Editorial notes on the draft of book two of the '60s trilogy arrived two days before my spring travels. I went anyway.
D.C. in mid-April, Tennessee, New Hampshire and Denver in May, and several local schools in June, capped by a trip to Pine Manor College in Boston on June 30, which brings us up to date. Sort of.
I didn't take my camera for work, but I sure did take it on the road to visit my sweet peas in D.C. and Denver. Then there are the peas right here, at home, too. We had a pretty good time just being with one another.
I look at these pictures and feel lucky. I know I am. I also realize -- again -- how my writing life is an extension of the life I lead... my stories come directly from the day-to-day of living...
...playing cards at the kitchen table, going to High Tea at the Mayflower Hotel (not so high anymore, I'm sorry to say), celebrating birthdays, rides in wheelbarrows, cloud watching, reading, hiking, wondering, cooking and eating together... the simplest of everyday activities is the stuff of our lives, and, for me, it's all story.
I'm grateful for the stories in my life... every one of them.
I can't wait for that part. I'm staggering to the finish line with this documentary novel -- the biographies are still not where I want them, for one thing -- and it's good to have family time like I've had this spring, to mix it up and remind me that there is life beyond 1964 Mississippi and Freedom Summer and the book that has consumed my life for the past three years.
It's all good. And I have no poetry left in me to make it sound better than this. This is it, and it is good. Very poetic, eh? More on book two, next.
