Being Here, Now

What happens now? What happens next?

Digging around in the front closet, looking for a gift box and some wrapping paper (and finding neither) I excavated some old journals and books from a high shelf and pulled down a notebook with a soft dark cover, imploring: Chase Your Dreams, You Might Catch One.

A Dallas friend gave it to me just days before Tom and I left for South Carolina to pursue my wild dream of researching and writing a book. Way back in 2017. Remember 2017?

My friend was supportive. And concerned. You’re doing what? South Carolina to write a book? Are you sure about this?

We weren’t sure but we were energized and excited and we loaded the dog and some of our stuff and drove to the lowcountry.

I open it, read the entries from that first week:

Jan 2, 2017 - Two days of driving… the house we rented sight unseen works!… so many stairs - we hauled our stuff up three flights of stairs to the bedroom… we wake up to the view of the marsh behind us…. We’re here!

Again and again, day after day, I describe the light, the birds, the Spanish moss. Over and over, I underline here; my scribble proclaims We’re here!

Ten days later, we arrive in Key West for the KW Literary Seminar and workshops. We’re thrilled that there’s a writing workshop in Key West. In January! We tell each other We’re here! To sweeten the treat, I’ve been awarded a scholarship and our room is paid for. And Tom gets to go to lectures with me: Robert Caro, Teju Cole, Joyce Carol Oates. We get to visit Hemingway’s house. We’re here, we get to be here. Together. We’re here!

It’s all so good. 

We’re pursuing a dream. Trust and trepidation, to be sure, but also unbridled joyful energy. 

A week later, back in Beaufort, I’m writing every day, sometimes all day. The Pat Conroy Literary Center has just opened and I attend a reading, then a workshop. 

We walk all over Beaufort to learn all we can. We take the boat tours, the Gullah tours, the historic walking tours. I spend hours and hours at the library.

We walk miles and miles of old Charleston, tour Fort Sumter. Eat so much seafood. 

We’re here, we say with wonder and sometimes disbelief.

Most evenings before dinner we sit on the back deck of the rental house, watching the tide rise or fall, watching the moon rise or fall, watching the light play on the water as the sun drops, watching egrets – hundreds of egrets – fly across the marsh to roost in the trees.

We’re here. 

It’s not lost on me that aspiring writers seldom succeed in completing their project. And those who do may or may not be published. And most published books sell fewer than 1000 copies. Ever. I wonder, occasionally, if I’ve brought us into a nightmare disguised as a dream.

But. We’re here. We. Together. Here. This place. We’re giving it our best.

Tom has found a tennis community. And friends with boats. I’m finding characters and details for the book. 

We’re chasing this thing - the dream. Dreams, actually. Plural. We wonder if we’d like to live here permanently. We learn, slowly, to slow down. We’re not in Dallas anymore. We’re here and we don’t have to scramble or hurry or hustle. We start looking at real estate. We make friends. We learn the names of water birds and big fish. We keep the binoculars close. 

We learn to cook shrimp.

A few months later, well into a manuscript, I’m introduced to a literary agent named Marly. She wants to see my work.

We stay here. I write the book. We buy a house. Marly finds a publisher. Trouble the Water is published.

We chased the dream; we caught it. We came here. We made it, here.

He gave me this. He believed in the dream, all of it. He believed in me. I believed in him. And we expected to grow old. Really old. Together. Right here. 

And now…

I’m here. 

And Tom is both here and not here. His physical absence is everywhere. Here. Not here.

And I wonder, now, how to be anywhere; this is the only place I want to be but I don’t quite know how to be here.

I don’t quite know how to be. 

How do we inhabit the place we chose when so much has changed? How do we honor the dreams shared and the hopes realized and the losses, the inevitable losses, when the storms come? 

How do we honor this broken and beautiful gift of life? 

What happens now?

What happens next?

What happens here?