I'm baaaaaccckkk!

                                       



Blogs are vulnerable to abandonment and I've been absent.  Enthusiasm and discipline can waver as finding fresh ideas grows harder or maybe Life Intrudes so that writing the blog falls ever lower on the To Do list until it falls off altogether.

Then there is the problem of not writing.  What do you write about in a blog about writing when you are not writing?  Sure, you can write about the fact that you are not writing, but mostly I knew  my problem was not writer's block, but a case of Life Intruding, of discovering that  I had been operating on will-power and had run out of fuel.  What seemed best was to hunker down, rest, and have faith I'd recover.

I'm here because  along with the thawing happening outside (at long last) I am thawing inside.  I am feeling more like myself.  I haven't been writing new fiction yet, but I have been reading some of what I wrote last year, surprised, as I always am that it's "not so bad" or "less bad than I expected."

What undid the ice jam was being the guest of honor at a long-running book group at Bridgeside books, hosted monthly by the proprietor, Hiata Corduan, in Waterbury, Vermont.  Imagine spending an hour with a group of avid readers, your book in their laps and everyone declaring that they loved it, loved spending time with Poppy, wished Poppy was their friend (so do I).   Even I, with my tendency to find the worst in every situation having to do with me, have to admit that they meant every word.

They all begged me to write more about Poppy's life and they made a good case (one Bridgesider is a lawyer!) that Her. Story. Is. Not. Done.  Using the word "beg" is not an exaggeration.  It startled me, you can bet.

One reader asked, "Is Poppy happy?" which I translate to mean, "Is walking dogs enough?"  Well, yes and no. Even if she has gotten daily satisfaction from helping people by looking after their dogs, she is not happy about the fact that this work does not ask much of her intellect.  She does love dogs, but it doesn't feel like a career.  She is aware too that some of what she is feeling is a cultural bias, that we respect certain occupations over others, and this troubles and confuses her.

We leave Poppy having made one choice--with her brother's encouragement and her own good sense--she will honor the part of her life that is working and accept that she can't solve all her problems at once.

As the discussion fizzed around the room, what moved, astonished, and excited me was realizing how genuinely Poppy's story had touched these readers, all women; how it opened doors to talking about their own lives and choices.  Also, everybody seemed to know someone, a niece, a neighbor's child, a grandson who spent time walking dogs, while in a similar in-between.  One member admitted, laughingly, that in her early thirties when her life fell apart, she came home "to live in my mother's basement" and  conceived the notion that moving to New York City and being a dog-walker would be the perfect thing.  (Yes, her mother did talk her out of the idea and out of the basement.)  Another told of falling into a career that she never cared for, but made into something she is proud of.  Yet another, after realizing she wanted to do work that made a difference, went, bravely, to law school as a single mother.  We discussed the difference too between a having a vocation and a job.  No conclusions, mind you, although I think we all admit that not everyone can be so fortunate as to find a way to make a living at something they love to do or even land a job that may just be "a job" but yet feels meaningful and satisfying. We wondered if it is too much to expect every little part of our lives to work perfectly. And we also touched upon the painful fact that in order to have a meaningful life as an individual one has to exert some single-mindedness that can feel like selfishness--generally harder for women to sustain.

Jane Austen could end a book with an engagement as women were then seen fulfilling themselves as wives and mothers in the home (even though Jane herself took another path).  Later in the nineteenth century women began choosing either to marry or to have a career, but few could opt for having both.  Today, women do expect both and seek fulfillment in family and also in an occupation outside the home. (Correspondingly many men want to participate in family life and regard their involvement as a key component to having a meaningful life.)  All of which is still very much a work-in-progress, I should add.

Before attending the Bridgeside book group meeting, the matter of whether to go on with Poppy's story felt optional.  Since attending the book group, however, I feel differently.  Daunting as it is, I owe it to Poppy, to myself and to these wonderful readers to give my all to writing creatively about Poppy's quest.  There's no guarantee I will succeed, but I can commit to the effort.  I think I've shied away, because it will be much harder for me to write a book on this subject.  It's scarier, less explored, less understood, even less tolerated even now.   I'm terrified of disappointing myself and my readers by not being able to manage it.

But maybe admitting that is a good place to begin.