This is my sixth season at the cottage. Each year has been both the same and different. I wonder how it will be this year? In 2011 I was traveling back and forth to visit my mom, who turned 101 that May and died that October. 2012 was a grieving year, as was 2013. Last year I began working on a memoir about her, which I have entitled Very Grateful. I am hoping 2015 will be the year to finish the book and get it out there so people can learn about this amazing, very grateful woman who was my mom.
I’ll be heading back to the cottage a week from tomorrow. For those of you who aren’t familiar with my the cottage-by-the-sea experience, let me explain. From mid-November to mid-April I rent a cottage right on the Atlantic Ocean (well, a couple of hundred feet from it), an hour and a half drive from my home. My general routine is to spend the week there and then return home for the weekend. At the cottage I watch the ocean (my specialty is sunrises), read, write, pray, walk and do jigsaw puzzles. I talk to no one, never turn on the TV, and stay off the internet except to post my blog and check email morning and evening. As expressed in this blog, I go for silence, solitude and simplicity and because sometimes I like to be alone.
This is my sixth season at the cottage. Each year has been both the same and different. I wonder how it will be this year? In 2011 I was traveling back and forth to visit my mom, who turned 101 that May and died that October. 2012 was a grieving year, as was 2013. Last year I began working on a memoir about her, which I have entitled Very Grateful. I am hoping 2015 will be the year to finish the book and get it out there so people can learn about this amazing, very grateful woman who was my mom.
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My new plan to deal with stuff and dust is going along extremely well. I’ve only cleaned out one shelf, so in terms of volume I’m winning no simplicity award. However, my mind is clear of fretting and perseverating about the what, when, how, and where of it all. That is mental simplicity. As far as writing ‘Very Grateful’ is concerned, I doing a fair amount of thinking, which in the education field is called pre-writing. My plan is to open up the file and delve in when I return to the cottage on November 16th. For now I’m gathering grateful stories. My mom’s message lives on. The other day the 96 year old mother of a friend told me that since hearing of my mother’s final words, she has taken on naming gratitudes instead of worries when she wakes up in the middle of the night. How is that for mental simplicity? I’m finally snatching some chunks of solitude. Not days on end, but that will come in a month when I return to my routine of weekdays at the cottage and weekends at home. It will be my sixth season with such a routine, same and yet always different, and of course I never know what life will put on my plate on a given day. My plan is to return to work on my book when I arrive up there on November 16th. For the moment, I’ve put the manuscript aside until I have extended, uninterrupted time every day and for consecutive days. Need I tell you that takes an enormous physical and emotional commitment to write? That’s especially true for me in writing about my mother.
Today I return to 'Very Grateful'. I am wearing the light pink Carpe Diem T-shirt that my nieces had made for the family for Mom's memorial service. My morning coffee is in my "Book Woman" mug. I will be writing in the front room where I keep all of Mom's papers. I have faith that I will know what to say. I’m sitting in the passenger seat of our 2004 Camry with 175,000 miles showing on the odometer. Jim and I are on our way to Pennsylvania to visit Emily, Tony and our grandkids. On the way we’ll stop for lunch at my sister’s. It’s a particularly a poignant time for me, because she now lives in the condo that was Mom’s home from age 80 to 90. Um, it just dawned on me that for the last seven years of Mom’s life, we drove this very car to visit her. Longevity comes in many flavors. It’s been a challenge to blog ever other day. It’s all about writing, and I’ve been immersed in preparing the final draft of “Very Grateful”, my memoir about Mom. Tomorrow is the day it goes in the mail to my editor, so she can begin work on it next week. I appreciate a deadline and work well with one. But this is also about Carolyn, who has to plan her life as well. She can’t meet her deadline for my manuscript, if I can’t meet mine first. Sounds complicated but it’s really rather simple. Back to write. Here’s what’s new from my silent, solitary and simple home. Thank goodness my husband and I fit well with this. We both like it. 1) I love my new washing machine, but am also delighted with my old dryer. I had ordered a new one to go along with my new washer, but cancelled the purchase when it wouldn’t fit in the door. I can’t believe that I was sucked into thinking that washers and dryers have to be bought and discarded as a team. After all, they don’t die at the same time! My twenty year old dryer is still tossing the clothes around, and since I hang most of my laundry out to dry, I figure it should last my life time—even if I live to be 101 like my mom. 2) Speaking of Mom, the memoir is about ready to be mailed to my friend Carolyn for developmental editing. Next there’s the copy editing, cover design, formatting for print copy on demand and for e-book, and then the launch of Very Grateful on Amazon—hopefully by the end of the year. 3) The Jane Austen project has slowed down a bit because I just received an annotated edition of Sense and Sensibility from interlibrary loan. 400 pages of text, notes, photographs and paintings. So I’m rereading but I haven’t given up the e-book, which I must say is an extremely different experience. All good—including the audio edition in 10 compact discs. For the past three days I have found myself living an at-home version of the cottage-by-the-sea. No ocean view, no walk on the beach, but a sense of silence, solitude and simplicity. There was nothing on my calendar and I didn’t go out in the car—except for a quick run to the grocery store. I walked, read, and wrote. With the entire day at my disposal, I experience a fluid rhythm that enabled me to become deeply involved in the memoir I’m writing about my mom. Although I had completed a rather final draft, I had focused on the word ‘final’, but forgotten about ‘draft’. I’d forgotten how much tightening up and detailing had to be done before sending it off to an editor. My goal is still to get it in the mail to Carolyn by September 17th. I am very grateful for it all. Self-discipline and perseverance. I’m going to wrap these up into one post. I have them both, at least for some of the things I do—the ones I care about. But isn’t that the life’s way? When I wrote Joyful Learning, I’d get up at 4:45 every morning and tap away at the computer until it was time to go to go off to teach. And now I’m feeling the same determination. My editor from my Heinemann days has agreed to be the developmental editor for Very Grateful. Need I tell you how very grateful I am to her? With self-discipline and perseverance I will get the manuscript to her by mid-September. All Dugard’s traits, curiosity, hope, passion, courage, independence, self-discipline, and perseverance, are coming together. |
Contact me: bobbifisher.mac@mac.com
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