It seemed fitting that my first reading for The Gift of an Ordinary Day take place in our old hometown of Winchester, MA. My husband Steve and I met Judy Manzo the week she bought Book Ends Bookstore, nearly 17 years ago. She didn’t know anything about selling books, she confessed to us, but she knew a lot of people in town, and figured that she’d do fine if she just ordered five copies of any book that a customer requested. It was a start. Judy was a quick learner, and it wasn’t long before she had turned this sleepy little suburban bookstore into a lively cultural center and the go-to place in town for gifts, cards, books, and news of local authors and book groups. I did my very first author event, for Mitten Strings for God, there ten years ago, nervous and shaky and not at all sure that I really had anything to say that others might want to hear. It was easier this time. Judy had been selling my book for a week, sending emails, advertising. Old friends appeared, as did strangers who had already read a few chapters and arrived eager to talk. Afterwards, three dear friends took me out for Chinese food, and then I spent the night at the home of a former neighbor, sitting up late, drinking tea and catching up on all the latest news. We’ve been gone five years now, and yet in most of the ways that really count, the old town still feels as much like home as it ever did. Our friendships endure, and it feels wonderful, always, to be welcomed back so warmly. As Jack and I like to say, moving just made our world bigger–we didn’t give up one life in favor of another one so much as expand and stretch our lives so that they include more: more friends, more people and places to care about, a broader definition of the “good life.”
Our old house is empty now; the new owners are spending this year overseas. It is strange to see it there, dark and unlived in. The gardens are overgrown, the grass a little long, the dark green paint starting to peel. But the hydrangeas that Steve and the boys and I planted as frail saplings on several successive Mothers Days many years ago are full-sized trees now, in extravagant bloom and bent nearly to the ground beneath their weighty burdens of blossoms. “You might as well cut some,” my old next-door neighbor said in the morning, “no one is going to mind.” And so it was that I stood in the yard that we left five years ago, scissors in hand, cutting flowers. How strange it felt, to be back there again, doing what I used to do. I clipped a huge armful, and then my two friends and I headed up the hill to pick raspberries, just as we always used to do in September. Two hours later, driving north, back to New Hampshire, with a trunk full of hydrangeas and hands stained with berry juice, I thought about how grateful I am for life as it is right now, a life that allows me to embrace two places, not one; that is enriched by friends and loved ones in two towns; and that has taught me so much about change, and about holding on and letting go.
Back at home in our “new” house, I filled vases with hydrangeas cut at the “old” house, watered the garden, put away groceries, reclaimed my space. And the next day, on the spur of the moment, I pulled over at a roadside nursery and bought a wispy hydrangea sapling to plant here, just outside the screened porch. The weekend has been busy–three more book signings in two days–but there was still time for a walk this afternoon when I got home from the last bookstore. Steve and I grabbed a trash bag, called Gracie, and headed out to hike our 45 minute loop through the woods and up the road to our house. We picked up beer bottles along the way, empty cigarette packs, crushed soda cans. By the time we got back to the house, our bag was full, but the roadside looked beautiful again. Home, after all, isn’t just the house. It’s the town itself, the road where we live, the trail through the woods that we walk nearly every day. Taking care of this place, even if it’s just to pick up litter, feels like a good way to express our still deepening appreciation for all that we’ve found here.
And then Steve dug a hole, Debbie came down to lend a hand, and we got our new little tree into the ground, well watered and staked. It looks just right there, and next year when it’s time to cut hydrangeas, I won’t have to look further than our own front yard.
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