|
|
|
(Above: marigold and zinnia garlands at the Bellingham Farmers Market)
|
Happy end of summer, friends!
|
I am about to be a part-time empty nester. I say “part-time” because our youngest child is about to move to college in Seattle, just 35 miles away, but is pretty serious about wanting to come home on weekends. She’s got some special circumstances so I believe her knowing what she wants. And of course, that may change. We will miss her terribly and we are excited for her new set of adventures.
|
But we are moving into a different phase of life, for sure. A lot less breakfasts to plan, less lunches to pack. No more weekly phone calls or emails from the school district. Josh and I will be able to plan meals and grocery shop and cook differently: maybe more spicy dishes, more brown rice, a wider variety of vegetables. We will have more lunchtime and dinner dates. We will have the bandwidth and time to watch full movies rather than shorter TV episodes.
|
To accompany that phase, I am trying to go through our house slowly, giving away books, organizing cupboard and closets one by one, sorting my craft supplies, filing paperwork, donating kitchen goods. I am touching the things that we own, feeling closer to the things I want to keep, and lighter by letting go of other things. I am trying to break some of the cycles of generational hoarding that I have been given. I have been reciting Derek Walcott’s poem “Love after Love” to myself as I go through the many many objects and cupboards and closets of my life. I am trying to reframe decluttering as a positive thing for myself—not a series of losses. I am telling myself that, like the speaker in Walcott’s poem, I am feasting on my life.
|
In book life, I have received some wonderful emails, notes, social media messages, and texts from readers, from family and friends and strangers. If you have sent me one, thank you! (Today local bookstore Eagle Harbor Books posted a social media photo of my book in a pile of wonderful memoirs and tagged me. This is another dream I’d hoped for: that I get to see where the book hangs out, where it lives, and with whom. It was in great company.) I’m going to try to make a scrapbook from the messages, just for me. I look forward to exploring more visual arts and crafts. This is another form of feasting on my life. I tend to collect things, both good and bad, and not look back at them. I want to look back and savor the good.
|
Another thing that makes me happy is to create something new with what I already have. I am making bookmarks out of old posters. It makes me happy to repurpose things and know that they can be used and appreciated by others. I am making “decorate your own bookmark” kits for my Little Free Library, putting strips of thick paper with animal stickers and crayons in sandwich bags. Since I have gone through most of my books, and my youngest kid has too, I have a full storage bench for refilling my Little Free Library.
|
In case you are wondering what I am working on next, I have a number of new directions that I want to explore with my writing energy. None of them are fully formed yet. I have a love story in the works. I have enrolled in a class for writing picture books this September. And I have been mulling over a hybrid essay collection about archives. I don’t have the energy to launch fully into a new book yet, just yet, so I am letting these ideas compost for now. Classes tend to energize me and I hope the picture book one will be especially fruitful. Today I just got a new essay, a book-adjacent one, accepted and it felt good to have that new publication energy.
|
All of this to say: I am trying to take my therapist’s advice that now is the time to lean into joy. As always, I know that there are so many things, large and small, going wrong in the world. This past weekend my neighbors and I did a pay-as-you-can fundraiser yard sale for La Resistencia, a local group fighting for immigrant rights and supporting folks who are detained in the Northwest Detention Center here in Tacoma. Together we raised close to $1400, and it felt good to lighten the house and raise money for such an important cause.
|
|
Even as things fall apart, I keep returning to this quotation from Buddhist meditation teacher Kaira Jewel Lingo in her book We Were Made For These Times:
|
…even though I many be struggling in a time of transition or adversity, I can still be in touch with what is wholesome and good in me and around me. In fact, this is the moment I need it the most! Nurturing the good is crucial to our well-being and resilience in the face of change and tumult.
|
|
And Ross Gay’s wonderful essay collection Inciting Joy, which talks beautifully about the close relationship between grief and joy and resistance.
|
|
I think that’s what the writer Toi Derricotte means, in her poem “The Telly Cycle,” when she says that “joy is an act of resistance.” The luminous, mycelial tethers between us, our fundamental connection to one another, the raft through the sorrow, the holding through the grief joy is, reminds us, again and again, that we belong not to an institution or a party or a state or a market, but to each other. Needfully so. Which we must practice, and study, and sing, and story, and dream, and celebrate. Belonging to each other as though our lives depended on it.
|
I return to these two books again and again and I always find comfort and inspiration and joy.
|
I’ve almost finished planning the rest of my book tour events for the year. In September, look for me online at a virtual launch with my dear friend Lisa Factora-Borchers and at the Seattle branch of the Jaipur Literature Festival, and at the Densho Anniversary Gala. In October I’ll be back in my home state of California to do some events in the Bay Area and in Sacramento. As always, stay tuned to my News and Events page of my author website for registration details for these events.
|
Last week I ate a white peach so ripe, I nudged it towards the knife in order to cut it into pieces. I hope you can feast on your life too, even in these times, however that looks like for you. We need the feasts amidst the famine.
|
Lately I have been guilty of reading a lot of books just because I know the author’s names from previous works. I haven’t been thrilled with much of what I’ve read, unfortunately. So I am going to challenge myself to read more books by authors I do not know, by smaller presses, and in translation.
|
|
A Tender Age, Chang-Rae Lee
|
|
The Ghosts of Waikiki, Jennifer K.Morita (I’ll be reading with her in October)
|
We’ll Prescribe You A Cat, Syou Ishida
|
|
What I Just Finished, Mostly
|
|
Will This Make You Happy, Tanya Bush (finishing the recipes still)
|
|
The Road to Tender Hearts, Annie Hartnett
|
|
People You Meet On Vacation, Emily Henry (ok, did not finish)
|
|
Enormous Wings, Laurie Frankel (recommended)
|
|
Alan Opts Out, Courtney Maum (recommended)
|
|
The Wedding, Vandana Nair (recommended)
|
|
Slow Dance, Rainbow Rowell
|
|
Exit Party, Emily St. John Mandel
|
Mestra and Galatea, Madeline Miller
|
(below: an amazing bounty of white and yellow peaches and nectarines)
|
|
|
For an archive of my past newsletters, please visit my archive page.
|
|
|
|
|
