Even Now, April

Part two of the book saga and an ode to April.

One friend has a scare with a bear outside of her small white slanted cottage. She tells me this in a text as she heads to the eye doctor. She is a poet, so it is not my bear to tell you about, that is her bear. But it seems in April, there are bears everywhere, trying but missing, scaring us only so we do not sleep at night.

For two weeks my sister suffers from a migraine and its echoes. She sees a neurologist while I watch her children, and an acupuncturist, and a psychic, and a naturopath, and an ENT who she says looks like a cartoon, and just about any other kind of person who might be able to help. But mostly, we rely on the robot, as my son says. Over the two weeks I develop an intimate relationship with my robot chat, typing in questions and symptoms, and when I least expect it, he comforts me. None of us sleep at night, and when the symptoms clear, it feels like spring.

April comes like a welcomed house guest, the kind you wash the sheets for and take down spiderwebs, and buy good orange wine and clear the leaves off the deck for. We need this, we keep on saying, and we mean it. But still, there are bears at the window.

I never wrote the part two of my book update because it took me some time to stomach it. I keep reminding myself that I am here to share the journey, especially when it does not look like you imagined it might. The short story: my book did not sell. (Yet.) But there was enough consistent feedback from editors who almost said yes, who loved my voice and the character and all the things, that my agent gave me two choices: one, go for another round of editors as is, or do a heavy revision (again), which essentially cuts the first third of the book and restructures the entire thing. Keep the voice, and the lore, and the characters, and the heart, and the bones, but get rid of that fatty meal at the start. It is the most poignant case of kill your darlings I have ever seen. If I think about it too much it is a bear at the window, and I am terrified that I do not have the skill or the heart to do this again.

And yet, here I am, lacing up my boots to get back to work. I tell myself that this version of the book got me my agent, whom I adore, and that we are down but not out, and that lots of great books undergo something like this. I keep reminding myself that doing the work is the life, and that spending another season in that world is a gift. If I don’t try and see the way out, I can almost see the way through.

What else can I tell you? That my daughter grows this spring like a tulip, quick and bright, and that my son drives me mad when he is most like me, and that I feel older than I ever have. I make a list on the refrigerator where the grocery list is supposed to go, and it details anything I deem gorgeous, and what it ends up being is a list for spring, the good parts, not the bear parts. And I need it so much that I am tempted to take the piece of paper down and eat it.

What I do know, even now, is that the pomegranate and apricot trees are blooming and the entire world here smells like orange blossom. That the river is still running from spring rain and the hills have not yet turned golden. But they will.