When a
grandchild comes to you and says, “I need a favor,” the proper answer is not, “What?”
or “Why?” or “How much?” When Jacob made that announcement this morning, I
said, “Okay.”
“Stand
up,” he commanded. “I’m going to take your picture.” And he did, saying it was
for school. I never got more clarity than that. When he showed it to me, my
thought was that, except for the quarantine haircut, I don’t look like I’m
suffering in this life of isolation. And then I remembered a time way back,
when he was maybe five, that he insisted on taking a picture of me. So here are
Jacob’s two pictures. I’m considerably younger in the early one but maybe not
quite as full of smiles.
The
problem with Sophie, I decided today, is that while I think of her as a
medium-sized dog—thirty pounds—when excited, she has the shrill bark of a small
dog. And she was excited today: the yard guys came. She always barks, and it
didn’t used to be a huge problem, because they came in the late afternoon, and I
just kept her in the cottage and endured the barking for twenty or thirty
minutes. But now they come right when I want to nap.
Today
I had a brilliant idea: I locked her in the bedroom with me. Fail! That just
meant that I was confined with a barking dog in a small room that acted as an
echo chamber. Then she decided she could best protect me if she got on the bed,
which was okay for a few minutes because she was still. But when a slight noise alarmed her, she stood on the bed and barked,
which rocked the whole bed. Then for a blessed short while, she lay quietly on
my feet, and I dared not move.
I was dozing, happily plotting a scene in my mind
(napping is when I do my best thinking about whatever I’m writing). Then she
came unglued again I gave up and let her out of the bedroom. She proceeded to bark
frantically for about twenty minutes.
Suddenly there was quiet. I tried to recapture the
plotting moment, but it didn’t work. Got up reluctantly and began a different
kind of plotting—grocery lists with Jordan.
Tonight a good friend of Jordan’s, someone I’m fond
of, came for a distanced happy hour, but I begged off, pleading that I had
promised to make German potato salad (Christian’s favorite) to go with our burgers
tonight and I had a lot to do.
That sense of having so much to do has only come
over me recently, but I find it puzzling. Yes, I am working on a new mystery,
but I have no deadline. I am in every sense self-employed. But today I wanted
to finish up my newsletter, do grocery lists with Jordan, write a blog, make
the potato salad, and, I wish, make progress on the novel. None of it must be
done today—except that in my old compulsive mind it does.
Jordan wanted to talk grocery lists this morning,
and I put her off with the explanation that I was doing something I really
wanted to do. It occurred to me that, yes, the urgency is in my own mind, but
it’s not because I’m compulsive. It’s because I have it in my head where these projects
are going, what I want to say, and I want to commit it to the computer before
it leaves my brain. Could I call it inspiraton?
A lot of people would still say I’m compulsive. Writers
will understand.
