It’s been a while since a good Hollywood post, and there’s no stopping it this week. The Emmys happened Sunday night. And from the moment Jimmy Fallon met up with the cast of Glee and opened the show with a musical number complete with matching costumes and dancing in silhouette, I turned to Michael and said, “I’m so happy.”

Do you know the line in Music and Lyrics when Drew Barrymore’s character has just inadvertently dissed Hugh Grant’s character with a reference to how a “Pop song isn’t likely to impress” her ex-boyfriend? And Hugh Grant says, sure, it’s not great literature maybe, but nothing “makes people feel as good as fast as ‘I got sunshine, on a cloudy day.’”

It’s true. And nothing makes me as happy as fast as a good show-stopping musical number. When it was over, I applauded. Because I’ve done just enough singing and dancing in my life to know that stuff takes work, and I felt so thankful that they’d done the work and passed on the happy.

Then Monday came and with it the announcement for the new contestants on Dancing with the Stars. And I haven’t gotten excited about that cast in a couple years now, but this one made me very, very happy. Mostly because, it includes Jennifer Grey.

Dirty Dancing is one of the shows I watch pretty much any time I catch it on Cable. And if it happens to be at the final number, all the better. I’ve got “I had the time of my life” on my ipod, and when Dancing with the Stars did a Patrick Swayze tribute last year, I was beside myself. And as if just having Baby herself on the show wasn’t enough to thrill me, they paired her with Derek Hough. I like many of the professionals on DWTS, but he’s my favorite. As far as my world is concerned – and my Monday and Tuesday nights – Dancing is back.

Now, some of my friends and family members insist that I should also be watching So You Think You Can Dance. And I always intend to. But I know it will be missing two elements I really love about DWTS. One is the proven effectiveness of cross-pollenating your brand. So many times on DWTS, I haven’t even known the people who were cast. They were in fields (such as comedy, sports, the Disney Channel, or Reality TV) that I just wasn’t familiar with. Sometimes I didn’t like my first impression of them either. But then as they worked their butt off and showed us their vulnerability and their human-ness and their relatable thoughts, I came to like them. I cared that they existed, and I didn’t (always) want to see them go.

And speaking of working their butt off, that’s the other thing I love about this show. It’s the if-I-can-do-it-you-can factor. I love how often we actually watch people improve – right before our eyes. We see them struggle with the steps, feel embarrassed (I hate that part), get criticized (I really hate that part), and then get better. It’s a beautiful thing. A good dance can bring Carrie Inaba to tears, and I totally understand why. It tells a story. And sometimes it’s not a fictional one, and it’s not the story of a dance. It’s the story of a dancer, a person who wasn’t sure they could, a couple that fought and struggled through rehearsal but stayed persistent, or a person who’s been seen in every light but good, and then the work pays off and the couple comes together, and the person rises above, and it all comes together for the beautiful, inspiring end. And suddenly hard work seems so worth it, and very little seems too hard to overcome.

A cancer survivor once said that she dances every single day. She was definitely onto something.

(Photo by Xanda on Flickr.)

***

Yesterday I broke Jake’s heart when he looked at a family picture with everyone in it but him. He asked, “Where am I?” I said you weren’t born yet, and he looked at me like everything he’d ever known had just crumbled beneath him, and he was falling. “What does that MEAN?” So I told him. We looked at pregnant pictures and then at hospital pictures and then at snuggly pictures with baby sleepers and tiny little fingers. And suddenly he wanted to be a baby again, he wanted to grow little. And the whole thing broke my heart too. I’ve had emotional moments with all of my boys like this one, always when they realize there is death. And that’s what this seemed to be, like maybe the moment he realized he used to not exist suggested that one day he wouldn’t again. It’s hard watching children discover hard things.

***

The latest quote that haunts me, especially when it comes to my writing: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure but of succeeding at something that doesn’t really matter.”

***

I’ve rediscovered reading to my children. None of them are too young to pay attention, none of them too old to care. And, thus, I’ve taken back bedtime. No longer an exhausted battle of dragging us from life to sleep. Now it’s a happy event in which we’re real-live, actually, truly, together.

