Waiting

This post was originally drafted in mid-May. Apologies for the belated publication and for any lingering typos. The garden is flourishing now in August, and though we skipped much of spring, summer has been glorious here on the mountain. I continue to be safe and well, but like the rest of the world, I still find myself anxiously waiting… marveling at how slow and fast time can seem at once, how I am less socially engaged than ever, but seem still not to have enough time to do all that it takes to keep self and home and work going as efficiently as I would like. I suppose in one sense I am waiting on myself.

Life seems to be very much about waiting at the moment.

Waiting to plant the garden because it’s been such a cold, cold spring here in Southwest Virginia.

Waiting for the bread to rise in the cold house.

Waiting on a colt to be born.

Waiting to wash my hair even though I just spent an absurd $100 on huge, pump bottles full of shampoo and conditioner, because what is the point of washing my hair? I see no one much. It feels fine on my head. I’m probably just going to get some sort of lawnmower, weedeater, chainsaw, log-splitter fumes it in tomorrow anyway, and why would I waste such expensive shampoo and conditioner?

Waiting to fix said lawnmower and weedeater because I can’t decide which parts to order from which place because I have online shopping fatigue and can’t decide which supplier has the least irritating shipping cost.

Waiting for weeks on end for those parts even once I’d ordered them because pandemics mean that everything is backordered from the manufacturing universe in China.

Waiting to go to the post office to ship long-ago-promised parcels because I don’t want to go more than once even though our post office is typically a ghost town and is so small it closes for lunch.

Waiting to apply for my replacement passport, because what is the point?

Waiting to fix that window in the root cellar because I don’t feel confident enough to tackle it yet.

Waiting to put more guttering on the house until my income feels slightly more discernible, and meanwhile eyeing the house foundations for worrying changes.

Waiting to write letters to friends in faraway places or reply to emails until I’m in a better mood, or I’ve tackled some of my home repair to-do list, or I feel I actually have something to say and the energy to say it well.

Waiting to get cracking on a next book until the aforementioned. What do I even have to say? What is good enough to hold my attention so fully at a time like this? And do I have the energy and singular focus it takes to write in any period, let alone this one?

Waiting to read the stacks of books sitting around me on side tables, nightstands, and overflowing shelves because I just feel so mentally drained by the constant, low-grade stress of knowing there is a pandemic out there, and simply waiting for it to get here or to someone I love.

We wait.

While we wait for disaster, or for the world to reopen (or both), I find myself more and more often drifting back to what I never thought I’d deem “simpler times.”

Had you asked me at the time, I would—OF COURSE—have said that things felt dominated by worry and anxiety.

But what I remember now are the bluebells, the hours spent barefoot in the grass, the bright-yellow fields of rapeseed in full flower, the endless sunshine and the long, peaceful, golden evenings of that May. I remember the soft, velvet dusk, the pink flower and heavy morning dew in the apple orchard, and shopping for pens at Bartrum’s in Hay. I remember nights along the South Bank, canal-side strolls, the bookshops, the celebrations, the orchestras I got last minute tickets to see. I remember sitting silent in more wood than one, just drinking in the sounds and the smells. I was in and out of Wales that month, back and forth across the lanes of Sussex, Surrey, Wiltshire, Dorset, Somerset and Gloucestershire. I took time to meander the old routes, too weary of the M4 to be there any more than absolutely necessary. I saw Wells Cathedral for the first time. I cried as I gazed up at its famous scissors arch. (Craftsmanship can, indeed, be that moving to those of us who understand the labor involved.) I had more bottles of real Champagne that month (and less actual money) than I have had my entire life combined, and I had at least one of those in a hot tub under starlight in a tucked-away corner of the glorious Wye Valley.

I remember the relationships that still existed and even thrived, though at the time it was parsing the broken ones that consumed me.

