Katrina Kenison's Blog, page 15

Thank You!

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”  – Meister Eckhart

“Thank you.” 

Maybe these words really are enough.

Certainly “Thank you” is the phrase on my lips today, the emotion overflowing in my heart, the words I want to say to you, the prayer of gratitude I offer up to the universe.  To every single fellow traveler, to everyone who’s read Magical Journey and shared it with a friend, I offer a huge springtime bouquet of thank you’s.

Here’s what we’re creating together:

          *Attention!

Nearly three months after the official publication date, People.com cites Magical Journey as a “Memoir We Can’t Put Down.”  (I imagine Cheryl Strayed has grown used to such accolades by now, but for me, a shout-out in People is a Really Big Deal.)

Thank you, to senior writer Jill Smolowe, who said she randomly pulled my galley out of a pile during a lull at work and found herself “lured in,” as she wrote me over the weekend.

          *Word of mouth sales! 

As of last Friday night, Magical Journey was #75 on Amazon’s sales rank in the Biography/Memoir category.  Hey, to break through the top-100 ceiling in any category at all is quite a thrill.  It means that even in a world crowded with thousands of wonderful books, Magical Journey is quietly but surely finding its way.

Thank you to every book buyer and book giver. Book sales are where the rubber hits the road.

*A Facebook Author page that has grown from exactly zero at pub date to nearly 3,000 followers! (Just 26 more “Likes” and we’ll be there.)

Thank you to every single FB friend who hit that button and is generously sharing my blog posts with your on-line world.

            *An eNewsletter mailing list that is multiplying by leaps and bounds!

I remember writing my first blog post, just three and a half years ago, and wondering how on earth anyone would ever find it and who on earth would even care.

When the first subscription from a real live reader ping-ed into my email box, I couldn’t have been more stunned:  a human being, reaching back through the ether to ME!  Well, we’ve learned a lot together since then, become friends here in this space, discovered just how much we have in common as we share the ups and downs of our lives with one another.

And guess what?  My weekly blog post now goes to over 3,000 e-mail boxes.  (If you’d like it to land in yours, just click here and subscribe to join us.  Of course, it’s free.)

Thank you to all of you who faithful readers, and a special virtual hug to those of you who take the time to comment.  (While I had to make the tough decision not to respond to all blog comments, much as I wish I had the time to answer each and every one, I DO read them ALL — gratefully, joyfully.)

          *Reader reviews.

Sure, a rave in the New York Times would be great.  But it means far more to me to know that my book is striking a chord with you. What a gift, not only to be read, but to have readers who care enough about this book to craft and post a response online.  Your reviews touch me deeply.  And although I try not to spend my time checking in with Amazon, my two sons keep tabs on those stars. (You are making them proud.)

Thank you for your beautiful words!

          *YouTube views (l ots of them!)

Suddenly, my video for The Gift of an Ordinary Day is flying around the internet again.  I can’t compete with Dancing Nana, but at over 1.8 million views and counting, this seems pretty amazing — for a book trailer.  The video for Magical Journey, though quieter and more introspective, has been seen by more than 10,000 viewers since January. (Keep sharing!)

            *Letters!

Just over two hundred of them since January 8.  Each one is unique, heartfelt, appreciated.  And taken altogether, what they tell me is this: Sharing the true stories of our lives — the dark, difficult, messy parts right alongside the heartwarming moments and the ah-ha revelations – is worth it.  When one person takes a deep breath and reveals a little bit of the struggle, it clears a space in which someone else can be honest and vulnerable, too.  And suddenly fear and isolation and confusion are displaced by empathy and compassion and hope.  To say I’m grateful for your letters would be an understatement.  They make my day — and the stories you entrust to me confirm that though the road may be bumpy at times, none of us journeys alone; this path is full of fellow travelers. We are all in it together.

Thank you for allowing me these glimpses of your lives!

“We can only be said to be alive,” wrote one of my literary heroes, Thornton Wilder, “in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”

On this mild April Monday, I am feeling deeply alive and deeply grateful for the treasure we are creating and sustaining together: a supportive community of readers and thinkers, wanderers and wonderers, seekers and soul mates.

To express my thanks to you, my dear readers, who continue to support my work so generously, I’m gift-wrapping four books this week to give away.  (Mother’s Day gift, perhaps??)

 

My Springtime Gift to You

To enter to win one of four copies of Magical Journey, personalized as per your instructions,  wrapped in handmade paper, and mailed with a card to you, or to a special someone in your life, just leave a comment below.

I’d love to know what you’re feeling grateful for as we round the corner into spring.  Or, you can just say, “Count me in.”  Four winners will be chosen, at random, after midnight on April 9.  Good luck to all!

(And, if receiving a signed and gift-wrapped book is something you just don’t want to leave to chance, you can also order signed, wrapped copies through my local bookstore by clicking HERE.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Full house, full heart

I’ve sometimes wondered if I’ll spend the rest of my life missing my sons as the little boys they used to be.

Even now, though it’s been years since I reminded anyone to look both ways, the sight of a mom crossing the street hand-in-hand with a little guy with sleep-tufted hair and rolled up jeans fills my eyes with sudden, unbidden tears.

Arriving at an elementary school to give a talk one morning not long ago, watching parents bending low to kiss their children good-bye, observing the sea of bobbing backpacks, the bright art on the walls, the exuberance of  six-year-olds beginning their day, I was so overcome with emotion that I had to slip back out to my car for a few minutes and compose myself. Still, standing up at the podium in that room full of young mothers, I wasn’t quite sure I could trust my voice.

“Do you know,” I wanted to say to them, “how quickly this will all be over?  Do you realize just how sweet and rich your lives are right now? How fleeting?”

Of course, this is what older people have been saying to younger ones since time began.  And no one wants to hear it.

Busy, distracted, wondering how to transport the kids from point A to point B and pick up some food for dinner and get the homework done without too much of a fuss, an over-stretched, over-tired parent isn’t worrying about the end of childhood so much as how to survive the hours between 3:00 and bedtime.  I know that.  I’ve been that mom, too.

But it’s been a while since we had two boys still living at home full time, and what I’m most aware of now is not how endlessly long those days could be, but how quickly those years flew by. Adjusting to my new empty-nest reality, after over two decades of 24/7 mothering, has been a slow, bittersweet process.

         At times my nostalgia for our family life as it used to be – for our own imperfect, cherished, irretrievable past – is overwhelming.  The life    my husband and children and I had together, cast now in the golden light of memory, seems unbearably precious; what lies ahead, darker and lonelier and less certain.

When I first wrote those words, just two years ago, I couldn’t imagine ever feeling differently.  Even as my days slowly filled with new joys and occupations, I felt as if I also lived in the shadow of that darker, lonelier future.  With both my sons grown and gone, I wondered if any as-yet-unwritten life chapter could ever feel quite as right, quite as challenging and fulfilling, as those years of intense, day-in-day-out togetherness.

It is such a raw and relentless business, motherhood.  There is the constant physical engagement, at once exhilarating and exhausting. But there is also the vehement, insistent emotion; the frightening, thrilling ferocity of our love for these souls we’ve delivered into the world.

How many times was I brought to my knees by the visceral intimacy of tears and blood and poop, fevers and sweats and strange skin rashes, sibling battles and wild nightmares and crazy, irrational fears? And then, within the same hour sometimes, I would be lifted right up again, exalted and turned inside out by the accidental, extravagant grace of wild laughter or a whoop of glee, a whispered confession, a cuddle, an imponderable question, a kiss delivered to an elbow or a knee (why there??), some random joke without a punch-line that made us all giggle anyway.  When all of that ended, when first one son and then the other had the audacity to grow up and leave the nest, I was sure our family life would never again be quite as good.

Last weekend, both our boys were home.  We still had about three feet of snow on the ground and not much on the agenda – a lot of March Madness basketball on the TV, a couple of family dinners, unplanned hours. I made chicken potpie from scratch.  Jack (a skilled body worker after three years of interning at a studio in Boston) offered to get me up on the massage table and work on my stiff muscles.  For an hour he patiently stretched and manipulated my arms, neck, and shoulders, with extraordinary sensitivity and attentiveness.

