So Much All at Once

Things have been busy and will be for a while, but I’ll write when I can. I’ve been missing this.

November-January is normally my busiest time of the year, given my deadlines for The Best American Short Stories, the inevitable sudden expansion of workload in my other two jobs, my kids’ birthdays, the holidays. Add in a week-long trip to a writers’ conference in Kauai (I know, world’s smallest violin)— and then a something that landed like a house upon the Wicked Witch of the East. In fact, it was a house.

For the past three years, I’ve rented half of a grand, old, character-filled house that frankly has seen better days. While my kids have nice big bedrooms and can walk to town, my office sits in the hallway outside my son’s bedroom. I have no usable closet in my bedroom, and our shared bathroom is tiny and boasts large patches of rust and mysterious other oddly colored matter that I’m afraid to identify. The rotted out rear stairway that leads to the driveway is a fragile deathtrap.

Mostly out of curiosity about the housing market, my person and I have occasionally attended open houses during the last year. We are committed to each other, and knew that we wanted to live together some day in the future, but the exact timing had floated around and remained elusive. I’d begun to think that we should wait until the kids were in college or later. I’d had my eye on a house about two miles from where I live now, a smaller but equally charming old beauty on the Charles River that was slightly out of range price-wise. It sold, but then came back on the market at a lower price. Although we had no realtor and had yet to be preapproved, we went to see it, fell in love, made an offer, got it accepted, had it inspected, and we are set to close on December 22.

I seem to be someone who fears and avoids change while thinking constantly about it (as if that helps at all), someone who then lurches into the future feeling as if I’m being impulsive. I have thought about buying a house and living with this man for a while now, but still, it all seemed very fast and rather shocking. I’m excited for this big change, and nervous, nervous to live with a man again, nervous to mix him with my kids and mine with his kid (who is also 17) under one roof, even though the kids aren’t really kids, but still. It’s a damn big change.

We conducted the final house negotiations from Kauai, cementing the surreal nature of it all. The wonderful Paula McLain, one of my clients, got me invited to this idyllic conference. After an ungodly long flight to Kauai (again, tiny violin), I settled in and taught a master class on writing short stories, gave a talk with Paula about dramatic tension, and met with umpteen students to bestow my opinions of their manuscripts, a practice I frankly loathe, as it plunks a very tender transaction inside a cold speed-dating like atmosphere, putting both participants on edge. I love to help writers. I do not love to read beginners’ work and speak uncomfortable truths face-to-face in a compressed amount of time.

(My fantastic class of short story writers)

The week was a blast of teaching a class full of creative and kind writers, and then playing with my writer friends in the afternoons and evenings. We swam in the ocean, sat in the hotel’s hot tub, perused nearby shops, swam again, walked, all the while talking about writing and publishing and relationships and family, the things writers love to discuss. I was again reminded of how lonely a life of writing and editing can be, and I could feel myself return to myself in the presence of so many friends. Meg Wolitzer is an old friend, and it was wonderful to see her there. I’ve edited the lovely Angie Kim, who was also there, and got to meet the completely charming Christina Baker Kline, Patti Callahan Henry, Priya Parma (who was accompanied by her endearing Frenchie, Herbert), Jean Kwok, Jane Green, Mary Kay Andrews. I also got to hang with the hilarious and brilliant Billie Collins, the wondrous Adrienne Brodeur, and a group of smart, fun agents and other industry people.

(With Jean Kwok and Paula McLain, not unhappy to be there)

On our last night, we piled in a bunch of rental cars and headed south to Poipu beach, blasting Otis Redding and Cat Stevens and singing all the way.

(A very candid pic that captures the happy frenzy of this group)

Here we saw the Hawaiian green turtles heft themselves onto the sand, where they slept for the night.

I said goodbye to this magical place, this rollicking group, and headed to the airport for my overnight flight home, preparing myself for the rush of work, the rush of the mortgage process, and eager to see my kids again.

And then I got Covid. I arrived home on a Monday afternoon feeling unwell. It’s a mild case, but I have asthma, so walking up three stairs is a challenge. I’m on the case, though, and have parked myself next to my super effective air filter and assortment of inhalers. I write this from bed, alongside stacks of literary magazines, my dog, and my ever-growing to-do lists.

My son got his driver’s license yesterday. Both of my kids can now drive. “Sunrise, Sunset” has been running through my head.

Thanksgiving is coming. My kids take the ACTs and SATs soon. We need to pack up this apartment. I have three trillion stories to read for The Best American Short Stories, as well as a novel to edit for a client, and stories to edit for Amazon, but first I need to get through Covid.

Sometimes I peer out at the news, all of it terrible, all of the lives lost in Gaza, all of the hostages still being held hostage, the babies, the children, the bloodshed, the horrors that never stop, and I see how massively lucky I am for this overly stuffed love and art-filled life. I’m wishing you a peaceful holiday that grants you time to enjoy whatever messy gifts you yourself possess.