Dreaming/ waking
1960
See this beautiful woman? That’s my mother in 1960, the year my younger brother was born.
1991
Here she is again at the age I am now, holding my youngest son. I love how every bit of her loving personality is captured in that photograph.
A decade later we lost her to dementia and years after that, she finished passing.
Last night I dreamed that we were going to have breakfast together this morning. Then I woke up.
This is the table beside my back door. My husband and I walk by it multiple times a day, but we leave it untouched. There’ve been a number of wild summer storms recently, including one which sent a huge section of tree falling across the street just as I was sitting at my desk looking out. This, however, is not from that. It’s not nature’s work at all except in the most basic sense. This is a collection, a very deliberate assembly of the best sticks available. Note the one shaped like a scythe…
I had the pleasure of raising two sons so I know what I’m looking at when my younger grandson gathers his best choices and lays them out on my table, explaining as he goes, what makes each one so special. They may all be named Sticky (okay, the part about all of them having the same name I can’t claim to understand), but they need to be here the next time he comes over. (Older brother has already stashed his “short sword” styled stick on a shelf in our garage, out of sight of any thieves or meddling adults.)
Meanwhile, the wonderful little neighbor girl is in her backyard playing in her lilac colored princess dress, one which she wears often, and I think, “what parallel universe is playing out over in that yard?” I grew up with uncles and brothers before having sons and I swear, I have never in my life come anywhere near a princess dress. It looks like quite the adventure, one I wish I had experienced!
If our family happens to collide with that universe in the future, we will welcome the change with joy, but in the meantime, the sticks will be there when the boys return.
News in the publishing world is that my books for Sunbury are going to be recorded on audio and should be available in that format before long. I can’t begin to imagine what listening to them will be like! And, the latest in the series about photographer Audrey Markum will be heading to the publisher soon!
Before we left on our Hawaii adventure, my husband and I had four goals. In addition to just being warm during the month of February, we wanted to do a lot of snorkeling and we wanted to see whales, surfing and volcanoes. Happily, we were able to accomplish all of them! The first full day we were there, we drove up the north shore of Oahu and after watching a bunch of cute kids learning to surf, we stumbled upon a surfing competition. What a wild scene!
Kelly Slater in a surfing heat.
On Maui for most of our time, we were able to go out on several boat trips and saw lots and lots of whales. The captain on one boat lamented that we would never get back into port because we kept seeing so many, and that was on a snorkeling excursion! One especially beautiful day we were able to snorkel at Olawalu Reef where we saw a variety of fish and our hosts pointed out Jim Darling’s research boat. His years of research are largely responsible for the numbers of whales alive today.
By far the worst boat ride and most beautiful snorkeling was at Kealakekua Bay on the Kona side of the big island. The vibrant coral was especially beautiful after seeing so many bleached out reefs on previous snorkeling trips in the Caribbean and even on the Great barrier Reef. My husband took many stunning underwater videos which almost capture the beauty of it all. The grand prize though, watching the videos at home and hearing all of the whale song that we hadn’t noticed at the time!
David’s photo of yellow tangs in Kealakekua Bay, near the Captain Cook memorial.
Another day we took the drive up to view Haleakala Crater. The different colors within the crater were fascinating and an interesting contrast to the look of the volcanic craters on the big island when we drove the chain of craters road. Those craters reflected different eruption time frames and periods of regrowth. The overview and Holei Sea Arch at the end made the long, slow drive entirely worthwhile.
Haleakala crater on Maui.
Holei Sea Arch on the big island.
Now we are settled back in Michigan and eagerly tracking the signs of spring. Happy spring to all of you!
Is it weird to come home from a big adventure like a trip to Hawaii and say that what you liked most was the trees? Of course, we loved all of it. The beaches and sea turtles, the mountains and volcanic craters and especially, snorkeling from boats over the most beautiful reefs we’d ever seen. It was all amazing. But I have to say, that I especially loved the trees.
