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Finding My Courage

The hotel room is dark. Maile is asleep in the bed beside me. A short line of white light shines under the door on the other side of the room. The yellow street lights glow between the blinds. The air conditioner hums, and the room smells the way hotel rooms normally do: muffled, reused, artificially clean.

Maile and I spent the evening of Father’s Day at a restaurant, catching up on the things we rarely find time to talk about when our six children are around. We laughed. We gave each other parenting pep talks. We visited a bookstore and meandered through the aisles, picking up books, considering them, putting them down. Look at this one, we said. Read the back of this. Books have always been our love language. I bought two because buying books is my loveliest addiction.

We came back to the hotel, watched a movie, watched another. We held hands. She fell asleep. Now it’s just me awake, the day nearly done.

* * * * *

It’s been almost a month since I’ve been around these blogging parts. I’ve had to put the blog on the back burner, now that I’m finishing a manuscript, promoting The Edge of Over There, getting ready to spread the word about Once We Were Strangers. (You can preorder both of those by the way, and if you do I’ll love you forever.) But I miss blogging. I miss the casual nature of this place, the day-to-day sharing. I miss hearing from you.

Writing novels is what I have always wanted to do, and now I’m doing it, and it’s nothing like what I thought it would be. Maybe I’ll talk about that sometime, but not tonight. I’m too tired. Tonight, I want to tell you about a phone call we got while we were coming back to the hotel.

Maile talked to her mom and she told us Leo was learning to swim. Our brown-eyed, curly-haired boy had taken off his floaties and learned to stay above water on his own. It wasn’t that long ago he was scared of it all, sitting at the edge of the pool and kicking his feet. But now he’s jumping in, doggy-paddling his little heart out, lifting his chin and grinning and spitting out water. Clinging to the side, yes, but ready and willing to head back out.

A few weeks ago, we were at the Gulf of Mexico, and for the first few hours, he ran from the waves. He scampered along the shore, running in long arcs as the waves stretched up towards dry sand. He’d follow them back down, then turn and dart for safety when the next wave came.

But over the next few days, he found his courage, standing in the water as the undertow pulled the sand over his feet. He started wading in a little further, jumping up over the foam. By the end, he was sitting in the gulf, letting the waves crash into him.

Leo the lion had found his way, and the thing that once terrified him became the source of his enjoyment.

* * * * *

I confess: I am sometimes terrified of the vulnerability of publishing books. I am afraid the waves of writing will wash me away, carry me under. I am scared of what people will think, what I might think years from now when I read back on my first, early efforts. I wonder if I can keep doing this for years and years, even if I never have a bestseller, even if I go on being me and only me. As if being me-and-only-me is something to avoid, or overcome.

But I watch Leo, and he helps me find my courage. If a 3-year-old boy can face down the entire Gulf of Mexico and smile as the waves crash over him, I can write my best book and laugh at the waves that come, whatever they might bring.

So can you.

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Watching My Daughter and Her Grandfather and the 70 Years Between Them

She walks ahead of him. Now that he has agreed to follow her outside, she seems to have forgotten he is even there. She is only two, after all, and her sights moved rather quickly from getting someone to open the back door for her, to getting someone to go out with her, to getting someone to walk into the neighbor’s yard with her, and now she’s eyeing up the slide, the grass scratchy on her feet, the May sun hot, the May air humid.

Her grandfather walks quietly behind, hands at his side, staring at the grass and then at the fruit trees he planted and then at his granddaughter climbing the slide.

“You can do it, Poppy,” he says in a sing-song voice.

“Yep,” she says, because that is her answer to almost everything these days. Yep. She doesn’t have time for much else. She’s always on her way to the next thing.

So he stands there and watches her climb, this grandfather of hers. He is 70 years older than her. Think about that for a moment. 70 years. Seven decades. Seven long and large chunks of ten years each. He lived his own childhood, his own growing up years, lived with and left his own siblings, his own house. He came of age, got a job, married, had kids. Had a career. Lived through the death of friends and family members. Had his own tragedies, personal and public. Lost his own grandfather, his own father and mother. And now there he is, 72 years old, standing in the back yard of his North Carolina house, watching his granddaughter climb a slide. She loses her grip and slides down part of the way. Climbs back up.

