A Birthday Gift

One of my closest girlfriends took me out to a wonderful restaurant for my birthday dinner. We ate great food and talked about our lives and what it meant to be getting older. I told her about a novel I’d just started writing in which the protagonist has a boyfriend who is a sculptor. I’ve always been deeply attracted to sculpture and the people who create it. I explained to my friend that I had taken two artists I knew and melded them into one composite character. I told her how I mete each of them and how they moved me.

When we got up to leave, we passed several people who were standing at the front of the restaurant. One of them caught my eye and he said, “Andrea?” I looked more closely at him. “It’s David,” he said. I hadn’t seen him in more than twenty years and when we hugged, it felt like no time had passed. We had dated for a while, we’d had a solid friendship and it was a delight and a stunner to run into him. Even more stunning was the fact that he was one of the sculptors that I had just talking about with my girlfriend. What a birthday gift!

These kinds of coincidences are astonishing. I once met a woman who had bought a house in Laurel Canyon where I had lived for two years way back when. I see my sister’s face just before the phone rings and when I think about someone I know, I often end up running into them.

David and I met for coffee yesterday to reminisce. We caught each other up on what we were doing now. He was married with kids, he had a sculpting studio where he worked three days a week, he taught art, he gave talks and the more we spoke, the more the past came into focus. It felt like a scattering of vague snapshots in my mind that meshed together and created a solid picture. I recalled things about him I hadn’t thought about in decades. The foundry where he bronzed his pieces. His mentor who taught him to be bold and courageous in his work. We talked about the deep conversations we had about life, love, creativity. I remembered a particular sculpture he did of a man and a woman completely intertwined.

“I wrote a book,” he said, “It’s just a rough draft, really rough, but you’re in it.”

I looked at him quizzically.

“You taught me so much about life,” he said. “You helped me understand what the sixties were about and how they influenced the world today. You encouraged my art. You helped shape me. You helped me see things in a different and more immediate way. I guess you didn’t know.”

I didn’t and I was gratified that I had made such a positive impression on him. It reminded me of a woman at a recent gathering who was excited to meet me because she read my blog every week and it inspired her. It felt good to be complimented, it always does, but the idea that the work I do every day in isolation in my office, the blog I post every week like this one, has its own trajectory and reaches people I’ve never met.

This is especially poignant for me right now because I’m at a point in my career where even though I write every day, I don’t feel moved to get an agent, find a publisher, advertise on social media, do radio and TV spots and get my work out. I did all of that in the past, I enjoyed it, but now, instead of getting my work out, it feels more like I’m getting my work “in.” After numerous book deals and bestsellers throughout my career, writing has taken on new meaning for me. Different meaning. It’s simply what I do. My spiritual practice. My safe place. I don’t struggle to make sure I write. I just do it because there’s nothing else I would rather do. I don’t count words. I just write. I don’t try to string chapters together. I just write. I don’t aim it toward a particular market or write in a particular genre. I just write. I have a friend, a good writer, who won’t write unless she has a book deal. I understand, I used to feel that way but now, I write to write. I lose time, I watch the words appear on the screen and that satisfies me.

It wasn’t easy at first to come to terms with writing for its own sake. Sometimes it felt like I was writing into the wind and I compared myself to other people I knew who attracted millions of social media followers and did podcasts. I asked myself why I didn’t make an effort to do the same and the answer was clear. I didn’t want to. It took a while to make that a good enough reason and now I can’t think of a better one.

The reunion I had with David was rich in its rewards. It was not only about how I had affected other people. When I think about past relationships, I have a tendency to overlook the good parts and dwell on the bad parts. I forget the reasons I was with someone in the first place and recall the disappointments at the end. I tell myself that I have a bad picker – and then David comes along and reminds that I don’t. He’s a wonderful man and we respected and learned a lot from each other, even after we had moved on. I began to remember a variety of wonderful men in my life and how good it felt to love and be loved. I began to see how abusive it was to taunt myself with how it should have been instead of being nourished by what it turned out to be. I saw that my life path is a choice I made, even though I get lonely sometimes. It might change or it might not. For now, my peace comes by accepting where I am and what I do.

Every relationship has its challenges and so does being alone. And how we talk about it can affect out lives and the lives of others. None of us are missing anything. No one loses and no one wins unless we interpret our choices as good or bad. David helped me remember that I had some wonderful times with partners in my life and I made a strong impression on them as they did on me. I have come to understand that what I give, consciously or unconsciously, affects other people whether I am aware of it or not.