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Letter from Joyce Archives
February 24, 1999
Dear Friends,
There have been lots of comings and goings around here lately -- the reason you haven't heard from me for a while.
Sometime in mid January I took off for Mendocino for a week, where I holed up, working on my new novel, and making great progress. I stayed away until my sons ran out of food and I ran out of money, then came on home. Walked in the door just as Cher was finishing the last few notes of the national anthem at the Super Bowl, and barely broke stride; I headed straight for the barbecue, to grill up red meat for my sons and their dozen or so friends. It is the big challenge of my life at the moment: trying to be the parent I want to be, and the writer I want to be, all in the same one lifetime. And then there is that other annoying detail: earning a living.
I had to put my novel away while I attended to that. For the last month or so, I've been working hard on a bunch of shorter work -- most recently, a fascinating and deeply troubling magazine story involving video voyeurism that took me to Louisiana and Tennessee. Without going into the details, I will just tell you that my research required me to climb into the attic of the home of a woman whose neighbor had hidden a video camera there for the purpose of secretly taping her and her husband in their bed. In my zeal to see for myself the spot where the man hid the camera equipment, I stepped on drywall -- rather than studs -- and broke through the floor. Fortunately, the spot I landed in was her kitchen cabinet. Other than a bruise on my leg with as many colors as in a Marin County sunset, I survived my fall surprisingly well (managing to get in a ten-mile rollerblading workout on the astonishingly flat land of Louisiana, with the woman I was interviewing and a friend of hers who owns the largest cricket farm in America). I'll let you know when my story is published. It's a fascinating and disturbing tale.
March 4 I head to New York to give a speech at Barnard College Center for Women's Studies -- then home for another round of work on my book, I hope. On March 24 -- my son Charlie's 17th birthday -- he and I are off to Brazil, on a trip to promote the release of At Home in the World, in Portugese. For some reason I don't even attempt to comprehend, Charlie has evidently been booked as a guest on Brazilian MTV, where he is scheduled to play the drums. What this has to do with my recently published memoir is hard to determine, but I am guessing his appearance may go a long way towards sewing up the sixteen year old girl book-buying market in Brazil.
Willy is off in Hollywood at the moment, training with his tennis coach, Rod, and possibly launching a career as an actor. I think it was his recent performance, at a Berkeley poetry slam, of his poem "The Perfect Breast" that confirmed my sense, this was a boy who needed to get out in the world and perform. Friends who call our house at the moment and get our answering machine are often taken aback when they hear a warm greeting from a playful and wise-sounding Irishman... ("I guess I have the wrong number" is the common message, though one woman said, "What is Frank McCourt doing at your house?") It 's only Willy, of course.
So, I had to support his fierce urge to go and pursue this. And off he goes.... He turned fifteen this morning, first time I have had to make do singing him "Happy Birthday" over the telephone.
Even our dog Opie has an adventure in store: This very night, a family comes to take him north, to Sonoma County, to perform stud services in exchange for the pick of a future litter of Boston Terrier puppies. Some people, observing our life, might question whether what we needed to make our lives complete around here was a puppy. As for me, I figure he'll fit right in.
What else? My daughter Audrey, who turned 21 on Bob Marley's birthday (some would say, George Washington's birthday, but those are probably the same people who might question the wisdom of getting a puppy), returns home this weekend, after a two and half month stay with her dad in New Hampshire. As you may remember from my last letter here, Audrey had taken a semester off of her studies at UC Santa Cruz to work and snowboard back east, then had a bad car accident that left her with a broken collarbone. She's been recuperating at our old house -- now her father's house -- since early January, and is finally out of her sling. It was one of the hardest experiences I have known as a parent, to see my daughter experiencing the kind of loss and pain she went through this past month and a half and know there was nothing I could do to make it better. I am longing to see her again, even though she will touch down only briefly before heading out again -- north, to protest the lifting of environmental restrictions that had, up till now, protected the commencement of logging in the Headwaters forest. From there, she'll go backpacking with a friend, till the new semester starts. Audrey is never happier than when she finds herself in the wilderness.
Yesterday, eight women I had never met showed up at our house for pie-baking instruction they'd purchased at an auction last fall, to benefit the scholarship fund at my sons' school. As always happens, during these pie-making events, we greeted as strangers and parted as friends. Every one of them went home with a good looking pie in her hands, I might add. Though I am a little worried about the pie of one of my students, who had flown here from Connecticut the day before. She was planning to take her handiwork back with her, on the plane. Pie is not a great item to put in the overhead luggage bin.
There you have it: the news from my little corner of the world. To those of you who ordered the Where Love Goes CD and wondered what happened to it: my daughter's car accident delayed my ability to get a new shipment of the CD's from New Hampshire, where they're stored. Myrna is back in business and accepting orders. If you can no longer give the CD in time to give as a Valentine, well now, there's always St. Patrick's Day. All proceeds from sales go to our indefatiguable web mistress, Myrna, so don't hold back. Consider getting a copy for every member of the family. It's a terrific CD, and makes a great coaster too.
Now, what's new with you?
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