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Fatherless Day—Wednesday, June 24, 2009

On Father’s Day I was at Glide Memorial Church in San Francisco's Tenderloin district with Olivia, witnessing the baptism of a friend’s baby boy. Church is never a good place for me because, try as I might, I cannot help weeping. I have never quite figured out why church makes me so mortifyingly emotional. Does it bring back painful memories from my childhood—the only time of my life when I attended regular services? Is it the stirring music? In spite of my objection to organized religion, is it something I need that I am denying? I never get to the bottom of it. Instead, I simply stay away. It’s easier.
 
But there was the baptism. It was a weekend during which a bunch of us helped to throw a Stone Soup wedding for a friend who has had two children with a man she never got around to marrying. Her five-year-old then pointed out that the other mommies and daddies were married, and within a month they set a date. But the recession had done away with all thoughts of a wedding budget, so the bride’s friends plotted and planned and each of us brought five things and did five things, and poof! Instant wedding. This is a friend who does favors for people as naturally as she walks on two legs; her payback, all assembled in one friend’s house, was a nuptials more lovely than those of a lot of folks who can afford caterers and wedding planners.
 
The day after the wedding, all the out-of-town guests were treated to Baby Number Two’s baptism. They cried tears of joy while I cried tears of frustration—hot, choking tears from way back in my throat. On a screen behind the pastor was a slide show honoring fathers. One photo was of a father’s grave. Olivia squeezed my hand. I was helpless to stifle myself. I hoped I wasn’t upsetting her too much.
 
Really, I don’t want my dad to be alive again. I can’t bear to think of him the way he was in the last year of his life, confined to his bed, his kneeless leg dead on the mattress, his eyes sunken, his speech incoherent. But as much as I abhor church, I am the first to say I know there’s something out there—I know because I feel my father every single day. He is young again, surfing on his big, beige “The Five S’s” board, smiling. But knowing all of this doesn’t stop me from wishing I could talk to him one more time, or ten. The best I could do was to mail him a Father’s Day card, addressed to Steve Losee in The Heaven With the Juicy Waves. I did that last year, too. Maybe I always will. I picture my card in a pile with all the undelivered notes to Santa, and the image—along with the knowledge that I don’t have to go back to church for the foreseeable future—comforts me.

 

Because I Love Her?—Wednesday, May 6, 2009

I just received my third invitation to another reading of a new anthology I am no longer in. It’s called Because I Love Her: 34 Women Writers Reflect on the Mother-Daughter Bond, and it’s out this month in paperback from Harlequin.
 
I’m no longer in the book because the editor suggested I think hard before publishing my essay. She had contacted me to ask for the piece because she read about it in my article in O, the Oprah Magazine last January. That article was called “The Willpower Myth,” and in it I explained that I achieved a breakthrough in my personal essay writing with the assistance of a mentor who helped me understand that much of what I wanted to say had to do with my unpleasable mother. I wrote a story about the conversation my mother and I had that made me decide it would be healthier for me to become estranged from her than to stay close to her, and the story was selected as a finalist for a literary award.
 
So I sent the anthology editor that essay, and she accepted it for the book. During the editing process, she told me that the book was intended as a Mother’s Day gift item and that mine was the most brutal story in the mix. She thought my piece would attract a lot of press—was I ready to publish it? Was I comfortable making the decision, a year in advance, to close the door on my relationship with my mother? Because that is what the editor thought would happen if I allowed her to keep my essay in the book.
 
Her reaction to my story was ironic, because the conversation I described was one my mother was proud of. I had found her behavior shocking, but she had bragged about it later, so I knew she wouldn’t be embarrassed to have it described. But I imagined my frank essay in this nicey-nice Mother’s Day anthology, pictured reviewers singling me out for violating the Fifth Commandment, and I withdrew the essay.
 
But I’m still invited to the readings. I don’t know whether I wish I had published the essay or I’m glad I didn’t. I don’t know whether I hope the book doesn’t sell or I’ll be relieved if it does and I don’t have to suffer the consequences. All I know is, I don’t think I’m going.

 

Something to Blog About—Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Woe is my blog, I have neglected her lo these many months. Two anyway, which is, like, an ice age in Blog Time.
 
