I'm Just Like Madonna

Madonna and I almost have the same birthday.

Madonna and I had our first babies at the same time.

Madonna's baby grew up and left for college.

Mine did too!

Did she tell her baby the same things I told my baby when he left?

It turns out that we did!

Of course, there are slight variations and we may differ in style, because we're all special snowflakes, but mostly, Madonna and I sent our firstborn children off  to school with the same words. Except she says her child is at "university" and I call it "college" sounding like Ice Cube in 22 Jump Street at :50.



Madonna swears she's just like any other mom who has to explain the lyrics to songs like "S.E.X." As she says, her kids know it's just "mom being mom."

Me too! I was in our local paper, bottom inside page, 1/2 inch by 1/2 inch space right above the table of contents. It was about me blogging. People came up to my children telling them they saw me in the paper again and my kids said the same thing as Rocco and Lourdes, "Just mom being mom!"

She calls Carson Daly, "my man." Boom. The same words I use when our recycling guy comes on Monday mornings and lets me sneak in an extra bag without the mandatory lid closing stipulation! "My man!'" *high five*

Does Madonna worry about Lourdes killing too many brain cells while at "university"? She does. That's why she advises her daughter to "try and go to class, try and study, try to not kill all your brain cells at once."

Here is where Madonna and I differ. I tell my kids straight out the truth about alcohol. That it causes permanent brain damage from just one beer. (who knew, right?)

The list of similarities between us is confounding. I'm not allowed to attend "university" games, neither is she. Madonna dresses like a matador, so did my mother for a costume party in 1959.

If you overlook the "try not to drink" advice and the "university" versus college, along with having capes pulled off your back while you're dressed like Maleficent, then Madonna and I are sooo *likethis.*

Remove the tequila shots for breakfast on morning shows, and the resemblance blows my mind.

But get ready for this: did you know we both use BenGay in the morning? 

Twinsies.

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The Power of Listening

It's been six years that I've known of Listen To Your Mother Shows. I have been involved in this live story telling event either as cast member, audience member, or production team since 2010. What I've witnessed is nothing short of a transformation in the people who both hear our stories, and tell our stories.

Writing is different from talking.

Community is fostered when we hear and learn of the lives of our neighbors. Strength can be found in shared laughter when we support the experience of another. Healing can begin from being present for another's words.

We've leaned across cups of coffee and confided moments from our lives to friends. Our words then are spoken, they trip, sometimes glide, off our tongues. But when we write, we soul search. Our words are carefully chosen, our lines read again and yet again. And with each time that we go back and strike through, or illustrate once more, highlight and reinforce yet again, we grow stronger.

Writing is an experience.

When Milwaukee Listen To Your Mother has held its auditions over the past three years, we never knew the stories we would hear. Auditionees enter our reserved room for their reading slot, and we as producers listen. We put our pens and pencils down, and focus. We hear the words, we become aware of the voice when it changes, we hear the rush to get through some parts, and we sense the electricity in passages that sum up everything they hope to convey.

Writing is participation in your life.

Our lives, when we take to penning them, have us stepping out and then back in, to reflect and explain, who we are and why we've chosen to write about the experience that we have. Hearing these stories from the people that come read to us, confirms, there is no one else like us. Our words celebrate that. Our pen-written and key-stroked stories are our experiences, our reflexes, our reactions. Our Us.

We go back in our minds and hearts, and we live through it once more, to bring that moment full and shining, to a communal experience. We write, and in that act, we experience the moment again. But this time, when we share our words, we are not alone.

Our Listen To Your Mother auditionees come to us, they bring an offering of themselves. That always overwhelms me. We gather, we share, we listen, we hear. There is a stillness in the process that doesn't come from quiet. After someone reads, we are silent. We have heard what they have given to us. And we honor that with a moment intent on them.

It's how we say thank you.

I wish everyone in the world had the opportunity of five minutes to be heard, uninterrupted and without questions. Just them, their story, their life. And our silence.

Writing validates an existence.

Telling our stories transforms us. We stand taller and see ourselves as someone worth sitting down and writing about. Our readers walk in the door, shaking and cautious, exuberant and eager, bursting and ready. No matter the way, they share the same motive at their core, the chance to be heard.

