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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how they spend the day.

At the Royal Society of Medicine in London earlier this year

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January 1, 2026: Melissa Pritchard 

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Florence Nightingale all but soars right out of Melissa Pritchard’s Flight of the Wild Swan.

I may not know why I was born, but it cannot be to wage war on dust and broken crockery. It cannot be to put down in a house ledger, as I do now, meaningless columns of tweedly this, tweedly that.

Flight of the Wild Swan is a big, thick novel structured in short chapters that highlight moments, keep the story moving, and underline the urgency in Florence’s thoughts and in her life. As a child she creates journals from her parents’ old letters, each page “folded into fours, the folded pages neatly stitched down one side.” She fills any blank space.

I am compelled, despite the ache in my wrists, to write down every smidgen of life going on around me, every thought boiling up within me. Nothing is real unless I take it down, pin and straighten what I see and think into measured words, solid sentences.

Florence was born in 1820 in Florence, Italy (hence her name) to wealthy parents. She was a brilliant child, not only interested in healing but in everything. She and her father studied stones and fossils together.

I have collections of coins, seashells, wax dolls. I’ve a cemetery trove of harvest mice, a baby wren, pink-skinned and naked of feathers, a blackbird, two halves of a grass snake…

Her father was also the one who made sure she and her sister received an education, even though both her mother and her father expected the girls to marry and raise families. But Florence was desperate to be out in the world doing things.

A letter, too, from Pastor Fliedner, asking when will I be coming to Kaiserwerth to study nursing. My application has been approved. I would be there this minute! Why am I here, in this house? A seething creature, poisoned by rage, with an oversized brain.

Forced to stay at home by her parents, she does what she is supposed to until she cannot.

From the landing, William Nightingale calls upstairs. She’d not come down to dinner the previous night, complaining of a headache. She has not appeared at breakfast. Hearing no response he takes the stairs. The door is unlocked, her bed is neat, unslept in… Where is she? At that moment he spots a dark, still shape at the farthest edge of the meadow. Hurtling downstairs, flinging open the front door, shouting her name, he runs.

Flight of the Wild Swan was a finalist in the category of Literary Fiction in this year’s Georgia Author of the Year Awards. It is historical fiction and gorgeously written as you can see by these excerpts from the first part of the book. When I was a child, I loved reading about Florence as the “lady with the lamp.” Now I love her so much more, knowing how hard she had to fight to hold that lamp and how much more there is to her story.

In addition to Flight of the Wild Swan, Melissa has published ten other award-winning books. She has received the University of Georgia’s Flannery O’Connor Award, the University of Rochester’s Janet Heidinger Kafka Award, Chicago’s Carl Sandburg Literary Award, and a Barnes and Noble Discover Great Writers Prize. She is a five-time winner of Pushcart and O. Henry Prizes and frequently shortlisted in Best American Short Stories. WordTheatre has performed her short stories in New York and Los Angeles; two of her books were named New York Times “Editor’s Choice,” and “Notable Books of the Year.” She has been awarded fellowships and grants from the National Endowment for the Arts, the Carson McCullers Center for Writers and Musicians, the Howard Foundation at Brown University, the Ledig-Rowohlt Foundation in Switzerland, the Hawthornden Foundation in Scotland and the Bogliasco Foundation in Italy. The Carnation Milk Palace, her fifth short story collection, will be published by Bellevue Literary Press in January 2027 and her sixth novel, Tempest: The Story of Fanny Anne Kemble, will be published by Regal House Publishing, Fall 2027. She currently lives in Columbus, Georgia.

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Come back on JANUARY 1st to read how MELISSA PRITCHARD spends her days.

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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how he or she spends the day.

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April 1, 2020: Allen Gee

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I’m happy to introduce another Columbus, Georgia writer–Allen Gee–as the next writer in the series. Allen moved to Columbus in the fall of 2018, I believe, after teaching at Georgia College in Milledgeville for fourteen years, serving as the coordinator of the undergraduate creative writing concentration and the graduate (M.F.A.) program. Currently he teaches at Columbus State University, where he is the Donald L. Jordan Endowed Professor of Creative Writing. And just look at all the great things he’s making happen.

Service trips abroad, for one thing. In fact, if not for Covid-19, he would be writing to us from Guatemala. Allen has also established an annual writing competition that offers publication in addition to the $10,000 prize–The Donald L. Jordan Prize for Literary Excellence. This year’s judge was Rosellen Brown. He has also created The Columbus State University Creative Writers Conference, which will take place here on Oct. 24, 2020. The conference is all about community and will be open to the public.

