Dear Jen

I’m writing to you on the very cusp of this new season. Summer thunderstorms now drive in cooler weather, and the days are noticeably shorter. My daughter attended freshman orientation a few nights ago as she prepares to enter high school, and then this evening our middle daughter went to her junior high orientation, giddy with excitement. It sometimes feels that life is racing ahead, leaving me behind. Tonight, I can feel my head spinning as the years sweep past.

It’s funny you would say that about you and Ryan’s 30s being the tired years. Maile and I can definitely relate. In the last few weeks we potty-trained our youngest, our baby Poppy, and not having diapers on the grocery list is rather disorienting. We’ve also entered the phase where everyone in the house is actually sleeping through the night (for the most part). I feel like we’re settling in to a more solid era, although if anyone asked me, I’m not sure I could define exactly what I mean by “solid.” It just feels like the right word.

All of these changing seasons have Maile and me talking quite a lot about what the next few years might look like for her. We took a few days away for our 20^th wedding anniversary last week, and the question we kept mulling over (a question Steve Wiens challenged us with on his podcast) was this one:

“What are you building?”

His challenge was to think bigger than, “What are you working on?” or “What are you doing?” To be honest, it left both of us floundering a bit. What are we building? What am I building? Am I building anything? I’m still pondering that one.

But the reason I bring it up is that the question has affected how we look at the next few years. Two summers from now our oldest son will be entering his senior year of high school, and little Poppy Lynne will be going into kindergarten. Maile’s days will be freer than they have been in 18 years.

What are we building?

We would both love it if that new season could mark a return to more writing time for her, but if that’s our decision, we need to keep that in mind as we think about what automobile to purchase, what loans to take on, how much to spend on the house. There are things we would love to have and probably could if she got a job, even part time, but is that a trade we are willing to make? If we really want to build to a point where she can focus on her writing once the children are out of the house, it’s going to take a lot of discipline to make sure we don’t create a life that depends on her income, or begs for it.

What are we building?

I think we know what we want to build—a more creative life, one that values artistic pursuits, even when these things do not always bring about a huge monetary return. Perhaps we’d also like to build a home where these things are valued more than a large paycheck—writing, reading, music. It all sounds so naïve when I write it out and see it there in black and white. But it feels like it would be worth building that, or trying to.

In the meantime, Maile has taken on a new practice: she has started writing 250 words per day, and this approach has been a godsend. She first came across the idea in the acknowledgments section of one of Kate DiCamillo’s books—that is how much writing Kate does every day, and she’s written two Newbery Award books in that seemingly tiny window of time each day. 250 words.

Maybe building what we want to build doesn’t actually take as much time as we think it does. Maybe it’s just consistency spaced out over a long period of time, words gathering like drops in a bucket. Maybe these seasons come and go to remind us of our lack of control, our smallness, and God’s mercy and kindness to us as we stumble along, doing the best we can.

I hear everything you are saying regarding your continuing journey with writing, and navigating that space with Ryan. It’s so, so good you two are talking about it. What often feels like failure–in writing, relationships, whatever–always seems to tear open new ground, ready now for the seeds of future harvests.

Family time in Toronto sounds lovely. Really. Hopefully someday we can make it up there.

Warm Regards

Shawn

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What began as a Twitter conversation between two writers has become an exchange of letters. Here is a list of our prior letters for Postmarked:

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (1)

Postmarked: Dear Jen (2)

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (3)

This week’s installment in our Postmarked series is Jen writing to me about expectations, creativity, and what happens when we (or our spouses) are careless in regards to our writing. Here’s a preview:

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Imagine, then, Ryan’s own learning curve when it came to my writing life. He married a woman who’d studied to be a teacher, who’d happily quit that work to raise his babies, who did occasional editing and freelance writing, then suddenly, at the age of 38, mused aloud on a long walk in the neighborhood ravine if God weren’t calling her to start a blog. Then, almost as if on a lark, she wrote her first book. I think Ryan thought it was all wonderful at first—wonderful in a kind of wonderful “hobby” sort of way. I was writing, but I might also have been gardening, mastering my scone recipe, tinkering at automotive repair, improving my tennis serve. Truthfully, both of us, at that point, thought of my writing as something elective, something to be done when the time could be spared. . .

And of course you can probably guess at the terrible place where this is all headed, this carelessness about my writing.

