when we are not writing we are living: the kitchen, five months later, is done

In San Antonio, on the TAYSHAS panel, Susan Schilling asked what we do when we are not writing.

We are, in our own ways, living.

Nina LaCour remakes whole rooms, top to bottom. Dana Reinhardt pursues the immediate results—the appreciable outcomes—of cooking. Andrew Smith has not, in fifteen years, missed a day of running—wherever he is, wherever he goes, he heads out into the weather. Blake Nelson learns as much as he can (in sometimes funny ways) about people.

When I am not writing (and most of the time, I am not writing), I do many things that I am not particularly good at. Building objects out of clay. Raising seedlings into buds. Dancing the tango with my husband. And, also, sometimes all-consumingly, turning my nearly 100-year-old house into a home.

This past November, I began a quest to refinish my kitchen. To replace the broken things. To up the ante on the colors. To generate new light and life. It was a fraught proposition from the get-go—famously horrific weather, disappointing contractors, a leaking roof, delays, unforeseen expenses.

This morning she stands. Whole at last, complete.

I am, when I am not writing, living.

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Quiet

Perhaps because it has been raining. Perhaps because the trees keep losing their leaves at a rapid, unstoppable clip. Perhaps because I have allowed myself back inside a novel I have trembled about for months.

Perhaps I don't know why, but the house is a different sort of quiet.

Yesterday, running outside with my camera between rain showers, I stopped and glanced toward the kitchen, so unpeopled just then, so still. No stacks of my son's homework on the table, my mother not there with her cup of tea.

This quiet is a new quiet. I'm learning to bend it toward me, finally.

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