Allen’s first book, My Chinese-America, a collection of eleven essays, was itself a prize winner for SFWP’s national contest, judged by Lee Gutkind, and published by SFWP in 2015. From Kirkus Reviews, “In this collection of essays, Gee engagingly probes his thoughts about living as a man of Chinese origin in the United States.”

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On the first of each month,
a guest writer
shares
how he or she spends the day.

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November 1, 2019: Nick Norwood

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As many of you know, I travel a lot and meet writers from all over. But I’ve been negligent in connecting with writers where I live. I’m going to work on that. Which makes me especially proud to introduce the poet Nick Norwood, who lives in Columbus, GA, as the next writer in the series.

I met Nick a few months ago when he gave me a tour of Carson McCullers’ house here in Columbus. Nick is not only a poet and a professor at Columbus State University’s College of Literature and Sciences, but he is also the Director of the CSU Carson McCullers Centers in Columbus, GA and Nyack, New York.

For the last few years, without knowing who wrote it, I’ve been enjoying part of his poem titled “Eagle & Phoenix Dam.” Sixty-two words of it can be found in a cool art installation above the RiverWalk near the old Eagle and Phenix Mill. Nick and the sculptor Michael McFalls, also a CSU professor, collaborated on the project.

Photo by Andrée Martin

Photos by Rylan Steele

It’s so awesome to see poetry out in the world that I would like to spend this whole post talking about this one thing. But I have more to say about Nick’s work. [So for more on the poetry sculpture, click Eagle & Phoenix Dam.]

Nick’s fourth poetry collection, Eagle & Phoenix, was published earlier this year. In addition to “Eagle & Phoenix Dam,” it includes other poems about Columbus. From “Eagle-Watching,”

I gazed across the Chattahoochee
as she skimmed her shadow
over sloped banks crawling with kudzu
saw her snatch a sunfish
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from its given, giving world,
wormhole it out of time mid-swim
and cart it aloft to be stricken
in the bright white air.

The “Phenix City Story” tells the story of an older local woman, sick, calling for Ezekiel. The poem takes us through her December, January, February, and March with details of plastic over her windows, the five-and-dime clock, the clot of crumpled Kleenex, the Salvation Army truck.

She burned the leaflets

and old bills and catalogs
in the rusted trash barrel
out back: they still do that here.
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She had to admit, it was kind
of beautiful to watch: the fumes
and bit of feathery paper
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wafting up, the dark, thin smoke.
But the stink of it: pure
Alabama. Good riddance,
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she thinks, and goodbye.

The poems in this collection are wrapped around moments that ripple out. In “Latchkey,” about the first time a child lets himself into an empty house, Nick makes the poem bigger than itself by slowing time. In Ronnie’s, Nick expands the moment by moving in one breath from summary to scene. In “Old School,” it’s language that enlarges the moment. “Around / the corner, home, into your room. / And–soft, slow–close the door.”

As in the compelling Gravel and Hawk, this collection also includes poems in memoriam. These i.m. poems, like the other poems, focus on a moment but seem to capture a person’s whole life. Nick writes one for his great-grandmother, his great-grandfather, and so many others. I just loved “Aunt Sue,” which takes a broader view than some of the other i.m. poems but leaves us smack in the middle of a moment.

And where your secretary found you in bed,
turned off the television, picked up the phone.

And I will leave you with this. The first of the i.m. poems I read was in Gravel and Hawk and written for Nick’s father. In the moment of the poem, the father is shaving and singing and then the time jump will grab your heart. Please click over for “A.M.” You can read it and/or listen to Nick read it. And then,

Come back on NOVEMBER 1st to read how NICK NORWOOD spends his days.

Here are a few I remembered after the fact–being a Brownie leader, spending every New Year’s Eve until graduate school cooking a fancy meal with friends, sending Bobby to Harlem when I was trying to send him to the Threepenny Opera, a conversation with Peyton Manning that let me know the charm of my youth was gone, watching Heroes on Monday nights from 2006-2010, Friday Night Lights on Tuesday nights from 2006-2011, Glee on Tuesdays/Sundays from 2009-2015, Parenthood from 2010-2015, binge watching House of Cards in 2013.

Last night I discovered this line in Carolyn Heilbrun’s The Last Gift of Time–Life Beyond Sixty:
What one remembers is, I think, a clue to what one wants to be.

