Springtime and Passover in NYC

Carl Schurz Park, Yorkville, New York City, tulips above and walkway below.

Every year we gather in New York City for Passover. My parents host our Seder, and we all take turns reading from a haggadah that has more English than Hebrew. Our mixed-faith family is also multinational: American, British, Japanese, Italian Canadian and Mexican American. Only a few of us went to Hebrew School, but we all mumble along with enthusiasm, especially in the Dayenu chorus. The week-long holiday celebrates the Jews' escape from slavery in Egypt. In remembrance, we eat matzah, unleavened bread (English spelling of Hebrew varies). On the run in the desert, there was no time for the dough to rise. All the food is symbolic.

Passover is always in springtime, but the timing shifts due to the Hebrew lunar calendar. In my neighborhood park, the cherry trees were in peak bloom. My husband and our kids had to return for school, but I stayed a couple extra days to catch up with friends and art.

There's a wonderful Munch exhibit at the Neue Gallery, including his pastel Scream. Afterwards my parents treated me to a Viennese lunch at Cafe Sabarsky (above). The museum and cafe are inside a gorgeous 5th Avenue mansion overlooking Central Park.

Meanwhile back in Maine, my husband texted me this photo of our backyard. My flight back home Tuesday was cancelled due to the snowstorm! This was unusual for late April, even in Maine.

Given an extra day, I enjoyed a leisurely walk in Central Park.

For gym class in high school, I used to jog around the reservoir with my friend Cathy, who now runs Main Point Books in Pennsylvania. Another friend of ours is a librarian at a Harlem high school. We love talking books, and they use my recommendations to restock their shelves. My librarian friend was especially grateful for my Gay YA Romances post, since those are the books that go missing. Her students love romances and dystopia so I promised to keep an eye out for diverse YA in those genres.

For my last lunch, I had matzah ball soup at The Mansion, our local diner which has been there longer than my parents can remember. On the windows were both Passover and Easter decorations. I felt right at home.

Now back in Maine, I found my forsythia blooming over melting snow. Locals call spring snow "poor man's fertilizer." This transplanted New Yorker is feeling inspired.

Spring Snow & Before Goodbye by Mimi Cross

March is capricious in Maine. After an abnormally warm winter, six inches of snow fell on the second day of spring. On Monday I put on skis to walk my dog, but most of the snow has melted now. Late March through April is mud season for us. Anything is possible. You need a good sense of humor and excellent outerwear to live this far north. Spring snow makes me want to curl up by the fire with a good book.

Before Goodbye by Mimi Cross is a new young adult novel about music, romance, and grief-induced addiction; it will cross over well to an adult audience. After her musical muse dies in a car crash, Cate can no longer play the classical guitar. This 16-year-old sophomore seeks escape in the foggy stupor of Ketamine. David, an 18-year-old wounded athlete, uses sex like a drug to forget the pain of his brother's suicide. These two troubled teens from dysfunctional families bond over their love of indie music. Their dark romance is told in alternating voices and is set in a posh New Jersey suburb.

What makes Before Goodbye special is the musician-author's knowledge of music and her lyrical writing style. The words sing from the page, begging for guitar accompaniment. I often paused to read lines out loud, to hear their rhythm. My teenage daughter is a singer/songwriter so I related to that part of the narrative on a personal level. The book was at its strongest when music found symbolic resonance in the plot and in Cate's character development:

"I do not play the instrument; I am the instrument. I serve. My fingers move up and down the fretboard, skip, skip, skip across the strings..." 

"I put the guitar away, wondering suddenly as I do, what it would feel like to never take it out again. To close the case forever, like a coffin." 

"Snow doesn't produce a sound. Rather it emits stillness. Cate's stillness is not so different, and like the snow, that still aspect of her, I'm starting to understand, has to do with something frozen."

This gorgeous, engrossing novel suffers a bit from a typical debut problem: plot sprawl. There are enough subplots and messed up characters for a full season of a teen melodrama: two accidental deaths, two suicides, child abuse and neglect, depression, alcoholism, rape and homophobia on top of drug and sex addiction. Juxtaposition dilutes the emotional impact of these tragic issues and makes the story less plausible. The author does an admirable job delving deep into all of them, which resulted in a 400-page tome. Most contemporary YA is closer to 300 pages and is faster paced, especially in the opening chapters. Cross's novel would have been stronger for focusing more exclusively on the central plot without so many diversions. Even so, I stayed up late reading and look forward to more from this promising new author.

Given the edgy content, I would only recommend Before Goodbye to mature teens (16 and up) and to adults. The Maine Writer's panel on YA Today (last week's blog post) predicted more young adult books geared for older teens to accommodate adult readers (who comprise 80% of the market), and this is a fine example of the emerging trend. Cross covers a lot of contentious issues, but her novel includes consequences and learning. If my child were reading this book, I'd want to read along with her/him. Hopefully this dark story will open discussion on risky behavior. The author's acknowledgement ends with links to organizations supporting victims of rape, drug addiction, and domestic violence. Before Goodbye is a bold debut.

Reviewer's Disclosure: my writing crit partner, Charlotte Agell, recommended this novel to me since she knows the author. I bought the ebook and posted my review without compensation. Before Goodbye was released in January and is also available in hardcover, paperback, and audiobook from Skyscape Publishing, a new YA imprint from Amazon.

Wells Reserve in Maine

To escape the muddy trails of April, we drove an hour south to the Wells National Estuarine Research Reserve. Laudholm Beach is open to the public along with several acres of trails through the wetlands.

