I’m an Army spouse and therefore I am used to moving around. In eight years of marriage, my husband and I have moved seven times, the most recent being our transplant from Amman, Jordan, to Falls Church, Virginia. None of the moves are easy. Right now we are hanging around our rental house, sitting on folding chairs, waiting for the furniture we brought to Jordan to wend its way back to comfort our backsides sometime next month. We have researched new schools, dentists, doctors, gyms, grocery stores, local dives. I have had to buy all those things you take for granted in the back of your pantry: salt, flour, sugar, cinnamon, parsley, multi-vitamins. The cats, Jordanian refugees who have never seen a squirrel, let alone a deer, sit on the window sills all day in mute amazement.

We are as settled as we can be. After nearly a month of hotels, movers, and airplanes, I am happy to have a home again, even though we have been complaining about our house ceaselessly, like, who the heck did this so-called paint job? And what professional cleaner left gunk in our freezer, goop that my husband adamantly claims is mucus dripping down the closet walls, and blood on the floor boards? Hmmm, perhaps our eight moves have set our expectations too low?

Lest you think I have forgotten my last year abroad, here is my list of all the…

Things I will miss about Jordan

Stray cats (of course).

The food.

People riding donkeys at rush hour. Or camels.

Seeing Beduoin camps in the middle of the strangest places, like on a rocky hill, along a stretch of lonely desert highway, or just glimpsed behind a row of nice houses. There would be the tattered tarp, perhaps a Toyota Hi-Lux parked outside, a few goats, a camel. Very Spartan except for the satellite TVs.

Fruit sellers on the corner, offering fresh figs and pomegranates and peaches for next to nothing.

Hijab dolls, cereal, candy, etc.

Random strangers telling me my four year old daughter is beautiful. Arabs genuinely LOVE children.

Being able to hop in our car, drive 30 minutes, and see something literally biblical (Bethany-on-the-Jordan, Lot’s Cave, the Dead Sea).

Feeding a family for four dollars (though you might have some intestinal problems for a few days afterwards. However, if we are talking about the incredible shwarma from the small town just outside of Petra, then the two days of diarrhea was worth it).

Climbing all over thousand year old scupltures, ruins, mosaics (just about whatever you damn well please, even if it is all roped off, and you are usually urged to do so by the official tour guide/guard)

The weather: six months of cloudless blue sky and temps in the 80s.

Pictures of King Abdullah (sometimes with his father and son) EVERYWHERE.

The friendly customer service, from MacDonalds to gas stations, felt like four start treatment.

All the interesting people, American and various other expats, who also found themselves in Jordan during the Arab Spring.

Things I will NOT miss about Jordan

Stray cats (especially when they wound up in my house for some kind of surgery).

Seeing the food before it looked like food (and suddenly understanding why it might give you intestinal problems).

The driving. Each day I took my daughter to preschool could have been my last.

Feeling like a total floozy because I was wearing a short sleeved shirt in the summertime.

Getting honked at by every single taxi that passed by, whether I was dressed like a floozy or covered head to toe.

Random strangers telling me my four year old daughter is beautiful, then grabbing her, kissing her, throwing her up in the air a few times, even if she looked terrified. Then handing her a piece of bubble gum, which she would inevitably put in her mouth and swallow before I could stop her. Maybe Arabs love children too much.

The Israeli border crossing, which was so prohibitively slow, confusing, and frustrating, even with our diplomatic passports, that we only dared to cross the border into Israel/Palestine twice. (I actually took a photo of the border crossing but am afraid that if I post it, the Mossad will hunt me down and seize my computer.)

Absence of sidewalks. If there is a sidewalk, you can be assured that it was put there so someone could plant a tree on it or park their car. Sidewalks are mostly decorative and not meant to be a walked on. Just ask all the people that like to walk in the street during rush hour even when there is a treeless sidewalk directly parallel to them.

A barrage of gunfire in the middle of the night, indistinguishable from either a wedding/funeral celebration or the US Embassy under siege.

Public toilets, especially at the above mentioned biblical sites.

This Thanksgiving, I am thankful for a lot of things. I am thankful that my small family is together, my husband here with us rather than deployed like so many soldiers who will be eating instant mashed potatoes and dried-out turkey in an Iraq or Afghanistan DFAC. I am thankful that my four year old is healthy and sassy and sleeping at the moment so I can write this. I am grateful to have fabulous friends here in Amman (two of whom – Sara and Kristin– are going to host Thanksgiving for about 60 Americans eager for pumpkin pie). I am thankful we have been able to spend this incredible year in Jordan, with a healthy dose of travel to other Middle Eastern countries that have opened my eyes and boosted my hotel membership status to gold.

Until a couple of days ago, I had been especially thankful about our upcoming trip to Egypt, which we’ve been planning for a month– the penultimate finale of our Middle Eastern adventures, our last grab at this world of wonders before returning to the United States in January. To sum it up, the trip would be Cairo, Alexandria, the Pyramids, Luxor. And most exciting of all for my daughter and me, a cruise down the Nile!

Of course, I started to feel a little less gratitude and a little more anxiety over the past couple of days when I learned that protestors were starting to gather once again in Cairo’s Tahrir Square. Especially since the plush Hilton Conrad we had booked (cashing in on our gold status) was a block or two north of said square – close enough for the tear gas to waft up.  Especially when news reports started to speak of the protesters in “tens of thousands” and “rubber bullets” and “Molotov cocktails.” But my husband, being a man who has spent three years deployed to various Middle Eastern war zones, just cheerfully booked us a new hotel across town, and told me we’d be fine. “The protests are confined to a very small area,” he said with a grin. This from a man who once patrolled 200 square miles of Afghanistan with a mere 45 men, so his idea of a ‘small area’ is very different from mine.

Thousands of protesters gather in Tahrir Square (Khaled Desouki AFP)

Then my brother called last night.

“Ah, I don’t mean to talk about the elephant in the room,” he said. “But please tell me you cancelled your trip to Egypt?”

“Not yet,” I replied. “But the embassy won’t let us go if it’s not safe. Oh, and don’t mention the trip to Mom.”

“Mom’s been watching the protests on Fox News 24 hours a day,” my brother said. “But she thinks you are going to Greece. She will have a stroke when she figures it out.”

Afterwards, I called my mom.

“Siobhan, you are going to Greece in a few days, right?”

“Uhm hmmm, yes, Greece…” We were just in Cyprus last month. Southern Cyprus is sort of Greek so I told myself I wasn’t totally lying, then tried to think of a way to change the subject.

“But, Siobhan, I could have sworn you said something about a Nile Cruise? Is the Nile in Greece?”

“I don’t think the Nile is in Greece, Mom. By the way, what do you want for Christmas?”

“OH MY GOD, the Nile is in Egypt, isn’t it?” Voice rising. “Egypt? Siobhan, you are not going to EGYPT?!?”

Protesters clash with police (Mohammed Hossam AFP)

Today, a few minutes after my husband had texted to say he had gotten our Egypt Visas and all was well, our trip was officially cancelled. He received an email from the embassy: Last night was the largest demonstration since the fall of the Mubarak regime. Although the fighting is still confined to a small area in all of the cities involved, the footprint is growing daily. There has also been a larger amount of anti-American sentiment than normal. With the added stressor of the elections next week, there is too much risk for your families to allow the trip to go through.

