Barbara Samuel O'Neal is the author of more than thirty award-winning novels, including THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS and

The Secret of Everything
The Secret of Everything

A native of Colorado, Barbara loves teaching, travel, reading, writing, yoga, walking, food, cooking, photography and...okay, reality television.

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Pretty sure I’ve posted a blog that says more or less this same thing at least 63 times, but it’s worth saying again. I get more work done, more good pages, more excellent rewriting done when I actually put myself in the chair during my most productive hours (8 am to 12 pm) and…uh…work.

It sounds so simple, but it isn’t, actually. I have to bypass the Internet, even a little glimpse into it. Not just for the reason that it distracts me, and I can find something to do, but because it changes the direction of my thoughts, pulls me into the world instead of pulling me into myself. I used to walk the dog right after breakfast, but I make him wait now until I take my morning break. I do not answer the phone. I don’t do anything but go to the office with my coffee in hand and sit down at my desk. I’m allowed to write a journal or lists of things I’d like to accomplish or even lists of scenes. I don’t even let myself do a meditation right there in the corner, which is all set up for it. Even that can be a way for me to avoid going into the world of my novel.

I can journal, etc, for 20 minutes, then I have to open the file and get moving. Usually what happens is that I can’t go into it cold–it feels too challenging, too scary for my still emergent creativity–so I find a spot I know I want to tweak, or one I know I’m going to like, and I read there. I change a word or two, rewrite a sentence here, a sentence there. I read aloud to get the cadence right, maybe, or play with subtext or echoes. This always works to pull me back into the world of the book at hand, and out of my own head and life and agitations.

And surprise! By 11 or sometimes even by 9:30, I’ve done my pages for the day and I am free to do other things. Like today, when I am headed out to Barnes and Noble for a coffee and a nice amble. Maybe I’ll look at journals for my upcoming travels.

How do you trick yourself to do things?

The Lost Art of Family Dinners

Dinner in Suburbia by Make Less Noise

When I was a child, we ate dinner together nearly every night. I did not necessarily love the whole ritual, especially when my mother made hamburger pie, covered with mashed potatoes, or when I was in trouble for one thing or another (which was a lot), but I can see from this angle that it was a good thing.

Our kitchen was large and we ate there, gathered around the white melamine table with its painted edging of lacy gold leaves. We had assigned seats, mainly because my sister Merry is left-handed, but also because there was sometimes a scuffle over who landed the seat next to my dad. My parents pinned the ends, and I sat between my mother and my sister Cathy (who still jockeys to sit next to my father at all functions). My father would ask, “What was the highlight of YOUR day?” and we’d have to answer.

Supper was rarely anything fancy. Tacos and spaghetti and sometimes a Sunday roast beef, most every meal made from ground beef, which was affordable and stretched over six people. We did eat Hamburger Helper, which honestly didn’t seem that terrible to me, and jello with fruit, green beans from a can (I absolutely despised frozen vegetables) and applesauce from a jar, and sliced wheat bread with margarine to fill up whatever didn’t get full from the main meal. (Four growing teenagers can eat a lot!) When my father worked for awhile at a 7-Up bottling plant, he sometimes brought home six packs of Nehi, but we mostly drank Kool-Aid. (Hey, it was the ’70’s. Nobody had discovered cuisine, at least not in the suburbs.)

We talked, made conversation. Sometimes my father would ask us all to tell the highlight of our day, and we’d moan about it, but it was fun. We talked about everything, and if anyone had a problem, they stayed at the table after dinner to sort it out.

So naturally, when my own children came along, I also created a tradition of dinner at the table. American standbys had shifted a bit by then. Chicken and soups and Mexican food were my standbys, things that wouldn’t burn if I became distracted by my work. We drank milk and iced tea. Again, simple food on a simple rotation, the same 30 meals in endless rotation. In our house, we sat in the dining room with blue walls (light blue for a long time, then a bright, bold deep blue I loved madly), around a heavy wooden table someone gave us early in our marriage. The dogs were banished to the line on the other side of the door, and waited politely to finish. We talked about school, and I asked them sometimes to share the highlight of their day. Somebody would tell a joke. Someone would lodge a complaint.

But it was good.

