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!

There is so much in my life to be grateful for. No one I know was injured last week.  All my loved ones are fine.  Nothing visible in my world has changed. And yet, I find myself blinking back tears at the slightest provocation or criticism or harsh word.  There is too much violence in the world.  Let us not add to it, not even with one more negative word or gesture.

The headlines in the newspaper are both an accounting and a measure of our collective sorrow: the suffering that spills across the pages in articles and images, the anger and confusion still searching for an outlet, the grief still so fresh and raw.  Looking at the photos of two brothers, one dead and one facing death or life imprisonment, I search in vain for some clue that would explain such calculated, senseless evil.  And then, because I am myself a mother of two boys, I can’t help but think: these boys are also someone’s sons.

At the same time, photos from the funerals remind us of all the other parents who are mourning.  The losses, and the ripples from those losses, are unfathomable. Yet in the midst of loss, there is extraordinary grace, too, and resilience. On TV, a composed young dancer’s face lights up as she tells Anderson Cooper how glad she is to be alive, even as she envisions her new life without her left foot.  She will dance again, she insists, leaning into her husband’s arms and gazing down at the bright pink bandage that wraps her stump.  And then she makes a promise: somehow, though she’s never been a runner herself, she intends to return to the Marathon next year – as a participant, even if it means she walks or crawls across the finish line.

There is more than one path toward healing, no one right way to grieve or to recover.  But after a week of monitoring the unfolding developments in Boston, after listening to this courageous young woman try to articulate why she is choosing not to look back in anger but to move forward with hope, I sense it’s time for a break from the relentless onslaught of news.  Time to find my own still center and embrace the texture of life as it is – not an easy task in the best of times, perhaps even more challenging today.

The sight of my welcoming house at the end of a long car ride Sunday night filled my heart to overflowing.  Hugging my husband and son after a weekend on the road, receiving a sweet text just now from a friend, bending down to the floor to snuggle my aging dog, reading a poem I love, watching the sun slip behind a cloud, just being – alive and aware and fully present in my own ordinary life – feels emotionally demanding, too.  It’s as if everything has become heightened, both the fragility of my own brief presence here, and the exquisite, complicated beauty of our interconnected human existence on this earth.

Maybe, for a time, we are meant to be this raw and tender.  Forced to acknowledge the dark shadow side of human nature and to feel the full brunt of that knowing, we have to face the truth:  People hurt each other.  Violence and suffering are intertwined, one giving rise to the other.  And somehow, it is up to each one of us to do better, to soften our hearts, to sing our songs even in the midst of sorrow, to take better care of ourselves and of one another.

I think of how many opportunities I have each day to be brave and vulnerable, to offer a hand, to make love visible – and how many of those opportunities I squander, because I’m too annoyed to be expansive, too scared to reach out, too distracted to notice, or too busy to bother.  And then I’m reminded of words I turn to again and again by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, words that guide me home when I stray away from the person I aspire to be:

Be brave…

“Anything you do from the soulful self will help lighten the burdens of the world. Anything. You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity can cause to be set in motion. Be outrageous in forgiving. Be dramatic in reconciling. Mistakes? Back up and make them as right as you can, then move on. Be off the charts in kindness. In whatever you are called to, strive to be devoted to it in all aspects large and small. Fall short? Try again. Mastery is made in increments, not in leaps. Be brave, be fierce, be visionary. Mend the parts of the world that are within your reach. To strive to live this way is the most dramatic gift you can ever give to the world.”

 Inspiration. . .

I first met Carrie Carriello three years ago, when she attended a reading of The Gift of an Ordinary Day.  She told me she was thinking about writing a book herself, and asked if I would read a few of her essays.  Her humor and  courage were evident in every paragraph.  I couldn’t imagine how this busy young mother could possibly take care of five rambunctious children, including an autistic son, and find time to write a book, too.  And yet I also had a feeling nothing was going to stop her; she was that determined to tell her family’s story and to share her special little boy with the rest of us. Today, What Color is Monday? is published.

It’s my pleasure to share Carrie’s video with you, in which she recalls the moment she knew for certain her special son would find his way in the world, thanks to a stranger’s generosity – a beautiful example of the way one small act of kindness can transform a life. Listening to Carrie, I’m inspired to reach a little higher myself — to love more, to be better, to be braver, to be kinder.  “You have no idea what the smallest word, the tiniest generosity can cause to be set in motion.”

