I'm not feeling well this week. Sore throat, sniffles, headache. A summer cold. It always feels a little strange to be sick in the middle of summer. The world itself is the picture of health...and you feel its opposite.
Do I dare admit that I'm beginning to look forward to fall? It's been nice to have a summer, after so many seasonless years in Los Angeles. It's nice to feel steeped in warmth and heat, the landscape thick with a leafy green periphery, the earth yielding and abundant, and all of it eventually giving way to fall, to the delicate whisper of retreat and repair.
As I sit here at my desk, staring out at the street and the trees beyond, it's hard to imagine it all covered in snow. Last winter was hard for me, but I think so much of it had to do with it being my first six months in a new city. I was lonely and listless and the world seemed dark and cold. Imagining this coming winter spent in our lovely home with a fire going in the fireplace, early evening dinners with my husband, books to curl up to and soups to make...that sounds more than tolerable.
I wonder sometimes how long we'll live here in Chicago. I've now lived in Atlanta, New York and Los Angeles. I don't think I'd return to any of those. My time in those cities is over...richly lived and well spent, but over nonetheless. I would, however, live in California again. Perhaps Northern California, near San Francisco or Napa.
But when we would move, I'm not sure. I know we'll most likely be here for a few more years, but in a bigger picture, I'm not sure I see myself settling in Chicago, in particular the Midwest. Greg seems open to moving someday but we don't talk about it too often. Life is good right now. We're just starting out. There is so much to come.
Thank you for all the comments and suggestions and encouragement regarding my writing and my book. I'm feeling better about the book, even if I'm not feeling well in general. I think I needed to really recognize my feelings and frustrations and honor them for a brief period before I could move forward. I'm still not quite sure what my plan is now for moving forward but regardless, I'll keep putting one foot in front of the other.
Yesterday I saw in my stats that someone googled this blog by searching "Now that the wedding is over I feel sad." And while I don't feel sad that the wedding is over, I did think about the added pressure I feel to be actively working towards something.
Perhaps that's why fall seems so appealing today -- that crisp senses of industry and renewed energy for another season, another frame, a new time.
I'm feeling real frustration today about my writing.
Nothing new for any writer, but disheartening all the time.
It just feels laughable right now that I'm even trying work on this "book" that I've been talking about working on for the last five years. I feel stupid about it at this point. And I'm crying as I write this.
For as long as I can remember, all I've wanted to be is a writer. It's all I've ever really worked towards and all I ever really think about on a daily basis. And I write all the time. Here. For magazines and online publications, for guidebooks and journals. I'm always pitching and brainstorming and working on drafts of things. I constantly have deadlines looming over me and Greg and I talk daily about what we're working on next and how to write something bigger and better.
But the thing I want more than anything is to write a book that people will want to read.
Last year I quit my job and I spent 2 1/2 months writing a book. I wrote a whole book. I wrote every day and it was incredible. The story just flowed out; it all came together even better than I imagined. And when I was done I sent it out. And it got rejected several times. Enough times for me to read it and lose most of my faith in it. Enough for me to think that I need to start over or drastically overhaul it.
There's something about my writing here, on this blog, that everyone seems to love and to respond to. But that thing, whatever it is, gets lost in a bigger translation. I can't ever seem to find the narrative arc of the story, of what it is I want to say, of where I want the pieces to fall.
Yesterday I began working on something and I promised myself that I would just write, every day. No matter what. But I hardly got very far today before all the doubt crept in and all I could think about was where is this going and how it was probably going to end up just like the last book.
And then I went back and read my most recent rejection letter from an agent.
Morning Claire,
Unfortunately, this is not the best of
news; I’m writing to say that I’m going to have to pass on your
manuscript.
I took your pages home and dug into them
this weekend. And this is a fact: you are a talented writer (and you seem
to be aware of that, which is good – you don’t need me to tell
you). Your grasp of language, emotions, and setting is consistent and
powerful. I can see every scene in vivid detail, and, perhaps, this is a
large part of my issue here.
The subject matter here is extremely
personal and devastating. And while I believe you do a wonderful job
replaying your thoughts and the feelings you were going through during the most
difficult time (well, the many years) of your life, I feel that as a narrative,
as a book, this is lacking.
The structure is lacking, timing confusing, and it is fairly difficult to know
when and where we are in the text. You didn’t attach page numbers,
and while that’s the easiest thing in the world to fix, the problems that
arose from me picking up your pages feeling confused, feeling like I might not
be on the right page, is indicative of a greater organizational problem. Just
as, or more importantly, I felt that in order to make this work for public
consumption (as, yes, that is the gross task I have to gauge), you’ll
need to make more of a cohesive narrative plot. And, quite frankly, I’m
not sure whether you want or should do that.
