A Woman Writing

Dedication

For Larry

***

For making dinner as I made my way through another book.

And for breakfast. And for lunch.

***

I met my husband on a Saturday on the Sol Duc Hot Springs Road. The air smelled of wood smoke. I’d just hitchhiked my way to Port Angeles. When the beat up Volkswagen van pulled over,

I knew the man inside was the man for me.

He still is.

Book Epigraph

Write what you experience and see, because what history needs more of is first-person testimony.

— William Safire, Political Columnist & Speech Writer (1930–2009)

***

I wish I could thank this writer in person. His words give me permission, pretty much on a daily basis, to keep at it. Oh, the confidence you give to me, Mr. Safire!

Introduction

Back in November of 2009, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, a Texas Democrat (which has got to be a pretty sticky thing right there), echoed the point that it was funny to call health-care reform rushed, America has been working on providing access to health care for all Americans since the 1930s.

I have often felt the same way about writing a book.

Not that I, for a minute, compare writing, mine or anyone’s, to the crucial issue of health care. I’m just struck by how often there is this misconception of time, how long it takes to accomplish certain things, how slow and arduous writing really is.

For instance, you might think all my thoughts come to me as I write, and in one sense, they do. In another, they’ve taken all my life to uncover. All that comes to me now is an intensified need to get at them.

I’ve written a lot about being a writer, a woman, a wife, a daughter, a friend, and, I regret, what it feels like to be completely disillusioned about American politics as of late, and how I feel vulnerable about so many things because of it. And yet, in my earlier titles, I was writing from a younger perspective (a glorious deficit)! I was unable to crawl underneath and lift my work to where I can now.

I’ll say this though: I tried. I was determined. I spent whole weeks at a stretch pruning a single poem. I not only wanted my work to be beautifully written, I wanted it to make sense of things, especially the unexplainable, and especially to me.

I no longer put that kind of pressure on myself.

Gradually, I came to realize something: Writing, the act itself, is enough. If questions are answered along the way, better still, but it’s no longer my desire to make sense of so much. Isn’t there something completely shady about people — religious, political — who talk as if they hold the key to the truth, as if they know the great secrets, as if they know at all?

I think so. And I can’t tell you why people like this scare me so much. But they do.

It’s as if I freed myself. I remember it as the moment that I knew I would spend the rest of my life writing, a pivotal distinction in my life, when, even though I’d already published several books, I would no longer think of myself as a woman trying to be a writer, but as a writer. A woman writing.

Gratefully, with age come many such distinctions.

For as far back as I can remember, I’ve looked to the wise guidance of women like Sheila Jackson Lee, women who swim against the tide, who have what it takes to make things happen. Risk-takers are my greatest influence. If she can chip away at the glass ceiling, I can surely shape this book!

Early on, May Sarton’s Journal of a Solitude literally changed the direction of my life. Reading about a woman active in a life of her choosing, a writing life, when most of the women around her spoke of themselves with reference to what their children were up to, and then, as the years passed, grandchildren, well, even as a young woman still giving thought to having a child, I knew her solitary, writerly ways would become my own. I thought of her often while in the throes of these pages.

I also think of Edith Wharton, writing years before May Sarton, how she inhabited a 113-acre estate alone so she could have the freedom from trivial obligations which was necessary if I was to go on with my writing. She wrote this in the late 1800s. Hard to imagine how strong the tide against her independence must have been.

I’m well into the late stages of revision here when one family invitation arrives, and, later, another, and I must choose not to attend both my husband’s family reunion (not so difficult, really) and a wedding of a niece who lives across an ocean and a continent, a more difficult decision. I’m rather fond of the woman my niece has become.

Naturally showing up for neither didn’t win me any points, but it was a choice I had to make. I’d given myself the year to write, a promise I had to keep, making it impossible to say yes to the many social obligations — wait, I’d go so far as to say all — that take focus away if I cave. To disrupt the continuity is the worst thing.