On Sunday morning we went to church and listened to Henry play the organ.  As the light poured in through the tall windows,  as the choir sang the Palm Sunday anthem he’d chosen and rehearsed with them, I was flooded with memories of our son as a little boy straining to reach the foot pedals, practicing hymns on our old upright piano in the living room.  The tears that sprang to my eyes then weren’t tears of longing for what was, but of gratitude for all that’s come to be.

The journey between dreaming and becoming, between childhood and adulthood, doesn’t end, of course, when the kids head off for school or leave home or embark on careers or marriages.  It is ongoing, full of twists and turns, detours and disappointments, surprises and sudden revelations.

Who knew that what seemed like a catastrophic loss for one son – freshman year of college missed, two broken vertebrae and constant, chronic pain – would inspire this strong-willed boy who once fantasized about being a tennis star to become a compassionate healer instead?  And how could we have ever imagined that the shy, dreamy child who seemed almost too frail for this world at times, would one day grow up to be a competent, self-assured music director, perfectly at ease performing in front of a congregation and coaching singers four times his age?

In the afternoon last Sunday, between basketball games and my marathon in the kitchen, Steve and the boys and I all put on our boots and took a walk, our favorite loop through the woods.  Gracie trotted ahead, glancing back every few steps as if she couldn’t quite believe her good fortune.  For a border collie, heaven is having your entire herd in the same place at the same time – ideally, out in the woods and sticking close together.

I knew how she felt.  I was happy, too.

In fact, as we tramped along the path it suddenly occurred to me, for the very first time, that I wouldn’t turn the clock back now even if I could.  Not for one hour, not for one day, or for one year or ten.  Not for anything.

It hit me with the power of epiphany:  this sudden, unexpected end to the nostalgic longing I’ve carried like a bruise upon my heart for so long that I’ve nearly forgotten what true ease in the here and now feels like.

Who we are, what we are, where we are at this moment is different from what was, absolutely.  But it is in no way less than.  And the surprising truth is, I wouldn’t trade our family’s beautiful, complicated, ever shifting and fleeting present for any simpler golden-hued yesterday.

Instead, I am pausing each day of this Easter week and giving thanks for what is, right now.  I am grateful for who we are in this moment: four still-growing human beings, each of us irrevocably, mysteriously, wonderfully connected.  Each of us finding our own unique way to be in the world, and at the same time, each of us gratefully returning to this hallowed place of our own creation:  this piece of earth, this house, this dinner table, this history, this tangled web of us-ness.  Yes, we are each still and always unfinished parts of some greater, unknowable whole.  And yes, we are still and always something else, too.  We are family.

BIG Magical Journey News (and some Mother’s Day inspiration. . .)

I imagine Cheryl Strayed has gotten used to the accolades by now.  But for ME a rave in PEOPLE magazine is, well, a big deal.  Was I pleased to find this link in my in-box this morning, under the heading “Memoirs We Can’t Put Down”?  That would be an understatement! 

Maria Shriver is a role model for many of us, and her Architects of Change website is a treasure trove of inspiration, support, and wisdom.  So it’s a huge honor for me to be listed now among her “guides,” and especially to be featured by her this week.  Thank you, Maria!  You can read my essay HERE.

Power of Moms is, quite simply, an amazing website.  Described as “a gathering place for deliberate mothers,” it’s part hang-out, part retreat, part educational resource — and an altogether very friendly, helpful place to be.  I had such a great time talking with founder April Perry that I nearly forgot we were  recording a podcast; it was more like talking with a lively, like-minded friend.  Relax, take a few minutes with a cup of tea, and listen in HERE.

             Appearances

It seems to me that the best book conversations (well, the best conversations in general) are the ones that take place over a good meal. So my writing buddy Margaret Roach and I are both looking forward to reuniting at a luncheon hosted by The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, CT, on Friday, April 19 at noon.  For the price of a book, you will get a catered lunch, a reading, and time to chat with the two of us too! Call the store at (860) 868-0525 for more info and to reserve your place.

I first “met” Priscilla Warner right here last June, when she left a comment on a blog post I’d written.  I immediately read her wonderful memoir Learning to Breathe, she read my manuscript of Magical Journey and encouraged me through every step of the final revision, and pretty soon it felt as if we’d been friends forever — even though we STILL haven’t ever laid eyes on each other.  That will change next month, when I go to Larchmont, NY, to speak at the Public Library  on Sunday, April 19, at 3:30 — an event Priscilla helped organize, in part, so I can finally come visit her.

Other spring-time journeys:

Margaret and I are doing our very last bookstore “duet” at the Concord Bookshop on Sunday, April 28, at 3.  (Think daffodils, home made cookies, and wide-ranging conversation– everything from the thorny questions of midlife to composting secrets revealed!)

I’ll be back at Ann Patchett’s beautiful Nashville bookstore Parnassus on Thursday, May 2, at 7 pm.

And from Nashville, I’ll go straight to Minneapolis for my final two readings this spring: The annual Motherhood and Words talk at the Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 4 and, finally, to cap it all off, a reading at Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor’s beloved bookstore in downtown St. Paul on Monday, May 6.  Minneapolis friends, St. Olaf connections, Twin Cities readers, I want to see you all there! 

                  Housekeeping . . .

MOTHER’S DAY isn’t far off.  Yesterday, I signed and personalized 24 (!) copies of The Gift of an Ordinary Day for readers who’d ordered them from my local bookstore, The Toadstool, here in Peterborough, NH.  I asked Willard, the owner, if he’d be willing to gift-wrap books as Mother’s Day gifts, and he said “Sure.”  That’s right.  Now, you can order personalized, signed copies of ANY of my books just by clicking HERE.   This will bring you to an order form at the Toadstool’s website.  Leave a note with your order, letting us know if you want your books personalized and/or gift-wrapped.  I’ll sign them, we’ll wrap them beautifully, and we’ll get them right off to you or to the special moms in your life.

I’ve loved hearing from so many of you!  Your letters never fail to make my day — they remind me all over again how lucky we all are, to be part of a community of readers, seekers, thinkers, nurturers.  If you feel inclined to write a bit MORE, however, each and every reader review on  Goodreads and on Amazon is hugely appreciated (by me!) and helpful.  (Doesn’t have to be long, just kind and, preferably, enthusiastic!)

Thanks too, my dear friends, for continuing to share my video with others, for inviting folks to “like” my  Magical Journey Facebook page, and for sharing my blog posts on your own Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.  There is no denying the power of word of mouth!

 

 

 

 

 

Quiet days

 

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

           ― John O’Donohue, from “A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted”

Hard as it is for my mom to be away from her fourteen-year-old cocker spaniel for a few hours, let alone three days, she couldn’t bear the thought of not being present for her sister’s grandson’s wedding up north this weekend.  My Aunt Gloria’s been gone for three years.  But this winter, my mother says, has been harder than the first one without her; she is missing her big sister more these days, not less.  Being with her extended family, staying in a hotel with my dad in Newport, watching the first grandson take a bride – none of that would fill in the hole carved by loss, but it would make her feel a bit closer to her sister and remind her she wasn’t alone in missing her.  Of course, she was torn between going and staying home with her dog.

“I’ll come down there and take care of Justin, so you can go to the wedding,” I promised her weeks ago, happy to fill in some empty March days on my calendar with a trip to Florida and grateful for any excuse to have a visit with my mom.

“Words Justin knows (but can’t hear),” she wrote in the extensive care-and-feeding manual she left for me.  “Sit. Stay. Off.”  Justin is sweet-natured, deaf, and, above all else, a creature of routine: up to pee at 5 am, breakfast at 5:03, back to bed til 7, dinner at 4:30, a walk at dusk, playtime, bed.  During the day, between periodic call-of-nature visits to a small circle of bleached crab grass in the backyard, he sleeps.