2016: Exhausted from the holidays, I arrive in Provincetown in a drenching rain storm. By the time I unload my suitcase and the groceries from the rental into the house behind the wharf house (which is closed for January and February), I’m drenched and standing in a puddle. The next day I wake up with fever. In a few days, the #1truething project is not only over but has worked its magic. At the end of 365 days, I’m now out of whatever hole I’d gotten myself into. I’ve recovered who I was and who I am. And more enormous good news–after months of looking for a house in Provincetown that I love as much as the wharf house, I’ve persuaded the owner of the wharf house to sell it. You just rent it, I said. I love it. But lots of potential road blocks–including a mortgage. My new Massachusetts lawyer and I become best friends. Still, I stay sick for weeks and weeks. I gain 10 pounds. At my six months’ endocrinology checkup in late March, my blood work shows hypothyroidism. Finally an answer. Mid-April I start taking a pill every morning and begin to feel better. I spend my birthday at AWP in LA. The week after that is Writing by Writers in Boulder. And the week after that, I close on the house. In May we add a new WxW event in the Methow Valley of Washington State. At the Seattle airport I pick up Ron Carlson and Andre Dubus, great teachers and WxW regulars, and we start the 5-hour drive west. Sam graduates from college, and even Jack flies in from LA for the weekend event. I rent my little house to pay the mortgage. Family vacation in Florida. Visits to and from the kids, who are now 35, 29, 27, 23–and living in Texas, Alabama, California, and North Carolina. I put a Stronger Together bumper sticker on my Prius. In NY, Cal and I stay at the Park Lane, where they upgrade us to a huge suite on the 46th floor with a mirror-lined dressing room and a living room and a dining room and a piano and so many closets I can’t count, and stairs to the outside, where we can walk all the way around the building. A once-in-a-lifetime experience. Amidst woodland creatures, Ro turns one and we go to Birmingham for the party. I hang a Hillary flag on my house. October is Tomales Bay, the Golden Gate Bridge, and a major clean-out of my closet. After months of worry and posting and talking, it looks as if Hillary will win. I vote and settle in to watch the first woman elected president. But the results come in with too much red. I don’t leave the TV. When she concedes, I burst into tears. The next morning I pack up the Hillary dolls I’d bought for each of the little ones, but thankfully Kathleen persuades me to give them out anyway. The resistance begins. A few days later, WxW is in Lake Tahoe for boot camp. In December, my mother falls, and my parents, now 83, need even more help. After five years, my agent and I decide to part ways. 34 books this year–my favorite is easy, Patti Smith’s M Train. My playlist for the year includes 51 songs–Anthem Lights’ Wildest Dreams, Indigo Girls’ Closer to Fine, Natalie Taylor’s Latch, Emily Barker’s Nostalgia, Ryn Weaver’s Traveling Song…And 107 days in Provincetown, with a record stay in the fall of 19 days. It goes so fast.

1 day to 60

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She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

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2015: Back in Provincetown, I sit still and stare at the water. The last couple of years, all my writing efforts have poured into this current novel and apparently all my self-worth as well. When I see people, they ask if they can buy one of my books yet. I lose my voice. I slip further away from me. The true me. What matters. I come up with a plan to recover myself. I will post #1truething about me every day for a year. When I’m in Georgia, I spend Wednesdays in Atlanta visiting and helping my parents. I begin to revise my novel again, but the one true thing project takes precedence and that feels right. In March I wake up one morning not believing my eyes–huge pieces of sea ice/ice floes/icebergs cover the Provincetown harbor. My hair is thinning and my nails are breaking. My endocrinologist says my numbers are fine. I cut my hair short and turn it red. Columbus is coming into its own with the longest urban whitewater course in the U.S. and a zipline across the Chattahoochee. For my birthday I step off the platform into nothingness and slide across a cable form Georgia to Alabama. Hillary Clinton will run for president. Bobby and Claire are expecting a baby! A couple of years ago I started going through our photos and digitalizing them. No real progress until now when I decide to tackle a year at a time and to finish by December. In addition to the generative workshop in Boulder in the spring and the Tomales Bay workshop in the fall, Writing by Writers adds a boot camp for completed manuscripts. We take our family beach trip to Sarasota for Memorial Day week. For our 30th anniversary, Cal and I take our first trip to the Caribbean, to Petit St. Vincent, where we raise and lower a flag outside our oceanside cottage if we need anything. Until now I’ve shelved every book I read. I begin to cull. I don’t feel that great. I don’t have my normal amount of energy, and when I get sick, it takes forever to get well. Perhaps it’s because I eat too much sugar and cheese and not enough vegetables. Cal and I go back to Canyon Ranch in July. I do a whole 30 but feel terrible the whole time. Throughout the year, there are visits from family, visits to family. In September, Baby Ro is born! And the nights become magical again–filled with little peeps and scratches, little fingers and toes. Only 34 books this year but so many that rise to the top: Niall Williams’ History of the Rain, Joy Castro’s Island of Bones, Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist, Jeanette Winterson’s Lighthousekeeping, Miranda July’s The First Bad Man, Hanya Yanagihara’s A Little Life (736 pages), Rebecca Solnit’s The Faraway Nearby. 72 songs on my Spotify playlist–Joshua Radin’s Worlds Apart, Lucius’s Wildewoman, O.A.R.’s Peace, The National’s Gospel, LP’s Into the Wild, Distant Cousins’ Fly Away, Andra Day’s Rise Up, and Nate Ruess’ Nothing Without Love… My agent sends my novel out to 4 more editors, and either something’s missing or it’s too literary or it’s too commercial or just nothing. 92 days in Provincetown.