Click here to watch.

 

 

“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.

 

Even now, though it’s been years since I reminded anyone to look both ways, the sight of a mom crossing the street hand-in-hand with a little guy with sleep-tufted hair and rolled up jeans fills my eyes with sudden, unbidden tears.

Arriving at an elementary school to give a talk one morning not long ago, watching parents bending low to kiss their children good-bye, observing the sea of bobbing backpacks, the bright art on the walls, the exuberance of  six-year-olds beginning their day, I was so overcome with emotion that I had to slip back out to my car for a few minutes and compose myself. Still, standing up at the podium in that room full of young mothers, I wasn’t quite sure I could trust my voice.

“Do you know,” I wanted to say to them, “how quickly this will all be over?  Do you realize just how sweet and rich your lives are right now? How fleeting?”

Of course, this is what older people have been saying to younger ones since time began.  And no one wants to hear it.

Busy, distracted, wondering how to transport the kids from point A to point B and pick up some food for dinner and get the homework done without too much of a fuss, an over-stretched, over-tired parent isn’t worrying about the end of childhood so much as how to survive the hours between 3:00 and bedtime.  I know that.  I’ve been that mom, too.

But it’s been a while since we had two boys still living at home full time, and what I’m most aware of now is not how endlessly long those days could be, but how quickly those years flew by. Adjusting to my new empty-nest reality, after over two decades of 24/7 mothering, has been a slow, bittersweet process.

         At times my nostalgia for our family life as it used to be – for our own imperfect, cherished, irretrievable past – is overwhelming.  The life    my husband and children and I had together, cast now in the golden light of memory, seems unbearably precious; what lies ahead, darker and lonelier and less certain.

When I first wrote those words, just two years ago, I couldn’t imagine ever feeling differently.  Even as my days slowly filled with new joys and occupations, I felt as if I also lived in the shadow of that darker, lonelier future.  With both my sons grown and gone, I wondered if any as-yet-unwritten life chapter could ever feel quite as right, quite as challenging and fulfilling, as those years of intense, day-in-day-out togetherness.

It is such a raw and relentless business, motherhood.  There is the constant physical engagement, at once exhilarating and exhausting. But there is also the vehement, insistent emotion; the frightening, thrilling ferocity of our love for these souls we’ve delivered into the world.

How many times was I brought to my knees by the visceral intimacy of tears and blood and poop, fevers and sweats and strange skin rashes, sibling battles and wild nightmares and crazy, irrational fears? And then, within the same hour sometimes, I would be lifted right up again, exalted and turned inside out by the accidental, extravagant grace of wild laughter or a whoop of glee, a whispered confession, a cuddle, an imponderable question, a kiss delivered to an elbow or a knee (why there??), some random joke without a punch-line that made us all giggle anyway.  When all of that ended, when first one son and then the other had the audacity to grow up and leave the nest, I was sure our family life would never again be quite as good.

Last weekend, both our boys were home.  We still had about three feet of snow on the ground and not much on the agenda – a lot of March Madness basketball on the TV, a couple of family dinners, unplanned hours. I made chicken potpie from scratch.  Jack (a skilled body worker after three years of interning at a studio in Boston) offered to get me up on the massage table and work on my stiff muscles.  For an hour he patiently stretched and manipulated my arms, neck, and shoulders, with extraordinary sensitivity and attentiveness.

On Sunday morning we went to church and listened to Henry play the organ.  As the light poured in through the tall windows,  as the choir sang the Palm Sunday anthem he’d chosen and rehearsed with them, I was flooded with memories of our son as a little boy straining to reach the foot pedals, practicing hymns on our old upright piano in the living room.  The tears that sprang to my eyes then weren’t tears of longing for what was, but of gratitude for all that’s come to be.

The journey between dreaming and becoming, between childhood and adulthood, doesn’t end, of course, when the kids head off for school or leave home or embark on careers or marriages.  It is ongoing, full of twists and turns, detours and disappointments, surprises and sudden revelations.

Who knew that what seemed like a catastrophic loss for one son – freshman year of college missed, two broken vertebrae and constant, chronic pain – would inspire this strong-willed boy who once fantasized about being a tennis star to become a compassionate healer instead?  And how could we have ever imagined that the shy, dreamy child who seemed almost too frail for this world at times, would one day grow up to be a competent, self-assured music director, perfectly at ease performing in front of a congregation and coaching singers four times his age?

