Annie Dillard wrote, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

On the first of each month, Catching Days hosts a guest writer in the series, “How We Spend Our Days.”

Today, please welcome writer

 

RAMONA REEVES

The garage door rattled. An engine hummed and faded as my wife left for work. The house went silent. I don’t eat breakfast because eating before I write sometimes satiates not only my hunger but my need for words. I make it a point to fill myself with language before food.

I would love to say I wrote right away, without distractions, but on this first Tuesday of the new year, my mind rushed like a swollen river. It runs calmer when I rise early and meditate consistently, but the recent holidays discarded any hope of routine.

In the last weeks of 2024, my spouse and I drove eleven hours from Texas to Alabama and spent ten days with my mother. There is no world in which I can imagine her meditating. A former marine, retired nurse and staunch Baptist, she is no shrinking violet, but she is aging and sometimes needs more assistance. My spouse and I love her as she is and know she loves us in return. We also know she is on the tail-end of the Silent Generation—an apt description—and that she would rather eat Vaseline than attend a Pride parade. Likewise, she understands we would rather wear five-inch heels in a thunderstorm than attend one of her church services.

Maybe this explains why I often write about characters seeking validation within their families. For my part, I mostly have given up on that sort of validation-seeking, and I think it’s perhaps no coincidence that my confidence as a writer has been in lockstep with my ability to validate myself.

This morning I did what I often do when I head upstairs and sit down at my glass desk to write. I stared out the single window and marveled at how trees thrive while standing still. Today the trees led me to think about my hometown of Mobile, maybe because I recently spent time there. For me, language, food, history, and so much else is caught up in the trees of the Deep South. Live oaks. Pines. Magnolias. Crepe Myrtles. They seem to tether thoughts to their trunks the way some people carry money in their shoe. Trees are ubiquitous in my first book and did not escape my second, either, though my second is not yet published.

But back to the writing. I did not write first thing this morning, and by “write” I’m referring to writing in my journal or working on a short story or the next big project. I’m close to finishing a novel. It’s currently with two readers. I’m hoping to hear from them that it’s nearly finished, but whatever feedback I receive, I’m grateful for this cycle of generosity among writers, of them reading my work and me reading theirs.

For my next big project, I’m torn between starting another novel or writing a short story collection, which is why my office was clean today. I spent hours yesterday tidying it, and today, I answered email and organized papers. It’s as though my subconscious was organizing and structuring my next project. I also looked up deadlines for several residencies and grants I’d like to apply for and glanced at my writing intentions for the year. Yesterday I posted them on a corkboard that hangs near my desk.

In previous years, I’ve crafted finite and specific goals for my writing (e.g., write X number of short stories, X number of essays and X number of pages of a novel each day), but I’ve let go of those goals, much in the same way I’ve limited sugar or given up alcohol. By nature I tend to plan too much, or at least I did before the pandemic. These days, I think those plans may have constrained my creativity and my ability to let go and bring a full sense of play into my work, so this year I chose fleshy intentions: Be in community, do joy work, care for your body, meditate, and write toward expansion.

I drove to my university job around noon and spent five hours editing engineering best practices and working in an office building. Out my window, evergreen and semi-deciduous trees cluster. Farther out, they plug spaces between commercial buildings and the highway Austinites call “Mopac,” a designation that appears nowhere along the road itself. The name references the Missouri Pacific railroad line running through the middle of Mopac’s northbound and southbound lanes.

Because I perform my university job from home several days a week, my official work office near Mopac is sparsely decorated. On the nearby credenza, fake flora pokes out of a tiny llama planter beside a framed and colorful drawing by a New Mexico artist, and next to that, sits a printer. A red clock hangs on the wall. I’m prone to staring out the window between editing tasks, and today was no different, except that I googled the history of windows. I discovered paper windows in ancient China and Japan, and among Romans I found the first glass windows. Given my predilection for these openings to the outside world, surely a window maker branches from my family tree.

I was commuting home on Mopac when my mother called in the early evening. She was eating dinner and watching the news. I rarely watch TV news. I prefer to read it.

“Did you hear about the fires in Los Angeles?”

I hadn’t yet heard and told her no.

“It’s awful,” she said.

“I’ll listen to the news when I get home,” I told her, and I did, but her words worried me. My mind jumped to the Bourbon Street revelers who days ago lost their lives while celebrating all that a new year might bring, then to the passing of President Carter.

“Are you still there?” my mother asked.

“Yes, I was just thinking about Jimmy Carter,” I said. “I liked him.”

“He was a good man,” she answered. “Not a great President, but a good man.”

I’ve often heard this opinion, but so much in life and writing seems a matter of perspective. My spouse would disagree with my mother. Carter ensured the Panama Canal was returned to Panama without a hitch. He’s a hero to many Panamanians.

Later that evening, my wife and I ate shrimp tacos and talked about her day. She told me that her students at the high school where she teaches were hoping the snow forecasted for Dallas later in the week would extend south to Austin. “You just came back from the holidays,” she told them. “Wouldn’t it be nicer to have a snow day in February?”

Her students, she told me, did not agree with her suggestion. “They’re impatient,” she said.

I’m not surprised by their lack of patience. It’s taken me decades to cultivate patience in life and in writing, and I’m far from finished. Even now, I must remind myself to allow the stories to come at their own pace and allow the revisions to take the time that’s needed. Am I scared I will not be a writer if I take too long or that I will leave something unsaid? For me, patience is sister to experience. Maybe if I live more decades, I will fully learn patience. Or not.

When I was a child, my grandmother was fond of saying, “Today is the day the lord hath made.” I confess to liking the idea of each day being made, like a quilt crafted from old scraps of fabric. There’s an implied agency to the idea of “making” that’s appealing to me both as a writer and as a human being.

The thought about my grandmother was the last thing I wrote in my journal before I put on my pajamas and settled into a bedroom chair to read for a half hour. Outside it was dark. I no longer could see the trees. Tomorrow they’ll be watching, though. They always are.

~

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NOT THOSE SAME 3 QUESTIONS…

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1. What one word best describes your writing life?

  • Bountiful.

2. Is there a book you’ve read over and over again?

  • Olive Kitteridge.

3. What is your strangest obsession or habit?

  • When I visit a city or town for the first time, I love visiting thrift stores to see what people have discarded and to piece together the personality of a place.

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By RAMONA REEVES

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Other Writers in the Series