And then I met Bonnie Harris.  Bonnie is a faithful yogi like me, and we often find ourselves side by side in the challenging class we both like to take on Thursday nights.  I’d known since moving to town that Bonnie is a revered family counselor and parent educator, that she’s in demand as a speaker all over the world, and that we even shared a New York publisher.  I’d heard good things about Bonnie’s book When Kids Push Your Buttons even before meeting her in person.

But what really impressed me about Bonnie was her headstand, which she performs with ease right out in the middle of the room.  (I’m not the only one who admires Bonnie’s ability to hang out upside down; in class she’s known as Headstand Bonnie.)

Eventually, Bonnie and I became friends outside of class, and that’s when we first exchanged our books.  “Reading The Gift of an Ordinary Day was like having coffee with my best friend,” Bonnie told me, as we finally did sit down to have coffee together.

And reading Bonnie’s most recent book, Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids, was like meeting my long-lost parenting soul mate.  It made me a little sad, too, as I found myself wishing we HAD been friends for years, instead of waiting so long before we finally rolled up our yoga mats and started our conversation.

I try to stay away from regret for what might have been, but I’ll admit to some here.  “If only I’d had Bonnie in my corner fifteen years ago,” I found myself thinking on every page.  “If only I’d read this book back when the gap between the parent I yearned to be and the day-to-day reality often seemed unbridgeable.”

There’s no doubt in my mind that my own parenting journey would have been much smoother if I’d known about Bonnie’s philosophy of Connective Parenting all along – back when my son’s temper tantrums were so scary and confusing to us both, or when every instinct I had was telling me that “time-out” wasn’t a great idea but I wasn’t certain enough to try an alternative, or when my desire to be the best mother I could be came up against other people’s ideas about how my children should behave or how I should discipline them.

Bonnie is the parenting guide I yearned for during all those years of raising two very different, uniquely challenging little boys.  She’s the wise teacher I searched for in vain in my stacks of how-to books, books that never quite spoke to what I knew in my heart to be true:  that the key to success for both parents and children isn’t to improve our kids, but to improve our relationship with them.

And here’s the funny thing:  I was absolutely wrong about not ever needing any more advice about motherhood.  In fact, there isn’t a single relationship in my life that couldn’t benefit from a little more compassion and empathy, from a little nurturing attention, from a wise observer’s thoughtful insight.

The foundation of  Connective Parenting is pretty simple, and it’s all about perception.  Connective Parenting begins with the understanding that a child’s resistance or defiance doesn’t mean that he or she is being a problem, but rather that he or she is having a problem.  That’s it.  And suddenly we are looking at our child’s behavior not as something that we need to “fix” but as an important clue to their inner struggle in any given moment, a reminder that the way forward is to turn our anger into compassion.

To put this in Bonnie’s words:

Connective Parenting means that the parent takes responsibility for 100% of everything she says and does but does not take responsibility for the child’s feelings or behavior. That is his job, which he learns well through connection, problem-solving and conflict resolution.

Connective Parenting gives parents the methods of connection that nurture, encourage and focus on the child’s strengths rather than inadequacies while setting necessary limits to ensure self-respect and respect for others. It engages the child’s innate sense of fairness and logic.

If we want our children to listen to us, we need to say what they can hear. Not give them what they want, but simply acknowledge and respect what they want. Connective communication encourages listening and talking and feeling important to someone — interaction. Disconnection occurs when we are indifferent as well as critical, blaming and punitive — when we unintentionally push our children away.

It probably goes without saying that this truth doesn’t just apply to screaming toddlers or cranky ten year olds or surly tweens.  It goes across the board.  As soon as I pause long enough to remember that my husband, my grown son, my dog, my neighbor, my sister-in-law’s behavior arises not from some secret desire to drive me nuts, but from their own pain or fear, then we are well on the road to connection.  It’s amazing how quickly anger can be transformed into compassion, resistance into cooperation, annoyance into empathy.

Once every other week, Bonnie’s Connective Parenting newsletter arrives in my email inbox.  Usually, when I see her later at yoga, I can’t resist telling her that the latest issue seems as if it were written just for me – even if she’s advising a mother of a twelve-year-old who’s just been caught lying, or the parent of a kindergartener afraid of the dark.  It’s not the ages of the children, or the specific parenting issues, that make every post she writes so relevant, but Bonnie’s reminders that no matter what problem I’m struggling with in my own life, there is always something else going on beneath the surface.

My job isn’t to come out swinging and attack the problem, but to explore the root cause – to lead with my heart and to go in search of the truth.  With truth and compassion as my compass, I do feel more confident – whether I’m hashing out a budget with my son, disagreeing about a vacation plan with my husband, or engaging in an inner dialogue with my own closet-cleaning-averse self.  (I can beat myself up for being a hopeless hoarder of outdated clothes.  Or, I can unravel the complex emotions that go along with admitting I will never wear a certain black lace dress again.)

No matter where you are on your own parenting journey, my guess is that Bonnie will meet you there, just as she did me.  (To experience her warmth and wisdom first-hand, spend a few minutes with her video.) A few weeks ago, after yoga, Bonnie and I hatched a Mother’s Day plan: to introduce our mothering communities to each other and to give away signed, personalized copies each other’s books on our sites.  Bonnie and I are both all about connection, and it’s our pleasure to connect our readers to one another!

So, here’s how you can win:

Leave a comment below.  If you have a favorite parenting book, or a beloved novel or story about motherhood, make a recommendation. (This will turn into a great reading list for all of us.) Or, if you’re feeling shy, just say, “Count me in.”

Then, to double your chances to win a book, head on over to Bonnie’s blog and leave a comment there, too.  I’m giving away signed copies of When Your Kids Push Your Buttons and Confident Parents, Remarkable Kids here.  And Bonnie’s giving away signed copies of The Gift of an Ordinary Day and Magical Journey over at her place.  We will both draw winners, using Random.org, after entries close at midnight on Saturday, May 18.  Good luck to all, and Happy Mother’s Day!

Congratulations to Christie and Priscilla, who will each receive signed copies of Bonnie’s book.  And thanks to all of you for reading and for commenting!  

Years ago, when the dad of one of Henry’s classmates was dying of cancer, I made this cake every day for nearly a month.  Richard and I had become close during his illness, and I usually spent part of each afternoon, before school pick-up, at his house.  He and his wife had decided that his would not be a lonely death, but rather a carefully, lovingly populated one.  They wanted company.  They wanted their home to be filled with life and laughter and the sound of children’s voices even as the end one young father’s life drew near.

It was an education for me to be a part of that thoughtfully orchestrated leave-taking, an honor to be invited in, and an indelible memory that returns each spring as the daffodils bloom in my garden.  One day that early May, struck by the disconnect between the explosion of life and color in the world and the slow leaching of life from my friend’s body, I cut every single daffodil in my yard, well over a hundred in all, and arranged them in jars in his room.

It seemed right, somehow, to take everything of beauty I could put my hands on and deliver vessels stuffed full of springtime into this household.  Everyone had some version of the same impulse it seemed — to meet death with life, grief with love. Other friends brought music, artwork, foot rubs, poems to read out loud.  The kitchen was always full of people, the tea kettle always on boil, the refrigerator always full of good food.

But as Richard’s appetite waned, there was just one thing he wanted to eat, just one treat that actually tasted good, even if he could manage only a bite or two: a sip of coffee and a small slice of my lemon cake.  I couldn’t do anything about the relentless progression of his illness, but I could make cake.  And so I did, again and again and again. Even now, thirteen years later, I never begin the process of grating lemon peel without thinking of Richard.

Yesterday, the daffodils were blooming at last in my New Hampshire garden.  The forsythia buds were opening before my eyes, the grass greening by the hour. And I found myself feeling  just a touch blue as I considered the fact that after many months of sharing readings and appearances with my friend Margaret Roach, author of The Backyard Parables, we were facing our final “duet” together.

We weren’t sure how many people would be willing to leave their back yards on such a glorious spring Sunday afternoon to go listen to a couple of authors talk and read.  But for the two of us it was a bittersweet moment, the end of the road for this book publication journey we’ve shared since our memoirs came out within a week of each other in January.   I wanted to mark the occasion, to offer her a sweet something by way of saying “Thank you for being my friend and partner.”  (What we’ve both learned is that book tours are lots more fun with a buddy!)