I am inclined to believe that this
project was something very personal and needed to be done, but will not be your
first major published work. It is in you, that much is obvious, but it
seems like this was something you needed to get out, and now that you have, I’d
be more than happy to read any other manuscript you send my way.
I’m sorry this is not better news,
but best of luck, Claire. Time is on your side.
Agent
And now I just feel like I'm having a pity party. It's not going to help at all to just sit here and cry because something is hard. I know that. I know that I just need to keep going, to keep writing, to either take the above to heart or not...it doesn't even matter really.
The wedding is over. I'm caught up on sleep. I've put away all the gifts and cards and memorabilia. I've started the thank you notes. I went to yoga and I caught up with friends on the phone. Greg and I opened a joint checking account and I'm back on track at work.
It's time to move forward.
We talk sometimes about trying to start a family next year and while that idea thrills me more than I ever thought it would, it also pushes this deep urge in me to get a few more things done before that part of my life begins.
Namely, I want to write another book and I want to travel to a few more places. The wedding was incredibly distracting, but now that it's over my life seems like this wide open path down which I'm ready to move. Possibilities seem endless and even more possible.
I began a new writing project this morning. And I plan to write every day. I'll do this with much less flourish and fanfare than the last time I began a book but that's probably a good thing. It's another memoir project and really just another incarnation of the same book I've already written, but told from another lens, another time.
That said, I've been writing all morning and must rush off to work now.
Look for me, photo and all, in the new issue of Yoga Journal, on stands this week.
I can't believe that the wedding is over. That it all actually happened and is said and done for now.
I don't mean that in a mournful way. I think if we had waited a year, it still would have felt immense and swirling and over faster than we thought. I mean more that I almost can't believe that it happened at all. That I got to get married, that I made it this far into my life, that such an unbelievably good thing was able to happen.
The last couple of years have been filled with a lot of good things. There have been graduations and writing accolades, huge life moves and falling in love, new jobs and beautiful places to live, incredible friends and a proposal from the person I love the most.
But for a long time in my life things were hard. My days were full of knotting tension and anxiety about the well being of people I loved. Then they were filled with loss and painful memories, loneliness and self-hatred. I think most of my adult life, so far, has been spent in a realm of fear and sadness and inner isolation.
When things began to turn around a couple of years ago, in large part to the work I was doing on letting go of those ways of being, it was like entering into a whole new world. Everything felt different, temperatures and textures, sounds and tastes, all evolved to suit this new way of looking at the world: a way that wasn't so much about holding onto the past and all the sad things that happened but that was much more about consciously moving forward into the life I wanted to create for myself.
Easier said than done though. I've said it before and I'll say it again: falling in love with Gregory was one of the scariest things I've ever experienced. I was so afraid to invite something into my life that could have the potential to also become one of the greatest losses I'll ever experience. In the beginning I could only think about how painful it would be to lose this person whom I already knew I would love more than I had ever loved anyone.
I still think about it a lot. I have a constant murmuring in the back of my head that says, please let me have this. Please let me have these days, these moments, this love. Please let me marry this man and start a family with him. Sometimes I find myself calculating how long would be enough. I think of my mother, who died when she was 58, and I think, that might be enough. If we had children in the next few years then they would be young adults by then. If I could only have that long, please, please let me have that.
Truthfully, all this time, throughout my twenties, I don't think I thought that I'd ever get this far. Losing my parents and going through all that I did really did a number on my sense of mortality and the movement of life.
But now.
Now things are changing. Tears are in my eyes as I type this. I got to get married. I got to fall in love, to have this wedding, to go to sleep night after night next to this beautiful man whom I love and who loves me. All things I was so terrified would never happen. But they did. These facts and experiences, these moments and truths, they all stand just as as tall and as real as my parents' deaths. The gain is beginning to equal the loss in the most profound way.
Realizing this forces me to continue reconfiguring all the things I thought about life. And it calms me and allows me to begin to release this urgency I carry around. It's like an equation. If I was able to fall in love and get married then it suddenly seems quite possible that I could be able to have children one day and live a long and happy life. Whereas before, the equation read more like, if I can lose one person I love then I can lose another.
All this to say that for the first time in a long time, I have this feeling that I can slow down, that, if even for just a little while, I can stop obsessing over whether or not things will happen. That I can simply breathe and be in my life. That I can finish this post by simply saying how grateful I am for everything that my life is.
