I just birthed another book. It's an odd feeling. Even though I've written all my life, ever since I learned how to form sentences in first grade, I never expected to have actual books out in the world. Now there are seven.
I wrote, as a child, because I could. I knew how to transfer words in my mind to paper. I could save them up ---- and I have. I could go back and read them later, and recreate the experience all over again. That seemed like magic. It still does.
Fifty-three years worth of journals repose in the blue bookcase in my upstairs room. Everything up there is dusty. I don't go upstairs often, though it's a cozy space. But my writing desk and now-stationary laptop are downstairs, and steps can seem daunting. Plus it's Buddy the Doggy's favorite place, his man cave. He can keep an eye on the neighborhood from up there.
The other day, I mentioned a long-ago incident from when my son was five years old. I became curious; memory is a tricky beast. One of the reasons I write things down is to keep myself from making things up. So I trotted upstairs and pulled that volume from the shelf, blew off the dust, pounded the couch pillow (cough, cough) and sat down to find the magic of the written word.
Life goes by day to day. In the morning, we never know what's going to happen. Something life-changing can occur at any moment. The thing is, often we don't even recognize it when it does. I was 29 years old in February of 1980. Andrew was still in his Superman phase. He spent two years in full regalia most of the time. I was feeling my oats as well --- living with my folks for free in the Azores, a fulltime Portugese grandmother to take care of Andrew by day and plenty of childcare at night as well. Single, ripe, and fancy free on an Air Force base is the stuff lurid lit is made of, and I was trying my best to live up to the genre.
What I remembered so vividly was the decision to send Andrew to live with his father in the States. In hindsight, 35 years later and 33 years sober, it was pivotal. It was the beginning of the end of my drinking. It was the realization that I was hurting my child and he needed a "normal" life. It was fear that I couldn't control myself and might actually harm him sometime. So I sent him away, rather than change myself. That, right there, that's addiction.
In my journal from February 1980, it rates a small paragraph, spliced in between accounts of cast parties, flirtations, speculation and drunkalogue. I have no way of knowing what would have happened if I had not sent him home. I'm dead sure it was the right thing to do, though once it happened, a few months later, I was bereft, and spent several pages lamenting the loss and wondering whether I would ever get him back. I did, but it took three years and getting sober before it happened.
I still keep a journal. It's sporadic. I'll write intensely when my mind is crammed and my life is feeling out of control. Then I'll go a month or two without writing at all. But I never quit. Every so often I go back and check myself like this, check in on my old self. There's a lot I don't remember. Things that seemed catastrophic at the time, have disappeared entirely from my memory. People, too. I'm surprised at how memory works, and doesn't work.
When I face a perplexing decision or emotionally-charged situation, I try to project ahead to the end of my life and look back on the present. It usually helps to change my perspective that way. Puts things in focus. In the meantime, while regular, sweet, boring life unfolds, I do what I can to stay awake to what's in front of me and, when inspired, write it down in my journal.
The new book is called Haints in the Sideyard, a sequel to Way Out in Dog Heaven. Do you know what a haint is?