There was really just one thing to do:  make my lemon cake.  As it turned out, about forty-five people came to the bookstore and yet I’m pretty sure everyone who wanted a sliver got one.  We talked together about friendships and endings and the fact that nothing lasts.  And we shared stories and celebrated spring and acknowledged the beauty of beginnings.  For those of you who couldn’t be with us, I’m sharing the recipe.

Glazed Lemon Cake

(Simple.  Dense. Lemony. Sturdy.  Good.)

2 sticks unsalted butter, room temperature

2 cups sugar (I use half a cup less)

3 eggs slightly beaten

3 cups flour

1/2 tsp. baking soda

1/2 tsp. salt

1 cup buttermilk

2 heaping tsp. grated lemon rind

3 tblsp. fresh squeezed lemon juice

Set your oven to 325.  Grease a ten-inch tube pan, line the bottom with piece of waxed paper cut to fit exactly, grease the paper, and then lightly flour the pan.  Set aside.  In the bowl of an electric mixer cream the butter and sugar until light and fluffy.  Add eggs one tablespoonful at a time, beating well after each addition.  Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt, and add to to dry ingredients with mixer on its lowest speed, alternating with the buttermilk and beginning and ending with the flour.  Beat in lemon rind and juice.

Pour the batter into the pan and bake on middle rack of oven for 65 minutes, until the cake begins to pull away from sides of pan. Cool for 10 minutes, then remove from pan and glaze (optional) while still warm.

For the glaze:  In a mixer cream together 2 cups confectioners sugar and 3 T. butter.  Add 3 heaping T. grated lemon rind and 1/4 cup fresh lemon juice.

 

 Magical Journey — my last three readings (for a while, anyway)

I would love to see you at one of these events! And if you can’t make it, please put the word out to friends in Nashville and Minneapolis.  

Thursday, May 2, 6:30 pm:  Parnassus Books, Nashville, TN  

Saturday, May 4, 7 pm:  Seventh Annual Motherhood & Words Reading, The Loft, Minneapolis, MN. 

Monday, May 6, 7 pm:  Common Good Bookstore, St. Paul, MN.

To stay up-to-date on future book news, the latest posts, and other doings, “Like” my Facebook page by clicking here. 

And to order signed/personalized copies of any of my books, click here. 

 

“If the only prayer you ever say in your entire life is thank you, it will be enough.”  – Meister Eckhart

“Thank you.” 

Maybe these words really are enough.

Certainly “Thank you” is the phrase on my lips today, the emotion overflowing in my heart, the words I want to say to you, the prayer of gratitude I offer up to the universe.  To every single fellow traveler, to everyone who’s read Magical Journey and shared it with a friend, I offer a huge springtime bouquet of thank you’s.

Here’s what we’re creating together:

          *Attention!

Nearly three months after the official publication date, People.com cites Magical Journey as a “Memoir We Can’t Put Down.”  (I imagine Cheryl Strayed has grown used to such accolades by now, but for me, a shout-out in People is a Really Big Deal.)

Thank you, to senior writer Jill Smolowe, who said she randomly pulled my galley out of a pile during a lull at work and found herself “lured in,” as she wrote me over the weekend.

          *Word of mouth sales! 

As of last Friday night, Magical Journey was #75 on Amazon’s sales rank in the Biography/Memoir category.  Hey, to break through the top-100 ceiling in any category at all is quite a thrill.  It means that even in a world crowded with thousands of wonderful books, Magical Journey is quietly but surely finding its way.

Thank you to every book buyer and book giver. Book sales are where the rubber hits the road.

*A Facebook Author page that has grown from exactly zero at pub date to nearly 3,000 followers! (Just 26 more “Likes” and we’ll be there.)

Thank you to every single FB friend who hit that button and is generously sharing my blog posts with your on-line world.

            *An eNewsletter mailing list that is multiplying by leaps and bounds!

I remember writing my first blog post, just three and a half years ago, and wondering how on earth anyone would ever find it and who on earth would even care.

When the first subscription from a real live reader ping-ed into my email box, I couldn’t have been more stunned:  a human being, reaching back through the ether to ME!  Well, we’ve learned a lot together since then, become friends here in this space, discovered just how much we have in common as we share the ups and downs of our lives with one another.

And guess what?  My weekly blog post now goes to over 3,000 e-mail boxes.  (If you’d like it to land in yours, just click here and subscribe to join us.  Of course, it’s free.)

Thank you to all of you who faithful readers, and a special virtual hug to those of you who take the time to comment.  (While I had to make the tough decision not to respond to all blog comments, much as I wish I had the time to answer each and every one, I DO read them ALL — gratefully, joyfully.)

          *Reader reviews.

Sure, a rave in the New York Times would be great.  But it means far more to me to know that my book is striking a chord with you. What a gift, not only to be read, but to have readers who care enough about this book to craft and post a response online.  Your reviews touch me deeply.  And although I try not to spend my time checking in with Amazon, my two sons keep tabs on those stars. (You are making them proud.)

Thank you for your beautiful words!

          *YouTube views (lots of them!)

Suddenly, my video for The Gift of an Ordinary Day is flying around the internet again.  I can’t compete with Dancing Nana, but at over 1.8 million views and counting, this seems pretty amazing — for a book trailer.  The video for Magical Journey, though quieter and more introspective, has been seen by more than 10,000 viewers since January. (Keep sharing!)

            *Letters!

Just over two hundred of them since January 8.  Each one is unique, heartfelt, appreciated.  And taken altogether, what they tell me is this: Sharing the true stories of our lives — the dark, difficult, messy parts right alongside the heartwarming moments and the ah-ha revelations – is worth it.  When one person takes a deep breath and reveals a little bit of the struggle, it clears a space in which someone else can be honest and vulnerable, too.  And suddenly fear and isolation and confusion are displaced by empathy and compassion and hope.  To say I’m grateful for your letters would be an understatement.  They make my day — and the stories you entrust to me confirm that though the road may be bumpy at times, none of us journeys alone; this path is full of fellow travelers. We are all in it together.

Thank you for allowing me these glimpses of your lives!

“We can only be said to be alive,” wrote one of my literary heroes, Thornton Wilder, “in those moments when our hearts are conscious of our treasures.”

On this mild April Monday, I am feeling deeply alive and deeply grateful for the treasure we are creating and sustaining together: a supportive community of readers and thinkers, wanderers and wonderers, seekers and soul mates.

To express my thanks to you, my dear readers, who continue to support my work so generously, I’m gift-wrapping four books this week to give away.  (Mother’s Day gift, perhaps??)

My Springtime Gift to You

To enter to win one of four copies of Magical Journey, personalized as per your instructions,  wrapped in handmade paper, and mailed with a card to you, or to a special someone in your life, just leave a comment below.

I’d love to know what you’re feeling grateful for as we round the corner into spring.  Or, you can just say, “Count me in.”  Four winners will be chosen, at random, after midnight on April 9.  Good luck to all!

(And, if receiving a signed and gift-wrapped book is something you just don’t want to leave to chance, you can also order signed, wrapped copies through my local bookstore by clicking HERE.)

UPDATE:  Thanks so much for all your comments and lovely support!  And congratulations to the four winners of gift-wrapped copies of Magical Journey:  Jennifer Lawson, Lisa Coughlin, Linda Groff, and Linda Warschoff.

 

You have traveled too fast over false ground;

Now your soul has come to take you back.

Take refuge in your senses, open up

To all the small miracles you rushed through.

Become inclined to watch the way of rain

When it falls slow and free.

Imitate the habit of twilight,

Taking time to open the well of color

That fostered the brightness of day.

Draw alongside the silence of stone

Until its calmness can claim you.

