Christmas Alone

The following is a guest post by Terry Robinson, a Coeur d'Alene writer. Thank you, Terry!

Photo courtesy of snaplaundromat.com/au

Christmas Alone
by Terry Robinson

Sitting in the small laundromat, aimlessly flipping through my copy of Business Week, the full impact of decisions I had made earlier in the year came into focus.  It was Christmas Eve and I was alone, living far away from home in a small town an hour north of Indianapolis. The door opened and a young woman walked in carrying her laundry. She had a slender build, not quite blocking the doorway as she entered. I looked past her, noticing the predicted snow had started to fall and had already begun to cover the street and the town’s single traffic light. It had grown dark and with the darkness felt colder than it was.

I was in a new job and not in a position to take the time off to travel home for Christmas. So I would be alone this year. It was a lonely feeling, but one I willingly made to advance my career. The young woman sat next to me, having completed the ritual of starting her laundry. Content in thumbing through my magazine, I ignored her, though she seemed intent on having someone to talk to. Our eyes met for just a second, long enough for me to take notice that she was quite attractive, with reddish hair and blue eyes. My glance lingered just long enough that she seized the opening and wondered aloud, "Why do you suppose two attractive people in their twenties might be alone on Christmas Eve?" Her name was Chris, and in her I saw an opportunity to escape the loneliness and be with someone for a while. Even if just for the evening. As she rambled on about growing up on a farm in northern Indiana and how she wasn’t able to make it home for the holidays, I smiled and listened quietly. I had been around long enough to recognize she was showing an interest in me and I was entertaining the notion of inviting her over to my home for a glass of wine.

By now Chris had completely engaged me in conversation and innuendo. As I watched her speak and smile and move about the room, I began to feel close to her. Her warmth began to replace the empty cold of being alone and far from home. Being with her seemed to fill a void in my soul. Could spending the evening with this young woman make it better, make me feel better, or would it be just a temporary healing? As I was about to invite her over, I felt the ache in my heart once again and came to recognize that while she might have made it better for a while, being with her would not fill the emptiness in the same lasting way that family does. In that instant I wished her a Merry Christmas, gathered my things and headed home. And, I was alone.

I made my New Year’s resolution that evening: to never be alone again on Christmas.

Author bio: Attending Washington State University in the 70s, Terry enrolled in the communications program and aspired to being a photojournalist. Somehow life got in the way and he graduated from Central Washington University with an accounting degree and has been in finance and accounting ever since.  Terry has lived throughout the country in eleven states, and has traveled through all fifty states.  He enjoys writing about events in his life with an emphasis on life in North Idaho. Terry is currently the Chief Financial Officer for Kootenai Electric Cooperative. Terry and his wife Sue currently call Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, home and  have two grown daughters in Colorado. 

Somewhere in Time...

I recently came across some valuable advice regarding the writing of historical fiction. The cautionary note indicated that the writer should not get lost in the research.  Luckily for me, I am one of those people who like the process of creating something; the journey is fun and I do not really want to get to my destination. This may explain why I often sit in my car in the driveway when I am returning home from a trip to the market. History should never be top heavy in the story; it should be there, but not in the way. What we want to see is how the characters react to the changing times, not to read about every last parliamentary procedure, or tiresome debate in the Senate. We need to have a light hand with that ingredient, yet it is just as important as butter is to a good batch of shortbread cookies.One fantasizes about writing the definitive work, and the writer wants to know every single last significant detail about the time, but then it has to be as a thick, velvet curtain at the back of the stage.

When I set out to write a story set in 1630, I  wanted to capture, for myself most of all, what it would have been like to live in back in Boston when Europeans were new to the continent.  I read everything written on the subject and then some. Due to the fact that my characters traveled back to England in the midst of the civil war, I had to cover that as well. Once I began to grasp the enormity of losing every safeguard put in place, and seeing England fall into a military dictatorship, I did want to cover it in great detail. Too much history came the response from my first readers, and so I had to chop and chop. Still, the story of the struggle remains.

While I am not a big reader of the genre known as historical fiction, I do love reading a gripping tale when I feel as if I have been transported to another place and time. To me, that is the key.

Last evening, we set out in the boat from our dock here at the southern end of Lake Coeur d' Alene. Given that we were after hours to some degree, and needed to fill up on gas, we decided to try the town of Harrison. Having always been a fan of the place, I was happy to go over and take our chances. We were told to go up to the bar and find the man who could help us. It gave me time, while standing and holding the boat, to think.