I believe it was the varied silhouettes of the trees that hit me first. We are so used to our oaks and maples, to our evergreens with their oh-so-familiar shapes. In Hawaii, Cook pines reach up above the horizon like the tallest of bottle brushes while massive banyan trees fill nearly every town square. Lahaina has one of the largest in the world and was planted in 1873. Of course, there is every variety of palm, but I loved the monkeypod trees along the roadway that spread overhead with dark, twisting limbs that look nothing like what we are used to here. Impossible for me to photograph properly, I just wanted to keep driving through their shady tunnel.
David’s photograph of Lahaina’s famous banyan tree.
Monkeypod trees near Lahaina.
Beautiful but not native to Hawaii are the albizzias, which grow quickly and have amazing, high, flat tops that look as though you could sit on them. Another invader, brought in as a failed lumber source, is the rainbow eucalyptus tree. Stands of them on the road to Hana blow the mind with their peeling bark that reveals bright colored streaks. Having only seen them in photography books, I was totally bowled over at seeing them in person. Unfortunately, both tree species grow quickly and absorb water needed for native trees like the Koa.
Rainbow eucalyptus.
The wonderful silhouettes of trees at Fort DeRussy Beach Park on Oahu.
In other news, Picturing the Dark, the second book in my Audrey Markum series, is nearing the finish line! Just waiting on final proofing and cover art. For now, I am scheduled to be interviewed on a podcast about it next Saturday, 3/25/2023 so there should be a link to that to share soon. The adventure continues!
While my husband and I were off on our Hawaii adventure, one of the first things we noticed, beyond the heart stopping scenery, was how a server at a restaurant or a tour leader could make your day with their attitude. When they share a bit of themselves they go beyond the stock phrases and scripts that they’ve had to learn and connect with the people who are right in front of them. It’s such a gift to a traveler to be treated so warmly.
At the Manoa Craft Chocolate Factory tasting, our lovely tour leader admitted she was going without her note cards for the first time. My stomach clutched for her, but she continued and when she stumbled, was so friendly and casual asking a co-worker a question, who gladly stepped over and offered his expertise, that it almost made you wish it was your job. Can you imagine if your day job was helping people taste incredible chocolates? Retirement, schmirement…(https://manoachocolate.com) And yes, they do ship to the mainland!
We experienced this welcome again when we went on two different whale watching outings. In both cases the crew members were informative and friendly, but on the first one we learned about their background as marine biologists and were given a glimpse into their lives when they mentioned it was how they met. Now we saw amazing whales on both trips, but that one stuck with us much, much more. (https://www.ultimatewhalewatch.com/) Here a mother whale is teaching her calf how to use their pectoral fins. The mother/baby/escort groups were fascinating!
Anticipation!
Do you remember in science class when they explained the notion of potential energy? The example I recall is a boulder perched on a cliff, ready to plummet downward. Sometimes I think anticipation can feel like a version of that concept, wonderful possibilities perched on the edge of space and time, just about to happen.
This month I am giddy with anticipation. My husband and I are about to go on a long awaited trip and are just now reaching the point of saying, “this time next week we’ll…” How glorious is that? You book the flights, you reserve the rooms, you search out activities and then you wait and wait and wait until finally, finally it’s “this time next week we’ll…” With a blanket of snow on the ground, the sky darkening and temperatures getting ready to drop even further, we go to bed dreaming of sunshine and palm trees.
My new book, Searching for Rosey, is also generating some wonderful anticipation. We are through the first edits and discussing a cover and suddenly, this amazing journey that I’m on is about to arrive at another station! In addition, I’ve just been invited to participate in a second podcast (details to follow) and a solid draft of the third and final installment of my series (which turned out to be a trilogy… who knew?) is now in the hands of one of my expert consultants. It continues to amaze me!
Here’s wishing you many hours and days of wonderful potential energy. The wind is blowing snow off the branches of our trees and I am a happy boulder just waiting to fly.
