Cross-posted from my reader email because I want to be able to find this easily in the future.
I made the most astonishing discovery yesterday. It’s like a dream come true, and literally, it was a dream come true. I’d dreamed very vividly the night before about my mother. She was with my friend Sophie’s mother, and they told us they loved us. It was so startlingly vibrant and intense that I emailed Sophie about it as soon as I woke up. It wasn’t a normal I-was-eating-pickles-at-the-carnival-then-I-was-in-a-garden-with-my-high-school-english-teacher kind of dream. It felt real.
Sophie and I had lunch a few hours later. We talked more about the dream.
Then I went home and in a full-blown fit of writing procrastination, I started mucking out the front porch which routinely becomes our dumping ground for boxes of clothes and books to donate, packages we haven’t bothered to open yet (new kayak paddles, the cable box the internet company sent us that we’ve never hooked up), dog food bags, and all the stuff we just don’t know what to do with.
It’s embarrassing. It’s our “garage” as we have no garage and very few and tiny closets. Guests have to walk through the hell of it to get inside our nice house. It smells like cats (they sleep there at night and every once in while they decide they hate the cat box – gah.) Once a year or so I spring clean it, and yesterday was the day.
Now, a couple of years ago, I cleaned out my office. I KonMarie’d it, getting rid of SO MUCH crap. I also put all the stuff I mean to digitize into cardboard boxes and put them on the porch. The boxes held old photographs, all my old writings, and my mother’s photos and writings.
Yep, my mother was a writer, too.
If you’ve followed my work at all, you already know that she was pivotal to me and who I am now.
In Western Samoa where she was a diplomatic something-something for New Zealand, where she met my Peace Corps father.
My mom and I were really, really close. I considered her one of my very best friends and biggest champions. One of the biggest regrets of my life is not sharing my first completed novel (which went on to be my first published book) with her, but honestly, she was too sick then, and pushing it on her would have been the wrong thing to do. I just really wish she had read it, that’s all.
But as a writer herself, my mother remained as carefully in control of her emotions as she did in every other part of her life. One of her friends once told me, “You know, your mom is my best friend. But I don’t know her at all.”
Oh, yeah. That was my mom. She could deflect attention like she was wearing conversational armor. A primary goal of my whole life was to get her to tell me things about her past. She never wanted to speak of any of it, and not because she’d had a bad youth – she hadn’t. She’d had a delightful one, for the most part. She was just so private. (The apple fell REALLY far from the tree on this one.)
In the articles that she sold to magazines and newspapers, she always wrote about other things. An old-school journalist, she kept her personality out of her work.
When I inherited her writings, I combed through them, looking for something more personal. I found an essay about her being pregnant with me. It was short, but lovely. That was it. Everything else was impersonal and left me craving more.
Yesterday, as I was finally taking back the porch, I found the boxes I’d piled there. Time to move them to new digs! (Not to digitize them yet, oh, no. That would be too much work. Time to move them out of cardboard boxes and into more protective plastic ones which could then be stored in our bedroom closet! More procrastination, ahoy!)
So I paged through Mom’s writing again, for at least the third or fourth time. I found book review after boring book review. Articles on gardening. Birds.
I dropped them all in the clear plastic bin. I lifted the sharpie to write on the outside: Jan’s papers.
And I looked through the bin, to the top folder. It said clearly, The Morning Pages.
My brain stalled.
My mother. And Morning Pages?
Impossible.
Now, any of you who were pursuing creativity in the 1990s remember the Morning Pages. They were a tool in Julia Cameron’s book, The Artist’s Way. Basically, whether you’re a writer or not, you start your day with 3 handwritten pages, and you do this for 12 weeks. You don’t think about what you’re writing; you just blab. The words come from the bottom of your soul and the top of your mind. You don’t worry about grammar or spelling. You don’t reread. You can write “I don’t know what to write” for three pages, and that totally counts. (I HIGHLY recommend the book. Grab it if you’ve never done it.)
[Important point: They are not meant to be read by others. Morning pages are private, and personally, I’ve never even read my old ones. But Mom expressly left them to me in her will. She put them in the box with my name marked on it. If YOU do the morning pages, make sure you’ve thought about what you want done with them. I don’t care who reads mine because no one would ever get five pages in. I’m BORING on the morning-pages page.]I popped open the box and yanked out the file folder. It was orange and had black printing on front: THERE IS NO ANTIDOTE FOR TERROR.
Inside were 217 pages of morning pages in my mother’s hand.
I flipped forward. I read a few lines. Yes. These were hers. Really, really hers.
They were from 1996.