The voice of Nancy Reagan, of all people, comes to me now. I suppose because I was in my most vulnerable years when, in reference to drug use, she coined the catchphrase: Just say no. On purpose, I applied her slogan to my own set of needs as a young writer.

Okay, Nancy, I will.

I’m not saying it’s impossible to write between demands and duties, allowing a sliver of time here, another there. But I’d be lying if I didn’t say that, for most of us, writing is just so all-consuming, such hard work, requiring so much energy and time and concentration that it has to be our only work. It’s amazing anyone wants to be a writer at all is what I think when I’m tired, or when my confidence falters and I fall into the fear pit again. I remind myself how many times fear has turned into the teacher I need. When I think, I stink; my writing stinks! I allow myself a few hours of that, tops. Until I’m more determined than ever. And off I go.

I’ve never been the kind of writer who can define a book at the beginning. I write it page by page (no, it writes me, which may sound like a writer’s cliché, but it’s true) and this requires patience. It requires exacting work, and it requires lots and lots of time. You can’t rush a delicate process.

Maybe this is why so many books nowadays seem forced. It’s no secret that a writer’s first book can take years to write. But the same writer can be asked to hand over a second title in under a year. And why I’m struck by some of the lesser-known European authors I’ve discovered, how they write without seeming to give much thought to the American bestseller list, how individually they tell a story, how originally they make the pages their own.

In the back of my mind, I store what Anne Lamott said about her book Bird by Bird, how her process began as separate essays, but as she got into them, they grew into a single theme.

Her saying so left me reassured, a confidence booster if ever there was one. Here I thought I was creating another collection of essays stemming from my various columns and commentaries, but, in the end, it didn’t work out that way. Sure, I had to revise the tone from column/commentary into book. I had to get in there and release each essay from the constraints of word count. Like a proud gardener, I had to stand back and let them flourish.

Writing is my greatest pleasure, all I ever wanted in terms of work. Still, I had to ask myself why I was determined to write a book about writing? Isn’t living the writer’s life enough?

The simplest answer is that a woman who writes her life is sooner or later going to write a book about the process. I know by now that writing honestly about writing and writing about my life are, pretty much, writing about the very same thing, inevitable to anyone who has made a stage of her life and given a backstage pass to her readers.

So here are a few things my mind kicked around during what I now look back on and fondly call the Obama Years. But, really, it doesn’t matter when they were written, because the issues remain the same.

And not simply because of the way they have driven me crazy over the years.

Part One

Writing is like driving a car at night. You can only see as far as your headlights, but you can make the whole trip that way.

—E. L. Doctorow

Let’s Begin Here

January

A new year is here, and it’s just the kind of year I’ve been waiting for!

Sure, I’ve told just about everyone I know that I can’t take much more of the way things have been going. I am not a silent sufferer.

But look around, we are in the throes of a new beginning. We are supposed to let go of the past; that’s what I keep hearing.

But you know what? I can’t.

Not yet anyway.

I’m trying. Professionally, that is. I’m fine with where my work is going.

Well, maybe not as fine as I thought I’d be by now. Honestly, I’m sort of struggling. Between sips of coffee, I sit here trying to find a new way into an old story, as if any part of it could surprise me by now, as if some new angle will suddenly come to me.

I would not have dreamed, could never have imagined, that I’d be back here writing about a friendship gone awry. I thought I’d covered everything there was to say on the subject in my last title. I wonder if there are just some things we need to live through again and again before they sink in. We are a stubborn species.

True, I am probably the last person who could tell you exactly what happens between friends. What’s more, I don’t want to travel down that road again. But last night I couldn’t sleep. I tossed and turned. Because it wasn’t just any old friendship; it was the kind of love that happens intensely between two straight women. And it’s taken me forever to be able to admit just how shaken it left me. All the time we spent together, all our laughs and confidences coming to nothing? How does love amount to nothing? No more lasting than fumes of paint?

