Enjoying the In-Between

Written by Drusilla on January 31st, 2012

The first draft of HONOR AND GLORY is with my editor at Grand Central and I’m waiting for her revision notes. It’s a pleasant change not to be worried about a deadline at the moment, though having a line in the sand helps me be productive. Inside me there’s still a fourth grader who wants to please her teacher.


But for the next few days, I can wake up slowly and think about the day ahead.


Projects –


I have boxes of photos: children and grandchildren, holidays, old friends. A bunch of them go back to my grandfather’s family in Winterset, Iowa. I look closely at every face, hoping to see some trace of myself in those stern expressions. I got my name from my great-grandmother, Drusilla Newlon who got it from her grandmother, Drusilla Philbrick. Though I see nothing of myself in their pictures, I know I’m in there somewhere. I would not be me without them.


Drusilla's OfficeLetters. Mom saved all my correspondence from when I lived in Australia, London, Panama and D.C. I barely recognize myself in some of these letters but others bring the memories flooding back. Can a girl be literary, philosophical, bold and terrified and an airhead all at the same time?


I am also cleaning my office. What should I do about all the pens and pencils? I test every one and throw out more than I keep. All those shrieking chartreuse highlighters: dry as the Gobi. Goodbye tchotchkes off the top of the cubbies, into a storage box you go. Five years from now I’ll shop this box and remember why I loved that tiny ceramic pig with the blue glass eyes. Files and files labeled “Ideas.” I read each one and marvel at the way my handwriting has deteriorated, and am amazed by the places my imagination has taken me over the last twenty years. Those files get saved for sure.


All this backward-looking tires me out. I’m caught in webs of wondering that are denser and stickier than the ones I found in the closet I just rearranged. I wish I could talk to the Drusillas Newlon and Philbrick, to the Drusilla who hitched rides across Europe, to the one who came up with the idea for a book about a human zoo.


I need a rest from the past. I’ll escape and spend this rare and precious day of leisure and opportunity playing WordWarp and Bookworm.

Filed under Family & Friends, Life Matters | Tags: , , ,


One Response to “Enjoying the In-Between”

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  1. Judy Reeves says:
    January 31, 2012 at 11:12 am

    Nice to sit in a chair and watch you sort thru, remember, toss out, keep, think about and muse. Thanks for inviting us in.

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