the big table.

Here, I am going to talk about writing, sort of. Nothing else consumes me as much as the need to put things on paper, for better or for worse. And maybe most of it won’t make it past my notebooks in scribbled form. But there are a thousand beginnings and endings, and I need to untangle the cords if only to wrap it all back into a tidy ball. It feels urgent. What if I die in a car accident tomorrow? What if someone else writes my book instead of me? We’re all working against an enormous clock.
I wrote one children’s story today and sent it off with another older manuscript to a literary agent. I used the word ‘hag’ in one of the picture book works. I quickly texted my friend Megan to ask her opinion of the word, and she gave me slight confidence in the matter, so I crossed my fingers and kept it in the script.
I have an outline and several chapter beginnings of a book, all on papers scattered through the house. There’s a narrative nonfiction saved one Google doc, and cozied up to it only a tab over is a fiction manuscript.

Joe brought home a big Reader’s Digest full of short stories by Fitzgerald and Dorothy Parker and the like, and so I’m underlining sentences such as

He was as dogmatic as Mr. Kelada and resented bitterly the Levantine’s cocksureness. The discussions they had were acrimonious and interminable. (Mr, Know-All by W. Somerset Maugham)

Does anyone even want to read this kind of stuff anymore? I do. I want to write it, too. I could open a tab right now for a short story…and I’d want to put twelve-letter words in it like I was getting ready for a spelling test. I’m a puzzler. Nothing satisfies like locking the perfect word into place.

I have a notebook and pen on every flat surface in the house, should the need arise. I wrote today as my little girl stood in my lap, combing my hair straight into my eyes at the kitchen table. “Good,” she’d murmur, “it looking good.” Then she would brush it out of my eyes with her hands and stare at her handiwork. She was completely unperturbed by my need to scrawl notes. She repeated the process: comb flat into my eyes, brush and pat away the hair to reveal my face, stare in satisfaction.

How could I stop someone so sincere?

I’ve always been occupied with other things–I mean, since I’ve felt writing so urgent. It didn’t come along until after the babies. I am the main caretaker of the kids around here, of course. Sometimes I get the feeling other people can do kid stuff with their hands tied behind their backs, but I cannot. Even when the children are talking to my attentive face, I feel guilty for not following the conversation, My mind is always occupied. Focus is a struggle, and I understand the same issue in my own kids. They are all humming and reading all day and night. It has to be hereditary.

I remember, as a teenager, my dad driving me around to various meetings. He would always, always miss the turn. He simply was too bound up in his own thoughts to keep his mind on the road. It frustrated me when I realized I was the same. When boarding a plane, I need to look at my ticket seventy billion times to remember the flight and seat number. When I call the doctor to make an appointment, I jot down my own phone number so that it will be in front of me when the receptionist asks me for it. I constantly doubt my ability to speak in public, as if it is ad-libbing, as if I’m a liar and as soon as I open my mouth everyone will know.

With good intentions, I enrolled in an online English teaching class. I have texts to read, papers to write, and tests to take. The course is useful, and I hope to become certified in something other than being a homebody, but truthfully? I might be doing it to prove to myself I don’t need to write all the time. That some sort of fulfillment must come with a degree of professionalism.

My heart is not convinced.

Deep down, I’m waiting for a seat at the table, the grownup one, and not the kids’ card table. I’m waiting for an invitation, because my mind won’t believe it’s a legitimate work until I get a nod from somebody up the ladder. I timidly send off proposals and articles, yet before I’ve clicked the send button on the email, I’m sure I’ve flubbed it so badly, I shouldn’t have even wasted the time. The guilt of vanity weighs so heavily on my conscience, I cannot bear to be looked in the eye. They will know I’m a phony.

No, I’m waiting for a seat at the table. I think about how Jesus told his followers to not take an important seat until they were invited, lest they be embarrassed when a more distinguished guest arrives. Not to rely on themselves, as if they had any importance, but to remain humble. I wonder what this means for my own life, as I sit in my own kitchen and let my little girl brush my hair into my eyes. I suppose I won’t miss out when it comes my turn to move to the big table.

But I’m still anxious for it.