And so this week’s moment of happiness despite the news…one day late. Longer than normal too.
Lordy. I said I would write this today, since I ran out of time yesterday, and I am. At 7:30 at night. And I’m just eating lunch now.
That should give you an idea of what my week has been like. Part of the busy is a new cat in my family. An 11-month old black and white female nervous tornado named Poe (not named by us, but by the animal rescuer who found her and her siblings, brought them to a cat rescue, who in turn brought them to Elmbrook Humane Society, the only humane society in my area that tests the cats for feline leukemia before they place them). Michael’s favorite non-living author was Edgar Allen Poe, which was why our cat Edgar’s whole name was Edgar Allen Paw. Seeing a cat named Poe, who also had the restriction of only being available for adoption to someone who already had a cat in the house, and our having Oliver, who was lonely and missing Cleo, well, it seemed like a huge arrow darted out of the sky and said, THIS ONE! So far, she absolutely adores Oliver. She’s not so sure about me or Livvy. We’ve had her since last Monday, and neither of us has managed to pet her yet. She has sniffed my fingers, and she will come to Oliver when he’s leaning against my legs, so we’re making progress. But she’s a super-hider, and so quite a bit of time has been spent on fruitless searches. Whew.
There’s also the AllWriters’ Annual Retreat to prepare for, coming up on July 16 – 19, and the venue let me know last Friday that our usual gathering room is now being used as an exercise room, but “we have plenty of space for you.” When I emailed back questioning this, I received an automatic reply, stating that the person was out of the office until after the 4th of July.
Sigh.
BUT – yes, there was still a Moment. A couple of them, in fact.
I’m going to talk about dreams. There are two kinds, really. The kind of dream you have when you’re conscious, and you’re dreaming of goals you’d like to achieve. And there’s the dream you have when you’re sleeping, so you’re not really conscious, and you’re surely not in control. Both of these types of dreams gave me Moments this week.
So the conscious one first. Way back in 1987, when I was publishing short stories and becoming known as a short story writer, but no book yet, I read author Tim Sandlin’s first novel, Sex And Sunsets, and promptly fell in love with him. In his third novel, Skipped Parts, he included a note to readers, saying if you wrote him about the book, he would send you a picture postcard of the Tetons (he lived in Wyoming) with a note from him. I did, and he did, and we struck up a dialogue that lasted until his death last March, soon after the release of his final novel, Lit.
In that original postcard, which I still have, Tim wrote, “Dear Kathie, This is actually a picture of the Gros Ventres, but you can see the Tetons if the photographer turned around. Most of my female readers (at least the ones I hear from) think I’m one of the only males who understands them. Or at least tries to. I’m accused by critics of being a feminist. One female reviewer said any man who writes from the viewpoint of a woman is a rapist – so I didn’t please her, but for the most part, women aren’t offended. At least not enough to tell me. Writing is hard enough work. If you tell what you see as the truth, you can’t worry about who you offend. Good luck in your writing. I’ll look for your name.”
I’d written to him about my penchant of writing about difficult subjects. I have held his words, “If you tell what you see as the truth, you can’t worry about who you offend,” close to my chest ever since then. Tim apparently kept my name close too, because he did watch for me, and I always had a message from him after one of my books appeared.
Tim went on to start the Jackson Hole Writers Conference, growing it from a modest meeting of local authors to a highly successful and premier literary gathering. He led it for over three decades, and the event will celebrate its 35th anniversary this year.
To say I’ve wanted to be a presenter at this conference is an understatement. It’s been my goal since it started. But I never felt comfortable asking Tim about it, because I felt that was taking advantage of our relationship.
Well, as you’ve probably guessed…I’m going to be at the Jackson Hole Writers Conference in 2027. I met last Monday with the current director, via Zoom. He’d heard of me through Tim, and also through one of my very enthusiastic students who lives out there. He’d told me that the 2026 event was already booked, so I wasn’t sure why he wanted to talk now. But partway through, he suddenly said, “How’d you like to be a presenter in 2027?”
Ohmygod.
Goal achieved. Dream achieved. And I’ll get to stand where Tim stood, and speak where he spoke, and I’ll get to see the area he loved so much. If you’re talking to me and I suddenly burst out into the silliest of grins, it’s because I’m thinking of Jackson Hole and 2027.
And then a sleeping dream. I was extremely puzzled a few mornings ago when I woke up after a weird dream. I was sitting at the AllWriters’ classroom table, and in front of me, I had a huge pile of stuffed rabbits. Specific rabbits…they were all, I knew, the Velveteen Rabbit, from the children’s book of the same name, by Margery Williams, originally published in 1921. I was cutting out red velvet hearts and amazingly sewing them onto the backs of these stuffed rabbits (I don’t sew. I am famous for stapling my oldest daughter’s Brownie and Girl Scout badges to her sash.). Once sewn on, the red hearts looked like angel wings on the rabbits, if you looked at the rabbits straight on. In the dream, Olivia came into the room, looked at all the rabbits, and asked me what I was doing. “I’m remembering your father,” I said. And then I woke up.
Remembering Michael? As far as I know, there is no connection between Michael and rabbits. He never liked rodents, including Mickey Mouse, even though he grew up in Florida. When Michael and I first got together, two of my kids had guinea pigs…and Michael couldn’t bring himself to touch them.
So I thought about this for a few days. I’ve wondered, of course, if some of the things I’ve experienced since Michael’s death were real. I want them to be, of course. I’ve also been very conscious of not wanting to turn Michael into a saint. He wasn’t, and I’m not, and our marriage wasn’t perfect. A lot of the reviews of The Birth Of A Widow have brought up the intense love that I express in the poems. In the most recent review, by a lovely woman named Nicole Pyles who took part in the blog tour of Widow, she said, “Her poems and some essays reflect the complexities of grief, memory, loss, and, most of all, love.”
Love. Now I have to tell you, one of the unexpected aspects of grief is the rise of the question of reality. Am I remembering Michael accurately? Did we have a wonderful, imperfect marriage? Am I missing the real person, or just the role of being a wife and having a husband?
The mind works in really, really weird ways. Add being a writer to that, and well, it can get messy in my brain.
So, The Velveteen Rabbit. The main storyline of the book is that an old, beloved stuffed animal, the Velveteen Rabbit, wants to become real. And he thinks he can become real through the love of the child, who is now grown. This is the line from The Velveteen Rabbit that I remember the most. I once took a photo of all the beloved stuffed animals from my childhood, sitting on a bench in my bedroom. When I had the photo printed, I framed it with this quote beneath it:
“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”
And now, here I was, in my dream, attaching hearts like wings to Velveteen Rabbits, and wondering about reality.
I loved Michael, I still do, and Michael loved me. Most everything that I’ve accomplished has happened since I met and married Michael. I was no longer squashed, cut down, made to feel less than. I was loved, I was respected, I was believed in. I became me. I became Real. And Michael became Real too. Our love for each other was Real, because we weren’t perfect. We didn’t just play. Even through the hard parts, even when those hard parts were our relationship, or one of us, we still loved, and we still stayed together.
Real.
I need to find a Velveteen Rabbit. And then I will staple a red velvet heart to its back.
And yes, that helps. Despite. Anyway.