***

It’s exhausting to constantly grumble. Dr. Phil likes to say to people, “How’s that working for you?” It’s such a simple solution, but really. Why do we spend so much time criticizing, assuming the worst, believing the rumors, spreading the gossip, embracing road rage, jumping to conclusions, debating, fighting, holding grudges, being jealous, and refusing to move on? Don’t we know by now that happiness leads to more of it? I dare you to answer a grouchy checkout person with genuine kindness and see how they respond. I dare you to go out of your way to make sure the person who almost backed into you knows that you know we all make mistakes. I dare you to just change that thing about which you can’t seem to stop complaining. Double. Dog.

***

Perhaps Friday is a psychological myth. Maybe weekends never live up to the hype. We can’t really catch up on missed sleep. And despite what we want to believe, routine is more conducive to productivity. But here’s hoping for it anyway – the myth to be true, the rest to be possible, and for us to prove our surprising ability to be productive in the routine we create for ourselves. Happy Friday.

I like to-do lists and wish lists actually. I never have a wish list unless I’m pretty satisfied with life. And to-do lists are good because they give me something to look forward to. It would be awful to think you were done in life, wouldn’t it?

Still, I don’t like those moments – usually between 5 and 6 p.m., LIKE CLOCKWORK, when I’ve just finished work and I’m busy with supper and every single thing that’s out of place or left undone screams at me that my long-term to-do list looks exactly like it did months and months ago and it’s bound to look the same FOREVER. Poor Michael. He doesn’t even ask what’s wrong anymore when it’s that time of day, and I open the dishwasher a little harder than necessary and put spoons on the counter with emphasis.

So, in light of that, I am loving the delightful satisfaction of checking things off the list, here and there, the thrill of actually finishing something, of starting one week with a few more things completed than in the week before. Here are some of the things I’ve done lately to get that feeling.

Snapfish – I used to upload all my digital pictures to Snapfish.com with the goal that I would print them out eventually. (I still like albums you can flip through; I’m old-fashioned like that). But, you can probably see where I’m going with this. I stopped ordering actual prints about October of 2003. So I have some catching up to do, and it thrills me to no end to order a bunch and get that brightly-colored envelope in the mail, and then – more importantly – to tuck my memories into pretty albums and put them on our shelves. I love that feeling. And along these lines, I have ordered prints of the photographs from Jake’s birth and his first few weeks at home, so I’m at least one step toward that resolution at least.

Betsy-Tacy – Mom got me the first Betsy-Tacy book for Christmas, because of our blog-friend Katie who loves them. But I didn’t get to it until last week. You may know I once gave Anne of Green Gables to my niece and namesake, Nola Serenity, and wrote in it that when she read it someday, she’d be reading pieces of me. And that’s how it felt to read a beautiful children’s book that I knew Katie loved. And I didn’t realize until the very last chapter when Betsy and Tacy meet Tib that this is the very book Kathleen Kelly talks about in You’ve Got Mail when she says of Tib, “Whose real name, I’m sorry to say, is Thelma.” You know, Anne of Green Gables is mentioned fondly in that movie too, and suddenly it was like sitting down with Katie, Maud Hart-Lovelace, Lucy Maud Montgomery, and Kathleen Kelly as we all just gushed about the literature we love.

Audrey Hepburn – I’ve now seen Breakfast at Tiffany’s, Sabrina, and Roman Holiday thanks to my wonderful sister-in-law Mary who gave them to me for my birthday. My old-movie repertoire was sadly lacking and now feels much more complete. Roman Holiday, incidentally, was my first Gregory Peck flick. I now have a huge crush on Gregory Peck and feel I should buy a poster of him for my wall. Felicity said Michael might not like that, but all he said was, “He’s dead, right?” And speaking of my crush on Gregory Peck…

To Kill a Mockingbird – I finally bought this book that I have never read. I haven’t seen the movie either (with my aforementioned crush). And my life, as a person rather fond of words, feels a bit less fraudulent now. I haven’t finished reading it yet, but since reading it is such a delight, I don’t plan to hurry.

