You know how days run along like a stream and all through that fluid movement you receive texts or emails or say hello to people you pass in the street and everything blends together into a seamless day but then something happens and everything stops, the sounds around you fade, and you see something, really see it? That happened to me yesterday at about two in the afternoon when Maile sent me the email in the photo. When I read it, everything else stopped.
She finished writing her book.
On the day she turned 40, she finished writing her book.
An upper-middle grade book that is delightful and moving. I can’t wait to read it in its entirety. I can’t wait for you to read it.
If you’ve been following along in this space for the last few months you’ll know that this has been a time of huge transition for our family. 3/4ths of our school age kids are going to public school in the fall. We decided not to move out of the city. And as a family, we began setting aside time for Maile to write.
Her finishing this book seems like an affirmation in so many ways, mostly that we are doing the right things and moving in the right direction and taking better care of each other.
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We celebrated by going out to Wasabi, our favorite sushi place, and we took the kids and Leo was super-tired and Poppy was mostly grumpy and wouldn’t let Maile eat her food but we celebrated anyway, all of us raising our glasses (of water, of root beer, of Sprite, of lemonade), a resounding “Cheers!” sounding out. Leo laughed at that.
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So we’ll take the next month or two and focus on revisions and then she’ll wade into the publication process and who knows how that will go but we’re hopeful. Always hopeful.
Thanks for all your encouragement.
