Tomorrow
we shall have to think up signs,
sketch a landscape, fabricate a plan
on the double page
of day and paper.
Tomorrow we shall have to invent,
once more,
the reality of this world.
–Octavio Paz, “January 1st” (translated by Eliz. Bishop)

For my husband’s birthday dinner this week, we invited a friend to join us. He is 92 years old, and regaled us with stories of his first dog, his experiences in the Navy, his career, his marriages, and his children. (I was especially impressed with a daughter who insisted on taking her horse with her when she left home for college.)

After dinner, our friend had several riddles for us, all of which required “thinking outside the box.” These required, he warned, that we focus on certain key words, and not assume that they meant something conventional. So in one riddle (the most straightforward of them) “home” got translated from one’s house to homebase in baseball, but even words like “man” and “distance” and “into” had to be further or more deeply perceived.

Writing requires a constant thinking-outside-the-box. I remember a poetry professor who warned us (back in my MFA days) against including the moon, or love (!), or hearts in our poems. But of course we do want to write about the moon, and love, and hearts. I’m often dismayed by how many other poets are writing about struggles with teenagers, or care of aging parents. But that doesn’t mean we don’t write about these things — of course we MUST write about them.

The trick is to think more deeply, to think in layers, to not write conventionally or through our first assumptions. As I have said before, my goal is to write — and to live — as though the gate’s been left open.

“A story is already over before we hear it. That is how the storyteller knows what it means.” -Joan Silber, The Art of Time in Fiction

I hope I am not one of those people who says, “Everything happens for a reason.” As I once heard Barry Keating say, “God doesn’t send you hardship to build your character.”

Nevertheless, things happen, and sometimes character gets built. Sometimes things work out for the best. But knowing that isn’t necessarily helpful at the moment.

One of my daughters has had a setback, not getting into a program she had set her heart on. I’m reminded of other disappointments. Concert ticket scams fallen for. The right boy not making an appearance at the right time. Mom not giving in to a request for shoes that could change her life. Dropped ice cream cones.

I’m reminded of a boss who used to say, when his melodramatic young employees carried on over an upset, “And, Lo, she did not die.”

I’m reminded of a time one of my nephews, new at toddling, fell and bumped his head. When my brother-in-law got upset, my mother, the wise grandmother, said, “He’ll have lots of bumps and bruises in his little life.”

Which doesn’t mean you don’t keep an eye out for potential danger. Which doesn’t mean your heart doesn’t sink when your child is hurt, emotionally or physically.

One of the things I like about being a writer is that hindsight, which is 20-20, becomes a tool for storytelling. In life we don’t know, not yet, what will come of a missed opportunity. Later, in storytelling time (one might say), we do know.

It feels like a tragedy, just now. But no one has died. (No one even got bruised!) If you keep your eyes open–you’ll see other doors open.