Time and Katy

 This one’s about Time. And Katy.Katy: you wrote so eloquently about your cancer I thought your words would banish those cells from your body forever. But no. A few cells lurked.  Multiplied. Finally, they left your words and took your body. And I am grieving. Me and a whole lot of other people.I knew you first as a writer, a fiftyish mom like me who left the teenagers at home while we honed our craft in an MFA program.  Then when I read what you wrote, I knew you as a writer who had faced down death at an age when most of us are debating whether to stop coloring our hair.A few nights ago I went to a phenomenal reading sponsored by Hedgebrook.   On the program were a former writing teacher of mine, Rebecca Brown, two poets—Ruth Forman and Lenelle Moise—and a songwriter, Thao Nguyen.  I was so inspired.  So proud to be a fellow Hedgebrook alumna, so flooded with that warm, farmhouse table feeling of creative community.But then a little cancer of a thought started through my brain.  It went like this: I wish I had been brave enough to pour my whole life into writing, like these writers.  I wish I were up on that stage with them.  Rebecca Brown’s a year older than I am, and she’s written and published a dozen books.  And she teaches and does readings and writing is her life!  And it’s the life I want!  Damn it, I’ve blown it: I’ve lived the wrong life!And then I thought of Katy.  A writer, like me.  An un-famous writer, like me.  Who raised two kids.  And had lots of different jobs.  And then started writing like crazy in mid-life, like me.  With the knowledge that it might take an awfully long time to get published.  Except there’s one difference.  I can still pretend this is the middle of my life, even though I really have no idea and it’s not likely I’ll live to be 108.  But Katy couldn’t pretend any such thing.  And she knew it.  And I bet she’d be shocked to hear that I sat there at the Broadway Performance Hall and allowed that diseased worm of regret into my whiny old brain when I should have just been reveling full-tilt in the moment.  Reveling in the inspiration of women who have committed their lives to creativity.  Who wrote, wrote and wrote some more long before they got published or invited to readings.The title poem in Ruth Forman’s book begins, “I wear prayers like shoes.  Pull em on quiet each morning.  Take me through the uncertain day.  Don’t know what might knock me off course.”In this summer of uncertain days about the economy, whether our house will sell, how the next few months of our lives will go, nothing calms me like putting on my running shoes.  As I lace them up, I know that soon I’ll be walking or running, which means I’ll also be praying.  About whatever’s knocking me off course. Katy’s death.  Or pointless regret about my life so far, a life that has been rich, though you wouldn’t know it by our bank balance or by my lack of an Amazon author page.I wish Katy had more time.  I’m sure she does too.  But I also know she lived a rich life.  She was loved.  And she loved herself.  Enough to give herself time—what time she had—to do what she loved, which was writing.May Katy inspire me to banish from my brain the cancer of regret.  To put on my praying shoes, or pick up my pen, or both, whenever I’m tempted to succumb.