All posts by Jackie Pick

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About Jackie Pick

Jackie Pick is a former teacher and current writer living in the Chicago area. She is a contributing author to multiple anthologies, including Multiples Illuminated, So Glad They Told Me: Women Get Real about Motherhood, Here in the Middle, as well as the and the literary magazines The Sun and Selfish. She received Honorable Mention from the Mark Twain House and Museum for her entry in the Royal Nonesuch Humor Writing Competition. Jackie is a contributing writer at Humor Outcasts, and her essays have been featured on various online sites including McSweeney's, Belladonna Comedy, Mamalode, The HerStories Project, and Scary Mommy. A graduate of the University of Chicago and Northwestern University, Jackie is co-creator and co-writer of the award-winning short film Fixed Up, and a proud member of the 2017 Chicago cast of Listen To Your Mother.

Month in Review — Probably Shouldn’t Have Woken Me Up When September Ended

Month in Review, Recommendations, Writing, , , , , , , ,

Usually, I type up the Month In Review posts either the last day of the month or the first of the next month. And here I was all fired up about Hugh Hefner and the hero treatment the man is receiving …

then Las Vegas.

So. Here we are again. My words on this topic won’t matter. We’ve shot people every day. We’ve not stopped it. Not after it happened in a club, in a church, or in a classroom.

I am in perpetual mourning. For victims of hate, victims of catastrophe, victims of senseless violence. Victims of ideologies. Victims of climate change deniers. Victims of the NRA.

My sorrow is deep and the reactions are predictable.

I will act, and I will donate, and I will put my feet to the pavement.

…And I will share what helped make September bearable, or at least escapable for bursts:

 

Maybe this is the only instruction guide we need to be happy, even at times like this.

I’m a big ol’ nerdball when it comes to documentaries. Makes sense, I guess, as I also tend to gravitate towards nonfiction writing. But it’s the weaving in of storytelling craft that makes for an outstanding piece of nonfiction, and Ken Burns is the master. I was riveted from moment one. I’m only on Episode Five, but this is not a series to binge watch so much as to take in and digest before moving on to the next part.

Oof. Why it’s so important that we study history. It is because of this that I hope we can scrub all the faux news and the equivocating and the creative silent editing and the “butwhatabouts” from the record. Not an easy essay to swallow, but there’s some pretty disgusting stuff in world history and it would be nice to not have to repeat it. Unfortunately, we are a stubborn species, determined to live repeat rather than shuffle.

Sometimes, especially when life gets mired in ugly small indignities – a turned back, a cruel word, an untruth, a passive-aggression – or just the daily grind, it can be hard for me to access creativity. I will be turning to these strategies as needed. Hopefully, they won’t be needed often!

Maybe this is just the answer to it all. 

I wish you good friends, a nice cup of something warm, hugs, a sense of history, a creative spark, and dessert.

An Act of Courage

Parenting, Writing, , ,

One of my children has been saying he’s a “bad writer” and that he doesn’t like writing. Writing is complex and so emotional that the act can feel like we’re ripping our skin off in public, so I tread carefully on this. Because, really, sometimes I tell myself I’m a bad writer, and often I don’t like writing (particularly the rewriting part, which is about 80% of the writing I do).

He told me yesterday, in an impromptu conversation held at the beach (as most potentially life-altering conversations are) that he wants to write his truths, his story, because that’s the assignment at school, but he doesn’t want to write his whole truth, his deep truth, because it’s going to be judged on some level, and possibly shared. So he picks the stories of his life that aren’t the most profound, most revealing, most forefront. Meaning he doesn’t pick the ripest fruits from the most fertile ground.

And I get it. I said that writing is making yourself vulnerable, and it’s ok to not share those stories yet if he’s not ready. And he may never be. But he should write them somewhere.

He wants to write them. He wants to share, but what’s forefront in his mind are those stories in his young life where he has felt different, excluded, raw, or torn between difficult choices. These are the things that make for real and wonderful writing, and the things that can make for painful moments in childhood (and beyond). These are not the things one necessarily chooses to stand in front of one’s peers and read.

Fortunately, he’s not isolated, he has friends, and he can slough off many difficult situations with more grace than any child should have to muster. He also has perspective and a good heart, and some real skills. I gave him some suggestions on different ways to handle these types of situations. He can choose how he wishes to proceed as he continues on. He will have to write in school. That’s just how it is. He will have to write narratives probably at least through middle school. That’s also just how it is. But he has choices and strategies now.

As a former English teacher and also as a mother, it’s made me wonder about writing and how we teach it, what we expect from our youngest, most vulnerable artists. It also explains why teachers get a glut of “narrative” essays (one of the big three we are required to teach – narrative, expository, and persuasive) – about scoring winning goals or small traumas and pains or issues that scratch the surface or highly formulaic pieces that don’t usually take a big risk.

And it reminds me what an act of courage it is to ask children to go to school every day and write and interact and take risks. To be bad at something. Or, scarier, to be good at something.

Every. Day.

Promises Made, Promises Kept

Creative non-fiction, Parenting, Surviving Summer Funtimes, , , , , ,

“It’s so slow. It’s always so slow.”

