Hopelessly Devoted

For several days I’ve been waking around 4 or 5 a.m. - not with the kind of agitation and anxiety to which I’m prone, but with a sense of quiet energy and anticipation. I don’t bother fighting my wakefulness, but slip as quietly as possible out of the warm nest of blankets and dogs and make my way to the kitchen. While the coffee is coursing its way through the Cuisinart, I take a few moments to stand at the window and greet the silent, snowy day, before I empty the dishwasher and preheat my favorite mug. With my coffee balanced on a small, cloth lined tray, I make my way back upstairs and into the Room of My Own, the bedroom in our house that’s become my de facto office/reading room/retreat. For the next few hours, I read, write, think.  As the sky brightens outside the window, I allow myself to sink deeper into my ideas, my thoughts, my memories. By the time my family is awake, I am spent, but also energized. I feel a sense of accomplishment, and excitement. The words are taking me places I’ve never been, and I’m excited for this journey.

This is my work these days, and I am devoted to it.

Devotion is my key word for this year. It is a word layered with many levels of meaning, a word that began to crop up in my thoughts several months ago when I decided this would be the year I devoted to myself, my projects, my creativity. It is a word that carries traces of the holiness which I hope to bring to daily life. It is a loving word, a word that means giving freely of time and attention to that which is important. It is a gentle word, that implies persistence without the need for perfection.

It is a word I bring to my writing, but also to my body with all its desires and imperfections. To my husband and our marriage, in honor of true generosity and faith. To my mother, whose needs increase with age but whose love is proportionately far greater than her expectations of us. It is a word I bring to Life in General, with a growing awareness and acceptance of what makes me happy and a genuine dedication to seeking it in my daily living.

Enjoyment, then, is another important layer in the concept of devotion. It feels almost sinfully luxurious  to have the time and ability to ponder and pursue these things - this writing, this life, time to sit with what I’ve learned and explore things I want to learn more about. It’s like receiving a box of Belgian chocolates and knowing you can eat as many as you want without gaining an ounce. I smile at the very thought, don’t you?

For the past year or two, I’ve been about the business of stripping away layers - layers of clutter, of memories, of  expectations. So much has changed during that time. I’ve streamlined my living, literally and figuratively. I once thought change was evil - I dreaded it and fretted over it and hung around the edges of it as long as I could. But if there’s one thing that’s certain in life, it’s the fact that nothing stays the same, nothing is static. I’m finally starting to be okay with that idea. Lately, change has been good to me, and for me.  Now I can devote myself to seeing where it all will take me.

The Reading Life: The In-Between Hour

 The In-Between Hour, by Barbara Claypole White Paperback: 400 pages Publisher: Harlequin MIRA; Original edition (December 31, 2013)

Publisher’s Summary: Bestselling author Will Shepard is caught in the twilight of grief, after his young son dies in a car accident. But when his father’s aging mind erases the memory, Will rewrites the truth. The story he spins brings unexpected relief…until he’s forced to return to rural North Carolina, trapping himself in a lie.

Holistic veterinarian Hannah Linden is a healer who opens her heart to strays but can only watch, powerless, as her grown son struggles with inner demons. When she rents her guest cottage to Will and his dad, she finds solace in trying to mend their broken world, even while her own shatters.

As their lives connect and collide, Will and Hannah become each other’s only hope—if they can find their way into a new story, one that begins with love.

If it sounds like the characters of this novel have a lot on their plates -well, they do. Author Will Shephard has been dealt a double whammy, between the sudden loss of his five year old son and his aging father’s descent into dementia. In addition, Will still has unresolved feelings about his mother, whose mental instability made his youth miserable. Meanwhile, Hannah Linden is desperately trying to save her grown son from his own demons and from following in the footsteps of his grandfather, who committed suicide.

The summary of this novel pushed all my interest buttons - caring for an aging parent, adult children with mental illness, dealing with grief - and I wasn’t disappointed on any level. It was a compelling, well researched novel, with complex and believable characters.  And setting the novel in the North Carolina foothills provided the author with an opportunity to use the natural surroundings to enhance the mood. The title of the piece refers to the time of day between daylight and dusk, the time once know as “the gloaming,” and many of the characters find themselves at such a period on their lives, at a crossroads between light and dark.

