Have you noticed a pattern? (Hint: three in a row.) I’m trying to be my own Advent calendar. Blame it on the daily Advent devotion from Marsh Chapel at Boston University. (I started listening to the Sunday services during the pandemic and still do, except not on Sunday anymore. Mainly it’s when I am riding my indoor bike trainer.) This season the Marsh Chapel Advent intention is on gifts– the ones we have inside of us– both finding them and sharing them. Even being a gift with presence for others. (It sounds woo-woo but these days I’m all about it.) While I would not go so far as to say what I do is a gift from God, I do know that I don’t knit or craft, or bake all that well. I can’t play the piano or the clarinet. Or tap dance. I am not even that quick at Wordle. After my first book was published I brought one of the brand new hardcovers over to my friend Madeleine’s garden to give it to her. She was an artist and made all kinds of beautiful things– paintings, earrings, silk screen T-shirts. All the ornaments on her Christmas tree. A garden that was both lovely and productive. She was always giving me handmade creations – so I brought her If You Lived Here and said, “I made something for you!”
Tonight at the Lighting of the Fort, I talked to a young friend who got married last summer, and he told me that he and his wife are having a baby- a boy- in May. He is a writer too, and always asks what I’m up to, and so I hemmed and hawed, “Well, I’m working on the house next door. My son and his family will be in it in five days, and there’s a lot to do…”
Chip assures me we are closer than it appears.
And then there’s the extra dogs this weekend — especially this little one. Roscoe made sure we didn’t sleep last night. Apparently he isn’t really crate trained, and he’s definitley not housebroken. My daughter will be back from Whitehorse tomorrow afternoon.
Standing in the snow by the fire, I asked my writer pal what he was working on and he said his new writing coach has an ill brother, and so it’s not going that well– and he’s pretty busy with work and family life– and I nodded,”Life. It’s good, right?” Especially for writers. That’s where the stories come from.
I’m not sure if it was the cannon blast, the starry skies, the fireworks, Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer playing on the PA system or even the good will around that roaring pallet bonfire– but as we talked about writing, we soon agreed that we were both highly functioning procrastinators (my husband calls me The Queen of Wing It)- and so we decided, right then, to change that, and we promised to meet once a week after the New Year to exchange pages on our books in progress.”Accountability” we said in unison.
“Thursdays” he said, smiling.
“At the library!” I said, suddenly happy too. “And we won’t just say nice things– we will be critical, in a helpful way.”
“Exactly,” he said.
On my way home, I realized that he must trust me, and better yet, that I trust him. That’s a good feeling. A gift.
