Honoring the Day

Or, Returning to a writing life again and again and again

In early January, just a few days after students and teachers had returned to their post-holiday schedules, Nashville was layered with a thick blanket of snow. Snow is a rare event for us, so the city is cautious. Schools close, and doctor's appointments get canceled.

Chuck and I love the excitement and peace of a snow day. We stand at the window and watch our neighborhood transform. It's so beautiful, especially in the beginning when things are magical and quiet—no tire tracks on the road or footprints on the sidewalk.

The stillness is a welcome gift, like a writer's retreat made for two.

After the appropriate amount of gushing, we head to the living room and settle on opposite couches. Laptops open, I hear the click of the keyboard, the crackle of the fire. We write and write and don't eat until noon. I make French toast and bacon to honor the day.

All of this sounds idyllic, but my mind is a big ball of thoughts that don't quiet easily. Wouldn't it be fun to invite the neighbors over? I hope the grandkids got food in the house before the snow came. I should start planning Chuck's book release party. This would be a good day to call Maggie. Remember to check The New York Times so you know what’s happening in the world. On and on it goes.

I reign it in. Receive the day.

It hadn't been long since we'd emerged from the November-December bubble of friends and family gatherings, each especially sweet and soul-filling.

Two of our grandkids are in their leaving years—they go away, try things, come back, and leave again. So, I treasure it even more when we're all together. Sometimes, my heart gets so full it takes me hours to wind down and fall asleep. I think about our conversations. What we laughed about, the stories we told.

November 28th was one of those nights. Molly's birthday coincided with Thanksgiving this year, and we surprised her with a family singalong—thirteen of her best-loved songs from the 80s and 90s.

With Sam playing guitar and Ruby leading us when we stumbled, we started with a crowd-pleaser: Whitney Houston's “I Wanna Dance with Somebody”—then moved on to the Beatles, Sheryl Crow, Counting Crows, and Shawn Colvin. Whenever a song sparked a memory, Molly shared it, which made the evening even more connecting and special.

And, as it turns out, singing pop songs with three generations is my new favorite thing! Who wouldn't want to be in a living room singing “You Can Call Me Al” and “Fast Car,” topping off the evening with homemade chocolate cream pie?

I went into partial hibernation once every gathering, church service, and lunch date was over at the end of December. I read, finished a puzzle, and roused myself for an occasional walk. And then something in me clicked as it does every year. School was about to start. It was time to make way for the return of ordinary days. I began by cleaning. Chuck grinned at me one evening and asked, Are you pregnant? You're nesting!

From all the years of winter breaks with kids and grandkids, I felt the nudge. When school schedules start again, it's time for the grownups to get it together. Move on from jammies and jigsaw puzzles and cookies for breakfast. Return to the necessary rhythms of life.

Returning is always the same no matter my age: Go to the grocery store with a menu plan for good health. Remove the Christmas tablecloth with its crumbs and memories. Slowly and with an ache, take down the greenery from around the house and pack up the vintage Christmas things. Vacuum and dust, mop the kitchen floor, pay bills, and clean bathrooms. Figure out what to do with the stacks on my desk. And begin to set the alarm a little earlier each day until the wonderful blur of going to bed late and sleeping in corrects itself to a more orderly existence.

For a moment, we had a clean slate. I pushed my return button.

With the foundation laid, I adjusted my rhythms to normal. Write in the mornings and schedule everything else in the afternoons. I'd written some during the holidays, but returning to a consistent faithfulness requires a mental shift. It's shocking how often I whisper in my own ear: You are a writer. Now, get back to it. Take your coffee, go to your office, open your laptop, and continue. Work until back pain and hunger insist that you move. Show up every morning you possibly can. Don't worry about the Christmas tree. Leave it up. Savor the beauty.

We finally took the tree down on January 22nd, but only to make room for the next big thing—the February 4th launch of Chuck's excellent and beautifully written memoir, Roots and Rhythm: A Life in Music. After the bookstore, we gathered at our house with old friends and extended family.

Celebrations take a lot of work, even with the help of loved ones. You bake snickerdoodles and ginger-molasses cookies, wash glasses and platters and pitchers, go shopping for cheeses and crackers, wine and olives, flowers and candles. You prepare the house and the food and clean up for days after.

Eventually, if you are a writer, you return to the piece you began four weeks ago on the snow day, not knowing what it was about then but finding out along the way.

To one degree or another, this is everyone's story.

Writing doesn't make its way to the page because the calendar is empty but because it is full of life. It takes as long as it takes. And that is often hard and frustrating. I want to do it all at the same time. Have more energy and less back pain.

A publishing deadline of some sort helps. You say no to many things because you have to. However, writers keep writing because of something deeper and more internal than a publishing deadline. If you are a writer, you write because it is your strongest desire, your practice and discipline. It is your calling.

I'm curious. If you're reading this and you write anything at all, how do you stay faithful to your writing life? What are your disciplines? How do you schedule your days and nights to keep this central thing at the center? We work around so many different realities: caregiving of many kinds, other jobs, households to maintain, people to feed, aging bodies, and, yes, all those life-giving celebrations.

Recently, I've been listening to Shawn Smucker and Maile Silva's two podcasts, "The Stories Between Us" and "So, We Bought a Book Shop." The latter is their newest, but I've been meandering through each. Maile and Shawn are married with kids, both writers and, as of last year, owners of Nooks, a book shop in Lancaster, PA. In most episodes, they talk about the realities of a writing life, and I appreciate their warmth and honesty. It's the conversation I hunger for. I'm also a great fan of Jonathan Rogers's “The Habit: A Podcast for Writers About Writing.” Jonathan interviewed us last year for Why Everything That Doesn't Matter, Matters So Much, the book Chuck and I wrote together.

I’m signing off this evening with a special cheers to all you writers out there. As Maile and Shawn always say and I agree, keep writing!