There has been much made about some (flawed) studies of children and family dinners, and I’m not going to bother with statistics here. I’m an observer, not a social scientist; a curious writer, not a statistician. We don’t need statistics. Our gut knows that this is an important ritual. Time Magazine said it best in this article from 2006:

“There is something about a shared meal–not some holiday blowout, not once in a while but regularly, reliably–that anchors a family even on nights when the food is fast and the talk cheap and everyone has someplace else they’d rather be. And on those evenings when the mood is right and the family lingers, caught up in an idea or an argument explored in a shared safe place where no one is stupid or shy or ashamed, you get a glimpse of the power of this habit and why social scientists say such communion acts as a kind of vaccine, protecting kids from all manner of harm. Read more: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1200760,00.html#ixzz0gEQfFb8l”

Yet, over and over we read that the family dinner is in decline. There are likely hundreds of reasons. Parents who work long hours to keep the mortgage paid, the decline in cooking skills, fast food, irregular schedules. I suspect, however, that we’ve simply fallen out of practice a bit.

In THE LOST RECIPE FOR HAPPINESS and THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING, family dinners end up playing a small but crucial part of the narrative. And I’m forced to admit that I believe in it, family dinner, believe that it has the power to cure all kinds of ills and problems. Not everything. Heaven knows family dinners didn’t keep me out of trouble as a rebellious (and obnoxious) teen. They did, however, give me a place to retreat, fall apart, even make reparation by showing up and behaving myself. “Pass the potatoes, please,” and “Does anyone want this last tortilla?” can go a long way to healing rifts.

Family dinners don’t have to look like they do on television. Maybe both mom and dad can’t be at the table. Maybe the family is mom and one child, or dad and his visiting children, or stepfamilies assembled in all their glorious and inglorious incarnations. Maybe it’s even grandpa bring home some chicken and biscuits from the local Kentucky Fried.

The important part is the regular-ish timing of it. It’s the setting of the table and the sitting down to a meal on plates, whether it came out of a bucket or an oven or is peanut butter sandwiches and a glass of milk. It’s the dumb requirements of conversation (What was the highlight of your day? What was one thing that happened today?) and the attempts to be present for each other, even if—as in the Time paragraph—everybody would rather be holed up in their rooms in front of the television.

So, those would be my rules for magical family dinners.

Same time every night
(If evenings don’t work, make family time at breakfast.)
Seven days a week.
Every family member is required to sit at the table unless they have to work (and parents should not use this as an excuse very often. Aim for a time that’s realistic.)
Everybody has to participate even if they think it’s silly.

Bonus points:
Prepare meals from scratch together
Offer a blessing from your tradition over the food before you begin
Aim for one really great meal every week, maybe Saturday evening, and follow with family games or movies.

Triple points for teenagers showing up. I shamelessly used bribery with mine, but you may be more squeamish.

Eat. Talk. Prosper.
—————–
Do you find it difficult to arrange family dinners? What gets in your way? What tricks have you found to help? Did your family eat together?

The Practice of Giving Something Up

Today is Ash Wednesday, the day that marks the opening day of Lent, a period of atonement and abstention in the Christian, particularly Catholic, tradition.  Although I no longer attend Catholic masses or actively practice many of the traditions, Lent still seems to me to be a powerful time to practice mindfulness, to notice what excesses I might be lazily indulging, and give myself a chance to bring life back into balance.

As I have an indulgent sort of personality, it turns out there are lots of things I could give up—sweets and sugar, wine, all meat, chocolate—and I haven’t decided yet what it will be.   The first time I consciously gave anything up, I was a young mother and in a difficult stretch for our family.  I gave up all meat for the duration, and it was a bit of a pinch, but mostly, I forgot about it.   One afternoon, nearly at Easter, we were moving, and I stopped at McDonalds to buy the boys some lunch. Exhausted, starving, stressed, I thoughtlessly ordered a hamburger for myself, too.

And it was the most delicious hamburger I had ever eaten.   Ever.  I kept thinking, why is this such a great burger? It didn’t hit me until I was putting the boys to bed that it tasted so good because I hadn’t eaten meat in 30 days or so.

Gretchen Rubin, in THE HAPPINESS PROJECT, a wonderful lighthearted book I recommend highly, says that giving something up has the effect of making us happier. It’s mastery and virtue rolled up into a little happiness bubble.   A year or so ago, I decided to give up spending money on Starbucks except once a week.  I could use that $4 at any time during the week, but only once.  (I make an exception for days I desperately need to work and go to Starbucks to jolt my creativity.)  It’s a small thing.  It’s not like I can afford the coffee, but it’s just such a silly, extravagant expense—and it really does make me feel virtuous every time I drive by and don’t spend the money.   It reinforces my idea of myself as a mindful spender.

