Celebration & consolation

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This morning I thought with a start: does “console” mean with-alone? It doesn’t, it turns out. According to the OED, it comes from the Latin con- (with) + sōlārī (to solace, soothe). We used to say “consolate” until Dryden, Pope, and others shortened it. But I like my pretend etymology, too. There’s inwardness to mourning, but it’s also touching how many people reach out kindly.

Last spring I found it deeply strange that the world was coming to life so beautifully as a virus ravaged populations all over the world. This spring, as the human social world stirs in harmony with the natural one, I’m thinking about how my mother would have appreciated the warm weather, the annual sequence of blooms, and the lift of mask mandates (I worry about the latter, but I bet she would have flung hers away triumphantly and gone to brunch with her friends, to her children’s exasperation). It’s strange not to text and call her. Guilt and shame sometimes flood in about the times I wasn’t kind to her. I woke up in the middle of the night mad at a relative who wouldn’t talk to her during the last year (although he’s also elderly, I thought in the morning, and deserving of compassion, so I will NOT be extending the grudge). I wish my mother had one more summer.

On the “with” side of lonely brooding, I’m thinking about traveling and connecting with friends, in person. I rebooked last June’s cancelled trip to Iceland as well as an August week at a NC beach house with my kids–and I’ll come to the latter straight from the Sewanee Writers Conference, which I’m looking forward to with excitement now. This Thursday Chris and I are driving up to NJ to spend three nights at my sister’s beach house before attending a small memorial for my mother in my sister’s backyard, with a few friends and relatives I haven’t seen in ages. I’ve picked out a poem from Heterotopia to read, and I’ll share a letter from my mother’s best friend while growing up in England, but other than that, this writer has no idea what to say. There’s so much, and a lot of it feels private.

Another emotionally confusing thing: my mother’s final illness somehow occurred between the first anniversaries of my 2020 books, The State She’s In and Unbecoming. This weekend marks the book-birthday of the latter, and I want to celebrate it! I went back and savored some blurbs and reviews. Here’s a lovely one from Emily Croy Barker (who also puts poetry in her tales!): “The story of a woman leading an ordinary life who discovers within herself extraordinary powers, UNBECOMING is sage, funny, and warm, like a long conversation with your best friend about all the strange and wonderful things that have been happening to her lately. Lesley Wheeler’s writing is so deft and magical that I’m convinced that she must have learned it from the fairies.” And from Gary K. Wolfe in Locus: “Unbecoming is framed largely as a satirical academic tale, but one leavened with more than a bit of witchery and magic, principally the notion, which begins to haunt the narrator, that certain women entering middle age somehow develop magical powers…there are occasional hilarious echoes of the sort of gonzo academic satire we used to see in the novels of David Lodge and others.” It would be a great book to read over the summer, hint-hint. 

I also gave the novel a photo shoot and a few social-media shout-outs. Further, I’m thinking toward a virtual conversation I have planned with two AMAZING writers, Anjali Sachdeva and Brittany Hailer, at 7pm on June 4th, hosted at the wonderful indie bookstore The White Whale in Pittsburgh (they’ll also have copies of my book for sale). This event comes from the bout of planning I was doing in late winter, before my mother got sick, and I’m glad I managed to arrange this one good thing. I hope you’ll sign up at Eventbrite or Facebook. We all work in the zone between literary and genre fiction, so we’ll read a little from our books but also talk about those borderlands.

Other good things: my poetry book just received a lovely and unusual review from Seth Michelson in storySouth. I have two poems in the new issue of Nelle and a few more forthcoming soon from other magazines. I also had a great conversation about linebreaks with Tacey M. Atsitty and Ron White, hosted by Stan Galloway at Pier-Glass Poetry and later posted here. I wasn’t sure if I could manage it, honestly, but it was fun and stimulating, reminding me that the literary life is consoling and worth celebrating.