Dreams

If you’ve read The Transformation of Things, then you’ve probably guessed that I’ve always been interested in dreams, in what they mean, where they come from, how they affect us. Yes, the book takes a bit of a fantasy spin on all this, but it’s rooted in the fact that dreams have always interested me. As a kid, I had a dream dictionary that I used to use religiously, every morning, looking up what my dreams from the night before meant. As an adult, I hang on to dreams, sometimes write them down, often think about them, analyze them, try to seek some sort of meaning from them.

In almost all my memorable dreams, I’m in the house I grew up in. We moved from this house before I started high school, but I hardly ever dream about that later house, or even the one I live in now, or anything in between. Often my dreams also involve my best friend (who I’ve been friends with since kindergarten), and maybe it’s because I have so many memories of the two of us spending summer days in that old house. I’m not sure. But a large part of my dreams are very rooted in these aspects from my childhood, even when that makes absolutely no sense with what’s going on in the dream.

Lately I’ve been dreaming about my dead grandfather. A lot. He died over three years ago, but the dreams have only begun lately, a month or two ago. In the first dream, he was with me and my best friend at a historical landmark pulled directly from the book I’m working on. (Okay, it probably doesn’t take a genius to figure out how that wormed its way into my subconscious!) Anyway, he was our tour guide in the dream, and he showed my friend and me around, in the process telling us that everything was going to be okay and that we needed to stop worrying so much. I hung onto that dream for weeks, because it felt so real – not the tour guide at the historical landmark part, but his words. When he was alive, he’d always ask me about my writing, and at the time, the submission process for my first book. I talked to him every Sunday, and every Sunday he’d ask. At first about getting an agent, then whether the book had sold to a publisher. Every Sunday for probably two or three years, I’d say something like, “I don’t know if this book is ever going to get published.” And he’d say. “Don’t worry about it. Everything is going to be beautiful, Babydoll!” That’s also what he told me, in the midst of his tour, in my dream.

This past week, I've dreamt about him almost every night. Wherever I am, whomever I’m with, he’s been there. Sometimes tagging along with my family; sometimes he works at whatever place we’re at and appears later. It’s been bizarre and creepy and lovely -- waking up every morning, feeling as if I’ve just seen him and talked with him.

I mentioned these dreams to my mom the other day, and she said maybe the dreams mean he’s somewhere, watching over me right now. I laughed and said, if he was somewhere, watching anything this past week, I was sure it would’ve be the March Madness Tournament instead, which he used to LOVE beyond almost anything else.

The rational side of me could list off various reasons why he’s tumbled into my subconscious lately, and thus, why he's probably been so present in my dreams. But then there's this other part of me, the part that believes that every dream must mean something. That part wonders, if maybe my mom's (joking) words are right, and maybe he's been sneaking in to check on me, even if just for a few minutes, during half-time!

How I Found Kindness Again

I read something a few days after the shooting in Tucson. It was an article talking about how to explain the events to children. The psychologist who was being interviewed suggested that parents emphasize that though there are bad people in the world, there are good people, too. More good people, in fact. And because it seemed like a good thing to say, I told this to my children. Did I believe it myself? Sort of. Not really. Maybe?

Then a few weeks after the shooting, I was in a Safeway (not the Safeway) but one only a few miles from there, and I was with my son. We were buying only a few things, but very obviously for a birthday party, and the elderly man in front of me in line started asking me and my son questions. When was his birthday? How old was he? My son, well-versed in not talking to strangers, looked at me but didn’t answer, but the man seemed friendly enough, so I did. We started talking, and I learned that his birthday, as well as the birthdays of his numerous brothers and sisters were all the same week as my son’s.

As we were talking, the cashier was ringing up the man’s order, and just as he was about to pay, the man turned to the cashier and asked him to ring up my order and add it on to his bill. I protested, but he insisted, and the cashier listened. Before I really knew what happened, the elderly man, a perfect stranger, had paid for my things. “You’re all set,” the cashier said to me, motioning me to get out line so he could ring up the woman behind me. The elderly man waved to us, wished my son a happy birthday, told me to take care, and walked out of the store.

“What just happened?” My son asked, confused.

“That man paid for your balloons,” I told him

“Why?” he asked.

“Because he wanted to do something nice, I guess,” I said.

“Isn’t that weird?” he asked me.

“I don’t know,” I said. Because honestly, my first inclination was to feel, well, weird about it. Leaving the store, without a receipt, my things paid for by a stranger, I almost felt like I was doing something wrong. But then I wondered, was the thing that was weird was that I was so flabbergasted by kindness?