I recognize this person, even though I’ve never seen her before. She’s harried. She’s got too much to do and this particular task probably took longer than she’d anticipated. Now she’s stuck in a pokey checkout line here at a local craft store.

I can feel this poor woman’s rage and helplessness and her to-do list beating out of her chest. I get it. We all do.

It’s the first week of September, and whether you’re a parent celebrating some extra time, or you’re a parent saddened by the end of summer, or you don’t even have kids, this week marks the return of Hurry Up and Get It Done. No more Flex Fridays. No more lazing. Work and school have been waiting impatiently for the day after Labor Day to unload all the things we need to do immediately. 

There is a sense that if we do not get organized, we will be chasing after our own lives until winter break.

Not-so-much-a-spoiler-alert: we will never get things completely under control.

Wednesday was the second day of school. We’re all unmoored, exhausted from new routines, and expending excessive amounts of emotional and physical energy figuring out and living the New Regular.

My daughter started kindergarten and has been understandably needing extra nurturing at home. Her kindergarten eases the kids into a long day by starting the year having the students attend for a few hours, then after a few weeks, they add another hour, then another. Right now, there are almost four hours a day it is just me and her, before her brothers come home. She needs and wants my attention, and I force myself to put away my list of All the Things I Wanted to Do Once School Started.

For a week, I’ve been promising to take her to the craft store to find some after-school before-brothers-come-home activities. It was about the last thing I wanted to do between meetings, deadlines, and the ever-growing piles of laundry that similarly begged for my attention.

Then there’s that exhaustion thing that never seems to fully disappear, the sum of running around, absorbing all the nervous energy of the house, plus too many nights of poor sleep.

Unsurprisingly, we spent a happy hour there wandering the shelves, picking out stickers and barrette-making kits. Still, it took effort to stay focused on being with my daughter, being there, holding space as she  processed all the new in her world. I just wanted to zone out and stare at Washi tape for awhile.

Later. Always later.

We wound our way to checkout line after  45 minutes of giggling and smelling scented candles and avoiding the scary Halloween aisles. There’d been some yesses (stickers!) and some nos (happy cloud rainbow pillow), and a lot of marveling.

We were both ready to go, and we waited out the customers ahead of us. Checking out is never a fast process at this particular store, and there were some customers who had coupons, some who had questions, and others who were genetically part-sloth.

My daughter kept asking for candy (no), then tried to convince me the that Cheez-Its in the candy display are not candy (true) and could she have some (no). We looked at the wreaths hanging on the wall. We told terrible jokes to each other. She booped my nose a few times and each time I made a sound just to get her to laugh and distract her from her own exhaustion.

So, yes, it was slow. While my heart beat in rhythm with the woman huffing and puffing behind me, I could not take in her stress, because mine is at peak right now. I didn’t want to commiserate. I didn’t want to bond. I just wanted to practice patience. I smiled as sympathetically at her as I could and turned back to my daughter, who brought my attention to the erasers shaped like lollipops.

“Have you ever seen anything like that?” she marveled, and I loved her so at that moment.

Spent — utterly, totally, bone-achingly spent — we finally got called over to Register 5. It was only after I put our little items on the counter that I realized I’d left my wallet at home.

I rarely remove my wallet from my purse and had only done so earlier in order to order some groceries online, a desperate effort to gain some control in my life, to steal a few precious moments, to perhaps sit a little bit.

Backfire.

“I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten my wallet.”

The cashier, also overwhelmed, looked over all the items on the counter. “Ok.” She started moving the items to a different cart.

“I’m so sorry. We can put them back.” I glanced at my daughter, whose little brows knit, and I squeezed her little hand to let her know I would explain in a moment.

“That’s ok. Next customer to Register 5. Next customer to Register 5.” And with that, we were dismissed.

“What’s going on?” my daughter asked. “Are we getting our stuff?”

I steered the cart out the door. “No, baby. I forgot my wallet, which means I don’t have any way to pay.”

My tears stung hot, not because of the wallet, not because my daughter didn’t get a $5 crafting kit, but because I knew I was on overload. Too many meetings, too many worries, too many obligations, too many calendar spaces filling up too quickly, too many tears wiped, too many “this will just take a second” items.

“You ok, Mama?”

Was I? No. I was split open, flattened, put to the fire.

“Yeah, baby. I’m just…spatchcocked.”

She started laughing, having never heard that fabulous word with all of its hard consonants.

I laughed.

“We had fun, didn’t we?” I asked her as we sped home to make sure we were home in time to greet her brothers after school.

 

Epilogue: I went back to the craft store alone that evening but to undertake my weekly Artist Date — an essential part of living a creative life that is all-too-often the first thing I cancel when life gets busy. I stared endlessly at Washi Tape. I did not zip through the aisles as fast as possible. I recreated our morning, putting the items we had delighted in into the cart, plus a few small things for myself. It was a peaceful rewind.
30 minutes I left the store refreshed and re-energized. I looked up to see this:

It was a symbol of a promise of a different sort — one from myself to myself.