The intersection of Will and Hannah’s lives was my favorite aspect of the story. Merging two disparate lifestyles as well as the very demanding needs of family members is a daunting task for any couple, but the reader is left feeling as if they will indeed be able to manage it, and provide each other with some much needed stability for the journey.

Barbara Claypole White writes and gardens in the forests of North Carolina.  Her son’s battles with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) have inspired her to write love stories about damaged people. The In-Between Hour goes a step beyond most conventional women’s fiction, with it’s authentic focus on the havoc mental illness can create within a family, and the legacy it leaves for generations to come.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for the opportunity to read this novel.

Still Writing

It’s a fine line we writers walk, the line between wanting to be a writer and actually doing the work of it. As Dorothy Parker said, “I hate writing. I love having written.” Sometimes, sitting at my writing desk in the mornings, trying to restrain my itchy fingers from clicking on the Facebook icon one more time, I sigh in frustration. Where is that inspiration they kept promising me would come if I showed up faithfully every day? I want to go downstairs and make myself a cup of coffee. I really should put in a load of laundry. And there is, of course, Facebook and Twitter to check.

Instead, I pick up Still Writing, Dani Shapiro’s new book. I open it up and read:

It’s so easy to forget what matters. When I begin the day centered, with equanimity, I find that I am quite unshakable. But if I start off in that slippery, discomfiting way, I am easily thrown off course - and once off course there, I stay. And so I know that my job is to cultivate a mind that catches itself.  A mind that watches its own desire to scamper off into the bramble, but instead, guides itself gently back to what needs to be done. This kind of equanimity may not be my nature, but I can at least attempt to make it my habit.

If, as I have said to myself, that for this year at least what matters to me is this writing work I have set out to do, then I must be ever vigilant about guiding my mind back to what needs to be done, shepherding it gently away from the list of distractions all too ready to lasso it and wrestle it to the ground.

I must learn to be still. And write.

This book of Shapiro’s, this small square volume,  sits now always on my writing desk, always at hand. It serves as a guide, when the writing road becomes rocky and my mind has wandered into the bramble. It is my devotional, a dose taken daily even before I touch my finger to the keyboard, before the screen blossoms into life. “The Pleasures and Perils of a Creative Life,” the book is subtitled, and Perilous it can seem at times, to have chosen a life of words, of weaving expressions smooth as silk from nothing but rowdy thoughts that flit and flicker across the valleys of my mind.

But oh, the Pleasure to be had when mind and fingers work in tandem, when thoughts form as tangible things in tiny icons of black and white, marching steadfastly across the blank page. When words mirror the images in your head, brush them with the glow of painter’s finest bristle, and set them alight for the world to see. When you finally understand that thing that has eaten away at you for most of your sad, sorry life, when the words have worked it around in your head until at last you say “Aha! Of course! That is why I am the way I am!” When you write, and write some more.

When hours go by and -  still - you are writing.

There it is, then, the reason I sit down at this table every morning, the reason I shush the voices that beg me for coffee, that chide me about laundry, that niggle me for news from the Internet.  

Be still! I tell them. Go away with you.

I’m writing.

Still Writing 

Author: Dani Shapiro

Publisher: Atlantic Monthly Press

Pages: 230

Buy A Copy: Amazon|Barnes & Noble

Snow Birding

We are hunkered down here in the midwest, heeding weather forecasters who predict another barrage of snow on top of the storm that ushered in 2014 earlier this week. But it was sunny and bright during the early part of the day, and we walked down our frozen street wearing the unlikely combination of sunglasses and earmuffs. Between the holidays and two big snowstorms back to back, I’ve found myself with a totally unprecedented amount of quiet time. Is there anything I like better than quiet time?

Not much.

Of course I can always find ways to keep busy. I’m surrounded by books, I have hundreds of movies and TV shows at my disposal (thank you, Netflix, Amazon, and TiVo). I always have the Book Project to fall back on should I find myself bored. (ha!)

But as snow falls gently and steadily outside the window, I’m content to sit in my chair, my hands wrapped around a steaming mugful of tea, and watch the chickadees and goldfinch flocking to the feeders. My interest in birds is a new one, and because there are so many birders in our neighborhood who feed and water them regularly, there is a large assortment always available for observation.

A friend sent me an interesting article about chickadees - apparently their little birdbrains physically expand by 30 % every winter to accommodate memory storage of all the places they’ve hidden gathered seeds during the fall. When spring comes, their brains “shrink” back to normal size. "They grow more brain when they need to remember things; then shrink that brain when the "remembering" season ends."