In the afternoon last Sunday, between basketball games and my marathon in the kitchen, Steve and the boys and I all put on our boots and took a walk, our favorite loop through the woods.  Gracie trotted ahead, glancing back every few steps as if she couldn’t quite believe her good fortune.  For a border collie, heaven is having your entire herd in the same place at the same time – ideally, out in the woods and sticking close together.

I knew how she felt.  I was happy, too.

In fact, as we tramped along the path it suddenly occurred to me, for the very first time, that I wouldn’t turn the clock back now even if I could.  Not for one hour, not for one day, or for one year or ten.  Not for anything.

It hit me with the power of epiphany:  this sudden, unexpected end to the nostalgic longing I’ve carried like a bruise upon my heart for so long that I’ve nearly forgotten what true ease in the here and now feels like.

Who we are, what we are, where we are at this moment is different from what was, absolutely.  But it is in no way less than.  And the surprising truth is, I wouldn’t trade our family’s beautiful, complicated, ever shifting and fleeting present for any simpler golden-hued yesterday.

Instead, I am pausing each day of this Easter week and giving thanks for what is, right now.  I am grateful for who we are in this moment: four still-growing human beings, each of us irrevocably, mysteriously, wonderfully connected.  Each of us finding our own unique way to be in the world, and at the same time, each of us gratefully returning to this hallowed place of our own creation:  this piece of earth, this house, this dinner table, this history, this tangled web of us-ness.  Yes, we are each still and always unfinished parts of some greater, unknowable whole.  And yes, we are still and always something else, too.  We are family.

BIG Magical Journey News (and some Mother’s Day inspiration. . .)

I imagine Cheryl Strayed has gotten used to the accolades by now.  But for ME a rave in PEOPLE magazine is, well, a big deal.  Was I pleased to find this link in my in-box this morning, under the heading “Memoirs We Can’t Put Down”?  That would be an understatement! 

Maria Shriver is a role model for many of us, and her Architects of Change website is a treasure trove of inspiration, support, and wisdom.  So it’s a huge honor for me to be listed now among her “guides,” and especially to be featured by her this week.  Thank you, Maria!  You can read my essay HERE.

Power of Moms is, quite simply, an amazing website.  Described as “a gathering place for deliberate mothers,” it’s part hang-out, part retreat, part educational resource — and an altogether very friendly, helpful place to be.  I had such a great time talking with founder April Perry that I nearly forgot we were  recording a podcast; it was more like talking with a lively, like-minded friend.  Relax, take a few minutes with a cup of tea, and listen in HERE.

             Appearances

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 are both looking forward to reuniting at a luncheon hosted by The Hickory Stick Bookshop in Washington Depot, CT, on Friday, April 19 at noon.  For the price of a book, you will get a catered lunch, a reading, and time to chat with the two of us too! Call the store at (860) 868-0525 for more info and to reserve your place.

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! 

                  Housekeeping . . .

MOTHER’S DAY isn’t far off.  Yesterday, I signed and personalized 24 (!) copies of The Gift of an Ordinary Day for readers who’d ordered them from my local bookstore, The Toadstool, here in Peterborough, NH.  I asked Willard, the owner, if he’d be willing to gift-wrap books as Mother’s Day gifts, and he said “Sure.”  That’s right.  Now, you can order personalized, signed copies of ANY of my books just by clicking HERE.   This will bring you to an order form at the Toadstool’s website.  Leave a note with your order, letting us know if you want your books personalized and/or gift-wrapped.  I’ll sign them, we’ll wrap them beautifully, and we’ll get them right off to you or to the special moms in your life.

I’ve loved hearing from so many of you!  Your letters never fail to make my day — they remind me all over again how lucky we all are, to be part of a community of readers, seekers, thinkers, nurturers.  If you feel inclined to write a bit MORE, however, each and every reader review on  Goodreads and on Amazon is hugely appreciated (by me!) and helpful.  (Doesn’t have to be long, just kind and, preferably, enthusiastic!)

Thanks too, my dear friends, for continuing to share my video with others, for inviting folks to “like” my  Magical Journey Facebook page, and for sharing my blog posts on your own Facebook pages and Twitter feeds.  There is no denying the power of word of mouth!

 

 

 

 

 

A mother’s midlife memoir paired with a gardening book?