Are you familiar with the word liminal? It’s a wonderfully evocative word that only rarely works its way comfortably into a conversation. It means a transition or as my dictionary says, occupying a position at, or on both sides of, a boundary or threshold. I love that idea, just imagine being on both sides of a boundary at once. That in-between kind of space can be frightening and disorienting but it can also offer space for both remembering and expectation. In Michigan now, we are in that liminal time with one season not over, the other not yet begun. Last evening my husband and I sat on our back deck and reveled in the soft warm air that we know will disappear all too soon. We were reluctant to go inside, even as the sun went down, and the birds grew quiet.
I was reminded of the word and the time when I was out walking this morning and noticed the first leaves of the season turning. They shouldn’t have come as a surprise, just as I shouldn’t be surprised by how dark it is now at seven in the morning. It happens every year. But still, it’s nice to be reminded that seasons don’t change overnight, that time isn’t really pushing us faster and faster, that we don’t have to move any more quickly than a tree donning its fall wardrobe. Here's to liminality.
Some time back I wrote a post about my focus on gratitude. Over the course of this pandemic, with each day looking nearly identical to the other I’ve found it harder to maintain that focus. We keep thinking about what’s lost, what’s changed, and what we can’t get back. We’re all bereft in ways big and small. Now, on day ten of my own bout with covid, however, I am reminded yet again, of how fortunate I am. In the last few years, tens of thousands of scientists and health experts have been doing exhaustive work that positioned me to experience a bad cold, an annoyance that two years ago might have killed me.
In that sameness, that continuity of days, I’ve also failed to remember what an amazing journey I’ve been on as a writer. A life-long reading addict, I love libraries and my local branch has been remodeled into an extremely pleasant space. (It has a truly bizarre cataloging system, but I’ll leave that rant for another time…) I was looking for a new book by an author I’d been devouring (Cheetos, not prime rib but delicious all the same) when I came upon this scene. Some kind librarian had even set it out so that it might catch someone’s eye!
I was curious then about my newest book. I had to switch to another shelf (see note above about odd cataloging system) but there it was. And how crazy it was to see my name standing right next to Craig Johnson, whose Longmire series I dearly love. It is indeed, an incredible journey and one which I am truly grateful to be on!
While we’re awaiting news on the latest book, remember that you can locate all of the earlier ones at your local library (if you’re lucky enough to live in Ann Arbor!) or on Amazon. Here’s a link to make it even easier.
Once the spring robin infestation calmed down* the birds around our house settled into their usual summer routine. The sparrows returned to their nest in the eave of my neighbor’s house, the wrens’ songs fill in the background and the blue jays continue to act as the neighborhood bullies. That is, until yesterday. My husband heard it first, this loud, raucous chorus of bird voices in the back yard. We stepped out onto the deck and there in our neighbor’s yard was a red-tailed hawk munching on a rabbit. (I know, ew!) What was really interesting though, was how all of the other birds kept screaming and diving at it trying to get it to move on. It totally didn’t care, though, even when they clearly made contact with it!
Obviously, being me, I didn’t try to get too close to the sucker. However, I took my camera and zoomed in the best I could to capture it where it was eating. The blur beside it is a blue jay, I believe. After quite a while, the hawk finally had enough of them ruining his meal and he took off. He landed first on the top of a telephone pole and then when they continued to pester him, he flew on. I know Disney worked hard to pretty up the whole circle of life deal, but I have to say that in flight, he was a lot more attractive than he was sitting on the ground munching on fluffy.
I hope your summer is going well and that you are at peace with whatever wildlife you share your territory.
*When the cat pictures didn’t work, my husband purchased something called ‘predator eyes’, reflective plastic disks with a stylized eye in the middle. Hung near every window on the first floor, the idiot robin finally moved on. (I later heard from a friend that an across the street neighbor had a robin problem but…)
I’m being told that Finding Rosey is going to be out this fall so more news as it becomes available! You can read about it as well as purchase the earlier books through the website. Just touch the button below!