I was still living at home then, finishing college and about to leave home for grad school (I was a mama’s girl and never really wanted to leave). I know that I’d started morning pages the year before (and kept them going for years), and I have a vague memory of encouraging her to do the Artist’s Way. I also remember hearing her complain she had nothing to write about, and I remember saying, “No one does. Just write anyway.”
So yesterday, I set the folder to the side. (I’m one of those people who always save the best for last.)
I finished my five-hour clean out. I scrubbed the front porch. I drove to the thrift store with my SmartCar full-to-bulging. I bought some wine and some salt and vinegar potato chips.
I went home and took the chips, the folder, and a glass of wine onto the back porch.
Then I read.
And I found my mother.
I found her. This voice – the one on the page – was the one I heard when she’d had two glasses of wine (one past her giggle limit). This voice was the one I heard in a little osteria in Venice as she told me just the barest bit about her childhood home. This voice was the one I heard on a dark road in New Zealand, lit only by glowworms, as she talked a tiny bit about an old boyfriend.
At Hot Water Beach in her native New Zealand
It was the voice I’d always wanted to hear.
She wrote about her childhood bedroom. About her first attempts at making art (age 7: she diverted a creek to make islands, and covered them with flowers). About her subsequent attempts, tracking them through her life.
She wrote about us. About my sister Beth and her baths. About Christy and her artistic talents. About going to a writer’s reading with me (oooh, she did not like that one poet).
She wrote about her cats. She wrote about her garden and where her love of each scent came from. I learned amaryllis would always remind her of her father’s funeral. That violet was the best scent of all (I actually already knew that one though my knowledge of it wouldn’t come until that trip to Italy.)
And this: I learned that she felt she was locked down by inertia. Her most-frequently used affirmation in the pages (affirmations are strongly encouraged by Julia Cameron) is “I can overcome inertia.”
This is wild. My mother was like me – we never, ever stop moving. We’re always, always doing something, every minute of the day. But she really felt that her creativity was stuck and that it was inertia that held her there.
She would never have said this to anyone. This was a deep feeling, and (as she confesses in the pages), she couldn’t speak these kinds of things. She went mum when it came to emotions or relationship issues, her tongue tied.
But lord, she gets it on the page.
And funny! I’d almost forgotten how funny she was. She was literally the smartest person I’ve ever known, and I knew that, but I’d forgotten her sharp wit, always ready to tease, sometimes a tiny bit too hard (something I can also be prone to doing).
I do, I promise, have a point in telling you this.
Leave something behind.
Oh, god, Rachael, you had to go to the macabre, didn’t you?
Yes, I did.
This is one of the biggest gifts I will ever, ever receive. Last night, on the solstice (which she always loved and honored), I read on the porch until the light faded from the sky and the frogs in the creek became deafening.
I sat with my mother and heard her for the first time since she died almost exactly nine years ago.
I was with her. I was much too happy to be sad.
If you have a writing bone in your body, do this: Leave something behind. Write in a journal, even if it’s only every once in a while. Don’t write about the Things You Got Done; no one cares about a list. Write about how they made you feel. Be honest. I’m only 55 pages in to my mother’s pages, and I’m hoping desperately she says something agonizing about me (she hasn’t yet). Oh, to hear her despair of me ever doing anything with my life (I showed very little promise for a very long time).
I’m only a quarter of the way through, and I’m going to try to take my time with them. Then I’m going to transcribe them so I can share them with family (her handwriting is easy for me to read and very hard for most people including other family members).
I just can’t believe I’d never found them before. I’d looked.
I have a very strong feeling she saved them for me, for now. For the solstice of the year that I would be strong enough to have nothing but joy in my heart as I read. She sent me the dream. (I KNOW, it’s woo-woo, yes, but the only truly prophetic dreams I’ve ever had were about her – twice I dreamed her various cancers before they were diagnosed. And there were more dreams I won’t get into here. It runs in our family – her mother had had the same talent).
Leave something behind for the ones who love you so they can truly commune with you later, so they can hear your specific and wonderful voice. Tell them what you think. Be you. Be true. Be broken and fallible and honest and you.
You’re amazing. I know you’re (probably) not planning on leaving the earth anytime soon, but even if you are, first: you are loved, and second: there’s still time.
Put your heart in a bottle and throw it in the ocean of time. Someone you love wants to find you someday. I promise.
Thanks for reading.
love,
Rachael
PS – On a really fun business note, The Darling Songbirds just released in audio, and it’s read by the amazing Xe Sands, who I’ve been a fan of for years. I can’t believe she’s my narrator! The other two in the series will be out this summer.