She has all of those things ahead of her, the growing up and the leaving and the figuring things out, the birth and death of friends and family, the triumphs, the times that will make her weep with joy or sadness. But right now she is thinking only of the slide she is trying to climb, and the sky above her, and the heat that holds her. She is the center of the universe.

I watch them through the glass door, thinking of my own grandfathers, both of whom died before I was of the age when I could appreciate them fully. Both of them had lived lifetimes, and our paths crossed for such a short time, and I stare out the glass thinking of how our paths are always crossing, lifetimes between us. The old getting older, the young never catching up but old before they know it, looking down at brand new babies and wondering where all the time has gone.

I wonder that now myself. Often. Where has all the time gone?

“You can do it, Poppy,” he says again, and she turns at the top, and she smiles, and she lets go.

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Forever Lost in My Normality

Photo by Rob Bye via Unsplash

I am sitting in a coffee shop I don’t often visit, a smaller one in the middle of the city where I live. It’s a bustling, bright place with worn wood floors and large windows. Nearly every seat is full, and the baristas chat with the customers like they’re all old friends. I get a feeling this is the kind of place that has regulars, the kind of place where the employees know your normal order.

There is a man not too far from me who is drawing in a sketch book. His table is covered in colored pencils, his bag overflowing with paper. Every so often, he laughs for no reason, and he laughs so loud that we all jump and then chuckle nervously, smile sheepishly at each other, somehow embarrassed not for him but for ourselves.

The door whines open, slams closed. The music is loud.

At a nearby table, there is an old man in a wheel chair. His face is curled up in perpetual confusion, and his words escape in long, gentle moans. He wears oversized clothes and the rubber tires on his wheelchair are low on air. A young man, maybe in his late twenties, takes care of the man in the wheelchair. He eases the man’s travel coffee mug up towards his mouth, guiding the straw home. The old man coughs and the young man lifts a handkerchief to wipe his mouth. The young man walks around behind him, lifts him in a jerking motion, moving him up so that he can sit straight in his chair. He helps the old man wrestle into a coat.

People come by to say hello to the old man in the wheelchair. They carry on one-sided conversations as if nothing is amiss. And maybe nothing is. Or maybe I am the thing that is amiss, forever lost in my normality.

* * * * *

An African-American man comes in, baggy coat, earphones up on his head. He has a long, kind face. Concern etches the plains around his eyes.

“I’ve got a friend coming in a few minutes,” he explains, pointing towards the back. He is very sincere. He is not saying this ironically. “I’m just going to wait back there. He’ll be here any time.”

The barista waves off his concern. “No problem,” she says, and he disappears into the back, but not before the young man taking care of the old man whispers after him, “This isn’t Starbucks, man.”

* * * * *

Another old man comes in and sees someone he knows, grins. “You’re just as handsome as you were the last time I saw you.”

The guy he’s talking to chuckles a sandpaper grunt. “I hope the women still think so.”

The first man, feeling rather pleased with himself, leans in close and puts his hand on the other man’s shoulder. “I didn’t say you were handsome. I said you’re just as handsome as you were the last time I saw you.” And he laughs, taking immense pleasure at the joke, as if the world is his.

It snowed yesterday. But outside the sun is shining even brighter than it was when I got here, and the trees  are budding red flowers. Everyone is walking down the sidewalk, staring up at the sun with expressions of awe on their faces, as if the unthinkable is happening, as if spring has finally come.

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In Which We are Beginning to Find Our Way

“I thought Mom went to college to be a Mom,” Sammy said, and he was completely serious, and we all paused for a moment before laughing hysterically, and therein surfaced one of this family’s major problems, from beginning to end, stated in ten simple words.

