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Letter from Joyce Archives

January 6, 1999

Dear Friends,

As you may remember, I sequestered myself over the Christmas holidays for a while, working on a new book. December 30, my sons returned from New Hampshire, where they had spent Christmas with their father and sister. (She's still there, taking a semester off from college.) My son Charlie had been away from home since July, attending a wonderful one-semester program in New York called City Term. As those of you know, who have teenagers yourselves, there comes a time in our children's lives (and it's here, for mine) when what they need and want, most, is no longer us, but the world of friends, new experiences, new places, discovery.

There is something a little sad, for me, in realizing that the days are over, when either parent could provide the central and formative influence on my children's lives. They are formed people now, and though they still need and want to have me around, as they pass through, they are on their way out the door more than they seem to be on their way back in. Charlie returned home a different person than the one who left--with a maturity and excitement about art, and reading, and learning, that has delighted me. I love having him home again, too--and so does his brother. But I also know, I'd better not get too attached to his presence. He'll be off again before I know it.

And of course, it's not just our children who grow and change. We do too. This year seemed particularly filled with growth and change for me, in fact--not all of it easy, by any means. It was just exactly a year ago that I packed up my computer and drove twelve hours north to the Oregon Coast for three weeks, to hole up and work on my memoir in solitude. I think back to those weeks with a lot of good feeling, though it was also some of the most demanding and emotionally wrenching work I've ever done. And of course, it was during my time in Oregon that I discovered the wonderful weekly music jam at the Cannon Beach American Legion Hall, where I met the wonderful woman who now runs this website, Myrna. I remember a night when I went back to the kitchen of the legion hall, to check out the facilities, and explained to her, "I teach pie making sometimes. Maybe I'll do it here sometime." I've never thought to ask her, since, but she probably thought I was crazy.

I returned home at the end of January. Having just immersed myself in a story of one kind of old and long-buried pain, from my youth, I decided to address another, and checked myself into a hospital in Los Gatos for a twenty-years-delayed surgery to repair some old wounds of childbirth. The recuperation was more painful and difficult than I'd imagined--and reminded me some of the reasons why I'd avoided doctors as much as I have over the years. Still, it is a good feeling when you finally take care of a problem you've swept under the rug for a decade or two, and I did.

March saw me returning to Oregon to work some more on my book. A therapist who read the manuscript had said to me, "Even as you're writing about how you kept protective silences all those years, I feel you're still doing it here...." And she was right. So I stripped away another layer, and came home with a manuscript that felt really honest and strong, and took my sons off for a week at Lake Tahoe, to celebrate.

In April, my son Charlie got his driver's license--one of the biggest moments in a young person's life. Here at our house, I hosted a party of twenty five friends from this website, and we made paella enough to feed not only ourselves, but another twenty five or so friends who stopped by, later. I worked hard, revising my book. My daughter Audrey set out for two and a half months of backpacking in the wilderness of the Sierra, Death Valley, and Oregon. Her letters home--sent once a month, when she returned to civilization just long enough to resupply and send mail--told me that she had also undergone some very fundamental changes. She would probably not even call the places she came, to mail her letters, "civilization". Audrey likes the unspoiled places best, and yearns for a simpler life. We are enormously different people, my daughter and I, and that makes for tension between us sometimes. When I ask myself, though--"Do I want my daughter to be just like me?"--the answer is easy. Of course not. I adore the young woman my former husband and I have raised, who will turn 21 next month, and marvel at her joyful spirit.

This summer, my children scattered: Audrey returning to New Hampshire to paint houses with her father, Charlie snowboarding in Oregon, working at a plant nursery, and driving cross country with his father. Willy spent a lot of time in Los Angeles, working on tennis with his longtime coach, Rod. I spent a lot of time sitting on the sidelines of tennis tournaments, watching him play. It's one of the hardest things I have known, as a parent: seeing my children experience difficulty and pain, large or small, and knowing there is nothing I can do (or should) to rescue them. Certainly there was never any way to rescue my son, when he was in trouble on a tennis court, though my stomach would be in knots. We had some very silent drives home from tournaments, but some extraordinarily good and close times too. By summer's end, Willy had won himself a ranking in Southern California, and a powerful game.

This summer I also got to perform three wedding services for good friends who had asked me to marry them, including one couple I met through this website. They were all three wonderful, hopeful ceremonies, filled with good music, good food, dancing, friends, and a sense of enormous love and commitment between the partners. I am not ready to give up my day job for this marrying business, but I may continue to help people I care about to tie the knot, now and then, when called upon.

I travelled to Washington D.C., and met the first lady--as well as a hundred or so teenage winners of the Scholastic Magazines writing contest, that gave me my start as a writer. I gave a bunch of interviews, and had my picture taken more times than I had, in the last twenty years combined, in preparation for the publication of my book. I met readers, from this website, who became friends, and continued to develop other friendships, begun here--with a letter from strangers brave and trusting enough to tell me of their lives. Honesty is a powerful gift to give a person, and I have been the recipient of a great deal of it.

