Posted from my Work-Nest

Like everyone else here, I’ve come to realize that the things I will miss most once I’ve lost them are not objects that can be bought with money. I really think the things that give me the most joy (besides the presence of other beings: my spouse, our furry children, my two grown stepsons) are space and time.

Spending eight hours a day in monotonous, entry-level jobs taught me the value of time for myself. Between semesters at university, I worked in various government offices as a clerk-typist in the time Before Computers. My office uniform had to consist of dresses or blouses and skirts with nylon pantyhose that stuck to my legs in summer heat. (If memory serves me, this was also the time Before Air Conditioning.) Tappity-tap-tap was the dance my fingers did on a keyboard all morning and all afternoon. By evening, my mind didn’t feel capable of producing an idea for a poem, a short story, a play or even a letter to the editor. I thought of myself as someone who once had the ridiculous ambition of becoming a writer (especially after winning a national student writing contest in high school: clearly a fluke). But now I was in my twenties, so I had to grow up and accept the reality that my life would never improve.

I thank Whomever that it did. Teaching jobs have been the perfect complement to a writing life. Teaching gets me out of the house, it brings me into contact with other people, it actually forces me to discuss ideas and analyze other people’s writing, and then – best of all! – it provides me with unscheduled time. I don’t know of any other paid, structured job that includes “free time” within working hours. Teachers at the university level are expected to produce something more tangible than knowledge in the minds of our students, so we are provided with time and office space to do “research,” whatever that means to intellectuals in various fields. For English instructors, it usually means either scholarly or creative writing.

In 1929, Virginia Woolf famously claimed that women writers need rooms of their own, and the assumption that women don’t need or deserve any such thing helps explain why so many women eventually lose their creativity, or never express it in any way other than sewing curtains or knitting afghans.

http://www.amazon.com/books/dp/B0029LHWO0

I never really understood the significance of having space of my own, mine, all to myself, until I acquired my own office at the university AND a room in my house that we call the “library” because it is stuffed full of books, but where I spend time at the computer while Spouse uses her laptop. Something in the air of both rooms was inspiring, and I rediscovered writing. 1999 was a watershed year, when my miserably-paid marginal teaching job was transformed into a middle-class career (thanks to an aggressive academic union), my new income qualified me for a mortgage, Spouse and I moved into a character house (built in 1914) in the artsy neighborhood of our choice, and I got my first erotic story published in an anthology with the work of writers who seemed vastly more famous.

In the new millennium I’ve had ups and downs, but I’ve never sunk to the levels of despair that threatened to drown me in the past, when I was often told I was at the peak of my life, and that women’s lives go downhill after they turn twenty-five or maybe thirty. Ha.

Who knew that I only needed time and space of my own? Those are the things I would miss the most if I had to give them up.

Everyone on earth needs a room, a shed, a nest, a den or a cave of one’s own. And everyone needs a few hours to spend there, not tending to anyone else’s needs. There should be a new drinking toast in every language. Instead of “To your health!” friends should drink “To your space!”

To My Fourteen-Year-Old Self

by Jean Roberta

Dear Jeanie,

I’m old enough to be your grandmother, and I know how you feel about old people who give you lectures. Please don’t tune me out. I haven’t forgotten being you.

I’ll start with some good news:

Your acne will go away. Seriously. I know you’re not happy with your body, but you will never gain more than 30 pounds beyond your current weight. That’s not much of a physical change over 47 years.

Consider this: you are not defined by the way you look. No one is. If you can’t find an inner core that feels like your true self, you will be as vulnerable to every passing influence as a weathervane.

The biggest challenges of your life will not be the ones you imagine now.

Bill, your current boyfriend, is a preview of the rogues’ gallery in your future. Remember what he told you about the value of the necklace he gave you? You don’t really believe it’s worth hundreds of dollars, do you? (By the way, I still have it. I’m sure an appraisal would reveal it to be the best bling from Woolworth’s, circa 1965.) And when he told you the words for “I love you” in the language of the Eskimos (which he calls “Eskimalian”), after telling you what a world traveller he is, you knew that was all hot air, didn’t you?

Yet even when your father found out Bill has never been registered as a student at the state college, as he claimed, you clung to hope that maybe there had been some mistake. You still hope, with all your wild energy, that clashing versions of the truth can be made compatible, that all the pieces can be cleverly aligned like the parts of the “Chinese puzzles” you love getting in your stocking on Christmas morning.

You are terrified of trusting your own common sense, let alone your deepest instincts. You know what guys like Bill say about girls who “can’t trust.” He’s right, in a way. Trust is good. Give it to yourself before you give it to anyone else.

Please remember that anyone can say anything. You can be lied to and lied about. (You know how that goes. When you hear Sandy Posey sing it on the radio next year, you'll be singing along.) You can be told you are crazy, and you will be.

I wish I could spare you from the worst experiences ahead, but then you would probably miss some of the good stuff too.

You know the dreams you’ve had about a beautiful baby girl with a brown skin? She’s real and she’s ours, by blood.

You know how much you would like to become a published writer? You will be. You’ll be surprised at how easily the words flow when you have enough time to think and a room of your own, just as Virginia Woolf explained it. Nothing in the world is really new. It’s just new to you.

Here is a paradox that you need to learn: truth and imagination are related. You need a flexible imagination to begin to glimpse the complexity of what is under your nose. Never try to shut down your fantasies in order to see things clearly, or close your eyes in order to find what you seek.

Your desire for sex is not a sign that you deserve to be locked up somewhere. Your confusing crush on Katie is not the symptom of a mental illness. Right now, you can’t imagine how much easier it will be for women to love each other in the next century.

Looking at photos of you, I see a glow in your eyes that you can’t see in the mirror. You have no idea how much I love you, just as I love the woman I gave birth to, and her children. I know you feel my love from time to time. It’s like a tingle in your skin when no one else seems to be touching you. Love is a moving current that needs to be passed on.

You know what you need to do to survive. Have faith.