“I’m looking forward to this,” I assured my mother as she packed her suitcase on Friday.  “I’ve been going nonstop since December. Three days alone, with no one who needs me for anything, will be a luxury.”

I meant it.  It feels as if the only conversation I haven’t had lately is one with myself.  So, I had my own plans for the weekend:  disconnect totally and do nothing.  I would read, think, write in my journal. Allow my soul to welcome me back.

What a relief it would be, I was certain, to just close up shop on my life for a couple of days.  I vowed to take a technology holiday — leave my laptop asleep in its case, my phone on vibrate, my emails unread, incoming texts unanswered, my Facebook status unchanged, my Amazon sales figures unchecked.

Yesterday, all alone in my mother’s house, I erected my cathedral of quiet.

And then, moment by moment, I struggled to live inside it.  All day long, I fought against the uneasy, unfamiliar discomfort of keeping company with my own silent, non-doing self.  How humbling, to realize I’ve lately grown so accustomed to distraction and busyness that it’s a challenge to simply stop in one place and be, to inhabit an empty space in time without giving in to the impulse to fill it up.

For months now, I’ve been in high gear, doing not only my normal every-day stuff (shopping, cooking, cleaning, mothering) but also the adrenaline-rush stuff of traveling, giving readings and talks, connecting, and promoting –  what I’ve come to think of as the job of being a person who’s written a book.  And I’ve loved just about every minute of my own thrilling Magical Journey.  It’s been a privilege to visit bookstores all over the country and a joy to hear from readers, to receive their thoughtful, heartfelt letters, to meet new friends and reconnect with old ones.

At the same time, I have to wonder:  have I become so used to being connected somewhere, to something, all the time, that making a deliberate choice to unplug and shut up, even for a day or two, has become a challenge?

“Stop,” I kept reminding myself yesterday, each time I reflexively reached for my phone, “just to check my email,” until at last I just stuck it out of sight in a drawer.

Pausing just to be sounds simple enough in theory, but it can be wildly hard. Making a choice to inhabit a windswept interior emptiness rather than trying to stuff it full of mental furniture feels awkward, even a little scary.  “Is this all there is?”  my busy mind kept demanding, casting about for something, anything, to do or worry about or fixate upon.

Having grown used to velocity as my automatic response to complexity, I’ve become pretty efficient when it comes to getting things done, but somewhat less graceful, apparently, in repose.  Give me a to-do list, and I know how to power through to the bottom line.  But even competence comes at a cost.  Give me a day without an internet connection or a deadline or a self-imposed goal to be met or a finish line to cross, and all my self-doubts and vulnerabilities come rushing out to meet me, jostling for position, demanding to be seen and heard.

I floundered around for a while, at odds with myself, rubbed raw by the rough edges of my own solitude.  It was hard to sit still, hard even to focus deeply and completely on the pages of the book I very much wanted to read.  I did some yoga and tried to match slow steady breaths to slow steady movements.  I took the dog for a walk, frittered the hours away, spoke to no one.  I didn’t try to get Justin to read my lips, as my mom does, or engage in doggie small talk he couldn’t hear, just to break the silence.  I resisted the urge to email a friend, to text my sons, call my husband, or turn on the TV and catch up on Downton Abbey.

In the end, I stretched out in a lawn chair, put down my book, and gazed up into the turquoise expanse of sky. Finally, time slowed down.  Finally, I felt something inside me begin to soften and settle, to release and let go.

This morning, I’ve been reading a memoir called “Until I Say Good-bye,” by Susan Spencer-Wendell, who was diagnosed with ALS two years ago, at the age of forty-four.  Knowing she had, at best, one good year of life left, Susan made a deliberate choice: to plant a garden of memories for her beloved husband and their three young children, and to cultivate joy in whatever time remained for her.

She wrote her book in three months, painstakingly using her one good finger to type into the Notes function on her iPhone.  By the time she was finished, she had lost her mobility, her voice, nearly everything except her courage, her consciousness, and her conviction that although she had no control over her illness, she could control the attitude she brought to her approaching death.  Certain the greatest gift she can give her family is her own acceptance of her fate, Susan is facing the end head on; as her book makes its way in the world, she is preparing, with little fanfare, to leave it.

Last week, following up on an earlier  interview conducted a few months ago when she could still speak, Scott Simon asked Susan how she is doing.  Her written reply to him was simple, straightforward, tremendously moving: “As well as can be expected. My body and voice become weaker every single day, but my mind becomes mightier and more quiet. You do indeed hear more in silence.”

She is right, of course.  And so, with gratitude now, and a good bit more ease than I felt yesterday, I sit outside at my mother’s quiet house, beneath the rustling palms, and watch the sun go down. I receive John O’Donohue’s words of blessing into my being, and feel what it means to imitate the habit of twilight.  I wonder whether, if I abide here long enough, a well of color might somehow open within me, too, just as the evening sky itself grows diaphanous at last light, the clouds translucent veils of rose and gold and mauve.

 

Magical Journey News

On the web

I never thought much about how my yoga practice has shaped my work as a writer, and vice versa, until Kate Hopper at Motherhood and Words, asked me some probing questions about both craft and practice in this lovely interview.

Other recent interviews and blog posts I’ve loved are:

Ali Edwards’s beautiful review. Click here.

An interview HERE, with Harriet Cabelly at her inspiring and rapidly expanding Rebuild Your Life site.

Amy Makechnie’s  brand new and engaging “fascinating person” series,  HERE.

 

Appearances

There’s a bit more magical journeying in my future, and a few new events on the calendar that I’m very excited about — each one an opportunity to meet wonderful, like-minded women, to listen and share our stories, and to reweave and reaffirm our connections with one another.

Next:  A reading and conversation at the Annapolis Book Festival on April 13 with Donna Jackson Nakazawa, author of The Last Best Cure.  (More about this terrific book, and a give-away, here very soon!) In the meantime, do visit Donna’s website and get to know her there.

It seems to me that the best book conversations (well, the best conversations in general) are the ones that take place over a good meal. So my writing buddy Margaret Roach and I were thrilled to be invited to speak and read at a luncheon hosted by The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, CT, on Friday, April 19.  Details to follow; in the meantime, you can call the store for more info.

I first “met” Priscilla Warner right here last June, when she left a comment on a blog post I’d written.  I immediately read her wonderful memoir Learning to Breathe, she read my manuscript of Magical Journey and encouraged me through every step of the final revision, and pretty soon it felt as if we’d been friends forever — even though we STILL haven’t ever laid eyes on each other.  That will change next month, when I go to Larchmont, NY, to speak at the Public Library  on Sunday, April 19, at 3:30 — an event Priscilla helped organize, in part, so I can finally come visit her.

Other spring-time journeys:

Margaret and I are doing our very last bookstore “duet” at the Concord Bookshop on Sunday, April 28, at 3.  (Think daffodils, home made cookies, and wide-ranging conversation– everything from the thorny questions of midlife to composting secrets revealed!)

I’ll be back at Ann Patchett’s beautiful Nashville bookstore Parnassus on Thursday, May 2, at 7 pm.

And from Nashville, I’ll go straight to Minneapolis for my final two readings this spring: The annual Motherhood and Words talk at the Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 4 and, finally, to cap it all off, a reading at Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor’s beloved bookstore in downtown St. Paul on Monday, May 6.  Minneapolis friends, St. Olaf connections, Twin Cities readers, I want to see you all there! 

As always, HUGE thanks to all of you who are creating this community of like-minded souls and keeping the word of mouth going by writing reviews on Amazon, showing my video to your friends, or sharing my blog posts on your Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.  Every week, this newsletter is going out to more people — there are well over 2,ooo subscribers now, but I’d love to widen this circle even more.  My Magical Journey Facebook page, which started with exactly zero followers in November, now has nearly 2500.  (That really DOES feel like magic.)

 

 

Waiting

You could say, we are waiting here.

