Monthly Archives: August 2018

August 28, 2018 · 11:38 am

Some other beginning’s end

Know what happened on moving day? As the guys were loading the truck? Our bear, the one I’ve never seen but Frank has on several occasions, came wallumping out of the woods behind the house, down the driveway, and across the street.

A bear.

If that wasn’t Chris sending us off on this leg of life’s adventure, I don’t know what it was.

I teetered on the brink of breaking down in the days prior to and just after the move. When I felt the sorrow welling, I pushed it down. Not now. Nope. Can’t do it. And I didn’t. It made me feel guilty, but I couldn’t leave that house if I let it overwhelm me. So I didn’t.

The house stopped being mine when my stuff was packed away. I detached from it, couldn’t wait for moving day. I’m so ready for a different lifestyle, simple, less work. Neighbors for the first time in nearly sixteen years. When I left, I thought I was going back to pick up a few things (like my cat) so I didn’t say good-bye. I didn’t walk room to room, remembering. Making peace. I just drove away. And I didn’t go back. That upset me, at first, but I’ve since come to realize it was better not to leave that house with that kind of emotional cloud hanging over me.

Leaving behind my log house on the river, in the back of beyond, didn’t quite suffice to convince my heart to tag along. It’s still there in the bricks and the boards, in the gardens no longer mine. In Jamie’s magnolia, Gracie’s cherry tree, Chris and Scott’s apple trees. Mixed into the roots of the tree where we buried Chris’ ashes. Not all of it, but a piece of it. I suppose that’s the way of such things; when you’ve lived and loved and lost so much in a place, you can’t just close the door and be done. It’s never done, and I’m okay with that. I really am.

14 Comments

Filed under Life's honest moments

August 7, 2018 · 10:24 am

Quixotic Drama

I rarely bring up Goodreads or Amazon reviews here on this page. It breaks an unspoken rule, and that fourth wall between writer and reader. Do you hear a but coming? Today, I found something amazing in the review section on Goodreads, and it struck me so completely I had to immortalize it here.

(Not the full review–just the pertinent part)

“What is real; to what extent do we live our fictions; what should be real? Wonderful characters whose souls are stirred by death and words and a past built upon more words and immortal youthful misdeeds. […]this is a book for the spirit and the mind. It is also a paean to the passing of an age of great authors who lived immortally, if not tragically. Kudos to DeFino. I call this category of fiction, Quixotic Drama.”

Quixotic* Drama. As Linus Van Pelt is prone to exclaim, “That’s it!”

This is exactly what I do in all my writing, whether fantasy, romance, fairy tale, or contemporary fiction. Quixotic drama. I have a name for it now. And you know what the old tales say about naming something–there is power there. Great power. I can already feel it thrumming in my fingertips.

In googling the term, I see it’s not quite unique to the world, though I don’t find it in reference to fiction. Whether a thing or simply new to me, it’s magical. The connection to Don Quixote, in all its facets, pretty much says it all.

Peanuts1

*quix·ot·ic

kwikˈsädik/

adjective

exceedingly idealistic; unrealistic and impractical.

“a vast and perhaps quixotic project”

synonyms: idealistic, romantic, visionary, utopian, extravagant, starry-eyed, unrealist unworldly.

2 Comments

Filed under The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers, Writing is Life

August 5, 2018 · 11:37 am

A Moment to Reflect

Life has been coming at me super-fast these days. Only two weeks left until we move from our log home on the river, to the townhouse in the woods. I went up to Framingham (Boston area) for a signing, was interviewed for an article, agreed to a whole bunch of writerly events from local book clubs to a library in Maine. The rest of August, September and October are almost completely booked by trips to the beach, appearances, and moving.

And then there are the grands who love to come over and swim.

I’ve had very little time to reflect on all the changes in my life since June saw The Bar Harbor Retirement Home for Famous Writers (and Their Muses) release into the world, and the sale of our home. This quiet Sunday morning, I sat with my coffee, reflecting.

I thought I’d be okay staying here if the house didn’t sell, but I was wrong. I didn’t know that until today. I’m so ready. To go. To leave behind this house, let go this dream, and step into the next phase of my life. Staying here isn’t going to change the fact that life here didn’t work out as we anticipated. It won’t bring my son back. It doesn’t even keep him close to me. It’s time, and I can’t even be sad about that.

It’s going to be hard to close the door that last time. Knowing I can’t go back inside, see the rooms we lived in as a family, the roof over the walkout that Chris built with a shattered ankle, from a wheelchair; all my word art; the mural I painted when we first moved in; the gardens I planted; the trees grown so tall; the table where we all played Loaded Questions, laughing so hard over the bawdy and bawdier answers we came up with; the kitchen where fifteen years of Christmas cookies have been baked with Jamie and her friends–a tradition that goes back to her junior year in high school; the “grow room” Chris and Scott worked in together; the turtle WWF sticker on the wall in Grace’s room that I’ve never had the heart to scrape off; the fireplace that kept us warm when the power was out for over a week.