“I have had the life I have had because I kept on being a barber, you might say, in spite of my intentions to the contrary.”
What is it about Sunday nights that can sometimes bring on the long, dark thoughts, the heavy-hearted wondering, the every-other-breath-is-a-sigh? By Monday morning I know I will be ready to make a to-do list for the week, ready to move forward word by word. But Sunday nights close in, even late July Sunday nights, and everything can feel a bit on the downward slope. The opposite of Aslan’s call in The Last Battle, everything feels further down and further out.
On Sunday nights, for me, writing can sometimes feel like a fruitless endeavor.
The above quote, from Wendell Berry’s Jayber Crow, bit me hard when I read it this week, mostly because I could have substituted the word “writer” where he has put the word “barber” and it would be pretty close to the truth for me.
“I have had the life I have had because I kept on being a writer, you might say, in spite of my intentions to the contrary.”
We went on vacation last week with my extended family, which can seem like a silly, almost petulant thing to do when the checking account says what our checking account says, but this last week in July is unmissable. For the last sixteen years, we’ve gotten away together—my mom and dad, my three sisters, two of whom are married and have children. Sixteen grandkids altogether. Me and Maile.
Every end-of-July we drive an hour or so into the woods, into the hills, and cram ourselves into a cabin and spend the week swimming and eating and fishing and playing games and eating and sitting and staring into the woods and eating and falling asleep to the sound of teenagers scurrying around the house like mice until the wee hours of the morning.
I found myself, this year, staring into the trees and thinking of my friends who have done very well for themselves in business, and I read Crossing to Safety, and I wondered, as I sometimes do, what will come of this life dedicated to stories and writing. Especially in a world where these things are not particularly valued, monetarily speaking.
In other words, am I doing the right thing?
It reminds me of another story, this one in the gospels, where Jesus delivers a particularly difficult message, then turns to the disciples and basically says, “Are you going to leave me, too?” and the disciples say, “But who else will we go to?”
And I say this to writing, when it asks me what’s the point . . . but what else would I do?
And then Sunday evening bedtime, and I’m in our queen-sized bed with Leo and Poppy, 8 and 6, and I pull out the book, The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane, and I start reading.
“Once, in a house on Egypt Street, there lived a rabbit who was made almost entirely of china.”
And they are immediately taken in. The three of us are there as Kate DiCamillo (I call her Saint Katie in my mind) constructs a rabbit made of china and wire, and infuses this rabbit with life. And I get to the end of each chapter, and Leo and Poppy look at me, eyes wide, as if to say, “We can’t possibly stop there, can we?”
We read the first seven chapters, and I carry them to bed, and I remember why I write.
“I have had the life I have had because I kept on being a writer, you might say, in spite of my intentions to the contrary.”
Someday I will tell you all the times I intended to stop being a writer. Great stories, each of them. But somehow, every time, the writing pulled me back in.
So for now I guess I’ll keep writing. It is the life I’ve been given. And on this dark Sunday night, after reading Edward Tulane to Leo and Poppy, it somehow, inexplicably, makes sense again.
If only for one dark Sunday night.
Well worded. Your experience brings to mind the words of another writer, Pam Munoz Ryan, who in her middle grade novel, Echo, says, "Your fate is not sealed. Even in the darkest night, a star will shine, a bell will chime, a path will be revealed." May God reveal the path.
Shawn, as long as you have the ability to create and share stories, keep on writing. Unfortunately, following a lengthy surgery forcing too much anesthesia in March 2019, my husband pointed out to my surgeon at my first post-op appointment that he felt he had brought home the wrong wife. Now in 2022 some of the reasons for that statement still ring true. All my creativity seems to have disappeared. Nothing I enjoyed in the past motivates me whether it's writing, music, quilting and needlework, homemaking, etc. I keep hoping something will turn that button on again, that creativity button. Keep writing, Shawn, please! God has blessed you with the gift of storytelling.