How the Ocean Trapped Me

This year for the holiday, my family decided it would be best to rent a beach house in order to accommodate everyone with their own bedroom -- such is the way of everyone being an adult and picky. It was a good idea. It was my idea. And we quickly zeroed in on Dauphin Island as the perfect destination. Not only that, but we narrowed our search down even further to a house at the far western tip of that island where nothing but shrubs and grass grow and all is sand and water.

(I'm not being dramatic. That's all totally serious and true.)

Background: Dauphin Island is a barrier island off the coast of Mobile, Alabama. It's not too far from our home in Gulfport, Mississippi, nor is it very large. As islands go, it's barely there (6 square miles!), but it's historically significant as being a few hundred yards from Admiral Farragut when he spoke the words, "Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead!" during the battle of Mobile Bay in the Civil War.

Well, renting houses online is an exciting thing. Websites and photos give you a general idea of the place you're about to spend quality time in, but you can never really know what it'll be like until you're pulling your car onto a sand-and-pebble driveway in front of a up-on-stilts-house while the ocean laps at the shore just feet away. There's just no real substitute for stepping out onto damp sand and looking South to the Gulf of Mexico, then North to Mobile bay - both close enough to splash. No real way to prepare for what it might mean should a storm roll in while you're living in this up-on-stilts-house on an island with one road down the center...

As you've probably guessed, this is exactly what happened. On Christmas day, winter storm Euclid tore across the country and in the south, he called to the seas. "Rise up! Rise up!" He cried. "Higher! Louder! Steal that driveway! SHAKE THAT HOUSE!"

It was insane. The house shook every time the waves crashed against the stilts (a-ha! this is why they're on stilts!), which might have been lulling had I not been wondering just how deep those stilts were buried in the earth. I hoped they were all in the bedrock, but suspected not. By 10:00pm, the ocean had swallowed the bottom step leading to the driveway, turning the sand to muck, and the waves were nearing the road.

That's about when we stopped looking. We were in it for the long haul no matter how high the seas got. The tornado warnings kept going, but houses on stilts HAVE NO BASEMENTS. So we decided to get some sleep, and hope for the best.

Obviously, I'm still here, but the next morning was...interesting. I've captured some of the aftermath for you...

Thanks to the realtor, we had enough warning to move our cars across the street, otherwise, my trusty vehicle might still be in Alabama...or on its way to Costa Rica.

We were stuck for two days and just as the water receded enough to get our cars back in the driveway, another storm rolled in and it started all over again.

Hope your holiday was a little less eventful and ten times more safe than mine.

(All that said, I would totally stay in a up-on-stilts-house again. Just....in May or June.)

On funerals and family

I was eleven when my nonie died.

My parents decided that my sister and I were too little to deal with prolonged knowledge of her illness and only told us three months before her death that she had cancer. I remember where I was when my father called me inside to hear the news of her passing – standing in a four-foot-deep trench I’d been laboring over with my best friends, Tom and Mike. We had some notion that such a trench would help us capture one of the bullies in the neighborhood. What we would do after his capture, however, was a mystery, but that didn’t matter. The trench took weeks to dig and that was really the point of the exercise.

I don’t remember my reaction in the moment. I remember returning to that trench with my friends and having distant awareness that our trench was the exact shape and size of a grave.

We traveled to Mississippi where the family gathered. I remember feeling strangely detached and confused. I tried to understand. I knew death was sad. It was an ending and if the television was correct, there would be wailing and uncontrollable sobbing.

I waited for that to hit me and while I waited, I explained it to my little sister who, at the age of eight, was surely more lost than I was. It made me feel better.

“Rosie,” I said, “tomorrow is going to be a very sad day. People might not smile. We’ll have to be quiet.”

This was my way of preparing her (and myself) for a day with no laughter and no play. But when that day came, there were smiles everywhere I looked. My aunts and uncles smiled, my parents smiled, all the distant relatives I didn’t remember and couldn’t keep straight, they all smiled. They laughed and hugged and traded stories for hours. My favorite was the story of Nonie letting the horses follow her into the kitchen for a quick apple so long as Poppy wasn’t around to see.

It was many years before I would come to understand funerals. In fact, it was many years before I would attend another. I came to understand the sobbing and the wailing, I came to understand the laughter, and I came to understand how family weaves and unweaves itself around theses shades of sorrow.

Late this November, one day after I turned thirty-two, Poppy passed away.

This time, I returned home with equal parts sadness and anticipation. I knew there would be tears and difficult moments, strained throats and messy noses, but I also looked forward to seeing the aunts, uncles, and cousins who live all across the country.