I was reminded again today of how much I miss the voices from our workout circuit at Curves. There were so many stories that flowed in and around the music and the exercise: a woman talking about a gift she’d gotten for a grandchild who’d just come out, or another woman whose first grandchild had been born on the west coast and was counting the days until she could visit. I heard a judge discussing her campaign as she prepared for an election, and a newly hired in-store shopper explained the job to me when that trend was just beginning. Another woman with family in Alaska, talked about all the activities they did indoors during the dark. I heard narratives of wonder and loss, of moving and remodeling, of husbands declining and old friends rediscovered. Everyone had stories and it was a gift to move among them, to listen and contribute, to hear debate and laughter. Curves was such a safe place that even the quiet women would often add a comment or two.
One of my favorite on-going conversations was with a woman whose friends were writing and collecting stories about growing up as the children of Holocaust survivors. They had found support and commonality within their unique group and were hoping to share those stories with others. We talked about writing and re-writing, editing and publishing. Today, I’m thrilled to say, that I hold that book in my hand! The Ones Who Remember: Second-Generation Voices of the Holocaust is its title, and I had the privilege of hearing several of the authors speak at a book reception this afternoon. My Curves friend, Joy Wolfe Ensor, is a contributing editor and author.
Not surprisingly, in line at the signing today were several members of that vibrant Curves community. I know there are more losses from the pandemic than we can ever catalog, but the loss of Curves remains one of the saddest to me.
You can purchase The Ones Who Remember locally at Nicola’s Books or online here. I recommend it!
I won’t start by saying that I hate birds, I don’t. However, I will say that I only like birds at a distance, like at least ten feet or so. You know, a GOOD distance. For example, watching a gorgeous hawk soaring overhead? Wonderful. Dining outdoors with birds flitting in and around the tables? A horror. Bird attacks in general just seem way too personal as far as I’m concerned.
So, what has happened in the past week as we’re all looking for those delightful signs that spring might actually arrive in Michigan? A robin has been attacking my house. Repeatedly. Every day. Multiple windows. In fact, I can hear him as I’m typing this. Initially when he started pecking on the basement window, I didn’t really care, but it drove my husband bonkers. So, he installed those clear, plastic covers over the window wells. Did the bird take the hint, maybe start to seek out other like-minded robins? NOOOO… he decided to up his game.
This moronic excuse for a bird has been throwing himself at my first floor windows over and over again for DAYS AND DAYS. It’s nightmarish, Hitchcockian, even, and believe me when I say, no one wants to actually live through a Hitchcockian scenario. My wonderful husband hoped that taping up some pictures of cats might discourage him. It did not. Instead, he started aiming for them. It was as if we’d thrown down some sort of avian gauntlet. Who knew?
In more delightful news, Sunbury Press has just agreed to publish the sequel to Seeing in the Quiet! The new book is called Finding Rosey and should be out around the end of the year. You can learn more about it in the book section of my website. Until then, keep well and hope for better signs of spring than toxic avian masculinity!
My husband took this photo for me. No way was I getting that close to it, even with the glass in between us!
Of podcasts and giant can-openers…
Now that we are in our second (third? fifteenth?) winter of our discontent, I have been struggling to find things to do. Perhaps you have too, what with the cold temperatures and icy sidewalks forcing many of us to remain inside. Luckily, a couple of things have fallen into my lap recently that have helped me to shake off some of the winter blues.
First, after writing about how I enjoy women’s podcasts I was invited to participate in one! Sherry Knowlton (author of Dead of Autumn and other Alexa Williams novels) and J.M West (author of the Carlisle Crime Cases series) are two authors from my publisher Sunbury Press who host a podcast called Milford House Mysteries. We chatted for half an hour about life and books and writing. When I’m writing, I don’t normally think about the process of writing so it was challenging to step back and think about how I write and then voice those ideas out loud. It was also interesting to feel a part of the larger writing community. You can listen here.
