I had the opportunity to help out some friends. It seems that Auntie was very ill, and she needed someone to come stay with her on the top of a mountain in the middle of Virginia. But everyone was, well, honestly? ...busy. In the middle of things. In the middle of an economy gone sour, selling houses (or not selling houses as the case may be) and trying to get by. Everyone could volunteer a little time here and there, and thoroughly upset the applecart of a craggy, cranky woman who didn't like a lot of fuss or company and thus lived on a mountain top. So her daughter, my best friend's cousin, was busy trying to fill in, do the caretaking and still manage her own life 1,000 miles away.
It hit me like a ton of bricks. I was unemployed. I, too, had been here--too far away to help, but doing it anyway--and I thought, this is perfect! Don't pay some stranger, toss me a few shekels and I'll go help.
So, I dialed my best friend. Would this work? Would everyone be okay? I'm a bit of an interloper and I know y'all are a rather private family...but no, no, this is a good idea, he said. Let me see. Phones rang, exclamations of relief were heard across various valleys in California and Virginia and I was on a plane in three days.
The next thing I knew, I was ensconced in a mountain cabin in the Blue Ridge with a Subaru at my disposal and a very limited array of duties. This eyedrop, that pill, some ice cream, small meals. I cooked up an occasional small feast to rave reviews, and then we would sit and sip scotch and watch the day draw to a close.
Auntie was a writer, published and a damned good one. When I first walked in, I looked at the famous table and said, "so, this is where the magic happens." I got the eyebrow. She smirked when she realized I was being impudent. "Yeah, that's the place."
I said one afternoon, "Really...what did you *do*? How did you get here...a published author?"
As her biography lined the shelves in various collections of essays and a memoir, I knew most of her story, but she put it plainly: "I wasn't working. I had to work. I was alone, out of the house, not going to college, that wasn't for me. It was write or starve."
She had been through what I thought were more adult-making experiences than a lot of people should endure before 21, but no self-pity for her, write or starve was it. So she did. She worked for a department store, she wrote ad copy. At one point she was in enough demand in advertising that she took it with her...writing from abroad while following her artist husband, pregnant with the daughter I know, meeting very fascinating and important people in the art world in Europe. She would get the assignments by phone, I believe, and airmail them back.
Then the articles and books started. I asked how that happened. Best advice I've ever gotten:
"You get a little idea. Not a big one...that's too much to do in one sitting. Just a little thing. Something you'll follow and actually do. Then you nudge it along, a little bit every day. Next thing you know, you've got a big pile, and you work it up. Just like that."
I got it. And I watched. As she quieted down, she spent more and more time in her room. Finally, I was just bringing small meals and she wasn't moving much at all. "Bring some paper and a pen, will you please?" she asked one afternoon. I brought paper, pens, set up a table. I smiled, we muttered something about "the magic" to each other and the joke didn't materialize, but there she was, back at it. And she kept working.
By the time she died two years ago last week, she had eight or ten pages of something started. It was laid out in her hand, thoughts, ideas, a paragraph or two. But she never stopped. And I realized what I want to die doing.