A few weeks later, Valentine’s Day, I was in Target. I knew it was the last day The Transformation of Things would be on the shelves there, so impulsively, I threw the last two copies in my cart. As the cashier rang up my things we started talking, and she examined the book as she rang it up. “Do you like to read?” I asked.

“I LOVE to read,” she exclaimed. “I’m always reading.”

After she rang up my book, I handed it back to her. “Here you go,” I said, explaining to her what the book was and that I had written it. (Nevermind that I have a bunch of free copies at home or that I didn’t even know her. I’d just bought her book!) She was beyond thrilled and asked me to sign it – I did. And then I gave the other copy to the other cashier, who, it also turned out, loved to read, and was thrilled.

Did they find it as strange as I did when that man paid for my things? Maybe. But I felt pretty good about it as I walked out of the store. Maybe we should all buy things for strangers once in a while.

In Which I Write Something

Since I am a writer, whenever things happen people always tell me to write about them. But there are some things that are impossible for me to write. Things that defy words. This happened to me a few years ago, when my family asked me to write my grandfather’s eulogy. I wasn’t able to attend his funeral (which happened quickly, across the country, and I had a two-month old at the time). So everyone in my family implored me to write something instead for someone to read. I did. It took me an entire day to come up with two paragraphs. What I wrote was awful. I’m certain. There were no words to really express what I felt or thought or missed, already.

I’ve been reminded of that feeling these past few weeks, in the aftermath of the shooting that happened in Tucson. My city. My home. I’ve had the feeling that I should have something to say, that writing something would somehow make things. . . better. Or at least, that it would somehow make me make more sense of them. Writing is, after all, my way of understanding the world. But the truth is, I have written nothing in the past few weeks, not about this, or anything else. I just haven’t been able to.

I was in the shopping center where the shooting happened, when it happened. I was having coffee, with a friend, a new friend who I’d met in person for the first time only ten minutes earlier, a friend who I feel I will now forever be connected to. We were talking preschools and our children, and I could see, out the floor to ceiling windows behind her, the front of the Safeway. I had no idea Gabrielle Giffords was having an event outside. (Thank goodness, several people have remarked to me in the past few weeks, or I may have been curious to stop by and meet her. Would I have? I’m not sure.) Though we were probably only about fifty feet away, it was loud enough inside the bakery so that we did not hear the gunshots. We didn’t see them either, since the cars in the Safeway parking lot blocked our view. My first cue that something wasn’t right was when I saw one police car pull into the shopping center, lights flashing, followed a few minutes later by four or five others. I watched as the police officers jumped from their cars, running and pulling things from their trunks. “What do you think is going on behind you?” I asked my friend.

She turned around. We made nervous guesses. Was there a traffic stop? A robbery in the bank in the front of Safeway? Were those more sirens in the distance?

Then a man dressed in bike-riding gear ran inside the bakery. “There’s a shooter in the Safeway,” he yelled.

We looked at each other. I suggested that we leave. I felt the urge to not just leave but run. If there was a shooter, anywhere in the shopping center, I wanted to get the hell out of there. Fast. We debated it for a minute. Was it safer to leave or stay? My car was right out front. Hers was in the Safeway parking lot. So we decided to both run to my car, and we got in quickly. We had no idea what was going on, but we figured it couldn’t actually be serious, that we were probably silly to leave in such in rush. But we’re both moms and writers, with vivid imaginations.

We noticed police starting to tape off the exits, and she wondered if she maybe she should get her car. I drove her to it, on the edge of the Safeway lot. We still had no idea what was going on, but the decision to run felt like the right one, then. We decided to meet at another coffee shop a few blocks up the road. “If I don’t make it there. Come back and look for me,” she joked.

“This is going in one of our next books,” I quipped back.

Ten minutes later we were sipping coffee in another quiet shopping center. It felt very far away from the police cars, sirens, the rumor of a shooter. It was probably just something silly, we decided. Though, I still felt shaky, and even now I have very little memory of what we talked about in those few moments until a woman ran in and told everyone what had happened. We stared at each other, gripped with shock. Disbelief. Then we couldn’t drink coffee anymore. We left. When I got home, my hands were still shaking; my brain was numb. My children ate lunch and gave me hugs, as if nothing had happened, but suddenly they looked different to me.

We’d been so close. And so far away.

