Maycomb and Bookstores and Teenage Boy Readers and the Best Book Club I Know

An open letter to my book besties in the smallest most bestest Facebook Book Club ever:

You guys, you may not forgive me but here goes.

I haven’t read our book this month.

In fact, I probably won’t ever read Ready Player One.

I’m still working on Townie, a book I started on JUNE 8th (can you BEEELEEVE it’s taken me over a MONTH to finish this thing?) and can’t quite get to the end of, but I’m too close to the end to NOT keep going to the end.

And then…

We just had to go on and go to the bookstore in Homer yesterday and I saw my boy’s hands reach out in front of him and gravitationally lift toward Go Set a Watchman on the upper left corner of the top shelf and I watched his brain count up the money he had in his wallet and quickly realize that it wasn’t quite $27.99 so he sat right down and read four chapters in the half hour I shopped and took selfies with my book and chatted it up with the owner of the store.
On our way home we checked the mail, and there it was, Go Set a Watchman, the copy I’d ordered last week from Amazon.

He wouldn’t let anyone else touch it and he didn’t put it down until twenty hours later at 4 p.m. today when he said:

THAT.

Now THAT…was good.

I build my platform and I think of Jesus and I haul them to 4-H meetings and I sip my red wine and I make land deals this week but really…

I have to finish Townie.

Because I have to start Go Set a Watchman.

Now.

Because I see reviews that Atticus is a bigot and I hear the news that he and Scout had a blow-out and my man-boy-literary snob is snorting in the back seat and volunteering to stay and watch the truck while the rest of us do a library trip and I see his eyes get big over the edge of the new hardcover that smells so good and

my whole family is waiting for me to start Go Set a Watchman.

After reading To Kill a Mockingbird out loud to them on our big road trip in April…

How could I not read this to them in August?

How could I not read it to ME in August? Or this, the last week of July?

So between my mother being here from out of state and needing the attention of good company…

…and between our farm life being in full swing with fair prep and growing animals…

…and between the excitement of a new chunk of land that will cradle our homestead and even better a WHOLE ROOM FOR A LIBRARY…

…my stack of books seductively calls my name and as I dream of baskets of paperbacks that hold titles for yearly reading goals…at the top of the stack is our sweet Harper Lee with her hardcover that without knowing it, we’ve all been anticipating, and friends, I hang my head in book-club shame but I say it clear and I say it sure…

Ready Player One is never going to fit into my life.

I face it, own it, have come to terms with it, and now…

I’m telling you.

I bare my bookish soul and I face my bookish friends and I say I’m just not going to be able to read our book of the month, and even if I had time I wouldn’t because I can’t squeeze in one more book before I move on to Harper’s and it’s right there on the kitchen table while our other selection sits somewhere in the abyss of the Nook with the dark screen.

I won’t be able to chat and get excited and type answers in a bookish frenzy about the new favorite book we all love and the new favorite characters we all meet, and while I’ll miss that this month, I know you all understand.

Scout calls.

She’s right there.

Atticus beckons.

I can almost see him reading the newspaper in the parlor.

Maycomb begs entry and soon I’ll smell her streets.

And right after I finish Townie…

I’ll open the pages on this new one here and along with my boy…

…and his siblings and his dad…

….I’ll fall in.

All These Years

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All these years that I’ve been holding you…

The morning whisper before the routine of the day and it’s me and it’s him and it’s quiet before kids louden the house and it’s all these years and all that holding…

All these years.

A day can seem like a year and one year looks like the one before it and pretty soon all the years mix into one big day…and the messes and the money and the love and the fights and the hugs and the tears and the critters and the kids and the good and the not-always-good…they all blend up together in a sweet day-swirl of years that soften as they go, and pretty soon it’s been over twenty now that you’ve been holding each other in the dark and in the quiet.

How did we get to all these years when I thought we were still just starting?

How did the babies go on and grow and get to be a mini-version of the adults they’re turning into?

And how did we somehow get all grown up when we still have so much work to do on growing up?

All these years…

The trail we boondock bumps and jars and I hop off the four-wheeler while he works out the high-center and I walk with the fireweed and my hands touch the tall grass and there…right there…is where I’d have him put the house we’ll stay in for all the years that are yet to come.

It rolls like a meadow from back home, but it’s rugged like a spruce from this home, and my eyes water because I’d really love to buy this land and standing here in the fireweed, I’m standing at my to-be kitchen sink and looking out my to-be big window and right there my little horses are grazing in their to-be pasture while my children do what farm children do, they hunt and run and yell and create and care for critters here on their to-be homestead where they’ll bring their to-be children back to spend sunny days and wrap their dirty play-stained fingers around mine someday.

