As some of you know, I've been toiling for the past few years on an empty-nest memoir. It has been the most grueling writing project of my life. Just months after our only child left for college, my wife, Carol, took a job in Tennessee. Having been the full-time caregiver in our family for the past two decades, I suddenly found my life empty with no direction or purpose.
You'd think I would have followed Carol to Nashville, but I'd lived in our Florida house for nearly 10 years, and after following Carol's jobs to five different states over the years, I decided to dig in. I refused to move. I would commute. I and the cats stayed in Fort Myers, and I dropped into Nashville for a few days here and there – and then those trips became shorter and fewer. Unconsciously, Carol and I started drifting apart.
After one drunken solitary night, I awoke to find that I'd arranged my daughter's baby teeth in a lifelike arc on the kitchen table – and I knew I had to get out of the house. I hopped into my truck and started driving around the country, in a sort of Mister-Toad's-Wild-Ride adventure. My wife now calls this period "the year Ad ran away." Frankly, both of us thought our marriage was coming to an end. It's not that we disliked each other – it's just that we were tired and beat up from all those years of fighting on the front lines of parenting. We'd reached the natural point in a marriage when both parties re-examine the bonds of their relationship and, often, decide to go their own ways.
While I drove to places like Amarillo, Texas and Oklahoma City and Little Rock, Arkansas, I wrote and sent pages of a memoir-in-progress to my agent, who said this: "These adventures are funny, Ad. You're a funny guy. But you've got to remember that in every memoir something is at stake. What's at stake here?"
For months, I didn't know. And then a series of events (in Lincoln, Nebraska, in Wichita Falls, Texas, in Someplace I Can't Remember) brought me to my senses – and I suddenly realized that I was on the verge of losing the most important thing in my life: my wife, who had started building a solitary life without me. The realization hit me like a bucket of cold water dumped on my head. It was as if I'd been clouded by grief – the loss of a child – and I was simply going through the motions of day-to-day existence.
With great ferocity I set out to win back her skeptical heart. It was not easy. My odyssey made me realize my shortcomings as a husband and friend, and I had to admit to myself all the things I'd done wrong over the years. I'd been a great dad but not-so-great husband.
Slowly, I regained her trust. We are in a great spot right now. It's as if we've fallen in love all over again. (Sorry, darlin', but there's no way you're ever gonna get rid of me. 'Til death do us part.)
All this would make a great book, wouldn't it? But you're not going to read it because I'm not going to finish it.
After a decade of being a full-time author, I've decided to move on. I'm weary of words. I'm tired of being inside my head for so much of every day. There's good reason why so many writers drink heavily: they can't shut down the alternate reality that they've created and that continues to run like a carousel inside their brains all day, all night. I've found that I need something tactile, something physical. I want to be able to read books for pleasure again. (An author always deconstructs and critiques books as he reads, hoping to learn something about the craft.)
There's good reason why Linc Menner, the protagonist of my househusband novels, was a landscape architect. Anyone who's read my books knows how much I love plants. Unlike so many writers, I don't feel the need to write – I never have. I feel the need to create. Years ago I simply chose words as my medium because I'd been raised in a five-generation newspaper family. Words are what I know.
I'm simply switching mediums of expression. In an example of life imitating art, I'm going to become a full-time professional urban gardener. I'm now immersed in the Tennessee Master Gardener program. I'm reading books on business plans and dreaming up marketing schemes. After living in tropical zone 10 for the past 11 years, I've got much to learn about the plant life in zone 7A.
I've met many wonderful people in my years as novelist, via book tours and my website and through book clubs. Y'all have made this job and journey very enjoyable – and I hope we keep in touch via facebook and twitter. And I'll still occasionally write: I love writing short stories and essays, such as the one titled "Tree Bitch," which ran in last summer's Best of the South issue of The Oxford American. I'm going to post and sell these things as Kindle singles on Amazon. The days of the New York publisher are numbered – and writers no longer need a middleman to distribute their work.
After several months of living in a downtown Nashville highrise, Carol and I have found a swell home in the Green Hills neighborhood. We love Nashville. It's got the charm and niceness of the South with the openness and entrepreneurial spirit of the West. There are so, so many smart and talented people in this creative city. It's a great place for starting over, for starting something new.
So here I go …
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