2 days to 60

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She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

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2014: My agent sends me a note: “I’m so excited about your new novel, and I have a very good feeling that THIS ONE IS IT!” On the first trip of the year, Cal and I get snowed in in Provincetown. In February, one night I’m in Seattle at a VIDA party at Hugo House as part of AWP; the next, I’m in Columbus at a Mardi Gras debutant party where Jack is an escort to one of the Queen’s maids. Back in PT,  a neighbor brings me a plate of sausages and peppers. In March we have our second Writing by Writers event–a 3-day workshop at the Colorado Chautauqua in Boulder–with Pam, BK Loren, and Ben Percy. It’s in March that for the first time I stay in the wharf house, where at high tide the water swooshes under the house, and I know I don’t want to stay anywhere else. From the outskirts of PT in The Days Cottages, I’ve slowly moved further and further in. But the wharf house is already booked for most of the year. While Dani Shapiro reads my manuscript, I take a break from the novel to revise an old story. I trade in my Lexus for a black Prius–the first car I’ve bought thinking only of myself since my twenties. Family trip to the beach for Memorial Day, and family can rain down upon me because I have my week a month to myself. “Hidden Tracks” is published in the summer edition of Contrary. Kathleen has another baby. Wynn is born in September–more little fingers and toes, more tiny murmurs, more magical nights. In the fall Sam heads to France for a semester–the Davidson program now takes place in Tours, where I lived for a year. In October it’s WxW at Tomales Bay again. At SFO, I pick up Andre Dubus and Kwame Dawes, who sings a stunning No Woman, No Cry… And Pam finally makes it to Columbus and meets Cal. In November he and I fly to France to see Sam. All of us visit the apartment building where I lived 34 years before, the school where I taught, the market where I shopped. Cal asks me not to go to Provincetown in December so I try that. It will be the only month I’m not there out of 51 and still counting. My agent sends my fourth novel to 10 editors, and it’s not a match, or it’s too slow, or it doesn’t pull together. 36 books for the year. Bon Iver’s Beth/Rest (the Rare Book Room version), Passenger’s Let Her Go, lots of Jasmine Thompson, and Van Morrison’s Into the Mystic… Last year I stayed in 5 different places in Provincetown–this year it’s 3–the penthouse, the wharf house, and the boathouse. 82 days.

3 days to 60

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She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