It took one search after another (books, magazines, and a particularly powerful reality check from a woman I hardly know who said, You need to know something: she did the exact same thing to me, checked me off like eggs from a grocery list.) to make me see that there are just some people who want to cream off the best of you and move on. They choose you for a while and then, poof, you are history, and they are gone.

For weeks, I was miserable. I grew to resent having to try to explain what happened to my friends, to my husband, even to myself, partly out of embarrassment, partly out of regret, mostly out of pure old friendship fatigue.

But today, after picking it apart for a while, I recognize a turning point.

In fact, these are not pathetic tears I’m shedding, but finality tears. Not whiny, but necessary. And necessary tears have the perfect view. They can see. I just had to write myself up here in order to see over the hump, where finally I can say, "No, I don’t want a friend who would do this, who would decide in an instant she has what she needs so why continue."

Admittedly, there has been something a little haywire with me in the friendship department as of late. In the same way some women can’t choose faithful men, I’ve had my share of wandering friends. And in the clear light of day, I can look at my pattern objectively, take responsibility for my part of the flubs, and promise myself to honor each red flag as I see them.

But then a new flag waves, red as all get out, and I follow along.

So, I decide, this is the reminder every writer needs, to get to the place where time raises perspective and perspective raises the bar. And my job is to climb over the bar.

Um, excuse me, but, no. Big mistake. Enough already! She’s moved on, you’ve moved on. Snap! Crackle! Pop! Two new lives.

So you see, even if I wanted to write about a lousy ex-friend, which I don’t, there is a better friend to contend with here, someone I need to introduce you to straightaway because she sticks by me no matter what.

I appreciate how her tone has matured over the years. It’s more sweetie-listen and less listen-or-else which makes all the difference. I’m proud of us for evolving so well together. The way she insists I get on with it while, at the same time grounding me, well, how many friends do you know who can pull off this balancing act?

But damned if I am not a little put off at times. Because even as my fingertips resist, I think about my other friend, the faithless one, her smile coming to me even now. And when I have about as much ability to learn from my mistakes as the military, it drives me nuts.

You needed a wake up call. Someone to wipe that heart off your sleeve.

So let’s just say that when a friendship has breathed its last, no amount of writing about it can revive it.

And leave it alone.

And begin again.

Because this whole year feels more promising. Can you feel it?

Maybe it’s how wonderful it feels to watch a woman run for president. How just saying this, I sense everything more fair than before, what a country that truly values women is like.

But it’s taken so long!

Do I need to sing the Prince song to you again? Maybe I’m just like my mother: she’s never satisfied.

Or maybe it has more to do with the fact that this month, in every single way, is so much easier than October when Puget Sound fades from green to gray with no leafy-red in between. Better than drippy November by a long shot. And so much better than December, the most trying month because it’s supposed to be the merriest. But we both know how much energy it takes, not to mention how ridiculous and unconvincing we sound, when we are faking it.

Then there’s January.

January is about as bleak as it gets in the Pacific Northwest.

But there are days, merciful days, when the sun casts a stark light over Elliott Bay and I find myself staring out at the waves lit up like torches, until I, too, become lighter. Maybe that’s what I’m feeling.

But when a brutal wind blows across Lake Washington and rips through town, it’s just no fun to be outside. Maybe this is why we make resolutions this time of year, to give ourselves a new survival tool.

A new survival tool.

Come to think of it, I found one! Inspired by, for the sake of privacy, a man I will call Mr. P.

See, I wound up calling Mr. P a bad name, a very bad name, a name that is much too New York for Seattle. This time of year I’m prone to surliness, and I’m beginning to take it more seriously. Last year around this time I was this close to calling one of my editors the same bad name. Right after I told him he needed a wife. I didn’t stop there. I don’t underestimate the perceptiveness of women readers and neither should you! I yelled. "You just don’t get it!"

It being me, us, women. He had (I am sure of this) no idea what I was talking about. I didn’t want to lose my column in his paper, but neither did I want to dumb down my stories to the level he was suggesting. It is better to respect my readers, right?