I should be happy to have averted an incident replete with the sound of tear gas canisters hissing in the distance. To stay safe and sound in Jordan, an extra eight days to write, get my house packed up, neuter a few more stray cats. But, like my husband, I am crushed. The Arab Spring runneth over, this is a moment in history, the outcome completely unknown, its effect across the region potentially huge. A writer can’t help but want to get a glimpse.

And, let’s face it, a blog about NOT taking a trip to a country seeming to fall apart at the seams is a hell of a lot less interesting than a blog about taking that trip.

But it also makes me thankful for the stability of my own country, that we are not currently under the self-proclaimed rule of a Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, we don’t have to worry about the Muslim Brotherhood waylaying principles of individual freedom, we have a Constitution that has served us well for over 200 years, and our democracy, while imperfect and subject to slings and arrows in this time of economic difficulty and our own protest movements, is still that, a democracy.

So maybe I am missing out on a view of the Pyramids and a non-refundable Nile Cruise, but, trust me, that’s nothing compared to everything I have to be grateful for.

When we were planning our trip to Saudi Arabia, I knew from guidebooks that I’d have to wear an abaya (dark robe) over my clothes to cover any hint of feminine curves. I’d also have to wear a black veil over my hair, ears, neck. I was prepared for this, even went shopping at Amman’s Mecca Mall and picked out an abaya that snapped up the front and had rhinestones on the gold-velvet sleeves, as well as a black Kuwaiti headscarf that squeezed my face through a small hole and felt suggestive of strangulation whenever I wore it. But I was excited to don this gear in Riyadh, for both the costume appeal and the odd anonymity of it, but most of all to get a glimpse of what it felt like for millions of women who cover themselves in such a way every day.

However, I was not prepared for Saudi Arabia’s segregation between men and women. I didn’t realize that our very nice Sheraton Hotel would not allow me to swim in the hotel pool. Or go to the main gym on the first floor. Instead, I had to use the small women’s gym on the fourth floor with it’s two elliptical machines and a stationary bike. Even Starbucks would not allow my friend, Katie Monge, and I to sip in the main area, instead directing us to go through the frosted-glass automatic doors and sit inside wooden cubicles, lest someone see us with suggestive cappuccino foam on our lips. At this point we started to re-examine our guidebook, realizing that many of the restaurants we had circled with enthusiasm (baby camel anyone?) had the words Men Only in tiny italics near the operating hours, and that the museums had “Family Hours” (the euphemism for “Hours in Which Women are Allowed Entrance”) only in the late afternoon.

It seemed a little bleak for we women at first, especially since mine and Katie’s husband had meetings at the American Embassy at Riyadh for a couple of days. We ladies were left stranded at the hotel (it was also recommended that women not take cabs without a male escort, and the only thing within walking distance was a mall that didn’t open until 4 p.m.). Outraged, I filled out a hotel comment card in capital letters, letting the Concierge know how upset I was about not being to swim with my four-year old daughter. A few minutes later,  I was amazed and a little abashed to find the Concierge knocking at my room door and handing me toys for my sequestered child to play with.

This would be my emotional reaction to everything: at first my American sensibilities were frustrated at a situation and I would get all fiesty about perceived injustices. But a moment later I would glimpse the Saudi solution, and while not always perfect, I realized that I had to try to think outside my veil.

I was peeved that there wasn’t one treadmill in the women’s miniscule gym (my husband told me there was an entire wall of treadmills in the main/male gym on the first floor). Yet I couldn’t help but appreciate having the women’s mirrored-room to myself, using the free weights without worrying that grunting men in lifting belts were going to smirk at my sissy eight-pounders held shakily aloft.

I was annoyed we had to eat our Taco Bell in the family seating area (ahem, yes, we were in Saudi Arabia and our first stops were Starbucks and Taco Bell, but no one was in the mood to try that aforementioned baby camel…), away from all the young men in their white dishdasha robes and flowing red and white checked head scarves who merrily munched at crowded tables right in the center of the action. Yet the “family area” looked out on a wall of windows facing a manicured garden with fake balloons staked to the ground, was sparkling clean and, unlike the men’s section, had plenty of open tables to choose from.

Though we were supposed to be accompanied by a male member of our family at all times, Katie and I happened upon a “Ladies’ Kingdom” floor of the mall only opened to women, where gals took off their veils and unzipped their abayas, drinking coffee in the open, even ignoring the call to prayer (everything in Riyadh, including all the shops in the malls, closes for about 30 minutes during each of the day’s five calls to prayer). The women of the Ladies’ Kingdom certainly did not seem like a meek or submissive lot.

Taking the veil (and abaya) to the mall with my daughter and Katie

During our tour of The Gulf, we’d attended some deliberate educational events, including a lunch at the Dubai Culture Center.  A man lectured while we ate the local spread, and since he was a man, and since he was a man wearing white, I was a little skeptical when he claimed, “Wearing a black abaya is like wearing sunglasses—you don’t sweat from your eyelids when you put on your dark sunglasses, do you?” He also said abayas were great when his wife was running out of the house and didn’t want to get “dressed up.”

In Riyadh, I had no choice but to wear the abaya (it is enforced by the religious police, or Mutawa, who supposedly carry around paddles to beat people who commit religious infractions). I might be a little skeptical about the sunglasses theory, but, man, it only took me a couple of hours to fall in love with my abaya. I adored its instant elegance, its flowing length and shining sleeves, especially when I had my non-treadmill-using-gym-clothes hidden underneath. Even my daughter started asking to wear her mini abaya by the end of our trip, willingly wrapping a purple scarf around her blond hair before leaving our hotel room.

Which made me wonder what other presumptions I had made, how many subtle details of dress and culture my untrained American eyes had been  missing. Since arriving in Jordan last March, every time I’d see a woman in a black abaya walking down the street I’d feel a flash of irritation, especially if she was walking next to a man in a t-shirt and jeans, wondering how she allowed herself to be made invisible, wiped clean of individual flair, of color and form and identity. But on this Gulf trip of ours (seventeen days in the Sultanate of Oman, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia), where traditional clothing is worn by both sexes much more often than it is in relaxed Jordan, I saw women wearing black abayas of every shape and style. I couldn’t help but notice the details, the bedazzled cuffs, the embroidered hems, the glint of sequins and metallic threads in the dark veils. Most interesting of all, the women who are completely covered with the niqab, with only the area around their eyes revealed, even these women have found ways to express themselves, sometimes using an intricate knot system at the back of their heads to keep the veil across in place, the cord looped and twisted so that it looks like a braid different than anyone else’s.

Now, back in Jordan, when I spot a woman in head-to-toe black walking down a hot and sun-lit street next to a man in a t-shirt, I might narrow my eyes a bit about whether or not she is wearing bodily sunglasses, but I am also wondering if maybe she’s just got gym clothes underneath.

Cork International Short Story Festival. Yes, it was just as incredible as the name implies. Six days, five nights, in Cork, one of Ireland’s golden cities, with hotel, meals, transportation provided for, and most spectacularly of all, drink vouchers (only in Ireland). I had been long listed for the hefty Frank O’Connor Prize but didn’t make the short list, so naturally I assumed that I was invited because of my Celtic name (and after having the name mangled by American mouths for three plus decades, it was about time that name gave a little something back).