Second, I seem to have acquired a part time job! A friend that I worked with at Curves asked if I was interested in working with her at a local meal service company. It’s called What’s Cooking! and it produces an amazing number and variety of meals from a small commercial kitchen. It’s fun to be a part of, especially since I’m used to my small-scale home cooking. There are full size sheet pans with parchment paper in perfectly fitting sheets covered in golden brown, roasted potatoes. There are cans that take two hands to lift and the full upper body to crank around on the giant can opener, as well as weighing and measuring tasks, and opportunities to mix big quantities of ingredients in pans the size of my sink at home. Most importantly though, there is conversation and the company of others, which is a real treasure in overly quiet times. Here’s a link to What’s Cooking!
Having something to do, feeling useful and engaged makes a huge difference these days. And of course, if you’re looking for something to read on a quiet winter afternoon, you can find my new book Seeing in the Quiet here. If you enjoy ebooks and participate in Kindle Unlimited, all of my books are available there!
In my recent book, Seeing in the Quiet, the main character finds relief and ease in the quiet that descends when she puts her hearing aids away for the evening. I imagine at one time or another, we’ve all enjoyed that feeling when the din recedes and we are able to notice the quiet around us. It can be very comforting. But, I have to admit, the pandemic has led to a lot more silence than I needed. In particular, I miss the voices of the women I knew at my local Curves club. There were so many different, vibrant, funny women that I got to share my weeks with.
Because of that Covid silence, I have found myself listening to a number of podcasts.* Not surprisingly, my favorites have all been women. Hearing Dolly Parton talk about the courage it took to expand her world as a young singer/songwriter or listening to Michelle Obama and her friends talking about getting together at Camp David has been amazing.
Recently I was listening to Anita Hill and Christine Blasey Ford talk together about their experiences, their suffering and frustration, but also about the sense of duty that moved them to speak and the courage they mustered when faced with the ordeal that their testimonies became. Strong women, both of them: quiet, articulate, soft-spoken and generous, but each with a core that the meanest in our society could not break.
I have been thinking a lot lately about the strength of women, the public power of women in leadership, as well as the quiet power found in a group of friends. Often it seems as though it is the women who hold our world together. They lift and carry us along, feeding us, caring for us, buoying our spirits when we begin to falter. I’d like to say thank you for our women leaders and for my women friends and family. You make the world spin.
* Dolly Parton’s America Host: Jad Abumrad
The Michelle Obama Podcast Host: Spotify
Because of Anita Host: Audie Cornish
If you’d like to purchase Seeing in the Quiet you can find it at Amazon. (For my local friends, I have still not heard back from Nicola’s Books. If/when it becomes available there, I will be sure to let you know!)
I’m so excited to announce that Seeing in the Quiet was officially released on October 1, 2021! It’s now available at Amazon or directly through Sunbury Press. I hope it’s as much fun to read as it was to write!
Remember David Byrne singing and dancing in that big suit? It was so odd, and yet, he looked so comfortable in it. I remember playing dress-up with my childhood friend, Doris, stumbling around in her mother’s dresses and ragged high-heeled shoes. As I stomp around now, most often in clogs or wide-toed boots, I realize I was trying on a lifestyle that I never adopted. In fact, I never even got close to the glamourous lifestyle that those dresses and heels represented. Perhaps that’s exactly what dress-up is for, to try on roles and then discard them as we fumble and grow and morph into this version of ourselves that the child never imagined.
I certainly never pictured myself as a marketer, but here we are, and honestly, it feels just as weird as wearing high heels. I love sitting at my desk writing, living inside my head, and talking with my imaginary friends. Or when I’m lying in bed waiting to fall asleep, and I find myself wandering around in my stories. The cliché is true. Writing is a very personal process. I think that is why trying to help sell a book seems so foreign. I don’t want to pester people or impinge on wonderful friendships. In the car, I turn off the radio in between the songs. When I watch tv, I pride myself on how quickly I can mute and unmute the constant ads. Give me a choice between televised soccer and football, and I will choose soccer every time. Forty-five-minute halves with no commercials! What’s not to like?
