A Walker in the Suburbs

I came of age in an era when writers produced words not platforms. Which is not to say I haven’t promoted myself through the years. When my book, Parents Who Think Too Much, was published, I quickly learned that if it was up to me to bring it to the world’s attention. I devoted several months to the task, but after that I reverted to type, toiling away in obscurity.

I kind of like obscurity. You can let your hair down there, can be yourself. It’s easy to freeze when people are paying attention. One of the reasons I started this blog 15 years ago was to write more freely and for myself, not for whichever publisher or establishment was paying me at the time.

But now, with the monkey of full-time employment off my back, most of what I write is for myself. It makes sense to meld the “professional” me with the “blogging” me. I’ve added a new page to the site with links to some of my published works. I’m hoping to add another page or two before I’m done, for other works and projects. It’s not quite a platform, not yet, but it is, perhaps, a scaffolding.

(Nature’s scaffolding in miniature, shot August 28, 2021, outside Lexington, Kentucky.)

I had to watch the replay on Sunday to see Journalism win the Preakness. The horse was well behind for most of the race. At the top of the stretch a clump of horses hemmed him in.

When he began to accelerate, a colt named Goal Oriented blocked him. There was a tussle, a bump, and then Journalism was free, streaking toward the frontrunner, Gosger. There seemed no way that Journalism could make up the difference before the finish line after the jostling he’d just endured. But somehow, he did.

He moved like the great ones did, with seemingly supernatural power, as if distances were meant to be gobbled up, as if he was born to run on this track, at Pimlico, in the last race before it closes for more than a year of renovation.

“Journalism has won the Preakness Stakes in a performance like you read about,” the announcer shouted, hoarse from calling the race. Later, he said, “A remarkable recovery by Journalism” and “Journalism has its day.”

It’s hard not to see a metaphor in all of this.

On Saturday, the Washington Writers Conference, which I help plan, was followed by the Kentucky Derby, which I never miss. The result: a harried trip around the Beltway from North Bethesda home.

This year, it was especially important to watch the race. The favorite, Journalism, was sharing the field with a horse named Publisher. As it turned out, a horse named Sovereignty won. Journalism placed and Publisher was fourteenth.

Shortly before the race came the famous command “Riders, up,” which means it’s time for jockeys to mount their steeds. What I’d been experiencing all weekend was something similar. It was, Writers, leave your house and join us for discussion and inspiration. Writers, take a deep breath and pitch your ideas to agents. Writers, find community, fellowship and lasting connections. In other words … Writers, up!

(Photo: Bruce Guthrie)

I’m still thinking about the 15-year run of this blog, of how moments add up to years. Isn’t that what life is all about, too? Trying to hold on to the little things when time wants to steamroll them into a seamless routine?

Writing here — and in my journal, the habit from which this practice grew — is my way of hanging on. As ways go, it’s an old-fashioned one, even though it uses relatively newfangled technology. Most days my phone wants to show me “moments” and there are apps for remembering everything from birthdays to baby feed times.

I’d rather choose my own moments and record them in the way that comes most naturally to me — with words.

Up before dawn this morning staring at this screen, which I’ve done all too often of late. I think about the legions of writers before me, also up early plying their trade. Down through the centuries they go, scribbling by fireside and candle flame and lamp light.

And then you have us modern folk. Our tablets are illuminated. Our laptops gleam. We need no lighting source save the one upon which we type.

There’s a lovely scene in the most recent film version of “Little Women” where Jo writes in the attic of her home in Concord. She has just lost her dear sister Beth, for whom she began writing tales of their girlhood, and now it has dawned on her that these stories, humble and homespun as they originally seemed, are the real thing, the stories she’s meant to tell.

She writes in soft candlelight, dipping her pen in and out of the ink. She wears her old writing jacket and scratches out the words as if in a trance. Days pass. The manuscript pages pile up, and she moves them around on the attic floor.

She writes in light and in darkness. When she strikes a match it sounds as if she’s setting the house on fire. But it’s she who’s on fire, penning the words that even after all these years I can still quote from memory: “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents.”

And here I sit, as the day lightens around me, as the screen glows.

(Saoirse Ronan as Jo in a still shot of “Little Women,” 2019, directed by Greta Gerwig, Sony Pictures Entertainment)

I remember an acquaintance years ago, a fellow journalist, who laughed about how he was working his way down the masthead. He had been the editor of a magazine I once wrote for, but that magazine folded, as beautiful magazines inevitably do. He did well for himself later, but there was some irony in his career progression.

I don’t have quite the same story, but I find it amusing that I once wrote for pay, and now I pay to write. Not always, only when I write academic papers. And I don’t pay much. The classes are made possible by a tuition benefit that’s made possible by an editorial job I held for ten years.

Less irony, then, but the point is similar. For many who do what I do, the money and the position don’t matter. It’s the writing itself. Look at it on paper, examine the bottom line, and it makes no sense. But that’s beside the point.

For my birthday, my daughter Claire gave me a subscription to Storyworth. This is a program that encourages you to tell your life story by sending you an email prompt every week. Mine arrives on Monday mornings.

Sometimes I set the prompt aside to answer later, but usually I respond right away. This may not be the most orthodox way to tell one’s life story, but maybe it’s the best way. Rather than sitting down to a blank page and an awesome responsibility, this is “telling it slant,” in the words of Emily Dickinson and one of my favorite books about writing. “To tell the truth, yes, but to become more than a mere transcriber of life’s factual experiences,” say authors Brenda Miller and Suzanne Paola.

My interpretation of “telling it slant” here also implies a slight off-handedness. I’ve long since learned the persuasiveness of the little editor on my shoulder; to subvert it is one of the reasons I started this blog. Sometimes the best way to avoid it is to dash something off, to meet a deadline. You can refine the piece later, but first just put some words on the page.

So, at least for now, that’s how I’m telling my life story.