Cork caught between sun and rain.

My excitement about this festival surprised me a little bit. Aren’t we writers supposed to be a shy, slightly damaged bunch, spying on all the functioning folk in the world and neurotically scribbling down the details we observe? Aren’t we more comfortable hiding at home with our ink stained fingers or laptops, prone to panic attacks when we have to give a reading or an interview? And yet there is the undeniably social aspect to writing. We write to be read. If we wrote just for ourselves (the way some more ascetic scribes like to claim), then we all would be sitting in padded rooms, dreaming up stories in our own safe little heads, never having to worry about crafting the words on paper, never facing the horrors of rewriting, rejections, bad reviews.

These festivals we attend somehow ignite the contradictions of our nature as reclusive-social-animals. All these bookish readers/writers are thrown together and forced to mingle. Once they figure out how to have a conversation with one another, the conversations are bound to be about, glory be, BOOKS! A whole room (or pub) full of people who only want to talk about writing! Throw in those free drink vouchers and I think it’s about as close to heaven as this gal can get.

Colm Toibin, Ethel Rohan, Suzanne Rivecca, Orthlaith Foyle, and a giddy me

The intimacy of the CISSF was also a nice departure from some of the larger American festivals. CISSF is small (there were a leisurely 24 events during five days, compared to the more frenetic American AWP with over 400 events in the span of four days). It was a cross section of the writing world the likes I have never seen, with writers just starting out and getting their short stories placed in literary magazines, up to the forty-year career of such masters of Edna O’Brien, with over twenty books under her glamorous belt. And because of the small size, everyone  gladly shared information, rallied around one another, and tried to attend each other’s readings (this Irish-named-nerd also bought the six short listed collections and tried to read them all in advance, but that’s because I like to be a smarty pants). Remarkably, there was the feeling that we are all in this together– from the debut writers to those whose stories are always in The New Yorker. I won’t reveal their personal ups and downs (Edna O’Brien told me she is working on a memoir, so be on the lookout for that!), but everyone seemed to have them. Which is both frightening and comforting. Writing doesn’t get any easier after the first book or after the twentieth. Nothing will ever change the hard truth that each book starts out as nothing but a writer and a blank page.

Writers' lunch with Ethel Rohan, Tania Hershman, Yiyun Li, Alison MacLeod, Orthlaith Foyle

Edna O’Brien was the festival favorite; anytime I asked one of the short listees who they thought would win, they all said Edna. And she did win, deservedly so. Edna is force of nature. Eighty-one and magnificent, in sequins and crushed velvet gowns reminiscent of Victorian England, tall and straight backed, flame haired, perfectly made-up, with a melodic voice that has the best of both Ireland (where she was born) and England (where she has lived since her twenties). I had the good fortune of catching a flight to Heathrow with her at the finish of the festival and I have never been so honored to heft someone’s carry-on bag. For a crazy moment in which I forgot my child and husband patiently waiting for me in Jordan, I imagined moving to London and becoming Edna’s personal assistant. She has that kind of magnetic charm.

Heathrow baggage claim with Edna O'Brien

As a lengthy aside to those of you still reading, I recommend that you all run out and buy the books by the six short listees: Edna O’Brien, Saints and Sinners. Colm Toibin, The Empty Family. Suzanne Rivecca, Death Is Not an Option. Alexander MacLeod, Light Lifting. Yiyun Li, Gold Boy, Emerald Girl. Valerie Trueblood, Marry or Burn. All very different, all amazing.

Pat Cotter (CISS's wizard/man-behind-the-curtain) and Valerie Trueblood

Valerie Trueblood’s collection especially resonated with me. The title grabbed me, the fiction inside sizzled along my brain and I swear it rewired me a little bit—I feel like I will now write differently (and better) thanks to reading her stories. They are winding, elusive tales that start in one place and end up somewhere completely different. Which is an incredible freedom, for writer and reader, to move through a story in such a way, following a daisy chain of events, seven degrees of separation between the characters, all of it so alive with possibility.

I also recommend the work of writers Ethel Rohan, Orfhlaith Foyle, Alison MacLeod, Michael Christie. Except for Ethel, who is Irish but living in San Fran, they are Irish, British, and Canadian, so we don’t hear as much about them in the US as we should, though we might be hearing about them very soon.

Thanks again to everyone at the Munster Literature Centre, especially Pat Cotter and Jennifer Matthews, for the perfect literary extravaganza kind of week.

Ahhh, the memory of it all makes me want to curl up with a big pot of tea, toasted soda bread, and make my way through a high stack of short story collections…

Kind readers, forgive me for a blog that will be more photos than prose—my family and I are currently traveling with friends through Israel/Palestine and finding quiet times to write are few and far between.

If you are living in Jordan, it is best to generalize when referring to this disputed land and just call it “Jerusalem,” or, if you are being very sensitive to your Arab friends, Al-Quds (Arabic for Palestine). Saying the word “Israel” can cause your Jordanian listener to visually flinch, and it took me a few flinches before I realized why my listener seemed suddenly afflicted. Jerusalem, self-proclaimed capital of Israel (although the international community does not acknowledge it as such), is the land of the Temple Mount and Western Wall for the Jews, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus to Christians, and the Dome of the Rock/Haram Esh-Sharif where Mohammed was lifted to the heavens for Muslims. Jerusalem felt like a place of truce when I walked its streets and saw veiled women buying their Ramadan sweets, shops selling menorahs and Star of David necklaces, a priest leading a procession of pilgrims carrying a life sized-cross. As the Hebrew poet Yehuda Amichai says, Jerusalem is surely a place “saturated with prayers and dreams.”

We have been on the road for almost two weeks so these are just a few highlights from along the way. Here is a glimpse…

Tel Aviv at sunset

If you find yourself in Tel Aviv, watch out for the damned matkot players. Matkot is this horrible little game where players knock small black rubber balls at each other with wooden paddles, preferably while standing over the heads of toddlers (until my Irish temper flared and I demanded they leave our staked piece of beach alone). Beside getting hit with stray matkot balls, the beach was good for people watching. There were bikinis on every female, many of whom ought to wear bikinis but an awful lot who should never even think of squeezing themselves into a two piece; men in speedos or, if they were wearing swim shorts of the American variety, they felt the need to roll them up to their butt cheeks, which created a puffy diaper look that I can’t imagine anyone finding remotely attractive. We even saw a mostly naked young man in a drenched white t-shirt that clung obscenely to rear end; fortunately he carried his wet pants across his unmentionables.

The matkot menace.

On our way to Haifa, my daughter and I spent most of our trip to Caesarea, one of the country’s major archaeological sites, playing with stray cats, of course…

Then the Old City of Akko, with its underground crusader halls, hummus with mushrooms (I have had this dish just about once a day for our entire trip), and most refreshingly, its fresh pomegranate juice… 

Then Nazareth. We’ve witnessed many faiths and nationalities interacting everywhere we go, and this is the only outright sign (ok, billboard) of intolerance we’ve seen. It is posted in front of the Basilica of the Annunciation (thought to be built over the home of Mary, mother of Jesus)…

Mary's home in the bottom left, church on level above with light spilling out.

Oh, Jerusalem! 