Waiting to find out which colleges will accept Jack for next fall. (So far, one yes, one no, one wait list.) Waiting to see what choices he’ll make and which school — after a year of working and living on his own and figuring out whether he even wants to go to college at all — will finally feel like “the one.” Waiting to see if the next round of X-rays will show further healing in his two broken vertebrae. Waiting for his pain to disappear. Waiting to find out if he’ll be able to play tennis again or have to content himself with being a passionate fan. Waiting to learn which doors have closed in his young life and which have yet to open before him.

We’re waiting to hear if the job Henry has his heart set on will pan out. Waiting for the musical he’s co-directing to be performed. Waiting to know where he’ll be working for the summer. Waiting to find out where he’ll be living next year. Waiting to see if he’s going to need a car. Waiting for him to decide whether grad school is still part of the picture. Waiting to see if the pull of a someday-maybe Broadway dream turns out to be as powerfully alluring as the illusion of security conferred by a paycheck and a plan.

We are waiting for two young adults’ ever-shifting and unknowable futures to become the nailed-down and predictable present-tense, for dreams to become reality, hopes to be realized, expectations fulfilled, applications accepted or denied, next steps executed, careers  revealed, life to turn this way or that.

And then another letter arrives from a reader who has lost a child. I turn the calendar to March and realize it’s been ten years since my dear friend’s son was murdered three months before his college graduation while trying to save a teammate who was being beaten on a street corner. I open the newspaper and read the headline: “BU student dies at party.” A new friend on Facebook posts that, had her daughter lived, she would be turning twelve today. I find myself in tears as I read Emily Rapp’s fiercely moving memoir of parenting her son Ronan, who died of Tay- Sachs disease last month, just shy of his third birthday.

Life is long, I like to tell myself. But of course, that isn’t always true. Everything will turn out for the best, we assure our children, and ourselves. But that’s not always the case either. Sometimes life is cut short. And sometimes the most beautiful dreams are derailed by tragedy. Sometimes children get sick or hurt and sometimes they leave us. How foolish and naive, to think we think we can skim along on the surface of life without cultivating, at the same time, an intimate relationship with its dark and unknown depths. And how much we sacrifice when we trade the quiet, unobtrusive pulse of the moment that is right here, right now, for the false promise of some brightly imagined future.

Last night, while Henry and his dad watched the Celtics game on TV, I climbed into bed with Emily Rapp’s book, Still Point of the Turning World. Ronan’s brief life was never about making progress or racking up achievements; he was only nine months old when his parents were told their baby boy was going to die. Emily’s task, then, wasn’t ever to prepare her son to succeed in the world, but to love him just as he was for as long as he was here. Somehow, every moment of her mothering had to contain multitudes: both the joy of being Ronan’s mom and the grief of letting him go.

Perhaps there is no one better suited to speak to us distracted, harried, future-oriented parents than a mother who has had no choice but to live in the “now” and to embrace her child in the moment because he will not live long enough to have a “someday.”

“How does the knowledge that nothing lasts forever and that all of our time is limited change the way we approach the world?” Emily asks.

And then, like the best spiritual mentors, she answers her own unanswerable question with more questions:

“Will we be fearless in our pursuit to live a life we consider big and beautiful, no matter what other people might think of our choices and no matter what difficult changes we might have to make? How does this knowledge affect the way we parent? Not knowing what tomorrow will bring, would we be so concerned with our children’s ‘progress’ and perhaps more interested in activities that simply make them happy?”

The sun is rising as I type these words, pouring light into the sky after two days of snow. In a few minutes, I’ll shut down my computer, take a shower, go out for blueberry pancakes with my husband and older son. Later today, I’ll do a reading at the bookstore in the town where I grew up. I’ll hold up the 12-foot long piece of blue finger-knitting that Jack did when he was five, giving me the title for my first book, Mitten Strings for God, which contained everything I knew as a young mother about slowing down and paying attention. And then I’ll drive to the bus stop and pick up my 20-year-old son and bring him back to the house for dinner. We’ll light the candles, hold hands for a moment before we start to eat, say “Blessings on the meal and each other.”

I will mention, as I always do when we’re all home together, how happy I am to have everyone at the table. My husband will agree and our sons, who have yet to fully comprehend that each human life is a progression of farewells, will no doubt roll their eyes.

And then I’ll remind myself: there is nothing to wait for. All we need, we have.

To read an essay by Emily Rapp and watch her Today Show appearance, click here. 

And I cannot recommend her exquisitely written and profoundly generous book, Still Point of the Turning World, highly enough.

 
Magical Journey News

 

Months before my book was published, I told my friend Ann Patchett that my only real aspiration as an author was to do an event at her bookstore. So it was definitely a disappointment to get all the way to Nashville during publication week in January, only to have an ice storm shut the entire city down an hour before I was supposed to read. Happily, we’ve rescheduled just before Mother’s Day. I’ll be back at Parnassus on Thursday, May 2.

From Nashville, I’ll go straight to Minneapolis for my last two appearances: The annual Motherhood and Words talk at the Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 4 and, finally, to cap it all off, a reading at Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor’s beloved bookstore in downtown St. Paul on Monday, May 6. I can’t wait! (And then I’m looking forward to coming home for good, stowing my suitcase in the closet, and digging in the garden.)

Magical Journey is a book that seems to sell one copy at at a time, as one reader says to another, “Here, I think you’ll like this, too.” I haven’t seen it piled up on any bookstores’ front tables (except right here in my own hometown). There were no print ads, no big TV breaks, barely any reviews. And yet I am learning not to underestimate the power of word of mouth, of women’s passionate enthusiasm for books that speak to our real experience, and of our generosity toward one another. This morning, I signed 20 copies of Magical Journey and The Gift of an Ordinary Day for one California reader who is sending them to her special friends. This is word of mouth and then some!

Meanwhile, the online ripples continue to spread outward. If you’ve contributed to those widening circles — by liking my Facebook page, writing a review on Amazon, showing my video to your friends, or sharing my blog posts on Facebook and Twitter — thank you! (And if you’d like to help me by helping my book find its way in the world, these are quick and highly effective ways to keep it moving!) As you know, I’m always happy to sign bookplates (just drop me an email or FB message) and I can personalize copies of any of my books through my local bookstore, which will mail them right out to you. (That link is HERE.)

Loved these recent reviews and interviews:

Ali Edwards is a rock star to crafty types, with a huge and devoted following (and no wonder, her message about telling our own ordinary stories with words and pictures is as inspiring as it is irresistible). So of course I was pretty thrilled to be featured on her blog this week. Click here to read her lovely piece.

The Ali ripple effect actually began HERE, with Harriet Cabelly’s terrific Rebuild Your Life site.

I was honored when Amy Makechnie asked if I’d be her first interviewee in her new “fascinating person” series; I should have known she’d come up with questions as engaging as she herself is. Read the whole Maisymak interview HERE.

Book giveaway, events, and online chat

 

A mother’s midlife memoir paired with a gardening book?

What, you might well ask, could these two volumes possibly have in common?   And why would a married mom of two and a resolutely single, encyclopedically knowledgeable, former-Martha-Stewart-publishing-executive-turned-rural-hermit ever become writing partners, let alone dear friends?

Well, if age teaches us anything, it’s that life is full of surprises – and that the relationships that bloom and blossom in the langorous afternoon of life are often quite different from those of its bright morning.  No longer bound to our friends by social stratifications, proximity, or the shared duties of parenthood, we find ourselves connected, instead, at a soul level.  “Friendship,” writes C.S. Lewis, “is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What? You too?  I thought I was the only one.’”

And so it was with Margaret Roach and me.  Coincidence brought us together (we share a publisher, and our editors had given us galleys of each other’s last books).  But it wasn’t until we met in person, at a bookseller’s convention two years ago, that we each experienced that unmistakable “click” that signals this is someone who is meant to be in my life.

