I pulled up to the stop sign on campus and sat there for an extra moment. The streets and sidewalks and buildings were mostly empty—two students, working on campus for the summer, walked slowly away. A security officer drove past. A few clouds drifted above the trees.
Every time I return to Messiah College (now University), I fall into a thousand memories, mostly revolving around the fall I first met Maile. Stopping to talk to her for the first time. Our first kiss outside her dorm. The place I asked her to marry me. But there are other memories, too, of the more mundane type: eating dinner nearly every evening with Doug and Jason, or studying in the library by the tall glass windows, or meeting Gregg and Lize at Wilbur’s for coffee.
But last Thursday night I was there to teach a writing class to high school students. I did my best, talking about all of my favorite writing lessons (escalation, causality, specificity), mostly things I’ve learned from George Saunders and Anne Lamott and Annie Dillard. Together, we read Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s story, “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World.” Such a fabulous, unique story.
It was a fun night.
From there I drove through pounding rain to a hotel close to the Baltimore Washington International Airport, slept for four hours, woke up at 3 a.m., and began my journey to Nashville, where I planned on meeting with a client for two days.
I slept on the flight, drifting off before the plane was airborne, stirring a few times, and waking when the landing gear came down. In Nashville I rented a car and drove north to Hendersonville where I spent the better part of two days sitting with a songwriter in their sunroom, working up an outline for their book, delving in to a few scenes, talking about voice and pace and purpose.
I love helping people write their stories, love it more than just about anything in the world. The beginning is the hardest part, building the foundation, but once that’s there, it’s full-steam ahead.
I spent Wednesday and Thursday night at my friend Lily Isaac’s house. She’s a singer, too, the matriarch of the blue grass country band The Isaacs (they just returned from touring with Reba McEntire and were recently inducted as members at the Grand Ole Opry).
Lily is a good friend, and we go back about fifteen years, to when I helped her write her first book, the one about her parents surviving the holocaust, her growing up in NYC, and her journey into music. We spent time catching up, reminiscing. Her home is so peaceful, and I slept great both nights.
On Thursday evening I went out to eat by myself, which my younger self would have thought sounded like something only pitiful people do, but is something my older self enjoys immensely. Ordering a nice, juicy steak, taking a book (currently reading Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese), and taking my time. No rush. Enjoying my book and the hum of people around me. Heavenly.
Friday morning I was up at 3 a.m. again, off to the airport for a super early flight home. The drive from BWI back home was warm, even though it was morning, and I drove with the windows down (our little red car doesn’t have power windows, power door locks, or AC).
I love traveling, but there’s nothing better than coming home again, especially when this is the crew waiting for me.
I never could have imagined this life, not when I was a kid or a teen or even when I was a student walking those sidewalks in college. Writing for a living? Six kids? A wife like Maile? Beyond anything I could have dreamed.
And that’s not to say life is perfect. Maile and I take each other to the edge of our patience; our children are wonderfully flawed, as we all are; we’ve gone through some hard stuff this year. We’ve lost loved ones.
But it’s life. It’s life. The only one I’ll get.
As Clarence the angel said,