 Harrison has all the makings of a place that time forgot. Handsome brick buildings suggest that it was a town on its way to becoming a small city back in 1890, when a branch of the O.R. And N. railroad put in a stop. A large sawmill, moved up from St.Maries, meant that a substantial operation had begun. However, a large fire broke out at the same mill, in 1917, and  destroyed most of the town. When the steamships discontinued service, they were all but cut off and the town ended up having a different future. It is one of those places, where when looking at it from the water, you sense that you knew what it was like to live there one hundred years ago. As I stood on the dock,  waiting for my husband to return from One Shot Charlies, the bar where the man who could pump the gas happened to be visiting, I thought of potential stories regarding the town and how I always feel that way when I am there.

An enchanted place can often spark the impetus to write historical fiction. Those wanting to know more about the era, will often be drawn to the story.

In the movie, Somewhere in Time, the late Christopher Reeve plays a man who being stumped in his efforts at writing, decides to take a small trip and travel to the famous Grand Hotel on Mackinac Island, Michigan.  Once there, he becomes, captivated and obsessed regarding a photograph in the lobby. Desperate to know the hotel in its hey day and perhaps meet the person capturing his imagination, he accomplishes time travel and returns to 1917.  Of course, this is a metaphor for all writers and are we not lucky, that we have an imagination and picture what that may be like.

Time is running out to enter our contest here at writingnorthidaho. For details, read all about it in the sidebar.A picture can inspire 500 words.

No Small Change

                                         Photo by Chris Lighty

Well, we moved. After twenty-two years in one location, we have changed our lives completely. It was a bit of a stretch to think of ourselves as city mice, being that Coeur d' Alene was a small town when we moved up to Idaho from Northern California. Nevertheless, we were downtown in a lovely neighborhood known affectionately as Sander's Beach. Full of handsome historic homes, close to the water, close to parks, close to the library, close to downtown, it was close to everything. Our home, built in 1920, with an addition put on in the seventies, had enough old world charm to suit us and it was a great place for kids, dogs, family and fun. What changed? Our lives did.

Once our daughter left for college, the character of the house seemed transformed. Suddenly it seemed too big, too expensive, too time consuming, too too. We knew we would have to downsize eventually and since I didn't like the idea of that looming before us, it seemed like a good time to get on with it. Plus, my husband declared that he would not deny himself the life long dream of a shop, one minute longer. That became the criteria: we needed something smaller that came with a shop that I would eventually grow to love.

Why is a home a place to hang one's hat for some, and nearly a religion for others? While I fall into the latter category, I must say I come by it honestly. It was gut wrenching to pull the old place apart, make endless decisions about what to keep and what to discard, but with a steadfast effort, we boxed up the sum total of our accumulated artifacts and toted them off to storage. Loading up the units became the great pleasure at the end of the day. It is far easier for me to fill a space than empty one, so I liked that part of the process. Seeing possessions wrapped and boxed gave me a picture of the size and scope of it all. Most of the objects were not even mine to begin with; they fell into my care through my mother who had a very good eye. So the question as to why I was keeping one cute tea cup after another begged to be asked, but could not be answered. As long as I can remember, the tendency to ascribe sentiment to objects is bred in the bone.

  I also liked spaces where my Dad would claim a modicum of freedom from what he described as, the land of “birds and flowers.” He set up a desk in the boathouse at our summer home and had a phone put in as well. A fridge where he kept a fresh supply of fishing bait for me, and cokes for him, made it comfortable. Every part of the boathouse was ship shape and unadorned. Our towels were on wracks with names stenciled above. Lines on top of wooden boats were gleaming white and perpetually coiled; it was the navy man's equivalent of a shop. He was happy in the boathouse and escaped to it often. I am so glad to know that my husband has his 'boathouse,' a place that is his.

Once through the looking glass, we are more than pleasantly surprised. We are ecstatic. Our new home is wonderful and we love it! We have left the life of city mouse behind and now dwell in the country. The site is beautiful, up high overlooking woods with a stunning view of the lake. It is peaceful and blissfully quiet. We have all new conversations. We each have room to pursue our hobbies, and we also are surrounded by countless birds of such varying species, I am going to need a field guide. It all makes sense to me now. In the midst of this honeymoon period, a post card arrived in our old, tin mailbox. My husband saw that it was a real estate advertisement about a home just sold in Sander's Beach. When he turned it over to look at the picture, he was shocked to see our former home. Showing this to me,  I found a curious distance had set in. Yes, it was familiar, but no longer attached to me. 