The other reason I want to give something up is to begin preparation for a pilgrimage walk I’ll be doing this summer.  A group of us will be walking a portion of the Camino de Santiago, a famous medieval pilgrim road in Northern Spain, and I would like to prepare spiritually for the journey.  To open up to prompts and whispers and take a new step on my spiritual journey. It’s very appealing to imagine walking on a road that has been trod by seekers for a thousand years, to taste the air they breathed, listen for the whispers of their hungers and sorrows and quests.

Meat would be easiest to give up. Sugar a misery. Wine a pinch.  Which should I choose?

Have you ever given anything up for Lent or some other spiritual tradition? Will you give something up this year?

How the wind do howl....

If you follow me on Twitter or Facebook, you know I’ve been engaged in an adventure with my mother.  We traveled to Washington DC so that my mother could browse the Smithsonians until she dropped and then we would have dinner every night with my son. 

Last Friday, of course, it started snowing.  I nearly cancelled about 12 times, but kept thinking that once the storm was over, it would be okay, and we could go play.   On Sunday morning, they were thinking they might be able to get the airport open by evening, so we took our chances and headed out, laying over in Chicago, with a flight booked the next morning. 

Reagan Airport never did open that night.  We ate in a passably good Italian restaurant called Carlucci’s, where I had the roast chicken in a subtle, lovely broth:

Titanic was on television that night, so we watched that for awhile and then went to sleep early, so we could be up at 3 to catch our 6 am flight.  (Yes, I am a morning person, but my mother is not, poor dear.)  The airport in DC was still closed, but everyone was hopeful, and we uneventfully pased the rest of the day.  Miraculously, our bags actually arrived before we did, and were waiting when we got there.

There was a lot of snow.

but we were so happy to be there, we didn’t care.  We called Ian and he came over to meet us for dinner at  a vegetarian friendly spot called Busboys and Poets (who knows why?) and all was well.  

In the morning, the Smithsonian and the Federal Government were still closed.  There was a threat of snow, and tons on the ground, but it hadn’t started melting yet, so it was pretty navigable.  We pulled on our snow books and layers and headed out into the day.  Visited the International Spy Museum, which is like wandering around an espionage novel or many opening a bunch of boxes of Cracker Jacks.  We had it almost entirely to ourselves, ditto the cafe.  The weather was cold, but not intolerably so, and we headed down toward the Mall, which was quiet and beautiful in the snow.  We wandered by the White House, and along the frozen-solid reflecting pond (I have shots, but can’t show you until I upload the other pics from my real camera, not the cell phone).  We figured out the Metro well enough to find our way to Ian’s side of town and by the time we got above ground again, snow was going crazy.  CRAZY.  We were soaked by the time we got to his house, but I was still glad.  One of my little things is that I like to be able to visualize my kids in their environments, so seeing his house is a big plus.  (Also I got to kiss Hercules, the biggest cat on the planet. )

We ate pizza (New Haven style, which I’d never heard of, but was quite good) and then we headed home.  The Metro station was without power, so dark and creepy and I grabbed my mother close to me and didn’t let her out of my sight.  We were shipped off to the end of the line and then had to make our way back, and then slogged through the increasing snow to get back to our hotel, shed our wet clothes and fall into bed. 

This was the view from our room when we got up:

Yeah. We didn’t end up doing much.  I know you’re surprised. 

And my confession is that I was very irritable about it. I wanted my mother to see the Smithsonians.  I wanted to go with her to Julia Child’s kitchen, and I wanted us to have little conversations over tea and muse about history.    It was a holiday for me, too, and I honestly don’t have time for another one. There was a tiny bit of business worked in there, a single meeting with my editor (whom I adore!), and I had to cancel that, too.   

I would love to tell you that I’m always a good sport, but that would be a big fat lie.  By yesterday morning, I’d had it with snow and soaking wet clothes and feet and not being able to see a single thing we wanted to see or go to the restaurants we wanted to go to or even have a halfway decent breakfast.  There wasn’t enough space in my room to do any yoga.  Ian was stranded on his side of town, we were stuck in a hotel that only serves breakfast and we were facing the prospect of eating ramen noodle imitations for dinner. 

It would have given me great pleasure to bite off the heads of chickens and spit them out or something.  Something big and violent and disgusting. 

Instead I took my grumpy self to the fitness room and found space for some yoga, then walked (barefoot since I had no proper shoes) on the treadmill.  I told myself we were getting the thing we most wanted: time with each other and Ian.  We could make do with the herbal tea I had in my bag, and our books, and yogurts carried upstairs from the breakfast bar. 

