Corporate Lawyers Who Do Our Emotional Heavy Lifting, #365StrongStories 48

Will they ever find out that Mike is a fraud? No, not Mike my husband. I’m talking about Mike Ross, attorney at Pearson, etc.

I really worry about Mike, even though he’s not real. Actually, I worry about him because he’s not real. There’s almost no plausible scenario that would put us in the same circles. No, I only care about him because some screenwriter got the formula just right.

My husband and I owe a great Mike and his colleagues on Suits. Over the last few months, their high stakes corporate takeovers, epic spats, and captivating wardrobe choices have been like a trip to the spa (even better than “mudding”). Because absolutely no one on the show has children, it packs an even more satisfying escapist punch than Game of Thrones.

But then, there was the episode we watched last night - dead parents, infidelity, professional betrayal, fear of being alone, Catholic guilt, and being found out as a fraud. Messy, human stuff that you couldn’t tune out after a five-season investment. So much for escape!

This is what stories are supposed to do, you see. They’re supposed to be addictive excursions that open us to experience terrible, wonderful, tantalizing things. When the fear and pleasure centers are triggered, the brain honestly doesn’t know the difference between fiction and reality. That's why stories make us care and cry and even change the way we think.

And the ending of this particular episode was devastating. Usually, of course, autoplay would do its magic and we’d only teeter on the cliffhanger edge for a few moments. But it was a Tuesday night, and husband was feeling strong and virtuous, so he clicked the TV off.

Here's the thing about story addiction: when you don’t get your next hit, you just might have to feel something for a while.

Both of us sat there staring at the blank screen willing the clock backward so we could dive deep into this pinstripe sea and put off real life for another 44 minutes. In this silence, I felt the swell of unbidden emotions. My husband sensed the rush within me - it’s quite easy to hear your partner’s ragged breath when it’s not competing with “Previously, on Suits…”

All those lawyer problems had triggered my own doubts and fears, and though the details are as different as a Hyundai and a Bentley, the pain was universal enough.

In this binge watching culture, we’ve denied ourselves access to the real power of all these stories. We revel of the abundance of “more good TV than one could watch and still have a job!” and deny ourselves the divinely unsatiated state when we see just enough to feel something real.

Entrepreneuring, Mothering, and Laundry Basket Despair, #365StrongStories 47

I prefer mountains of laundry to mere hillocks. So, when I enter a marathon sorting and folding session, I know there will be plenty of time for introspection. Today, however, both kids are home thanks to some freezing rain and a minor fever. Turns out I can’t get much deep thinking done when I must constantly exclaim “Please do not knock over mommy’s stacks!”

So I’m left to consider the clothes themselves. Since I could tell you my life story by giving you a tour of my closet, this is actual fertile territory.

There’s this fuchsia Marks and Spencer sweater that’s just beginning to pill. I find this terribly disappointing and give myself over to a little bit of laundry basket despair.

Even in that moment I knew I was actually mourning the fact that I’m folding and refereeing rather than writing and planning. This was supposed to be a brilliantly productive professional day. But wishing I were entrepreneuring instead of mothering isn’t going to get these clothes in drawers or make me any nicer to my kids, so I focus on that sweater (and sounding kind when I beg the girls not to jump on the towels I’d just turned into relatively perfect squares.)

This sweater doesn’t owe me anything. It was some hand me down that I never even put on my first daughter because it always looked too fancy. With my second daughter, I’ve tried to quit hoarding pretty things for the day when our lives were perfect and posh enough to do them justice, so she’s worn it during trips to the grocery store. As I sit in the midst of this domestic mountain range, unable to control the weather or viruses or my own work day, I breathe into the realization that our lives will never be what the glossy catalogs tell me I’m supposed to be striving for.

We’ll have brilliant days while wearing our mismatched pajamas and we’ll suffer through others while wearing our newest and brightest best. Eventually, it will all come out in the wash.

Does Every Story Have to Have a Bad Guy? #365StrongStories, 46

“Mom, does every story hafta have a bad guy?” For some parents, this might be a straightforward question. (Perhaps: “no, not really, but most of the stories we like best do” would suffice.) In our case, the answer lasted the entire fifteen minute ride home from town.

My daughter had just seen one of the Minions movies. It's amazing we held out this long. If you earned a quarter for every Minion you spotted at the grocery store you could cover a decent part of your bill - their googly eyes stare at you from cookies and Band Aids and even the bananas.

