Kathyesque

Okay, here’s a meme with questions sent to me by The Lass.

If you want to play, leave me a message in the comments and I’ll think up five questions for you to answer. Post the responses in your journal, and link back to this entry.

1. What books have inspired you as a writer and why?

Anything by Marion Winik, the best writer you probably never heard of. She’s funny, insightful, and poetic. I want to write like that and I own everything she’s ever written. Her first book was called “First Comes Love,” the account of her marriage to a man she knew was gay when she married him. They had two kids and then he died of AIDS. Miraculously, neither she nor the kids got it. She also has written several books of essays. Here’s a hilarious and horrifying story about the day she went on Oprah after she wrote “First Comes Love.”

2. The house is on fire! You can grab two things and make it out safely. Which two things do you take and why?

My jewelry box, not because I have fine jewelry, but because it’s full of memories and family heirlooms - my dad’s and grandmother’s old watches, both of which I wear with regularity, my old Brownie pin, passport, and the extra buttons that came with all my good woolen skirts. Wait, those aren’t heirlooms. Why do I keep them? I dunno, but if there’s a fire and my skirts survive, I’ll still have all the spare buttons.

My purse, if I can get to it, for obvious reasons — cell phone, credit cards, my slightly busy social calendar, and the supermarket coupons I cut out and then never use. Maybe I should start sleeping with my purse next to the bed, now that you mention it.

3. Some people think that throughout our lives, we have certain golden moments - times when we seem to be in perfect sync and peace with ourselves and our circumstances. What have yours been and how have they affected you?

I guess my first one did not come until I was well into my thirties - I was active in a bicycle club, had a lot of friends, plenty to do. I had finally realized I could attract a man without significant emotional problems or social phobias, in other words, someone normal. I had a nice boyfriend (to whom I eventually got engaged) with a young daughter I adored. Even with a difficult breakup after I realized I didn’t love him, and had to break his heart as well as the kid’s, I still had the friends, a good social life, and plenty of fun.

The second one was when I was with the second man I got engaged to, who lived in New York City. He’d come down on Friday nights, leave in the wee hours Monday morning. It was like a honeymoon every weekend; we had the best time. Every so often I’d go up to New York to see him; I thought it was the coolest thing ever to have a beau who lived there. Curiously it’s been nine years since I last visited NYC, and I haven’t had any desire to go back since; I never did like it there. He lives two miles away from me now, but I haven’t seen him in the last eight years, and I’m grateful for that. Although I did find him on Facebook and he has gotten, um, quite LARGE, which has great schadenfreude value for me, because he once asked me how he could help me lose weight (and that was 15 lbs. ago), so there’s some poetic justice for you. That split really messed me up, and I spent far too long searching for someone who made me feel the way he did and not succeeding. But I digress.

And the third time is now - I’m finally at peace with not ever having children or getting married. I know who I am and what I can and cannot accomplish in this life. I’ve gotten published a couple of times in the newspaper, and that’s all I ever really wanted in that regard. I’ll be published in a regional magazine in the spring, maybe now I should try for a national publication? I’ve gotten into the writing thing and made a number of new friends that way, as the friends from bicycling days have faded away and moved on, and only the really close bicycling ones remain. I tutor to exercise my mothering impulses, and I still date because I hope to have sex (within the context of a meaningful relationship, of course) again before I shuffle off this mortal coil. I don’t rely too heavily on men for my identity anymore, which is a relief, actually. And I no longer take crap from anyone, male or female.

4. If you could give any gift in the world, what would you give and to whom?

I would give my handsome, funny, smart younger brother the gift of motivation and self-confidence so that he could get an education, find a better job than working in a factory, and have a better life. I would also give him the social skills and maturity he missed out on by being a heavy marijuana user from the ages of 13-42. Oh, wait, here’s another - I would give him the gift of realization that the surgery he had back in September to remove a cancerous kidney was his wake-up call to STOP SMOKING CIGARETTES, which he has not done and that just kills me. I guess that’s three or four things, but you get the idea.

5. What WOULD you do for a Klondike bar? Hmmm?

I’d do the hokey pokey and turn myself around, because that’s what it’s *really* all about.