The Other Side of Trouble

Autumn is tricky. It’s a time of year when any piece of big, bad news has fallen into my life along with all those big, beautiful leaves. 

One year, a few days after Thanksgiving, my first husband said he wanted a divorce. Another November, on the Sunday after Thanksgiving, I was driving on a highway in North Carolina when I got the call that my dear friend had died. Another fall, I got a difficult diagnosis and underwent a major surgery and spent the holidays recuperating, traveling back and forth to the doctors. Another October, my dog was ill enough she needed a specialist, needed pills. I needed pills, too, that year, though nothing helped. It was the only time I wished I drank alcohol, and lots of it. Instead I faced just me.

Yet I love autumn. It’s still my favorite time of year. I love the colors, the chill, the softening, slanted light. I love the season’s sweaters, fireplaces, flannel shirts. And I love the brightness of our Christmas tree, which for a decade we’ve put up as early as November 1—my choice, not my husband’s, but he indulges me. He hauls it out of our garage and out of its box, sticks the “branches” into the metal pole, and I fluff the fake pine needles, decorate the tree with ornaments from my childhood and from our years of marriage, a perfect union of past and present.

But last year, of course, autumn was different. We didn’t exactly get bad news, we just kept living through what was by then months of pandemic isolation and uncertainty. No one knew how to gather safely, and even gathering felt selfish. My family disagreed on what was safe, and in the end, I served red lentils for Thanksgiving and forgot it was a holiday. I forgot the Christmas tree. I forgot to celebrate. December came and it wasn’t until mid-month that I even remembered that a major holiday was looming. It felt too late, by then, to put up the tree, or maybe it was just that I didn’t care. The tree stayed in the box in the garage. We spent Christmas by ourselves, and it was like any other day. 

This year, true to autumn’s fickle promise, my family faced a a handful of medical issues, and off we went to so many doctor’s appointments I stopped counting. I worried at night but pushed that aside to tackle the day’s challenges. And now, it seems, we’re past them, or at least we’re on the other side of something. 

And this year, on November 1, I remembered it was time. I mentioned it to my husband, and I didn’t even have to ask: by evening, the box was in our den, and by the next day, the tree was standing in the corner like a long-lost friend.

There will always be trouble, but there will always be the other side of it. You just have to get there. That’s what I keep telling myself. Put up the tree. Dangle ornaments from branches. Tie the velvet tree skirt around the base. Count my blessings; celebrate the now; plug in all those brilliant, beautiful lights.

(Photo credits: autumn road by Benjamin Voros; Christmas tree by yours truly)

The Walk Home

I’ve been walking and thinking and facing life’s small and big challenges. I keep remembering this passage I wrote years ago, a passage that ended up in my memoir, The Going and Goodbye. It was the shortest chapter, but it’s one of the longest in the sense that I keep living it. Here it is once more:

The Walk Home

It wasn’t an emergency, but one morning when I still lived in Chapel Hill, after a particularly heavy snow, I had to go to the hospital for a medical appointment, the kind not easily missed and rescheduled. My friend offered to drive me in his four-wheel- drive behemoth, which I gratefully accepted. I told him I would walk the way home.

It wasn’t too far, just four miles, and I had good boots, a warm coat, and a love of the outdoors. After the appointment, I emerged from the hospital worried and fearful—not because of something said in that one appointment but because of all the trips I’d had to make there, the heavy glass doors I’d had to push, the elevator that rode up slowly, the long hallway of doors that all looked the same. And because of all the rest: the fear of trouble happening, a kind of fear that emerges when a doctor tells you that you are at a higher risk for something you don’t want to have. I was lucky because I didn’t have that something, but I remember that on that snowy day I worried that one day I would. 

Then I walked. 

I walked on the main road, out of the hospital’s reach, and past the university buildings and downtown with its brick fronts and boutiques, though that day the town lay quiet, asleep in snow. I walked and I breathed and I saw the white on roofs and driveways and trees. The branches bent down under the weight of it all. I felt the chill in my lungs, which I liked, which I craved. It reminded me of the place I was from, the cold that had made me who I was. I trudged past people’s homes, their histories hidden behind doors and shutters, some of their stories easier than mine but others so much harder than I would ever know. I walked past covered cars and blankets of lawns, past forks in the road and stoplights and stop signs. 

I could look back or look forward. I could remain or I could walk. 

So I walked and I walked, even after I turned the key and pushed open my front door, I walked on the day after, and the next and the next. 

(Photo credit: Jaunathan Gagnon, Unsplash)

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UPCOMING (ONLINE) WORKSHOPS & SEMINARS

The Art of Memoir & Personal Essay: a Four-Week Workshop
Tuesdays, November 2-23, 2021 2:30-5 p.m. EST
Join me in this four-week online (Zoom) workshop during which you will generate new writing, read writing that inspires, and learn tools and techniques on the craft of personal essay and memoir writing. There are no critiques in this workshop. The goal is for you to leave with first drafts and a writer’s toolbox ready to help you finish and write the rest of your own life stories. Space is limited to 12 participants. All levels of writers welcome. No memoir experience necessary. Cost $279. Early bird registration $219 until October 20 or until spaces fill. Learn more. Register here.

Let’s Write Together!
Tuesdays at noon EST (on Zoom): October 19; November 2, 9, 16 (more dates to come)
Having a hard time finding inspiration and motivation to write? Join me for any (or all) of these online one-hour sessions on Tuesdays at noon EST. We’ll talk about a piece of writing, I will give you a prompt, and then you will WRITE. These workshops are in partnership with Press 53. Cost: $10/session. Register for any of them here.

