“Human isolation is terrible. We want to connect and figure out what it means to write. ‘How do you live? what do you think?’ we ask the author. We all look for hints, stories, examples.” –Natalie Goldberg, Wild Mind
I love the tick-tock of the making brain. The mashing, smashing thoughts unfurling from onion minds. The breaking out from solitude to concrete connection. And friends.
So much of my day is had at home with children and sandwiches and upside-down expectation. Then comes the quiet time at the writing desk rooting around like a truffle hog for the unmistakable scent that will hoist me out, and up, and into the possibility of the Great Huzzah!
Hope Edelman said, “I believe in the possibility of everything.”
Well, I believe in the possibility of the Great Huzzah!
Great Huzzah!: Noun. Idea paramount to all others. An idea so profound one forgets to take the double chocolate molten lava cakes from the oven. For hours.
But the Great Huzzah! is elusive. It flits in and out of peripheral vision. It teases in the space between sleep and wake. It careens from my children’s mouths, and while I’m still laughing, it’s forgotten.
When I come close, really close to catching it up, I’m in the company of others.
How lucky then to have driven to Milwaukee on the 9th of October and to have shared coffee and conversation with Christi Craig and Lisa Rivero, to speak so freely of writing and kids in equal measure without guilt or guile. How lucky to walk along Lake Michigan and to be a mother-writer in the company of other mother-writers.
Huzzah!
It feels good to link experiences.
Huzzah!
There are others like you in the world–both writer and mother, both creatively driven through words and emotionally driven through thought and action.
Huzzah!
Writing is connection and though all our experiences are different, our lives lived and loved and longed for, we have this–words on a page.
And it feels good.
Here’s to you, mamas, writers, creators, givers, and growers-of-things–here’s to you and the search for the Great Huzzah!
Tell me about you and your onion mind–what are you searching for? What have you found?
Huzzah, indeed! I love this post almost as much as I loved our beautiful sunny afternoon threesome conversation of writing and mothering and things that go bump in the night.
A huge cyber hug sent your way… (((Victoria)))
~ Lisa
Hugs back, Lisa. I hope we can do it again and again.
Wonderful and inspiring and sad all at the same time that those molten lava cakes were lost!
Huzzah!
Maybe tomorrow I’ll try some good, old fashioned peanut butter cookies. Maybe that would spur some revelations. Huzzah!
Whew! I love this! But it does make it hard to get my butt in the chair to write. Now what I really want to do is go find my peeps! It’s amazing how much of my ‘writing’ comes from not actually writing – from building relationships with other moms, other women, other writers, being out in the world. I couldn’t agree more.
Kario,
You are so right. We gain so much from the back and forth of conversation, from tossing ideas like softballs, from stopping and considering and starting up again.
Thanks for stopping!
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