And that’s just the beginning. But it gives you an idea. I also clean the kitchen, sort through the boys’ not-so-endless-when-I-actually-take-the-time-for-it mound of paperwork, do a load of laundry, write in my journal, blog, or download a new song from iTunes. It’s the little things that squelch the five p.m. blues. What are your small, satisfying accomplishments that serve to keep you sane?

*Photo by tellmewhat2 on Flickr.

I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and number.

And if I had a lot more money and an electric pencil sharpener. Have you ever sent anyone a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils? This should definitely happen in my life at some point – maybe a teacher I want to thank…but there are so many.

On Tuesday we met my children’s new teachers and put their supplies in their desk and added our tissues and disinfectant wipes to the pile. It’s been well over ninety degrees around here lately, and you’ll notice I haven’t written a single crisp-and-crackly blog post about how I can feel change and the beginning of new things in the air and just around the corner. And that is because I can’t feel anything but the heat and oh-dear-god-the-humidity, especially since the A/C on my car just looks at me and rolls her eyes like, Are you kidding me? It’s August in Missouri. The humidity is serial. No one can help you now.

But as we pulled out of our drive to go to the school buildings, and I KID YOU NOT, leaves fell from the tree beside our house. They’re all yellow and dead-looking, and they fell. And from one building to the next, a breeze picked up that actually made me shiver, and suddenly it was fall. This from the person who invents magic into the mundaniest of moments: That was the most poetical thing I’ve ever seen.

So now I’m all set. Bring on the sharpened pencils. Bring on the mountains of take-home notes and permission slips and Scholastic book orders – especially those! After I tucked the boys into bed Tuesday night, three Mizzou Tiger shirts laid carefully over three pairs of pants on the carpet, I opened their shoe boxes to make sure each shoe was laced, and then I just breathed in that happy new shoe smell. Seriously, bring it on.

This is my fifth grade class. Just to give you an idea on the size of my town, this is ALL the fifth graders in it. It was my first year in Edina, Missouri, the place my dad finally settled as a physician after years of medical school and two different towns the two years after that. I’m on the bottom row, second from the right. My best friend Maggie is beside me. She eyed me warily the first day, but we were good friends after that. Next to her is Stephan – I rode with him to our orthodontist for several years. The first guy in the row above me is Todd. He helped me learn to parallel park the night before I tried for my driver’s license. Michael helped us too. You’ll find him in the top row, second from the left, and he will kill me for posting this, so please have my epitaph read something poetic from all my ramblings here along with, “Then she embarrassed her husband one too many times, and died.” Because it’s about to get worse.

This is the cover of the diary our fifth grade teacher had us make. I only had a few entries in it. And I’m not sure why this survived The Great Journal Destruction By Burial of my early teens, but it did. I still have it along with letters and cards and stories. We wrote in it during class, so I honestly cannot fathom where I got the sheer nerve to write my first entry with such forthrightness, but here it is for your perusal.

If you don’t feel like clicking on it and reading, I’ll give you the highlight:

There are two cute boys in my class. Michael Bohan and Tod Greg.

“Michael” is the only correctly-spelled first or last name in that sentence. The last sentence would have made my literary agent jump ship, I think, if she’d seen it before now. And finally, several of these boys became my friends, and I would just like to say regarding the diss on their perfectly pleasant good looks as well, I was ten – what did I know?

Michael never saw this entry, of course, because OMG I would have died. (Kind of like the time in seventh grade when I doodled I Heart Mike on my notebook paper in Math and then LEFT IT IN THE CLASSROOM where my friends found it, took it to him, and then told him they knew it was me!) (Though you know I was secretly glad that he knew…) But he did reciprocate at the end of sixth grade when he wrote this on my yearbook:

“To a very nice girl,” it says. “And very cute to. Mike Bohon.” I have an even better one after seventh grade when he told me he would probably see me over the summer but that he would miss me anyway and to “stay good lookin’.” AND HE UNDERLINED IT SEVEN TIMES. I really like that one.