           ― John O’Donohue, from “A Blessing for One Who is Exhausted”

Hard as it is for my mom to be away from her fourteen-year-old cocker spaniel for a few hours, let alone three days, she couldn’t bear the thought of not being present for her sister’s grandson’s wedding up north this weekend.  My Aunt Gloria’s been gone for three years.  But this winter, my mother says, has been harder than the first one without her; she is missing her big sister more these days, not less.  Being with her extended family, staying in a hotel with my dad in Newport, watching the first grandson take a bride – none of that would fill in the hole carved by loss, but it would make her feel a bit closer to her sister and remind her she wasn’t alone in missing her.  Of course, she was torn between going and staying home with her dog.

“I’ll come down there and take care of Justin, so you can go to the wedding,” I promised her weeks ago, happy to fill in some empty March days on my calendar with a trip to Florida and grateful for any excuse to have a visit with my mom.

“Words Justin knows (but can’t hear),” she wrote in the extensive care-and-feeding manual she left for me.  “Sit. Stay. Off.”  Justin is sweet-natured, deaf, and, above all else, a creature of routine: up to pee at 5 am, breakfast at 5:03, back to bed til 7, dinner at 4:30, a walk at dusk, playtime, bed.  During the day, between periodic call-of-nature visits to a small circle of bleached crab grass in the backyard, he sleeps.

“I’m looking forward to this,” I assured my mother as she packed her suitcase on Friday.  “I’ve been going nonstop since December. Three days alone, with no one who needs me for anything, will be a luxury.”

I meant it.  It feels as if the only conversation I haven’t had lately is one with myself.  So, I had my own plans for the weekend:  disconnect totally and do nothing.  I would read, think, write in my journal. Allow my soul to welcome me back.

What a relief it would be, I was certain, to just close up shop on my life for a couple of days.  I vowed to take a technology holiday — leave my laptop asleep in its case, my phone on vibrate, my emails unread, incoming texts unanswered, my Facebook status unchanged, my Amazon sales figures unchecked.

Yesterday, all alone in my mother’s house, I erected my cathedral of quiet.

And then, moment by moment, I struggled to live inside it.  All day long, I fought against the uneasy, unfamiliar discomfort of keeping company with my own silent, non-doing self.  How humbling, to realize I’ve lately grown so accustomed to distraction and busyness that it’s a challenge to simply stop in one place and be, to inhabit an empty space in time without giving in to the impulse to fill it up.

For months now, I’ve been in high gear, doing not only my normal every-day stuff (shopping, cooking, cleaning, mothering) but also the adrenaline-rush stuff of traveling, giving readings and talks, connecting, and promoting –  what I’ve come to think of as the job of being a person who’s written a book.  And I’ve loved just about every minute of my own thrilling Magical Journey.  It’s been a privilege to visit bookstores all over the country and a joy to hear from readers, to receive their thoughtful, heartfelt letters, to meet new friends and reconnect with old ones.

At the same time, I have to wonder:  have I become so used to being connected somewhere, to something, all the time, that making a deliberate choice to unplug and shut up, even for a day or two, has become a challenge?

“Stop,” I kept reminding myself yesterday, each time I reflexively reached for my phone, “just to check my email,” until at last I just stuck it out of sight in a drawer.

Pausing just to be sounds simple enough in theory, but it can be wildly hard. Making a choice to inhabit a windswept interior emptiness rather than trying to stuff it full of mental furniture feels awkward, even a little scary.  “Is this all there is?”  my busy mind kept demanding, casting about for something, anything, to do or worry about or fixate upon.

Having grown used to velocity as my automatic response to complexity, I’ve become pretty efficient when it comes to getting things done, but somewhat less graceful, apparently, in repose.  Give me a to-do list, and I know how to power through to the bottom line.  But even competence comes at a cost.  Give me a day without an internet connection or a deadline or a self-imposed goal to be met or a finish line to cross, and all my self-doubts and vulnerabilities come rushing out to meet me, jostling for position, demanding to be seen and heard.

I floundered around for a while, at odds with myself, rubbed raw by the rough edges of my own solitude.  It was hard to sit still, hard even to focus deeply and completely on the pages of the book I very much wanted to read.  I did some yoga and tried to match slow steady breaths to slow steady movements.  I took the dog for a walk, frittered the hours away, spoke to no one.  I didn’t try to get Justin to read my lips, as my mom does, or engage in doggie small talk he couldn’t hear, just to break the silence.  I resisted the urge to email a friend, to text my sons, call my husband, or turn on the TV and catch up on Downton Abbey.

In the end, I stretched out in a lawn chair, put down my book, and gazed up into the turquoise expanse of sky. Finally, time slowed down.  Finally, I felt something inside me begin to soften and settle, to release and let go.

This morning, I’ve been reading a memoir called “Until I Say Good-bye,” by Susan Spencer-Wendell, who was diagnosed with ALS two years ago, at the age of forty-four.  Knowing she had, at best, one good year of life left, Susan made a deliberate choice: to plant a garden of memories for her beloved husband and their three young children, and to cultivate joy in whatever time remained for her.

She wrote her book in three months, painstakingly using her one good finger to type into the Notes function on her iPhone.  By the time she was finished, she had lost her mobility, her voice, nearly everything except her courage, her consciousness, and her conviction that although she had no control over her illness, she could control the attitude she brought to her approaching death.  Certain the greatest gift she can give her family is her own acceptance of her fate, Susan is facing the end head on; as her book makes its way in the world, she is preparing, with little fanfare, to leave it.

Last week, following up on an earlier  interview conducted a few months ago when she could still speak, Scott Simon asked Susan how she is doing.  Her written reply to him was simple, straightforward, tremendously moving: “As well as can be expected. My body and voice become weaker every single day, but my mind becomes mightier and more quiet. You do indeed hear more in silence.”

She is right, of course.  And so, with gratitude now, and a good bit more ease than I felt yesterday, I sit outside at my mother’s quiet house, beneath the rustling palms, and watch the sun go down. I receive John O’Donohue’s words of blessing into my being, and feel what it means to imitate the habit of twilight.  I wonder whether, if I abide here long enough, a well of color might somehow open within me, too, just as the evening sky itself grows diaphanous at last light, the clouds translucent veils of rose and gold and mauve.

 

Magical Journey News

On the web

I never thought much about how my yoga practice has shaped my work as a writer, and vice versa, until Kate Hopper at Motherhood and Words, asked me some probing questions about both craft and practice in this lovely interview.

Other recent interviews and blog posts I’ve loved are:

Ali Edwards’s beautiful review. Click here.

An interview HERE, with Harriet Cabelly at her inspiring and rapidly expanding Rebuild Your Life site.

Amy Makechnie’s  brand new and engaging “fascinating person” series,  HERE.

 

Appearances

There’s a bit more magical journeying in my future, and a few new events on the calendar that I’m very excited about — each one an opportunity to meet wonderful, like-minded women, to listen and share our stories, and to reweave and reaffirm our connections with one another.

Next:  A reading and conversation at the Annapolis Book Festival on April 13 with Donna Jackson Nakazawa, author of The Last Best Cure.  (More about this terrific book, and a give-away, here very soon!) In the meantime, do visit Donna’s website and get to know her there.

It seems to me that the best book conversations (well, the best conversations in general) are the ones that take place over a good meal. So my writing buddy Margaret Roach and I were thrilled to be invited to speak and read at a luncheon hosted by The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, CT, on Friday, April 19.  Details to follow; in the meantime, you can call the store for more info.

I first “met” Priscilla Warner right here last June, when she left a comment on a blog post I’d written.  I immediately read her wonderful memoir Learning to Breathe, she read my manuscript of Magical Journey and encouraged me through every step of the final revision, and pretty soon it felt as if we’d been friends forever — even though we STILL haven’t ever laid eyes on each other.  That will change next month, when I go to Larchmont, NY, to speak at the Public Library  on Sunday, April 19, at 3:30 — an event Priscilla helped organize, in part, so I can finally come visit her.

Other spring-time journeys:

Margaret and I are doing our very last bookstore “duet” at the Concord Bookshop on Sunday, April 28, at 3.  (Think daffodils, home made cookies, and wide-ranging conversation– everything from the thorny questions of midlife to composting secrets revealed!)

I’ll be back at Ann Patchett’s beautiful Nashville bookstore Parnassus on Thursday, May 2, at 7 pm.

