I was walking Stella, my dog, who we’ve trained to sit when a car goes by. This one stopped. It was my neighbor, going for a drive to get out of the house.
“I just read your blog,” she said. “It’s so depressing. Can’t you write a happy one next time? Something inspirational?
I thought, but didn’t say, that’s not my style. How many times have I heard people say things like that to me? Just a recent email from an old friend declared, “I have read your poetry and wondered at your gift for writing. It is wonderful to read but so full of sadness. I look for the hope! “
Another (now former) friend dismissed our relationship by saying “You’re too sad for me.” That was in the years after our son Geoff died. Laden with the heavy coat of grief, what could I be but sad?
People at my poetry readings always look serious, stricken. And they often come up to me to tell their own painful stories, sometimes thanking me for putting into words feelings that for them had been inchoate. What I write about, often grief, loss, and lately, aging, I think, is real. Close to the bone. Since my growing-up years were filled with secrets, “don’t talk-about-its,” hypocritical religious dictums, pretense and outright lies, I have come to want only truth for myself and those around me.
And truth can be sticky, sometimes unpleasant, gritty, at times frightening—but to me, a beautiful shining thing.
My upcoming memoir, I Am Not a Juvenile Delinquent, is another attempt to not only to speak the truth of my life for myself but for the at-risk girls I taught, sharing their stories of rape, drug abuse, incest, neglect and truancy, our communal journeys to transform the truths of our experience into art. Many readers will want to find hope, defined as a dream, prayer, or wish for change from what is and has been to what could be, in our stories. But what I want them to see is that simply accepting things as they are, is what brings the peace to me that perhaps hope has given to them. Yes, positively changed circumstances may come to some, but not because of wishing or dreaming or praying. Awareness gained from reflection and experience, hard choices made, help and support from caring friends and mentors, are what power the small transformations. We can definitely evolve.
So, writing the “inspirational” is not exactly what I’m all about.
But here’s a nugget of light I can offer in these tangled times. Because truth is not always hard and sad. The reality is that most of us are struggling most of the time, some so very much more than others. But pieces of light can and do bounce into our current lives and certainly are present in mine. I know I am incredibly fortunate right now, not to have young children or a job with daily responsibilities. Or no job at all, or a business that’s shuttered. Or the virus itself, or anyone I know sick with it. I have financial stability, a home and gardens I love, a caring and supportive husband, a black Lab puppy we adore.
I am surrounded with trees and fields, lovely walkable roads and forest paths.
I have health and energy, zoom yoga classes, contacts with friends far and near.
But, because everything in life is faceted, I have discovered that –when I’m not reading the New York Times or Washington Post, that is—I am really liking this sheltering in place. Though an extrovert who loves and needs social interaction, I’ve also learned to deeply cherish my solitude. It’s absolutely what a writer needs, and I have often run from it in former “normal” days—“doing” rather than “being.”
I love being up here in my book-filled study, messy with random piles of papers, poems that need revision, my “altar” of prized and comforting objects collected over the years, a cozy couch that I almost never settle into for reading the books piled around it. I love sitting at the computer, writing these words.
But most of all, I love having the burden of choice lifted from my shoulders. I love having no options, though many of you have heard me say how important having options is to me. That was then. But right now, those options don’t exist for anyone; they’ve been suspended by the coronavirus restrictions. I don’t have to fret that others are doing more exciting things than I am. I don’t have to decide whether to go to that lecture or reading, what play to see in the city, what museum or restaurant to grace with my presence, what workshop or residency to apply to, what country to visit next. (Although I fully realize what privileged choices these were).
I don’t have doctor or dentist appointments, my hair is long grown past its last cut and my toes are unpolished. I don’t have to pack for yet another trip.
Right now, I don’t have “conflict about conflict,” a condition that has been an encumbrance all my life. I first heard this term used by Padraig O’ Tuama at a workshop with Marie Howe in Ireland a few years ago. It was the perfect description for how I’ve felt so much of the time and I was actually thrilled to have words to put to that feeling. I get wrapped up in “Shall I do this?” Shall I do that?” “Which choice is better?” Which is possible?” “What if?” And on and on, driven through the thorny, dizzying, thickets of determining which options to select in a myriad of situations-- large, small, and in-between.
I think some of you can relate.
So now I am relieved of decision-making, with the exception of what to have for dinner or lunch, what time of the day to take a walk with my husband and Stella, what wonderful book to read (I’m now in the middle of “Our Revolution,” by Honor Moore, about her relationship with her late mother—it’s terrific!), how many hours to spend writing and reading. The only present demands on me involve marketing for my memoir, setting up virtual readings for it and writing these blog posts, all pleasurable pastimes. What I wear or how I look doesn’t matter; I take delight in the small domestic chores I do each day.
So, here’s that nugget of light : I feel joy and relief in being forced to accept things as they are. Again. I never would have imagined I could have, in this tragic and unbalancing situation we are all in now.
I don’t know if that’s inspiring to you, but it surely is to me.