We started at the Mount of Olives and worked our way down. Here is the Russian Orthodox Church of Mary Magdalene. There was a young nun sitting at the gate with baskets of scarves and sarongs, and she promptly asked us to cover up: my husband was wearing shorts (not allowed), I was wearing pants (not allowed), and my daughter just felt like it (allowed).

The over 2000 year old olive trees of the Garden of Gethsemane, the only thing standing that hasn't been torn down and rebuilt over and over again by each new conqueror.

Greece and Armenian Orthodox Tomb of the Virgin Mary

The Church of the Holy Sepulcher is the church built over the spot where Jesus was both crucified and buried. I have never heard of this before, but the Church is “shared” by many different Christian denominations, among them the Latins (what they call Catholic here), Greek and Armenian Orthodox, and Egyptian Coptic. There were a lot of shouting holy men in big black hats. But a lot of beauty and awe too.

Site of crucifixion.

I kept my scarf/veil on as we walked through to the Wailing Wall/ Western Wall.

Next was our trip from Jerusalem up to the Golan Heights, with a lengthy stop at the Sea of Galilee where we swam in a spot where it was where absolutely prohibited and crabs grabbed at our toes.

The idyllic lushness of Golan Heights’ pomegranate and peach groves are a bit incongruous with the Israeli tank battalions in position near the border. Yesterday we drove around hoping to find a scenic outlook so we could see the demilitarized zone between Syria and Israel, only to happen upon a mine field (which didn’t stop the men from getting out of the car and following a dirt trail to the top of the hill. Women and children wisely stayed in the car.) But today we chased the plenty of Golan rather than the turmoil, like the gentle offerings of a brewery, an olive oil factory, and a vineyard.

Shalom and salaam,  my friends.

"Fixing" my cat problem

Imagine the American Embassy in Amman. You may have trouble, and I can’t help you out with an image because no one is allowed to take any pictures, but, trust me, it is SOLID. As impenetrable as something civilian/non-war zone can look. Smooth stoned creamy walls, squarely set upon each other, small windows that call to mind the slits in ancient fortresses just big enough for an archer to aim out of. But beyond the placid stone that separates the embassy from the world outside, there are road barriers, uparmored Jordanian military vehicles with helmeted soldiers sitting in turrets behind glossy machine guns, civilian guards in uniform manning gates, dogs sniffing under vehicles that enter (and this doesn’t even include the inner sacrum of the embassy, where the US Marines stand behind bullet proof glass with their hands on Battle Star Gallactica key boards that activate alarms, automatically close doors, and do all sorts of high tech things I can’t even make up).

Now imagine two women, one American with hair blowing into her eyes, wearing jeans and a long sleeved t-shirt, one Jordanian in her hijab and long trench coat covering her from ankle to wrist. Both are about 5’2, and one holds a long, unweildy metal trap, the other an animal carrier that seems large enough to hold a class of kindergartners. They are crossing the barriers and saying hello to the guards, walking into the bomb proofed entries and banging their cages through the metal detectors. And the guards actually let them in. About an hour later, now sweating and reeking of tuna fish, the women depart the embassy, back through the metal detectors, past the two separate guard shacks that check IDs, past the two parked uparmoured vehicles with the bored soldiers peering out. This time there is a howling, scratching, incredibly angry cat in each cage.

The women will take those cats to the American’s house in an effort to neuter, flea dip, give them shots, check for bites and wounds and random cat diseases. First they will try to inject a sedative through the cages but inevitably that doesn’t work, which means they will have to get each cat into a soft black fabric bag, tighten it until the cat is a hissing ball stuck at the bottom, unable to move or bite, and give it the shot. But of course this is never easy, and one or both cats will manage to escape and run through the American’s home, knocking down family pictures and plants and eventually hiding behind the couch, where it will occasionally vomit from whatever knock-out drug made it into its system before it escaped. But when it is finally unconscious, the vet will stretch it out on the dining room table, perhaps tying up its little paws, spread eagle, and she will operate right there, scapel and scissors, gauze and rubber gloves.

You see, the vets in Jordan do house calls.

Let me backtrack a bit.

For those of you that don’t know this, I am a crazy cat lady.

I have had a weakness for strays, from the flea bitten to the off-kilter human variety, my entire life.

When I was living in Texas, during my husband’s most recent deployment to Iraq, there was a time when I was feeding and housing seven cats. But, through a combination of kindly neighbors coerced into adoption, coyotes, and an untreatable brain tumor, I was down to a more manageable two cats by the time my husband returned.

He was relieved. I was slightly disturbed by the high feline turn-over, doubting whether I was doing these poor animals any good if the majority seemed to die on me. But since my husband was adamant about the two cat limit, I promised I wouldn’t try to ‘save’ any more strays.

Then we came to Jordan, and in the process of moving had to leave our two surviving cats with families in the States.

One of the first things I noticed about life in this new country was the stray cats (of course). Every dumpster you walk by has some wretched little animal mewing and digging for food. At night the howling of cats can resonate as clearly as the loud-speakered call to prayer.

And then, a mere two weeks after my daughter and I arrived, my husband was sent to Italy to wage war with NATO, leaving me and my little cat problem alone and unchecked. When the man deploys, I collect cats. An army wife left to her own devices can get into worse trouble, no?

Embassy Strays

There are a group of strays that reside in the embassy. They have their own little bowls that kindly employees fill daily with food and water. The embassy cats had it pretty good, lots of free wheeling tom cat debauchery and unbridled kitten making.

Until I came along.

At first I just pet the cats when my daughter and I happened to be there for some kind of appointment or play-date. Then I started carrying a ziplock bag of cat food around in my purse, making a point of going to the embassy when I couldn’t think of anything more entertaining, as if it was my own personal petting zoo: “Let’s go feed the kitties!” Then, I swear to God, one of the smaller cats, just out of kittenhood, started waiting for me each day. I would see her sitting at the gated entrance exactly as I had left her the night before. When we left, she would try to follow me through the guard rooms with their metal detectors and I’d sadly shoo her away. When I tried to touch her, she would crawl up into my lap and nuzzle my neck, purring like a maniac. That’s when I noticed her ear was bloody. That’s when I knew, embassy or not, she wasn’t safe from those Toms.

So I brought her home. My husband returned from his Italian deployment a few days later (did the threat of a cat invasion bring him home early? Perhaps.)

The embassy recommended a vet, the lovely Dr. Faiza (who surely had no idea what she was getting into with me). Now every couple of weeks, she and I go to the Embassy and catch cats. We bring them home to my apartment and she operates on my dining room table. They sleep off their meds in my guest bathroom and usually my poor, beleaguered, infinitely kind husband has to help me bring them back onto the embassy grounds a day or two later for release. Each time my husband has to try to explain that we are not randomly releasing strange cats into the embassy, but that these are the same mangy animals we snatched the day before, new and improved and neutered (not an easy task to explain in arabic).

We still only have one cat (at least living in our current home, I know that technically that brings our totally up to three when we are reunited with our cats in the states, but come on, I think this is a step in the right direction for me!).

Cats eating the hard boiled eggs I had originally packed for my family to eat during a hike.

One of our friends refers to our home as The House of Cat Horrors. I have also had more than one friend say to me, “Oh my God, please don’t tell me the vet operates on the same table where you just fed us lasagna.” Uh, yes, the dining room table is just the right height for ball removal, sorry folks. So glad you liked that lasagna, come back again real soon.

