Goin' Down to Mama's

Sunday Morning Serenity

I ran across this picture and immediately heard Julie Andrews singing "raindrops on roses and whiskers on kittens." I love a good rain. It's one of MY favorite things.

Cheeto and I were in the Story Shack early this morning, and we had the heater going, so I couldn’t hear anything outside. About the time I was getting frustrated with what I was writing (which was going nowhere fast), I decided to go in the house and freshen my coffee. I opened the door to a soft rain falling from a dark early morning sky. It made me forget the bad writing on my computer and the cold coffee in my cup. I just stood in the doorway and listened to it fall.

What I love about rain—provided I don’t have to drive in it—is the way it slows everything down. You were planning to do yard work . . .  but it’s raining. What’s on Netflix? You were booked into your kids’ Little League game . . . but it’s a rainout. Let’s order pizza.

Sometimes I think we need some sort of intervention, like rain, to make us just stop. When I’m spinning my wheels at work or at home (one day, I’ll clean the guest room—I promise), it’s usually because I’m trying to do way too much, and I need to just stop.

My mother says I’m terrible at doing nothing, but there’s great value in being still, in abandoning our determination to make something happen and instead just letting what was meant to be unfold. (Cheeto has no problem with that one, by the way.)

My prayer for you, this rainy Sunday morning: a calm spirit, a peaceful heart, and the serenity of falling rain.

Sunday Morning Serenity

Last week was not fun. Can I say that out loud? I spent Monday-Wednesday dreading Thursday, which began with my annual physical at what Daddy calls “the woman doctor” and ended with a pitch meeting at the magazine. In case you’ve never experienced a pitch meeting, that’s when you walk into a conference room filled with your colleagues and present story ideas to the editor-in-chief, who critiques them and asks questions about how you intend to produce them. And even though nobody involved is the least bit mean-spirited, pitch meetings still give me that “sure hope I studied the right material for the final exam” feeling. Mama finds my pitch panic baffling, given that I’ve been doing what I do for 30 years and am old enough to retire. But even after all this time, I guess I still want an A+ on my paper.

Back to the annual physical. I not only trust and respect my doctor but outright adore her for her patience and kindness. She and I are only a few years apart, so we’ve gone through changing life stages together. And our discussions about health invariably evolve into discussions about life. Once you hit your fifties, the stakes get dramatically higher. Bone density, balance, weight (don’t get me started), stress levels—they all have tangible consequences right now. They’re not some distant something that could affect you one of these days. And the people you lose get closer and closer to you. Not your parents’ friends but yours. Not your friends’ grandparents, but their moms and dads. Maybe you’ve lost your own parents. Or maybe you haven’t, and you feel overwhelmingly fortunate to have them in your life.

The big upside to aging is that a heightened awareness of your own mortality is accompanied by an equally heightened sense of your purpose. You understand what matters and what doesn’t. You know who your real friends are. You know how you really want to spend your time, even though other things sometimes get in the way.

So while I still panic when I pitch, at the end of the day I’m just happy to do interesting work with people I like. I appreciate Dave so much more now than when we first married because I see what it means to have someone who will be there, no matter what. I appreciate my family a lot more now than I did in my twenties because I see what a rarity they are. Not everybody grows up with the safety net of grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins I once took for granted. I appreciate my church family more now because I know what it’s like to live far away from them and struggle to feel at home in a different congregation.

Bottom line: I’m getting older. But I’m getting wiser, too. And more thankful every day.

Sunday Morning Serenity

My friend Jane used to say, “Sometimes you just gotta let the rough end drag”—meaning, we all reach a point where we just have to let some things go.

I didn’t send Christmas cards this year. Again. Our Nativity scene is still on display in the living room. And the multicolored lights I hung in the picture window of the Story Shack have been sadly dangling from one corner since the Command hook on the other side fell off and dropped them. How much energy would it take to stick a new hook on the window frame? Apparently, more than I have. The brown remains of my summer flowers still clutter the pots they were planted in because I don’t have time to garden, and that just has to be okay till spring. My work uniform has become jeans, boots, and whatever top doesn’t need ironing. I keep Cheeto fed. Dave keeps me fed. And that’s about all we can promise right now.

(Precious Jane up in heaven, the rough end is officially dragging and I miss being able to whine about it to you in the church parking lot.)

For weeks, I was struggling with a book manuscript, so I sent an SOS email to my novelist friend and volunteer writing coach in Minnesota. He told me about something he read by Kurt Vonnegut, who said that every character in a book wants something—it can be something small or something huge—but once you figure out what they want, you’ll know why they’re in the story.

Brilliant. And also true of people. What do we want? And why are we in the story? Some of our wants are unique to us, but others are universal. We all want love. We want forgiveness and redemption. We want a sense of purpose. Finding that last one—purpose—makes the sorting process much easier: “I really need to do this, I can stop doing that; this is important, that’s not.

Prayers for clarity of purpose—and the good sense to let the rough end drag.

[Image by Gerald Rencehausen @ freerangestock.com]

Sunday Morning Serenity

We haven’t talked about my lifelong habit of hand-wringing in the past five minutes, so let’s explore that again:)

Y’all. This week has been the proverbial emotional roller coaster. Book release and dream come true. Yay! The very next morning at approximately 2 a.m.: Oh my gosh. The book is out. Will it sell? Will it tank? Will they love it? Will they hate it? I can’t sleep. Did I lock the back door or is a serial killer hiding in the closet? I can’t sleep. Did I turn off the stove? No, wait—I didn’t cook. I haven’t cooked in a month. Where’s Cheeto? Is he on top of Dave’s head? No. Dave looks fine. But still. Where’s the cat? I’m hot. I’m cold. What time is it? If I’m not asleep by 3 I’m getting up. I need coffee. Or maybe not. I need some sleep. Who are we kidding? Dave’s not snoring. So whose snoring woke me up? Oh. Right. I do that now. Man, I’m old. Maybe I should go to the gym. When it opens. Do I have a 9 o’clock meeting or is that tomorrow? I never cared for that guy Mary Ellen married on The Waltons. I wonder what she saw in him. What time is it??????

I once read a transcript of an oral history interview with a Hurricane Camille survivor who referred to worry and fret as “quitty quieting.” As in “I’ve got to quit my quitty quieting.” I love that. (Thanks for sharing University of Southern Miss.)

Let me tell you I have done some serious quitty quieting this week. Over GOOD news. So much that I developed total brain freeze on the manuscript for book 2, which is due in . . . MARCH!!!!!

Finally, yesterday morning, I realized that staring at my computer screen was getting me nowhere. So I started looking at old family pictures. And smiling. And breathing. And sharing them with my cousins on Facebook. They came back at me with their own memories of those photos, wonderful little tidbits I never knew or had forgotten. We had ourselves a virtual reunion that stretched across the Deep South and down to the coast.

My family is the reason I started writing in the first place—to see if I could tell stories that were as good as the ones I grew up hearing on the front porch or around Grandme’s dining room table. (I wasn’t allowed to actually sit at “the big table,” but I could lurk once dinner was over and the coffee started flowing.) I've probably told you this before—because I repeat myself a LOT these days—but when I was in college, a friend was listening to me tell some family story or other, and she looked at me and said, "It's like you're going through life with this big safety net under you." I was. And I am. 

After a morning with the family, I wrote just fine yesterday afternoon. I slept just fine last night. And I said a prayer of thanks this morning.