Thursday, May 02, 2013

The Writing Cottage

This morning I sat on a pile of pillows and wrote my first journal entry from inside the NEWLY RENOVATED SHED. (Which a friend kindly suggested I begin calling "The Writing Cottage.") While that certainly sounds more dignified, I'm not sure Eric and I will ever be able to call it anything other than "The Shed." I owe a huge thank you to my husband - speaking of Eric - who not only agreed to the renovation, but also painted the walls for me, the floor for me (2 laborious coats) and then assembled my desk for me, after it took me nearly two hours to just assemble the drawers. Incidentally, we have decided to launch a lawsuit against the people who okayed the phrase "Some assembly required."
Ladies, if there exists a better definition for the term "knight in shining armor," I don't know what it might be.

When I was a little girl, my room was a cluttered mess of stuffed animals, toys, books, rumpled clothing and paper that stretched from wall-to-wall. I can still remember the dark gray afternoon, humid with thunderstorms in the lazy stretch of summer, when I decided I was going to clean out my closet and make it my very own special hiding place. It was probably only 2' by 3', but after a long days work I had managed to dump everything out of it and clear out a place big enough for a stool and a lamp. Inside the closet, with the door closed, I sat cozy and dry in the cheery light of the lamp reading A Wrinkle in Time. When I was fourteen and began to get interested in things like writing and Runes and meditation, I can remember closing my eyes and wishing, from a quiet place inside myself, that someday I would have a room of my own, just like Virginia Woolf had written of,  a room to dedicate solely to the pursuits that mattered most; a room that could be kept pure from the pain, clatter and clutter of every day life, a room just for me, with a lock and a key and cushions on the floor.

I turned the knob and swung the door of my room open this morning. I lit a stick of incense and sat on the cushions, looking out the window at the thick trunk of the Longleaf Pine, the tender shoots of Canna lily rising from their bed of pine straw and heard the clear call of a cardinal. I felt an unusually cool May morning breeze blow in through the screens, rustling the leaves of the wax myrtle. I could feel images from my new book beginning to usher themselves in, I could feel the possibility of it all. And I cried a little (hence no video tour, as my friend Alex Bledsoe had suggested. I was far too emotional!). Because all I could think of was that wishes really do come true.

They do, they do, I promise you.

We may not know exactly how we will get there, but the magic is in trusting that someday, it will come to pass. Our only jobs are to be good and kind, trust, and then let the rest go. Someday, when our wish has almost been forgotten, you may move to a house in a suburban neighborhood in a new land, and you see it has a dilapidated old garden shed...

I'm so excited to share some pictures with all of you. Not just because you have read my story and become a friend, (or are already a friend or family member) but because I want to share with you this feeling of possibility.

Believe.
I'll be wishing that all of your deepest wishes come true.

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My father's old nightstand
The Longleaf Pine from my writing desk
Cardboard moose head from Steamboat, CO
A crow on my writing chair pillow to signify my connection to black feathers


The brass chandelier was a gift from friends that I then painted

Lynne Wallace-Lee, I found the perfect place for the gift you brought me in December