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Personal blog of christian
writer & fallible mom
Katy McKenna Raymond
in Kansas City, Missouri

Katy is represented by
Greg Johnson at
WordServe Literary

Read more Katy at
LateBoomer.net

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Recent Posts

• Try
• Becoming Brenda Starr
• Off Beat
• Scattered
• That’s It
• So I’ve Finally Signed With An Agent. Now What?
• The Spoon
• Sciatica
• Sweetheart
• A Woman’s Train of Thought Has No Caboose
• However much we own, we are all still living on borrowed time
• After all, when restaurants shrink portions, they don’t shrink prices.
• As with everything in life, balance is key.
• Slow down, you move too fast…
• Yeah, I know. I have issues.

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E me at katy @ ngenius.com

Ghosts (#410)

I've accumulated a team of ghostwriters. Each of them are unaware that the others exist, that they each have competitors vying for my confidence.

So far, they've staggered their visits, managing to show up one at a time. That's the way I want it.

I've taken long walks with one of them, our thoughts so intimately entwined that we end up strolling arm-in-arm down my sun-streaked country lane, having endless discussions about our mutual ideas for plot and character development and dialogue.

She is like my literary twin, only she's so much more competent with words than I am. I trust her with my story. Flattery doesn't get her anywhere with me, for some reason, so she's stopped attempting it. She's all work, and when she's around, she pushes me to get it down on paper. And I do.

The other writers have been offered bits and pieces of my work, to see how they'll respond, to see if they can improve what I'm attempting--to see if, by any means, they can bail me out.

We sit on the porch, just me and one other at a time, hashing it over.

One is hyper-critical, and thinks theres not much she can bring to the table. She is of the hopeless sort. I don't invite her back, but she's shown up on a number of occassions without provocation.

One is new at this business, like I am. She is anxious to produce a body of work, to assemble a portfolio, even if my name ends up on the cover. She is eager from the moment she opens her eyes in the morning to help with my project, but I'm beginning to realize her enthusiasm and first successes may stem from something more like beginner's luck than true talent or developable skill. She tends not so much to want to write, as to have written.

If I must choose among them, I'll go with the first woman in my collection. After all, she's believed in me from the start.

Whenever we meet, she grabs a quick Iced Americano with four shots of decaf and one of caf, two Sweet-and-Lows, no water, lots of ice and room at the top for half-and-half, and joins me on the purple couch for some brainstorming.

If she doesn't exactly write the words for me, she at least points me in a good direction, smiles, and says something trite but wonderful like, "You can do it."

I've accumulated a team of ghostwriters, and honestly, they wouldn't get along well together at all. Most of them will have to go.

I open my eyes then, and it's just me alone in the room. The critic hasn't arrived yet, and the newby with her evident lack of experience will be a little late today. I hear a knock on the door, and it's the ghostwriter of my dreams, the one who believes in me, who knows I can do it.

I smile and let her in.

---

The Next Thing You Know (#411)

You're going seventy or seventy-five on the interstate, on the far right, eyeing a suspicious-acting vehicle trying to re-enter the highway from the right side, into your path. You don't quite realize all the traffic in front of you is stopped as the construction up ahead funnels everyone into one lane.

You see those stopped cars a little late in the game, because of watching the car attempting to re-enter the highway, and slam on your brakes. You lay a lot of rubber and there's a burning smell and you skid across three or four lanes to the far left, where there's a small opening waiting for you, if you're lucky. You have no choice, since if you go straight you'll end up under an 18-wheeler, and you're not short enough to survive that maneuver.

The brakes are still screaming when you see another car directly in front of you also heading left for the only opening available, the one you're praying is yours. You realize you're going to hit the car at a horribly high speed and that you're probably going to die.

The next thing you see, Kevin says, is a white cloud directly in front of you, and you think you're in heaven. And you're very happy you gave your heart to Jesus when you were a little kid, because now he won't take one look at your pathetic self and say something scriptural like, "Sorry. I never knew you."