What, you might well ask, could these two volumes possibly have in common?   And why would a married mom of two and a resolutely single, encyclopedically knowledgeable, former-Martha-Stewart-publishing-executive-turned-rural-hermit ever become writing partners, let alone dear friends?

Well, if age teaches us anything, it’s that life is full of surprises – and that the relationships that bloom and blossom in the langorous afternoon of life are often quite different from those of its bright morning.  No longer bound to our friends by social stratifications, proximity, or the shared duties of parenthood, we find ourselves connected, instead, at a soul level.  “Friendship,” writes C.S. Lewis, “is born at that moment when one person says to another, ‘What? You too?  I thought I was the only one.’”

And so it was with Margaret Roach and me.  Coincidence brought us together (we share a publisher, and our editors had given us galleys of each other’s last books).  But it wasn’t until we met in person, at a bookseller’s convention two years ago, that we each experienced that unmistakable “click” that signals this is someone who is meant to be in my life.

Reading Margaret’s work, I knew right away I was in the presence of a kindred spirit — someone who finds pleasure in the small moments, who draws sustenance and inspiration from the frogs in her pond and the flowers at her doorstep, who is more at home stirring a pot of home-made soup at the stove than hobnobbing with fellow writers at literary soirees.

Becoming her friend for real, spending overnights in her guest cottage and sharing countless dinners together, only confirmed what I’d already suspected: different as our lives may be on the surface (Margaret never has to postpone a writing project because a son needs help on his college application; I wouldn’t know a Chaenomeles x superba if one was in full bloom in my own yard), we nevertheless have much to offer each other – gifts of time and support and perspective on the universal challenges (and joys!) of growing older and, hopefully, just a wee bit wiser.

So maybe it’s not so surprising after all, that when we exchanged manuscripts of our most recent books, we each found ourselves scribbling excited “Yes!” notes and exclamation points in the margins.  There were so many common themes that we had to laugh.  And then we realized that of course our readers would probably enjoy getting to know one another as much as the two of us had.

Since our books came out last month, Margaret and I have appeared together at bookstores all over New England – and we can now report that our hunch was right.  The conversations are lively, our joint readings fun for all, and the connections and cross-overs always surprising and delightful.

So, consider this your invitation to come join us!  Win our books (signed, personalized copies), hear us speak, or if you can’t make it to one of the events below — jump in to our free online chat starting Monday on Goodreads.

 

 Duets with Margaret

The goodreads.com event
Goodreads is like a giant online book club that never sleeps. It’s amazing, and it’s free; a great place to get tips from other keen readers on books to look out for, according to your interests, and to “talk” to authors. Margaret Roach (author most recently of “The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life”) and I will be there Monday February 25 for an open forum, to answer your questions about our new (or older) books, about writing, or about whatever you feel like asking about.

In our in-person events recently, the topics have ranged from finding midlife friendship, to raising adolescent boys (or unruly plants), to recipes we’ve swapped and books we’ve both read, to our writing “process” (Margaret paces, I sit still for hours on end)—no kidding, that wide a range, and more. Fun! So come share whatever’s on your mind. Won’t you sign up and join us?

The in-person events

• Sunday, February 24, 3 PM: POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER. Reading and conversation with author Margaret Roach from our two new books, her “The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life” and my “Magical Journey” An Apprenticeship in Contentment,” at the Concord (MA) Bookshop.
• Thursday, February 28, 7 PM: Reading and conversation with author Margaret Roach at the Arts Center of the Capital Region, Troy, NY, hosted by memoir-teacher and author Marion Roach Smith.
• Sunday, March 3, afternoon: Two events, same location: 2 PM, “The 365-Day Garden” slide lecture by Margaret Roach. 3 PM, a reading and conversation with me and Margaret from our two new books, at Battenkill Books, Cambridge, NY.

How to win the signed books

To enter to win a signed copy of “The Backyard Parables” and one of “Magical Journey,” too, simply comment below, answering the question:

What’s the last book you read that you recommended afterward to a friend, and why?

Then to double your chances to win—two sets are being given away on each of our websites—scurry over to Margaret’s book giveaway now and paste your comment there as well.

No answer to the question, or simply feeling shy? No worry; just say “count me in” or something to that effect, and we will. Winners will be drawn at random after entries close at midnight on Wednesday, February 27. Good luck to all.