I’ve been thinking about all this for two reasons. One of them is that those two fifth graders – after a whole lot of history that was quite a ride at times and didn’t always seem to be headed toward a fairy tale but that miraculously doesn’t have a single breakup in it – on August 16, 1997, they became this.

And the other reason I’ve been thinking about it all is because a couple years after this they had a little boy. They named him John Michael and put a ball in his hand as soon as he could grip things and introduced him to all the best movies like Aladdin and Karate Kid. And now the craziest thing has happened. Guess who starts fifth grade tomorrow?

I think of you when I’m crying because my mom just sent me an essay she wrote about The Cancer Year, and I can’t believe how well she remembers its details and how gut-wrenching yet beautiful it is to see those days through anyone else’s eyes, but then I just can’t think how to tell you about it in a way I haven’t told you before. (Her essay was about the blanket, pictured here, which was signed by my family and friends to help me feel I was held by them).

An Oprah commercial came on the other day, a little montage about her final year. And it was timely, because I had just laughed at a guy on her stage who said, “I want your viewers to know that dreams come true, because I’m standing here next to Oprah,” and I was all, “They all say that, Buddy. And all that means to us is dreams come true for you.” And on the Oprah commercial they flashed back to one of the many times when she has said, “What I’ve learned over the years is that people want to be heard.” They want to know, did you see me? Did you hear me? And did what I said matter to you?

So the question is, how do we find that validation within ourselves? Because we aren’t all getting on Oprah. Even fewer of us have that hope than before, because this is it. Her last year. If her show is the only thing to prove that dreams come true, if her hearing us is the only way to truly feel we’ve been heard, then we are all doomed.

And that commercial was one of those crowning moments in my life – just a weekday afternoon in my own home – but it was crowning. Because I knew that I have that feeling. And it’s not because of Oprah or even because of this blog. It might be a wee bit because of The Cancer Year. But, believe me, it was happening before then, and it’s happening to you. You just have to open your eyes to see it. I do have the feeling that I am heard. And I am seen. And what I’ve said has mattered.

Is there one person who loves you? At least one? I bet you can think of more than that. I bet you can think of a whole lot more. A crazy, generous number. A number that – wait for it – might be bigger than the number a celebrity could give. Because you know people who love you because they know you in real life and like you despite all your humanity and the fact that you’re not rich or famous. What do they love about you? Because that’s when you were seen. Do they ever ask you a question, show interest in your life or plans or happiness? Because that’s when you were heard. Have they ever told someone else about you, shared a story you first told to them, passed on good or even troubling news from your life, prayed for you? Because that’s when what you said mattered to them.

Today I don’t love my blog because I get to be seen and heard. I love my blog because I get to tell you that you are. And hopefully, sheepish grin, you heard it.

We celebrated a few things – two anniversaries, my five years cancer-free, my dad’s fifth year of recovery from an addiction, plus lots and lots of children and many years of love.

And on Sunday we gathered in this room for church. And we read things from the bible and talked and maybe cried a little. Some of us cried a lot. I did, for instance, when we sang the song about God’s feelings for us that’s titled How He Loves. “He loves us, oh how he loves us.” That’s the chorus, over and over. And I couldn’t even sing it because I just cried instead.

The last time I saw the song performed, it was with cardboard testimonies. People held up cardboard with their former troubles and sadness on one side, then flipped it to their victories and happiness on the other. Things like this, for instance, from my niece. You can see what’s on the cardboard when you roll over the picture:

And as we sat in this room my mom now calls the Sanctuary, and Dan played the piano and those who know it well sang the song, I didn’t even remember that performance that had also sent me directly to The Ugly Cry with its stories of redemption. Instead I was just feeling loved. And it was only later that I thought of the cardboard testimonies we could have shared…

Cancer

Addiction

Miscarriage

Separation

Loss

And then, of course, I thought of that room which for the time at least held nothing but the victory to all those things. Health, recovery, babies, love, and life. And then I really cried when I heard the words again. He loves us, oh how he loves us. I hope you can hang onto that if your cardboard looks more like trouble right now than redemption. And even if you can’t, it’s still true. And I hope you get the chance to feel it soon.