Cat's view of The Monastery, Petra. Best seat in the house.

And cats? They tempt me where ever I go. They tried to crawl into my backpack when we were in Petra last week and I took more photos of the Petra kittens than I did of my daughter in front of the ancient Nabatean site. My husband wasn’t happy that I fed them his coveted Slim Jims, but I know he was relieved I didn’t even try to take one back with us to Amman.

MORE SLIM JIM!!!!

I am learning. I came, I saw, I neutered. But I will not take them home (well, except for the one)…

When I first moved to the Middle East, my family in the states were a bit worried. Not that I could blame them. But I was moving to Jordan! Jordan with its smiling King Abdullah who was a guest on The Jon Stewart show TWICE. So what if Jordan borders Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Palestine, and Israel, regions either beset by long wars or tackling protests? Jordan’s Queen Rania looks like a supermodel. Surely, I thought, I have nothing to fear.

When I arrived in Amman, I attended a security briefing at the American Embassy that taught me the correct embassy evacuation routes, how to shield myself when the “Duck and Cover” alarm is broadcasted across the sound system, and emphatically advised to never stick to a ‘routine’ in case someone decides I’d make a good kidnapping target. Then I was shown a series of grotesque photos of blown-up cars and blood-stained sidewalks whose only discernable value was to scare the hell out of me.

Very interesting, I thought to myself. I some took notes during the briefing, planning on somehow using the most shocking details in my writing, but otherwise I wouldn’t let myself get too freaked out.

However, I soon learned that there is one thing that could strike fear into the depths of my being, one thing that would keep me cowering in the safety of my house until there is absolutely no food left in the fridge, one thing that made me dread getting behind the wheel of my car and venturing out…

Street hawkers.

Each day I drive two miles to my daughter’s pre-school. Two miles that seem to have been designed by the roadside hawkers themselves, full of traffic lights and roomy medians where whole gangs of Jordanian youths wait until my car appears and then descend upon my geriatric Land Rover.

Paper boys are the worst.

There is one in particular, a diminutive young man who always wears a tight white and black striped shirt. My mental nickname for him is Toulouse-Lautrec because he seems half midget, half angry mime. He runs to my window and starts rapping on it, demanding my full attention, pressing his newspapers against the glass. When I try to wave him away, he removes what looks to be a coupon for diapers from his pocket, motions as if lifting a full spoon to his lips, and starts shouting “Baby!”

There is another paper boy, a handsome youth with gelled back hair, snug jeans, a ready smile, who salutes my car every time I pull up at that dreaded red light. I made the mistake of buying a newspaper from him one morning. The price is 500 fills, which I gave him. He looked at the change in his hand in disgust and told me I owed him the same amount again. I pointed at the price stamped on the paper, 500 fills in black and white print, and, surprised by my resistance to hand over more money, he quickly pulled out a coupon similar to the dwarf’s and started the hungry-baby routine with me. Call me crazy, but someone trying to coerce me, charmingly or not, doesn’t rate on experiences I’d like to repeat, so I haven’t bought a paper from him since.

The Charmer

Though I do have to admit a grudging respect for these men and the skill involved in these non-skilled jobs. These savvy traffic entrepreneurs know when those lights change as if their hearts beat in stop lights, stepping to the side just as red changes to green, dancing between the moving vehicles like fearless acrobats. I just wish the fearlessness didn’t extend to the window banging. I know that many people in Jordan have only seen Americans acting badly on television and therefore I want my behavior to reflect positively on all of my countrymen, so I usually try to seem as kind and generous and friendly as possible. I’m convinced I exude an American niceness even with the window up, the doors locked, shaking my head in a most definite NO. But this self-proclaimed American niceness only seems to incite more window banging, which I counteract with a feebly apologetic wince while staring straight ahead and praying the red light will turn green.

Here are some of the things I have seen sold in the middle of the very busy intersection: just about every fruit and vegetable, kites, angel wings, Dora posters, coloring books, chicklets (A LOT of chicklets- this seems to be the item of hawking choice for children, old men, and anyone who has a limp), reflector shades for your car, cowboy hats (yes, cowboy hats, more like caballero hats, I swear they even had tassels, and the only person I have ever seen wear these hats in all of Jordan is the guy who is unsuccessfully trying to sell them), strange little bobble headed chickens on a string, metal looking flowers that spin when the wind blows and seem capable of lobbing of the fingers of children, Jordanian flags, soccer flags revealing the strange Jordanian passion for Barcelona and Real Madrid, and flowers, flowers, flowers.

Flowers, indeed.

One day, in my vaguely smiling way of trying to not buy anything, a flower man ripped the bud off a rose and pointed at my child sitting in the back of my car. “Bebe! Bebe!” the man shouted. I reluctantly rolled down the window, he handed me the rose, and I thanked him. He did this for three days in his calm manner, to the point that my daughter would wave him down and expect some delicate bud. And that’s when I started buying his flowers. How can you not buy flowers from a man who gives them to your child? Who smiles at you? Who, miraculously, doesn’t bang on your window? Thus a relationship began, my buying his wares once or twice a week. For the first time in my middle class life, I had fresh flowers in my house every day. Flowers for NO REASON—not just the rare Valentine’s Day or anniversary bouquets from my husband. Incredible. Perhaps wasteful. But for an average of 4Jordanian Dinar (or $6 US), how could I resist not acting like a good American when here was this man smiling at me, waving at my daughter, passing cellophaned red roses through my window fresh and cool during the mid-afternoon sweltering heat?

My friend, the flower man.

And on this same intersection as my flower man, I found my ideal paper boy— a youth completely indifferent to making any kind of profit whatsoever. He leans against the cement divider and calmly watches the cars that pass, occasionally fanning himself with a newspaper. He only has an English paper on-hand to sell me about once a week, smiling and winding his right arm in a circle, claiming, “Bukra!” or tomorrow on the days he does not. Once a week suits me just fine. It takes me roughly that long to read a newspaper, nonfiction not being quite my thing, but a weekly paper keeps me just connected enough to world events that I can hold an intelligible conversation without sounding like a total idiot.

The last week of my daughter’s preschool, I bought flowers almost every day, full of guilt, not having the words in Arabic to tell my flower man that I would no longer be driving past him each morning and afternoon. I cherished each time he waved at me, each time he saw my car and came over with his arms full of color. I cherished that someone in this city recognized me, that I had established a connection with my limited words and gestures and wallet.

But now summer break has started. I have spent an entire week with my car languishing in the garage under my apartment building. My fresh flowers died, the vases have been washed and put away. Each day I go from my apartment to the embassy where my daughter plays in the shady park or swims in the jewel-like pool. Otherwise I try to hide. I do not want to drive down Hawker’s Lane and feel the pressure of being someone’s idea of an American. I do not want to think of what the paperboys who bang on my window see, this American woman safe her big car, with her long hair uncovered and her averted eyes, immune even to their desperate entreaties to feed real or imagined babies, all of us knowing that I have dinar in my pocket. That drive, even when I buy flowers or a newspaper, even when I buy a package of sun-warmed strawberries or a Jordanian flag for the dashboard, makes me feel like a lousy American, and I am happy to keep my guilty self at home.

But not to worry, reader. Every once and awhile I will brace myself and shop at that grocery store on my flower man’s street. I hope that he will still raise his arms when he sees my car in the distance, that he will still hand me velvety red roses, smile, and give single buds to my daughter in the backseat.

