In the kitchen, you can usually be quite sure if something is “done” or “not yet done” or “raw.” In the rest of life, though, telling whether something is where it needs to be, at a jumping off point or place of readiness and fruition, often gets a little more complex.
A bit like a cook reaching for a favorite spice, my mother had a way of latching on to particular words and using them over and over, emphatically — a trait that naturally amused her children as time went on.
Whenever there was wind along with a downpour, we could be sure to hear, “Wasn’t that a lashing rain we had last night?”
Looking out over her front field in spring, she’d say on the telephone, “Here I am, fortunate to be in my green green world!”
Carrying on the tradition perhaps, I can’t seem to get the word “blossom” out of my head this May.
Naturally, it’s partly because a simple walk outdoors offers so many actual examples. I’m back working in a high school (an hour’s drive away) during this last gasp of the academic year, and when I arrive home in late afternoon, all I want to do for a while is wander around with my dog, taking everything in.
I give myself permission to do just about nothing at all for a while, and it feels perfect.
There are the new leaves on the birches down by the pond.
There is the dog himself in the pond.
There are the forget-me-nots in small batches right next to the pond.
By the fence, there are the dandelions, some in flower and some already gone by.
Closer to the house, there are the lilacs and the tulips, giving off their rich color.
Each little scene, taken separately, is completely sufficient to me after a day spent inside since 7:15 a.m.
And each little scene will keep changing through the weeks to come, with leaves thickening and blossoms fading; but there is a kind of “done” quality at each moment.
The done-ness of a book manuscript, however, well that’s quite another story.
Tomorrow evening in Boston, my “Memoir Incubator class at Grub Street will have a kind of graduation ceremony. It will consist mostly of each of us reading a chosen segment, just a few minutes worth, of our work. I think I’ll refer to them as blossoms.
After almost a year of weekly meetings, we can say with some confidence, “I have a full first draft.” We have labored through somewhere between 200-360 pages, and none of us is done.
In other words, “I am not yet ready to submit to an agent, but I am getting there.”
Or, “I am well on my way to finishing my book.”
Or, “Once I incorporate all the feedback I have received, I’ll be closer to being done.”
Or, “I am now starting the revision process towards a second draft, which will definitely be stronger than the first one.”
You get the idea.
Going forward, while carrying around this “Still Incomplete But Nonetheless Proud” status, which is of course largely invisible, I plan to cherish each and every bit of actual flowering that goes on around me in the visible world.
Those plants work hard to achieve what they produce, you know.