I’ve noticed. It’s one of the reasons I don’t have very many pictures of my children in their school performances. The other reason is that school performances, and certainly any lines or solos my children may have, are about seven seconds and if I have the camera in front of my face for even a moment or two, it’s like I wasn’t there.

I thought of this the other day when the Black Eyed Peas were on Good Morning America. A camera panned the crowd from the back and all I could see were hands in the air holding cell phones and cameras, snapping pictures of what I’m assuming for much of the audience was once-in-a-lifetime. And I thought, I wonder if anyone is just being there.

In New York, I was determined to do that. I told you when I stood on Bow Bridge, I texted my mom, saying I’d dreamed of actually being there and now I was. How could I be sure I was taking it in? And she texted back, Just breathe. Which was very Yoga of her. I think yoga actually helped me learn to do this more. It’s a very be there kind of thing, yoga. I remember doing it at home once without any music. And I could actually hear the ticking of the second hand on a clock that cost approximately 9.99 (hardly a big, classic one with the musical Tick-Tock to it), and it felt so good to be moving with time for once instead of against it. That’s what yoga taught me and what I determined to do in New York. And almost without exception, I succeeded.

But then, I remembered this picture. Isn’t it beautiful? Taken from the top of 30 Rockefeller Plaza, Top of the Rock. You can see the lower level of the observation deck – to get spacial context, you know – some of Manhattan’s skyscrapers, and Central Park stretching out beyond. I love it. I adore it really, because I was there. I’m the one who took the picture.

But here’s the thing. Like the singing of patriotic songs by two hundred kindergarteners in red, white, and blue, my moments on this platform were miniscule. The group had already told me they were ready to go when I was on the platform below – where I definitely didn’t get enough time for yoga either. But I was not going to come this far and not at least stand on the higher level. So up I went. I didn’t pause to look, I wasn’t even there, but I snapped a picture on the Lower Manhattan side and then on this side, with the view of Central Park. And I thought, I’ll look at it later. And hopefully with the combination of having actually climbed the steps and feeling the wind, then seeing this picture, it will be like I was there.

And I’m so glad I did that. I wish I had done it in more of the places we breezed through, because some things I’ve already forgotten.

So now I realize there really aren’t any rules for how to be where you are and take it in. Maybe a camera puts you more there than not, because you’ll always be able to look back and remember. I only know you’re more likely to be there if you breathe. In the words on the journal I just got from Michael for my birthday: Love the life you’re living. I hope you are.

I was at a country fair, and oh how I love those. Seriously, if you read sarcasm into that, you’re reading it wrong.

In order to suck the full marrow from this one, I walked through a corn maze, pet two really long snakes, rode on a hay bale in the back of a tractor trailer, looked really hard for the line to the funnel cakes, and signed up my 4-year-old for mutton busting.

If you know what mutton busting is, you’re probably already laughing. I knew mutton meant sheep. But the busting part I was less clear on. I’d seen Little House on the Prairie quite a bit in my day, though, so I pictured something like the greased pig contest. Baby lambs, covered in something gooey, while little children chased them around, and we all laughed and little lambs were tortured for our pleasure.

Little did I know, the mutton were not going to be the tortured part of mutton busting.

I signed Jake up, and he was “in the hole” right away, which meant – second in line. They put the first kid on the sheep, which was decidedly not a lamb, in this gate thing you see here – just like the wild broncos at a rodeo. Then they strapped a helmet on the kid, and the dad said, “Lie down, Son, and wrap your arms really tight around the sheep’s neck.” I felt a little – um – concerned at that point. Then they opened the gate, and concern shot out of me with the gale force of the terror shooting in. The sheep shot out of the gate like we’d all been poking it with sticks. The child FLEW off its back and onto the ground where the sheep proceeded TO TRAMPLE HIM. I am only exaggerating in the sense that the child was never hospitalized and there were no signs of internal bleeding. You can look up mutton busting on You Tube now if you’d like. And if you think you didn’t know what mutton busting was, imagine my poor unsuspecting child knowing even less.