And we would have.  But then some guys staggered through the front doors carrying six packs of beer, and a woman said there were rumors that Busboys and Poets was actually open, so we wrapped ourselves up like mummies and braved the winds to have a hot meal and a bottle of wine.  This is my mother, with the cafe behind her, and below is the cafe itself.  Really cool place.  Check it out if you go.  Excellent for the vegetarians in your world.

I grew quite fond of the place.  Shelter from the storm and all that.

We carried wine back with us, and ordered a movie to watch on the hotel channel, and then this morning we awakened to SUNSHINE! And melting snow.  The airport was open, so Mom’s flight was on time (we had sort of hoped for a bit of a delay).   We bundled up and headed out to see the city coming alive again. But on our rounds we saw this at the National Portrait Gallery:

And my mother shot the photo, laughing, saying she was going to take pictures of every museum she didn’t see.

In the end, I suspect we will remember other things—the utter silence of the mall under the falling snow.  The quiet camaraderie of braving the elements and a trip that turned out to be something other than what we expected.  I will remember our time together.  Me & my mom.  Me & my son.  My son & my mother

Have you ever had a crazy trip?   Tell us about it in the comments, and I”ll choose someone to win a signed copy of The Secret of Everything.

Playlist for THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING

I’ve had a good number of requests to post the playlist for THE SECRET OF EVERYTHING, and here it is.  I had no idea there was so much music in this book, honestly, but music is always playing in my head (and Tessa’s!), so I suppose it is no big surprise.

I had a soundtrack that kept growing and growing and growing as I worked, and this is most of it. Not all songs showed up on the actual pages, of course.  And not all the folk songs have names I know.

Orphan Girl, Emmy Lou Harris

The Garden, Mirah

Dark on Fire, Turin Brakes

Ballad of an Outlaw Woman, Annie McCUe

Our House, Crosby Stills Nash and Young

Deja Vu, CSNY

Helplessly Hoping, CSN

It’s a Beautiful Day, It’s a Beautiful Day

Bombay Calling, It’s a Beautiful Day

Guinevere, CSN

Long as I Can See the Light, Creedence Clearwater Revival

Hanging on a Star, Nick Drak

Chasing Cars, Snow Patrol

Friend of the Devil, Grateful Dead

Truckin’, Grateful Dead

No Sleep Tonight, Faders

Superman, Three Doors Down

Rescue Me, Aretha Franklin

Mother of God, Patty Griffin

Turtle Blues, Janis Joplin

All You Rolling Minstrels, Fairport Convention

Tessa’s List of Happy Artists

Entire Motown List

Beatles

Sound of Music (also Natalie’s favorite)

Kirstly McColl’s Tropical Brainstorm

Cat Stevens, Teaser and the Firecat

I would love to have made you a playlist so you could download the whole thing at iTunes, but I haven’t a clue how to do it.


A sweet bow from her shy petals

One of my great desires has always been to have a greenhouse.  In a corner of my dining room is a small conservatory, a Victorian imitation, and within are a cyclamen and African violets.  This morning, this cyclamen was blooming and I spent an hour admiring it, shooting the light on its petals, diving into a wordless orgy of appreciation.  There is something so quiet and renewing about flowers, something that heals all those little broken spots and makes you feel you might be able to take a deep breath and keep moving after all.  

If I had a greenhouse, I’d probably never get any writing done.  I’d just be in there, shooting photos from twelve angles, breathing in the fresh exhalations of the leaves.

Is there some small beauty in your life that stops you exactly in your tracks?

A beautiful loaf

Jack had to have a bit of surgery this week (he’s fine, he’s fine!) and when I got home from finding out, I didn’t even take off my sweater. I gravitated to the kitchen and started pulling out flour. This is the result, a wheaty loaf, using a small amount of buckwheat in a poolish starter.

Farewell to the Ancient One

I had to let Sasha go last Friday. You’ve all been so kind, I thought you’d want to know. Rather than weep, I think in her honor we should all laugh, eat something we love, and raise a toast to the scavenger dogs of the world. Here is a link to one of my favorite stories about her, the butter story:

http://www.barbarasamuel.com/blog/2009/01/26/life-with-bad-dogs/

Once upon a time…

We’re doing some spring cleaning around here and while transfering files from a box (really) to an actual file cabinet, I found this query. 

It ended up leading to my first sale. 

The phone number was my mother’s, by the way.  I was too poor to have a phone of my own.

Come visit with me in Colorado Springs

I’ll be at the Briargate Barnes and Nobel on Sunday afternoon. Come on over!

January 17, 2-4 pm
Barnes and Noble, North Colorado Springs
1565 Briargate Blvd
Colorado Springs, CO 80920
719-266-9960