I look at the old cottonwood that reaches its emerald clumps of leaves high in years-long praise. How old does a tree have to be to reach that size?

All those years it stood there.

Right there.

I want our house to be right here. I want to look out over that meadow every day and I want this cottonwood to be here with us. Right here is where I want our house to be.

He usually has to think things over for a good long time. He’s like that and it’s good.

But I ask him if we can’t pray on this one because sometimes God decides to move faster than we do and

God? Can this be one of those times because all these years are going by faster than I thought they would.

I want Him to move faster than smart husbands who mull long so we clasp hands and I try not to cry because sometimes God moves even slower than husbands who take time, and I’ve learned while that’s hard, it’s a good thing too.

But in the slowness when will we finally grow into who we are?

When do we finally have it together?

When do we finally look out over the meadow and feel like there’s peace?

When do we quit feeling like a wreck, like a mess, like there is so.much.more growing up to do?

When do we finally feel like we’re Home?

It’s hard to wait and God, can’t You just make it happen fast?

But then today I remember.

This time of year marks the time of year I said yes to Jesus.

Twelve now since I said yes, I’ll follow and I’ll grow up into the girl you had in mind when you made me. Yes. I will follow.

In all my waiting to finally be there…I forget that it’s not just twelve days.

I’m growing up.

It might be slow, but I’m closer to Home now than I was then and even when I’m high-centered, I’m still on the trail.

All these years…

I’ve been holding you…

When I reach my hands up in years-old praise and stand firm in this good soil He gives…

…or when I lay broken like the spruce that snapped in the massive wind storm years back and just hasn’t quite gathered the strength yet to stand…

…or when my heart is hardened like the burl, that huge one that forms around a mar in the design and grows bigger until it’s finally chopped off and used for good…

…or when I sit quiet and vibrant like the wildflowers that show up briefly and grace her surroundings with beauty…

…all these years He’s been holding me.

I’m growing.

You…me…we’re getting there.

In the quiet…in the dark…in the good…in the bad…

All these kids and all these critters and all these fears and all these tears and all these flaws and all this growing and all these years…

We put an offer on the land today.

We might get it or we might not.

We might have to wait for another meadow or we might have to make one right where we are.

But today, this day of meadows and dreams and hopes and prayers I know this: all these years…

…He’s been holding.

He’s been holding.

Sex Ed on the Farm

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We have a hog with a hernia that her cage mate thinks is a nipple so she lays around nursing on it like a baby.

We have a guinea pig with cancer of the mammory glands and a penis that protrudes, which requires Preparation H.

We have a chicken who thinks she’s mama to a dozen pheasants and spends meal times telling the mini horse all about it.

We have a gelding who forgets he’s gelded when the sun is high and the breeze is nice.

We have a rooster that plays cat and mouse with his 22 hens, and we have a juvenile gander that has just started trying to mount the girl goose…sideways.

That right there is the kinda sex ed they just don’t teach in books.

🙂

‪

An Ordinary Afternoon on the Farm; All in a Day

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New baby bunny for my rabbit showman. We pretty much adore her.

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My little chicken wrangler.

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We’re nursing a quail rooster that was getting picked on. Pecked on, I should say. He came to us with one eye; naturally we dubbed him Rooster Cogburn. We call him Chuck for short. A little coconut oil treatment has him healing well, and exciting news, once all the scabbing came off and he started healing, he still has both eyes.

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My girl and her dad built a new trough for her hogs. We love the pigs. Really we do. Lets just say the smells, the pig chases, the level of maintenance these piggies require…these things make me glad that pigs are a summer project only 🙂

My girl is teaching her pony to drive. He harnessed up like a champ and long-reigned like he’d always been doing it. Can’t wait to see her and her boy with his new cart!

We could take about a thousand chickabitty pics and every one is our new favorite. Not sure there’s anything cuter than a sweet baby chicky.

See what I mean? ❤

Our pretty boy Beau.

Baby geese follow their mama girl everywhere.

Sharp Shooting

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The sweetest blue eyes I’d ever seen were in the face of my newborn firstborn.

Those precious little eyes somehow recognized mine and when the dark blue lightened to the shade of the sky over the next days…

…it was like they’d forever been a part of my life.

The eyes of my firstborn.

I could sink into the coolness of their blue and they’ve seen three siblings added to our family.

I look at those eyes sometimes and wonder how they’ll look one day when he weds the one who’ll become part of him.

They’ve sparkled with the stars as they’ve seen animals born.

They’ve leaked pure tears of sorrow when they’ve seen animals die.