Kathleen Conery says
My father died a year ago April. One of the best, and hardest, thing at his funeral was reading the letter my brother had kept from dad’s time overseas (Navy pilot during Vietnam). I have a letter too, but I haven’t bought it out. It’s good because he comes alive again in his words… but I think maybe I’m not ready yet to hear them. Not quite yet.
I’m glad you found your mom’s words, and I’m so very glad you were ready. I know I will be too, in due time.
Lola says
Oh goodness girl….you have me bawling like a baby!!! I am so happy for you even though I have chicken bumps running up and down my arms! Lol and I do truly understand what you’re saying and a part of me so wants to do that and another part of me says, who cares! For the life of me I cannot see my children giving a damn….and I know that’s okay! I might just do it so when I’m bordering on Alzheimer’s I can bump into it!! But you are so special Rachael and I truly believe Jan ment fir you to find those at a time that you could appreciate them fully! What a wonderful blessing!!! You always s manage to brighten up my day!! Love the apple falling from the tree line…dad and I were hysterically laughing!!! Thank you darling for being so far from the tree!!!
Rachael says
SO FAR FROM THAT PARTICULAR TREE! I tell my business to everyone! Love you back. xoxox
Anna says
Isn’t it wonderful how the universe gifts us with what we need, when we need it? I absolutely believe she was pointing you towards that journal, just like she shielded it from you before. What a truly lovely gift.
Xe Sands says
This is such a beautiful and prescient post, Rachael – thank you so much for sharing it! Just this week, I went through two large boxes I recently received that contained songs, writings, pictures, band logs, etc. that my father had stashed in his attic, that since his passing, my step-mother simply didn’t know what to do with. And it was like walking through all the parts of his life I never got to see/experience/know. It was truly a gift. And then to find your post today was like another gift – gift from a kindred spirit! So thank you 🙂
Tina says
Oh my goodness this makes me so happy. Really so happy! I used to journal daily and as I took up more visual journaling my writing has dropped off. The problem is my visual art making isnt truly narrative in anyway. My son is graduating from 8th grade today and I feel time moving away from me faster and faster. Today I will begin writing again. For myself and for him. And I will beg my wife to do some writing as well. Thank you so so much for this.
Pat Lummis says
Hi Rachael – darn, my phone ate my post! what a fantastic find. Your closeness with your Little Mama will now be even closer. My mother and I both had premonitions,probably because I was born on her 40th birthday – – both Pisces!!
Thank you very much for my winning a copy of your audio book,The Darling Songbirds. what a lovely surprise. I had a bit of a problem with the original download but think it is ok now.
Thanks again, Rachael. Best to you and Lala and hugs to the four-footeds.
Pat
Terri DuLong says
This was beautiful! Just beautiful! On you finding the writing when you did, I couldn’t help but recall the saying, “When the student is ready…..the teacher appears.” What a wonderful gift and keepsake for you!
I also did the The Artist’s Way back in the 90’s, so I have that journal but also many, many others. I’m sure someday my daughter and granddaughter will find and read them. I hope they appreciate mine as much as you appreciate your mother’s.
Thanks for sharing it. I enjoyed it so much! xox
Cara says
Sigh. My experience was vastly different. My mother died and left behind journals full of bitterness, anger, and hurtfulness that I don’t believe any children should have to read from their parents. I loved my mother dearly, but her last five years were miserable and our relationship was sorely tested and strained. Finding those journals didn’t help. I’m hopeful that some time down the road I will be able to sift through her earlier work and find more like what you found. As for my kids, they have my blog whether they want it or not!
Rachael says
Oh, I could see that being REALLY hard. Thanks for sharing this. xo
Teresa (Moen) Suida says
I was just thinking of your mother the other day. We too found a journal quite by accident, it was my Grandmother’s, it talked about our early days in Saipan and my grandmothers love of flowers. The best part for me isn’t her words or what she wrote about but that it was in her handwriting. It made me feel connected to her again. I’m glad you found your mom’s journal and shared it with all of us. I’m by no means a writer but as I fight ovarian cancer right now I naturally think more about what I will leave behind for my son.
Rachael says
Oh, Terry! That’s so hard. I’m sorry you’re going through that. Fuck cancer. And yes, about the handwriting. I’ve seen places you can get jewelry made in their handwriting, and I’m tempting. Lots of love.
Nicole Morgan says
Rereading “a life in stitches..” and was just reading about your mother.. Thought I would have a look at your blog and found this post. Its wonderful that you found them! I hope you are still relishing every word.
Rachael says
Oh, thank you so much! <3