Why I Write

My 16-year-old daughter vomited all night with pain from her recently extracted wisdom teeth. My 13-year-old son needs blood work so we can start him on Accutane for severe acne on his back. This has to be done before breakfast and school and the oral surgeon can only see my daughter at 8:20am and the office is thirty minutes away. It is now 7:45am. We are all in pajamas.

The husband and I scramble to make a plan. He’ll take her. I’ll take him. We’ll meet back at the house. I get the boy’s blood work, buy him ALL the chicken minis because he is a 13-year-old boy and needs food, and get him to school. All the while I’m texting with the husband about what the oral surgeon is saying about my other kid’s mouth and her pain and strategizing about how to fix it.

We get the girl home, I get to the drug store, get the new prescriptions filled and get some medicine in her and collapse on the sofa, but I’m too keyed up to sleep. I figure I may as well accomplish something, so I open my laptop and pull up a book chapter I’m working on and dive in.

Ah sweet revision, my happy place. As I re-read the narrative my co-author has drafted, connecting things up to the overall chapter and book, massaging the words, my heart rate slows. This is my craft. Some people knit with yarn, I do it with words. I pull the threads of thought through the narratives, weaving together ideas, making something that rings true to me, something that is beautiful. The world slows to a manageable pace and all is well. I am ready to handle the next crazy crisis, which is sure to arise within the next ten minutes.

And THIS is why I write.