They’ve seen his mama be angry and happy and cry and they’ve seen years of his Daddy being a strong and good man.

They’ve seen countless words on countless pages and though they fought the learning, they soon learned to devour ink on the page and every day they bring other worlds and big ideas and solid truths to the mind of my boy.

If there’s a shiny trout swirling beneath the hole in the ice, the eyes of my firstborn will lock onto the iridescence and won’t leave the murky depths until he’s got the fish on the end of the line.

The blue eyes will take in the colors God made and they’ll watch the fish swim off in a rainbow flash after gently being released.

His eyes detect the jump of a salmon across a wide and roaring rocky river.

His eyes tell him whether a fish is hooked in the mouth or snagged in the body before it even breaks the surface of the water at the end of his line.

His eyes can spot a spruce hen in a treetop before anyone else has even seen the tree.

His eyes have a knack for bringing the target close and a bulls eye stopped surprising me a long time ago.

It doesn’t surprise me when he delights in bringing home food to provide for his family and he was young when his eyes, and his hands, saw that a man of the family will do just that.

I wouldn’t think he’d do anything different than what he does with his little animals…teach others the goodness God gives when he gives us critters, and my boy’s eyes have a knack for seeing just who needs to know that the most.

What did surprise me though, was yesterday after his routine eye exam, we learned that my firstborn is visually impaired.

As in, he has no vision except for peripheral in one of those big blue eyes of his.

Mechanically, his eye works fine. Visually, that eye just doesn’t see.

All this time…

He can only see out of one eye.

All this time…

He’s been sharpshooting with one eye.

We went on with our day, just another blurb in the blurbs of life and our morning went into afternoon and our errands split us all up before coming back together and we didn’t get much of a chance to talk about this thing that will be with my boy now until he leaves this earth.

But stretched out over the afternoon busy, I’d think on it here and there.

A fishing hook in his good eye could render him completely blind.

A fragment from a misfire could take his left-eye dominance and end any shooting for the rest of his life.

His driver’s license will always say RESTRICTION.

He will always turn his head a certain way to take the whole sight in.

He may not be able to serve in the military.

He’ll never be able to be a pilot.

But aren’t those eyes still the sweetest blue and how many eyes do we need to see goodness?

How well do we need to see to see love?

If both of my arms didn’t work, could I still hug?

If I was missing a leg, would the steps I take still matter?

His blind spots on the freeway might be a little bigger than normal-sighted drivers and his normally-cautious self will have to be even more cautious now and he’ll always have to protect his eyes, but more than the blue seeing the green of the world around him, I want the eyes of his heart to always see the LORD and to see the good and to see the love…

and for those things I pray he’ll never be visually impaired.

I pray my vision will never be so restricted that I don’t teach him to see you and to see love and may we all always have a heart to see.

The news from his morning appointment could have been terrible.

We’ve stood up under cancer and we’ve said goodbye to loved ones and there are mothers right here on this planet, right now, today, who’ve had to turn loose of their babies’ hands and somehow go on and let their heart keep beating even while it’s being ripped clean out of their chest in agony.

Today’s news wasn’t bad.

It’ll just change how we see some things.

My boy will be fine.

And last night as my husband tells me how our child, this firstborn boy with big blue eyes, how he has such a great attitude about it. He told me how, before dinner, they set up the new bow our boy got for Christmas and they put a target out on a bale of hay in the front yard so they could play with the new toy and do some sighting-in.

Our boy was casual about the whole affair.

He’ll just wear his glasses, he said.

He’ll make sure to be mindful of where his fish hooks are.

And he took up his bow and he loaded an arrow…

It’s no big deal Dad, he said.

I can still see fine.

He brought the target into his line of vision…

…and he shot a bulls eye.

Your path led through the sea, your way through the mighty waters, though your footprints were not seen. Psalm 77:19

Every Summer…

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There are times, when nearing July…

a couple yearns for rolling land and sand and grass…

and fireflies.

The song of the Midwest yowls and the people pull and it somehow all begs them…

Just bring the babies to run and laugh and chase.

But then they remember…

Alaska.

The mountains so patient.

The beaches so long.

The trees so tall and the salmon so many…the people so fierce.

Why would we ever think to leave?

And the annual tears fall…

Reviews, Sales, and Giveaways

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Now that the school year is over, and before we get too far into next year’s planning, I’m spending a bit of our summer working to get the story of Annie out there and to drum up some book reviews.

Best way to do that is with a big sale and some giveaways. 🙂

Annie Spruce is now on sale through the end of July…$3.99 for Kindle on Amazon, and I have a giveaway currently running on Goodreads. If you are interested in reading and reviewing Annie Spruce, The Dog That Didn’t Die, I’d love to send you a copy today.