And from Nashville, I’ll go straight to Minneapolis for my final two readings this spring: The annual Motherhood and Words talk at the Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 4 and, finally, to cap it all off, a reading at Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor’s beloved bookstore in downtown St. Paul on Monday, May 6.  Minneapolis friends, St. Olaf connections, Twin Cities readers, I want to see you all there! 

As always, HUGE thanks to all of you who are creating this community of like-minded souls and keeping the word of mouth going by writing reviews on Amazon, showing my video to your friends, or sharing my blog posts on your Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.  Every week, this newsletter is going out to more people — there are well over 2,ooo subscribers now, but I’d love to widen this circle even more.  My Magical Journey Facebook page, which started with exactly zero followers in November, now has nearly 2500.  (That really DOES feel like magic.)

 

 

Waiting to find out which colleges will accept Jack for next fall. (So far, one yes, one no, one wait list.) Waiting to see what choices he’ll make and which school — after a year of working and living on his own and figuring out whether he even wants to go to college at all — will finally feel like “the one.” Waiting to see if the next round of X-rays will show further healing in his two broken vertebrae. Waiting for his pain to disappear. Waiting to find out if he’ll be able to play tennis again or have to content himself with being a passionate fan. Waiting to learn which doors have closed in his young life and which have yet to open before him.

We’re waiting to hear if the job Henry has his heart set on will pan out. Waiting for the musical he’s co-directing to be performed. Waiting to know where he’ll be working for the summer. Waiting to find out where he’ll be living next year. Waiting to see if he’s going to need a car. Waiting for him to decide whether grad school is still part of the picture. Waiting to see if the pull of a someday-maybe Broadway dream turns out to be as powerfully alluring as the illusion of security conferred by a paycheck and a plan.

We are waiting for two young adults’ ever-shifting and unknowable futures to become the nailed-down and predictable present-tense, for dreams to become reality, hopes to be realized, expectations fulfilled, applications accepted or denied, next steps executed, careers  revealed, life to turn this way or that.

And then another letter arrives from a reader who has lost a child. I turn the calendar to March and realize it’s been ten years since my dear friend’s son was murdered three months before his college graduation while trying to save a teammate who was being beaten on a street corner. I open the newspaper and read the headline: “BU student dies at party.” A new friend on Facebook posts that, had her daughter lived, she would be turning twelve today. I find myself in tears as I read Emily Rapp’s fiercely moving memoir of parenting her son Ronan, who died of Tay- Sachs disease last month, just shy of his third birthday.

Life is long, I like to tell myself. But of course, that isn’t always true. Everything will turn out for the best, we assure our children, and ourselves. But that’s not always the case either. Sometimes life is cut short. And sometimes the most beautiful dreams are derailed by tragedy. Sometimes children get sick or hurt and sometimes they leave us. How foolish and naive, to think we think we can skim along on the surface of life without cultivating, at the same time, an intimate relationship with its dark and unknown depths. And how much we sacrifice when we trade the quiet, unobtrusive pulse of the moment that is right here, right now, for the false promise of some brightly imagined future.

Last night, while Henry and his dad watched the Celtics game on TV, I climbed into bed with Emily Rapp’s book, Still Point of the Turning World. Ronan’s brief life was never about making progress or racking up achievements; he was only nine months old when his parents were told their baby boy was going to die. Emily’s task, then, wasn’t ever to prepare her son to succeed in the world, but to love him just as he was for as long as he was here. Somehow, every moment of her mothering had to contain multitudes: both the joy of being Ronan’s mom and the grief of letting him go.

Perhaps there is no one better suited to speak to us distracted, harried, future-oriented parents than a mother who has had no choice but to live in the “now” and to embrace her child in the moment because he will not live long enough to have a “someday.”

“How does the knowledge that nothing lasts forever and that all of our time is limited change the way we approach the world?” Emily asks.

And then, like the best spiritual mentors, she answers her own unanswerable question with more questions:

“Will we be fearless in our pursuit to live a life we consider big and beautiful, no matter what other people might think of our choices and no matter what difficult changes we might have to make? How does this knowledge affect the way we parent? Not knowing what tomorrow will bring, would we be so concerned with our children’s ‘progress’ and perhaps more interested in activities that simply make them happy?”

The sun is rising as I type these words, pouring light into the sky after two days of snow. In a few minutes, I’ll shut down my computer, take a shower, go out for blueberry pancakes with my husband and older son. Later today, I’ll do a reading at the bookstore in the town where I grew up. I’ll hold up the 12-foot long piece of blue finger-knitting that Jack did when he was five, giving me the title for my first book, Mitten Strings for God, which contained everything I knew as a young mother about slowing down and paying attention. And then I’ll drive to the bus stop and pick up my 20-year-old son and bring him back to the house for dinner. We’ll light the candles, hold hands for a moment before we start to eat, say “Blessings on the meal and each other.”

I will mention, as I always do when we’re all home together, how happy I am to have everyone at the table. My husband will agree and our sons, who have yet to fully comprehend that each human life is a progression of farewells, will no doubt roll their eyes.

And then I’ll remind myself: there is nothing to wait for. All we need, we have.

To read an essay by Emily Rapp and watch her Today Show appearance, click here. 

And I cannot recommend her exquisitely written and profoundly generous book, Still Point of the Turning World, highly enough.

 

Magical Journey News

 

Months before my book was published, I told my friend Ann Patchett that my only real aspiration as an author was to do an event at her bookstore. So it was definitely a disappointment to get all the way to Nashville during publication week in January, only to have an ice storm shut the entire city down an hour before I was supposed to read. Happily, we’ve rescheduled just before Mother’s Day. I’ll be back at Parnassus on Thursday, May 2.

From Nashville, I’ll go straight to Minneapolis for my last two appearances: The annual Motherhood and Words talk at the Loft Literary Center on Saturday, May 4 and, finally, to cap it all off, a reading at Common Good Books, Garrison Keillor’s beloved bookstore in downtown St. Paul on Monday, May 6. I can’t wait! (And then I’m looking forward to coming home for good, stowing my suitcase in the closet, and digging in the garden.)

Magical Journey is a book that seems to sell one copy at at a time, as one reader says to another, “Here, I think you’ll like this, too.” I haven’t seen it piled up on any bookstores’ front tables (except right here in my own hometown). There were no print ads, no big TV breaks, barely any reviews. And yet I am learning not to underestimate the power of word of mouth, of women’s passionate enthusiasm for books that speak to our real experience, and of our generosity toward one another. This morning, I signed 20 copies of Magical Journey and The Gift of an Ordinary Day for one California reader who is sending them to her special friends. This is word of mouth and then some!

Meanwhile, the online ripples continue to spread outward. If you’ve contributed to those widening circles — by liking my Facebook page, writing a review on Amazon, showing my video to your friends, or sharing my blog posts on Facebook and Twitter — thank you! (And if you’d like to help me by helping my book find its way in the world, these are quick and highly effective ways to keep it moving!) As you know, I’m always happy to sign bookplates (just drop me an email or FB message) and I can personalize copies of any of my books through my local bookstore, which will mail them right out to you. (That link is HERE.)

Loved these recent reviews and interviews:

Ali Edwards is a rock star to crafty types, with a huge and devoted following (and no wonder, her message about telling our own ordinary stories with words and pictures is as inspiring as it is irresistible). So of course I was pretty thrilled to be featured on her blog this week. Click here to read her lovely piece.

The Ali ripple effect actually began HERE, with Harriet Cabelly’s terrific Rebuild Your Life site.

I was honored when Amy Makechnie asked if I’d be her first interviewee in her new “fascinating person” series; I should have known she’d come up with questions as engaging as she herself is. Read the whole Maisymak interview HERE.

Two days after New Years, with both sons back at school, I flew to Florida and set up camp in the guest bedroom of my parents’ house. My mom, keeping her promise not to tempt me with distractions, went about her carefree retiree’s life. Meanwhile, I holed up in my self-created bunker, sitting cross-legged on the bed for hours on end, bent over my laptop, pretending no one would ever read what I was writing. My immediate goal was not to send words out into the world, but to be quiet and disciplined and attentive enough to find out if I actually had anything to say.

