Hello November

on beginnings and endings, and rescuing tomatoes

I lay the baby on the cold grass while I pluck ripe tomatoes from the garden. I am trying to save what I can before the frost arrives and whatever fruit remains splits down the middle and drops to the ground. I have cut the few dahlias whose magenta heads still peek out from the tangle of vines and dried leaves that have overtaken everything. I promise myself that this year I will turn the basil leaves I’ve salvaged into pesto to freeze for the winter rather than letting them brown and shrivel on my countertop when my attention shifts to more pressing matters.

At some point before the ground freezes, I’ll need to dig up the Dahlia tubers to store them until spring. I’ll need to plant the tulip bulbs, cut down the dried zebra grasses, and spread them over the garden so that the squirrels cannot tell where the ground has been disturbed and go digging, ruining all of my hard work. It is two tasks in one effort—cutting back the fading autumn garden, preparing it for spring. An ending and a beginning wrapped together.

For the past few months, I’ve been working on a novel about a group of women who are brought together by a shared hobby and a common experience of grief. I want to spend all of my time writing it, cast aside everything else that needs my attention and hole up in my little shed with its clanky space heater, and bring these women to life. I love these women, even the ones who act shitty and petty, or are uptight and irritable. It is a feeling that has grown stronger over the last year, though it sprouted a long time ago. All I want to do is write. I have two other books that I’ve been working on as well, slow and steady progress over five years. I have a short story that is close to ten years in its making. I check in on it now and then, tinker and tweak and inch it closer and closer to its finish. It pains me every time I have to set one of these things aside.

I am remarkably proficient at making the most of a very short amount of time. Coming into your own as a writer at the same time you became a mother will do that for you. You quickly figure out how to turn ten minutes of effort into forty minutes worth of output. If I just had a little more time, I tell my husband. Imagine. I would finish these books. I know that for sure. All three of them. They are so close. I am so close. So I am giving myself the time.

I am a rare Millennial who has worked the same job for most of her adult life. I bounced around between odd jobs for a year or so right after college and then signed up for a training program to become a massage therapist and opened my own practice as soon as I was licensed because I figured the part-time nature of the physical work would leave me time to write. But as I shortly discovered, running a business is a full-time job. Fourteen years later, with two kids, a chronic inflammation condition, and intractable back pain, there are lots of reasons why it is time for me to move on from this career, but the one that is pushing me forward, making me say, yes now, now is the time, is the desire to give more of myself to my writing even if it’s just a few additional hours each week.

It feels harder than I expected, though, as the few remaining months of my time as a massage therapist begin to wind down. I have clients that I’ve worked with for over a decade. There is a particular intimacy that develops when you work with people in this way. I often know where someone is carrying tension in their body before they do. I can easily navigate to the places where people didn’t realize they were hurting, release the tight muscles, and bring them relief. When you are good a giving massages (and I am very good at it) you develop a natural, intuitive flow. You don’t have to overthink it. You know how to shift from one element to the next seamlessly. Where to pause and move slower and deeper in the spots that need extra attention. It’s the same way I feel when I am writing well. I don’t need to know the next step because the story will tell me. Learning how to massage and learning how to write are both forms of learning how to listen.

I am giving up this thing that I know I am good at to more fully pursue a thing that I think I am good at, but am not quite as sure. And the stakes feel much higher. The income I bring in from my massage practice is what I use to fund the kid-lit magazine I publish. It goes toward the cost of the childcare I need to be able to find more time to write. It’s how I pay for occasional submission fees and my author website. My family is very very lucky to be in a position where I can take a couple of years to really explore if I can make writing full-time work for me in even a small way, but it means I’ll be spending some of that time researching and applying for grants to help cover the costs of the magazine, and that I’ll have to take chances on getting published in more competitive places that pay even though that certainly means more rejections to shoulder, more disappointment to push through. I have a few workshops that I will be leading, and some public readings in the year ahead that I’m excited about and am hopeful will bring in a few book sales. Having built a business before, I am confident in my ability to make this work, but I can’t help but feel a bit like my garden at this moment. This shift is an ending and a beginning wound together. I am planting the bulbs and crossing my fingers that when spring comes, green shoots will burst through the dirt and blossom into something worthy of the effort, a hopeful sign for a season of change.

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