Happy reading and Happy Summer!

Cassandra
🙂

Goodreads Book Giveaway

Annie Spruce, The Dog That Didn’t Die

by Cassandra Rankin

Giveaway ends July 31, 2015.

See the giveaway details
at Goodreads.

Enter Giveaway

Cirque, Summer Issue

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So I wrote a piece about my good man.

And our good state.

And a good woman we met along the way.

Cirque Journal has selected it for publication in their Summer 2015 issue!

A little bowled over and trembly about the whole deal.

I received an email last night that the issue is HOURS away from publication.

From Cirque’s website:

Cirque was founded in 2009 by Anchorage poet Mike Burwell. Cirque, published in Anchorage, Alaska, is a regional journal created to share the best writing in the region with the rest of the world. This regional literary journal invites emerging and established writers living in the North Pacific Rim—Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Hawaii, Yukon Territory, Alberta, British Columbia, and Chukotka.

Can’t wait to see my little offering of words next to so many of today’s greats from this side of the world.

Cirque brings together the finest literary and artistic talent from Alaska and the Pacific Northwest. Read the current issue below.

Cirque Journal

Taking the Mare Back, Baby Robins, and Father’s Day Flowers

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So we took the mare back yesterday.

And it about broke all of our hearts.

For a moment…for a week…it felt like maybe she belonged here. Like maybe her person would see that too. But instead, we could only fix up her feet some, braid her mane and tail, have our doc take a look at her, and love her.

We loved her while she was here.

Because as my husband said, when there’s a critter in our care, we do all we can. And even though she was loved here and practically the whole neighborhood came together to escort her back home… …sometimes all we can… just doesn’t feel like enough.

When the feeling of sickness in my gut rose up into my heart and pushed tears straight on out my eyes, they brought a strange new emotion. A helpless sense of having to let go. Letting go of something that could be part of your life…for all of its life…for all of your life…but knowing that for right now, for this time…it can’t be. Sometimes there just has to be a letting go.

I learned it’s so hard. It hurts.

So today, this day when we celebrate dads and grandpas and menfolk that love, …I’m thankful that these two don’t let go. The one the Father above gave me here below…the one who loves me…loves these children we made…loves this thing he’s been given, this band of six.

And the One who holds even tighter…the One Almighty. The One, who -no matter who lets go here on earth- won’t.

Ever.

The LORD Himself goes before you and will be with you; He will never leave you nor forsake you. Deuteronomy 31:8

He knows all about letting go. He wrote the Book on setting a loved one free into a less than perfect environment and He knows heartache and He knows missing them when they’re gone. He knows.

He knows. And on the way home from church…on the way home from sinking deep into the knowing that He knows and that there are men who are blessed and one of them is mine, we counted how long it was since his own father’s been gone.

Sixteen years too long without knowing these four or meeting great-grandchildren or seeing two of his own daughters’ sons serve this country like he did.

But something marvelous…when we pulled in the driveway, there was his tree, all a’bloom.

Since having to dig up the memory garden so many years ago and plunking his twisty, gnarled-up little willow tree that reminds me of his toughness right on top of a grassy mound…we haven’t seen any flowers. I’d look at it sitting there each summer…just waiting for me to find the perfect spot so it could remind us.

Remind us to remember those we loved because someday we’re going to have to let go of them.

Babies or breastfeeding or crazy little farms kept me from replanting it all this time, but then today…

….those flowers. And I never really realized it before, but we let go and they’re gone but the part of them that stays within us grows us…

… and one day…

…all we see are the flowers.

We see the pain but the pain brings a beauty and pretty soon they blend together and it’s all just beautiful and our hearts are soft with it all.

Last night after the mare, -my eyes still puffy from the tears that surprised me- my boy found a baby robin. He and his siblings showed me a dead mama robin they’d found two days before and they wanted to bring the baby in, because what if that’s the baby’s mama, Mama?

I looked at the red breast, beautiful but lifeless there in our woods, and I looked at the baby, yellow beak opening to the sky, and I listened to the wind. I looked to the treetops and I searched the sky. Maybe it was a different mama bird lying there?

And if the Almighty knows when a sparrow falls to the ground, won’t He also have His eye on a baby robin?

A sorrel mare?

I heard birds flitting in the trees and we identified the calls. Chickadee…Jay… wings flitted in the summer evening.

There! There’s a robin call and maybe just a glint of orange through the green of the spruce.

I had them test the grip of the baby bird. She could wrap her feet around my son’s finger. The experts said that means she’ll fly.

