{"id":1334,"date":"2012-12-07T06:52:10","date_gmt":"2012-12-07T11:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.katrinakenison.com\/?p=1334"},"modified":"2012-12-07T06:52:10","modified_gmt":"2012-12-07T11:52:10","slug":"a-duet-with-a-friend-and-some-good-winter-soup","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/katrinakenison.com\/new\/a-duet-with-a-friend-and-some-good-winter-soup\/","title":{"rendered":"A duet with a friend — and some good winter soup"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>I practiced a visualization all through last winter, one I returned to again and again as I sat alone writing in my son Henry\u2019s upstairs bedroom. In my mind\u2019s eye I saw my friend Margaret Roach at my side, finished books in our hands, the two of us doing a reading together.<\/p>\n

Margaret, I knew, was holed up in her own snug little house three hours from mine, working on her garden memoir, “The Backyard Parables.” Most mornings, before settling down to serious work, we would send each other a Skype greeting.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou ok up there?\u201d she\u2019d type, usually around 6 am, the hour both of us consider the best for getting any real thinking done.<\/p>\n

\u201cYes,\u201d I\u2019d type back. \u201cPlugging away.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m here,\u201d Margaret would answer. And somehow, just knowing that she was, brought me comfort. We were a writers\u2019 group of two, with book deadlines just weeks apart. Whenever the going got tough, as it seemed to at some point in nearly every day, either one of us could reach out. Commiseration was never more than a click away.<\/p>\n

We didn\u2019t show each other our manuscripts until we had both finished writing \u2013 among other quirks we have in common is a need to work in deep privacy. But when Margaret came to the end a few weeks before I did, I felt inspired to push onward myself \u2013 I knew she was waiting for me at the finish line, eager to exchange our first drafts.<\/p>\n

What we found, as we each began to read, was perhaps inevitable. Margaret was chronicling a year in the garden she has loved and tended for twenty-five years. And I was writing about the challenges of adjusting to a new stage of life without children at home. Yet it turned out that, unbeknownst to either of us, many of our themes were identitical: loss, change, acceptance, transformation, aging, gratitude, grace.<\/p>\n

Some of the parallels made us laugh as we scribbled exclamation notes in the margins: Turned out we had both stood in front of our respective bathroom mirrors, tugging our middle-aged, crepey neck skin up and back, contemplating the very distant possibility of a nip or tuck to tighten things up beneath the chin.<\/p>\n

But we also realized, as we read one another\u2019s work, that perhaps what had seemed unique to each of us as we labored away in solitude is in fact universal: married or single, mother or childless, employed or not, rich or poor, gay or straight, each and every one of us must eventually find a way to navigate the tricky passage between youth and age.<\/p>\n

It seems that the great challenge of our middle years is to figure out how to move into and through the second half of life with joy. Joy even in the face of inevitable loss; equanimity even in the face of relentless change; wisdom and grace even as old roles and old dreams fall away and new ones are slow to take shape. We may travel different paths through life, and yet perhaps there is no woman anywhere who doesn\u2019t long at some point for an inner road map, some kind of guidance as we are called to release our illusions of control, to let go of who we once were and to embrace who we have become.<\/p>\n

Maybe it shouldn\u2019t have surprised me at all that my friend and I have both spent the last couple of years quietly grappling with these very challenges \u2013 for aren\u2019t these also the topics of conversation whenever women come together and summon the courage to drop our public faces and share our true struggles and stories?<\/p>\n

As it turned out, our publisher decided to bring our books out within a week of each other. And suddenly, it seemed that my sustaining vision \u2013 the two of us together, holding finished books in our hands \u2013 might actually become a reality. In October, at the New England Independent Booksellers\u2019 Association meeting, we tried our idea out on some booksellers.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can have us separately if you want,\u201d we said. \u201cBut we\u2019d also be happy to come to your store together.\u201d By the end of the weekend, we had a whole list of bookstores that liked the idea of our \u201cduet.\u201d And so it was that last week, the two of us sat side by side on a couple of stools at Margaret\u2019s house and read aloud for the first time, to a room full of invited guests \u2013 our dress rehearsal, so to speak, to make sure the program we\u2019ve been imagining all these months would actually work.<\/p>\n

Wine was poured, dinner was eaten, and the conversation flowed. Our test audience was kind and enthusiastic, and the passages we chose to read seemed to speak to one another in two-part harmony \u2013 two friends, two lives, two voices, two books, with much in common and much to share. By the end of the evening, a room full of women who had arrived as strangers to one another were all chatting like old friends. I looked around and took a moment simply to allow myself to be grateful: for cameraderie and home made cookies, and also for the deep, spontaneous connections that the written word, when shared aloud, can always inspire.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was pretty fun,\u201d Margaret and I agreed the next day over lunch, as we ate some lentil soup I\u2019d brought to share with her. And so, come January, we are taking this show on the road.<\/p>\n

In the meantime, learn more about our friendship, and The Backyard Parables: Lessons on Gardening, and Life <\/a>at Margaret’s blog, A Way to Garden<\/a>.<\/p>\n

You can read excerpts from both Magical Journey<\/a> and from The Backyard Parables<\/a> simply by clicking on the titles.<\/p>\n

But perhaps the best way I can introduce you to my friend is by sharing her video with you. (To watch mine, just click HERE<\/strong><\/a>.)<\/p>\n