The Road Well Traveled
I called a friend the other evening while I was driving along Route 210, a long stretch of twisty-turny country road with very spotty cell phone reception. Probably not a place I should be making cell phone calls, anyway, but over the past couple of years, I’ve driven it so often that I know where all the deer crossings are, know where the bends in the road are likely to conceal an Amish buggy (therefore require I take them a little more slowly than my curve-hugging Subaru can handle), know the sections that contain a crumbly shoulder and have trained myself to look ahead for traffic, adjust, either swerve slightly toward the middle or slow so my tires and suspension don’t take a beating.
I don’t often make calls on that stretch of road, but I did Sunday evening. I was on my way to Pittsburgh, but only for one night, sleeping there and waking for an early morning medical appointment rather than hitting the road at dawn and fighting rush-hour traffic to get there. Short trip, easy as pie, but I felt melancholy, nonetheless. Didn’t want to be away from home, didn’t want to be in yet another setting where I couldn’t do what I’m doing right now (and likely not doing well). I can’t write, so when Amy answered, I told her, “I need to talk to another writer.” Bless her, she’s younger than I am, and though she might not agree, more disciplined, and she told me, “Just write anything and don’t worry about it. It’ll come back. Just get through it.”
I was doing well, not producing the straightest-line-as-I-can-write cohesive stuff, but okay. I was seeing the narrative, seeing the logic in the narrative, where it wanted to go, remembering where it had been, rearranging in my mind, slowly shaping and reshaping into a real manuscript.
And then my mother died. Everything about her life and her death is begging to be put on the page, and at the same time, I can’t manage more than a few notes in my Moleskine. Some writers would tell me I need distance. Fuck distance! It’s all here, all here now, and how it stubbornly defies my efforts to distill even a sentence of it has me floored. I wrote a little about God’s will, before and after, and that wasn’t easy, but Ma – you lived eighty-four years in such a way that never attracted a whole lot of attention (it wasn’t your way), such an incredible life, even though parts of it have made me want to scream, and I need to tell the world about you. I can’t. I try, and I can’t.
I’m beginning to think I know your life so well, and perhaps that’s the problem.
Till later…
I don’t often make calls on that stretch of road, but I did Sunday evening. I was on my way to Pittsburgh, but only for one night, sleeping there and waking for an early morning medical appointment rather than hitting the road at dawn and fighting rush-hour traffic to get there. Short trip, easy as pie, but I felt melancholy, nonetheless. Didn’t want to be away from home, didn’t want to be in yet another setting where I couldn’t do what I’m doing right now (and likely not doing well). I can’t write, so when Amy answered, I told her, “I need to talk to another writer.” Bless her, she’s younger than I am, and though she might not agree, more disciplined, and she told me, “Just write anything and don’t worry about it. It’ll come back. Just get through it.”
I was doing well, not producing the straightest-line-as-I-can-write cohesive stuff, but okay. I was seeing the narrative, seeing the logic in the narrative, where it wanted to go, remembering where it had been, rearranging in my mind, slowly shaping and reshaping into a real manuscript.
And then my mother died. Everything about her life and her death is begging to be put on the page, and at the same time, I can’t manage more than a few notes in my Moleskine. Some writers would tell me I need distance. Fuck distance! It’s all here, all here now, and how it stubbornly defies my efforts to distill even a sentence of it has me floored. I wrote a little about God’s will, before and after, and that wasn’t easy, but Ma – you lived eighty-four years in such a way that never attracted a whole lot of attention (it wasn’t your way), such an incredible life, even though parts of it have made me want to scream, and I need to tell the world about you. I can’t. I try, and I can’t.
I’m beginning to think I know your life so well, and perhaps that’s the problem.
Till later…
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