We hope we left you feeling that way, Milwaukee auditionees: heard. And affirmed.

Writing is bearing witness to life.

Come witness this power at Milwaukee'sListen To Your Mother Show, April 26. Details regarding tickets here.

Thank you, Milwaukee, for your Listen To Your Mother stories. Your stories touched us, moved us, made us laugh, made us smile, and made us part of your world. Your aching honesty, brave vulnerability, and courageous sharing will always leave us amazed.

 

 

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The Unraveling of Mercy Louis

“Your life would be easier if I were dead,” she says, folding her hands in front of her and staring at them.

“My life would be easier if I had a mother.”

“You haven't got a shred of love left for me,” Mama says, her breathing uneven from holding back tears.

“Mama...”

“You've saved it all up for a girl who doesn't even know your name.”

Illa looks at her sharply. “What are you talking about?”

“I saw the photo in your backpack, Illa. And you never shut up about her during the season.”

“How dare you look through--”

It is dialogue like this, found throughout Keija Parssinen's latest novel, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis, that seizes you from the first page and holds you tight up until the last sentence Keija writes. Then, and only then, are you finally able to breathe again. 

Keija is the author of The Ruins of Us, a debut novel that I fell in love with and reviewed here. The Ruins of Us was rich in storytelling and captivating with characters that felt as if they shared my same air. This same capacity for living breathing characters again holds true for Keija's latest work, The Unraveling of Mercy Louis.

The Ruins of Us had me keening over family and sacrifice, but here, with her latest work, Keija had me looking over my shoulder, shuddering in fear as I read deep into the night. Stephen King instantly came to mind as Keija deftly conjures to life the unsettling backdrop of the small Texas town of Port Sabine where The Unraveling of Mercy Louis takes place.

Repression, suppression, societal shame, and jealousy, are mixed in with the cauldron of the bible belt and religious fervor. A young woman burgeoning on adolescence in Port Sabine stands no chance of surviving what has taken hold of this town over one sweltering Texas summer.     

The Unraveling of Mercy Louis is chilling, dark and surprising. It's everything you hope to find in an enthralling novel. As you slowly watch the young women in the town of Port Sabine succumb one by one, you'll want to turn up all the lights in your house.

Keija Parssinen's latest work grips you from the start, and its contemporary theme, that of a town's star held up to the standard of perfection and what happens when they fall, is perfectly timed to our world today. In giving the reader a heart-pounding psychological thriller where young women are castigated for being human, Keija as author, expertly shows us no mercy.

Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the Devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour.

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The Unraveling of Mercy Louis is available here, where you can also purchase Keija’s first novel, The Ruins of Us.

Leave a comment below for a chance at winning The Unraveling of Mercy Louis.

Click over to read more reviews and enter more giveaways for Parssinen's The Unraveling of Mercy Louis at the blogs gfunkified and SurrenderDorothy .

  



Keija directs the Quarry Heights Writers’ Workshop and works with students in Cedar Crest College’s low-residency Pan-European MFA program. She lives in Columbia, Missouri with her husband and son. She earned her MFA at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where she was a Truman Capote fellow. Find out more about Keija here.

You want this book.

*Also: how does someone who looks like they go to the farmer's market every Friday morning for sunflowers and cockscomb, write a book like this?? Mysteries of the universe.

 

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When The Twilight Zone Calls

Double Takes.

My formative years were filled, hours of them, in unsupervised marathons in front of the television set. I had a thirst for my favorite series, The Twilight Zone, that was unquenchable.

As soon as an episode ended, I needed another. The big reveal, that moment when we got to see just what took a typical day and transported it into The Twilight Zone, left me without air. The Twilight Zone -- that break in space and time, where we either fall into something or something falls into ours, and whoooosh, we are knocked into another state of being.

I felt it every time right along with the actor on screen. The closest words to describe that split in being is this, whatever you just heard, or saw, or felt, makes you do a double take. You see it once, your head swings away in disbelief because you have to thinkthinkthink, and then you can't help it you need to look again, because: no sense no sense no sense. Your brain can't catch up to the reality of the situation. I'm not a physically demonstrative person, but if I were, then in the moment of Twilight Zone-ism you'd see me flapping my arms like my oven mitts were on fire.