So here’s my promise as a non-marketer marketer. I will try to be brief but clear and interesting as well as honest. Most importantly, though, I will be appreciative of every reader, every critic, every individual who takes a moment from their day to read what I’ve written. As I said in an earlier blog, thankful is my religion and I plan to continue practicing it.
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Today I made English muffins. I haven’t tasted them yet, but they look pretty good. They look right. And no, there was not any profanity involved in their creation. As a rule, I enjoy cooking and baking and my husband is a wonderfully open-minded eater, so the two go hand in hand. However, anyone who knows me is aware that I do have a history of kitchen tantrums. I admit it. I’m not proud of it and I would argue that I have many fine qualities that outweigh the tendency, but I can’t deny the reality of it. (Amazingly enough, my older son enjoys cooking as well. Recently, his wife described an epic tantrum of his that involved burnt dinner rolls, oven mitts, and an uncooperative sliding glass door. I wish I’d seen it. It sounded kind of wonderful! Whether through nature or nurture, I know I have to own that trait right there.)
Not imagining the monster that it might create, this winter my younger son asked if I’d be interested in baking a cake for his wedding in July. He and his wife were clear that the bar was set incredibly low, that they did not expect anything fancy at all. Of course, I immediately said yes. In fact, I was very calm about the whole idea. I figured I had plenty of time to practice, to find a recipe and a look that they would both like. I’m sure my husband’s brain was clanging with warning signals, but he was generous enough not to share them.
The first thing I have to say is that those baking videos online are filled with lies. Or maybe, they just need to be done by people more like MRFIXIT, who rates his DIY videos by the number of f-bombs you’re likely to use during the task. Now that’s a teaching tool I can get behind!
Practice cake number one went very smoothly but was not the flavor they were looking for. So, I moved on to practice cake number two. Chocolate on chocolate, easy enough, right? Except that the cake was too dry, and the frosting was too cold to spread easily (NOT highlighted in the baking videos!), but it was the ganache that sent me over the edge, and on a colder day, this would have been no problem. On a colder day, the windows would have been shut. Did I mention that a delightful young family moved in next to us and that they love to be out in their backyard?
Well, the cream that I was heating in the microwave exploded, and so did I. And just as the profanity jumped out of my mouth at possibly a shocking volume for someone my size, my husband looked out the window and was appalled to see the neighbor’s head spin around in alarm. At which point, I stomped my size seven on the floor and told him to apologize for me. Which he did, kindly attributing it to high-intensity-baking.
Needless to say, practice cake number two was not a winner. It was not even up for miss congeniality. But in the end, I got it right, or right enough at least. And things with the neighbors have been going better. Well, aside from the day that the watermelon leapt out of the back of my car onto the driveway, and she was in her backyard on zoom…
Just over a year ago, the musician, Justin Townes Earle, passed away. It hit hard, like so many of the other losses we’ve experienced, John Prine being one of the toughest. But it felt as if Earle was a casualty of his own life rather than the pandemic. I didn’t know his music well, but we saw him one night as part of a folk festival here in town, and he talked about his life with addiction, described himself as a young man so high he could hunt ducks with a rake. Sadly, his passing wasn’t the surprise that it might have been.
What captivated me that night was a beautiful song he did called Mama’s Eyes. In the song, he describes traveling the same difficult path as his father, but then it shifts to this reassurance:
And I say to myself
I’ve got my mama’s eyes
Her long thin frame and her smile
And I still see wrong from right
Cuz I’ve got my mama’s eyes
Yea I’ve got my mama’s eyes
As someone who spent most of their life estranged from their father, I recognized something of myself in the song. Both of my parents have passed, but even now, I look at my hands, their short fat fingers and wide, crooked nails, and know that they’re my father’s hands, that when I wear my glasses, my brothers see his face in me. But I never wanted to be like him. He was a leaver, a little-carer who walked away from our family, from me. Just like Earle, though, when I feared that I might have taken on the worst of my father’s attributes and habits, I could look in a mirror, without the glasses, and see that I too have my mama’s eyes. And, I hope, along with them, a measure of her patience and the sense of love and commitment to family that she never walked away from. I wanted to thank Justin Townes Earle for the song and the recognition it gave me, but I also wanted to say that I am thinking of his mother, of her losing her boy. I am so sorry for that loss.
