THE PENNY PUB
Rufus Wainwright’s Music Woke the Rebel in Me
His songs resurrected the part of me I thought was dead
The year was 2007. I was beginning to feel a restlessness in my life I didn’t understand. Although I loved being a full-time mother and wife, there was a niggling feeling that I was not seeing something important that wanted my attention.
Whatever the something was, it was making itself elusive. I’d catch glimpses of it inside strange and shameful longings that lived in my gut and woke me at 3:00 a.m. I’d lie next to my slumbering husband and weep tears for reasons I could not logically explain.
It was also the year I attended Natalie Goldberg’s Memoir Writing Retreat in Taos, New Mexico.
It had taken all the courage I could muster to ask my husband if I could go. He’d be required to look after our two children, ages six and five, you see, while working full-time. (I was in no way the woman I am today and still believed I required permission to meet my needs.)
I got to meet Natalie Goldberg. She was not at all the warm person my mind conjured her up to be after reading Writing Down the Bones and the half-dozen or so of her other books.