It’s not for lack of thought or even the usual working-mommy mania. It’s because so many things have been happening that I can’t talk about (or couldn’t talk about at the time). For example, I took the fall off of paid work in order to (a) recognize that I am, in fact, human; (b) give myself some designated grieving time after my father’s death; and (c) help Olivia apply to high schools. The last provided much in the way of stories but none in the way of blogs, lest some admissions officer happen upon this page and, how shall we say, take things the wrong way. Then of course there was the itty detail of journalism turning out to be the first line item to be crossed off in the universe’s budget for 2009 (and possibly beyond). Who wants to hear my whining added to the chorus of boo-hooing authors?
 
But now we are in the After Phase to some degree. I miss my dad, but I am getting used to communicating with him rather differently than I used to, given that he no longer has a phone number. Liv got into her first-choice school, University High, reminding us that even in this illogical post-crash world, simple hard work and passion do occasionally rule the day. And I seem to be finding my way again as a writer; several more articles have come out about office romance that quote Helaine and me (Glamour, for one). I’ve got a couple of short pieces coming out in the summer issues of San Francisco magazine, and I’m on the phone with my agent a couple of times a week shaping up my new book proposal. But something funny happened on the way to the continuation of my book career; I found I had a yen—and the ability, it seems—to help other people find success with their writing. I’ve been coaching other writers on how to pitch their ideas to editors. I’ve been teaching writing classes. I’ve been editing other people’s proposals and sample chapters. I’ve been counseling authors about how to promote their work. It’s a new way for me to participate in this industry I love so much (and which stands so threatened), and I’m glad—perversely—that the downturn forced me to find it.
 
Yes I believe I’m ready to talk about this stuff now. Look for a new page—Consulting—on this web site soon, as well as a number of updated links and pages throughout. Stephanielosee.com is back in business. Fingers crossed that the rest of the globe will follow suit.

 

Not-Happy Anniversary—Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Today is the first anniversary of my father’s death. I’ve been dreading it, and now that it’s here, I know why. It’s because everybody says that the first year after a parent dies is the hard part, and once you get through it you’re out of the woods. Except that my first year after my father’s 25-year suicide attempt finally worked has been much harder than anyone—myself included—could possibly have guessed, and I don’t believe that tomorrow will bring relief.
 
My mind actually came apart at times this year. As recently as October I was still making shocking mistakes that made me wonder if I was in an altered state. Greta was supposed to go to a birthday party for a friend who now lives in Connecticut and was flying in for the holiday weekend, and I entered it into my iPhone for Monday, the school holiday, even though the party was for Sunday afternoon. I got two emails talking about the upcoming party and whether Greta was coming, and mentioning that the family would be flying back east on Monday. So it didn’t make sense that the party would have taken place on Monday. But my brain didn’t work well enough to re-think what I had entered into my iPhone. On Sunday afternoon we were lolling about, with no other commitments, while Greta’s friends had a merry reunion. On that Monday Tom left work early to take Greta to Acrosports and the receptionist told him that the party was the day before.
 
It gets worse. The reason I made that mistake is that I had made so many similar ones in the months prior that I had decided my iPhone was my only defense against my nonfunctioning noodle. I entered in dates and reminders relentlessly, leaving myself endless clues, just like the amnesiac in Memento. I had noticed that the iPhone sometimes enters a date one day later than you intend, so I got into the habit of checking and double-checking every time I hit Save. My iPhone became my memory’s district judge, overruling its every verdict. So even my reliance on a solution for bringing an end to these mistakes caused mistakes.
 
Since October I’ve gone back to being only as bad as the next multitasking mommy. I guess that’s a sign of progress. And I’ve gotten to the point where I can mention my father without crying every time. I guess that’s a sign of progress too. I’m areligious and not inclined to embrace the woo-woo, but it has become absolutely clear to me that my father is communicating with me on a regular basis, trying to send me comfort. Yesterday, for example, Greta asked me if I would teach her how to surf. Out of the clear blue sky. While eating cereal. I had awakened with the thought that tomorrow would be Death Day, and I felt positively ill. So my dad seems to have decided to do one of his fly-bys to make me feel better. And I heard his message. Even more progress, I guess.
 
But now a year has gone by since his death. I’ve made progress. My question is, Dad, what now?

 

Lemony and Me—Saturday, January 31, 2009

Lemony Snicket—aka Daniel Handler, or perhaps it’s the other way around—read not one but eight “Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak” at the Books Inc. reading last night, and *his* voice didn’t break. Then again, his eight mini-memoirs were actually about his various and sundry hetero and homosexual romances, whereas I had to explain that I thought mine was about romance, but it was actually about my dead father.
 
