When I was in my thirties, or maybe even my forties, I found myself mid-way through a spiral-bound notebook that once upon a time had been my journal. I’m a sucker for notebooks, but only spiral bound. In said journal I found reference to a plan to spend the year after college graduation, in Paris.
My mother grew up outside of Paris, and in the early 1990’s she bought an apartment in a run-down arrondissement and fixed it up. Twenty eight meters big, or small, the apartment consisted of two rooms, perched up on the third floor, overlooking a courtyard of plants, and cats and cobblestones. Mom was game for me to go. Or so she said. I had no recollection of planning this trip.
“Mom, why didn’t I go to Paris after I graduated?” I needed to know.
“I don’t know, Gabs. You planned to go, and one day you changed your mind. You never told me why.” Sounds about right.
No help at all, and the plot now thickened. What was happening after college that made me scrap a sweet opportunity like that? Maybe it was the college boyfriend, and the on-again, off-again thing we had going on. Likely. It could also have been the idea that the twenty-ish stores I was selling lip balm to in New England might require that I stay put. Either way, I didn’t go. Ultimately, the apartment was rented for decades, and we never set foot in it, until recently when we began doing shorter term rentals.
Today, I am finally in said apartment, on what I’m calling a DIY writing retreat. Six days to myself. To think. To be with me. Six days to also try and not think about the fact that Paris is out there, right outside my window. Thankfully, the heat wave is on pause, but it’s hard to not think about the salade chèvre chaud I could be eating, the raspberry tarts with my name on them, stories about Marie Antoinette I could be listening to.
But, no. My goal is to finish revisions on draft three of my book, so I can turn it over to my (Secret) Agent Anna, and see what comes next. Probably more revisions? And some point it will have to be ready-enough to go out on submission to publishers.
This book thing actually IS my first rodeo. I feel a bit like a first grader, sitting in the front row, pencil sharpened, fresh ponytails pulled up high and tight, my clean, white notebook ready for the spelling words. After thirty-five years of the same gig, I enjoy the mystery of the book-business. It certainly makes selling lip balm look straightforward, comparatively.
I’m surprised it has taken me this long to get to this point, since I’ve had an empty nest for almost four years. You would think I had gotten the hang of this thing by now, and written five books! But alas, I have not. It’s been a slow burn. The writing-me is very much a work in progress.
The week after my youngest son went to college, I had the wild experience of a month-long residency at Chateau de la Napoule which I applied for on a whim during a mid-winter bout of Covid in 2022. I cried for three days when I was accepted.
I had not left Mad Gab’s or my life for a month— ever. Since I began selling lip balm using yellow pages and maps and driving wherever I had a couch to sleep on, Mad Gab’s was a living creature in my life. it always wanted more, needed something. I figured it out as I went. There were no true days off. Then I became a mother when I was 29, after being married for less than two years. Also no days off. I signed up for all of it, and it was a wonderful, wild and crazy time, mostly.
I sobbed when I arrived at my residency. I unpacked my two suitcases into the massive armoire in my corner room overlooking palm trees and the Mediterranean. I was still not exactly sure what a residency was.
I knew what I was: exhausted, excited, scared. I also felt like it was a mistake that I had been accepted. Who was I to take this place from a real artist? As I settled in, I moved into a sense of shock and walked in circles for a couple of days unsure what to do with myself. I grabbed a hard boiled egg and sugary Yoplait yogurt every morning and watched the other residents head off to their studios. I sat in mine, which looked out onto beautiful gardens, and felt more like a dentist office than a castle— arranged my photos, purple and green index cards, and wrote. Without direction, any idea how to organize a book, certainly no Secret Agent Anna yet. I muddled. Beautiful muddling.
It was a blissful month. How could it not have been? I tried not to feed people, but I did. I tried not to mother any one, but when another resident got Covid, I made it my job to feed them. I reckoned I needed the structure, the pacing of the day. What to do with each precious 24 hours?
Here, in Paris, today, there are no fellow residents, just the kitties who fight down in the courtyard. The funny Parisian sirens screaming as they speed off to do not-so-funny things. There is simply my wooden chair with two cushions stacked under me, a laptop I resurrected before leaving, and my current spiral-bound, green notebook. I’m working my way through a few dozen chapters that I’m about halfway done.
Despite the fact that it took me thirty five years to find my way here, I know this is the start of a new tradition. One where I make up for lost, misplaced and forgotten, time.
Wish me luck.