There are loose rocks to cross and tidal pools to hop so hiking boots are prudent. It's well worth it for the calm ocean vista, only a quarter hour drive from busy Kennebunkport.

The muted colors of mud season suit this landscape very well.

Nature is a fine sculptor too. 

When we returned home, I was delighted to find our crocuses in bloom. Spring is here at long last!

Hiking Morse Mountain, Maine in Spring Snow

Over "spring" break, three weeks ago, my intrepid son joined me for a hike up Morse Mountain.

In Maine spring doesn't really kick in until May, but at least the snow is melting in mud season.

The trail starts by a saltwater marsh before climbing into the woods. We hiked with 

ice-stabilizers strapped to our boots, but snowshoes would have been better.

The mountain is really a hill, but it offers a spectacular view of the marsh and ocean. You can click on my Morse Mountain label below to see this view in other seasons. Over the last three weeks the snow has melted to patches. We were in the 60's these past few days! I shall spare you the photos of mud.

Snoooow!

What I woke up to this morning...in mid April! 

At least I got my daffodil fix last week in NYC.

The people at Columbia College were very helpful with my research. 

When I got back home, all the ice had melted. I thought we'd seen the last of the snow. You need a good sense of humor and an excellent pair of boots to live in Maine. 

Thanks so much for all your encouraging comments last week. I'm taking a blog vacation to finish the first round of revisions on my novel. My crit-partner, the talented Charlotte Agell, will be reading my work-in-progress next week. I'll be away touring colleges with my 16-year-old daughter.
I'll be back online May 7th. 

Happy Passover and Easter!

A Rough Draft of the Maine Novel

After seven months of writing, I have completed the first draft of a new young adult novel! It's a rough draft riddled with inconsistencies and plot holes, but the main story, setting and characters are there. I have chatted and written notes to these people at all hours of the day and night. My family has to remind me that my characters aren't real. You know that feeling when you're engrossed in reading a book? It's even more intense if you are writing that book. I kept writing because it was the only way I'd know what would happen.

First drafts are thrilling but also challenging. Although I know the initial set-up and the ending before I start writing, the narrative can go in so many directions in between. The characters are defined existentially through their actions, but those choices are made as I work through the plot. Initially my focus is on story and on character developed and not on writing craft. My first draft looks so coarse compared to a final polished manuscript. It makes me cringe with embarrassment. I much prefer revision to drafting, but it's all part of a process that can span more than a year. There will be months of revision and beta testing on teen readers before I share the manuscript with my agent.

Central Park in April a couple of years ago.

The timing couldn't be better for fleshing out a novel set in the spring of senior year. For hometown details, I'll be revisiting Monhegan Island and harbor towns that inspired my fictional coastal community. Since my protagonist has been accepted to Columbia College, my first field trip is to New York City, where I grew up. The last time I was on campus was back in high school so I've signed up for a prospective student tour tomorrow. I'll be the only parent accompanied by a virtual daughter!

I'm starting my field work in New York because Maine is still a fraying patchwork of snow and ice. This has been an unusually long winter and a protracted mud season. I'm craving flowers, warmth and any color beyond frosty white and muddy brown. I'm staying with my parents, seeing friends and celebrating Passover with my family. There will be time for museums and shops. I need a short break.

Happy spring!

Mud Season in Maine

Pond ice is thinning.

Seawater is flowing into estuaries.

Maybe my last day on skis?

The backyard cover is only ankle deep.

Sidewalks thaw and mud oozes.

The beach has just a frosting of snow, a glazing of ice. 

It's nearly the end of winter,
but not quite the start of spring.
Mud Season.

photo note: first photo by my daughter on our "last" ski.

Mud Season in Maine

March and April is mud season in Maine.

Rivers thaw, snow melts and fields brown.

Every step is slippery or squelchy,

And a question mark of snow remains.

Tides ripple the sand, promising summer.

Only my dog misses winter.

Blog Watch for seasonal blues: Les@Tidewater Garden hosted his annual winter walk off. Sapphire shared cherry blossom season in Japan. Petra revisited summery Lhota in the Czech Republic. Pamela@From the House of Edward posted a whimsical list for spring.

Draft and Thaw

“My Life in Sentences” by Jhumpa Lahiri is the first article in Draft, a new series on the art and craft of writing in The New York Times. Lahiri is one of my favorite authors for both style and content. Her first story collection, Interpreter of Maladies, won the Pulitzer in 2000. I also loved The Namesake and Unaccustomed Earth. She writes exquisitely about writing too:  

“But only certain sentences breathe and shift about, like live matter in soil. The first sentence of a book is a handshake, perhaps an embrace.”

Don’t you love her metaphors? Lahiri’s experience with writing, of waking in the night to scribble sentences on scraps of paper and having the story come to her like “pieces of a jigsaw puzzle,” is how I go about writing first drafts too. It was encouraging to find parallels. 

I just looked back at my review of Lahiri’s last book and was amused to see that I read those stories in Cornwall. That trip to the West Country was meant to be a vacation from writing, but it inspired me to shift the setting of a novel I was researching in England. I’m revising that manuscript right now.

Lately it’s been a challenge to sit inside writing. As I noted in an earlier post this month, March is usually still winter in Maine.  April is mud season, a time of melting snow and thawing mud. True spring, with everything blooming all at once, doesn’t normally kick in until May. Last weekend temperatures soared to the 60’s, and we’re due to hit 80 today! The last patch of icy snow in my woods vanished yesterday. Nothing is blooming yet and the grass is more dun than green, but I’m soaking in this warm sunshine with delight. More seasonal 40 degree temps are due at the end of the week.

Happy Spring!