Now, twelve months later, the book that finally began to take shape during those weeks is in the bookstores. The irony of the title Magical Journey, of course, is that I didn’t actually go much of anywhere, except in search of a bit of solitude and silence. Sometimes the most challenging journeys aren’t the ones that require backpacks and sturdy shoes, but rather a willingness to turn inward, to seek something deep and as yet unformed within ourselves. And sometimes, as the last two weeks have revealed to me, it is the work done in lonely isolation that ultimately forges and affirms our most essential human connections out in the world.

This morning, home again after a flurry of nonstop travel and bookstore appearances, I paged through the journal I kept last winter. Every day, I attempted to clear my mind and face my fears by writing longhand in a notebook before turning on my laptop and confronting my manuscript. A few excerpts from those arduous, uncertain days exactly a year ago:

“I am so slow. What I’ve written is probably not terrible. I’m trying to convince myself that it is at least good enough. Yet moving forward feels really hard. What is the right attitude? Maybe just to try to keep on writing without judging, to think my thoughts and feel my feelings, and get something down on the page, and then decide later whether it’s any good or not.”

And this:

“The slowness, the uncertainty. What am I learning from this process? That in my writing, first and foremost, I must put my faith in the truth. That the truth is mundane, embarrassing at times, difficult to distill clearly, yet still worth reaching for. That the only way through is through. That it doesn’t get easier. That living wholeheartedly can mean going within, rather than without. Not fun, exactly, but wholehearted nonetheless.”

And also:

“So strange to be in a time of life, a place, where Steve and Henry and Jack can all be living separate lives in different places. They are doing just fine away from me; I’m the one who feels the loss of all that used to be. All I used to be. Guess that’s what it’s been like for my own mom for years now. Perhaps I’ll get used to it. I feel alive in different ways – alive when I’m needed at the center of my family, making dinner or having a heart-to-heart with one of the boys, keeping all the balls in the air. And alive in a totally different way now, in solitude, when all the structure and to-dos fall away, and I’m left with my own thoughts, my own demons and dreams, my own inner landscape. Time slows. There is nothing to do but honor my commitment to keep at this, uncomfortable and hard as it is. But I wonder: to write from this vulnerable place, to be who I really am on the page – is this in itself some kind of path or calling? Perhaps, for now anyway, it is. And perhaps, if I can just stick it out, it will even lead to joy. Or at least lead me back out of myself, with some sense of where I’m meant to go next.”

Yesterday, my friend Dani Shapiro, wrote a thoughtful, lovely post about the difference between taking risks in life and on the page. Most of us, as she points out, will go to any length to keep our loved ones safe. Learning how to assess risk is part of growing up; making prudent calls, at the heart of every mother’s job description. And yet, says Dani, “When it comes to the writer’s life, risk is what it’s all about.”

She’s right, of course. We have to step out on that high wire again and again, even though we teeter with every step, even though we’re dogged by insecurity: “Maybe it won’t work. . . . Maybe it will suck. Maybe I’ll waste my time and precious energy on a piece of prose that will be dead on arrival.”

I don’t suppose there’s any way to avoid the inexorable loneliness of the process, the feelings of frustration and powerlessness that come at the end of a day in which the only thing you really accomplished was staying put in your chair. Still, I wish that when I was sitting alone with myself in that Florida bedroom, I could have flashed forward a year, to the joyous scene last week in a hotel room in Nashville.

Every single woman from my book group had flown in earlier in the afternoon to celebrate the launch of Magical Journey with me and to attend my reading at Ann Patchett’s beautiful bookstore, Parnassus. On that first evening, we were all gathered together, toasting our trip, our thirteen years of books and lives shared, and the publication of this new memoir of mine (despite the fact that the work of writing it had kept me from attending a single meeting last year.)

The conversation soon turned to vulnerability, and risk, and the importance of sharing our stories, even the painful ones. After all these years together, we trust one another completely, hold little back, know that we can close the door and bare our souls in safety. And yet, as my friends began to share their first reactions to my book, we found ourselves talking as well about taking risks in public and on the page. And how, perhaps, in taking some risks myself, I’ve cleared a space in which other women might be more willing to share their own stories, or at least come to feel a little less alone.

This, it seems to me, is the reason any writer undertakes the speculative work of memoir. Not so much to tell “what happened,” as to illuminate the slow, halting process by which we learn to make our peace with what is. And in that vulnerable revealing, in the stumbling, wayward truth of that story, lies something that is worth offering: not the gift of what we have accomplished but rather the gift of who we really are.

To be vulnerable on the page is indeed a risk – hang yourself out on the line, and anyone can come along and take a swing at you. Yet my own experience over these last two weeks has been the opposite. People are kind, and words build bridges. As I’ve met and talked with readers in Connecticut and Nashville and Washington, DC, and as I’ve read and responded to the letters and Facebook messages and emails from strangers, I’ve been moved deeply by the stories women have shared with me, joyful stories of change and growth, but also intimate stories of loss and hardship, suffering and grief. Stories told in confidence within this safe space, a space created by kinship and kindness and courage. Publishing a book, any book, is an act of faith – in oneself of course, but in one’s readers even more. How humbling and gratifying it is to have that faith returned a thousandfold.

I would not want to relive last January, all those days spent, as Dani says, “in the teeming, writhing darkness,” trying to beat back my own self-doubt long enough to make something lasting and sturdy out of words. But I’m glad now that I did it. What I’m learning, I think, is something one of my most admired writers, Anne Morrow Lindbergh, knew all too well.

“I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches,” she writes in Gift from the Sea. “If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness, and the willingness to remain vulnerable.” This, it seems to me, is the work of the writer: finding something of value to add to the suffering. Sometimes, yes, it is isolating, to dwell in that place of risk and revelation. And yet what we find on the other side is so worth the effort: community, connection, kinship, healing. Nothing less than the road back to grace.

To all of you who are supporting the birth of this book with your heartfelt letters, your messages, your words of encouragement, your online reviews and your real live attendance at my readings, a most heartfelt thank you. I am honored to be a part of this ongoing conversation, to meet you and to share the path with you, to be reminded that none of us journeys alone, that we are all connected, that my story is your story — and vice versa.

News from the road. . .

Building an audience is the writer’s job once the book is published — and that’s what I’m up to now.  (A far cry from that writerly solitude of a year ago.)  Want to help me spread the word?

Here are three things you can do:

1. Write a brief review on Amazon.

2.  Like my page on Facebook and share posts with your friends.

3. Share the book!  (One of my favorite stories: A reader wrote to tell me she was ordering five copies for friends for Valentines Day.  No sooner had she placed her order than an Amazon rep called to ask if there had been some mistake.  “No,” she replied, “I loved this book, so I’m buying more for my friends.”  The Amazon clerk read the description and said, “It does sound good.  I’m going to buy it too!”  Talk about word of mouth!)

Also, check my Events page to see if I’m coming to a bookstore near you. I’m visiting lots of independent bookstores — we need these stores in our towns, and they need our business to survive.  (This week I’ll be in:  Concord, NH; Portsmouth, NH; Manchester, VT; and Cohasset, MA.)

If you haven’t read Priscilla Gilman’s probing interview with me, Click Here.

A nice review from the Chicago Tribune (Editor’s Choice).

Finally, a word about The View from My Window, the collection of blog posts my husband gave me for Christmas.  Your comments — all 264 of them!–stunned me.  I read each one of them with gratitude.  And then I wished I could send every single one of you a copy of the book.  Which of course made me think:  there has to be a way.  For now, all I can say is, stay tuned. (This sounds like a project to take up a bit later, after Magical Journey is well on its way.)  Meanwhile, congratulations to winners Ann Laurence and Louise Olmstead, whose names were drawn at random on my pub. date.  

She was sixty, a gentle, charming Southern housewife with dreams of finally publishing the enormously long novel she’d spent years writing — years when cancer and chemotherapy and its complications had kept her confined to her house, and the joy of creating characters she loved had kept her going.