Welcome everyone! We now have cover art for Seeing in the Quiet. I am getting excited for our upcoming release. Nicola’s Books in Westgate has said that they will carry it and we are tentatively planning an author event. Stay tuned for more details!!
In no surprise to anyone, that time of year came earlier than usual to our household. In Michigan, the winter weather often leaves us cooped up inside for days at a time with too much sitting and too much eating leaving us feeling crappy and unfit. Unfortunately, the pandemic has had much the same effect, with my husband working from home, one zoom meeting after another and me tiptoeing around upstairs or sitting for unhealthy lengths of time as I try to remain quiet.
So what do we do to break the cycle you may ask? We ping pong! Our basement is not really conducive to it with one end covered in weightlifting equipment and the other filled with a stereo cabinet and boxes of abandoned toys. But with a few modifications, we make it work. Rule number one? Do anything you can to keep the ball on the table and not have to go hunting for it in the crowded and/or spidery corners. That means you play it off the ceiling or the heating duct, off the double bounce or the over-hit. Of course that means that rule number two is don’t keep score. Why wouldn’t it be?
What those rules bring though, in addition to truly mediocre ping pong, is laughter and the freedom to experiment! How can you not laugh when the ball comes zinging at you off the elliptical machine and you manage to put it back on the table? And what about the freedom to practice every kind of back-handed, wildly spinning attempt to send the ball flying in a new direction?
But you want to know the real secret, the magic that keeps us moving and playing in spite of the weather or the pandemic? He’s an amazingly good sport when I gloat! And I have to confess. I gloat. A lot. And he lets me. There are a lot of definitions of love but I swear, that has to be in there somewhere. I hope you and yours are able to find your own kind of magic in these tough times.
(All of this is on pause while my husband recuperates from surgery but I still think it rings true… We’re currently in the process of rewriting the rules to Scrabble!)
All quiet for now…
So, I’ve been away. Well, not actually away, but definitely down a deep, Covid rabbit hole. Perhaps you’ve been in one too. I find it’s a hard place to be, especially when you’re perfectly fine and have no real reason for being there. As ever, I am deeply grateful for my health and family, for my beautiful town that is filled with the colors of fall. Yet there are still reasons to grieve. My beloved Curves closed in March and I miss my coworkers and members like a leg. Never in my life had I been with so many amazing women and I mourn the loss of their company. For safety reasons, I also haven’t been able to visit with my son and daughter in law and their wonderful children. They are twenty minutes away but it feels like an ocean separates us. So I mourn the loss of their company too. Hence the hole.
A wonderful friend of mine loaned me a book recently called Intimations by Zadie Smith. It is a collection of essays that do the best job I’ve seen so far of describing the odd world we now find ourselves in. My favorite one is called “Something to Do”. She talks about how all of us who are not essential workers have found ourselves struggling to find something to do. She’s so right! Do I sit upstairs? Do I sit downstairs? Do I go for a walk now or later? Do I make chicken or pasta or scroll through dozens of on-line recipes? How much time have I filled? And here’s my favorite line: “There is no great difference between novels and banana bread. They are both just something to do.”
I may not fully leave my hole until after this election has finished, but one bright star that is drawing me out is the news that Sunbury Press has agreed to publish my book Seeing in the Quiet. I don’t know how long it will take or what the process will involve, but I can’t wait to get started! As we head into what is likely to be a very dark and difficult winter, I hope that you will find your own bright stars to lead you up and forward and away from the holes.
By the way, any tips on getting rid of what Oliver Sacks called earworms? I am currently on day four of Rene and Georgette Magritte With Their Dog After the War and although it is a lovely song, it is NOT four days worth of lovely. Suggestions are welcome!