I'm sitting here, cramming toast in my mouth and swilling coffee, trying not to think about the million things I have to do today, and how I just want to write a good, long post about the wedding.
I'm still trying to absorb it all. Still trying to take in the fact that Greg is my husband, that I am his wife, that we are married. Last night, lying in bed, all the incarnations of those words, husband and wife, swirled through my head. A lifetime's worth of associations, good, bad and all things in between. Those words, so laden with meaning and images. Husband and wife as archetypes, role models, aspirations, declinations. I think it will take some time to absorb. Time to settle into being a wife, to having a husband, to what that means to me.
The wedding itself could not have been more lovely. It was ten times better than I imagined it might be, full of surprises and love, light and depth, well-wishes and intimate moments. Everything seemed to unravel and fall into place in just the right ways, affirming over and over that this very sweet and small ceremony on Cape Cod was exactly how it always should have been.
Greg and I, along with his parents and my half-brother and his girlfriend, all arrived on the Cape on Thursday. We spent the afternoon getting settled, everyone getting to know each other and maneuvering around my aunt's old, Victorian era beach house. Greg and I went for a swim in the late afternoon, just the two of us, and floating there in the warm, green Atlantic, I realized that I was the happiest I'd been in over a decade.
On Friday we all ran around taking care of last minute preparations. Friends and family arrived at the house on the hour. Greg's four brothers and his best man, Tarek. My cousins and my maid of honor, Liz. Everyone hugging, introducing themselves, laughing and lugging suitcases. We all went to the beach in the afternoon and then to the church for the rehearsal in the early evening.
Both the rehearsal and the dinner following were fun and funny. As I walked down the aisle that first time in my flip-flops and t-shirt to "Here Comes the Bride," we all giggled with the enormity of what was coming the next day.
That night we all dined at a long table at The Bishop's Terrace, an old, very Cape Cod, restaurant in Harwich that my grandmother had loved to go to, and we ate and drank and laughed and everyone gave the nicest toasts. The air-conditioner wasn't on and there was a problem with the lights, but the food was fantastic and we dined by candle light, all of us excited to be there.
That night when we got back to the house, my cousin Ron had arrived from New York and was waiting for us. He's an incredible fashion photographer and had actually arrived late because he'd been in the city, photographing Christian's (from Project Runway) new line. (Ron turned around the next day and shot our whole wedding -- an amazing gift and I can't wait to see all the pictures.) That night Ron and Liz and I ran down to the beach with Greg and Tarek, all of us dipping our feet in the ocean just as an enormous thunderstorm broke overhead, catching all of us in a downpour as we ran, screaming and laughing, back to the house.
The next morning I woke feeling calm and ready. Liz and Greg's mom and I all went to get our hair done and then back to the house for more coffee and quiche before heading to the church. Greg had spent the night with his brothers and best man and I wouldn't see him until the ceremony. While everyone else ran around in a frenzy of last-minute things, I rode to the church with Ron and Liz and Greg's mom. Liz put in a CD as we got into the car and "We're Going to the Chapel" played over the speakers. Just one of the sweet things my girlfriends did for me, including mailing packages and cards and letters and gifts all to my aunt's house for me to open before the wedding.
At the church I got dressed in the same room in which my mother did when she married my father 33 years
ago. Ron ran around taking photos of everyone as they arrived and I stood in the room in my dress, ready well ahead of time, as people came and went. My dress was perfect. I don't think I've ever felt prettier in my whole life and I wore my mother's wedding garter and her necklace and earrings. When my aunt Pam popped her head in to see me before the ceremony she began crying so hard that she couldn't even come in.
I think there are so many elements of this event that I'll write about in the days ahead, but for today, I just want to give a synopsis. But I will say that, never once, during the whole weekend, did I feel sad that my parents weren't there. They were just so present in so many ways and my overwhelming feelings of privilege and gratitude for this day even happening outweighed anything heavier.
The ceremony itself was everything I wanted it to be. Greg and I had designed it together, down to the last detail. And we had found ways to incorporate almost everyone present. My uncle, who is a retired minister and who married my parents and baptized me, officiated. There were readings and poems by family and friends and while my cousins sang a song, we passed our wedding bands around to be blessed by all who were present.
When it came time for the vows, Greg and I had each written our own, and neither of us had heard the other's until that moment. I read mine aloud from a book I had been writing to Greg ever since our 2nd date (in the very first entry I told him I would give this book to him on our wedding day...and I did). We took turns each reading one of our three vows aloud and, as a testament to our relationship, the vows were so complimentary to each other. Greg's were sweet and funny and thoughtful, just like he is. And I read mine slowly in my breathy voice, taking time to look up at him as I did so. I think that everyone present cried, including us.
