June 7, 2009
Sunday

“Why did you call your book Keeping Days?”
“Because when I was young, a Keeping Day was a day on which something very grand happened.”
                     — Mary Stolz, 1921-2006, American fiction writer
                          from The Sea Gulls Woke Me, popular teen novel published in 1951

I’ve been out of the classroom more than ten years, but I still live the academic year and still plan my work in terms of units of study. On April 12, Easter Sunday, four days back from my month in Georgia, I opened the second notebook for 2009, having filled 150 pages of the first one in less than four months, an astonishing rate of production for me. “The landscape is greening up,” I wrote. “I feel healthy and strong and optimistic. Time to count, plan, project again.” So I broke the next 20 weeks into blocks of work:

April 12 – May 23 — 6 weeks – Florida residency application
May 24 – August 8 – 11 weeks – back to Perpetual Light (the novel I worked on in Georgia)
August 9 – August 29 – 3 weeks – Bread Loaf break

Then, a week before the end of that first block, I got the Bad News, about the “decline” in my favor at Bread Loaf. I cried. I sighed. I wore out my friends with my wailing. The residency application was nearly complete. I thought briefly of not sending it, thinking that it was an exercise in futility, but I took a deep breath, wrote my “Hope to Gain” statement, and sent it out two days early.

And on May 24, as I had planned, I went back to work on the novel. “Today is the first day of the rest of my writing life,” I printed in large letters across the top of the page spread in my work diary for that week. “Has anyone seen that window that’s supposed to open when a door shuts?” I asked on Facebook.  Then, as if there might be something to this idea of vibes and synchronicity and serendipity, I received an offer from a writing friend to accompany her as her guest to a brief writers’ conference where she was giving a presentation.

I jumped at the chance. And planned the first Summer 2009 Gallivant.

The conference would be taking place in Wildwood, New Jersey on Tuesday and Wednesday, June 2 and 3. I decided to go down Sunday night, have dinner with a friend who lives nearby, and take Monday to make a long-imagined visit to Rowan University in Glassboro to research a piece of family history. On our many trips “down the shore” when our kids were little, my sister and I would drive past Rowan, and each time say to each other, you know, we should stop there some day and see if they have information about  . . .

Sunday and Monday gave me exactly what I wanted — deeper bonding with a friend I seldom have extended time with, a visit to a research library where I saw a lot of interesting things even though I didn’t learn much about the subject I’d gone to study, and an afternoon nap from which the sea gulls woke me into another evening of conversation about writing and friendship and the joy of being alive.

Tuesday, then, was a bit of an adjustment. I’d left a private, quiet B&B where the light across the writing table and the salt air against my cheek soothed and inspired me, only to find myself in a conference-provided motel more suited to senior week enthusiasts who mostly want to surf, sleep, and sip. The room faced the street where a major construction project was in full swing and the window opened onto the pool machinery. It had no table and no chair, but it did have a ticking clock. And you know how I love those.

The conference turned out to be part Amway convention and part religious revival, writers and editors and gurus of self-publishing all sounding the same clarion call: write your book, tell the story only you can tell, sing your own special song even if nobody else sings along. I had to absent myself from Wednesday afternoon, retreating to the church-like quiet of a branch of the Cape May County library that had a table and chair that fit me just right, good lighting, and an ocean view. Two hours there restored me enough to enjoy my friend’s presentation, the panel discussion afterward, and then a short walk on the beach before the closing banquet. I got home on Thursday to a brief visit from Lynn and a neighbor’s graduation party, full of laughter and shared memories of the way the babies these beautiful young women once were filled our lives with so much joy.

I visited my place by the river today. I watched seagulls, certainly far from their home, fly silver across the water, and remembered waking last week to their call. Something in the air and the light has changed, and I’ve moved fully into a summer sensibility, a sense that anything is possible, in my writing, in my reading, in my relationships. These can all be Keeping Days, if I but walk out in wonder.

 Love it? Hate it? Just want to say hi?
To comment or to be included on the notify list, e-mail me:
margaretdeangelis [at] gmail [dot] com (replace the bracketed parts with @ and a period) OR
Follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/silkentent