Up until Thanksgiving, I was moving along merrily, working each Saturday on my novel, and on my other works in progress on Sundays and during the week. And then - I was scrambling to get something done for the last workshop - and, truth be told, without the workshop to give me a deadline, almost nothing would have been written before the New Year. And I don't think it was just me - we probably set a record for the shortest River Writers ever this week.
What is it about turkey and trees and holiday lights that slows us down so much? (I notice, for instance, no one has been blogging here either.) Well, unless turkey has long term effects not yet identified by science, I guess it has to be mood and memories. I don't think it's just that Christmas was a time of such great anticipation as a child; I think it is an ongoing sense of loss that settles in as we get older, loss of all the people who are no longer with us as we gather to celebrate. Grandparents, parents, the generations behind. When I was ten years old, I visited a nursing home with my class at Christmas time and met a 102 year old man who was born during the Civil War. I was thinking of him this week, and thinking he was born almost 150 years ago. That's a lot of Christmases. It's not exactly that I miss the Christmases of my childhood - it's that my childhood is receding through time, becoming historical, subject to sentimentalization and ossification. If I had a time machine and could go back and ask that nice man a few questions, one would be if the Victorian Christmases we see on our cards and Christmas windows today have anything at all to do with his memories.
Oh well, this too shall pass, the New Year will arrive, the roar of the crowd from Times Square will wash over us, and writing will become easier again. But it probably won't make next December any easier - maybe we should just declare a writing holiday and dedicate ourselves to consuming cookies instead!
2 comments:
I think you have it covered. Also, with at least half of us getting over the flu-like cold, we were somewhat dimmed.
What looking back and sentimentality gets wrong is that people living through the past didn't feel it was quaint as they lived it. The present feels fleet, new, and full of possibility (and a host of other urgent and unpleasant things) and even if history paves it over, to those here and now there is no amber hued glow or ye olde signs. This is now. It was now then. Now and now and now. And the family and friends are gone, yes, but if they were here they would be some version of themselves we never got to know, because we are shaped by the times we live in if we are sentient. My mother, in old age, would obviously not be the 43 year old whom I last knew. Only Rip Van Winkle and awakening coma patients can find time stood still in their minds. But what a shock it is to them after all. Older bodies and a new culture to assimilate. Your 102 year old man, his holidays were certainly not a Currier & Ives print in his mind.
But yes, I miss them too. And when I am gone who will be left to mark their time? Very few or none at all. But they lived. The now was real to them. The now will always be the now.
Thanks Susan! Great to know someone besides us is enjoying the writing.
Post a Comment