I expected the reunion to be good. I expected it to come with surprises and stories and all the awkward moments imaginable. And it did. But it also came with moments so touching and humbling that I hardly knew how to react.

One of those moments was on the day of the funeral. After the service, the church had prepared a meal for the family and we all filed over to the gym to feast. I stood to the side with a few of my cousins, letting others go through the line first. One cousin, who I’ll call J, studying the buffet table, said, “Those better not be Chick-fil-a nuggets.”

This was a surprise. Of all the cousins and as far as I knew, I was the only one that fell in the LGBTQ spectrum. My cousins, all younger than me, didn't have to care that the church was serving food from an institution that actively takes an anti-LGBTQ stance and funds anti-LGBTQ causes. They didn't have to care, and yet, they did. They all did.

Cousin J went to the table, plucked one from the platter, and tasted it with the results we feared.

The rest of the cousins collectively sighed and as we moved through the buffet line, every single one of them walked quietly past the nuggets and instead filled their plates with potatoes and salad.

It was a quiet resistance and I marveled at the cousins I hardly knew all making that choice.

When my uncle sat at our table with a small pile of nuggets on his plate, no one said a thing. At least, not while I was there. I left the table at one point and when I returned, noticed that my uncle had pushed his nuggets to the side of his plate and didn’t eat a one.

In some ways, this defied all expectation. This was certainly one of the last things I expected to learn about my Mississippi-based family while sitting in church. It was almost as absurd as discovering that my great-great grandmother’s middle name was Bobo. Almost as absurd as the number of roosters in my grandparents’ house. Almost as absurd as sprinkling Poppy’s ashes into the lake – his lake – ten feet from a floating gator head. But no less amazing and wonderful for it.

I thought I knew about funerals. I thought I knew that they were for the living – for mourning and remembering and moving on. But they’re also about discovering who we are now and how we fit together as pieces of a family.

Conversations with Mom

A short time ago, my sister and I visited my mom. While we were there, I decided to introduce them to The Vampire Diaries. It was really more for my sister, who I was sure would love the show every bit as much as I do. She did. But the surprise was that my mom did also. After I left, she continued to catch up through the end of season two. She missed season three entirely and one day, this happened.

(Note - all conversations with my mother improve if you imagine that she speaks like a Southern Belle.)

(Second note - she doesn't actually look like Katherine Pierce, but I don't have a handy picture of her in hoops.)

MOM: You remember that vampire show? The one you showed me?
ME: The Vampire Diaries?
MOM: Yeah. That one. Well. I turned on the TV the other day and there it was -
ME: Oh, no. You mean you caught the season 4 premiere?
MOM: Well, yeah. I guess. I just thought I'd be able to fill in the gaps on my own.
ME: *cringing* ....and?
MOM: And I'll be damned if Elena didn't turn into a vampire!

And then yesterday, we were chatting about nothing related to vampires when this happened.

MOM: Have you seen Lincoln, yet?
ME: No. I promise you I'll see Breaking Dawn 2 before I see anything else.
MOM: Oh! I hadn't done any of the Twilight things until just the other day when they showed the first two movies on TV. I watched them.
ME: ....and?
MOM: You know what I've decided? I've decided that the next time I get a pet, I'm going to get a werewolf.
ME: .....
MOM: Because I miss my cat, but I don't have a lot of time and if I got busy, my werewolf could just take care of itself. They're very self-sufficient and I think they're pretty. Don't you think they're pretty?
ME: .....I have to go internet you now.

So there you go. Some people post conversations with their children. I, apparently, post conversations with my mother.

On Attacking Baristas and Xylophones

I'm very protective of the music I use for writing. I search long and hard for the perfect collection of songs that can suffuse my brain with the tone I want to create in my novels. Every revision requires at least one new song to represent the shift, the new sense of climate I'm aiming to add to the story.

There's a small handful of people I'm willing to share my songs with. I can count them on one hand. It's not that I don't want to share my music, but I'm sort of afraid that if I give my story songs away, I'll dilute the power they hold over my subconscious. Somehow, I'm convinced that giving away the musical kernel of the novel is to give away the kernel of the story itself.

Irrational. I know. But it means that when I'm sitting in my coffeeshop, sipping my cappuccino on a Tuesday morning, and one of my hard-discovered songs comes over the speakers, I immediately leap to my feet and attack the mild-mannered, music-literate, cappuccino-making genius behind the counter with what I'm sure is a terrifying "WHY MY MUSIC, YOU THIEF????"

Don't fret. The encounter ended with mutual respect, one more cappuccino, and an exchange of music recommendations.