And when the summer is over, my daughter will start a new pre-K, with a new route to learn, new window bangers, new flower men, new paperboys weaving through traffic as newsprint flutters in the breeze. I will figure out my favorites and the ones whose eyes to avoid, and try to seem like a kind American with my windows rolled up, doors locked, unspent money weighing heavy in my purse.

Connie Kalter saves the day!

Vroman’s Bookstore, Pasadena

After the pseudo- heckling incident the previous night, you might feel a little wimpy when you roll into Vroman’s Bookstore in Pasadena the next afternoon. You might be even more simpering when Connie Kalter, the events planner, peeks out at the reading area and sees that you don’t have a rabid, standing room-only-full house. No. You don’t have much of an audience at all. But Connie, fortunately, is a GENIUS, and will have you meditate on a picture of Jon Hamm (guy from Mad Men) “Because you can only be happy after looking at all that Hamm-someness”, and she will suggest that you sit down with the small group of readers rather than stand behind a podium. You’ll join them in your usual nervous way, Irish skin mottled into unattractive splotchy pallor, and begin to read an excerpt. When you finish, Connie will start a chat– “chat” because somehow, there together, a dialogue will occur. Most memorably, there might be a woman who’ll tell you all about her father’s service during Korean War, how he had always refused to talk about his war years, and she’ll say that reading your stories helped her understand the untold parts of his story a little bit. So Connie– gracious, wise, kind Connie— will save you from a mortifying day (so be sure to send her a thank you card).

Elliot Bay Book Company, Seattle

Casey O'Neill at Elliot Bay

If you happen to have Casey O’Neill as your events planner, please tell him I say hello. Authors love Casey, we have had conversations about how wonderful he is on Facebook. I think Elliott Bay ought to sell t-shirts with his likeness. Like Connie at Vroman’s, Casey is incredible; he will have that miniscule audience sitting in a circle around you and then he will start a conversation so insightful and brilliant that every moment of being in Elliot Bay will feel like the most tremendous success.

The Book Stall with the Winnetka-Northfield Public Library, Winnetka, Illinois

David, Roberta, Michelin me, and Juli

Your wonderful publicist will have surely told you to always be camera ready. However, there might be a blizzard. Not just any blizzard. You will hear all the newscasters across America bandying around words like Snowcapocalspe, Snowmagedeon, Blizzaster. Yup, that blizzard. Which of course might lead you to think, “No one will care what I wear, it’s Snowmagedeon!” and you might foolishly don a comfortable pair of pants, a grey blouse layered over a tank top and t-shirt, hat, gloves, scarf, and cowgirl boots. You usually get to a reading and beg to use the bathroom, claiming to have a case of nerves, but actually go to the mirror, check your teeth for spinach, hair for whatever random thing might have blown into it, mascara to insure it hasn’t pooled into your cheekbones. But here, at the lovely Bookstall, you are being honored as the Winnetka One Book Two Villages 2011 Pick, which is pretty darn wonderful, and you are busy grinning like mad and thanking the librarians who chose your book (Thank you, Juli Janovicz!) when wonderful Roberta Rubin hands you a hot cocoa and tells you it is time to roll, no room for that bathroom check. Again you’ll tell yourself, “Hey, it’s a blizzard, who cares how I look?”

WRONG. ALWAYS LISTEN TO YOUR PUBLICIST.  Of course this will be the time, THE ONLY TIME during the whole dang tour, someone will videotape you and put you on YOU TUBE. In that video, either the blizzard or a malevolent poltergeist has diabolically rearranged your hair so that a piece of it is oddly perpendicular to your head. And the grey blouse that you thought looked OK in the hotel mirror? No. It does not look good. It looks so bad that it never could have possibly looked good. Those warm layers make you look like some kind of Michelin man squeezing himself into a child sized shirt of aluminum foil. You will watch that video and wonder how all of those nice people were able to talk to you with a straight face, have a normal conversation without staring at your odd head of hair or busting buttons. People are very very VERY nice in Winnetka, Illinois.

Lemuria Books in Jackson, Mississippi

Loving Lemuria!

This is another of those kinds of book stores that feels like your dream home, nooks filled with stacks of books and lots of framed authors smiling down from the walls, with an incredibly friendly staff just like you hope for from the South. But Mother Nature will crash the party again– this time with a hurricane warning. By now you are finding Mother Nature’s dogged devotion to following your book tour around the country hilarious.

There might be another uninvited guest at your reading.

You will be in the middle of your reading, everyone quiet and wondering where your character Natalya has gone and what will happen to her children, when your cell phone starts ringing and madly vibrating on the table in front of you.

You see a name pop up, LOWELL GOLDMAN. Lowell is one of your husband’s closest friends, a former Army Special Forces pilot. But strangest of all, right at this moment Lowell’s mother and father-in-law are to sitting in the front row of Lemuria’s listening to you.

The conversation goes like this:

“Lowell? Hello?”

“Sha-vunny-bunny! Your book is like a REAL book. I mean,  I am at a shop in Nashville and your book  is sitting here on the shelf, with other books by real authors!!! This is unbelievable!”

“Uhhh, thanks Lowell. Right now I’m in the middle of a reading at a bookstore. Can I call you back? Oh, and Jackson, Mississippi says hello.”

His mother-in-law shouts out hello too.

Lowell yells, “Oh %$#@! Tell Donna I say hi!” and hangs up.

(Lowell—you are always telling me I need to write about you but you never do anything that is PG enough for me to put in print. This is as close as it gets.)

Borders/AWP, Washington DC

Jen making me at home at Borders.

Since your last reading is in DC, and AWP (annual writer’s conference that is really just one big excuse for writers to act like they are cool) just happens to be in DC too, you roll into town at the height of the party. You might meet some fabulous writers at the conference who offer to go to your Borders reading, and since Penguin/Putnam is the best publisher in the world, they send you an Escalade so you could jam it full of as many foxy ladies as possible, including your two cousins who road-tripped to hear you (thank you, Caroline and Angela!).

A few Fallon girls.

And since Mother Nature has decided to show you some mercy on the night of your last official book tour reading, she stays away, alleluia! One of your old neighbors from Fort Hood brings her DC/Fort Mead crew of Army wives (including a spouse who you once guilted into adopting one of the Texas stray cats you collected, but she doesn’t bear you any ill will), some beautiful friends from your undergraduate days show up, and you even see some Army camouflage uniforms in the audience. It’s a cool, clear night, you are surrounded by friends, and you couldn’t finish your official tour in a better place.

Fort Hood Army gal neighbors (minus cats).

And AWP—Well, I had a blast, how could I not have a blast? I did not get a picture of my hero, author Benjamin Percy, but got to meet him and he is as brilliant in person as he is on the page. But here are some photo highlights…

If you are going to party at AWP, these are the ladies to party with...

That’s Tanya Egan Gibson (HOW TO BUY A LOVE OF READING), Barbara Mead, Therese Fowler (EXPOSURE), me, my AWP roomie Rebecca Rasmussen (THE BIRD SISTERS) , Heidi Durrow (THE GIRL WHO FELL FROM THE SKY), Caroline Leavitt (PICTURES OF YOU), Eleanor Brown (THE WEIRD SISTERS), Sarah Pekkanen (SKIPPING A BEAT).