* * * * *

Once upon a time two English majors, both writers, fell in love and got married and lived a quiet life in Florida where they spent entire Saturdays reading on the couch and finding their way as a newly-married couple and traveling up and down the East Coast. These were simple times, though they did not realize it. For two years they had their little routines which included milkshakes every night over Scrabble, and lots of sex, and counting their pennies, and, when a few extra dollars came in, going out to eat at the Outback Steakhouse around the corner. And afterwards feeling guilty because who had $30 extra to spend on steak and cheese fries? Not them.

For two years. Such a simple life.

Then the crazy took over, and a kind of eternal crisis mode set in, and at first it was crisis mode set into the mold of an exciting move to England and young children and a business that devoured days and then Virginia with four children and good friends and a business that devoured days and then it was the kind of crisis mode that arises out of huge debt and disappointment and struggling to keep heads above water, the kind of crisis mode where everyone does what they have to do to keep the house together and moving and bills paid, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera.

What started as an exciting overseas move led to fifteen years of discombobulation and searching for direction and falling into a life that worked. For me, anyway. It was a life that worked because I was lucky enough to stumble into a way of making a living that I loved: writing.

Let’s be honest.

It’s a life that has worked for me.

And somewhere along the way, Maile lost herself.

* * * * *

I came back from a work trip and I can’t remember if it was when I came back from Istanbul or Iraq or Nashville or maybe all of them but there we stood beside the bed and Maile told me she was flat-out gone, flat-out not someone she recognized anymore. She was nearing forty and didn’t know who the person in the mirror had become or where the last fifteen years of her life had gone or if she’d ever be able to find herself again, the self she loved. The self who wrote beautiful words and stories, the self she had been at eight years old writing in lined journals.

And what if this is it. What if this is life.

That is a hard thing to hear, especially when you feel like you have found yourself, especially when the last fifteen years have been you finding your way, only to realize the person you were with, the person who came along on the journey with you, the person who supported and pushed and cheered you on, wasn’t on a trail that worked for them.

Those are hard conversations to have. Those are long nights. Can two humans ever not fail each other? Is this what it means to be unequally yoked, one going one way, the other going the other?

Can two people find their way after so many years of wandering? Both of them?

* * * * *

Last week we were at the Festival of Faith and Writing, and Maile met some kindred spirits. You know who you are. And she asked, “How do you make time to write?” and “How do you stay married and have children and take care of a house and still make time to write?” and “When do you write?” and a hundred other questions.

This, I think, is what makes a writers’ conference worth it. Not the speakers, though they might be very good. And not the information, though it might be very helpful. No, a writers’ conference is a good one when it puts you in contact with people who will help you find your way.

They said, “You have to set aside the time, and maybe dinner doesn’t get made or children eat cereal or toast and maybe the house doesn’t get cleaned or maybe you have to go out somewhere. But you have to make time. You have to. You will die if you don’t.”

We are trying to make time.

No. Scratch that. We are making time.

* * * * *

Tuesday night from 4 to 6 was the first time, and the children chose to make Caribbean Pineapple Quinoa and they did an amazing job and I played video games with them for an hour before that because that’s what happens when I’m in charge. And a little before 6, Maile came down and we ate dinner together that the children had made and behold, it was good!

We had a long conversation with them about how in a family it’s important that everyone gets to follow their dreams and it’s important that we care for each other in this way, that we tend gently and faithfully to the fire that each of us carries, because this is the kind of caring that families have to do for one another. Often, no one else will do it.

We looked our little girls in the face and said that they in particular have to be careful about losing themselves. This is how it can be, if we’re not careful. This is how it can go.

This is when I told them that their mother loved to write stories, always had since she was their age, and that we hadn’t done a good job helping her find time to do this but that was about to change. Abra volunteered to make dinner every night. I said that was generous. “Well,” she said, “maybe not every night,” and we laughed and said we will see. This is when I told them their mother and I both studied English in college, and this is when Sammy said, “I thought Mom went to college to be a Mom.”

In that one sentence, I realized by how much I had missed the mark. A crisis mode that set in a decade ago, the mode in which we tried to survive by doing what we had to do, the mode in which I wrote for a living and Maile held everything else together, had slipped into our daily lives, and our months, and our years, and it had become our way of life, and it is my fault that we never came up out of that.

