Edification – Missing the people who are right there
Am I lonely, or is this what they call melancholy?
Edification – Newsletter #89 – September 26, 2021
Dear Reader,
Happy Sunday!
It’s fall, September’s passing through too quickly. Come back! Don’t leave me!
It’s suddenly tilting cold here nights. It’s quiet and dark by the time we get out for our evening walks. The frogs and cicadas and crickets have tucked themselves in for the season. The birds are still here, but they’re circling.
I guess I’m circling, too. Novel number three is growing hair; novel number two is in the midst of a “revise and resubmit” process, happily, at an agent’s request. Novel number one is quietly but insistently calling me back to it in my dreams. What am I to do with all these characters if I can’t get them out there into the world? Circling, circling.
I had a little epiphany about these three books. While all have distinct stories and people they share a kind of “friend interest” subplot, in lieu of romance. My main characters find strength (and challenges) in friendship.
So, my conscripted psychoanalysts, am I lonely? Is that why I’m writing about friendships, bonds between cousins or brothers or tough people who come from rural farming towns? Am I one of those loners who deep down need some help?
And yes, of course I am. And I also miss my family and friends a year and a half into this pandemic. My writing efforts must be trickling into a massive subcurrent of Covid-19 life.
I am a big fan of love. Huge fan. I’m the lady screaming courtside with the air-horn and half her face painted in a Valentine heart. Love it. Hell, maybe my next book with be centered on a love story.
But right now it would be nice to have some good old-fashioned buddies around. This week I chopped a few inches off my hair and felt so guilty about not seeing my best friend from high school for the task. She’s a hairdresser over in eastern Kentucky, big advocate of bump-its and spray tans, ready to tell me what my astrological sign is making me do now and regale me with possible ghost sightings. She’s the one they call, by request, for many an old gal’s funeral. Besides my mom (and myself) she’s the only person who’s ever taken scissors to my hair. I sure do miss her. And she’s right there! I feel like I could reach across the Big Sandy River and grab her by the sleeve.
Missing the people who are right there – that’s my personal brand. Jesus.
I miss my four brothers and their wives, even as we chatter continually in a group chat. I miss my husband’s four siblings and their plus-ones, too. It’s a pandemic strain of empty-nester syndrome, I suppose, to go from family gatherings of dozens of people to an exclusive “nuclear family.” But loads of people do it, not just in pandemic times. I lived far from my family for years in towns where I knew nobody but my kids and ex-husband. (Which is to say: things could be much worse than they are for me, personally, right now.)
Things are much worse for a lot of people, including right here in West Virginia. A confluence of factors has contributed to a delay in the pandemic setting in, both in actual cases and in psychological, political, social responses to it. We are more rural, more impoverished, less educated. There is less testing going on, vaccination rates lag, and public officials are unwilling to impose basic lifesaving measures like remote learning options or mask mandates.
To describe the situation as frustrating is painting a splintery fence with a pretty thin wash. Frustrating doesn’t convey the fear. Anguish. Danger. These are sharp splinters.
The unreality persists even as the Delta variant has surged to new pandemic peaks across the coalfields region of Appalachia. The hospital half a mile from my parents’ house over in Kentucky has had National Guard tents out front to deal with overflow Covid cases. Refrigerated trucks idle in the back. The schools are roiling with outbreaks and my unvaccinated nephews are hopping off the bus to stay with my mom and dad. Mom says everything’s “on an even keel.”
A little plug: I have a story included in And If That Mockingbird Don't Sing: Parenting Stories Gone Speculative, forthcoming from Alternating Current Press. (My piece is based on the sad fate of my cat who ran away when I brought my first son home from the hospital.)
I would be a bad lapsed marketing specialist if I didn’t direct you to the preorder page for this substantial anthology. It includes 75 flash fiction and creative nonfiction pieces by 76 authors and is edited by Hannah Grieco. Isn’t the cover fab? I’m pretty damned proud to be included.
So that’s that. Thanks for sitting with me.
Talk soon,
Edie
p.s. I sparkle as hard as I can out there, but I’m at a loss for how to grow my newsletter without your help. If you can share or tell the weird neat people in your life about it, I’d be forever grateful.
Okay. That’s it for real. Thanks.