All I can say after the last 11 ½ months, and after getting mortifyingly emotional in front of an audience of God knows how many people at the reading, is that the wound is still unexpectedly raw. I really did think I could handle it, talking about him on the eve of the first anniversary of his death. I’m supposed to have processed much of my grief by now. But I learned long ago that I perform much better in front of an audience if I haven’t prepared my comments, and because of that I didn’t know ahead of time what I would say or how I would react to saying it.
 
At first I got a couple of laughs. I got a laugh when I read my six words, “He’s less tall but more sane.” And I got another laugh when I explained that this project has taught me that even in as little as six words, you can have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about. Then I told the story about Olivia asking me what my memoir meant, and how the process of telling her showed me that it didn’t mean what I thought it did at all. (See the entry for January 7, 2009 if you don’t already know this story.) The audience was smiling and attentive.
 
Then I said The Thing. The book’s title is “Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak,” so I guess that’s where my brain got the word I used. I said, “But this year my father died. He was a real heartbreaker.” And on “heartbreaker” my voice broke. But I was able to keep speaking. “He was suicidal for the last 25 or 30 years of his life…” and at that point I had to pause so that I wouldn’t burst into tears. I put my hand up over my head, and said, “…and he was as tall as a tree.” My voice broke again, and I swallowed. “So it turns out that my six-word memoir is about my dad.”
 
There was a silence, and I sat down, and then the audience applauded. I wanted the ground to swallow me, junior-high style. But afterward people came up to me and shared similar stories, so I guess it was okay. They laughed, they cried, we all survived. But as far as my grief is concerned, I’d like to get past the point where I’m just surviving.

 

Now For a Word From Our Sponsor—Thursday, January 29, 2009

Actually, this web site—this career, for that matter—has no sponsor, because I have proven myself uniquely capable of publishing and publicizing quite a lot of perfectly national work without attracting more than ten farthings in pay. It’s a talent of sorts. At any rate, this weekend features the usual level of frenetic uncompensated career-related activity. I’ll be participating in readings both Friday night and Saturday night for Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak; please come along if you can. Details are at right in the Coming Up box. Tomorrow’s event is at the Opera Plaza Books Inc. at 7pm and Saturday’s is at Book Passage in Corte Madera at the same hour.
 
Since I have finally admitted to myself and all six of my loyal and devoted fans that every bloody thing this year is about my father, it will only embarrass me a bit to confess that I can’t stop thinking about what his six-word memoir would have been. When I think them up they all come out mean, which doesn’t reflect at all how much I miss him and love him. Actually, they’re probably so mean because I miss him and love him—if he hadn’t made such a mess of everything he’d still be here and we could have some fun. We could have an adventure, to use his phrase. The ones I keep coming up with are nothing he would ever have said about himself.
 
My dad: Had lemonade. Made lemons.
Had every advantage; threw them away.
Wife, daughters, health, job, home: gone.
Shouldn’t have had all those surgeries.
 
What would his version have been? I wasn’t asking myself before now. I knew him so well that I bet I can guess. He would say:
 
I should have married Judy Griffin.
Dad loved Bill; Mom loved me.
Wish I’d stayed in the military.
My college years were the best.
 
He visited me so vividly in a dream not too long after he died, and it was like no other dream I’ve ever had. He emerged from the floor—sort of peeled off like a Colorform sticker—and suddenly there he was in 3-D and full color, young and handsome and healthy again. He was telling me I should stop grieving so badly; he was grinning and reassuring me. And I woke up in the middle of it and understood that he is both the man he was at the end of his life, when he had figured out how to be a loving father, and at the same time he is the man he was at St. Lawrence University, when he was happiest. So I know what his six-word memoir is now:
 
Finally I get to surf again.

 

No Woman’s Land—Saturday, January 24, 2009

Today is my birthday. It’s a weird sensation to have birthdays after 40 because most people really haven’t imagined themselves at this stage. You can picture yourself in your thirties when you’re in your twenties, and you can let yourself think about 40 when you’re in your thirties. But after that it’s a sort of aging black hole in which there’s no other face you can imagine in the mirror besides that of your mother. So you just don’t go there.