Home at last from two weeks on the west coast, I find myself  still thinking abut this man who sits at a card table on the bustling, hippest street in Santa Cruz and  open-heartedly gives himself away.

“Free Empathy” his sign says.  And, indeed, there is not so much as a cup or a hat or a money box in sight, no way for anyone to pay for his compassion even if they wanted to.

Free empathy.  I wonder if there is any greater gift, any exchange between two people, that could be more valuable than this?

Free empathy.  Nothing less than an offer of refuge, of rest, of acceptance: you are safe here, and you are ok, just as you are.

Free empathy.  A promise to bear loving witness to another’s struggle.

Free empathy.  A reminder that we won’t save the world with big gestures or grand schemes, but by becoming better listeners.  By asking how someone else is doing, and then taking time enough to put ourselves in their shoes, to see the world through their eyes.

Free empathy.  One precious natural resource that is endlessly renewable.

 Magical Journey News

Events

I have three New England appearances coming up this week and would love to see you, either in New Hampshire or Massachusetts.

Thursday, Feb. 21, I’ll be at the Amherst, NH Town Library at 7 pm.  This event is free, but  please register in advance.  Details HERE.  

Friday, Feb. 22,  I look forward to meeting old friends and new at Book Ends in Winchester, MA, my former home town. Details HERE. 

Sunday, Feb. 24, my friend and writing partner Margaret Roach, author of The Backyard Parables, and I will read and chat together at the Concord Bookshop in Concord, Ma, at 3 pm.  More info HERE.  NOTE: THIS EVENT HAS BEEN POSTPONED DUE TO WEATHER!

Next week, Margaret and I have a couple of  special “duets” in her neighborhood (The Arts Center of the Capital Region, in Troy, NY, on Thursday, February 28 and Battenkill Books in Cambridge, NY, on March 3.) We will talk about everything from literary friendship to facelifts, garden chores to hot flashes.  In other words, no subject is off limits, and we would love to hear your stories as well as share ours with you.

Reviews

Who doesn’t love synchronicity?  Kasey Matthews’ beautiful review was the best Valentines Day gift I could have received, and her story-behind-the-story is one of those “meant-to-be” tales that sends a shiver up my spine.  Read her piece (and enter to win a signed copy of Magical Journey) HERE.

This thoughtful review by a young Muslim mother was a wonderful reminder: no matter how different our lives may appear on the outside, our mothering journeys are more alike than different.  Story Circle is a treasure trove for memoir lovers, and I’m honored to be in such good company HERE.

Word of Mouth

Word of mouth truly is an author’s best publicity of all.  Huge thanks to all of you who are sharing Magical Journey with others, buying copies for your friends, spreading the word on Facebook or taking a moment to “like” my page, or writing reviews on Amazon.  There are lots of books and countless daily distractions competing for our attention in this busy, busy world.  And sometimes it’s hard to hear a small, faint buzz amidst the noisy clamor.  But you are creating such a buzz, and even though it’s still a tiny one, I’m enormously grateful.

Bookplates

I had to stop mailing bookplates over these last two weeks while I was on the road.  But now I’m determined to catch up!  (If you wrote requesting them, fear not, they will soon be on their way.)  And if you’d like a signed bookplate (or several) for yourself or friends, just drop me a note through the CONTACT form on my website, and I’ll be happy to send them to you.  (Make sure to leave your mailing address!)

 

 

As I sat holed up in my bedroom today, making notes for the talk I’ll give to a group of parents on the West Coast on Tuesday, I realized that some of the quotes that have shaped me as a mother are really the spiritual equivalents of those guideposts poking up through the snow:  words that keep me on track when the familiar landscape of our family life is suddenly altered by some challenge or unexpected turn in the emotional weather.

It’s so easy, when things get stormy around here or seem a bit out of control, to lose my way.  But if being the mother of two sons who have now attained the impossibly grown-up ages of 20 and 23 has taught me anything, it’s that storms pass and that control is an illusion anyway.  Still, it helps when the weather is wild, to have some markers pounded into the earth, words that remind me of where I want to put my feet, of the solid ground I know is there for me, just beneath the blinding swirl of whatever’s coming down.

Attachment to outcome has probably been the biggest challenge on my own parenting path. Little wonder then that my central task as a mother seems to be practicing the art of nonattachment.  And so I look to the wisdom of others to remind me of what I already know:  I can love and care for my children, but I can’t possess them.  I can assist them, and pray for them, and wish them well, but in the end their happiness and suffering depend on their choices and their destinies, not on my wishes.

