The Horseflies have a song with this lyric, “I live where it’s grey. Ithaca.”
Without any snow on the ground, the end of January seems more gloomy, dank, and dark. Driving into Ithaca mid-day it could have been 9 a.m. or 4 p.m. for the lack of sunshine. Diffuse light dampened by glum spirits.
Makes me miss Sam. Who would have ever thunk I’d miss his grumbling about the weather? But I do. I want to hear him express what everybody else feels, too, about the crappy conditions of the weather as a metaphor for this world.
Winter keeps me inside working on book projects. Haven’t had a day off since Thanksgiving. So finding time to write myself becomes a time management struggle. Two hours a week come hell or high water. Before my business took off I could spend two hours a day writing. So I do what I can in those two hours to grow.
The new year brought writing spurts of a new sort. I’m trying my hand at fiction. This stretch to my writing repertoire remains under wraps. Kind of like putting on roller skates for the first time, even though you’ve been ice skating since you were knee high, you need to take a few spins and spills to learn.
Surely I will fall down a few times as writing fiction becomes more familiar to me. Nobody needs to watch those embarrassing moments; except my trusted friends in my writing group in Trumansburg. And they extend a hand to help me get back up and try some more new moves.
Story, narrative, fiction, non-fiction. Cross-training in truth-telling.
Someone who knew both Sam and I contacted me today by email with a request to connect through LinkedIn. She and her partner had met me first at the Trumansburg farmer’s market many years and ago and they came out to our farm and visited us once. Her daughter even worked picking beans a few weeks one summer.
A flush came rushing to my face. Someone who remembers. Someone who felt the sun there and swam in the pond. Someone who had a moment of our truth together.
The acknowledgement and affirmation of Sam and I living and loving brought me tears of joy. Sorrow, too.
Nothing is all black or all white. I live where it’s grey. Ithaca.
And yet my memories are like the painting this friend of ours sent: filled with sunflowers, a little cubbyhole cabin, vines, lush greens, blue waters.
Grey goes with everything. Winter fashion.
Jillybooks 