Good Friday

My good friend, an introvert, sent me an article from The Atlantic called "Caring for your introvert." It's good. I have never taken the Myers-Briggs test so I don't know if I'm a J or an I or an X or a Y. I do know that I am what folks call a people-lover. But I am also a closet introvert, too. (We all are, perhaps; it seems to come with this modern life.)

My son was away visiting his grandparents for spring break so I was out about town every day this week. I do love people. I love meeting old friends and strangers alike. Tuesday a colleague and I took our former intern out to celebrate his new job at the Indiana University Press. We sat by the window at Luci Ancora overlooking the St. Kate's campus and we talked all night long. The next day I drove to Mankato, had three hours of author meetings and another 2 hours talking to a graduate class at the college. In between all this I had chatty dinners out with my husband. Yesterday I had a three-hour meeting with an author while a Dunn Brothers grinder roared in the background.

Today I'm exhausted. Flat out spent. When I picked up my son at the airport last night, he (because he's now 13) gave me the Fargo nod as greeting. I was so tired I just gave it right back to him. We both understood.

Luckily, I took this day off. It's a perfect day to stay inside and be quiet.

Did I tell you my mom is an artist? I wrote a little about her in an earlier post. One time, while I was on retreat at St. Paul's Monastery, I wrote a piece about the Sisters there and how in many ways they were a model for growing old. I wrote that because my family moved around so much in the Air Force I hadn't come to know many older women, the way you might if you grew up in Chicago your whole life and had your great-aunt living down the street or the sage crones over at the salon or at the neighborhood coffee shop.

I take these retreats every year--another way to rejuvenate after a long season of demands and rushes. Some people are leary of spending time with religious communities but many of them have set up retreats with the option of participating in song and prayer--or not. On this one I was mostly interested in writing. So I would write in the spacious, light-filled library and then take many walks in the acreage and woods behind the monastery.



I was walking along singing the praises of these nuns, who cared for each other with such tenderness, and then I stopped right in my tracks. Of course I have another wise woman mentor. My mother. I overlook her own skills and life intentions sometimes because I'm too busy acting like her daughter. I thought about how over the years she has made military-issue homes beautiful for us, often on a moment's notice, moving from one bleak prairie base to another. She would embroider our pillowcases and paint all the pictures that went on our walls. When she wanted to make art she would do it late at night, after we had all gone to bed. Some mornings she'd just be coming away from her easel and her eyes would be crackled and red and we'd be all raring to go. But she was drawn and committed to her art in ways I so appreciate now. That's my mom below.

After moving so much and leaving her own hometown and family far behind, her art is the one clear thing she can call her very own.

So I've set my new spot to write, up in the bedroom on the farm table we got for free from the basement of our first apartment. In Atlanta I got an embellished print of my initial "P" from an antique store and then found a lovely square frame for 99 cents at Goodwill, and I've propped that against the wall, like Sid Hartman's nameplate over his booth at Manny's. We've got an old laptop without a battery and no Internet capabilities, but it'll do just fine. I'll pull out all the different stories I've been saving in brown accordian folders and start working away. I like this resolution.

But first, I've got to take a nap.