It surprised me to notice today that none of the quotes that keep me on track as a parent actually come from books about parenting.  But perhaps that’s as it should be. For the other thing this journey of motherhood has taught me is that my children are not extensions of me, and my real work isn’t about changing them, or shaping them into the people I think they ought to be. It’s about changing myself – learning to soften, to trust, to pay attention, to accept, and, most of all, finding the faith to let them go.

So, here are the guideposts I’ve placed along my own path, to keep me moving in the direction I aspire to travel.  What words serve as your guideposts on this journey?

(A word about this photo, taken ten years or so ago at sunset on a summer day in Maine:  I love the joy in these shadows, the memory of a vanished, distant time, the fact that Jack and I danced and played in that golden light and Steve grabbed his camera and captured the fleeting, precious moment.  It still makes me smile and get a little teary at the same time. And it reminds me: be present; we will not pass this way again.)

Words for the Journey

“To bow to the fact of our life’s sorrows and betrayals is to accept them; and from this deep gesture we discover that all life is workable. As we learn to bow, we discover that the heart holds more freedom and compassion than we could imagine.”   – Jack Kornfield

“I try to remind myself that we are never promised anything, and that what control we can exert is not over the events that befall us but how we address ourselves to them.”   – Jeanne DuPrau, The Earth House

“It has something to do with submitting rather than dominating. Surrender, submit. Have faith, trust in the mystery. That’s not easy. Surrendering one’s life to living in, and serving, the beauty of a mysterious world is a big step. . . .The purpose of the journey is compassion.”

– Joseph Campbell,  An Open Life

“Who you are is made up of three persons.  There is the one you think you are, the one others think you are, and the one you really are.  Work towards making all three the same. Then there will be peace and bliss.”          –  Sri Sathya Sai Baba

“Live in the present. Do the things that need to be done. Do all the good you can each day. The future will unfold.”  – Peace Pilgrim

 “Life is change.  Growth is optional.  Choose wisely.”  – Karen Kaiser Clark

“The little things? The little moments? They aren’t little.”   – Jon Kabat-Zinn

 “Each morning we are born again. What we do today is what matters most.”    – Buddha

 “To look deep into your child’s eyes and see in him both yourself and something utterly strange, and then to develop a zealous attachment to every aspect of him, is to achieve parenthood’s self-regarding, yet unselfish, abandon.”

“We must love (our children) for themselves, and not for the best of ourselves in them, and that is a great deal harder to do.  Loving our own children is an exercise in imagination.”   – Andrew Solomon, Far from the Tree

A Magical Journey update

Some books are review books. (Think a quotable rave from the New York Times).  That’s not this book.  Some authors appear on The Today Show or The View, with answers to all your questions about how to be happy.  (Think instant ascension on the best-seller list.)  That’s not me.  I am an under-the-media’s-radar kind of writer.  And I’m pretty sure  Magical Journey is a word-of-mouth kind of book.  That’s fine with me.  And I am deeply grateful to every single one of you who have bought a copy, shared a copy, or urged a friend to give it a try, saying, “Here, I think you’ll like this, too.”  Thank you!

Last week, Magical Journey was #1 on the best-seller list at Gibson’s Bookstore in Concord, NH.  Sure, it’s a small independent bookstore in a small city in the middle of my home state, but I’m pretty thrilled to be #1 anywhere.  And yes, readers made it happen.

Want to spread the word?  Here are three quick things you can do.  (With huge thanks in advance for your help.  It really DOES make a difference!)

1. Write a brief review on Amazon.

2.  Like my page on Facebook and share posts with your friends. (I update there often, and post news of every appearance too.)

3. Share the book!  (I just received a new box of beautiful, blank, custom book plates.  And I’m happy to personalize as many as you’d like and mail them right out to you.  Just drop me a line and let me know how many and where to send them. Valentine’s Day gifts, perhaps??)

Also, check my Events page to see if I’m coming this spring to a bookstore near you. Thanks to the generosity of fans and friends, I’m on my way to the West Coast this week:  La Canada, Laguna Beach, and Pasadena.

If you missed Priscilla Gilman’s thoughtful interview  Click 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.  

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.)