I was twenty-five, an earnest, aspiring New York editor who was certain I’d just discovered my first prize in the slush pile.  “Cold Sassy Tree could become a classic,” I confidently predicted in my typewritten manuscript report.  “It needs some cutting, but we MUST publish it.”

Not quite ready to trust my eager enthusiasm, my boss had his wife read the manuscript.  She agreed with me.  And so it was that Olive Ann became a first-time author and, in doing so, allowed me to become a first-time editor.

In the process, we became friends. In those more leisurely, pre-internet days (this was 1983!), she typed long, chatty letters to me, full of anecdotes about her family and friends in Atlanta.  Thrilled to be engaged in an actual “literary correspondence,” I answered every one.  We spoke on the phone, too, nearly daily for months, as she revised and as I cut pages, both of us trying to whittle her 640-page novel down to a more manageable size.  (I wanted to excise what I called “the dying stories,” long, rambling, invariably funny accounts of the demises and funerals and burials of various minor characters and their relatives.  Olive Ann insisted that every Southerner appreciated a good dying story, and that my failure to do so was just evidence of my constrained Yankee heritage.  We compromised.)

Olive Ann’s book was a hit, and it did become something of a minor classic, assigned in schools all over the South, featured on Oprah long before the advent of her first book club, and made into a movie starring Faye Dunaway.  Sales were brisk. And Olive Ann was in demand everywhere.  After all those years of being confined to her sick bed, she was thrilled to be in remission, and delighted to clip on her dangly earrings, put on a sparkly scarf, and go forth to meet her fans.  “I’m a ham!” she would proudly announce to her adoring audiences. And then she would entertain them for an hour, telling wildly improbable yet, she swore, absolutely true stories in her soft Southern drawl.

I was thinking of Olive Ann this morning, as I sponged down the kitchen counter and swept the sand off the mudroom floor.  Although she died in 1990, I can summon the sound of her voice still, that musical intonation, her way of turning everything into a story you wanted to hear.

Houghton Mifflin hosted an elegant party in Atlanta on the day Cold Sassy Tree was published, and I got to fly down from our New York office for the big event.  Rosalynn Carter was there, and various other luminaries and sophisticates.  I finally met “my” author for the first time in person, and was startled by how beautiful she was.  (She admitted to being a little surprised by the looks of me, too.  “Why, I thought you would be chubby,” she said, “you have a chubby voice.”)

But what I remember most vividly was Olive Ann’s admission that night that, even though she was all dressed up and the star of her own glamorous party, with people lining up to get her to sign their books, there was still no escaping the ordinariness of her real life.

“I thought that when I became an au-u-u-thor,” she said, drawing out the word, “it would be like in a fairy tale, and I would turn into, well, a princess.  So I was kind of surprised this morning when I looked down at my feet, and realized I still had to cut my toenails!”

Indeed.  My book Magical Journey is officially published today.  I’ve been on the radio since 7 am this morning,  and will be in my car driving north to a bookstore luncheon tomorrow.  There’s a party on Saturday night, and the next day I’ll fly to Nashville, to give a reading at Ann Patchett’s bookstore.  My calendar for the next two months is full of travel and appointments and  appearances.   (Check out my EVENTS page to see if I’ll be at a bookstore near you!) Exciting, nervous-making, exhausting.  And, to me right now, all a little unreal.

So, at the moment, I’m sitting here on the couch, looking at my own toenails.  And realizing I should absolutely give them a trim.  Meanwhile, there are few other things on my plate as well:  Jack’s college essay needs another read, the dog’s butt is stinky, there’s something wrong with the printer, and the car is due for an oil change.  The kitchen floor needs vacuuming.  We are out of milk.  This is my day.  This is my life — pub day or not.  Thank goodness.  And thank you Olive Ann, where ever you are, for reminding me to keep my feet on the ground and my toenails looking nice.

 

And now, for the book news: 

MAGICAL JOURNEY is in stores today.

(Finally!) Of course, I’m eager for you to have it in your hands. In the meantime, though, here’s some early reaction — and opportunities to win your own  copy.

First:  If you haven’t seen the VIDEO, CLICK HERE.

Second: A few glorious reviews!

What could be better, than waking up on pub date to Lindsey Mead’s beautiful reflections?  

Here’s Beth Kephart’s lovely piece.

Jena Strong says her blog post is NOT a review; but no matter, I can’t imagine anything that could have pleased me more.

Am honored to have a reader and friend in the wise and wonderful Karen Maezen Miller.  She wrote here.

And a nice shout-out from Book Page.

Want to order a personalized & signed copy? My local bookstore is making it easy. CLICK HERE.

To read an excerpt, CLICK HERE.

Want to order now? CLICK HERE.

Interested in receiving a signed bookplate for a gift? (I’d be happy to send you as many as you need!) CLICK HERE. (Make sure to include your mailing address!)

Finally: GOODREADS still has a couple of copies to give away. To enter their drawing, CLICK HERE. 

This was the first review, from PUBLISHERS WEEKLY:

In this intensely moving tribute to the importance of enjoying every moment of life, Kenison (The Gift of An Ordinary Day), former longtime series editor of The Best American Short Stories, tells a tale inspired by loss and confides what can be gained from it. After a dear friend dies from cancer and her two sons head off to boarding school and college, Kenison is forced to question what remains relevant in her life and how such an introspective examination might portend a change in priorities. Identifying a common and paralyzing fear (“I am so used to doubting my worthiness that the minute I decide to do something, I start convincing myself I’m not up to the job”), she turns to intensive yoga studies, where she learns that “the best antidote to anxiety about the future is to be present in the here and now,” and that finding contentment in what one is rather than what one thinks one should be is critical. Her journey will inspire tears and determination, and remind readers that anything, “done from the heart, changes the world in some small way for the better.”

 

 

As a teenager and young woman, horses had been her passion, a passion that had no place in her adult life as a busy mother and full-time partner in my father’s business. Yet as she entered middle age, I think my mother began to worry that if she didn’t climb back on a horse soon, she might not ever do it again. Her greatest joy in life would be nothing but a passing memory, relegated to her unfettered past, a time before marriage and children and working for my dad conspired to ensure that her own hopes and dreams took a back seat to everyone else’s needs.

And so, on the cusp of forty, my mom bought herself a horse and proceeded to fall hopelessly in love all over again — with her spirited three-year-old Morgan and with the smells of sawdust and grain and fresh hay and saddle soap. Of course, the horse needed a place to live. We left the modest in-town house attached to my dad’s dental office on a busy road, where my brother and I had spent most of our lives, and moved out to the country, to a remote 1765 cape with a barn, deep in the woods and surrounded by trails. A house of low ceilings and wide, sloping floorboards, steeped in silent history.

For months, most nights after his last patient, my father slipped away to work on that old sleigh, rebuilding it from a broken down skeletal form, cleaning and polishing the runners, refurbishing all the parts, upholstering a new black leather seat, priming and painting and detailing the bright red panels and the glossy black trim. He raced against the clock, working late into the night and every available weekend hour, to make sure it was finished, perfect, by Christmas morning.

Many of my childhood memories are hazy. The horses, the sleigh, even the barn itself are long gone. But I can easily recall the dazzlingly bright Christmas morning when my dad hitched up my mom’s horse, lifted her up into the seat of the sleigh he’d made for her, and took her for a ride.

What I remember, of course, is this great labor of love on my father’s part; how, in giving her this extraordinary gift from his own heart and hand, he was really saying: “I see you. I know who you are and I know what you love, and I honor that.”

This Christmas, my husband Steve gave me the equivalent of my mother’s sleigh, a gift that is so much more than the thing itself.

I knew, over these last two years, that I was writing a book; in fact, it was never out of my mind. Even when I wasn’t working on it, I was working on it. Of course, I was also living my life, taking care of my family, spending time with my friends, writing this weekly blog.

I began the blog the week before The Gift of an Ordinary Day was published, back in the fall of 2009. My publisher had told me I needed a website, and that I should write something for it. But until the day I wrote my own first blog entry, I wasn’t exactly sure what a blog was; I’d never even seen one.

