Photograph by Jamie Dedes
If what I say resonates with you, it is merely because we are branches of the same tree. W.B. Yeats
It’s a good writing room, this little room into which I have downsized to accommodate an ever-dwindling budget and my maturing, disabled body. It came furnished with some antiques and feels like luxury with its cleanliness, carpeting, and new shower-head with fancy features. It’s actually the master suite in a condo on the gentle sweep of a tree-lined street in Menlo Park, California, a long, long way from home. It has a solid, foursquare feel to it. There are no stairs inside the condo and no stairs to access it, and this is an added attraction.
The colors are soft and peaceful: creams, peaches and pistachios, maroons and deep green. A large statue of Quan Yin and two tall plants add grace to one corner. A table with a small forest of variegated greenery sits in the other. There’s a maple secretary, which is perfect for my laptop and family photographs, a shrine (or so my world-class daughter-in-law says) to those who sit at the center of my heart. I have tossed a white cloth of Brandenburg Lace over the round bedside table. The dresser is old oak. There are two mismatched-bookcases, much valued by me. Once, forty-years, seventy-pounds, and 3,000 miles away, I was addicted to regency romances by Georgette Heyer. I think if she would have written about this room with it’s fine, healthy plants, good books, good music, and hodgepodge of furniture, she might have described it as “shabby genteel”. That’s okay by me. I’ve got no one to impress and it serves my spirit and my latter-day ambitions well.
More luxury: For years, I have been sleeping in a twin bed. Now I have the use of a double bed. It offers ample room to layout books, pens and colored pencils, paper and even my laptop. My darling landlady’s two yellow-eyed black cats are also ample and like to hop on the bed for a visit periodically. Executives both, they supervise and comment petulantly when I don’t take direction well from them. I had a cat too once. Her name was Pywacket. I have learned that cats, like moonlight, inspire the muse. They are very welcome in my room.
There’s a washer and dryer in the condo, so I don’t have to try to lug laundry out and back. I have kitchen privileges. My diet is quite restricted, so this is also necessary. Since I love cooking it’s an endeavor that feeds my soul as well as my body, though I admit to missing the opportunity to cook for others. Today I was a happy housefrau, not a bad thing, running the laundry while preparing dinner: creamy yogurt, enchanted broccoli with olive oil, garlic, and lemon, and cheery orange carrot-coins with fried onions and dill. I prepared a risotto with rose brown rice, shallots, and shitake mushrooms. I will serve a repeat performance for breakfast. I tend to start my veggies first thing these days. For lunch, I will stuff a green pepper with what’s left of the risotto and serve it with a little cucumber-and-red-onion salad. In the morning, Peet’s Italian Roasted Coffee will accompany my breakfast. Jasmine Green Tea is my afternoon drink. And finally, in the evening I’ll sip honey-sweetened Citrus Chamomile for a restful night of writing and sleep.
From this quiet peace, this cleanliness, this simplicity, I will write, cook and love with reckless abandon. For the moment, there is safe harbor. Life is good and tomorrow is a new day.