What's that?

How come?

I don't get it.

THIS.IS.TRIPPY.

That is The Twilight Zone.

My children are the biggest cause of me finding myself in a double take, snapping my head back and forth like a cat following a laser pen. My children say something, do something, move their face or the light catches them in a moment where I can only open and close my mouth and stammer wha wha wha.

Of course, my three boys – some days more than others, look like me. But it's not the physical make up of who they are, nor the way they stand with one foot out like I do, not even the mannerism of how they have to smile before they begin talking in the same way I do. Those things are amazing, but they don't knock the wind out of me. It's the things they haven't seen me do, or heard me say, the ones I didn't teach them, that suspend me.

This week, when I went in to wake up my youngest, he opened his eyes and groaned, DANG. And he closed his eyes and rolled to his left side. I heard this, and stopped breathing. Because it's hard to breathe and freak out at the same time. My hairs stood on end because the word Dang is the first thing that leaves my lips every morning, but I say it to myself, alone, far away from everyone. He's never been with me at that point when night's rest ends and the day's bugles begin. And yet he just said it.

The Twilight Zone.

My middle boy will only eat one food at a time. I watch him and I know I've never talked about this, nor instructed him to do this, and there he sits: meat first, then the starch, finally, the vegetables, fruit comes last. Always in that order. We don't eat breakfast together, he has lunch at school without me, and dinner happens while I'm already at work some nights. But... the order of preference for food consumption. Identical.

Doodoodoodo doodoodoodoo

Most people can motivate themselves to do something because it needs to be get gotten done do it already. Me? I need the fire of a deadline singeing my hairs. The day I read a text from my oldest in college saying “Hey. Just found something out about myself. I need to have things due for me to get things done. That's when my work is really good.” Gulp. And yes, oh yes.

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!! Where how why do they know this???

This all brings us to the close of today's post. How many of us really know what's happening here? Do we watch and learn from our parents? Do our children imitate us, sense our actions, or are things already in our DNA? Are we all just one step away from merging into a sole being??

I don't know! I don't know! What I do know is this - my children are the most mystical, mind-blowing, arresting beings on this planet.

They are the only ones that have taken me to The Twilight Zone. But it doesn't terrify me as the show did -- although that was delicious. It's a different dimension they take me to, one where I feel a world without me at the same time as I feel the brush of my children's lives against mine.

I am reassured, through the goose bumps on my skin, about my legacy. Of course it involves food that can't touch, surly first words in the morning, and a last minute due date as the only sure way to complete a task.

 

What else embodies me more?

The Twilight Zone, an area of indefinite boundaries. Unable to delineate where one existence ends, and another begins. 

 * * * 

A Post of Good Things

 MetroParent Milwaukee has been nationally recognized and awarded two silver media awards at the Parenting Media Association's annual awards ceremony in Baltimore this weekend.

They were given a silver for General Excellence and a silver for Best Blog/Best Blogger. Philadelphia's online parenting magazine placed gold, and Chicago placed bronze. My weekly MetroParent Milwaukee column, Mom Logic, was recognized as a silver, in between those two big dogs.

Thank you to Liz Paulsen, my editor at MetroParent for the opportunities she has always passed on to me. I thank her for her encouragement and faith in what I do, and the space to do it in. Thank you to the readers, that click on to Mom Logic every week. I appreciate you.

In my mind, I see this right now:

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

because I remember the morning I logged on to MetroParent Milwaukee, and knew that I wanted to write for them and to serve the parents of our community. MetroParent gave me that chance, and my column there allows me to write in an arena that gives me purpose. Guiding, sharing, and building a community with parents that is based on honesty and experience is a satisfying relationship for me, and the readers that click on MetroParent as Milwaukee's #1 resource for parenting.

I'm proud, and grateful, to represent MetroParent.

Thank you for saying yes, Liz.

And Philly and Chitown, proud to be alongside you! You make me look good!

 

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