Small moments that swell the heart

My husband is in the kitchen chopping up celery and onions and thyme and potatoes to make Manhattan clam chowder. "It's soup season," he announced as he assembled his ingredients before getting started. It's blustery and cold outside, a Nor'easter expected to flood coastal areas overnight, but in here, it feels cozy. Yesterday, he went out and bought flowers to make Ikebana arrangements using driftwood he picked up on a walk by the river with our son two weeks ago. He transported the blooms home in the tote bag his son in law gave him from his flower side hustle. Today, I get to rest my gaze on these lovely visual moments just sitting on tables inside my home. Here are two of them. 

Last Thursday, I went to choir practice on the East Side, a make-up rehearsal, as I’d missed my usual Wednesday afternoon West Side rehearsal due to a scheduled conference call in which I was to get my subject’s brother’s notes on the manuscript. I thought he would have edits for me—he had been my subject’s sports agent and the negotiator of all her contracts, and I’d interviewed him several times during the book writing process. We thought it best for him to read and make sure we’d got the legal details and timelines correct before we turned the final draft in to the publisher. Turns out we had, and our call ended up being a delightful hour in which he told me all the different parts of the narrative that he loved, and why. I really hope our editor is as positive about the book as my subject and her brother seem to be. We submit the final tomorrow, so we will have that answer soon enough.

And this: In talking about whether my name would be on the book’s cover (never a given in ghostwriting, a term I avoid using but which most people more readily understand), my subject said not only was she happy to give co-writing credit but that she would feel honored to have my name on the cover with hers. We were on the phone so she couldn’t see that actual tears sprang to my eyes. I have rarely encountered such a gentling down of literary ego. Granting a collaborative writer cover credit is acknowledgement enough of the work we have done together, but to say the rest—well. I cleared the frog in my throat and told her I would be honored to have my name next to hers, too.

A really cool thing happened when I got home from choir on Thursday afternoon. I’d gone for coffee after with two friends, which made my timing perfect, because as soon as I walked into my house my son called and told me to come downstairs to the street. He said that he and his crew were on their way back to their home firehouse after covering for a station in Harlem whose crew was out at a fire, and they were going to swing by in the big rig to tell me hey. He joked that it was bring your work to mom day. Seeing my boy jump down from the rig and cross the street to bring his mama over to meet the guys, I felt proud to bursting. I took pictures with his crew and his lieutenant and chatted with them and loved the brotherly camaraderie among them all. As his sister says, my son is just about the coolest kid we know. 

Here's something serendipitous: I might already know what my next project will be and I’m cautiously excited. I really think sometimes I was born lucky. At the very least, I’m hopeful.