Dining with fellow Amy Einhorn authors, Eleanor Brown and Kelly McNees (LOST SUMMER OF LOUSIA MAY ALCOTT).

Jon Tribble, editor of Crab Orchard Review, who published my first short story in 2000.

And there we go. That’s the official book tour. (My trip to Austin came later, when YKWTMAG was chosen, along with The Things They Carried, as the 2011 Austin Mayor’s Book Club Picks–  it was amazing! I met Tim O’Brien! In my slow slooooow way I will write about it one of these days).

Thanks to everyone who has had the patience to read about this tour in my piecemeal posting fashion, I am really trying to work on writing more often (and shorter) about current life (aka Jordan). You all are the best.

A few of my debut writer friends are getting ready to book tour (Alan Heathcock, Rebecca Rasmussen, Meg Mitchell Moore—all extraordinary writers—catch them if you can at a bookstore near you) and it got me thinking about my less than organized preparations for hitting the road. I searched the web for advice (author Jean Kwok has a great blog called Book Tour Fears and Realities), but mostly I would sidle up next to a flawless woman in the TSA line, you know, those ladies who are impeccably pressed, who can wear heels and look great even if they are trudging from one end of Chicago O’Hare to the other, wheeling itty bitty suitcases the size of my toddler’s lunch box. It became a game of mine, asking these women how they packed (because asking a man was no fun—men would usually just tell me they wore the same outfit every day) and then trying to peer at the X-rays of their luggage and hope no one arrested me.

If only a gal author could wear this every day.

This is what I learned (or made up along the way):

Food—Pack the power bars. And Emergen-C. And every time you pass a bottle of that Green Odwalla, the gross looking one with spirulina and wheat grass, buy one. It tastes better than it looks. Pack some Laughing Cow cheese (doesn’t need to be refrigerated) and a box of low fat Triscuits (they are sturdier than most crackers and you will feel virtuous eating their high fibered-cardboardness). Seriously, there will be days when you do not have time to eat, and Triscuits and Laughing Cow Cheese, with a battered apple, will seem delicious. Oh, and pack instant oatmeal. Room service isn’t up at 4 a.m when you are checking out, so run the tap as hot as you can and eat the gruel, baby. Think Oliver Twist and imagine your high blood pressure just melting away. Order tomato juice on the plane. Eat sushi with lots of wasabi and ginger instead of the airport burgers and fries than smell so good. If you do this, even if you started your book tour sick as a dog, even though all of the above is slightly disgusting, you will keep that cold at bay. Though of course you should try the local fare when time affords a bit of decadence (In N Out Burger in LA, Fried Fish Combo with Chips in Seattle, Spinach and Mushroom Stuffed Pizza in Chicago). Expect that your pants will all be skin tight by the end of your trip.

You know you shouldn't, but you will eat ALL the chocolate tower, and the warm cookie too.

Cold Medicine—No matter how healthy you feel, no matter that you have not sneezed or had to blow your nose all day, as soon as you get up and start reading from your book, your nose will run. Really run, to the point that you will sniffle and be sure than anyone taking a photo is really zooming in on your shiny, wet, about-to-drip nose. Take cold medicine an hour before you read and always have a Kleenex. Some of those antibiotic wipes can’t hurt either, especially if you have been wiping your nose on the back of your hand the entire time you were reading, and then you sit down and expect to sign books and shake hands. Make a big show of cleaning your hands carefully with the antibiotic wipe so people aren’t completely grossed out, and then as you sign each and every book mention how bad your allergies are lately (even if you have never in your life been allergic to anything—runny noses caused by allergies sound so much more refined than a run of the mill cold, influenza, or swine flu)

Luggage— Small is best, I know. And my publisher generously told me to feel free to get my clothes laundered at the hotels. However I wasn’t around anywhere long enough to indulge in that perk. Be aware that you will probably drop a triangle of that soft Laughing Cow Cheese, ha ha ha, along the front of your black sweater on day one, the same sweater you assumed you would wear every day. Pack trendy jeans that are stylish enough to wear out and about, and comfortable enough to sleep in on the plane and maybe even your hotel bed in the middle of the afternoon when you have an hour break between interview and book store, when you should be practicing your reading, but you go to sleep anyway. Cowboy boots or something comparable you can wear every day for walking or for snow-time-dress-up in a pinch. Simple heels that match your three simple dress choices and the cardigans that go with them. Black pants and a t-shirt or two for under the cardigans so, every once and awhile, you are not wearing one of those three dresses in the pictures people post of Facebook. A scarf and some wild jewelry so they know somewhere beneath that rumpled exterior you have a touch of style. Tiny sneakers, which you will curse that you packed instead of red pumps, but you will actually use them, and get on an elliptical a few times, just because you lugged the darn things across the country (see below).

Exercise—You might manage exactly two thirty minute sessions on an elliptical in Texas and Portland. Most exercise is lifting your not-quite-small-enough luggage in and out of overhead compartments, and usually some brawny man feels sorry for your struggles and will do that for you. But again, if you packed sneakers as one of the ten things you could pack, you will feel inclined to use them, and you will try to get to a hotel gym at least a couple of times on your journey. And it will feel really good, those 30 minutes of mild sweat, especially if you are intending on eating an In N Out Burger Double Double at some point on your trip.

Ok, maybe it's not all power bar deprivation...

Bubble Bath—yes, you read that correctly. Try to make time for at least one bubble bath; you don’t get to take too many of those. You’ll sit in the bubbles with your toes wrinkling in front of you, and it will give you some time to remember how incredible every moment of the tour actually is, even if you have Laughing Cow Cheese on your favorite, sweater, all your underwear are slightly damp from being washed out in hotel sinks, and you are sick of instant oatmeal made with warm tap water. You are doing this for your book, and you love your book. But most importantly, people, absolute total strangers, are coming out to hear you talk about that book (maybe during one of the worst Chicago snow storms since the 1960’s, or a hurricane watch in Jackson, Mississippi, or whatever else vindictive Mother Nature does to try to ensure you have the smallest audiences humanly possible, and yet, each and every night, at least one reader has bundled up and come out to listen. That is crazy, wonderful, a miracle). Next month you will sleep again and you will long for the time when you peeked into the luggage of strangers and airport security made you take off your belt and boots every day.

So soak and enjoy it.

Links mentioned in this blog:

Alan Heathcock, author of VOLT http://alanheathcock.com/volt-stories/

Rebecca Rasmussen, author of THE BIRD SISTERS http://www.thebirdsisters.com/

Meg Mitchell Moore, author of THE ARRIVALS http://www.megmitchellmoore.com/

Jean Kwok, author of GIRL IN TRANSLATION http://jeankwok.com/blog/

DAY 1: Harker Heights Barnes & Noble, just outside of Fort Hood, Texas

Pure author bliss.

It’s not a bad idea to kick off the official tour in the place where you wrote the book, even though you will be incredibly nervous, thinking someone will throw Texas tomatoes at you (which are of course much bigger and much riper than anywhere else in the country because Texans do everything bigger and better), or, worse, no one will show up. But, maybe, there will a full house, even people standing up in the aisles, and they might seem to actually like your reading, gasping at just the right spots, acting like they want more. You even see a few of your old neighbors and gals from Alpha Company FRG (yay 2-7 Arrowhead!).

