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Begin again.

I might have cried, but for the moon and for the thought of you tracing the places we once had been, the person I had promised you I’d be.

~ from Journey: a traveler’s notes by William Sulit and Beth Kephart

On the flight home to Texas, you realize just how long it’s been. Since you’ve flown. Since you’ve seen your father, your sisters, your mother’s sister, those who know you best. Of course, it feels like forever, but it’s only been two years. Still, you are not the same person you were when they saw you last. When you last saw them.

Of course, there’s the pandemic, where you’ve been forced to slow down and take in more of what was right in front of you. But in the last two years, you lost your footing in a few places, got back up bruised, fractured, heart worn and weary. The bruises heal. The fractures dredge up an old pain you thought you had put to rest. Where weariness sets in is during the weeks of stepping gingerly, barely breathing. There was the month of anger. Of course, anger. And to measure it by a month isn’t entirely correct; anger, like grief, comes in waves and is marked by varied lengths of intensity.

This pandemic was nothing.

When the weather warms and the restrictions ease, you open the door, step outside. The yard is beat up, in front and in back, and full of dandelions. You gather your spade buried somewhere deep in the garage and begin carving out each one that has taken root, like you might cut around a festering sore. You pray for forgiveness. Dandelions, after all, have merit. This simple act of attention becomes a meditation so, of course, you stay outside longer than you had planned. You dream about summer, schedule a long visit with family, buy the plane tickets.

You are greeted at the airport by your sister who looks just like your mother, so much so that your heart skips and you whisper, Thank you.

She chauffeurs you for miles to each cornerstone (because there is more than one). It’s strange to feel lost in the place where you grew up. The roads have changed – names and directions, are still changing. But when you take the wheel, you take your time and drive with the windows down.

The rush of the Texas heat, the sound of your cousin’s laughter, the spirit of your kids and the joy as they tap into your roots (why have you kept them away for so long?), the wide-open spaces, your father’s tender heart, the words of your aunt who says, Your mother would be proud.

There it is. Everything you need to begin again.

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Digging Deep or Taking the Easy Way Out

photo 1(3)I just spent a weekend in Texas visiting a good friend, stopping in tiny towns, driving down country roads where I saw much of what I miss when I think of home: pastures and barbed wire fences and unfettered land.

And pecans.

Everywhere there were pecans. Tossed near the gear shift in my friends car, placed in a basket in her pantry, stuffed in her kids’ stockings for St. Nick’s. And in that early morning hour when her girls found the nuts and insisted on eating them straight away, I was pulled out of slumber by the sound of shells cracking.

In the my half-sleep half-wake fog, I was taken back in time. I remembered my own small fingers around the handles of the nut cracker, the textured metal cold to the touch. The sound of the shell giving way. The sensation of pulling at the hard outside to reveal the tender insides of two halves nestled together. There was the thrill of using the nutcracker’s sidekick, the pick, to clear out any hulls and the Cheshire grin of my grandfather when I’d neglected one tiny piece and scrunched my face at the bitter aftertaste. No amount of water–or time…even now I cringe!–can kill that taste.

pecan pieNow rooted up north and far from any pecan trees, I’ve grown lazy. I bypass all the work and purchase the nuts already halved and prepared for a tasty pie. I don’t once think about the bitters. But swathed in memory last weekend, I wondered if I might be missing out by ignoring the meditative (and maybe even therapeutic) process of cracking the shell, finding my way to the good stuff within.

It never fails that these tiny moments in life lead me to writing. These days, I am faced with a few projects that cry out for me to dig deeper, to pry open, to uncover. The subjects are either very different from what I am used to or altogether foreign to my own experiences, and I’ll be honest. Many days I want to take the easy way out, dress up the surface with pretty prose and hope the middle holds. Am I lazy? Maybe. But most likely I’m simply afraid. Lisa Ahn, in her essay on Hippocampus Magazine, reminds me that I am not alone:

Every story, every essay is a push-back against fear, the insidious little whisper that says, “not this time, you won’t.” That first draft? It’s never pretty, never even close. I’m just hoping for a string to hold, a path, a backbone in the wreckage. Revision is an exercise in ruthless shearing, cutting off two sentences for every one I keep. The bridge from brain to paper is a devil of a crossing. Even when the story’s done, it’s an act of faith and daring to push it, hard, into the world, to gather the rejections, and send it out again. Every writer knows this. . . . Writing isn’t for the faint of heart.

So, yeah, I could avoid the work it will take to give these pieces the attention and depth they deserve, but that would mean missing out, perhaps sacrificing the story. While that won’t serve the reader well, it also puts me at a loss. Taking the easy way out, I pass on an opportunity to grow as a writer. Which leads me to a great quote from Antonya Nelson in her “Ten Writing Rules:”

Write into the mystery. Write what you do not know. Write without having any eyes looking over your shoulder. Write the way you would dress for a party: utterly naked and alone, at first, and then, finally, stepping out and asking a trusted companion “Do these shoes go with this romper?”

This journey of mine is slow and tedious and full of angst, qualities that may serve me well if I’m willing to pay attention. Dig deep or take the easy way out. Which will you choose today?