Reading Margaret’s work, I knew right away I was in the presence of a kindred spirit — someone who finds pleasure in the small moments, who draws sustenance and inspiration from the frogs in her pond and the flowers at her doorstep, who is more at home stirring a pot of home-made soup at the stove than hobnobbing with fellow writers at literary soirees.

Becoming her friend for real, spending overnights in her guest cottage and sharing countless dinners together, only confirmed what I’d already suspected: different as our lives may be on the surface (Margaret never has to postpone a writing project because a son needs help on his college application; I wouldn’t know a Chaenomeles x superba if one was in full bloom in my own yard), we nevertheless have much to offer each other – gifts of time and support and perspective on the universal challenges (and joys!) of growing older and, hopefully, just a wee bit wiser.

So maybe it’s not so surprising after all, that when we exchanged manuscripts of our most recent books, we each found ourselves scribbling excited “Yes!” notes and exclamation points in the margins.  There were so many common themes that we had to laugh.  And then we realized that of course our readers would probably enjoy getting to know one another as much as the two of us had.

Since our books came out last month, Margaret and I have appeared together at bookstores all over New England – and we can now report that our hunch was right.  The conversations are lively, our joint readings fun for all, and the connections and cross-overs always surprising and delightful.

So, consider this your invitation to come join us!  Win our books (signed, personalized copies), hear us speak, or if you can’t make it to one of the events below — jump in to our free online chat starting Monday on Goodreads.

 

 Duets with Margaret

The goodreads.com event

Goodreads is like a giant online book club that never sleeps. It’s amazing, and it’s free; a great place to get tips from other keen readers on books to look out for, according to your interests, and to “talk” to authors. Margaret Roach (author most recently of “The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life”) and I will be there Monday February 25 for an open forum, to answer your questions about our new (or older) books, about writing, or about whatever you feel like asking about.

In our in-person events recently, the topics have ranged from finding midlife friendship, to raising adolescent boys (or unruly plants), to recipes we’ve swapped and books we’ve both read, to our writing “process” (Margaret paces, I sit still for hours on end)—no kidding, that wide a range, and more. Fun! So come share whatever’s on your mind. Won’t you sign up and join us?

The in-person events

Sunday, February 24, 3 PM: Reading and conversation with author Margaret Roach from our two new books, her “The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life” and my “Magical Journey” An Apprenticeship in Contentment,” at the Concord (MA) Bookshop.
Thursday, February 28, 7 PM: Reading and conversation with author Margaret Roach at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, NY, hosted by memoir-teacher and author Marion Roach Smith.
Sunday, March 3, afternoon: Two events, same location: 2 PM, “The 365-Day Garden” slide lecture by Margaret Roach. 3 PM, a reading and conversation with me and Margaret from our two new books, at Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY.

How to win the signed books

To enter to win a signed copy of “The Backyard Parables” and one of “Magical Journey,” too, simply comment below, answering the question:

What’s the last book you read that you recommended afterward to a friend, and why?

Then to double your chances to win—two sets are being given away on each of our websites—scurry over to Margaret’s book giveaway now and paste your comment there as well.

No answer to the question, or simply feeling shy? No worry; just say “count me in” or something to that effect, and we will. Winners will be drawn at random after entries close at midnight on Wednesday, February 28. Good luck to all.

Free Empathy

Perhaps it was his eyes:  the kindness there, the depth of his gaze.  Or maybe it was the quality of his listening, the way he seemed to hear with his whole body, leaning in to catch every word.   His lined face held no judgment, no impatience or tension or hint of boredom.  Nothing but love.  Waves of people surged by on the busy sidewalk, laughing and chatting, but his attention never wavered from the young woman who sat across the table from him, pouring out her tale.  I’m pretty he sure he didn’t even notice me when I paused, and then hesitated before snapping my photo, uncertain about intruding on this very public and yet strangely intimate exchange.

Home at last from two weeks on the west coast, I find myself  still thinking abut this man who sits at a card table on the bustling, hippest street in Santa Cruz and  open-heartedly gives himself away.

“Free Empathy” his sign says.  And, indeed, there is not so much as a cup or a hat or a money box in sight, no way for anyone to pay for his compassion even if they wanted to.

Free empathy.  I wonder if there is any greater gift, any exchange between two people, that could be more valuable than this?

Free empathy.  Nothing less than an offer of refuge, of rest, of acceptance: you are safe here, and you are ok, just as you are.

Free empathy.  A promise to bear loving witness to another’s struggle.

Free empathy.  A reminder that we won’t save the world with big gestures or grand schemes, but by becoming better listeners.  By asking how someone else is doing, and then taking time enough to put ourselves in their shoes, to see the world through their eyes.

Free empathy.  One precious natural resource that is endlessly renewable.

 Magical Journey News

Events

I have three New England appearances coming up this week and would love to see you, either in New Hampshire or Massachusetts.

Thursday, Feb. 21, I’ll be at the Amherst, NH Town Library at 7 pm.  This event is free, but  please register in advance.  Details HERE.  

Friday, Feb. 22,  I look forward to meeting old friends and new at Book Ends in Winchester, MA, my former home town. Details HERE. 

Sunday, Feb. 24, my friend and writing partner Margaret Roach, author of The Backyard Parables, and I will read and chat together at the Concord Bookshop in Concord, Ma, at 3 pm.  More info HERE. 

Next week, Margaret and I have a couple of  special “duets” in her neighborhood (The Arts Center of the Capital Region, in Troy, NY, on Thursday, February 28 and Battenkill Books in Cambridge, NY, on March 3.) We will talk about everything from literary friendship to facelifts, garden chores to hot flashes.  In other words, no subject is off limits, and we would love to hear your stories as well as share ours with you.

Reviews

Who doesn’t love synchronicity?  Kasey Matthews’ beautiful review was the best Valentines Day gift I could have received, and her story-behind-the-story is one of those “meant-to-be” tales that sends a shiver up my spine.  Read her piece (and enter to win a signed copy of Magical Journey) HERE.

This thoughtful review by a young Muslim mother was a wonderful reminder: no matter how different our lives may appear on the outside, our mothering journeys are more alike than different.  Story Circle is a treasure trove for memoir lovers, and I’m honored to be in such good company HERE.

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth truly is an author’s best publicity of all.  Huge thanks to all of you who are sharing Magical Journey with others, buying copies for your friends, spreading the word on Facebook or taking a moment to “like” my page, or writing reviews on Amazon.  There are lots of books and countless daily distractions competing for our attention in this busy, busy world.  And sometimes it’s hard to hear a small, faint buzz amidst the noisy clamor.  But you are creating such a buzz, and even though it’s still a tiny one, I’m enormously grateful.

Bookplates

I had to stop mailing bookplates over these last two weeks while I was on the road.  But now I’m determined to catch up!  (If you wrote requesting them, fear not, they will soon be on their way.)  And if you’d like a signed bookplate (or several) for yourself or friends, just drop me a note through the CONTACT form on my website, and I’ll be happy to send them to you.  (Make sure to leave your mailing address!)

 

 

Guideposts

Before the first winter snow flies here in New Hampshire, some of us pound stakes into the ground alongside our driveways, to remind us later, after the landscape is blanketed in white, of exactly where the pavement ends and the lawn begins.  Nothing fancy, just a few metal rods, perhaps with a reflector at the top, to keep the plow or the snowblower from straying off track.  They are, quite literally, guideposts.

As I sat holed up in my bedroom today, making notes for the talk I’ll give to a group of parents on the West Coast on Tuesday, I realized that some of the quotes that have shaped me as a mother are really the spiritual equivalents of those guideposts poking up through the snow:  words that keep me on track when the familiar landscape of our family life is suddenly altered by some challenge or unexpected turn in the emotional weather.

It’s so easy, when things get stormy around here or seem a bit out of control, to lose my way.  But if being the mother of two sons who have now attained the impossibly grown-up ages of 20 and 23 has taught me anything, it’s that storms pass and that control is an illusion anyway.  Still, it helps when the weather is wild, to have some markers pounded into the earth, words that remind me of where I want to put my feet, of the solid ground I know is there for me, just beneath the blinding swirl of whatever’s coming down.