I do look increasingly like my mother, which is the height of irony because one of my sources of teenage misery was that I looked not the least bit like her and I thought she was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. And when she was in her forties I noticed that she retained a certain youthful prettiness that the other moms didn’t have. But now that her face is mine I don’t feel pretty at all. I just feel older.

Except for one really bizarre thing: year after year, my body hardly changes. Now this is ironic. When I was young and had this curvy body, all I wanted was a spare, sticky body like my friends had. So did men, I might point out, which only added to my perception that what I had was nothing anyone wanted. But here I am 20 years later with a body that is much the same and whose dishiness I have finally come to appreciate, at a time when the only part of it anyone sees is the part from the chin up that offers the only evidence of my years of sunscreen noncompliance.

Leave it to a woman to measure her worth by her looks. I haven’t said a damn thing about where I’ve gotten in life.

 

Is Every Damn Thing About My Dad This Year?—Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Last night when I was writing my blog about the publication of Six-Word Memoirs on Love & Heartbreak (check out the promotional video here), Olivia asked me what my entry meant. I sort of stammered, because I have to say that I wrote it in about five seconds and hardly deliberated on the word choice or its deeper meaning. I responded by saying the obvious, something along the lines of oh, your dad wasn’t really my type at first but he’s so much nicer than those tall dashing guys. But when I woke up this morning I realized I had dodged the question, partly because I didn’t really know the answer. But now I do. My six-word memoir isn’t about the boyfriends I had before Tom. It’s about my dad.

He’s less tall but more sane. The truth is, I never dated anyone much taller than I am, which is not all that surprising considering I’m nearly five-ten myself. So Tom isn’t less tall than my previous boyfriends. And although I dated a couple of guys who weren’t all that nice to me, I never dated anyone crazy. So Tom isn’t any more sane than my previous boyfriends either. The only man I loved whom Tom is less tall and more sane than is my father, who was over 6-foot-2 and suicidal for the last 25 or 30 years of his life.

After reading the past two years of blog entries about my dad, my friends keep telling me that the memoir I should publish isn’t about my mother, it’s about my father. And today I recognized that, without realizing it, that’s exactly what I did. I published a memoir not about my mother, nor about my husband, who at first glance seems to be its subject. Instead I published a memoir, however wee, about my dad.

 

The Shortest Memoir in the World—Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Here’s the good news: My memoir was published today.
Now for the bad news: It’s only six words long.
 
It’s so sad. I sort-of-kind-of took the fall off from paid work, which means that the Coming Up box on my web site is empty and the New or Practically New box’s latest entry is my contribution to a book of six-word memoirs on love and heartbreak. I’m wondering whether to tell you what the six words are, or whether to insist you buy the book in order to read my entry. Nah. My six core fans, most of whom are related to me, will buy the book, but the rest of you will go on with your day, not suffering in the slightest from being deprived of my edifying phrase. So I’ll give it to you. It’s, “He’s less tall but more sane.”
 
The story behind the publication of this non-story is at the top of my updated Books page, so go looky there. My husband Tom, who is the subject of my silken six words, has also updated the Recentish Clips page and the New box and is in the process of fixing the clips archive if you are so devoted as to wish you could read some article of yore. Enjoy. Or, not.
 
You could say that my Autumn Of Publishing Very Little has left me with a tiny attitude problem.

 

 

New, or Practically New

  • Read the latest press on Office Mate and check out video and audio clips of our appearances here.
  • See my photo—along with that of many writer colleagues—on the back page of the “Best of the Bay” issue of San Francisco magazine. I have a ditty about corkage fees in there too.
  • My six-word memoir (sorry, that’s the best I can do right now) appears in the book Six-Word Memoirs on Love and Heartbreak: by Writers Famous and Obscure, out now from Harper Perennial.
  • Check out my latest Perspective for KQED, called “Economic News for Dummies.”
  • Q&A with Valerie Frankel about her new book Thin is the New Happy on AlterNet.
  • Commentary in The Huffington Post on how Sarah Palin’s lifestyle choices don’t seem all that conservative to me.
  • Check out my piece on stylists and my pic on the Contributor’s Page of the July “Best of the Bay” issue of San Francisco Magazine.
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  • Check out my review of Melanie Gideon’s upcoming memoir: “The Slippery Year: A Meditation on Happily Ever After,” in the August issue of San Francisco magazine.
  • Fame and fortune: Once? Future? Neither? Both? The jury's still out.