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2013: One week a month in Provincetown. Space is opening all around me. I plan ahead, run the dates by Cal, and start booking flights. In January, I stay at The Watermark Inn. It’s closed. But I’ve stayed here before and it’s Provincetown. So just me in an entire inn. At first it’s a little spooky and then I love the darkness and the sound of nothing but wind and waves. I start a new novel. Blank pages everywhere. February is AWP in Boston and my last writing group in Provincetown. Even the universe is trying to help. I visit Jack, who’s living and working in LA. A week later, at the beginning of March, while Kathleen and her family are visiting, Jack calls to say his stomach hurts. Within hours I’m headed back to California–he’s having an emergency appendectomy. Kathleen is pregnant again. For my birthday, Cal comes to Provincetown for the first time–and he likes it too. Pam asks me to be on the board of the new nonprofit she’s creating with Karen Nelson–Writing by Writers. It feels like progress to be on the other side of a writing workshop. In May, the Days Cottages at the top of this blog, which are just outside Provincetown in Truro, open back up. I drag a mattress from one of the adorable tiny bedrooms into the den and plop it on top of the pull-out sofa so I can sleep looking at the water and the Pilgrim Monument. Cal and I go to Canyon Ranch–his 1st visit, my 14th. All my writing efforts pour into this new novel. No stories or essays. Very few blog posts. I start reading a Shakespeare play a month, beginning with Henry the IV, Part One, thought to be his first. Everybody comes home for a visit in July. Before Davidson starts back, I take Sam and his girlfriend to the beach. Lily is born in August, and just like I did with Mack, I spend a week helping Kathleen–doing one of my favorite things–getting up with the tiny baby in the middle of the night. The first Writing by Writers workshop takes place in October at Tomales Bay in California, and over the Golden Gate Bridge I drive again. On the way home I add a visit to Jack. Cal and I visit Sam in North Carolina and Bobby and Claire in Alabama. I’m now on some drug to prevent migraines, but when I head to Vermont to be on a panel–Building Communities of Readers and Writers–at the Brattleboro Literary Festival, there’s no doubt the drug is making me crazy. I hand the car keys to Pam and call the doctor, who tells me to stop taking it. My mother turns 80, and I fly to Sarasota for her birthday–taking 80 candy bars (each one numbered). Everybody comes home for Christmas. 35 books this year with the highlights being Denis Johnson’s Train Dreams and Robin Black’s Life Drawing–each one short but sweet. My agent sends my third novel (no one except for me likes my second) to 11 editors, and some love it but no one enough. I’m spending more time helping my parents. By way of Spotify, not albums or CDs–I listen to Motopony’s King of Diamonds, Fleet Foxes’ Montezuma, Mumford & Sons’ Winter Winds. And a new thing to count–80 days in Provincetown.

4 days to 60

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She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

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2012: After I give my lecture and reading, I start making the changes to my first novel that my agent (late addition to yesterday’s post) has requested, Tori Amos’ Silent All These Years and Regina Spector’s Us on repeat.  Cal comes to Vermont for graduation. When I get back home, I put my feet up and breathe. I’m exhausted. Burned out. And I’m getting headaches and visual migraines. I need to stop doing so much. At AWP in Chicago, I go to a book launch party for Cheryl Strayed. She wrote the January 1 essay in the How We Spend Our Days series. For my birthday Cal and I go to Seaside and stay in a honeymoon cottage. I resign from Contrary. In May Cal and I go to Fort Worth for Mack’s first birthday, and Jack and Sam graduate within hours of each other on opposite coasts. We split up so both have a group to cheer as they walk across the stage. Wedding emails and texts are flying. In June I stop submitting to the writing group but will still read the other submissions, and I head to Provincetown to finally stay in one of the Days Cottages at the top of this blog. I fall in love–their retro feel, the screen doors, the line of roofs that never seems to end, the way I can look out at PT. In July I make my first trip to Maine. August is a wedding party for Bobby and Claire in Birmingham. Sam has chosen Davidson, so in the fall I get to head back to North Carolina to my alma mater. And just like that—a f t e r  3 2  y e a r s—no lights leak from under doors of children’s rooms. I have made it to Part Five. The first week and the last week of September I go back to Provincetown, staying in the Days Cottages both times. In October I clean out the attic, have lunch in NY with my agent, and see Crosby, Stills, and Nash at the Beacon Theater with Cal. In November I do a two-week residency at Ragdale. The rectangular Playroom, which is my room, has a round window and stairs to a cupola, where I work. When I’m done with a page, I launch it down the stairs. President Obama is re-elected. I resign from Hunger Mountain. After Christmas Bobby and Claire get married in a very cool brewery with little white lights strung across the ceiling and a CD wedding favor with a playlist of their favorite songs, some of which become mine. The Alabama Shakes’ I Found You, Ingrid Michaelson’s You and I… 48 books this year–back to back reads of Rachel Cusk’s The Bradshaw Variations topping the charts. My agent sends my first novel to 18 editors, and some love it but no one enough. My parents begin to need help with things. I listen to so many wonderful but random songs this year–Yael Meyer’s Shed Their Fear, Amos Lee’s Windows Are Rolled Down, and Lucy Schwartz’s I Don’t Know a Thing…

5 days to 60

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She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

