What was I going to write about?

Oh, now I remember.

I've had many oh-I-should-blog-about-that moments this week, though as I sit down now to write I'm having trouble coming up with even one.

I'll have to ramble for a while.

First of all, I'm cold. I'm sitting here in sweatpants (cropped 'cuz that's hot), a long sleeve t-shirt, a sweatshirt, one of those puffy vests, a wool hat, socks and slippers and still my nose and fingertips are like ice. My favorite thing to do when my hands are like this, as they always are, is to sneak them up Dan's shirt and press them against his skin like I am branding him with my coldness. (He doesn't totally love this and there is a possibility that I could get punched some day, but it's worth it.) I'm being stubborn about turning the heat on. I did it for a minute this morning but I'm just not sure that I'm ready to embrace the season of $200 gas bills. I don't feeeeel like it. But I won't last too much longer in a 65 degree apartment.

I shouldn't complain, this is my favorite time of year. Yesterday Dan and I went to the Farmer's Market that runs along a little street beside a river here in Exeter. It's as quaint and beautiful as it sounds especially now with the reds and oranges of the trees reflecting on the river. We bought cider doughnuts (there's no gluten in those, right?), end-of-season tomatoes, poblano and chili peppers, shallots, scallions and garlic, and even some Indian food---Chicken tikka masala and another spicier cashew dish---from a restaurant stand set up to advertise its opening. We also picked up a couple of acorn squashes and were planning to mix it into risotto tonight along with some pancetta, pine nuts and maybe some scallions or leeks but opted instead for pizza because neither of us feels like working that hard. (In fact, when I started that sentence I wrote "we are planning" but then decided that we aren't.) I have the feeling my coldness and sore throat are related so rather than get hijacked by illness I'm going to opt to relax tonight and avoid the work of cooking (and the drinking it requires).

I'm hoping to decorate for Halloween this weekend. That and 750 other things before GBFFE comes up to visit on Monday. Mattie hasn't been up to NH in years. The last time must have been when I first started dating Dan (eight years ago---really?) because I seem to remember Dan expressing some reservations about my sharing a bed with with this guy I called a best friend.

Lord I was born a ramblin' man.

Let's just get onto the Melliterary Spew so I can meet a goddamn deadline for once in my life and take a nap (or watch the new MTV Real World Challenge).

Melliterary Spew:

I met Joyce Maynard. 'Nuff said. Maynard is a favorite writer of mine whose memoir, At Home In The World, affected me so intensely that I felt compelled to write her a letter to thank her. I've never written to an author before. I've never seen a woman write more bravely or honestly (in her memoir and in other essays of hers that I've read) and my appreciation for her openness and her advocacy of a woman's right to tell her story is boundless. She tells the truth; her whole story, flaws and all. I know she cheated on her ex-husband and that he cheated on her as well. I know that she had breast enhancment surgery. I know that she had an abortion while married and a miscarriage after her divorce. I know that her shame was so deep that she's lucky to have found it and named it.

"I have come to believe that my greatest protection comes in self-disclosure," Maynard wrote in At Home In The World.

Her memoir was the first book I read that showed me, the first time I truly saw, the power of honesty. It tells the story of her entire life (up until 1999 when it was published) from her childhood in Durham, NH to the raising of her children in Keene, NH and her eventual move to California. It tells of her experience growing up with an alcoholic father and a mother so overbearing she once read her Joyce's diary and responded with a note she tucked into its pages. It tells of eating disorders that lasted from childhood into adulthood. It tells of a life built around pleasing others with her body and her words or by whatever resources she could draw upon. In later chapters it tells of a hard and love-weak marriage and an eventual divorce.

The main thing one would hear about the memoir though, is that it tells of her relationship with writer J.D. Salinger. Indeed, this was a significant part of Maynard's life. Any woman who had dropped out of college at age 18 to move in with a 53-year-old man would no doubt include this in her memoir as a significant event because no doubt such a thing would leave a mark on a life. The fact that it was J.D. Salinger only intensifies that mark, particularly since he is a famous man; particularly since Maynard is a writer. The relationship was emotionally abusive, if not sexually, and its effects were far-reaching and long-lasting. It is pertinent to her life story. Yet, Maynard was criticized and slammed at every turn for exploiting the great J.D. Salinger. Her reputation and character were accosted because in telling her own truth, she told the truth about a powerful and revered man.

She knew this was going to happen and she did it anyway. I dig that. She demonstrated the danger of secrets and shame. I dig that too.

I was first introduced to Joyce Maynard in 1999 but didn't remember or realize it until 2008. In January of 2008 I experienced a very long and painful miscarriage that pretty much changed me from the inside out (and might be a part of The Bookish). During that time I sought solace in a compilation of essays called About What Was Lost: Twenty Writers on Miscarriage, Healing and Hope which was born from editor Jessica Berger Gross. (The book was an incredible comfort to me and I now buy it for any friends or loved ones who are enduring this type of loss. If you've experienced a miscarriage, if you just want to understand the subject better, I recommend reading this book.)

One of the featured writers, the author of an essay which particularly resonated with me, was Joyce Maynard. Looking for more of her stuff online I came across her website and the At Home In The World Afterword. It was then that I realized I had heard of this writer before. I was a senior in high school in 1999 when Maynard's memoir came out. I remember having a discussion in my English class about whether this woman who had written a book about J.D. Salinger was exploiting the famous recluse. We talked about whether or not she had the right to disclose the contents of letters that Salinger wrote to her (when he first sought her out when she was a freshman at Yale, I later learned). I remember the words "kiss and tell" coming up. I don't remember hearing that she was only 18-years-old when the year-long affair began. I don't remember hearing how more stories of Salinger's relationships with much younger women were surfacing. I do remember that Salinger wrote about innocence and "phonies."

It was interesting to realize that this essayist I had just been introduced to and the author I heard about when I was only 18 myself were the same person. I was forced to reexamine the situation just as I've had to reevaluate many of the values I held and opinions I formed at that age. Reading her memoir, knowing what I do now about powerful men, I do not question Maynard's story in the least.

So I wrote Maynard a letter thanking her for writing such a book because really I am so very grateful. I heard back from her a week later. Then, a couple of weeks ago she e-mailed me to say that she remembered I live in Exeter and would be in Portsmouth, NH for a reading of her new novel, Labor Day (also wonderful, though completely different), and would be interested in meeting. So I listened to this beautiful woman read from her novel. I listened to her warmly and honestly answers people's questions about her books and life. And when we met during the signing she was gracious and kind to me as well. I told her again what At Home in the World meant to me. We talked about writing, truth, women. She wrote a lovely and insightful inscription in my copy of her memoir. We took a picture together and yet another one of those amazing moments in a life happened.

Dan said to me, "You draw your heroes into your life."

I think it was a strange coincidence, her promoting a new book in Portsmouth, NH so soon after I wrote. But coincidence or not, these are the affirming events in a life that let you know you're on the right track.

Now we're facebook friends if you can believe it. I think that's pretty good progress for one week.