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
DENISE SMITH CLINE
The day starts while it is still dark. The noises outside my bedroom window sound like an owl. Essentially unserious, I am no owl. I claim no penetrating eyesight, no haunting call, no ability to watch over a field and quietly wait, vigilant for what next appears.
I’m no lark either. At 7:12 it’s the Voice from the speaker in the bathroom that wakes me. She tells me the temperature, the humidity, the chance of rain. I let her greet me every morning, rain or shine, triumph or tribulation, a gentle wedge into wakefulness. She talks like someone who once lived in Australia but moved back to Ohio to take care of her mother who fell and broke her hip. Cheerful, dutiful, ready to face the day. But ask her to play an interesting song? Brace for disappointment.
After what seems like a lifetime, I still practice law in my own firm. I try to limit the work so that I can fill the remainder of each day with writing and other interests. I wonder about retiring and what that would look like. Every day, I remind myself that it’s time to be serious about my next maybe-book. My first novel came out almost a year ago and book promotion has been a great diversion. But how do I focus on what comes next?
Oscar Wilde supposedly said, “Conversation about the weather is the last refuge of the unimaginative.” But we start our mornings and our connections with strangers, our loves, our enemies, with the weather. We do it at the Harris Teeter, with the mailman, and the neighbor one street over who we see every day and know not at all. We do it with friends at church and with strangers in the elevator to the ICU.
And to a remarkable degree, light, temperature, the chance of precipitation, and the talk of it shape my day and how I feel about it. The Voice says it will be warm. She does not say the world has ended or that AI has destroyed the human race. The election is still weeks away. Interest rates will be higher by a quarter percent.
Still in bed, I do daily puzzles. I try to be a Genius at Spelling Bee every day. I try to get the purple first in Connections. When I finally rise, creakily, at say 7:34, my low back reminds me of my lifelong debt to it, all the times I’ve ignored it, taken it for granted. The dog spills off the bed, panting for a signal for next moves.
I weigh myself. Apparently, that too, is who I am. I daily measure myself, assessing if I am too much, too little. Same same. But it doesn’t hurt to check, I tell myself. It actually could be harmful in some cosmic, whole-body way, but I brush that thought aside.
Coffee, breakfast. Like so many writers in this series, I eat oatmeal with blueberries. This comforts me. Meanwhile, an inner voice reminds me to get more protein, stretch my back, and check my email, figure out what to get done today.
I start with lawyer work. One client asks a question I can answer easily. I could do this forever, I think, and still write plenty. The next one wants several days out of town, with a long list of people to interview, a tangled mess to sort through. So maybe not. My quiet neighborhood is ten minutes from downtown Raleigh, where I have an office, but I like to work from home when I can, in this easy chair by my brick hearth, cool today to the touch. Sitting here, dog at my feet, I write letters, emails, responses to questions.
At any point I could shut down the legal work and move my novel forward. But I procrastinate, telling myself I’m helping my clients, supporting my travel habit, paying the bills. I’m working on a novel set in the South in the 40’s. By happenstance, my home, mid-century brick, was built then. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to help my progress.
At 11:30 I close my laptop, and we go for a walk, my dog and I. The day is warm, hot and humid for late September. My shrubs need watering, and I notice the first hint of rusty pink in the leaves of the dogwood beside the front walk. There’s a fine creek nearby. My dog jumps in and quickly out again, panicked, perhaps, that I will leave her, not realizing that for her, I would dive in front of a moving bus.
One day not long ago, we were both at creek’s edge when we were overwhelmed by sudden, engulfing flapping. Above, below, loud in my face and ears. Leda and the swan came to mind and then a great blue heron rose from the creek, huge, beautiful, blue and gone. Overjoyed at the sight, I may have clapped.
But no herons today. The creek gurgles, quiet, still not back to pre-drought levels, but respectable. A familiar disheveled guy rides by, shouting at me from his window the same phrase as always, “The more we know of man, the more we love our dogs.” Truer words.
After lunch, I sit before the hearth again and the hours stretch into true afternoon.
A message to a client ends the legal part of my day. With the same laptop and sitting in the same chair, I take a deep breath and turn to a chapter I’m writing for my next maybe-novel. This one includes letters between two women, sisters-in-law who live many miles apart. As I write, I think of my mother’s letters to her sisters. Mama and my aunts wrote of their children’s antics, a new recipe, and the weather.
I wonder if the letter I write for a character today moves the action along too quickly, artificially. I don’t fix it. Revising is for another day. I don’t dread the writing or the polishing. It’s the starting that’s hard, as with so much else. Harder than it should be. And too often, I find excuses.
Afternoon blends into evening. My friend drives over from Carrboro, and we share a simple meal. Rotisserie chicken and salad from the day before. When we step out outside at eight, the breeze is cool and it’s fully dark again.
~
NOT THOSE SAME 3 NEW QUESTIONS…
1. What one word best describes your writing life?
- Unfolding.
2. Is there a book you read over and over again?
I keep books I’ve loved in mind for years, but my to-read list is so long. I rarely re-read.
3. When you’re writing, is there something you return to for inspiration?
The knowledge that putting words on the page on a regular basis works better for me than striving for the perfect words.
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By DENISE SMITH CLINE
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—Other Writers in the Series—
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