew he wasn't going anywhere quickly, then she pulled out the really scary, awful story about another young lady who'd left town for exactly 7 months and then come home a strangely empty woman. She even told me who it was: that pale, thin blonde who worked at Murphy's in town, Lita. I said that my Del hadn't had a thing to do with her. I said that was a lie spread by the girls Del didn't care to date.

I found out later that my mother's scary story was all true. That bastard husband of mine had gotten poor Lita pregnant and flatly denied the whole thing; she'd been shipped off to Philadelphia to have the baby at her aunt's house and then was forced to give the little boy up. Lord knows where he is today. She thought of looking for him but was afraid he'd hate her, afraid she'd find out his being adopted had ruined his life. The fear that she'd locate him at last in jail was too much to face. I found all this out because Lita ended up being my best friend. She got me through some tough times, helped me find work, even babysat Thea in a pinch.

Anyway. I married Delbert and my mama cried. The day of the wedding, she stood there and cried. Between that and Del sharing my name, we were pretty much doomed from the start.

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So. Do you care at all about Del and Del? Is this a believable voice? Or does it ring untrue? Let me have it. I can take it. Remember, I named this venture "Melmoirs" for a reason: I know that I have plenty of weak spots in my fiction writing.