It has to be better.

He, however, implied my readers don’t give a damn. Which may be true, but the assumption that people don’t care about reading anymore always sends me into a tizzy. What on earth am I supposed to write then? And for whom?

I don’t believe that, I said.

But, to be perfectly honest, I’ve been doubting myself lately. Not altogether, but maybe I should think about writing wine-pairing tips like everyone else, just so I don’t feel a hop, skip, and jump away from total unemployment as yet another editor suggests I write less about real life.

It was early in the month, the first week, the day our neighborhood newspaper comes out. Mr. P’s eyes were fixed on the headline: Seattle Center Axed? The Whole Park Developed Into Condos.

How can it be? I thought.

Though, now that I think about it, I am beginning to worry about Seattle with more and more frequency. Lately, I can’t even walk down the sidewalk without worrying. I never used to worry all the time. And worry does crazy things to people, makes us say things we don’t mean, explode into nutcase versions of ourselves. Take yesterday: I told a complete stranger sitting next to me on the bus that I was worried about all the new condos springing up that look exactly the same, how developers homogenize our neighborhoods, make them impersonal, bleak, how enormous push-up walls have lowered our expectations on so many levels and I have trouble forgiving us (me) for that.

Just your average worry, or did something bad happen? she asked, lowering her newspaper.

No, no, I said. I’m just surprised by how many new condos there are.

I live in a condo, she said.

"So do I."

Her newspaper popped back up. And, just like that, I was reminded how crazy the city can make me sometimes. Please make this bus hurry.

I’m more resistive, too. More so all the time. I don’t believe anything I’m told about the wars in the Middle East. I’ve grown too jaded to think, even for a second, that anything will ever be better because of them, even when I’m feeling positive. I wanted to understand the insanity as soon as we headed into Afghanistan.

I still do.

Mr. P not only registered my arrival, he wanted to talk. Which can be one of the most comforting things you love about a neighborhood, or a huge pain in the ass, when the unavoidable encounter means face time with a ghost. Oh, there he is! I’ll just pretend I don’t see him.

What tipped me off that Mr. P wanted my attention? Hey, Sanelli, I’ve got a bone to pick with you! Right there in the corner coffee shop. Gossip central.

Okay, fine.

The thing is, I’ve been a columnist for years so bones to pick doesn’t level me as badly as it once did. The thing that does level me is when a reader doesn’t understand that a column is only an opinion. What surprises me even more is when a reader feels the need to correct my opinion when it doesn’t gel with their own. Something about this always reminds me of my teenage years, when my opinion was considered talking back.

Mr. P went on about something I wrote a few columns back, after telling me for the umpteenth time how he used to be a professor, in the time-stealing, relentless way retired people do when they have nothing to get back to, nowhere to go, who get angry at columnists because we become their work and social life combined, their underling to admonish, their link to the outside, wage-earning world. (Twice I’ve had to call the cops on one of these guys, and decide whether to file a restraining order.)

Still, without question, Mr. P had every right to question me, to take issue. What I question is his right to call my take unacceptable.

And in that moment I could not think of a person, not one, who I wanted to get away from more. I rubbed my hand on my head trying to think of a comeback, and finally, in a moment both adamant and resigned, I looked him in the eye, searched for anything good amidst all his dislike of my writing and, what felt like, me.

But nothing surfaced.

Except a little confidence surge. And I have to tell you, I have never felt so brave, not even the time I stood up to my dad for calling me stupid (I was only a kid); not even when I found the nerve to say, look, any more lip from you and I walk when a rude host of a reading series admonished me for suggesting we do without the lectern (I couldn’t see over the top of it); as when I found the confidence, the absolute sureness to say the following unoriginal words to Mr. P: You *@$#-ing idiot!

To defend myself. To protect my sanity.