And the tow truck hauls your car away, never to be seen again. And the policeman doesn't give you a ticket, because of all the bizarre circumstances, and the construction, and maybe because of your beautiful blue eyes and your sincerity.

And your father comes to bring you home, and he embraces you and kisses you and says, "Don't worry. It's only a car. We're just happy you're alive."

And your mother waits at home, crying and praying and thanking Jesus for providing you with a way of escape.
And the three of you hold hands and praise the God who inspired mere humans to create air bags--the closest thing to heaven without actually going there.

---

Hairy Conversation (#412)

I wake up talking a mile a minute. He stays up late at night, and usually stays in bed at least an hour later than I do in the morning.

It's 6:30. I'm already reading him news stories about car bombings at the Marriott in Jakarta (where Scott may be going) and a girl who got killed in the parking lot at Wal-Mart (where I will be going).

He snorts and snores in response.

After regaling him with how dangerous the world is, I tell him that I thought of a great title for a book yesterday--one that uses my favorite titling technique, that of the "biblical half-phrase"--and that Amazon showed only one other book by the same title.

"Not A Sparrow Falls," I say. "What do you think?"

"Good title!" he says. Now I've got his attention for the day. "Much more poetic sounding than "He Numbers the Hairs."

Nothing wrong with my guy that a little Avacor wouldn't fix.

---

Kiss (#413)

"A Little Romance," Doug says, when perusing the available movies on cable last night. "What is that?"

"It's the one you like, remember?" I say.

And so we watch the tale for the first time since it came out in 1979, when we were still--for all intents and purposes--newlyweds. It is the last movie for Sir Laurence Olivier, and the first for Diane Lane, who plays a thirteen-year-old girl who falls in love with a boy in Paris.

The girl must leave soon, to go back to America, and so the young couple devises a plan to ensure that their love will last forever. They make their way to Venice, where they will ride a gondola under the Bridge of Sighs at sunset, while the church bells chime.

They will kiss under the bridge, and when they do, their love is sealed. Nothing can separate them now.

My husband loved this movie when we were young. We'd lost his father by then, and our first baby to miscarriage. I was precariously pregnant with Scott.

Perhaps Doug wondered if we needed something to seal our love forever.

Twenty-four years have passed, and we're watching A Little Romance once more. When the teenagers kiss under the bridge, we turn away to share our own kiss. On the other side, we are both in tears.

"I'll take you there," he says. "To the Bridge of Sighs."

"You don't need to," I say. "You've loved me here, every day, all these years."

We sigh. Our love is sealed forever.

---

Passed (#414)

We passed by Colonial Presbyterian Church in the near dark last night, and I saw the sign.

"Can we afford it?" I almost asked Doug. I'd already checked into it. $35 per month, for two mornings a week. We'd really have to stretch to make it work, but it was worth it, right?

"Pre-school Now Enrolling," the sign said, and little Scotty spoke up from the back seat of the Datsun B210, or did he?

"I'm going to go all by myself." The three-year-old's face beams with excitement.

When I ask him now, he barely remembers the first teachers who shared my joy in showing him the world. He only vaguely recollects the Christmas pageants, and the singing, and the drawing, and the reading.

He learned everything that they--and I--had to teach him, and moved on.

"I think I'm going to go all over China for a few weeks by myself." I look up at the little boy in front of me, who beams with excitement.

He's no baby. He's twenty-four.

We passed by his little school in the near dark last night, and I saw the sign. "Pre-school Now Enrolling."

Someday, I'll learn to read between the lines.

---

Work (#415)

A good reason to only write half the day:

"I was working on the proof of one of my poems all the morning, and I took out a comma. In the afternoon I put it back again." Oscar Wilde

---

Dishes (#416)

I'm sitting at my desk, intently working. Eighteen-year-old Kevin enters.

"Why did you yell for me?" he asks.

