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
MAUREEN STANTON
On land, I am a beast. My arthritic feet feel like paws and my hands are becoming gnarled. This is the arthritis that torqued and twisted my grandmother’s and my mother’s hands and that is now—finger by finger—afflicting me. I have bum knees, which occasionally buckle and shoot twinges of pain. On land, I lumber. But in the water, I am sleek and fast, and it is a pure joy to be in my body.
I live on an island connected to another island connected to the mainland on the coast of Maine. As I drive the winding two-lane road eleven miles from the mainland to my house, I cross five bridges. My house is a bungalow I bought for $17,000 twenty-five years ago when I was free-lance writing. The house was dilapidated, and I’ve been fixing it up ever since. I never fully finished the repairs, and now the repairs need repairs. But where I live is beautiful, which feeds my soul.
On this day, as with most, while my coffee is brewing, I consult the tide chart, which will tell me when and where I will swim. I apply my formula: high tide plus two-and-a-half hours, and this gives me the perfect depth to swim in the Little River, a brackish tidal river that flows into the ocean at the state park beach near my house. At low tide, the river is six inches deep; at high tide it’s over my head, dark and cold with a swift current. Using my formula, the river will be up to my waist, warmed by the sun all day. I swim against the current, which feels like a metaphor, and when I am tired, I let myself ride the river’s current with the pull of the ebbing tide to the churning confluence, where river meets sea.
If the timing of the tide doesn’t work, I’ll swim in the lagoon at the beach. This is a salt-marsh pool about as long as a football field. I swim laps, occasionally seeing a crab scuttling below me or bumping into a clump of kelp. Kelp has an umbilical-like cord attached to the mucky bottom, which floats up and blooms into flat rubbery sheets of seaweed. When I swim there, I feel like a sea creature. I am.
If it’s too cold for the ocean, I’ll swim in the pond up the road, which is warmer, maybe a half-mile long, and prohibits motorized boats, so I can put my face in the water and paddle my arms and only surface for a brief rest or when I’m done.
But that’s later. Now, with coffee at my desk, I clear away the clutter of emails, errands, bills. I can’t write with these tasks bearing on my consciousness; I’ve never been good at compartmentalizing, but the problem is, the tasks are never-ending. These errands can take a while. I’ve overseen my mother’s affairs since she was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s seven years ago, so I have her business to deal with along with my own.
On this day, in addition to working on my syllabi for the semester, I’m completing applications for Medicaid nursing homes, which require reams of information, like my mother’s checking account statements for the past five years, with explanations for any transaction over $500. My mother has depleted her long-term care insurance and our family’s ability to contribute financially, and now we must rely on Medicaid. I find the applications tedious and anxiety-producing, so I fill out one section—her list of prescription medications and medical history—and then set it aside. I’ll tackle another section tomorrow.
I eat lunch at my desk, allowing myself to scan social media while I eat.
Aside from the nursing home applications, I am also writing about my mother’s disease. I’m seeking to show her then and now, through the prism of how dementia affects individuals, families, and our culture, which is woefully unprepared for the on-coming wave of aging baby-boomers and the attendant spike in dementia cases.
Sometimes it’s too painful to write about, so I jot notes for later, glancing away from digging deeper. Sometimes it is a joy to write about my mother as I knew her for most of my life. The essay I’m working on today is about her 60-year aptronym collection (people whose names match their occupations), and the coincidence (or not) underlying that phenomenon (called “nominative determinism”). She has two spiral-bound notebooks filled with yellowed clips from newspapers or magazines, printouts of emails my siblings and I have sent her over the years. The essay is a reclamation of her mind, her quirky hobby. I will not forget her as she forgets herself.
I’m trying to edit the essay down from about 8,000 words. A writer-friend who’d read the draft suggested there were too many aptronyms in the piece, that it became repetitive. I’m struggling to decide what to cut; I find all of them amusing, like one of my favorites, Betsy Weatherhead, a climatologist under the first Trump administration, or Chris Bird, an ornithologist. But as I read the draft aloud, I can hear how the litany of examples slogs. I spend some time choosing which ones to cut. (Betsy and Chris stay!)
Another beta-reader said that my research bogged down the piece. I have a bad habit of loading my essays with long passages of fascinating (to me) facts and context. The editor of my first book cut about 75% of the research, which I bristled against, though I could see how the book was far more readable. (He said my research sections were like “potted plants.”) I trim some research bits and manage to cut about 1,000 words, which feels heroic, though I sense the piece is still too long. My process is to line edit by hand, then edit in the Word file, then print a hard copy again and let it rest for a day or two before reading and revising again.
This takes me to about 3:15 p.m., time to get ready for my swim, my reward at the end of the day. If I delay longer, the river will be too shallow, so I put on my bathing suit and lather my fair Irish skin with gobs of zinc sunscreen. (I’ve had cancerous moles removed, and my father died of melanoma, so I’m at a higher risk for skin cancer.) I drive two miles to the state park, walk a half mile to the river at the far end of the beach, put on my goggles, and wade into the cold water.
Swimming is like being in a sensory deprivation tank; the quiet and the movement rinses my mind of worry. Swimming becomes a meditation during which I offer gratitude and prayers. My mind is reset, and now ideas about my writing projects bubble to the surface. Swimming always feels like salvation.
~
THOSE SAME 3 NEW QUESTIONS…
1. What one word best describes your writing life?
- Bittersweet.
2. Is there a book you’ve read over and over again?
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I tend not to reread books as there are so many great new books to read. But in teaching, I reread short works, like James Baldwin’s Notes of a Native Son, which after dozens of rereads, continues to astonish me with brilliant writing, clear sharp insights, and his deeply moving account of racism.
3. What is your strangest obsession or habit?
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I frequently look up words I already know, common words. It’s as if in writing the word on the page, I have a momentary amnesia about its meaning, so I check to be sure. When looking up the definitions, I often find etymology that informs my writing. Once, I looked up the word “volatile” and discovered its root was “to fly.” I had used the word to describe my mood when I moved from one geographic location to another, but the essay was also about birds and homing, so that discovery was a happy serendipity.
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—Other Writers in the Series—