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Keep reading the entire letter over at Jen’s blog.

Here is a complete list of our ongoing correspondence on creative work and family life:

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (1)
Postmarked: Dear Jen (2)
Postmarked: Dear Shawn (3)

 

Dear Jen

What a quiet gift your letter was to me. In this age of hot takes and comebacks, snark and opinion, it’s refreshing to be on the receiving end of a gentle and friendly note. I hope this finds you and your beautiful family doing well.

It’s interesting to me, the timing of our correspondence: in five days Maile and I will celebrate our 20th wedding anniversary, and conversations about vocation, family life, and creative work have threaded their way through our years together. The temptation for me will be to try and tell you everything in one sitting. I’m not sure that once I start I’ll know where to end.

Maile and I first met in the cooling autumn days on a small college campus in central PA at the end of the last century. It was my junior year in college, and I had five classes with this captivating girl, her hair short and blonde, her eyes kind and blue. She had a very earnest way of listening to our professors’ lectures. It was easy for me to study her because she sat in the front row of every class, while I always sat at the back.

One day, between classes, I realized she was a short distance behind me. Determined to talk with her, I pretended to tie my shoe. Nervous about the possibility of overtaking me, she nearly stopped. I had to wait a rather long time for her to catch up. Eventually, I introduced myself. We walked slowly across the wide open space, talking about Counting Crows and books and life. We started studying together on quiet nights in the mostly-empty library. We were both writers. We both loved books and stories more than just about anything else on Earth.

16 months later, I found out that I would be working in Florida after graduation. Sitting at a round table in the library, we discussed long-distance dating, inevitable if she returned to Ohio and I moved to Florida. We knew we didn’t want that. In what is perhaps the least romantic pseudo-proposal in human history, I said sheepishly, “What if we get married?” I formally proposed a month later. Her “yes” was the single most important word a person has ever said to me.

It’s been a long journey since then. How can you ever possibly know who this person you marry will turn into as the years go by? We moved from Florida to England to Virginia and finally back to Pennsylvania, where my ancestors have lived for 13 generations. We had six children along the way, each a story of their own.

Those first two years in Florida were a treasure. Two years of just us, no children, entire states between us and family. But I have one regret. I wish, during those two years, I would have told her to forget about money, forget about a career—just do what you want. Do what you were created to do. Write.

Maile, write!

If I could have seen the challenging years ahead, the tiring years, the hard years, the full years, the miscarriages, the disappointments, the long nights, the empty bank accounts, the lessons only time can teach us, I would have given her those two years without hesitation. I would have insisted she stay home and write.

But we have so quickly taken on the values of our culture, haven’t we? If someone, single or married, is not “contributing,” is not “earning,” is not “making money,” what kind of wasteful life must they be living? So, she substitute-taught or worked as an admin at an office or tutored.

We traded two precious years for trinkets.

After ten years, after Florida and England and Virginia, we came back to PA broke, broken, and uncertain. I struck out on an apparent fool’s errand, attempting to co-write and ghostwrite for a living. Maile continued caring for our children and our home. It was all hands on deck. And for years, we squeaked by in those roles.

But I got busier as a co-writer and even found a publisher for my novels—suddenly, I was making a living as a writer, what both Maile and I had always dreamed of doing. The years passed, me doing what I loved, Maile holding everything else together. Don’t get me wrong, I have always been a hands-on father, getting up in the night with the kids, doing laundry, dishes, all of that, but even when I helped around the house, so much was required that it left Maile with zero creative margin. The words you wrote in your last letter were so true and familiar they made me ache: “the pattern had been decided early on: the indivisible ‘we’ was Ryan at the bow, Jen at the stern.”

One night over dinner in 2018, our middle son said, “But I thought Mom went to college to be a Mom,” and we all laughed long and hard. But Maile and I caught each other’s eyes across the table and I saw deep hurt. I realized our marriage was, in a very fundamental way, broken.

While our life together was working for me, it was not working for her. It was the beginning of a new time for us. We had to make some changes.

I could keep going but this is a long installment already. I have so many questions for you! How have you balanced marriage, family life, and creativity? What does Ryan think of your time spent writing? In what season do you now find yourself?

Kind Regards

Shawn

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A list of our prior letters for Postmarked:

Postmarked: Dear Shawn (1)