We chased off the cats and I had my son set her in a tree.

We let the baby go.

My heart couldn’t take much more letting go and this blessed man I’ve been given, he tells me I love the heart God put in you and you are fearfully and wonderfully made.

We have to hold them while they’re here.

We have to love them while they’re with us.

We have to show them they’re valuable…that they’re cherished…that they’re of great worth and great beauty.

We have to hold tight and sometimes we forget but let’s not forget any more but instead remember to love all-out every moment we have a kid or a critter or a friend or a neighbor or a spouse or a parent or a sparrow in our care. And then someday…

…because they never really belonged to us…

…they’ll be escorted Home…

…and we’ll let them go.

***

Happy Father’s Day to you who are dads. Your strength is great and your job is immense.

He is like a tree planted by streams of water, which yields its fruit in season and whose leaf does not wither. Psalm 1

***

Our Hard Working, Long and Sunny Week in Which We Made New Friends and Grew Bolder but Didn’t Get to Visit with Kate DiCamillo

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I haven’t had much time to write this week.

Shift work…runaway horses…new chicks on the farm…enough barnyard chores for a week’s worth of sunburn…

…it’s been a long week.

It’s been a great week, but a long week.

I bought a book last week and it reminded me to be bold.

So this week I’m trying.

But squished in next to trying to be being bold, I had to be productive and now, at the end of it, my arms are red, my nose is peeling, my barns are clean, and there’s a ton of dirt under my fingernails.

And the week has taught me all over again that every season brings new chores and new changes and new jobs and new critters.

Like the mare.

She showed up at my friend’s house a couple streets over. They managed to get her over to our place after she’d had a long morning on the run. There was a near deathly mishap when her owner came to pick her up and was careless and almost killed her, and I decided to be bold that day and I said No.

I won’t let this animal take another step.

I felt the boldness inside of me and it might have been sleeping but I remember now that it’s there and it roars loudly and when I heard it I hooked the lead rope onto the mare’s halter and I turned her around and I walked her back to my farm.

I learned that I really am a seasoned animal person now. A farmer. A rancher. Whatever you want to call it, one who is a caretaker of animals wants what’s best for the critter even when it might be inconvenient or hard or expensive or make you walk a bit.

This horse taught me that. This place has taught me that. It felt good. It felt right.

It felt bold.

And now the mare is hanging out with us for a while.

One of our favorite authors in all the world made the trek to Alaska and we planned the trip through the mountain pass to go stand in line and shake her hand.

But when the mare came, we needed to change our plans. We altered the route of our day and one of my kids looked sad. She said Mama, I was kinda lookin forward to shakin Kate’s hand.

And truth be known, I was probably looking forward to it even more than she was because Kate knows how to put words on paper that dance together and doesn’t every writer strive for that and want to look someone in the eye who can do that and say good job?

You do it right and you live the words and you do it well and I appreciate all you do because that’s what I try to do too, and because we both devote ourselves to trying…to needing…to having to put down the lives and the love on paper…I feel connected to you and in awe of you and in kinship with you…all at the same time.

That’s what my handshake was going to say.

But since the mare was here and needed us, we instead did what writers will do and we sent words strewn out on paper, and of course a book signed with shaky hands.

I felt insecure.

Because what do you write to your hero who writes?

But I felt bold too.

Because getting past the scared and giving your hero the best of what you’ve made?

That made me use my moxie.

Our friend who’d also been planning, she packed it along with her and she hand-delivered it and she texted me and there it all was, in Kate’s hand…

And now she feels like a new old friend.

So we checked out every one of her books we could find at the library and we howled over the adventures of Louise and Monique and we spent time with Kate on this side of the pass.

And then, last but not least, rounding out our new friends for the week, came the chicks. Fuzzy yellow, some brown, one black, little, peeping, baby chicks and I don’t think I’ll EVER get over how cute these things are when they’re fresh out of the egg.

There’s something about baby chickens that reminds me every time how fragile and delicate life is.

But how strong and resilient that life within every creature is too.

Bold.

These babies peck their way out of their shell when it’s time.

They survive the first awkward, gangly moments, live through being scooped up and plopped into a box with dozens of others like them to travel long distances at varying degrees of temperature and then they hit the feed stores just learning how to walk while they go on to practice eating, drinking, pecking and peeping their way up to the point of their death.

We bring them home and marvel at their smallness.

And how sturdy and confidently they stand.

How bold they are.

These two, in honor of Kate…in honor of our week…in honor of boldness…

…we named these two Louise and Monique.

***

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Goodreads Book Giveaway

by Cassandra Rankin

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