Friends, Romans, countrymen, lend me your ears
House Proud
I'm an old mom. People often assume I'm my daughter's grandmother and it's a fair assumption, even if you are one of those nice people who claim I look much younger than I am. The thing I like best about people who call me grandma is that they are absolutely remorseless when contradicted. They double down, explain to me in tortured detail why they made that inference. Look, it's an honest mistake, but maybe don't defend it? Here's my handy guide for how to interact with strange women, and maybe even women you know pretty well.
1) Don't guess their ages.
2) Don't ask if they're pregnant.
3) Don't grab them by their fannies. This works for Americans and Brits, who don't use this word the same way, fyi.
But I digress.
I'm an old mom. There are many good things about being an old mom. (Raising a small child dovetails beautifully with insomnia.) But if you are an old mom, you might have reached that point in adulthood where you have Nice Things and that does not mesh so well with young kids.
Now, my dining room table is nothing special. It was purchased at a middlebrow store 14 years ago and it has served us well so far. It can expand to seat up to a dozen people, which is funny as we have seating for only eight, ten if we drag in the two Mission chairs from the living room. It sits on an old kilim rug, with a pattern that is extremely good at hiding stains. The table is "white," which matches the wainscoting in our dining room.
Why "white." Take a look.
Now I can be pretty bourgeoisie when it comes to my house. I recently confided in Michael Ruhlman that one of my favorite Sunday-afternoon-alone hobbies is to clean my kitchen and then take a photo of it. (He very correctly noted: "That's weird.") I'm not a neat freak except when I am. I find cleaning to be a form of meditation, especially if Bravo TV is on in the background.
Yet this is my dining room table.
So you know what I do when people come over? I use a table cloth.
Now let me, oh so tidily -- see what I did there -- bring this around to writing, although there is not unanimous agreement in the world that I actually know anything about writing. There is not unanimous agreement in my household that I know anything about writing. (The six-year-old has more and more opinions. I blame first grade.)
But when I'm writing and when I'm teaching writing, I return again and again to the K I S S principle: Keep it simple, stupid.
The day I wrote this letter, I typed THE END on a novel. Literally. It makes me feel good. And I as ran my victory lap in social media, I found myself telling another novelist friend that I have to relearn the same damn lesson every time. I have to weed out the grandiose, over-the-top plot points and make a fairly simple story seem complicated. This goes back to something I heard Dennis Lehane say a long time ago, around the time I, in my infinite wisdom, acquired a white dining room table.
"Chinatown is a very simple story if you know that Evelyn Mulwray was raped by her father and had his child."
So, to sum up: If you're going to be an old mom, resign yourself to a less-than-perfect home, buy a tablecloth. Also, the world is full of spoilers. Get used to it.
Just read: ALL GROWN-UP by Jami Attenberg. This incandescent novel will be available to civilians in March 2017.
Am reading: VINEGAR GIRL, Anne Tyler
Reread: THE MIXED-UP FILES OF MRS. BASIL E. FRANKWEILER.
Me, Me, Me: WILDE LAKE made several "best of" lists in 2016 -- the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, the Telegraph, the Boston Globe, etc. It's out in paperback in February.
Laura