Unbelievably, this had happened to me once before, nearly 15 years ago. When I was a freshman in college, a mentally deranged woman hid in the bushes on the lawn of my college’s student union, with a rifle. She sat there, early in the morning, in the rain, watching students walk by. On the way back from my 8 AM Spanish class, I was one of them. Shortly after I passed her, she started shooting, and she killed one student and injured another. As a new college freshman, I was struck by how easy it was to die, senselessly, just like that. It is a feeling I’ve never completely gotten over. The kind of thing that every so often, when I remember it, it still makes me uneasy.

And when I got home on January 8th, from what was supposed to be an innocent coffee with a new friend, my husband (who was my boyfriend at the time of the college shooting) looked at me, and said (only half-kidding, I’m sure), “How did you manage to do this twice? You’re never leaving the house again.”

Looking at my children, something about that didn’t even sound that ridiculous.

I did, of course. Leave the house. And nearly every time I did in the first few days that followed this shooting, I talked to someone who knew one of the killed or injured, somehow. Then I watched these victims on national news, with the knowledge of which of my friends and family knew them, and how. These people were heroes, and also, my neighbors.

The first week our local newspaper was overstuffed with triple-sized headlines and articles. Every morning I read them and found myself crying. (I am not, by the way, usually a crier.) But everything felt so personal and sad to me, the way I know it did to so many other people, and not just because I’d drunk coffee nearby or because I live so close (though these things, I’m sure, made everything feel even worse) but because I am a mom, a woman, a human being.

Why don’t you write something about it? Countless people have suggested this to me in the past few weeks. But I think I’ve been afraid to put this into words, to relive it, to make it real. In the past 15 years, I have never once even tried to write something about that shooting at my college. I’ve thought about it. But words have never felt adequate.

Maybe it’s because when I write, I have something to say. And about this, about any of this, I don’t. I have no answers, no way to understand this, no words to make sense of any of it.

In writing all of this down, I know I haven’t said anything new or interesting or even important. But I am a writer. So I wrote it anyway.

Target!!!!

I'm thrilled to announce that starting this week The Transformation of Things is a Target Emerging authors pick!!!!

A few years back, when I had a newborn in the house, I would often find myself sleep-deprived in the middle of the Target diaper aisle (often with a crying baby in tow). Luckily, the diaper aisle in my Target is located just across from the books, and there were many, many times when I'd swing by the Emerging Authors shelf and pick up a new book just to save my sanity. I was never disappointed!

Which is why I'm so honored that The Transformation of Things is sitting on that shelf right now. If you happen to find it there as you stuff your cart with diapers and onesies and diaper genie refills, I hope you enjoy!

Books Make Great Holiday Gifts!!

It's true, books do make great holiday gifts! Even better gifts are books signed and personalized for a specific friend or family member on your list!

So if you buy yourself a copy of The Transformation of Things between now and December 1st, I will send you another free signed and personalized copy for you to give as a gift to a family member or friend of your choice. All you need to do is:

1.) Purchase the book. (Find it easily on Amazon or in person in Barnes & Noble, Borders, or nearly any bookstore!)

2.) E-mail me at jill(at)jilliancantor.com with the specific information about where and when you purchased the book.

3.) Let me know how you want your free holiday gift book signed and where you want it sent.

Could I make your holiday shopping any easier?!

Release Day Contest!

THE TRANSFORMATION OF THINGS is out in a few more hours! And to celebrate, I'm holding a contest here. The first 10 people who leave me a comment on this post, letting me know that they have purchased THE TRANSFORMATION OF THINGS will receive another one of Avon A's fabulous titles FOR FREE courtesy of Avon! I'll also throw in a signed The Transformation of Things bookmark!

That's right, if you are one of the first ten people to let me know that you bought The Transformation of Things, Avon will send you another book for free! And I'll send you a pretty signed bookmark :-)

Please include your name, e-mail address (so we can contact you to send your free book), and where you purchased the book in your comment. Or if you'd rather, you can just leave a comment saying you purchased and e-mail the rest of the info. to me at jill(at)jilliancantor.com.

One More Day!

To celebrate the release of THE TRANSFORMATION OF THINGS tomorrow, Melissa Senate and I are holding a contest today over at my Facebook author page! Click here to head over there, or if you're already Facebook friends with me, you can find it there as well. All you have to do to enter is leave a comment. One grand prize winner will win a signed copy of THE TRANSFORMATION OF THINGS and a signed copy of the fabulous Melissa Senate's new release THE LOVE GODDESS' COOKING SCHOOL. Two other winners will each win one of the two books. The contest ends at midnight tonight, just in time for me to start my amazing release day contest tomorrow right here on this blog. (Check back tomorrow for details!).