Once I started writing, though, I didn’t stop. I loved taking time out of the busyness of life to sit quietly and reflect on the meaning of the living, loved gathering up my thoughts and trying to make some sense of them, searching for the story beneath the story, the one that would give depth and shape to my experience and perhaps begin to illuminate the experiences of others as well.

Even more, I loved the conversation that soon got underway here, the thoughtful comments from you, my readers, the glimpses you’ve offered into your own lives and passions and predicaments, the heartfelt support you’ve extended to me as I’ve shared mine.

And yet, I’ve never thought of these pieces as much more than parts of that ongoing conversation, temporal and fleeting, musings that are very much of the moment in which they were written.

Turns out, my husband saw things a little differently. Perhaps he understands, even better than I do, what matters to me and why. And so months ago, unbeknownst to me, he began to gather these three years worth of pieces into a book. The result is the beautiful 350-page illustrated hardcover volume I opened on Christmas morning.

He titled the book The View from My Window, and for the jacket he shot a photo of our mountains, as I see them every single morning from my spot at the kitchen sink. He chose photos, wrote captions, assembled and re-read and copy-edited three years worth of my posts. He hired a proofreader, designed the pages and the cover, and asked a printer friend in Minnesota to produce a print run of thirty elegantly bound copies.

To say I was surprised on Christmas morning to find out I’d written not one book but two, would be an understatement. Realizing that my husband had been laboring for months, in hours when I’d assumed he was working on his own stuff, to produce a book printed and published just for me, reminded me of the long-ago efforts of my dad.

At the same time, this gesture is entirely in character for my husband, who shares my passion for books and who is at heart a publisher himself. We met, after all, at work, back when he was the marketing director at Houghton Mifflin Company and I was an aspiring young editor there. Little wonder then, that all these years later, the gift from his heart was this: to lovingly collect my words and give them back to me between two covers.

I’m not sure what to do with these books. I will give them to a few close family members and friends and save a couple for my sons and their families. But I also know that without you, the readers of this blog, The View from My Window wouldn’t exist. I would have stopped writing here long ago if it weren’t for the connection and sense of community we’ve created in this place — together.

And so, with the publisher’s gracious permission, I’d like to give away two copies of this (very) limited edition to you, the readers who show up here week after week, to read and respond and share your own stories with me and with one another. (To enter to win, just leave a comment below. I will draw two names at random on January 8 — publication date for Magical Journey!)

Today, as the snow fell softly outside, I opened my new book and began to read. It seemed right somehow, that as I bid good-bye to 2012 and prepare to welcome a new book into the world just a week from now, I pause to look backward as well as forward. Here, then, are a few of my posts from the past. Perhaps you will remember them. If you’re new to this space, perhaps you will be happy to read them for the first time.

Blessings to you and yours for a joyful new year. May you be happy. May you be well. May you be safe. May you be peaceful and at ease.

“Adulthood for Amateurs,” Oct. 26,2009

“Good-byes,” Jan. 3, 2010

“Asking for Help,” Feb. 4, 2010

“You Have What I Want,” Jan. 7, 2011

Charlotte’s Web, written and read by E.B. White
At dinner a few weeks ago a dear friend and I talked about our all-time favorite books. Charlotte has been at the top of my list for decades. I cherished it as a child, read it many times to my own sons, and then, as they learned to read themselves, loved hearing them read it to me, complete with voices for each animal. (When I read, I would always have to hand the book over to one of the boys for the last chapter; I could never make it through without tears.)

Last spring the New York Times published a piece in honor of Charlotte’s 60th anniversary; turns out E.B. White couldn’t read the final pages of his own book without choking up. It took him 17 tries to get through Charlotte’s death; even so, he read the ending with a catch in his voice. I never knew an audio version existed, but of course I ordered it immediately and I finally listened this week, on my daily dog walks. In short: pure pleasure. The book holds up (more than that, it soars; every word is perfect). I smiled all the way through. I cried at the end. And then I came home and ordered more copies, for my dinner companion and for all the other book lovers on my list, young and old.

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell (and read by him, too)
My friend’s all-time favorite book is William Maxwell’s small, haunting reminiscence of a childhood friendship shattered by murder. I first read this spare, tender novel 27 years ago and it broke my heart then. My friend’s admiration inspired me to take it from the shelf again. On Thanksgiving night, I settled in by the fire and re-read it cover to cover. My friend is right: Maxwell has no peer.

In a few austere, breathtakingly powerful chapters, he explores the meaning of friendship, the scars of childhood loss, the price of passion, the meaning of love, the redemptive power of self-forgiveness. Turns out, Maxwell, who died in 2000, also recorded an unabridged version of his classic novel. And even though it’s fresh in my mind, I’m listening to it now, feeling as if I’ve just discovered a precious, priceless treasure. My holiday mantra for William Maxwell: Read. Listen. Give unto others.

Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel. (And Frog and Toad Audio Collection, performed by the author.)
Yes, I’m definitely on a listening kick. A lifelong passionate reader but a recent convert to audiobooks, I find myself looking forward to any excuse these days to lace up my sneakers, put in my earbuds, and head outside. (True confession: I’ve also missed a few exits on the interstate, so caught up have I been in the story unfolding over the car speakers.) Finding some of my all-time favorite works read by their authors has been a joy, and hearing the stories I love told to me as if by a friend is not a substitute for reading, it is a different experience entirely – intimate, intense, and wonderful.

Frog and Toad were, hands down, the most popular books in our household. Billed as “I Can Read Books,” they are so much more than beginning texts for six year olds. They are profound. They are hilarious. They are unforgettable. These two best pals are also so true-to-life in their depictions of friendship and the challenges of being alive and growing up that we all quote our favorite lines even now. Ask anyone in our family, “What literary characters reside permanently in your heart?” We would answer unanimously: Frog and Toad. We will never outgrow them. Nor will you.

The Snowman by Raymond Briggs.
When my boys were born, a friend of my mom’s began sending us a carefully chosen Christmas book each year. Over the years, as our library grew, these books became a sacred part of our holiday tradition. On Thanksgiving, we would carry the box of books up from the basement and then, each evening until Christmas, we would sit down on the couch and read aloud together. No matter that we read the same books over and over again; the best ones became our own private classics. The books that were truly magical, we discovered, never grew old.

The Snowman, a wordless story told in soft yet unforgettable pastel images, IS magic on a page. Sometimes we would “read” this book in complete, companionable silence. Sometimes we would talk about the snowman’s nocturnal adventures with the little boy who built him and and became his friend. Later, we bought the video and discovered that rare thing: a book that is actually enhanced by its leap from page to screen. Fortunately the video is also wordless; an exquisite, unforgettable score is the perfect accompaniment to the animated images, rendered painstakingly from the book and even more moving when brought to life. This book (once again available in hardcover – don’t buy the small boardbook edition or any of the knock-offs!) and/or video would make a memorable gift for any family on your list.

A Christmas Memory by Truman Capote.
We came late to this small, lovely reminiscence of a little boy’s holiday preparations with his odd, outcast aunt. Eight years ago, spending our first Christmas away from the house our boys had grown up in, we were all at a loss, feeling more sad and cranky than cheerful. One night after supper, in a somewhat desperate attempt to foster some holiday spirit, I literally forced my family to sit down for a story. There was grumbling and sighing – trying to get an 11-year-old and a high schooler and a husband to all agree to be read to is like herding cats – but, somewhat to my surprise, Truman Capote captivated us all.

We haven’t missed an annual read-aloud in the last eight years, and we often share this little-known classic now with assorted guests and friends who are delighted to hear it for the first time. This book, published in 1956, inspired Jack, at 11, to declare Truman Capote his favorite writer. Each year, we marvel anew at the perfection of the prose, the bittersweet humor, the way a strange, eccentric lady taught a sensitive child about the real meaning of Christmas and the grace of unconditional love. (For someone really special, look for the now out-of-print slipcased hardcover edition; it is still available from used booksellers, and worth having in your library.)

