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,…
Perhaps it was his eyes: the kindness there, the depth of his gaze. Or maybe it was the quality of his listening, the way he seemed to hear with his whole body, leaning in to catch every word. His lined face held no judgment, no impatience or tension or hint of boredom. Nothing but love. Waves of people surged by on the busy sidewalk, laughing and chatting, but his attention never wavered from the young woman who sat across the table from him, pouring out her tale. I’m pretty he sure he didn’t even notice me when I paused, and…
Before the first winter snow flies here in New Hampshire, some of us pound stakes into the ground alongside our driveways, to remind us later, after the landscape is blanketed in white, of exactly where the pavement ends and the lawn begins. Nothing fancy, just a few metal rods, perhaps with a reflector at the top, to keep the plow or the snowblower from straying off track. They are, quite literally, guideposts. 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…
Just over a year ago, I hit the wall. I’d been writing for months, throwing away more pages than I kept, feeling less sure of myself and what I was doing with every passing day. I had a deadline, the end of March. But I wasn’t at all sure I had a book. 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…
We were an unlikely pair, Olive Ann Burns and I. 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,…