The point is, I'm as emotionally invested in my music as I am in my own novels. There's something really amazing about finding a song that perfectly captures a piece of my own imagination - the spark of a character, the first image of the story, the core of its emotion. It reminds me that I'm participating in a much larger tapestry of creative thought, adding to a conversation that's been going for hundreds of years in every medium storytellers can get their fingers on.

Which is my long-winded way of saying music is important to me, yo. (And I'm a little crazy about it).

As a way to further establish how crazy I am (and entertain you with my follies), I'll offer this final example.

About a week ago, M (one of the four people I share music with), sent me a song with the explanation, "you should listen to this because it's weird."

And it was. Weird. But oddly appealing. I filed the recommendation away for further thought and countered with a piece that was equally as odd, but far less appealing with attack xylophones. The point is we had a decent exchange about this piece of music.

Fast forward a week to two days ago when I encounter a song I think M will like. I send it and the following happens:

Me: Have you heard of this band? I like them so I think you will, too.
M: .....I have. Didn't I send you one of their weird songs last week?
Me: Um. You did? Did I like it?
M: You did. There's a problem with your brain.
Me: DON'T YOU THINK I KNOW?!

I'm on the prowl again. Searching for the music that will pattern my brain for the foreseeable future. Send your recs if you've got 'em!

Overdue / How I was defeated by a sink

Well. October happened.

But before October, there was September and that month was filled with travel and adventure.

Sometime over the summer, Tessa and I decided we'd be joining a few other YA writers on a retreat in the wilds of the French countryside. However, we seem incapable of hopping the pond without also stopping in the UK, so the trip quickly morphed into a two-week, two-country extravaganza. And it was brilliant.

In England alone, we met editors, agents, writers, bloggers, and family members. We rode the London Eye (after multiple trips to England, it was high time we knocked that one off our list), visited the Rosetta stone, got gouged by the Tube, walked miles and miles and miles, had a pint at The Anchor (which boasts many a debaucherous night with Charles Dickens), happened upon Douglas Adams' grave (as well as many cats), and more.

But it's the hotel room I really want to talk about. The sink inside it, to be more precise.

You see, I'm convinced it was a practical joke. It was not meant to be used by anyone sporting a head.

It's worth noting that Tessa and I have traveled together a lot. Not to and from Mississippi to visit my family, but all over Japan, Bali, and Europe. We backpacked through eight countries when we were sophomores in college. We're practiced travelers. We've managed crises in countries where neither of us spoke the language and returned with all our limbs in tact.

And England defeated us with a sink.

The bathroom in this establishment had clearly been a closet once upon a time, but as space is at a premium in London, it was converted into a bathroom with a toilet crammed in one end and a shower stall in the other. In the middle was a sink no wider than a loaf of bread and no longer than the same. It was petite. Adorable even, and smart given the restraints of the room.

Clever, I thought, to make a sink small enough that the door can still close!

I was so charmed by it's size, that it didn't occur to me that the shelf above the sink, of approximately the same dimensions, would be a problem.

Until I brushed my teeth and leaning down to spit found only the shelf and not the sink staring back at me.

I stopped. Considered. Bent my knees to see if it would be possible to hit the sink from a shorter height. (It is not). Then, I tried to squish my head between the shelf and the sink and be very careful with my aim. This....was only partly successful.

The floor got messy. I got messy. Tessa giggled. I giggled. I looked for some explanation. Some clue that I was doing it wrong, that in my travels, I'd forgotten how to sink. But no. This was THE sink. There was no way to push the shelf out of the way, flip it up or down. Clearly, I was supposed to be capable of using this travesty of a sink.

AND YET.

I eventually gave up. A shower works just as well as a sink and one of our precious towels had already been sacrificed to this great international practical joke.

And every single time I or Tessa went to use the sink, we had to relive the humiliation ALL OVER AGAIN. Half of the time, we knocked our heads against the shelf before remembering. Then there was the half-blind swivel between the sink and shower as we tried to wash our faces - that was an entirely different sort of crazy. Four days we were there and we left feeling relieved and confused.

Thankfully, our apartment in Paris greeted us with not one, but TWO unchallenging sinks.

I still don't understand how that happened. It was more a gesture at a sink than a sink. I wish I had a picture to share. Alas, I was laughing too hard to snap one.

Well played, England. Well played.

Why I haven't been blogging

Because I've been here...

And here...

Back in a bit. Probably with stories.

Dot Com

My website went live yesterday. I'm pretty taken with it. What do you think?

www.nataliecparker.com

Before you ask, I'll tell you. My web designer is ckladesign. He's pretty much made of fabulous.