“Be alone today”

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“Be alone today,” my inner advisor advises.

I’m home from two-plus wonderful weeks away, first in Toronto with a son and family, and then in Winnipeg with daughter and family, and then in Saskatoon with sisters, and the last two stops included launches of Like a River Divides the Earth at the McNally Robinson’s bookstores in those cities and an interview with Kelly Hughes. And none of it was onerous, but rather good — the times with children and grandchildren and friends and the launches and conversations and interviews. I’m deeply grateful for the love and support, especially for me and the book, and the many interactions with people and hearing, more than once, the sweetest words ever, which are “I love you Grandma.” But I came home tired.

Nowadays when I’m tired I usually blame my age. But when away, and doing things like book launches, there’s the additional “work” of being present, of presenting, of trying to keep my wits and attention about me.

So today, a day of not being present to anything or anyone. Alone.

It could be argued that writing a blog post is a public interaction, a projection of one’s presence toward others, and I would have to agree, but at the same time it feels different in that it’s reflection, a summation, a way of figuring out where I am in the moment, and what was, and what’s to come. For me, writing things down and sorting them is aloneness that helps.

Soon I’ll park myself in front of my coffee table where I have a panorama jigsaw puzzle underway, though only the frame done so far, and I’ll watch some of today’s FIFA soccer games, and later I’ll make a pie for tomorrow because my daughter-in-law’s family includes me in their annual Father’s Day Pie Contest and I’ll probably read (I’ve got Pick a Colour by Souvankham Thammavongsa on the go, and a book of the collected stories of William Trevor). Absorbing and gaining strength, undoing tiredness. Taking the advice of my inner advisor.

When Thought Becomes a Thing

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A box recently arrived in the mail. I knew what it contained and did not rush to open it. I let it sit in my hallway for a couple of days. Eventually, of course, I opened it.

I’m not quite sure what the hesitation or nervousness was about. I suppose it’s what we experience when something that’s begun in the imagination — whether a garment we’ll sew or a garden we’ll plant or a story we’ll write, or even that baby we dream of — finally becomes the thing itself, and we recognize it’s too late to change it now; it is what it is. And will it be okay?

Once in hand, yes, it is. The long process of each story, the seed in the ground, gives way to the result. It may carry its own surprises, but it’s good, it’s fine.

Yes, I’m truly glad about this book, Like a River Divides the Earth. There’s a story that begins with a 14-year-old seeing her soldier father’s face for the first time. And four older women sharing a house, which is something of a current trend apparently, until a mystifying event causes them to question what they thought they had. Two stories emerge from Mennonite historical events, but their themes are universal: disappointment and survival, and an individual life awkwardly poised in the midst of the larger and powerful community identity. In another, a seemingly simple tale of mother and son becomes something more complicated for the one who hears it.

There’s a rather small window of time for a book’s notice in the world of publishing, so that’s why I’m leaning out the window now and waving and saying: it’s here!

Available wherever you get your books (or could be requested as an addition to your library.) I’m deeply grateful to every reader.

Amongness

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A couple of months ago a friend invited me to join her Tuesday morning coffee group. I’ve been going regularly ever since. It builds into the structure of my week, but more than that, it’s an enjoyable hour-plus with smart, interesting women, all of us more or less in the same decade (though I may be one of the youngest). We’re usually about 5 or 6, sometimes as many as 8. And when I say smart and interesting, I don’t mean our conversation gets overly solemn or exalted. Last week, for example, we recalled Tupperware parties and burping our food containers. (We laugh a lot.) Today there was commiseration and advice for a woman who is trying to find a dress she likes for her grandson’s wedding. That kind of thing. (And sometimes, also the latest world news.)

I have some long-time close and intimate friendships. I have other relationships in which, though they may be relatively newer, our backstories are so mutually recognizable in important ways that we can move quickly into commentary, and even deep connection, about all we share and already know about the other.

Perhaps this is something just slightly different than those. Besides the woman who invited me, and one other person, I don’t interact with the coffee group women outside of Tuesday morning. But I discovered a perfect word in the wonderful novel Martyr! by Kaveh Akbar (2024) for what I experience there: amongness. I spotted it twice in the book, once when a character says he had a “sense of amongness” at an event, and another time in the phrase, “a safe little oasis of amongness.” Exactly. Yes.

Amongness: perfect for weekly coffee, welcome, laughter, and talk. Something lovely to bask in and also try to create for others.