While my three children were all in New Hampshire, I travelled to East Hampton, New York, to stay with my dear old friend Paco, who had been urging me for years to come to his little cabin there and paint with him. With my book about to come out, and a long and arduous book tour ahead of me, I chose to take him up on his offer, and spent two of the happiest weeks I have known with my friend, taking long walks, swimming in the ocean, cooking fish stew every night, and painting. Every evening, Paco and I would sit under the stars and he would tell me stories of his life and smoke his cigar, and later, lying in bed, I would hear him, just outside my door, sitting in his chair playing the harmonica. And I would think, what else does a person need?

I went straight from Paco's house to New York City, for my appearances on Charlie Rose and the Today program, and a whirlwind tour of fifteen American cities, followed by trips to London and Dublin, to promote At Home in the World. Although I had anticipated some controversy surrounding my decision to speak honestly, in my autobiography, about the period of my life spent with J.D. Salinger, it amazed me to witness the levels of misogyny and indignation on the part of so many critics and opinion givers, at the notion that a woman should reveal disquieting truths about a great man who was part of her life. It was impossible to imagine that, had Salinger chosen to write about me, his disclosures would have been met with similar levels of outrage.

The many people I have met and heard from, over the months since its publication, who tell me that my story has helped them deal with painful aspects of their own lives, have given me great joy. For me, the lesson of At Home in the World, ultimately, was this one: Raised as a girl whose sense of her own worth was defined almost entirely in terms of her ability to win the approval of others, I learned, young, to please others, at the expense of my own ability to lead an authentic life. When, at last, I granted myself permission to tell an honest story, guaranteed to displease some of the very people whose approval I had so desperately sought, for so long, I found myself shaken and, briefly, disheartened. But I am no longer that young girl, who needed Salinger's approval, or the acceptance of critics, or anybody else, to tell me who I am and prove to me that what I do is worthy. (And had they raved about a piece of work I knew, in my heart, to be second rate, would that have left me feeling good?) In the end, the only true measure any of us has, of who we are, lies in our own knowledge of ourselves. I wrote a book I'm proud of. I can't pretend it didn't hurt me, to see it disparaged in the press. But I wouldn't change a word of that book. Or the fact that I wrote it.

In October, I returned home from my book tour, reuniting with my son Willy, who had been staying with good friends while I was away. On October 20 came the sad news that my friend Paco had died of a heart attack, while returning from the walk he and I used to take every morning, back in the summer time. I had dreamed of returning to East Hampton to paint with him again, next summer. I will paint next summer, too, though he won't be there.

One of the great pleasures of my year -- like the one before it -- has been the presence of so many valued readers voices, coming to me through this discussion forum -- as well as in the mail, and at readings across the country. Your words to me, not just about my writing, but about your own lives, are part of the rhythm of my days. I feel I have friends, good friends, all over the country and beyond, thanks to this place, and that my understanding of life on this planet is daily expanded by hearing your stories. In November, I got to meet another wonderful group, when I hosted another one of my pie parties here at our house, for members of this website. Twenty three people came. Twenty three pies went home with them.

December was marked by a wonderful, week-long journey to New York City. I saw my children off to New Hampshire, to spend Christmas with their father, and savored the chance to be totally alone with myself, for a few days. I got to work on a new book -- also rode horseback for the first time since I'd moved to California, went tandem bike riding at Coyote Point, listened to jug band music, went to a movie in the middle of the day, baked Christmas cookies, took long walks with my dog.

Just after Christmas, I learned of the death, at 44, of another dear friend, Chris, the man to whom my last novel, Where Love Goes, was dedicated. His name is still among the list of recent e-mails sent to me; he wrote last on Christmas Eve, ending with the words "Got to scoot....take care."

Chris's death reminds me, if I didn't know already, how precious every day is, and how important to make each one rich and good. As the new year begins, I mourn my friend and celebrate my life--and that of my children, my friends, and new friends I will make, I know.

As my friend Frank, the one-armed harmonica player from New Hampshire, used to tell me, "We're a short time here, and a long time gone." I am likely to feel some pain, this year. All in all though, I'd choose that any day, to feeling nothing.

In honor of Chris, I'm also posting a short excerpt from my novel, Where Love Goes. It's a passage introducing the character of Tim, a single father living in a small Vermont town, and his daughter, Ursula, age seven, who lives with him full time. The character of Tim was based in many ways on my friend Chris.

If you've been enjoying this site for a while, you might think of showing your appreciation to Myrna by sending her a little contribution (Myrna Uhlig, P.O. Box 636, Clatskanie, OR 97016). Her work here is supported entirely by donations and the proceeds of the sales of my books and CDs that are available here. And though Christmas may be over, there's no law against ordering books, tapes, or the Where Love Goes soundtrack CD through our on-line ordering service, in the Joyce Maynard Catalogue.

That's about it for me, for now. Your turn.

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