Attachment to outcome has probably been the biggest challenge on my own parenting path. Little wonder then that my central task as a mother seems to be practicing the art of nonattachment.  And so I look to the wisdom of others to remind me of what I already know:  I can love and care for my children, but I can’t possess them.  I can assist them, and pray for them, and wish them well, but in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their choices and their destinies, not on my wishes.

It surprised me to notice today that none of the quotes that keep me on track as a parent actually come from books about parenting.  But perhaps that’s as it should be. For the other thing this journey of motherhood has taught me is that my children are not extensions of me, and my real work isn’t about changing them, or shaping them into the people I think they ought to be. It’s about changing myself – learning to soften, to trust, to pay attention, to accept, and, most of all, finding the faith to let them go.

So, here are the guideposts I’ve placed along my own path, to keep me moving in the direction I aspire to travel.  What words serve as your guideposts on this journey?

(A word about this photo, taken ten years or so ago at sunset on a summer day in Maine:  I love the joy in these shadows, the memory of a vanished, distant time, the fact that Jack and I danced and played in that golden light and Steve grabbed his camera and captured the fleeting, precious moment.  It still makes me smile and get a little teary at the same time. And it reminds me: be present; we will not pass this way again.)

Words for the Journey

“To bow to the fact of our life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.”   – Jack Kornfield

“I try to remind myself that we are never promised anything, and that what control we can exert is not over the events that befall us but how we address ourselves to them.”   – Jeanne DuPrau, The Earth House

“It has something to do with submitting rather than dominating. Surrender, submit. Have faith, trust in the mystery. That’s not easy. Surrendering one’s life to living in, and serving, the beauty of a mysterious world is a big step. . . .The purpose of the journey is compassion.”

– Joseph Campbell,  An Open Life

“Who you are is made up of three persons.  There is the one you think you are, the one others think you are, and the one you really are.  Work towards making all three the same. Then there will be peace and bliss.”          –  Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“Live in the present. Do the things that need to be done. Do all the good you can each day. The future will unfold.”  – Peace Pilgrim

 “Life is change.  Growth is optional.  Choose wisely.”  – Karen Kaiser Clark

“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”   – Jon Kabat-Zinn

 “Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”    – Buddha

 “To look deep into your child’s eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood’s self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon.”

“We must love (our children) for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do.  Loving our own children is an exercise in imagination.”   – Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree

 

A Magical Journey update

Some books are review books. (Think a quotable rave from the New York Times).  That’s not this book.  Some authors appear on The Today Show or The View, with answers to all your questions about how to be happy.  (Think instant ascension on the best-seller list.)  That’s not me.  I am an under-the-media’s-radar kind of writer.  And I’m pretty sure  Magical Journey is a word-of-mouth kind of book.  That’s fine with me.  And I am deeply grateful to every single one of you who have bought a copy, shared a copy, or urged a friend to give it a try, saying, “Here, I think you’ll like this, too.”  Thank you!

Last week, Magical Journey was #1 on the best-seller list at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, NH.  Sure, it’s a small independent bookstore in a small city in the middle of my home state, but I’m pretty thrilled to be #1 anywhere.  And yes, readers made it happen.

Want to spread the word?  Here are three quick things you can do.  (With huge thanks in advance for your help.  It really DOES make a difference!)

1. Write a brief review on Amazon.

2.  Like my page on Facebook and share posts with your friends. (I update there often, and post news of every appearance too.)

3. Share the book!  (I just received a new box of beautiful, blank, custom book plates.  And I’m happy to personalize as many as you’d like and mail them right out to you.  Just drop me a line and let me know how many and where to send them. Valentine’s Day gifts, perhaps??)

Also, check my Events page to see if I’m coming this spring to a bookstore near you. Thanks to the generosity of fans and friends, I’m on my way to the West Coast this week:  La Canada, Laguna Beach, and Pasadena.

If you missed Priscilla Gilman’s thoughtful interview  Click Here.

 

 

Magic

Just over a year ago, I hit the wall. I’d been writing for months, throwing away more pages than I kept, feeling less sure of myself and what I was doing with every passing day. I had a deadline, the end of March. But I wasn’t at all sure I had a book.

Two days after New Years, with both sons back at school, I flew to Florida and set up camp in the guest bedroom of my parents’ house. My mom, keeping her promise not to tempt me with distractions, went about her carefree retiree’s life. Meanwhile, I holed up in my self-created bunker, sitting cross-legged on the bed for hours on end, bent over my laptop, pretending no one would ever read what I was writing. My immediate goal was not to send words out into the world, but to be quiet and disciplined and attentive enough to find out if I actually had anything to say.

Now, twelve months later, the book that finally began to take shape during those weeks is in the bookstores. The irony of the title Magical Journey, of course, is that I didn’t actually go much of anywhere, except in search of a bit of solitude and silence. Sometimes the most challenging journeys aren’t the ones that require backpacks and sturdy shoes, but rather a willingness to turn inward, to seek something deep and as yet unformed within ourselves. And sometimes, as the last two weeks have revealed to me, it is the work done in lonely isolation that ultimately forges and affirms our most essential human connections out in the world.

This morning, home again after a flurry of nonstop travel and bookstore appearances, I paged through the journal I kept last winter. Every day, I attempted to clear my mind and face my fears by writing longhand in a notebook before turning on my laptop and confronting my manuscript. A few excerpts from those arduous, uncertain days exactly a year ago:

“I am so slow. What I’ve written is probably not terrible. I’m trying to convince myself that it is at least good enough. Yet moving forward feels really hard. What is the right attitude? Maybe just to try to keep on writing without judging, to think my thoughts and feel my feelings, and get something down on the page, and then decide later whether it’s any good or not.”

And this:

“The slowness, the uncertainty. What am I learning from this process? That in my writing, first and foremost, I must put my faith in the truth. That the truth is mundane, embarrassing at times, difficult to distill clearly, yet still worth reaching for. That the only way through is through. That it doesn’t get easier. That living wholeheartedly can mean going within, rather than without. Not fun, exactly, but wholehearted nonetheless.”

And also:

“So strange to be in a time of life, a place, where Steve and Henry and Jack can all be living separate lives in different places. They are doing just fine away from me; I’m the one who feels the loss of all that used to be. All I used to be. Guess that’s what it’s been like for my own mom for years now. Perhaps I’ll get used to it. I feel alive in different ways – alive when I’m needed at the center of my family, making dinner or having a heart-to-heart with one of the boys, keeping all the balls in the air. And alive in a totally different way now, in solitude, when all the structure and to-dos fall away, and I’m left with my own thoughts, my own demons and dreams, my own inner landscape. Time slows. There is nothing to do but honor my commitment to keep at this, uncomfortable and hard as it is. But I wonder: to write from this vulnerable place, to be who I really am on the page – is this in itself some kind of path or calling? Perhaps, for now anyway, it is. And perhaps, if I can just stick it out, it will even lead to joy. Or at least lead me back out of myself, with some sense of where I’m meant to go next.”



Yesterday, my friend Dani Shapiro, wrote a thoughtful, lovely post about the difference between taking risks in life and on the page. Most of us, as she points out, will go to any length to keep our loved ones safe. Learning how to assess risk is part of growing up; making prudent calls, at the heart of every mother’s job description. And yet, says Dani, “When it comes to the writer’s life, risk is what it’s all about.”

She’s right, of course. We have to step out on that high wire again and again, even though we teeter with every step, even though we’re dogged by insecurity: “Maybe it won’t work. . . . Maybe it will suck. Maybe I’ll waste my time and precious energy on a piece of prose that will be dead on arrival.”

I don’t suppose there’s any way to avoid the inexorable loneliness of the process, the feelings of frustration and powerlessness that come at the end of a day in which the only thing you really accomplished was staying put in your chair. Still, I wish that when I was sitting alone with myself in that Florida bedroom, I could have flashed forward a year, to the joyous scene last week in a hotel room in Nashville.

