I ferried my laptop to the kitchen table and brought up my novel-in-progress. A poppy-orange dawn filtered through window blinds and the coffeemaker hiccupped sighs and I relished being the only human in our house awake, tapping the pg dn key, feeling so smart for carving out private-time, feeling: cocky, the excessive type an Olympian experiences before failing epically at her best, most treasured event in front of millions and millions of critical eyes.
I came to ninja-crawling across tile towards the sectional. As the morning progressed, I jerked my chin at those hailing me as they passed through the family room to: nuke chocolate chip pancakes, play the piano, joyfully powerwalk. Eventually, my husband pried the TV remote from my fingers and switched the channel from the yeti documentary that no one will ever watch with me, even when I beg (you’ve got to see the yeti scalp, please), to hockey and my husband must have asked if he could change the channel, he would never not ask, nevertheless I was distressed when hockey interrupted the young National Geographic explorer entering the Tibetan temple resembling a She-shed and approached, fingers stretched, the yeti scalp. My husband flopped next to me and began sports-clapping-shouting at the TV so passionately, he righted my dire slump on the sectional.
“I WANT SCALP!”
After a while, hockey sucked the vivre out of my spouse and he shuffled, aged, to the breakfast bar and his own lurking PC. I watched him pull up his works-in-progress and it was then that I cracked, because: meddling with his writing tugged my husband’s lips into a smile so honest, it was concrete, sun-blessed, glittering confidence.
I can’t write, I blurted and there were tears and snot and pointless gestures. It’s over, I said. My writing is undercooked halibut. Chardonnay-free, sugar-free. No dairy. My writing isn’t even Akmak–worse, not Fritos. My writing is so skinny, it has completely disappeared.
My husband’s smile dissolved into a sympathetic moue. I heard the clack of the freezer making ice. An inherited clock chimed the wrong hour. By the fireplace, our elderly lab snored on the hearth, dreaming deeply.
But is your writing pub cheese.
Excuse me?
I believe it is.
Wut?
My husband slid his PC aside, leaned his elbows on the breakfast bar.
So here’s the thing, he said. I’ve devoured pub cheese for 15 years, bypassing crackers, digging in with a spoon. I am rich and whole and satisfied and better when I eat a tub of pub cheese. I’ve eaten award winning pub cheese and I’ve eaten simpler, horseradish-less pub cheese, but it’s all good. Every tub. 15 years of delicious tubfuls, babe. I’m a f***ing pub cheese expert.
My husband laughed. Our tween loped by with a contented cat in his arms. Thundering up the stairs, our tween laughed, too.
16, I muttered. 18, if you count dating.
Exactly.
Pub cheese. Really?
Let’s watch the yeti scalp.
My husband flopped down on the sectional and hooked an arm through mine.
And we did, we watched the entire documentary, beginning to end.
Last night, my little family and I stayed outside until 9pm social distancing with neighbors, all of us agreeing under a gorgeous full moon that all lives matter when BLACK LIVES MATTER, that peaceful protests are effective, all of us grateful change is here thanks to peaceful protestors in our community, our country and around the world, all of us grateful more change is coming.
m working on my French pronunciation thanks to Babbel-in-the-time-of-COVID19, so: Au revoir, April! I’ve enjoyed your showers and blooms and watching wild birds go spring-crazy and get very, very loud on our back patio–especially Quail Family Robinson.
ailed as my husband slid open the windows and a warm spring breeze entered the room, bringing birdsong from goldfinches and mourning doves and that hawk’s authoritative cry as it circled the park behind our house. My husband locked his fingers on my chin, turned my head to the windows. I saw the lush park, the small hill the coyotes howl from at night, the greeny mountains of the Angeles National Forest in the distance, the hawk’s tireless loops.
But then I startled myself. Our first day of quarantine, I told my Tween it was a holiday. We lounged in pj’s, drank hot chocolate, walked the dogs leisurely, and then my son played online games while FaceTiming his buddies: a lot. When my husband returned home (still at work for another week), I ordered him into the shower for office decontamination purposes, and then the 3 of us had the first of what have become regular family dinners, previously tricky things to coordinate due to my son’s piles of nightly homework and my husband’s unpredictable work schedule.
follow a schedule that makes no sense because there’s a virus out there that’s killing people and my kid is aware, aware, aware that people are dying, that his cousin is an ER Dr. on the front lines, that his auntie is at risk, that this is a weird and dangerous time.
And when Mom is on the couch cocooning in her king size white fuzzy blanket, sipping hot chocolate from her favorite mug emblazoned in: LIFE IS TOUGH, MY DARLING, BUT SO ARE YOU, she is waved at, not judged, as she binges on Star Trek or West World or MSNBC or that really bad Finnish crime drama with the bandy legged detective and sloppy dubbing.
The last event of the SCBWI Working Writer’s retreat consisted of 3 minutes allotted to each attendee to read aloud their first page of a manuscript. Professional critique was squeezed into that 3 minutes from a panel comprised of 4 agents/editors. All conference-goers were in attendance. We all heard what we all wrote. Y’all.
Heading to the SCBWI 
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