Now, you might think I ended there because if I was so confident, why act so defensively? I was fired up, that’s why, and I like getting fired up now and again. It keeps me from shutting down. If I nudge you to think about life in a different way, through a woman’s eyes, it’s a good thing, right? After all, your mother is a woman. Your wife is a woman. Your daughter is a woman, if you have a daughter . . . who still speaks to you.

He was quiet for, like, a millisecond. Then he started in again. This time with a pointed finger wagging. A pointed finger wagging is a real stretch for me.

I stood there thinking how you can always tell a professor. Retired or still at it, pedantic. It’s just amazing how often they mistake professing for conversation. Trapped as I felt, I had one thought, and one thought only: Who needs this?

I turned around and walked outside, vowed to have coffee at home from then on. Then, for some reason, I looked back at the window where Mr. P sat.

He waved. He winked. He gave me the thumbs up. He smiled.

In his smile, I could see we’d both just had a bit of fun. Good old-fashioned newsroom fun. When you are expected to fight for your story as a kind of sport in the male-dominated ring, one of the many, small, safe wars that keep men’s testosterone levels in check, I think. I had to learn the game the hard way. And now that I know how the game is played, I admit, I like to play. More, I like to win.

Mr. P had forgiven me.

Which made it a hundred times easier to forgive him.

Even so, next time I’m confronted with someone like Mr. P, I walk away; this is my survival tool. If nothing else, I won’t have to live with mental chatter waking me at 3:00 a.m. to scold, You shouldn’t have said that, you went too far. I’ll get more sleep, for starters. Instead of lying in bed, nearly falling off the edge of consciousness and then, nope, I can’t quite manage it over and over and over again. Until morning.

I’m not sure if I’ll ever live up to it completely. But I’m willing to try. Instead of giving in to a sudden need to call a good man by a bad name, whenever likely, whenever possible, I will use only the private place of my writing to get back at someone.

I’m still not going to let you dwell on that ex-friendship again. Not privately, not ever!

The point is I’m ready now.

Let the New Year begin.

Love Is All You Need

February

So-oo? You and your husband are a love marriage? my new friend, Amargit, asked. Amargit is from India where families still arrange most marriages.

I didn’t know how to respond. She added, Ye-es? before I could.

She looked a little concerned. She felt a little concerned. I felt a little uncomfortable.

I think back to that look, how she viewed me with such wonder, how I paused, and in my hesitation I realize we were taking our first leap of faith, when, in an instant, we both knew we weren’t registering reality in quite the same way and how, if we were to become friends, we’d need to leap in from two very different starting points.

Back when we were new to each other, these leaps were more challenging. We’d smile through the silence, make our way back cautiously, move into conversation that didn’t ask too much of us. We were clumsier then, not even close to the clowning around we manage now. We learned how to let go of the fear that made us tamp ourselves down as we struggled to share the everyday in an everyday way.

But our first leap really stumped me. I had no clue how to answer her question, how to put romantic love into words for someone still grappling with the English language. The ways of the heart are too mysterious, I thought, so maybe I should say something funny instead?

No.

Serious, then? Along the lines of how many sides love has, how many limits?

No.

Elaboration wouldn’t do. It was a simple, direct question, not entirely out of line with the others we’d begun to bat back and forth over the cultural divide that separates us even if we like to pretend otherwise.

That’s right, I said, finally. A love marriage. I shifted my bag to the other shoulder. I started to sing, All you need is love, love. Love is all you need.

When I’m nervous, I make a little fun. (I’m trying to get over this.)

Thinking more about this nervous tendency of mine, I believe it may have been key to my becoming a writer, though I hardly knew it at the time. As a young girl, I started writing in a diary as a way to handle my nervousness. I wanted to talk to someone. I wanted to admit my secrets. I wanted to be heard. Of course, my diary was a secret in itself; no one else was reading it. This was a huge part of the freedom it gave me.

Tilting her head to the right, Amargit said, Ye-es? lengthening the sound into syllables again, making more of a question out of the word and, though not intentionally, a fool out