Every single woman from my book group had flown in earlier in the afternoon to celebrate the launch of Magical Journey with me and to attend my reading at Ann Patchett’s beautiful bookstore, Parnassus. On that first evening, we were all gathered together, toasting our trip, our thirteen years of books and lives shared, and the publication of this new memoir of mine (despite the fact that the work of writing it had kept me from attending a single meeting last year.)

The conversation soon turned to vulnerability, and risk, and the importance of sharing our stories, even the painful ones. After all these years together, we trust one another completely, hold little back, know that we can close the door and bare our souls in safety. And yet, as my friends began to share their first reactions to my book, we found ourselves talking as well about taking risks in public and on the page. And how, perhaps, in taking some risks myself, I’ve cleared a space in which other women might be more willing to share their own stories, or at least come to feel a little less alone.

This, it seems to me, is the reason any writer undertakes the speculative work of memoir. Not so much to tell “what happened,” as to illuminate the slow, halting process by which we learn to make our peace with what is. And in that vulnerable revealing, in the stumbling, wayward truth of that story, lies something that is worth offering: not the gift of what we have accomplished but rather the gift of who we really are.

To be vulnerable on the page is indeed a risk – hang yourself out on the line, and anyone can come along and take a swing at you. Yet my own experience over these last two weeks has been the opposite. People are kind, and words build bridges. As I’ve met and talked with readers in Connecticut and Nashville and Washington, DC, and as I’ve read and responded to the letters and Facebook messages and emails from strangers, I’ve been moved deeply by the stories women have shared with me, joyful stories of change and growth, but also intimate stories of loss and hardship, suffering and grief. Stories told in confidence within this safe space, a space created by kinship and kindness and courage. Publishing a book, any book, is an act of faith – in oneself of course, but in one’s readers even more. How humbling and gratifying it is to have that faith returned a thousandfold.

I would not want to relive last January, all those days spent, as Dani says, “in the teeming, writhing darkness,” trying to beat back my own self-doubt long enough to make something lasting and sturdy out of words. But I’m glad now that I did it. What I’m learning, I think, is something one of my most admired writers, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, knew all too well.

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches,” she writes in Gift from the Sea. “If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.” This, it seems to me, is the work of the writer: finding something of value to add to the suffering. Sometimes, yes, it is isolating, to dwell in that place of risk and revelation. And yet what we find on the other side is so worth the effort: community, connection, kinship, healing. Nothing less than the road back to grace.

To all of you who have supported the birth of this book with your heartfelt letters, your messages, your words of encouragement, your online reviews and your real live attendance at my readings, a most heartfelt thank you. I am honored to be a part of this ongoing conversation, to meet you and to share the path with you, to be reminded that none of us journeys alone, that we are all connected, that my story is your story — and vice versa.

News from the road. . .

Building an audience is the writer’s job once the book is published — and that’s what I’m up to now.  (A far cry from that writerly solitude of a year ago.)  Want to help me spread the word?

Here are three things you can do:

1. Write a brief review on Amazon.

2.  Like my page on Facebook and share posts with your friends.

3. Share the book!  (One of my favorite stories: A reader wrote to tell me she was ordering five copies for friends for Valentines Day.  No sooner had she placed her order than an Amazon rep called to ask if there had been some mistake.  “No,” she replied, “I loved this book, so I’m buying more for my friends.”  The Amazon clerk read the description and said, “It does sound good.  I’m going to buy it too!”  Talk about word of mouth!)

Also, check my Events page to see if I’m coming to a bookstore near you. I’m visiting lots of independent bookstores — we need these stores in our towns, and they need our business to survive.  (This week I’ll be in:  Concord, NH; Portsmouth, NH; Manchester, VT; and Cohasset, MA.)

If you haven’t read Priscilla Gilman’s probing interview with me, Click Here.

A nice review from the Chicago Tribune (Editor’s Choice).

Finally, a word about The View from My Window, the collection of blog posts my husband gave me for Christmas.  Your comments — all 264 of them!–stunned me.  I read each one of them with gratitude.  And then I wished I could send every single one of you a copy of the book.  Which of course made me think:  there has to be a way.  For now, all I can say is, stay tuned. (This sounds like a project to take up a bit later, after Magical Journey is well on its way.)  Meanwhile, congratulations to winners Ann Laurence and Louise Olmstead, whose names were drawn at random on my pub. date.  

Pub date reflections

We were an unlikely pair, Olive Ann Burns and I.

She was sixty, a gentle, charming Southern housewife with dreams of finally publishing the enormously long novel she’d spent years writing — years when cancer and chemotherapy and its complications had kept her confined to her house, and the joy of creating characters she loved had kept her going.

I was twenty-five, an earnest, aspiring New York editor who was certain I’d just discovered my first prize in the slush pile.  “Cold Sassy Tree could become a classic,” I confidently predicted in my typewritten manuscript report.  “It needs some cutting, but we MUST publish it.”

Not quite ready to trust my eager enthusiasm, my boss had his wife read the manuscript.  She agreed with me.  And so it was that Olive Ann became a first-time author and, in doing so, allowed me to become a first-time editor.

In the process, we became friends. In those more leisurely, pre-internet days (this was 1983!), she typed long, chatty letters to me, full of anecdotes about her family and friends in Atlanta.  Thrilled to be engaged in an actual “literary correspondence,” I answered every one.  We spoke on the phone, too, nearly daily for months, as she revised and as I cut pages, both of us trying to whittle her 640-page novel down to a more manageable size.  (I wanted to excise what I called “the dying stories,” long, rambling, invariably funny accounts of the demises and funerals and burials of various minor characters and their relatives.  Olive Ann insisted that every Southerner appreciated a good dying story, and that my failure to do so was just evidence of my constrained Yankee heritage.  We compromised.)

Olive Ann’s book was a hit, and it did become something of a minor classic, assigned in schools all over the South, featured on Oprah long before the advent of her first book club, and made into a movie starring Faye Dunaway.  Sales were brisk. And Olive Ann was in demand everywhere.  After all those years of being confined to her sick bed, she was thrilled to be in remission, and delighted to clip on her dangly earrings, put on a sparkly scarf, and go forth to meet her fans.  “I’m a ham!” she would proudly announce to her adoring audiences. And then she would entertain them for an hour, telling wildly improbable yet, she swore, absolutely true stories in her soft Southern drawl.

I was thinking of Olive Ann this morning, as I sponged down the kitchen counter and swept the sand off the mudroom floor.  Although she died in 1990, I can summon the sound of her voice still, that musical intonation, her way of turning everything into a story you wanted to hear.

Houghton Mifflin hosted an elegant party in Atlanta on the day Cold Sassy Tree was published, and I got to fly down from our New York office for the big event.  Rosalynn Carter was there, and various other luminaries and sophisticates.  I finally met “my” author for the first time in person, and was startled by how beautiful she was.  (She admitted to being a little surprised by the looks of me, too.  “Why, I thought you would be chubby,” she said, “you have a chubby voice.”)

But what I remember most vividly was Olive Ann’s admission that night that, even though she was all dressed up and the star of her own glamorous party, with people lining up to get her to sign their books, there was still no escaping the ordinariness of her real life.

“I thought that when I became an au-u-u-thor,” she said, drawing out the word, “it would be like in a fairy tale, and I would turn into, well, a princess.  So I was kind of surprised this morning when I looked down at my feet, and realized I still had to cut my toenails!”

Indeed.  My book Magical Journey will be published tomorrow.  I’ll be on a radio talk show at 7 am,  and in my car driving north to a bookstore luncheon on Wednesday.  There’s a party on Saturday night, and in the morning I’ll fly to Nashville, to give a reading at Ann Patchett’s bookstore.  My calendar for the next two months is full of travel and appointments and  appearances.   Exciting, nervous-making, exhausting.  And, to me right now, all a little unreal.