My birthday, which is coming up on Sunday, is also my book’s publication anniversary. It’s hard to believe it’s been almost two years since I turned 35 in London and gathered with friends and family at The Approach in Bethnal Green to toast myself and my new book. I did so nervously, but gratefully. It was surreal at the time, and seems even more so looking back. People flew in from America, from Switzerland. They took trains from Wales. They took taxis from their scattered London neighborhoods. And as happy as it was, there were moments when all I could think of was who wasn’t there… people I’d always dreamed would celebrate with me. Some had died. Some had turned their backs on me. And so I also feared who might show up that I didn’t want to see.

I worried how the book would be received by those I knew and those I didn’t. I worried what I should or would say at my launch. I worried how I would pay for it. (Miraculously, my agent turned up and put ample money on the bar.) I worried what questions people would ask at my talks, and whether I would have to expand on any of the characters in the book who had turned problematic. I worried whether I would freeze on stage at Hay.

I needn’t have worried. Every audience was great and generous. No one showed up to harass me. Many lined up to buy books and have a word with me as I signed. Many more have written me, thanking me for the book, telling me why it meant something to them. I am still getting those letters, and each one I take to heart. I haven’t sold a number of copies that even touches my advance (meaning I’ll probably never see another cent from this book), but each letter is its own reward.

I remember later that year sitting next to Jeanette Winterson in the kitchen at Charleston Farmhouse, part of a tiny, lucky group who showed up to talk about Woolf’s Orlando. I tried not to be next to her, wishing not to seem too eager. I felt wiltingly self-conscious about being both a young writer and a huge fan, but it was impossible to avoid since everyone else was also shy and in complete awe. She is tiny. I am tall. We both had on good jeans and excellent boots. She passed around her first edition copy for us to hold. It was special, but it was she who held us rapt. We ate brownies and strawberries, drank Sussex fizz. I remember Darren Clarke, Charleston’s curator, served us. I loved his beard, appreciated his quiet care as he moved about the room unobtrusively.

I wanted to tell Jeanette before I left that we shared an agency. (She has the same posh agent who handles all of PFDs biggest stars like herself and Simon Schama, and that is not my agent, but I met her agent once in the green room loos at Hay Festival and found her very, very intimidating! I’ll keep Tim, thanks. He’s an excellent pub buddy.) I didn’t have a chance despite being right beside her. It was fascinating to watch how, at the end of the formal event, Jeanette was able to use a grateful smile to signal an unquestionable finality—to insulate herself from further personal conversation… not just from me, but from us all. She was 100% gracious and present during the event—felt more like a brilliant professor friend than a famous writer, and I think we all forgot the latter as she spoke to us—but as soon as it was over, the metaphorical portcullis came down to cut off access. She was not whisked out of the room by attendants, but simply smiled at us, and her impenetrable smile was the gentle but firm reminder that she is a famous person who has learned to very carefully and politely maintain her boundaries. People must be after her all the time, and that must be exhausting. So we were ushered out of the Charleston kitchen as Jeanette continued smiling at us. Intimacy replaced by efficiency. Thank you and goodnight.

Did it even happen? I have had so many moments like that at Charleston. All across my life, really. Things that were so exciting you can’t sleep afterward. Things that when you finally do sleep and then wake again the next day, already they don’t seem real. Things that I wrote down with furious speed, hoping to finish the account before even a single detail could slip out of my grasp. Those are the episodes and images I find myself revisiting, perhaps because it’s hard to imagine that anything other than Right Now In This Weirdness can happen again, so while I’m daydreaming, it might as well be of the outlandishly beautiful.

I can’t imagine when I will move about as freely as I once did. I can’t imagine when this country is going to get it together, put on its masks like adults, distance properly, and, importantly, elect a real leader who won’t actively encourage things to be SO BAD, though I hope that will be November 2020. I don’t know how much longer America can go on like this. We are falling apart. And perhaps it is that reason that I need my memories of Wales more than ever. I live in a good place. I am healthy. I have work and food and can right now pay my mortgage without worry. I’m one of the lucky ones. But not a day passes that I don’t ache for Wales. Even on a good day I miss it, but increasingly, our national picture here looks grim.