And then we were putting the rings on each other's fingers and we were kissing, and even though I never wanted those moments to end, there we were walking back down the aisle together. Before we walked out into our wedding day, we ducked into the little dressing room together for one private moment, our first as husband and wife.
After that, it was all a rush of hugs and bubbles, cars honking as they drove by us outside the church. My aunt had arranged for us to drive off in a little, convertible Volkswagen bug, but it turned out to be stick shift which meant that I had to drive it, much to everyone's delight, instead of
Greg. We drove off to the harbor for more photos and as we drove through town with me in my dress and veil behind the wheel, our "Just Married" sign on the back, everyone honked and laughed and wished us well.
As we all milled around by the harbor, posing for photos and talking about how the ceremony had gone, I thought about how grateful I was that we were able to get married on Cape Cod. It has always been the most special place in the world to
me, a haven to which I have returned every year, filled with memories and family and love and respite.
Back at my aunt's house, we all sat under a pretty tent in the backyard and feasted on lobsters and clams, all the guys wearing bibs and lobster bits spraying everywhere. It was so hot that everyone, except me, changed into shorts and sandals and we drank champagne and enjoyed each other's company.
After we'd all had our fill of food and drink, my aunt generously gave us one more surprise. She'd arranged for an a capella group called the Hyannis Sound to perform for all of us. My cousin Alex had been in this group over a decade ago, when I was still in high school, and I'd loved them, had crushes on all of them, and used to go up to Provincetown to hear them sing. Having them at the wedding was absolutely one of my very favorite moments. And it also allowed Greg and I to have our first, and only, dance.
Dancing there in the grass with my arms around Greg, the ocean air wafting up from the beach, and all the people we love all around us, was one of the most beautiful moments of my life. I'll share it with you here, even though it's almost hard for me to watch.
After that we cut cake and drank more champagne, and in the late afternoon all of us donned bathing suits and went down to the ocean together to float in the warm, green Atlantic. That evening Greg and I caught a ferry out to Martha's Vineyard where we stayed the night, our first as husband and wife.
I don't think it could have been a more perfect day. All these months I've been scoffing at people who say that your wedding will be the best day of your life. While I still think that there are many best days to come, I will admit that July 19th, 2008 was indeed the best day yet.
It's Tuesday morning and I'm sitting in the living room in my nightie still, drinking coffee and trying to sift through all the things there are to catch up on. There are opened Crate & Barrel boxes strewn around the house, the dining room table is piled high with gifts and cards and mementos like cake cutting knives and engraved champagne glasses. The plants need to be watered, I have to go to the bank, we're out of milk and I don't even want to think about all that there is to catch up on at work today.
I'm a married woman now. I'm Greg Boose's wife. He's my husband. (And yes, he's wearing shorts in this picture. I was the only one who stayed in my wedding garb after everyone changed to deal with the heat.)
There is so much I want to write about, so much I want to capture and remember and sift through from this past weekend. It will take time though, I think. I understand the purpose of a honeymoon and wish we were on one right now. Our night spent on Martha's Vineyard together, after the reception, was a welcome respite but not long enough. I can't believe I have to go to work today or begin following up on restaurant reviews for the guidebook we're working on or go to Trader Joes or listen to a hundred voicemails at my hospice job.
(Click on photos to enlarge.)
But that said, I couldn't be more grateful or thrilled by how we decided to do this. The wedding was actually perfect. I don't think there was one thing I would changed and it was ten times better than I ever hoped it could be.
More soon. I just need to catch up a little. Thank you so much to everyone who has sent messages and gifts and
let us know how loved and thought of we are. We couldn't be more grateful or feel any more special than we do right now.
This is a quick post written from Cape Cod -- we get home later tonight -- just to say that the weekend could not have been more perfect. I can't wait to write all about it and share a lot of photos! Thanks to everyone who wrote and emailed and called and sent gifts and packages and stood by us that day.
I'm getting married today. I know that in some way, you'll both be there. If not simply for the fact that we're marrying in the same church, that I'll wear Mom's wedding garter and earrings, that Greg will wear Dad's cufflinks, that I'll laugh a little like Mom, and that Dad's first born son will walk me down the aisle, then perhaps in a way less tangible than those. Perhaps you'll be there in love and spirit, your light and laughter coursing through my very blood as I stand across from a man whom I am overwhelmingly in love with.
Thank you for all you've given me in this life, for everything that had to be for me to have this day, this love, this life.
