LOVE AFFAIR

I've told you often it's never too late (or too early) to write your heart out. I often use my elderly students as an example. Their enthusiasm to write their memoirs, funny children's stories, tales of the weird or mysterions, and beautiful rhythms in poetry, teach me that lesson each week. But I have also found to give my beloved craft high priority in my life means I must allow myself to have a love affar.

For many years I have been in the throes of such an affair. I am helplessly, intimately seduced, utterly swept away. I know what love does, how that yearning sensation takes the breath away. Emotional comfort rises up to enfold me in a fond embrace. I all happens to me each time I pick up a pen,or touch a keyboard. How can I not give in to the beauty of the love of my life--the written word.

At this time of my life, I have finally learned to gracefully accept this obsession. Because though I can never walk away from this lover, I don't have to disappear in some shoddy motel, or dark corner of a restaurant, either. I don't have to shut myself away from the world; there are all those lovely chapters, personal essays, poems waiting to be written. There is also mental work to be done before my hands seek the keyboard. A walk along the beach, a picnic in the park, the soil beneath my gardening tools, the laughter of friends, and travels among the unusual--all are part of my secret life, the writer within I have kept hidden from many.

My grounding lover, my dear husband, understands this passion I feel for words. He allows me the freedom to have another love affair, though I am sure he often shakes his head at the roller coaster of emotions such a craft brings out in me.

Thanks, sweetie, for letting me be me. You are my saving grace. Allowing me to have this other love affair is an amazing gift.