We are emerging, and we are all catching our breath, and we are all looking around, trying to see how it might be in this new world.

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Some Thoughts on Book Contracts, Destinations, and the Importance of Hope

Photo by Danka Peter via Unsplash

The house is remarkably quiet, so quiet in fact that I can hear the hot water murmuring its way through the radiators. Outside, exhaust from our hot water boiler escapes the pipe, clouds up, gets swept through the breezeway, out onto James Street. It is a ghost, gone in an instant, frightened away by the scream of the passing ambulance.

This time of year always feels like the final stretch of an endurance race — winter not quite letting go, spring sports coming to an end, classes wrapping up, and summer beckoning. And you know me. I’m not great at waiting. Too often, I want to fast forward the journey and arrive.

* * * * *

Last week, Maile and I went out to Grand Rapids for the Festival of Faith and Writing held at Calvin College every other year. Two years ago, we went for the first time. Maile was pregnant with Poppy. I got to meet online writer friends I had never before met in person.

This year was no different. More wonderful people, more fun reunions. An amazing session with Walter Wangerin Jr. that I’m still processing. It was a beautiful time.

Yet, I couldn’t help but notice how different it felt to be there this time around. Two years ago, my agent and I were about to embark on trying to find a publisher for The Day the Angels Fell. I spent a lot of time at FFW two years ago walking around, staring dreamy-eyed at publisher’s booths, wishing, wishing, wishing. I was about to begin one of the most difficult periods of waiting in my life, those three or four months after we sent out the proposal for The Day the Angels Fell and started getting rejections.

But in the last two years, so much has happened. We teamed up with Revell publishing house to publish The Day the Angels Fell. The Edge of Over There comes out July 3rd. The book I wrote with my friend Mohammad, Once We Were Strangers, comes out in October.

Two years ago, I never would have believed where my writing journey is today.

Two years can bring a lot of change.

Are we willing to wait, to keep putting in the work, and perhaps most importantly of all, to keep hoping?

* * * * *

Cade wanders through the house, looking for a book. Maile goes up to bed. I chase her up the stairs and give her a kiss. She kisses me back, not a peck on the cheek but the real deal. Then, I hear a little pipsqueak of a voice coming from one of the dark bedrooms.

“You know I can see you guys, right?” giggles our 10yo daughter from her bedroom. “I’m right here!”

This is life. As real and at least as important as any book deal, any goal met, any achievement unlocked. Maile goes to bed and I come down to the dining room. The house is even quieter now. Night has settled over the city, and no matter the temperature outside, I know spring is on the way.

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What Are You Waiting For?

Photo by Riccardo Annandale via Unsplash

It is 7am, and I have already been up for nearly 5 hours, having driven someone to an airport in Allentown and back in the wee hours of the morning. I left home around 3am and returned around 6am and made a batch of baked oatmeal that should just about be ready by the time the kids wake up. The house is starting to stir–Maile came down and joined me, the two of us talking quietly in the kitchen, appreciating the time. Now Abra is in the shower, singing. Children come down the stairs, one at a time. Leo crawls into my lap. I can hear Sam wandering the upstairs.

I had a lot of time to think this morning during those long dark hours on the road, listening to a Lenten playlist my friend Megan created on Spotify and then, later, listening to the audio version of Wallace Stegner’s epic, Angle of Repose. It is the story of Susan and Oliver Ward, their life in the early days of the West, their long years of trying and failing, trying and failing, trying and failing. It is a story of hope holding out for a very long time, and then when hope is finally realized, they discover that other complications have set in.

It left me wondering what I am waiting for. What long-held desires of mine are keeping me from this present moment? What stresses about money or time hold my eyes enslaved to the future?

* * * * *

There is the life we want and there is the life we have, and while there is nothing wrong with the wanting, if we’re not careful it can devour everything.

* * * * *

The sun is rising now and a gray light filters down onto James Street. Our porch light is visible through the barely opened blinds, as is the brick rowhome across the street. This is the only day I have. What will I do with it?

E.L. Doctorow has famously said that “[Writing is] like driving a car at night: you never see further than your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.” Life is like that, too, I think.