The House of Belonging by David Whyte.
This is the collection I will press into the hands of every poetry lover on my list this year. “Poetry,” says David Whyte, is “language against which we have no defenses.” I can say this: I have no defenses against the poetry of this soulful, wholehearted writer. Every poem I read by this man gives voice to what lives in my own heart. Reading him lifts my spirit, reminds me who I am and what I care about. He writes of dailiness and small moments, of nature and rootedness, hearth and home, love and belonging. This is poetry unadorned, simple and graceful and true. It is poetry that invites you to stop and listen to what is deep and silent within you, to pause in gratitude for your life, and to honor that life enough to nurture all that makes it good: our own work, solitude and connection, writing and reading, gardens and clean sheets, our children, our partners, our friends.

I hope you find as much pleasure in the words and voices (and images) of these writers as I have. It is a great pleasure to widen this reading circle, to introduce my most cherished literary friends to you. And do tell me: What books are you reading and sharing this holiday season?

From “The Winter of Listening” by David Whyte

Inside everyone
is a great shout of joy
waiting to be born.

Even with summer
so far off
I feel it grown in me
now and ready
to arrive in the world.

All those years
listening to those
who had nothing to say.

All those years
forgetting
how everything
has its own voice
to make itself heard.

All those years
forgetting
how easily
you can belong to everything
simpy by listening.

And the slow
difficulty of remembering
how everything
is born from
an opposite
and miraculous
otherness.

Silence and winter
has lead me to that
otherness.

So let this winter
of listening
be enough
for the new life
I must call my own.

(I encourage you to shop at your own independent bookstore this season. Links to Amazon may yield a small commission if books are purchased; I use those commissions to fund book giveaways on the website.)

Margaret, I knew, was holed up in her own snug little house three hours from mine, working on her garden memoir, “The Backyard Parables.” Most mornings, before settling down to serious work, we would send each other a Skype greeting.

“You ok up there?” she’d type, usually around 6 am, the hour both of us consider the best for getting any real thinking done.

“Yes,” I’d type back. “Plugging away.”

“I’m here,” Margaret would answer. And somehow, just knowing that she was, brought me comfort. We were a writers’ group of two, with book deadlines just weeks apart. Whenever the going got tough, as it seemed to at some point in nearly every day, either one of us could reach out. Commiseration was never more than a click away.

We didn’t show each other our manuscripts until we had both finished writing – among other quirks we have in common is a need to work in deep privacy. But when Margaret came to the end a few weeks before I did, I felt inspired to push onward myself – I knew she was waiting for me at the finish line, eager to exchange our first drafts.

What we found, as we each began to read, was perhaps inevitable. Margaret was chronicling a year in the garden she has loved and tended for twenty-five years. And I was writing about the challenges of adjusting to a new stage of life without children at home. Yet it turned out that, unbeknownst to either of us, many of our themes were identitical: loss, change, acceptance, transformation, aging, gratitude, grace.

Some of the parallels made us laugh as we scribbled exclamation notes in the margins: Turned out we had both stood in front of our respective bathroom mirrors, tugging our middle-aged, crepey neck skin up and back, contemplating the very distant possibility of a nip or tuck to tighten things up beneath the chin.

But we also realized, as we read one another’s work, that perhaps what had seemed unique to each of us as we labored away in solitude is in fact universal: married or single, mother or childless, employed or not, rich or poor, gay or straight, each and every one of us must eventually find a way to navigate the tricky passage between youth and age.

It seems that the great challenge of our middle years is to figure out how to move into and through the second half of life with joy. Joy even in the face of inevitable loss; equanimity even in the face of relentless change; wisdom and grace even as old roles and old dreams fall away and new ones are slow to take shape. We may travel different paths through life, and yet perhaps there is no woman anywhere who doesn’t long at some point for an inner road map, some kind of guidance as we are called to release our illusions of control, to let go of who we once were and to embrace who we have become.

Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me at all that my friend and I have both spent the last couple of years quietly grappling with these very challenges – for aren’t these also the topics of conversation whenever women come together and summon the courage to drop our public faces and share our true struggles and stories?

As it turned out, our publisher decided to bring our books out within a week of each other. And suddenly, it seemed that my sustaining vision – the two of us together, holding finished books in our hands – might actually become a reality. In October, at the New England Independent Booksellers’ Association meeting, we tried our idea out on some booksellers.

“You can have us separately if you want,” we said. “But we’d also be happy to come to your store together.” By the end of the weekend, we had a whole list of bookstores that liked the idea of our “duet.” And so it was that last week, the two of us sat side by side on a couple of stools at Margaret’s house and read aloud for the first time, to a room full of invited guests – our dress rehearsal, so to speak, to make sure the program we’ve been imagining all these months would actually work.

Wine was poured, dinner was eaten, and the conversation flowed. Our test audience was kind and enthusiastic, and the passages we chose to read seemed to speak to one another in two-part harmony – two friends, two lives, two voices, two books, with much in common and much to share. By the end of the evening, a room full of women who had arrived as strangers to one another were all chatting like old friends. I looked around and took a moment simply to allow myself to be grateful: for cameraderie and home made cookies, and also for the deep, spontaneous connections that the written word, when shared aloud, can always inspire.

“That was pretty fun,” Margaret and I agreed the next day over lunch, as we ate some lentil soup I’d brought to share with her. And so, come January, we are taking this show on the road.

In the meantime, learn more about our friendship, and The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life at Margaret’s blog, A Way to Garden.

You can read excerpts from both Magical Journey and from The Backyard Parables simply by clicking on the titles.

But perhaps the best way I can introduce you to my friend is by sharing her video with you. (To watch mine, just click HERE.)

It was Margaret’s idea to share the soup recipe as well. That’s below, followed by a list of all our joint appearances this winter. Mark your calendars! We’d love to meet you.

lentil soup, adapted by katrina

ingredients

• 2 Tablespoons olive oil
• 1 red onion, chopped finely, or one large shallot chopped
• 1 leek, white part only, chopped finely
• 2 celery branches, diced finely
• 4 twigs of thyme, chopped finely
• ½ teaspoon saffron
• 1 teaspoon cumin
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 3 branches of parsley or cilantro, plus more to garnish
• sea salt and pepper
• large can of diced tomatoes with their juice
• 2 tablespoons double concentrate tomato paste
• 2 cups dry French green lentils
• 2 carrots, peeled and sliced
• 2 cups peeled and diced ‘Butternut’ squash
• 4 cups water
• 2 cups white wine (or vegetable broth)
• 2 bay leaves
• 4 garlic cloves, finely minced

steps

• In large pot, heat oil, add thyme, cumin, turmeric, shallot, leek, celery, and cook, stirring, about 5 minutes, till veggies are softening.
• Add tomatoes, tomato paste, cook one minute.
• Add lentils, carrots, squash, cook one-two minutes.
• Add water, wine, bay leaves, cilantro, season w. salt and pepper, cover and simmer till lentils are tender, about 25 minutes.
• To serve: Ladle soup into deep bowls, top with a poached egg, a heaping tablespoon of creme fraiche (sour cream or yogurt can substitute), chopped cilantro or parsley leaves, and a dash of paprika.

(Recipe liberally adapted from “La Tartine Gourmande: Recipes for an Inspired Life” by Beatrice Peltre)

about our upcoming events

Margaret and I will be reading together from our two new books, “The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life” and “Magical Journey” An Apprenticeship in Contentment,” at bookstores and other venues around the Northeast this winter. Come join in our conversation–or invite us to visit your library or bookstore or book group (virtually by Skye, or in person) by emailing using this contact form.

• Saturday, January 19, 2 PM: at R.J. Julia Booksellers, Madison, CT.
• Saturday, January 26, afternoon: at Northshire Bookstore, Manchester Center, VT.
• Sunday, January 27, 3 PM: at Buttonwood Books, Cohasset, MA.
• Wednesday, January 30, 7 PM: at New England Mobile Book Fair bookshop, Newton Highlands, MA.
• Sunday, February 24, 3 PM: at the Concord (MA) Bookshop.
• Thursday, February 28, evening: at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, NY, hosted by memoir-teacher and author Marion Roach Smith.
• Saturday, March 2, 1-3 PM: at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Stockbridge, MA.
• Sunday, March 3, 3 PM: at Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY. (I’ll do a “365-Day Garden” lecture that same day at Battenkill, starting at 2 PM.)