Nancy Bartholomew

Some days are just gloomy.

I don't mind the rain.

Not even the clouds.

Perhaps it's the air- heavy and thick,

sad.

It makes me want to eat

top-heavy, grocery store cupcakes.

The best stories are the ones that crop up unexpectedly.

Mert was sitting in the cabin  Saturday morning assembling the new garden cart when she suddenly stopped what she was doing, looked up and said "Did I tell you I saw a coyote walking through the subdivision a couple of days ago?"

I figured she was kidding.  It was early morning.  I hadn't had enough coffee and Mert is bad to fun you .  But she wasn't  kidding.  She was serious...See?

Around here, we call that a "Serious as a Heart Attack" look.  This, too...When Mert starts pointing her screwdriver, you know she's fixing to give you the straight skinny on the situation.

But, I thought, we live in a fairly large city.  We live in the Southeast.  Coyotes don't roam the streets of Greensboro.  Do they?

"Mert," I said. "What makes you think it was a coyote?"

She shook her head, acknowledging that this did indeed sound incredible.  "I heard on the news they've been moving into North Carolina," she said.  "And I don't know, he just moved like a coyote." 

It begs the question, don't you think?

"Mert, how do coyotes move?"

Mert's into it now..."Well," she says, laughing.  "They just, you know, slink.  Creepy, creepy, creeping along."

"How was that again?" I said, raising the camera and hitting the flash button for good measure.

"You know!  They just hunker down low and...Bookity, bookity, bookity...right on down the road!"

So there you have it.  Coyotes in Greensboro.  Film at 11. 

My 99 year old lady said the secret of life is all in how you decide to approach it.  "You can have a good one or a bad one," she told me.  "It's up to you."

I suppose that's how it is with writing, too. 

I don't believe this on bad days.  On days when my life seems to fall to pieces, or the writing doesn't go as well as I might like, I decide it's all in the hands of the publishers or the agents or worse, Lady Luck.

But again, that's just how I choose to look at it on a bad day.  On good days, it's all up to me.  If I write it, I tell myself, they will come.

Sigh.  We writers are such a neurotic group!

Hadn't written one single word since my return from the cabin.  Not. One. Word.

Needless to say, life has intervened.

But one inevitability has transpired-

I've done the taxes.

Some would consider this to be a major work of fiction.

Not I.

That's why I have a big box slap full of every single receipt from every single expenditure for the past year.  That's why I sit amidst that mountain of paperwork every year trying to resurrect the past so TurboTax can then explain it to the IRS in terms they can understand.

No wonder I haven't written.  Who could write with that kind of log jam in their head?

Back in the day, before kids, before major responsibility came my way, I would squirrel away all my vacation days and take 2 long weeks off to "Evaluate my Life."  I had a 20 year plan.  Really.  With goals that could be measured by the month, the year, five years on up to 20 years.

I did not take into account the wisdom that comes with time and age.

This probably explains why I don't have a house in L.A (Lower Alabama a.k.a Panama City Beach, Florida) with a private landing strip for my own airplane.  Thank God for that!

The first week of my 2 week retreat, I would spend frying myself to a cinder on the beach and drinking wine spritzers on the roof-top deck of my boss's beach house.  But the second week signalled the time of introspection and reevaluation.  I had goals for everything- my career, my personal life, my friendships.  No stone was left unturned.

This week away, up here at the cabin, felt like a miniature version of those old escapes.  I still have goals.  I still reappraise them and evaluate my progress, just not with the rigidity of my youth.  I was, however, able to hear the sound of my own inner voice again.  I did write- almost 50 pages- of something new. 

But I covet the old days of 2 week chunks.  I love the bliss of this place. The thing that comes with time and age is the knowledge that one day, all too soon, I'll have a lot of time alone.  My boys will be grown, with lives and families of their own.  So the good stuff, the memories and treasures, for now they're at home, in town. 

I'm big on being with my family in the moment, savoring every single bit of that experience and hoarding it for my motherhood retirement.  

That, and the taxes MUST be done...