As recently as 1994, scientists did not believe this was possible - in birdbrains, let alone in human brains. But guess what? Homo sapien brains can expand too. Every time we learn something new, we grow brain cells.

Learn enough, and the concept of big-headedness will be more than metaphorical.

That’s kind of comforting, isn’t it? Especially when you’ve reached the age where recalling the spot you left your coffee mug, book, and reading glasses can lead you on an hour long wild goose chase through the house.

So yes, bird (and presumably all mammals) can grow brain mass and power. But it’s the second part of that sentence which really caught my attention.

That their brain shrinks when the remembering season ends.

Sometimes it seems like old age marks the end of the remembering season. Especially when folks become infirm and  have to move out of their homes and into care giving environments. Although they might provide “memory-stimulating” activities, it seems like they're really just false approximations of the real-life events our brains are designed to work with.

Even at my stage of life, I can sometimes feel my brain stultifying (especially after too many hours on Facebook!) I really want to stay firmly rooted in the remembering season. That’s another reason why I love reading, writing, and playing music  - those activities are the nuts and seeds I gather all year round, expanding my brain cells with every page written and read, every note played.

Hieroglyphs on a Rock

I endured these (childhood) fantasies and premonitions by writing about them. The stories I made up were medicinal. My inner life was barbed, with jagged edges. Left untended, it felt dangerous, like it might turn on me at any moment. Intuitively, I understood that I had to use it. It was all I had. By writing, I was participating in a tradition as old as humanity. I was here. Hieroglyphs on a rock. I was here, and this is my story. Dani Shapiro (Still Writing)

Novelist and memoirist Dani Shapiro often writes about the way her childhood influenced her writing. The only child of older parents who “fought constantly” and “whose greatest source of conflict was me," Shapiro says she “felt as if she were navigating the world on a borrowed visa.” She turned to writing as a way of coping, of marking her territory, of staying safe. 

I was here, and this is my story.

I can relate to Shapiro’s sense of danger and unease about her place in the world.  As the cherished only child of over-protective parents and grandparents, I was treated more like a china doll than a normal little girl. Ever fearful of my getting broken, my mother tried her best to keep me in a safe cocoon. In her eyes, disasters lurked around every corner like potential land mines waiting to explode.  I often had bronchitis and asthma, and so many of the activities my friends engaged in were off limits to me. Things like running (which made me short of breath), swimming (chlorine in the pool aggravated my asthma), ice skating (I might fall and break something), overnights with friends (their houses might have too much dust which would set off my allergies) were all verboten.

I developed a sense of fragility about life in general and my own in particular, a belief that I should never put myself in harms way- even if the potential for harm was practically negligible. So I learned to be content with quiet pursuits like writing stories, many of which were potboilers about young girls in dangerous situations - locked in haunted mansions, being pursued by ghosts or kidnapped by gangs of thugs. Interestingly enough, I rarely finished these epic tales, probably because I couldn’t conceive of a way to reach the happy ending I wanted so desperately.

I think I was in fourth grade when I first heard about the cave paintings in Lascaux, those images etched into the walls of a dark cave that appeared to be a form of primitive communication. I remember a chill running down my spine as the teacher explained how scientists believed these drawings to be early man’s first efforts at leaving a message or telling a story. Preserved for eons, these odd images were proof positive that some sentient being existed, one who was compelled to leave a message for posterity.

From that moment on, I became fixated on the idea of using words and images to leave a lasting legacy. My belief in the power of our individual stories was born on that day. No matter what might happen to me  (a fatal asthma attack brought about during a secret playdate in my friend Lisa’s dusty basement!) my mark on the world could be ensured through writing.

I was here, and this is my story.

This year I will publish a book called Life In General, a collection of essays from the past 8 years. These pieces will tell the story of my here and now, my life in this 21st century - what makes me smile and laugh and cringe in fear. They are the compilation of my hopes and dreams, my thoughts about family and home and reading and writing. They are the shared stories of women I know, those of us who struggle to balance our lives with the needs of children and grandchildren, spouses, aging parents, and employers. They are all aspects of my story, each one a hieroglyph on the wall of my cave.

I was here, and this is my story. 

And I’m excited to share it with you.