But just when you think you might have done everything right for one whole day of your life, I am going to remind you of something foolish you might have done earlier that afternoon. You may have driven around your old neighborhood in the incredibly obvious Lincoln Continental that your publishers sent to indulge you. Be warned that if you make that mistake and ask your driver to swing by your old house, he might decide to stop in the middle of the street and show you a picture of himself with Sean Puffy Combs from the last time Puff Daddy was doing a concert at Fort Hood. While the driver is scrolling through his cell phone pictures, you might see all the children in the neighborhood, who were just playing dodge ball on your old yard, stare at that big black car, then start to scatter for their homes, and it might even seem like they are screaming. That’s when you will ask your driver to hurry up and drive away but for some reason he will just take his time making a K turn in the middle of the street, then hand you his phone to show you a picture of his Texas-bred football playing son. I tell you all of this, because when you are smiling at Barnes and Noble, signing books and chatting away,  the woman who lives in your old house will peer at you, a little embarrassed, and asked if there is any chance that you drove by her house earlier? She will be with a couple other of your neighbors, who will also be staring at you a bit oddly. And you will feel yourself go all red and wonder if you should lie, but you will nod, and she will tell you how there has been a pedophile loose in a dark car, how the entire neighborhood was worried sick all day when their children came sprinting in talking about a big black car lurking.

This will now be part of your legacy, how you wrote a book about Fort Hood, and when you came back to town, you scared the hell out of all your neighbors’ kids.

But it will still have been a close-to-perfect day.

You might also be a bit nostalgic as you leave Fort Hood the next morning, wishing you had more time to get on base, to see the front gates and Battalion Avenue and those tanks and helicopters outside of the First Cav Museum that you wrote about. And you will close your eyes for a minute, think of the neighbors and FRG wives who now have soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, all those Fort Hood heroes, those soldiers and spouses and families, those who deployed, those who stayed, and be grateful to them.

DAY 2: Tattered Cover Books, Denver, Colorado

Marti and Charles at Tattered Cover-- the BEST!

This will be one of the most beautiful book stores you have ever seen. You’ll also get to hang out with Charles and Marti, who are the most enthusiastic, loveliest booksellers ever, and you will want to bring them back to your hotel, feed them chocolate, and listen to their author stories all night, they are that wonderful. I got to glimpse two branches of this fab indie—the cavernous, labyrinth, books-in-all-the-nooks one down town (LoDo location), where I got to sign a tremendous stack of You Know When the Men Are Gone, as well as the refitted old theater with the statue of an old man that you will be certain is a real old man (Colfax location). When that old man hasn’t moved a hair from the time you arrived until the time you are about to leave, you might wonder if you ought to alert a clerk that they have a corpse on the premises and wonder if you should really ruin your night by being the bearer of bad news. Fortunately Marty points him out definitively as a statue and the crisis is averted. (Podcast of the reading, minus any mention of the old man, can be found at http://authorsontourlive.com/siobhan-fallon-podcasts-you-know-when-the-men-are-gone/)

Day 3– Book Passage, Corte Madera/San Francisco, and Capitola Book Cafe, Capitola/Santa Cruz

Elaine and Karen, The Goddesses of Book Passage

Book Passage! Fabulous in every way! Elaine Petrocelli and her incredible staff  will make you feel doted upon and adored. Olivia Boler, your friend for a decade and one your best readers, gives you a smile and a thumbs up during your entire reading. Michael David Lukas, author of The Oracle of Stamboul, shows up and he has even brought his sweet mom to help cheer you on. As you leave, Book Passage packs you up a little to-go bag of goodness–soup! Two pints of it! I ask my kindly media contact, who drives me all the way from San Fran to Santa Cruz and back again, if he wants some, but I say it in the kind of way that definitely lets him know I really don’t want to share, sort of, “Um, you don’t want any of this spectacular soup that I am very quickly devouring, do you? Since, you know, you are driving on a windy California highway, and I have already put my dirty spoon into both pints?” He graciously demures.

KUSP 88.9 The Agony Column

(DO try to talk to Rick Klieffel of Agony Column/KUSP 88.9 if you are in Santa Cruz, he has the most amazing radio voice, asks really insightful questions that make you sound smarter and more thoughtful than you actually are, and he’s fun. Podcast of this interview can be found at the Feb 6, 2011 segment at http://www.kusp.org/shows/agony.html)

Lovely Tamera Walters of Capitola Book Cafe

Capitola Book Cafe will have been worth the drive. There might be another fantastic standing room only crowd.

Blue Star Moms

The Blue star Moms will be there talking about their soldier sons and daughters in Iraq and Afghanistan (more about their amazing charity at http://www.santacruzbluestarmoms.com/).

Defense Language Institute Ladies

And a bunch of your army spouse friends from the Defense Language Institute at Monterey might be there, having smushed into a big van to surprise you. It will be another great day altogether, actually,  it will all have been too good to be true so far, which is why you deserve what happens next at…

DAY 4: Powells at Cedar Hills Crossing, Portland, Oregon

Lydia's very nice mom.

You might be getting a little cocky there, cowgirl, thinking your boots are mighty nice. Which is when you ought to get your come-uppance. And it will come. Maybe at Powells in Portland, which is enormous and beautiful, and the event planner might have put out way too many chairs that will remain empty, even though you start your reading about fifteen  minutes late, hoping some stragglers will come by from the gaping wide entrance to the  mall beyond.

Be prepared, there is a chance you might actually get heckled. Maybe heckled is too cruel of a word, but while you are begging the five people in your audience to ask you a question (one of them is your husband’s wonderful second cousin, the other an army wife friend’s mother), three very pretty teenage girls will come strolling through, talking to each other loudly, and they will sit in the last row and begin elbowing each other, as if on some kind of dare, and then all three will shoot their arms in the air and since you are answering a question and don’t immediately call on them, they will start shouting out things. Like, “DID YOU WRITE A BOOK?” and/or “WHERE ARE YOU FROM?” and even “IS THIS FICTION OR NONFICTION?” which will illicilt something like impressed high fives from her friends. At this point you might have forgotten what you were talking about, stop speaking, look at the teenagers, Irish skin of yours getting flushed and red, and you will feel like a teenager yourself that just slipped near the water fountain in the gym and landed on her butt. You answer all three of the teenagers questions, trying to be witty and self-deprecating in hopes that you will get a laugh, but you don’t get any laughs, you just get pitying looks from the five people in your audience, which makes you manically try to be even funnier but you are just not very funny to begin with on good days, and you will go back to your nice hotel room feeling very very tired and a little scared about the readings to come.  But come on, no more pity party, this is your dream, so you take a bath, tell yourself to buck up, and get ready for an incredibly early wake up call and the next day’s adventure in LA…

Links mentioned in this blog:

Market Heights B&N http://store-locator.barnesandnoble.com/event/68695

Tattered Cover http://www.tatteredcover.com/

Book Passage http://www.bookpassage.com/

Rick Kleffel and The Agony Column http://www.kusp.org/shows/agony.html and http://www.bookotron.com/agony/index.html

Santa Cruz Blue Star Moms http://www.santacruzbluestarmoms.com/

Capitola Book Cafe http://www.booksite.com/texis/scripts/community/eventcal.html?sid=4892&cal=1

Powell’s http://www.powells.com/