The Nuts and Bolts of Submitting Your Work to Literary Magazines
Wednesday, December 1, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. EST
Are you wanting to submit your work to literary journals but feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start? In this online seminar, we’ll talk about how to research literary magazines, how to submit your work, how to track your submissions (for free), and what to put in (and leave out of) your bio statement. (Please note that this seminar is not focused on finding an agent or book publisher.) We’ll also leave time at the end for your questions. This seminar is in partnership with Press 53. Cost $30. Register here.

Moments that Matter: an Introduction to Flash Nonfiction
Thursday, December 9, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. EST
In this online workshop, we’ll talk about what flash nonfiction is, how it works, and why it works. Together we’ll mine some powerful flash pieces for effective techniques you can use in your own writing. Cost: $30. Register here.

Thirteen: Not Such an Unlucky Number

I need to tell you about the mango, but first I need to tell you about this guy I met at a 12-hour contra dance in the mountains of North Carolina years ago. We talked a lot, he seemed nice, we exchanged emails. We lived four hours apart, though, and I didn’t think it was likely I would see him again. 

But a few weeks later, I did. I met up with him at a contra dance in Asheville. We danced, we talked, and he said he had a good friend in Raleigh, and he would plan a visit there soon and drop by Chapel Hill, where I was living at the time, to see me. Okay, I said, but I actually thought, yeah right, not because I didn’t want to see him but because guys had broken promises to me before.

When we said goodbye in Asheville, I thought how nice it was that though we would never see each other again, we’d had a good time and would always have the happy memory of that dance.

Then something strange happened: he planned a visit to Chapel Hill and Raleigh. A few days before he arrived, I bought some mangos, which are one of my all-time favorite fruits. I can’t remember why I even mentioned these to him by phone, but somehow I did—maybe because he had never tried them, or maybe because he liked them, too—and I promised to save one that we would share when he visited.

And we did—share it, that is, along with many more trips to see each other until finally one day Preston and I said I do by Boone Lake. 

That was thirteen years ago. 

The second thing I need to tell you is that part of me was scared I could not make a marriage work. I’d been married once before, for three years, and though I’d had a belief up until I got married the first time that I’d never get divorced, I had not adequately factored in the part about how not getting divorced was not just up to me—both parties had to want to stay married. I had not factored in that someone could love me but decide they weren’t in love with me anymore. I had not factored in that someone could decide he wanted to be free. 

Ruh-roh.

After my divorce, I wondered if I would ever have a marriage that would last. So when Preston and I passed the three-year mark, I breathed a sigh of relief.

Another decade has passed since then. I still ask couples what their secret is to a successful marriage, as if they might tell me something I have missed. But the truth is, I think I know what makes us work.

Our lives are full of daily compromises. Oh, we each gave up big things in order to be together, but now our compromises are so small an outsider might not notice them—we might not notice them, as we have grown used to this bending and meeting somewhere in the middle—sometimes closer to his side, sometimes to mine. He needs solitude; I need interaction: we map our days so we each get what we need. He needs to run an errand here; I need to run an errand there: we go together to both places, even though it will take longer. 

Maybe why it works for us is that we each look out not just for our own needs but for those of the other person.

Which brings me to the third thing I need to tell you about: another mango. There was one in the fridge yesterday that he did not even know about—he rarely opens the crisper drawer, while I daily open and close it, rummaging for my favorite fruits. I took out the mango and sliced it in half, and I started to eat it—it was perfectly ripe, sweet, and juicy. I finished that half and looked down at the other. 

I wanted it. I wanted all of it. He wouldn’t even know if I ate it all.

I pulled out a plate, set the half-mango on it, and left him a note for when he came home at lunch to take care of the dog because I was busy teaching a writing workshop. 

A mango is such a small thing, but thirteen years into this marriage, I know that love never is.

Photo by Avinash Kumar

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Upcoming (and NEW!) Seminars

Prompt-Writing like Speed-Dating: Prompt, Write, Next, Prompt, Write, Next (NEW!)
Tuesday, August 31, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. EST
If you’ve attended Let’s Write Together with me, you’ll recognize the format: I’ll share a piece of writing to inspire you, offer a prompt related to it, and you will have time to write. Except I’ll be offering a new piece and prompt every 10-12 minutes during this 1.5-hour workshop. Think of it like speed dating—there’s another piece and prompt ready to inspire you just around the corner, with time for sharing at the end. This workshop is in partnership with Press 53. Cost: $30. Register here.

The Nuts and Bolts of Submitting Your Work to Literary Magazines (NEW!)
Wednesday, September 1, 11:30 a.m.-1 p.m. EST
Are you wanting to submit your work to literary journals but feeling overwhelmed and don’t know where to start? In this seminar, we’ll talk about how to research literary magazines, how to submit your work, how to track your submissions (for free), and what to put in (and leave out of) your bio statement. (Please note that this seminar is not focused on finding an agent or book publisher.) I’d also really like to hear from you ahead of time with any questions about submitting your work to lit mags that you hope will be covered in this seminar, and I’ll do my best to prepare answers. This seminar is in partnership with Press 53. Cost $30. Register here.

Let’s Write Together!
Tuesdays at noon EST: August 17, 24; September 7, 14, 21, 28
Having a hard time finding inspiration and motivation to write? Join me for any (or all) of these online one-hour sessions on Tuesdays at noon EST. We’ll talk about a piece of writing, I will give you a prompt, and then you will WRITE. These workshops are in partnership with Press 53. Cost: $10/session. Register for any of them here.