"I yelled for you?" I ask, without looking up from the computer. I am momentarily flustered, but it won't last. I keep writing.

"You called me away from washing the dishes," he says, like I wouldn't know it if I'd done that. He's just trying to get his hands out of hot water.

"If I had called you," I answer, "I'd remember why."

"Well, you did." He sits down on the bed and reaches for the remote.

"Is there something you want to talk about?" I ask, just in case.

"No." He clicks the on button.

"I don't have anything to talk about right now, either, so why don't you go finish in the kitchen?"

"Because I don't want to." Now we're getting somewhere. He switches channels till he finds the soccer game.

"Go return Nathan's call, then." I sound like I'm grasping at straws.

"No." He switches channels.

"Kevin, darling?" I still haven't looked up.

"What?"

"I'm gonna kill you."

"Why?" He turns off the TV.

"It seems like the right thing to do."

Within seconds, the water is running in the kitchen sink, proving once again that the experts are wrong.

Threats definitely work.

---

Lucky (#417)

He has on his tropical print shirt again today, because he knows we'll be stopping by Starbucks.

It's hard to resist the compliments of the young female baristas, who say, in that way that sounds like it's fishing for a tip, "Nice shirt, Doug."

I've started calling it his lucky shirt.

Today, though, I'm looking way past where the young girls could ever see, past the maroon-and-cream flowered 100% rayon, into his mind and heart, into the part of him that doesn't really think much about baristas at all.

"You're an elegant man, Doug," I say.

He reaches out and takes my hand. "You're funny," he says.

"No, really," I say. "And I'm not just talking about your shirt, either."

I'm not talking about his shirt at all.

---

Refueling (#418)

When several cars are a part of your family's personal property, it can be pretty hard to remember--about any one particular car--whether the gas tank is on the left or the right.

I'm pretty sure the gas tank is on the right on the car Doug and I drive up to Weston, Missouri. Pretty darn sure.

Doug pulls up to the pump as if the tank is on the left. I don't say anything, don't even look at him funny. I just hop out of the car and run in to find the bathroom.

When I come out, it's clear the car is in a different position than when I went in, but there he is, still stretching the hose, still coming up short.

"Did you have to move the car?" I ask, as if I don't know.

"Yeah," he says. "I pulled around to the other side, but it was still wrong."

We laugh till we cry.

Isn't this just like life? When things aren't working out quite right, we imagine we just aren't stretching far enough. When that doesn't work, we pull around to the other side, point ourselves in the opposite direction, thinking if we make a 180, that'll solve everything.

The hose will be longer on the other side, we hope. The fuel will flow smoother. We'll be back on the road in no time.

Then we find out life's just as big a stretch as ever.

So we drive around the station a little bit more, until we remember where the tank is, and how to pull up to the pump. Amazing how the hose stretches with no effort at all, and the journey-granting fluid flows.

And we laugh till we cry.

---

Practice (#419)

Writing a novel is a prolonged, intensive exercise in decision making, problem solving, confrontation, and conflict resolution--all things I'm crummy at in real life.

So. Maybe I'm getting better.

---

Why We Do What We Do (#420)

I'm fascinated with the subject of how people decide what to do with their lives.

Do people tend to arrive at vocational conclusions accidentally?

When I got out of high school and didn't enroll in college (somehow, the ACTs slipped my mind...), I signed up with an employment agency. The first thing they found that matched my complete lack of education and skills and could keep me in macaroni and cheese, I took. I ended up keypunching orders for a pharmaceutical company for five years, the very type of work for which I am, shall we say, tempermentally unsuited.

I kept getting reported for writing poetry on the sales order forms, and designing greeting cards for fellow office-mates on company time. It was sad.

Or do people depend heavily on the opinions and direction of those they've come to trust, like high school counselors and even parents?

My guidance counselor might have edged me toward French, but what did she know? Today, all I can say is, "Brussez vos dents!" (Brush your teeth!). I've saved a little in dental bills, but still. I would have had a hard time carving a career out of it.

