Grand Delusions

4:00 AM, December 23. As has happened at this precise hour for the past twenty-two years, we tumble out of bed and into the pre-packed car for the annual 15-hour pilgrimage to the Star Wars House—my husband’s childhood home in suburban Michigan, an hour north of Detroit. This year we’re driving a rented minivan my daughter has named Todd. We’re all Toddsters. We leave at this unholy hour because we’ve learned it’s less painful to knock off the first few hours in the quiet of the early morning.

I always drive the first leg. It’s part of the entire holiday tradition that Mom drives first and everyone else goes straight back to sleep. By this I get four hours of near-perfect silence, driving through a snowy landscape of small towns lit mainly by Christmas lights. Crazy as it may sound, I look forward to this one piece of the drive. It’s become my own little personal annual retreat, where I check in on the past year of my writing life and look toward the goals of the next year.

The further west I drive, the smaller the towns get, crossing from northern Vermont into far northern upstate New York, where there are no ski resorts or other tourist attractions to boost the economy. This stretch of NY, north of the Adirondacks and practically at the Canadian border, epitomizes rural poor. The largest employer for many miles is the state prison in Chateaugay.  And yet…in these early-morning  dark hours just before Christmas, the bright decorations on tiny houses speak of hope and heart, of a people finding sparks of celebration within, of bringing back the light.  Some years it’s snowing and that’s the best—a coat of fluffy white to magic the land.  (And OK, I have to confess that I never drive through the town of Mooers Forks without the name giving me a warm feeling all the way to my toes. It’s so….so…Bedford Falls)

For many years—at least ten—these early silent hours were when I let my thoughts about writing unleash my inner teen, i.e. the younger me who didn’t know enough not to dream. I let this piece of me daydream about my magnificent future as a writer—the accolades, the galas, the strangers who’d recognize my name in unexpected places. It was fun, letting myself do this, giving a free rein to the fragile ego of that inner teen who yearned to make a mark. It kept me wide awake and smiling to myself as I drove, and it blended with the beauty of the towns and how deeply I love the rural north country.

Much as I enjoyed it, though, I can no longer daydream like this. The fun has gone out of it. Aside from that it was always pure crap, it’s also lost its appeal. I simply can’t summon interest in any of it. The stuff I care about now—the graceful turn of a scene…the moment I realize something intriguing and new about a character…the sense that I’ve finally hit on an epilogue that’s “working”—none of these lend themselves to daydream. I already have these things. They’re all mine, every day, in the writing life I’ve built slowly over time. A life in which my butt meets chair at the same hour every day and I forge ahead in the unfolding world in my mind. I’ve given this to myself, and it gives me small joys all the time. No galas. No strangers knowing my name—who cares about that? Over enough years, I’ve given myself the quiet confidence that I can pull off most any scene, most any complicated character arc. It may take 12 tries, but so what? I’ll know when it’s working (or not)—and this right here is a huge gift to myself. I’ve written the million words, taken the hundreds and hundreds of rejections…I’ve done my time. I’m competent.

And yet…and yet…some part of me completely misses the fun of that daydreaming. Maybe I don’t want to have that fragile ego for more than one day a year, but on that morning, in the dark, amidst the snowflakes and colored lights, I wish I could dream and let it make my heart race.

Without it, I have trouble staying awake…