Her voice was thin with worry and I could tell my first grader was feeling betrayed. That kind of product placement told her they were about sweets and treats, not about scary noises and tummy-churning plot twists.

So we talked about the stories she knows that don’t have bad guys. Everything from the Itsy Bitsy Spider to Wind in the Willows to nearly every Magic Tree House book.

We got to talk about individuals versus nature and how misunderstandings can make for a good story. There was a discussion of quests and journeys and how we like it best when the main character learns and grows and does things she never thought possible.

But this got me thinking about the stories that I’ve been telling - and whether I have really been writing stories at all.

I love stories with “bad guys” - it’s part of being human, this desire to see good triumph over evil. Ask many storytelling experts and they’ll say that conflict is THE defining factor. But when it comes to exploring conflict and antagonists every day in my own #365StrongStories project, well…

Most of these stories are drawn from my own life. I'm not a secret agent and I’m not a big fan of interpersonal strife, so what’s left?

The stuff of our imperfectly perfect, magically mundane everyday reality, that’s what.

We live powerful stories all the time, and if we’re lucky, almost none of them include criminals or violence or practical jokes with an edge. We’re thrill seekers who pick up novels and watch TV and movies so we can experience a vicarious jolt in our otherwise peaceful, bad guy-free lives.

But do our stories need a bad guy, dear daughter? No.

We may flock to watch megavillains fill the screen and we'll cheer at their demise. But we can still go home to create our own stories about personal realization and the revelation of another’s true character and know we've done work that's just as strong.

Valentine's Day With All the Hearts and None of the Flowers, #365StrongStories 45

The forecast was bad. Boston didn’t know it yet, but it was halfway through the snowiest winter on record and Valentine’s Day was bringing more than roses and the chocolate. We were hurtling along the MassPike right into the not-so-candy heart of a blizzard. A sane woman would have looked at her husband’s red nose and the trail of tissues left in his wake and said “I know how you're feeling, honey. It’s crazy to go. I’ll call them and tell them we just can’t make it.”

But I wasn’t going to make that call and he wasn’t going to ask me to. So we packed a car with gifts and a shovel and a couple kids and headed out to host a party.

I had no interest in weather or good sense or spousal compassion. My sister was home from the west coast and this was our one chance to throw her baby shower. I was inspired by sisterly devotion, of course, but I admit it: this upstate New York mama needed a night in a hotel in the heart of the city that she used to call home like a wino needs a merlot.

Now, Valentine’s Day stories are tricky. They depend so much on what the reader brings to February’s floweriest moment. Happy endings will either bolster your belief in the day’s inherent sweetness or nauseate you if you refuse to be one of Cupid’s minions. By the same token, if our story concluded with us sleeping at a Motel 6 in Worcester, you could see it as great tragedy or a poetic end to a day that needs to be reclaimed from Hallmark’s devilish expectations.

In reality, the party was lovely and being snowed in at the Prudential Center was great fun. The kids lying between us, we fell asleep watching Titanic and woke to marvel at the drifts of snow twenty feet high.

The next day, we cruised home on bright black pavement just as the last flakes were falling. I didn’t get a bouquet and I doubt I got a card, but it was the best Valentine’s Day in memory.

The Country You Can Visit But Never Call Home, #365StrongStories 44

If you wanted to flatter me when I was twenty, you would ask you to help you analyze a poem. Yeats and the handful of Irish women poets who found their voices at the turn of our own century were my specialty. To be awed by a turn of phrase, struck dumb by an image, transformed by the flow of a stanza… This was my drug. Caffeine and alcohol were welcome companions - poems are best shared in cafes and pubs - but even they weren’t necessary. The English language as crafted by solitary scribes and mothers scribbling between nappy changes were my heroes.

These were the people and the passions that mattered to an American girl who found her own country to vast and crass and disconnected.

And now, I pick a book from the shelf and I’m still transported. Yes, the verses themselves have power - perhaps even more now that I have almost two more decades of loss and love, suffering and survival that helps me understand their resonance.

But I’m also distracted by the person I was, the person who was so free to dedicate herself to words and ideas for their sake alone. I adore her, but I know I could never find my way back to a life spelled out in phrases that only flirt with comprehensibility. Now, it’s about message and clarity and capturing attention that you can never assume is yours for keeps. Poetry is a country I can occasionally visit, but never call home.