My dad might have used his connections in the industry to find me an entry level job in banking, but I was kiting so many checks when I was eighteen, I don't think he had the heart. Besides, he had his reputation to think of.

Is it some cosmic combination of childhood traumas, random compliments, faint praise, and heredity that leads us to our life's true purpose? For those who make it a matter of prayer, how does God let them in on His secret?

If you know the answer, or even part of it, I'd like to know.

---

Losers (#421)

"So what's going on in your head?" asks Dr. T, a personal acquaintance of mine these past thirty years. In recent times, I only see him when I require his medical attention, perhaps once a year.

He and his wife lost their son three autumns ago in a car accident. He was eighteen, and beautiful. I am a little self-conscious when inquiring after his family, and he is mildly leery asking about my health.

"Who knows?" I say, only it doesn't quite come out like that since by now he's jabbing around in my mouth with flashlights and pokers. "I've got a couple of weird cysts or something on my gum, one sore tooth, elevated cerebro-spinal fluid, a probable case of TMJ complete with acute facial pain, and....what did you say? I'm deaf in that ear--"

We laugh. We are both at ease now. He knows I'm going to ask, and he's ready.

"Apart from that," I say, "I'm fine. But what I want to know is, how are you?"

"Apart from that, I'm fine."

It is all I ask, and all he needs to say. Spoken or unspoken, that will always be there. Making us just fine, apart from it, but never completely able to be apart.

We are well-versed in the language of loss, and have compressed the syllables until they are few and succinct. He smiles a little under his mask, I can tell. His eyes even twinkle the tiniest bit, astonishing me.

Later he tells me a joke while he holds me captive, making a gunky impression of my mouth. He's not a jokester. He is a serious man, always has been, but he makes me laugh till I cry.

I guess we're both losers, in a way. The amazing thing is that neither of us is lost.

---

Imagine (#422)

I'm as big a Beatles fan as anyone, but the song Imagine has always bugged me. It's the premise that does me in every time I hear it, from back in the day until now.

"Imagine there's no heaven. It's easy if you try..."

For all these years, I've worried that I must have no imagination whatsoever, or at least no powers of concentration, because I couldn't make this work for me. I couldn't imagine heaven away.

Mercy Me's song, I Can Only Imagine, is the perfect antidote to the old standby, and the world must have been ready for it. It's climbing to the top of even secular charts.

The scripture makes it clear that none of us can even begin to imagine all the wonderful things God has prepared for those who love Him. Our tiny minds won't stretch that far.

But when my heart goes on a flight of fancy, this is what it sings:

"Surrounded by your glory, What will my heart feel?
Will I dance for you, Jesus? Or in awe of you be still?
Will I stand in your presence? To my knees will I fall?
Will I sing halleujah? Will I be able to speak at all?
I can only imagine."

I can only imagine.

---

He Is (#423)

"Are You the One? Or shall we look for another?"

Poor John the Baptist. Who can blame him for second-guessing whether or not Jesus was the Messiah, when he--arguably Jesus' greatest promoter--had been thrown in the slammer by King Herod for speaking up against unrighteousness?

Was this how it was supposed to go for John? Was this God's plan for his life, that his head end up on a cake plate at Herod's birthday party?

John was willing to give up his reputation and even his God-ordained ministry for Jesus, if that's what it took. Hadn't he said, "He must increase, but I must decrease"?

Sometimes, though, in the process of laying it all down again, you end up asking the hardest question of all, just to be sure.

"Are You the One? Or shall I look for another?"

"The blind see, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the gospel is preached to the poor."

He's still the One.

---

E-couragement (#424)

Once, a long time ago now, a reader of mine linked to me from her blog. I saw the link among my referrers back then and went to her site, where she said of me, based completely on reading fallible, that I was a woman who "had the material for a novel."

I'm sitting here before a blank screen thinking, If you're still out there, dear reader, email me. I need help.

---

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