My first task, on my very first day of work at Ticknor & Fields (a small, long-defunct New Haven subsidiary of Houghton Mifflin Company) back in January of 1981, was to sit down with an empty scrapbook, a pair of scissors, and a jar of rubber cement. There had been some recent press about Houghton Mifflin’s resistance to a corporate buy-out. (Loyal, long-time authors like Kenneth Galbraith and Louis Auchincloss had made their voices heard, and the powers-that-be had listened. Houghton Mifflin, in 1981, was determined to remain fiercely independent. ) I was given the assignment of sorting through a huge stack of newspapers sent to us by the hired clipping service (talk about quaint!), carefully cutting out the articles, and pasting them neatly into the scrapbook. I worked on a stool in the kitchen, where it was also up to me to keep the coffee pot full and the sherry glasses washed. (Tea was served in the front room at four; sherry on Friday afternoons, or when well-known writers came to call. Calvin Trillin’s visits were occasions for cloth napkins and Chinese take-out.) I was twenty-one years old and in heaven.

In our tiny subsidiary, we all did a bit of everything, which meant, as time went on, that I often had a hand in book publicity as well as editorial work: writing press releases, putting press packets together, and then, of course, pasting all the positive newspaper reviews and feature stories into those precious scrapbooks.

It was a perfect way to familiarize myself with the names and faces in my new company, with the authors I was getting to know and the books I’d eagerly carry home to read over the weekends. Soon, I was also taking dictation and typing letters for my boss (three carbon copies of each for the files, a bottle of Wite-Out close at hand), fact –checking manuscripts in the reference room at Yale’s Sterling Library, packing up pages to be overnight mailed to authors, scribbling phone messages on little pink pads, studying the Chicago Manual of Style, and learning to wield a blue pencil as I began to proofread copy.

What amazed me the most about my thrilling (to me!) new career in publishing was the realization that every single book was really the physical manifestation of countless details, all lovingly and expertly attended to over the course of many months, and in some cases, years. It boggled my mind to watch the process unfold — from an innocuous, unread pile of typewritten pages secured with rubber bands to boxes of finished, pristine, beautiful books, ready to be stacked up on a book store’s front table.

How extraordinary it was to witness this alchemy up close, to become part of it, to understand that every single book I’d ever read had required the faith and expertise of so many different people, from the acquisition editor who said the first determined “yes,” to the copyeditor who carefully considered the placement of every semi-colon, to the production manager who inspected the glue application on the inside binding. Countless decisions to be made, and a nearly infinite number of tiny questions to be answered: fonts, margins, paper, leading, initial caps, space breaks, advertising budgets, print runs — the list went on. Names to be verified, serial commas to be made consistent, every line of every page of proof at every stage of the process to be checked, from sample pages to final pass. Every color in every jacket was examined against its Pantone original, while in the back room, our meticulous designer worked with a ruler and Exacto knife to ensure that every word of type on the front cover was perfectly placed into position – by hand.

Flash forward thirty-plus years, to my current life on the other side of the process and in a very different world. A world that can be summed up in a word: digital. What was once done laboriously and time intensively (searching for the spelling of some obscure actress’s name in an old edition of Who’s Who, for instance) can now be done in an instant, with a click of a key and a Google search. Long gone are the antique tools of the trade as it once was. Including paper.

The first manuscript I ever worked on was a first novel by a young author who appeared at the front door of our office with his 700-page mystery neatly typed and packed into three dark blue Brooks Brothers shirt boxes. A few months ago, I delivered my own manuscript to my publisher — by hitting a SEND button. Weeks later, when the copy-edited manuscript was returned to me, I opened it not as a meticulously hand-edited original typescript sent in an insured and tracked padded manila envelope, but as a Microsoft Word document. And then I set to work learning how to accept or decline the editor’s changes online, in the digital margins of my text, carrying on a virtual color-coded conversation with my copy editor, whose actual voice I will probably never hear. (Even a ringing phone is largely a thing of the past; why call and talk to a stranger, when you could text or email instead?)

As a writer with a new book coming out, I hold out little hope for print reviews; most of the small newspapers that do survive these days have long since shut down their book pages. My print run this time will be half what it was for my last book; that’s how many readers my publisher estimates have shifted to electronic devices.