Change is supposed to be good for us, particularly as we age. While I questioned the wisdom of this through the move, I now know that the old adage is true. Of all the books I read in my youth, nothing cemented itself to my psyche more than Henry David Thoreau's, Walden Pond.

Born in 1817 and living until May of 1862, Thoreau kept company with Ralph Waldo Emerson, Branson Alcott, Walt Whitman and Hawthorne who were  known as the writers and philosophers of  the Transcendentalist movement.  It was no surprise, therefore, that these works found a very popular resurgence with the burgeoning hippie crowd. Thoreau is described as an author,  poet, philosopher, abolitionist, naturalist and tax resistor. What a heady mixture! It was his love of nature that struck a cord with me, his idea to live out on Walden Pond, soaking up the peace and beauty. It was this line of his that I took very much to heart and it is perhaps why I feel so much at home now:

" I went to the woods because I wanted to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and to see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

The Writer's House

We have heard Charlie Rose interview many writers over the years. He often asks the author to describe his, or her environment. Many readers imagine that the place is somehow part of the inspiration, as if the house gives up the words, and the author just has to keep pace with the ideas. Given to magical thinking, as far back as I can remember, starting with trying to mimic Mary Martin in Peter Pan, and believing I could fly, I am not so sure that the home of any artist does not play a huge part in the creation. In any house in which I have lived, I first walked around trying to imagine where I would put my desk. In my current home, the former owner had set up a sewing counter, complete with drawers underneath, situated by a window facing the lake. In what had been a sun room when our home was built in the twenties, I was immediately drawn in.  I papered my study in blue and white stripes and then ordered a favorite pansy print from Laura Ashley. With my study all set up and ready to go, we put the computer in and soon found that everyone liked it. The kids played games and did their homework there and so it wasn't long before I moved the whole operation to a cozy nook in our bedroom. Over the years, I would come in and find someone sitting there too, but eventually, I reclaimed my initial idea.

My study has a comfortable chair and a sofa, as I sometimes lie down to think. It is a welcoming spot and cheery, as it gets the morning light. Windows on three sides and an alcove in the wall holding books, make it cozy. A corner cabinet has shelves with framed needlework pieces I have done over the years, tea cups and saucers, and  a picture of my beloved sister, Victoria Rose Smythe,  in her hacking jacket, atop her favorite horse called Sir Stafford. Pictures of my grandparents, my children and my mother and father, group shots from weddings, oh, its all here. My great aunt's tea wagon holds my mother's china birds; its as fine a nest as any writer would ever want.

We have reached a time in life when it is time to scale down and move on. It will all have to be recreated. Just as a novel begins with a blank page, a home starts with other peoples paint choices, counter tops and old carpets. The creative process begins anew. I have no doubt that my next writing space will be as charming as this one and that wherever I put it, the ideas will flow. Some writer's like to be closed into a small nook with the drapes drawn and the distractions down to the limit. As for me, I can recall writing with a sleeping baby in a carrier on top of my kitchen table. Virginia Woolf's oft quoted statement of women needing "A Room of One's Own,” hit a cord, because it is almost impossible to achieve! The days when I took to my bed with a cold, often had my husband stretched out reading, a cat and two children up there on the bed with us and the dog curled up on the floor at the side. I would have my computer on a breakfast tray, still trying to get my thoughts down while asking everyone if there was any other place they would rather be. When they would all chime in with, “No,” I considered myself lucky.

Campers like to linger at the their favorite campsite with the last cup of their morning beverage in hand. Striking the tent and dousing the fire, brings it all to a close. The canoes are then loaded, the journey beckons and the point is rounded; we set off into the great unknown.

From Listen to the Salutation to the Dawn, I am reminded of these words: “For yesterday is but a dream and tomorrow is only a vision, but today, well spent, makes every yesterday a dream of happiness and every tomorrow a vision of hope. Look well therefore to this day.”

Pictured above is the view from my study.  My home where I raised my children and wrote two books, will enter a new era, just as we set off on another adventure. This place will always remain with me in my mind, and I will always love it and think of it as my house of dreams. As the future beckons and as we begin another chapter in our lives, the one constant is my cherished Idaho and my beloved Lake Coeur d' Alene. I look forward to knowing it more deeply and more fully.