Don’t worry. It ended well. And by well I mean this picture in which Jake screams in pain and terror because he got pinched by the buckle on his helmet. Soon after this, picture him clawing his way up the metal fencing and into my arms. His mutton busting career was over before it even began.

Now, this is the part you won’t believe. I mean you really won’t believe it. But I was bummed that he’d been pinched. I didn’t want him flying off a sheep and getting trampled. I didn’t. But I also hated the fact that the chance to try something was ruined for him by a painful little mishap. I returned to my senses about three children later when not a single one had come up from the dirt without bursting into tears. I did see one kid near the end come up without crying. He’s my cousin’s son, from Wyoming. I got a picture of him bouncing up from the fall, and the sheep is nowhere to be seen. That’s how fast they were moving.

I thought of this story because I’ve been thinking about living in our lives, embracing them. I have a lot of thoughts on it. But this one is the funniest, and the only one that puts my children in direct harm. I just can’t wait to ask Jake someday what made him madder, the pinch or the reality of what I almost made him do.

Do you remember learning about this race horse, Man O’War? Here you are in front of his statue – life-size, which is almost but not quite as amazing as the length of his stride, which we found at another place in the park. We stopped here, the Kentucky Horse Park, on our way from Florida July 2010, and I’m hoping you’ll remember it.

The story of Man O’War is extremely inspiring, isn’t it? Because Man O’War stood out from so many other horses, even other amazing ones. He only lost one race in his career – only one. That’s difficult to even fathom.

And I remember one of the sign posts in front of this statue said that many of Man O’War’s descendants were really fast too and fairly amazing. But that really all horse breeders just keep hoping, someday, a horse will be born that stands out as much and as miraculously as Man O’War did, though none have yet.

Can you imagine? People working hard, investing money, time, and motivation every day in the business of horse-breeding and racing, just clinging to the hope that maybe magic will one day be born again.

I’m doing that. Pursuing a dream that after four years doesn’t seem all that much closer to when I started. It’s just sitting there in front of me every day, the dream and the work – the constant work that I tuck into late evenings and weekends, with at least a glimmer of hope.

One day this year – maybe more – I thought of quitting. I felt almost certain I didn’t have it within me to tell a wonderful story and tell it well. I figured it was just the normal passing angst and I wrote in my journal that I wondered if maybe I should just give up and move on. “I bet some famous, beloved authors have said that,” I wrote. “But just imagine how many mediocre writers have said it too, and then actually did give up. And that was that.”

Pretty much every day I face that eerie nothingness of blank pages on my computer screen, ideas not yet written, mediocre drafts not yet perfected. No one sits beside me whispering that I should continue, telling me I’ll make it one day and should definitely keep on keeping on. It’s just me and the dream and the nothingness. And I make the decision again. I could quit. Today could be the day I give up, tired of the extra work without reward, the angst, the jealousy, the unknown. After all, life’s pretty happy without anything new in it, without any greater success. I mean, if nothing else, you guys are super, super cool and I’m a pretty wonderful, successful, and very accomplished person just for bringing you here.

Or I could keep going. Face the blank screen again, fight the jealousy, serenity-now the heck out of the angst. I can’t really think that hard about the goals or the steps it will take to get there. I just have to face the page and try again, keep writing, keep moving forward.

That’s the choice every day. You’ll face it too. Every day. It’s not true that you can be anything you want. It is true that you can try. And that some dreams do come true. And that your chances are way better if you choose a dream you’re theoretically fitted for and then work your butt off to get there. And if I never, not even on my dying day, get to hand you some absolute hold-it-in-your-hands proof that dreams come true this way, then at least you’ll know I faced the nothing every single day and kept trying. And maybe that will help you face yours and always keep trying too. Every. Single. Day.