Category: Days of light

Crazy winds. We got off easy losing power for just over 24 hours.  Driving around yesterday to survey the damage we took many detours because of downed trees and hanging wires. At home, we were cozy enough with candles and the fireplace – and the bonus of wonderful neighbor/friends still with power who shared their food, wine and couch with us.

It was an interesting reminder for me – the pleasure of simply flicking a switch to light up a room. In Croatia and Bosnia, there were months at a time  during the war, when I had neither water nor electricity and I somehow, got (uncomfortably) used to it.  And for a long, long time afterwards –  a hot shower was pure bliss, boiling water on the stove – a joy and what luxury to have heat and electricity! That theme again: how sweet the light becomes because of darkness.

Yesterday we spent the day cleaning up outside, working in our shirt sleeves, pausing to drink tea and eat lunch in the sun.  Glorious!  Four crocus in bloom – a set of purple on one side of the garden and yellow on the other.  By the time the sun retreated below the tree line, the yellow ones had tightened up into torpedos against the cold of night. There is a lot of work to be done – we beat a quick retreat indoors from winter. Broken birdhouses, flower pots, garden furniture and tools, half-done projects are strewn about, abandoned to the winter elements.

Yesterday, we raked leaves – a job we do not do in the autumn, preferring to mow them up into shreds for mulch. At least that’s our reasoning. But there are bags worth of leaves out there still, and my compost pile is full.  We cut back the butterfly bushes to  stubs and made trips to the dump. Our neighbors do this before winter sets in, but by the end of summer, we preferred to spend our free time kayaking and then, we just lost heart.  Closing down our favorite season makes us sad.  Now, fired up for spring just around the corner and glad to be in the sun, we attack these tasks with joy.

Also in the spirit of clean-up, I am back to my book for rewrites based on the good advice of a venerable agent. It’s been months since I’ve immersed myself in this story – my story – and while I feel inspired to make it stronger, I am also dragging my feet, reluctant to recollect those dark days again, like a return to winter. Perhaps I can pretend I am revising fiction – but then – what a different story I would tell.

Milestone

This morning, I popped the last white pill from the prescription bottle and tossed the empty bottle into the trash. After five years, it seemed unceremonious. There will be no more refills – I am done with Tamoxifen, the drug I diligently took to hedge my bets against breast cancer.  I am a pharmaceutical skeptic –  but was not willing to venture out on my own against this disease. I have diligently followed doctors’ orders, hoping to keep cancer at bay by religiously swallowing a pill every morning. Finishing the recommended protocol, I feel a mixture of relief and anxiety.  Fleeting thoughts that this little pill really was some kind of panacea. But I know better: there is no such thing.

The best I can do to try to edge up the odds in my favor, is to eat only the best of food, to drink red wine only in moderation, exercise these aging bones, but most of all, stay happy.  I am a complete believer in the mind-body connection.  I don’t think it was any coincidence that I was diagnosed only months after my husband’s suicide.  For years I had been tautly wound with stress, pain, worry, grief.  Since then I have learned to keep my toxicity radar finely tuned.  I try to pay attention more – to everything, starting with the breath – how life begins and ends.

The Promise of Brighter Days

Snow is virtually gone – washed by the past few rainy days.  At the end of the driveway on a sloping bit of land, the strawberry plants I transplanted out of the vegetable garden last summer, are a stunning green against the wet brown leaves and earth around them. In fact, the plants seem to have multiplied under the icy cover of the past two weeks. I let myself be thrilled by these crazy promises of spring – although it is not yet January and there will be plenty of snow and frigid days ahead. Technically, winter has just begun. Still, this glimpse of green and the pile of seed catalogues on my table feel like harbingers of spring.

This is partly how I navigated through some bleak days in my life: years of my husband’s addiction, his suicide, my bout with breast cancer.  Although there were times it was difficult to see the light, I always could imagine brighter days lay ahead. Nature is the key for me.  Throughout the seasons, there is always comfort to be found in the natural world. Planting bulbs, for example.  Placing the parchment skin covered bulbs into the cool autumn earth was an act of hope. Winters of the world or of the soul can feel long and dark but the bulbs helped me to believe that life would get better: a faith rewarded each spring as the crocus, daffodils, tulips and hyacinths emerge from the still-cold earth.

Brave New World

Authors regularly call me wanting to set up a signing at the store. Unless you’re a psychic or television personality, you better tell your friends and family to come out and support you.  Tell no one and that’s who will be there.  Even acclaimed authors who you’d expect to have an audience can tell you about events spent reading to one passerby and the homeless guy dozing in a chair.  My suggestion to authors is go to your target audience rather than expect them to find you. Wrote a book about WWII?  Speak at a veteran’s group. Gardening? Meet with gardening groups. Rotary Club, Senior groups, schools – are always looking for good speakers and will give you an opportunity to get the word and your book out.  That’s what I’ll be doing.

Recently, a generous, smart woman in the publishing industry gave me the same advice I usually give to others  – only she was referring to the cyber world.  The internet provides a whole new opportunity to build an audience, find readers before you even publish your book.  And in fact, you improve your chances of landing a publisher if you manage to capture an audience.  Times are tough everywhere, and publishers want to know that the book they’re getting behind has readers at the ready.

It was as if a light bulb went off in my head.  I have been slow to embrace this new media of blogs and twittering but after a week of exploration in this brave new world, imagining the possibilities – I’m sold.  It’s an exciting new world available right now on this snowed in Sunday morning when everyone else in my immediate world, is still sleeping!  So here I go, ready to launch out into this new dimension. Bear with me as I get the hang of it and thanks for spreading the word.

My memoir, Light Between Shadows, is about how love and a life were destroyed by drug addiction.  I needed to write the book for me but I know that my story is not unique. I hope to chip away at the secrets and shame associated with addiction and suicide.  We need to talk about this stuff, help each other through the dark days. We are not the only ones. Show me a family that doesn’t have an addict, an alcoholic, mental illness.  My community – friends, neighbors, co-workers, family all helped me survive those days of living with an active addict and the aftermath of suicide. I hope I can do that for others who are navigating the world that was once mine.  We are not alone.

Life is different now – the shadows are mostly gone and each day feels like a gift.  I marvel at the difference between then and now: ‘then’ makes the ‘now’ all the more precious. I watch my bright and beautiful daughter move through her world, wisely and with joy and am grateful. I wake each morning next to the rediscovered love in my life and can’t believe how lucky I am.  Now is a different story than the one I told in my book, but only because I lived it. I don’t forget that – ever.

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