Janelle Evans

Lately, I swear I can feel every emotion known to man within a five minute span.  Since learning about my mom’s cancer, I can barely concentrate on being a functional mom for my kids, writing has completely gone by the way side.  Which I know is normal, but in a weird and probably twisted way I miss it, maybe even need it to pull myself out of the funk I’m in, but I haven’t found a way to crawl back into my creativity.

I think it’s the whole countdown-to-death I’m living under.  “Everyone dies,” I’ve always told my children, “never fear it.”  But having experienced the death of many love ones, I think I prefer the quick, unplanned versions.  Sometimes I feel like I’m already mourning her loss and she isn’t even gone yet.  Yes, I know, sick, sick, sick, and twisted, but it’s what’s happening.  When someone dies suddenly, it’s like getting a Band-Aid ripped off your heart—really, really painful at first but somehow the feeling lessens.  What I’m experiencing now is like someone tearing the Band-Aid off one millimeter at a time—a continual, never-ending ache.  As my friend who lost her mother a few years ago said so succinctly, “Cancer sucks!”

I learned this week that my mother is sick, not like the flu sick, much worse—there’s masses growing on her pancreas and liver.  My mind didn’t get much passed that part of her phone call.  The air whooshed out of my lungs and wouldn’t really come back in, like her news was lying on my chest, crushing me.

I’m not ready is all I could think over and over again.  I know death is inevitable, it’s something we all have in common, but she’s still in her fifties, I shouldn’t have to say goodbye so soon.

She’s in pain.  She has been for a while, yet here I sit hoping she’ll never stop fighting.  Even though death would silence the agony for good, I’m not ready.  She’s been my sounding board.  The encouraging voice I needed when no one seemed to like anything I wrote.  Rejection after rejection she kept telling me, “Keep trying.  It’s good.  I know someone will see that.”

She was right.  A publisher finally saw what my mom did all along, but my first book won’t be out until next year.  It feels wrong for her to not to be able to hold that copy in her hands, so I selfishly beg and pray for her to continue.  What else can I say?  I’m not ready.  How in the world will I ever be ready?

Aah, another summer has finally come, and once again I face the same challenge—my children.  Ouch, that sounds awful calling them a challenge, but let’s face it, kids aren’t exactly conducive in regards to quiet time, and mine are way, way passed the age of napping.  Yet, I can’t write in chaos.  Believe me, I’ve tried, it doesn’t work.  My brain must have SILENCE!  Then I feel bad telling my kids to shush fifty times for the few hours I set aside to write it each day.

One day I’m sure my children will be on an Oprah-like talk show telling the world how their mother neglected them.  Ugh.  It’s moments like these I think year-round schools may not be such a bad idea.

I’m always frank with people who ask me about my desire to write.  The process has never been easy for me, and I see no point in glossing over my struggles.  Usually about the time I mention all the rejections I’ve experienced people ask, “Why?  Why keep going when the path ahead seems so impossible?”

The answer is simple. I can’t get off this train until I’ve seen it to the end—no matter where it goes. I would hate to spend the rest of my life ‘wondering if I could have’.  I know the odds are against me.  In any creative industry, (acting, music, art, literature), very few are successful, like less than 1% if you include every person who has ever written a book.  On the days when I’m feeling especially low, I remind myself lightning strikes the earth 100 times every second of every day—why not me?

After spending the day out in the hot sun with my children, I’ve decided there is nothing like being five.  When you’re five, you can slink off a job site whenever you want.  Then you can wander back in hours later and feel no guilt for not helping.  Every dirt clod and rock you can lift must be thrown.  And assume all punishment for such throwing should be diverted with an “I forgot,” though you’ve done it at least fifteen times in the last twenty minutes.  (I’ll be cursed for it but this tactic works on me almost every time, and he gets off with a warning—again.  It must be the cute smile he gives me along with it.)

Anything stick-like becomes a sword, and must be whacked on every surface, even siblings.  Unfortunately for the five-year-old, siblings aren’t as easily placated as parents with “I forgot” excuses.  No worries, this leads into the playful past-time of merry ol’ chase around the house, and ends with cuddling next to mommy so she’ll intervene on behalf of said five-year-old.  (Yep, this works too.)  What can I say?  He’s five, and I’m a sucker.  Good thing I’m not nearly as bamboozled when they get older.