The Vanishing Point

Here's a photo snapped at sunset off the Oregon Coast while my author husband and I were spending a few days on a writing retreat. My new novel, Widow's Walk, had just reached a scene in which the main character, a widow, is instructed to look into the vanishing point. How could I communicate how terrifying this was for her, but at the same time, compelling?

John and I had just finished an early dinner at the Asana Bistro and returned to our cabin to sit on the bench while the sun went down. We'd watch for the green flash. But what I saw was something that, because of the story I've been trying to tell for months now, felt even more stunning. I was looking right out over the ocean at was was clearly the vanishing point. The clouds, the water, the point of light, all those colors around that SPACE just shook me with a realization that I needed, somehow, to get into my book.

Twice in this life I have been widowed. I know the secrets that widows hesitate to tell. About a week after the death of my first husband another widow took me off into a corner and in a low voice said, "Honey, no one but maybe I will tell you this, but..." and then she told me one detail of her own reaction to her husband's death that stopped my breath for a moment. If she could do as she had done, then it might be possible for me to also do what I needed to survive.

Two years after my second husband died and I had just married my third (!), I thought I might write a trilogy of husband books. After the first one, The Root of Beauty, I hit a wall of impossibility. And then it came to me: This isn't about the husbands. This is about widowing itself. It needs to be a novel. I sat down at my computer and the first lines of Widow's Walk emerged.

"I woke thinking nothing had happened, thinking the green curtains an ocean the way they waved, forgetting where I was and why and who I might be with—a stranger I imagined I knew but never knew. I'd slipped my hand from his, pretending then, pretending now, constructing our reality on a breath, on a wave, and believing it."

I'm hoping to share bits of this writing experience here from time to time. There's so much I still haven't imagined.

Comments

WomanChrist: The 30th Anniversary Edition

A few weeks after my novel, Widow's Walk, was released I was visiting with my neighbor, Cecile. She was c urious about one of my first published books, WomanChrist, and asked if I had a copy. I did. It was a second-hand Amazon.com copy, rather battered, with a sticky-note inside the cover that read: “Cheryl--yes, this book is Really weird! (I had no idea when I bought it 😊 ) But bear with it—she has a lot of good ideas about being a woman today while also being Religious. Hope you enjoy it— (it’s not just to skip around and browse through)!!” Cecile might get a laugh out of that, I thought. Her reaction after reading the book was, “This is your best book! It’s so current. How could you have written this all those years ago? It’s actually prophetic.” She was the first one who told me to republish it. It had been written on my very first computer, more like a glorified typewriter and neither DOS-based nor Windows-based. I had only the published book; if I intend

Carol in the Hand of God

Carol in the Hand of God My friend Carol died yesterday. She'd been ill for a while and was on dialysis, but none of us thought her passage would come so soon. She already was on her journey from this world to the next when I took this picture of storm clouds at sunset Tuesday evening, just hours before her death the next day. At first I saw only the amazing combination of clouds, rainbow and color. And I saw the strange burst of light. But not until yesterday evening, after I heard she had dropped her body and was on her way, did my eyes adjust to see that Hand formed by the clouds. Nor did I see that the light seemed to have a human form, leaning foward, a spirit taking flight. Carol? Some of us do this--see the Virgin Mary in the ice crystals on a window, Jesus in the bark of a tree. Normally we'd see ice; we'd see the tree. It's the timing that makes the difference. It's the coming together of two realities, normally disconnected, but suddenly one even

WIDOW'S WALK IS PUBLISHED

I Have Always Been With You Artist: Shiloh Sophia WIDOW'S WALK, A NOVEL · FRIDAY, JANUARY 5, 2018 A sense of loss followed me like a shadow all my life. Real loss. Actual dead and gone kind of loss. Maybe it’s like that for everyone; who can know unless they tell you? From early childhood I knew I’d have to do something about this haunting or it would eat me up. There’s an old 16 mm film of me as a three-year-old circling the tiny grave of a bird that died--a tiny yellow chicken that my neighbor Minnie Osborn gave me from her coop. I’m performing a kind of ritual, like a priest circling the altar with incense. You can see the tears on my cheeks. As life goes on we lose a lot of who and what we love, those people and things that make us what we are. Maybe every experience of love continues as a part of us. Maybe we are made of the bits and pieces of the content of every moment we’ve lived--all we’ve seen and heard and touched and smelled, every gaze, embrace,

In the Spaces

Search This Blog