Hey there!
Let’s talk about our days…
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A week ago Monday was Tidal Flats’ official pub day--woohoo! As life would have it, it was also the day I needed to take my husband for an epidural—he’s been having back pain and weakness in his legs. My brother-in-law met me at the hospital around 9:00 am so I could get ready for my 10:00 am signing at a friend’s exercise studio. One of my sons drove over from Birmingham to sell books so I could focus on not messing up my name. Years and years ago, before my friend had a studio and before I had a book, I used to exercise at her house. On one of those days, she gave me a pencil holder imprinted with YOU WRITE that is now going everywhere with me.
Monday evening, other friends threw a book party in one of the old PowerHouse buildings overlooking the Chattahoochee River. I’m not a party person, but after 20 years of working toward this goal, I wanted to celebrate. My husband was there, just moving slowly, and it was all so much fun. You can see photos at These Days—and look for the amazing book cake that was so real someone stuck his fingers in to open it!
When I finally got in bed, I read some of Emily Arnason Casey’s beautiful book of essays, Made Holy, also a first book out this month, published by The University of Georgia Press. Emily and I were at Vermont College of Fine Arts (VCFA) together. Here’s a passage I love:
"Once while spending a rare weekend at the cabin when I was sixteen, my mom stood beside her bed in the loft, her back to me, spreading out the sheet…She turned to me and said, 'Sometimes, when I’m standing here, looking through the window at the dock and the lake, I forget where I am and it’s like for a second I’m a young mom again with small children.' I know this feeling. We travel along the surface of time and then suddenly the layers give way and we are in another year, another body, another place. We’ve dipped down into a different layer on the geological map of life…"
I look up, out the windows of the bedroom, and remember our kids and the neighborhood kids running through the woods in their Halloween costumes.
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Sion Dayson, another friend from VCFA with a first book out this month, wrote about one of her days in August for the How We Spend Our Days series on my website. She’s a kindred spirit, loving traveling as much as I do. She was born in New York, raised in North Carolina, spent a decade in Paris, and is now living in Spain. Her first novel, As a River, was published by the wonderful Jaded Ibis Press, a feminist press with an emphasis on diverse voices.
In another lovely connecting thread, As a River takes place in a small town “in middle Georgia.” Columbus is not exactly small, but we are in middle Georgia and, as I mentioned, right on the Chattahoochee River. As a River is Greer’s story–a story of leaving and returning.
"Greer stood on the edge of the river, trying to read the past in its black waves. With the night so dark and a quarter moon barely seeping light through the trees, all he could catch were glimpses of the hills and valleys of the water as it flowed along its way. He had taken to walking farther and farther along the banks of Snake Creek. With neither the river’s beginning nor end in sight, it was both comforting and frightening to think of something extending forever."
As a River asks the reader to take a close look at the question of shame, the reach of family secrets, and the decisions we make, almost without consideration, that define our lives.
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It was darker when I woke up this morning—the shorter days making themselves more obvious. One morning last week, I actually felt a little coolness in the air.
The days go by so fast. How do you hold onto them? How do you make them matter? Words, photos, painting, cooking, visits with others, a phone call, a pause… Is it through the senses that we hold on to them?
I’m a To-Do list nut. What do I have to get done today? The AC fixed, pick up some bananas, send off that package. But with To-Do lists, the goal is to get things checked off, over with. Maybe we need To-Be lists as well, where the goal is to pause, to look around, to see the light peeking through the trees. Where we make time to do something we want to do, something we want to last.
With this newsletter, I wish you moments of being.
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Let me know how you’re spending your September days. And feel free to share this email with others. Thanks for reading.
Peace out,
--cynthia
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