And even though I have a publicist in New York who is already hard at work arranging my visits to bookstores and sending out bound galleys, the process of spreading the word about a new book has gone largely digital as well. Which means that my job as author no longer ends with writing the final lines and holding forth in a few publication-week interviews, but extends into the equally essential and ongoing industry of ensuring that, in the midst of this busy, distracted on-line world, potential readers actually know that my book exists.

For the first time, my latest book contract included a clause about social media. Maintaining a website and a Facebook presence and a Twitter account is now part of the writer’s job description. (I think I’m supposed to bone up on Pintrest and Tumblr, too.)

Three years ago, when The Gift of an Ordinary Day was published, a friend suggested it might be fun to make a video to go along with it. I invited my book group and some neighbors over, read a few pages out loud in front of the camera, and pulled a bunch of my husband’s family photos out of the albums. It was fun. And the video took on a life of its own, becoming a virtual messenger for the themes of the book.

This time, there was no question: Nowadays, nearly every new book arrives with its own book trailer video. The truth is, all of these new publishing to-dos have been making me anxious. Not only have I felt the pressure of making the book itself all it can be, but also the pressure of fulfilling my authorial obligation to initiate word of mouth about it in every possible venue: updating my website, planning a blog tour, producing a video, setting up events at bookstores. In other words, going public. (If you are someone who chooses to spend much of her life sitting quietly at home alone in a room, the prospect of making self-promotion your new full-time job — even if it is largely on-line — is enough to keep you awake at night. It does me.)

All summer the video project loomed. I had an idea, but no certainty that my vision would actually work. The friendly crew that filmed my first video had moved on. Finally, the deadline was upon me. I had no choice but to put my faith in the process, hire a couple of strangers to come film it, and begin.

And what I found myself thinking this week — as shooting began on my four-minute film, as Steve snapped countless potential author photos, as the book jacket was being finalized, and as plans for recording the audio version were made — is that much as things have changed in this business, it is STILL exacting attention to detail, and the concerted efforts of many passionate people, that make book publishing such a special and uniquely collaborative endeavor.

The scrapbooks of my publishing youth may be gone, my manuscript may exist in pixels instead of on paper, my book may not ever be reviewed in the pages of the Boston Globe or the New York Times, and yet the process remains as exacting and, in its own way, as deeply collegial, as viscerally satisfying, and as detail-oriented as ever.

The other day, three final jacket proofs arrived from the designer, real covers to be spread upon my dining room table, the type in each a slightly different shade of burnt orange. Which to choose? The audio producer sent me the script, printed out in large type, so that I’ll have time to practice reading it aloud before heading to New York next month to record in the studio; careful attention to detail is what will make our four days together go off without a hitch. And for two days, as our house became a film set and as Tom and Melissa of Long Haul Films shot hour upon hour of footage here, I marveled at their ability to maintain enthusiastic concentration as they focused their lenses upon the minutiae of my tactile, ordinary, everyday life and somehow turned it into art. Perhaps it is simply the willingness to pay such close attention, to bring such devotion to the details, that is, in the end, what lifts any process from mundane to meaningful.

It took one whole extra trip from Boston to New Hampshire to nail the shot the film makers wanted of hands around a steaming mug of tea. Six takes of zipping a jacket, tying up shoes. Lots of waiting around for the clouds to break and the sun to shine. Gracie, making tennis ball catch after tennis ball catch for the camera. And during that time, as my family and two dear friends willingly gave up big chunks of their day to assist in this project, and as a slew of last-minute emails arrived from Grand Central, my publisher in New York, I found myself feeling suddenly and immensely grateful for the entire team that fate and circumstance have brought together here, to help guide one modest midlife memoir into the world.

Of course, all this makes me see that what really matters to people who work with books has not changed at all in thirty years: A passion for a well-told story. A profound, ongoing love affair with words. The quiet thrill of holding a new hardcover in your hands, turning the first pages, receiving the urgent, insistent news that is shared between human beings when we summon the courage to reveal ourselves to one another.

In January, this book I’ve been laboring over for the last year and a half will be published. But the Magical Journey, I’m happy to say now, didn’t conclude with the final sentences I wrote last spring. In fact, that brief moment of ending simply marked the beginning of another journey, from the intensely private work of writing to the very public work of sharing. How lucky I am to be accompanied on this new path by such a dedicated group of friends and readers and co-workers, each of whom is as delighted by and as dedicated to the details as I am. Already I feel less alone. And even, dare I say it, excited about the next leg of the trip. Stay tuned!