Ephemera

Subjects for my blog slip, slid, slam, whisper. This morning I have a heart full of humble. Putting out fires is sometimes what caring for an aging parent is. Today, there was the small fire of a leaking ten-year-old water heater and the need to have it replaced. The timing, right smack in the middle of the time set aside to write. I’m humbled at how quickly my husband offered to stand in for me so I could write. There were many more important things he was needed for, but knowing how important my writing is to me, he put himself out.

How lucky am I? Yet the loving act also makes me so aware of the tiny amount of success I’ve had and what each have cost everyone who loves me. It makes me want to do, be better and fear I’m not good enough. But…what can I do but be grateful to all those who believe in me and help me out and then do the best writing I can.

One of the gifts my brother gave me this year for Christmas was copies and originals of papers that were in a file of my father. Letters, pictures, old newspaper articles. Papers I haven’t seen for over forty years.

This is the second time I’ve been reminded how important some of these little memento can be, especially for a writer. I remember at a class reunion, our historian displayed our activity cards, flyers for stomps, hall passes, learner permits, ads for school plays, lunch tickets, the program for our graduation and Baccalaureate. Time travel. I don’t know why but this physical proof of my history speak to me the same way antiques do, as if the story is somehow embedded in the object. Ephemera, more so than other things does that. I find myself drawn to old papers, ledgers, journals and I know it’s the stories each represents.

Letters my father wrote me touched my heart most deeply. It had been so very long since I’d heard him, but there in the words of my letters was…me. Twice I mentioned how much I wanted to be a writer. I read a quote in The Writer in an interview (‘To Entertain and Educate’ by Mort Castle did on Ron Hansen.) It is advice Laurence Olivier liked to give want-to-be actors, It applies equally to writers, “If anything can keep you from acting, let it.”