So, at the moment, I’m sitting here on the couch, looking at my own toenails.  And realizing I should absolutely give them a trim.  Meanwhile, there are few other things on my plate as well:  Jack’s college essay needs another read, the dog’s butt is stinky, there’s something wrong with the printer, and the car is due for an oil change.  The kitchen floor needs vacuuming.  We are out of milk.  This is my day.  This is my life — pub day or not.  Thank goodness.  And thank you Olive Ann, where ever you are, for reminding me to keep my feet on the ground and my toenails looking nice.

 

And now, for the book news: 
MAGICAL JOURNEY is in stores today.

(Finally!) Of course, I’m eager for you to have it in your hands. In the meantime, though, here’s some early reaction — and opportunities to win your own  copy.

First:  If you haven’t seen the VIDEO, CLICK HERE.

Second: A few glorious reviews!

Here’s Beth Kephart’s lovely response.

Jena Strong says her piece is NOT a review; but no matter, I can’t imagine anything that could have pleased me more.

Am honored to have a reader and friend in the wise and wonderful Karen Maezen Miller.  She wrote here.

And a nice shout-out from Book Page.

Want to order a personalized & signed copy? My local bookstore is making it easy. CLICK HERE.

To read an excerpt, CLICK HERE.

Want to order now? CLICK HERE.

Interested in receiving a signed bookplate for a gift? (I’d be happy to send you as many as you need!) CLICK HERE. (Make sure to include your mailing address!)

Finally: GOODREADS still has a couple of copies to give away. To enter their drawing, CLICK HERE. 

This was the first review, from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:

In this intensely moving tribute to the importance of enjoying every moment of life, Kenison (The Gift of An Ordinary Day), former longtime series editor of The Best American Short Stories, tells a tale inspired by loss and confides what can be gained from it. After a dear friend dies from cancer and her two sons head off to boarding school and college, Kenison is forced to question what remains relevant in her life and how such an introspective examination might portend a change in priorities. Identifying a common and paralyzing fear (“I am so used to doubting my worthiness that the minute I decide to do something, I start convincing myself I’m not up to the job”), she turns to intensive yoga studies, where she learns that “the best antidote to anxiety about the future is to be present in the here and now,” and that finding contentment in what one is rather than what one thinks one should be is critical. Her journey will inspire tears and determination, and remind readers that anything, “done from the heart, changes the world in some small way for the better.”

 

 

The View from My Window

The Christmas gift I remember most vividly from my childhood wasn’t one I received myself. Early one autumn, just over forty years ago, my father purchased a rusty, decrepit antique sleigh and set about restoring it to present to my mother.

As a teenager and young woman, horses had been her passion, a passion that had no place in her adult life as a busy mother and full-time partner in my father’s business. Yet as she entered middle age, I think my mother began to worry that if she didn’t climb back on a horse soon, she might not ever do it again. Her greatest joy in life would be nothing but a passing memory, relegated to her unfettered past, a time before marriage and children and working for my dad conspired to ensure that her own hopes and dreams took a back seat to everyone else’s needs.

And so, on the cusp of forty, my mom bought herself a horse and proceeded to fall hopelessly in love all over again — with her spirited three-year-old Morgan and with the smells of sawdust and grain and fresh hay and saddle soap. Of course, the horse needed a place to live. We left the modest in-town house attached to my dad’s dental office on a busy road, where my brother and I had spent most of our lives, and moved out to the country, to a remote 1765 cape with a barn, deep in the woods and surrounded by trails. A house of low ceilings and wide, sloping floorboards, steeped in silent history.

For months, most nights after his last patient, my father slipped away to work on that old sleigh, rebuilding it from a broken down skeletal form, cleaning and polishing the runners, refurbishing all the parts, upholstering a new black leather seat, priming and painting and detailing the bright red panels and the glossy black trim. He raced against the clock, working late into the night and every available weekend hour, to make sure it was finished, perfect, by Christmas morning.

Many of my childhood memories are hazy. The horses, the sleigh, even the barn itself are long gone. But I can easily recall the dazzlingly bright Christmas morning when my dad hitched up my mom’s horse, lifted her up into the seat of the sleigh he’d made for her, and took her for a ride.

What I remember, of course, is this great labor of love on my father’s part; how, in giving her this extraordinary gift from his own heart and hand, he was really saying: “I see you. I know who you are and I know what you love, and I honor that.”

This Christmas, my husband Steve gave me the equivalent of my mother’s sleigh, a gift that is so much more than the thing itself.

I knew, over these last two years, that I was writing a book; in fact, it was never out of my mind. Even when I wasn’t working on it, I was working on it. Of course, I was also living my life, taking care of my family, spending time with my friends, writing this weekly blog.

I began the blog the week before The Gift of an Ordinary Day was published, back in the fall of 2009. My publisher had told me I needed a website, and that I should write something for it. But until the day I wrote my own first blog entry, I wasn’t exactly sure what a blog was; I’d never even seen one.

Once I started writing, though, I didn’t stop. I loved taking time out of the busyness of life to sit quietly and reflect on the meaning of the living, loved gathering up my thoughts and trying to make some sense of them, searching for the story beneath the story, the one that would give depth and shape to my experience and perhaps begin to illuminate the experiences of others as well.

Even more, I loved the conversation that soon got underway here, the thoughtful comments from you, my readers, the glimpses you’ve offered into your own lives and passions and predicaments, the heartfelt support you’ve extended to me as I’ve shared mine.

And yet, I’ve never thought of these pieces as much more than parts of that ongoing conversation, temporal and fleeting, musings that are very much of the moment in which they were written.

Turns out, my husband saw things a little differently. Perhaps he understands, even better than I do, what matters to me and why. And so months ago, unbeknownst to me, he began to gather these three years worth of pieces into a book. The result is the beautiful 350-page illustrated hardcover volume I opened on Christmas morning.

He titled the book The View from My Window, and for the jacket he shot a photo of our mountains, as I see them every single morning from my spot at the kitchen sink. He chose photos, wrote captions, assembled and re-read and copy-edited three years worth of my posts. He hired a proofreader, designed the pages and the cover, and asked a printer friend in Minnesota to produce a print run of thirty elegantly bound copies.

To say I was surprised on Christmas morning to find out I’d written not one book but two, would be an understatement. Realizing that my husband had been laboring for months, in hours when I’d assumed he was working on his own stuff, to produce a book printed and published just for me, reminded me of the long-ago efforts of my dad.

At the same time, this gesture is entirely in character for my husband, who shares my passion for books and who is at heart a publisher himself. We met, after all, at work, back when he was the marketing director at Houghton Mifflin Company and I was an aspiring young editor there. Little wonder then, that all these years later, the gift from his heart was this: to lovingly collect my words and give them back to me between two covers.

I’m not sure what to do with these books. I will give them to a few close family members and friends and save a couple for my sons and their families. But I also know that without you, the readers of this blog, The View from My Window wouldn’t exist. I would have stopped writing here long ago if it weren’t for the connection and sense of community we’ve created in this place — together.

And so, with the publisher’s gracious permission, I’d like to give away two copies of this (very) limited edition to you, the readers who show up here week after week, to read and respond and share your own stories with me and with one another. (To enter to win, just leave a comment below. I will draw two names at random on January 8 — publication date for Magical Journey!)

Today, as the snow fell softly outside, I opened my new book and began to read. It seemed right somehow, that as I bid good-bye to 2012 and prepare to welcome a new book into the world just a week from now, I pause to look backward as well as forward. Here, then, are a few of my posts from the past. Perhaps you will remember them. If you’re new to this space, perhaps you will be happy to read them for the first time.

Blessings to you and yours for a joyful new year. May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease.

“Adulthood for Amateurs,” Oct. 26,2009

“Good-byes,” Jan. 3, 2010

“Asking for Help,” Feb. 4, 2010

“You Have What I Want,” Jan. 7, 2011