GIVE US THIS DAY

November 27 2013We awoke to snow this morning, the landscape holding its breath. How I love that stillness, as if the sky has placed its cashmere paw upon the earth, bidding it lie down awhile. We sat in bed and watched; a silent meditation that held us in place until hunger got the better of us. By noon the sun was high and brilliant and who would not rejoice, yet really I had wanted it to take the day off and leave us cocooned.I’ve been craving a lazy day by the fire; a day in which I might surrender to this strange new space that envelops me since finishing the novel on Sunday. Not that it is finished in the ultimate sense; there are revisions and re-readings and the search for a publisher, for not until it is bound and set sail is it truly finished. But the ride of its invention is over. The knowing, each day, that for several hours I will be in the company of six characters who reveal themselves to themselves, to each other and, of course, to me…that ride is over.When I put down my pen on Friday I knew I was, in terms of the characters’ real time, fifteen minutes from the end and, not yet ready to let go, decided to wait until Monday before picking up the pen for its last inking. Saturday I spent doing more research, which I felt necessary for completion. And then, on Sunday afternoon, I could put it off no longer and, sitting on the couch where I am sitting now, I got back on the wild horse and rode her to the finishing line.                        Maggie 15 minutes after finishing the novelOn Monday, having promised myself to let the manuscript rest for a week before reading it, I wandered around the house, perching here and there for short periods, trying to let go and enjoy the emptiness, vacillating between the euphoria of accomplishment and the sorrow that comes with the loss of months of profound creative engagement. As I write, a dog, somewhere down the lane, has begun to howl as if in empathy.Yesterday we made a birthday lunch for Paul, he and Sharon coming down the hill, their cheeks rosy and chill, their energy a gift beyond compare. We ate for what seemed like hours at the kitchen table, before serenading Paul and then moving fireside for espresso and chocolate and the telling of riotous stories.And the days come and go as the year slips to an end, sidling out the door like a fickle lover. We make soups and omelets and bowls of steamed vegetables, the ingredients bought fresh each day from local markets, their healthy goodness providing permission for wickedness in the form of chocolate cakes and ice-cream, lemon tarts and croissant which we turn into pockets stuffed with goats cheese and honey. In the afternoon, a game of Scrabble and pot of homemade pear and ginger tea and then, joy of joys, Season Four of Downton Abbey, sent to us courtesy of the BBC shop. I dip in and out of half a dozen newly downloaded books on the Kindle, but find I want only to be reading my own novel. Meanwhile, Joel busies himself with archive work.The dog has stopped howling. Soon we will bring in more firewood. We find ourselves hugging each other a lot these days. I think perhaps because we are coming to the end of this year in Europe; a year which, much like the writing of the novel, invented itself daily, mostly with ease, at times with deep concentration and frequently with utter amazement that something as big as this turned out to be all that we had hoped for; a big canvas filled with brushstrokes.Yesterday we printed out the calendar for January in New York City and started slotting in family and friends, theater and dentist, meetings and supplies to bring back here. A square for each day, each square relinquishing its blank space to names and times and locations. Within 15 minutes January became more than half-booked and I realized that for a whole year I have lived without a calendar, apart from penciling in Provence, Tuscany, Provence.By the time this is posted it will most likely be Thanksgiving in America and although we won’t be ‘doing’ it here, we will most certainly be giving thanks for another day, for each other, for this beautiful world and for all of you…