Yesterday I chatted with my agent to talk about several items of outstanding business – pages I’m showing her, steps to take on several balls we have up in the air, a conversation I had with an editor. A few hours later, I was winding down my day by deleting emails from my inbox but keeping the ones that I needed. Among the keepers were a few from my agent, one from my publicist about a big book festival I’m participating in in October and another with mocks of the paperback version of THE SECRET SIDE OF EMPTY.
Oh my god. This is my life, I thought.
I thought back a little further. This morning, after I dropped off my kids at school, I took a quick run to the plant nursery. I bought two gorgeous tree roses and a dwarf apple tree (finally! My flowering tree!). I worked and then at lunch time I went outside, put my feet on the grass, and took a few minutes to clear my head before an important meeting. For dinner I picked up take-out with my daughter and then sat outside in the yard with the kids to eat. After dinner, they went upstairs and I stayed in the living room with my favorite lamp on. At just the right time, the sun beamed in at a sharp angle from the West and lit up its crystals like so many diamonds.
I am so damn lucky. I am surrounded by beauty and love and ease.
I am an expert at focusing on what I don’t have. The landscaping I want to do but haven’t yet. The wall I want to knock down. The trip I want to take. But I sometimes forget to look at the long sweep of my life, at how impossibly far I’ve come, at how every dream has unfolded at just the right moment in my life. I like to rush things, but as I look back now I realize that everything has happened exactly as it should.
An important reminder.
When I was small, I imagined the woman I would one day be. It was hard without a blueprint. I knew many of the things I didn’t want to be: weak, poor. I had this vague notion that I wanted to write professionally, although I had no idea what that might look like. It was an impossible dream, like sprouting wings and circling the globe playing a harp while flapping them. This is what my life looks like now, a consummation even bigger than I could ever imagine.
Life isn’t perfect. There are still things I want that I don’t have. But, as I look back, I see that everything has come in time. So I hope it will continue to be.