Hi!
It's me.
Before we begin, I'd like to share a document I found tucked between a garden catalog and several unrealistic expectations.
It appears to be instructions for turning sixty-one.
How to Turn Sixty-One
Step One:Lose your mother.
Step Two:Miss her terribly.
Step Three:Discover that grief doesn't leave. It merely changes seats.
Step Four:Acquire two Great Dane puppies.
Step Five:Keep making plans anyway.
Step Six:Start a newsletter.
Step Seven:Dream about land.
Step Eight:Wonder if you're hopelessly behind.
Step Nine:Write a poem about it.
The poem you're about to hear is narrated by my favorite British lady.
I am not a British lady.
I am from Texas.
For reasons I cannot explain, a British accent makes my questionable observations sound remarkably well-considered.
Love, Lannie🖤
I Was Told There Would Be a Handbasket
A Field Guide to Taking the Scenic Route
I spent years thinking
I was behind.
Behind on the book.
Behind on the dream.
Behind on becoming
the person I was supposed to be.
The passive-aggressive historian
who lives in my head
kept detailed records.
She loves a spreadsheet.
She loves a timeline.
She loves the phrase,
"By now."
By now, you should...
By now, you would...
By now, everyone else has...
She is constantly gathering evidence for a case I didn't know was being tried.
Frankly, I suspect she enjoys this far more than is healthy.
The problem is,
life kept interrupting my plans.
Cancer interrupted.
A heart attack interrupted.
Divorce interrupted.
Caregiving interrupted.
Grief interrupted.
A broken thumb, wrist and two broken ribs interrupted.
Even my own nervous system occasionally stood up and yelled,
“Absolutely not.”
And sat me back down again.
For a while there,
it genuinely looked like my life
was going to hell in a handbasket.
Which feels unfair.
Not the suffering.
The handbasket.
Who looked at eternal damnation and thought,
“You know what this needs?
Storage.”
Still.
There were days.
There were so many days.
Days when I felt like a plant
living beneath a Bur Oak.
Not dead.
Just shaded.
Not failing.
Just waiting for sunlight.
And because I am me,
I mistook waiting for failing.
For years.
Then one day,
while thinking about birthdays
and grief
and the one person who is no longer here
to say, “Happy birthday my precious child,”
I remembered something.
An orange.
Of all things.
An orange.
Years ago,
when I was a young art student
with questionable judgment
and a crush on a boy in art history,
I fell in love with still-life paintings.
Half-peeled oranges.
A glass of Chardonnay.
Beautiful light.
The kind of painting where absolutely nothing happens,
yet somehow everything happens.
I pointed to one and told my mother,
“That’s the kind of person I want to be.”
I wanted a life of beauty.
A life of art.
A life where conversation mattered.
A life where people gathered around tables.
A life where creativity was nourishment.
My mother listened.
Then she smiled.
And she said,
“Lannie,
you are that kind of person.”
At the time,
I thought she was talking about the future.
Mothers are tricky that way.
Sometimes they’re talking about the present
and we don’t realize it until decades later.
Because here I am.
Sixty-one.
Still dreaming about gardens.
Still writing books.
Still collecting plates
that no cabinet agreed to hold.
Still believing that people need places to gather.
Still imagining long tables beneath trees.
Still convinced that stories can save us.
Still convinced that hospitality is a form of love.
Still convinced that belonging is holy.
Maybe I never wanted a manor.
Maybe I wanted a salon.
Maybe I wanted my Momma’s kitchen.
Maybe I wanted a table large enough
for grief and joy
to sit beside each other
without arguing.
Maybe the dream was never the building.
Maybe it was always the people.
Which brings me to the keys.
I used to ask for keys as a child.
Not dolls.
Not bicycles.
Keys.
A deeply concerning preference
for a six-year-old.
Years later I discovered
the word châtelaine.
Keeper of the household.
Keeper of the keys.
Mistress of the estate.
And suddenly my entire personality
started making a lot more sense.
Because the keys were never about ownership.
They were about opening things.
A door.
A gate.
A garden.
A conversation.
A life.
Maybe that’s what I’ve been doing all along.
Not reinventing.
I hate that word.
Reinvention sounds like a product launch.
As if the old version of me
was defective.
No.
I prefer reanimation.
Reanimation sounds like resurrection.
Like brushing the dirt off.
Like the first green shoot after winter.
Like remembering.
And maybe that’s all this is.
Not becoming someone new.
Not finally arriving.
Not catching up.
Just remembering.
Remembering the woman with the orange.
The woman with the keys.
The woman my mother recognized
before I did.
The woman who kept surviving things.
The woman who kept planting gardens.
The woman who kept setting places at the table.
The woman who kept hoping.
Even when hope was unreasonable.
Especially then.
And if my life did go to hell in a handbasket,
it must have taken a wrong turn somewhere.
Because I ended up here.
With two Great Dane puppies.
A manuscript.
A dream.
A memory.
A handful of keys.
And a completely unreasonable amount of hope.
Which,
now that I think about it,
sounds exactly like me.