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2011: In January, I finish up winter residency and fall under the spell of Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad. February is AWP in Washington, DC, where I spot Josh Ritter in the bar and actually talk to him. In March, Contrary reviews are due to me, I go to Fort Worth for Kathleen’s baby shower, and Cal and I go to New York. I apply for the position of Assistant Fiction Editor at Hunger Mountain, VCFA’s literary journal. I don’t get it, but they ask me to join the staff as Art + Life Co-Editor with Claire Guyton. Together we revitalize this section of the journal and give it a new name–The Writing Life. We spend so much time on Hunger Mountain, it’s crazy. In April, Sam and I go to Florida for his spring break, and a week later Jack comes home for his. In May, Mack is born and technically speaking that makes me a grandmother, but it will be years before I’m able to use that word about myself. I’m blown away by Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water. Bobby graduates from St. Andrews and moves to Birmingham to be with his girlfriend. In June it’s more reviews to edit, another residency, and another anniversary (#26). During my grad school years, Cal and I are apart for three new year’s eves and two anniversaries. The fall brings another writing group trip to Pam’s ranch, more reviews, the beginning of Jack’s senior year of college, and the beginning of Sam’s senior year of high school. I can almost see the end. On September 12th, my to do list includes reading over 5 pages of my novel–every day, 5 pages. In October, “Mackenzie,” a short short, is published in Gargoyle, Pam and I take a trip to Napa, and Steve Jobs dies. I’m now in the thick of preparing for my graduating residency–working on my lecture and my reading, which will be from the opening of my novel, Love Like This. In December I sign with an agent who finds me by way of my blog and who loves my first novel! Bobby and Claire get engaged! 34 books this year–20 novels, 3 books on the craft of writing, 3 story collections, 3 essay collections, 2 poetry, 2 nonfiction, and 1 memoir. I start using Spotify and listen to U2’s One, Otis Redding’s Try a Little Tenderness, and The Band Perry’s All Your Life.

6 days to 60

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She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

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2010: The new year begins in the deep snow of Vermont. I stay in the dorm, wear my first pair of snow boots, and vow not to waste any more years writing novels that don’t sell. I will go shorter. And I start something new that has hold of me rather than the other way around. But every time it threatens to get bigger, I shut it down. Not only do I ferry Nan and Gay Talese from and back to the Atlanta Airport, but Gay is hot to watch a football game so they end up at our house. February brings several inches of snow to Columbus, a spa trip with Pam to Santa Fe’s Ten Thousand Waves, where I stay in an adorable little airstream trailer called Silver Moon that doesn’t exist anymore, a workshop with Robin Black on the Jersey shore, and a family visit to Jack in California, with a side trip to Disneyland. In March, Obamacare becomes law, and Cal and I go back to Sirenland–more steps, more of the brothers, and Ron Carlson’s class instead of Dani’s. On the day we talk about my piece in class, the first thing Ron says is, “Well, this is certainly a story that wants to be a novel.” I tell Dani, and she says, “Some people are just novelists.” On the way home, we spend the night in Rome, and I get violently ill, which leads to the wrong boarding pass the next day. I’m unsure whether I can fly, but I finally make it to the right plane only to have to de-plane due to mechanical difficulties. I then spend an extra night at an airport hotel. These days, Cal and I fly on separate planes, and he doesn’t know I’m still in Rome until he lands in the U.S. The iPad comes out, I take Sam to Florida for spring break, and I visit Jack again. I’m trying to get used to contacts, but I have such trouble getting the damn things in. Every month a packet is due for school. Cal and I go see James Taylor and Carole King in Atlanta on their Troubadour Reunion Tour. June 29th is our 25th wedding anniversary, but I’m in Vermont at the summer residency, where one day, I drive to Ferrisburgh to visit my old French Camp that is now a state park. When I sit still on the porch of the old infirmary, it’s like I can feel the past. My first novel places on the Short List for Finalists in the Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society William Faulkner-William Wisdom Creative Writing Competition, and my second novel places as a Semi-Finalist. In September, I go back to Pam’s ranch, and Bobby goes back to St. Andrews. In October I join the staff at Contrary as Review Editor. Kathleen is pregnant! It actually snows on Christmas Day in Atlanta. 50 books this year, with the highlights being Alexander Chee’s Edinburgh and Annie Dillard’s The Maytrees, which, as soon as I finish it, I start again. I email Annie and she emails me back. And then, listening to Mark Knopfler and Emmylou Harris sing All the Roadrunning, I’m back in Vermont where the year began.

7 days to 60

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She sees that she has before her an important task: to understand that all the things that happened in her life happened to her. That she is the same person who was born, was a child, a girl, a young woman, and now she is old. That there is some line running through her body like a wick.

Mary Gordon, The Rest of Life

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