Chapter 22 of Emily Rapp’s memoir The Still Point of the Turning World opens with a quote from Franz Kafka, “By scribbling I run ahead of myself in order to catch myself up at the finishing post. I cannot run away from myself.”

I cannot run away from myself.

Running away from yourself is exactly what you wish to do when you experience the dying of someone you love. And imagine if the one dying is your child? You will say to me (as people have said to Rapp), “I can’t imagine that.” But you can, Rapp would argue, and you do, which is why people like her, the mother of a dying (and now, sadly, dead) child make us so uncomfortable. They represent an inconvenient truth and that truth is that we are all of us dying as we live and that includes our children, too, though we dare not acknowledge that truth. We dare not.

Rapp had no choice but to acknowledge the truth of her son’s impending death. Indeed, she faced it head on. Still, she does not spill her tears on the page. She doesn’t ask for pity. She doesn’t want platitudes or euphemism  She doesn’t want hugs. And, most certainly, she does not want anyone to say to her, “I’m sorry.”

She just wants you to be present in your life and in the lives of those you love.

Reading this book brought up all kinds of complicated emotions in me. Mostly, though, what I felt was grief: for those I’ve lost, for those I will lose someday, for myself. I grieved for Ronan. I grieved for all of the children who have died and who are dying.

Grief is not necessarily a weeping thing, as Rapp shows us within this book. What it is is an animal thing. An animal thing like giving birth. Grief is uncontrollable, as is dying, as is giving birth.

My husband and I have always talked openly (in an age-appropriate way) about death with our son. We don’t say things like “passed away” or “gone to live with the angels” no matter how tempting they are. He is interested in my parents, his maternal grandparents. I show him pictures. We talk about them. Recently, I let him take out and examine several objects of my father’s that I have. A leather box. A leather key holder.

He wrote a note (with my help) to my father asking him to leave a sign if he was a friendly ghost. He placed is in the key holder and said he would go back the next day to check. The next morning, when there was no note, he was disappointed, but said it was what he expected. He did just as I have done countless times, asking for a sign from those I have loved who have died. Show me that you still exist. Show me that there is something more.

Even as he learns of these dead people, even as he falls in love with them, he also learns how to let them go. He learns how to grieve them just as his young mind begins to understand what sad means.

Yesterday, I found two photos in frames I’d forgotten about. One was of my mother as an infant and then other of a my father as a young boy. I handed these photos to my son and told him who they were and he said, “I love them so much.”

We worked our $5 an hour jobs. We rode through the city streets without helmets on our stolen bikes. We stood on the corner smoking and talking with the homeless men who were our friends. We drank beer on our lunch break. We stayed out all night and still worked our full shift the next day.

Beyond everyone I loved then–all those who broke my heart; beyond how much we talked about the art we would make someday; beyond the passion we felt for everything we believed: What that time in my life represents is a great, unfulfilled sadness. I knew I wanted to be a writer and I had written plenty before but then I stopped and I couldn’t get back started. I wrote privately in my journals. I squirreled it all away. Every separate emotion categorized. Even when I was happy then, I couldn’t stop feeling like I would never get to be where I wanted to be. I couldn’t help feeling like I would always be unfulfilled.

During all the years I lived in Boston, I passed by the Hynes Convention Center hundreds of times. Thousands. I worked conventions there. I passed through. I stood in its shadow.

20 years ago I never thought that I would be there again but this time with 12,000 other writers at AWP. I never thought I would be among them. Beyond that, I never could have imagined that I would be there because people had said yes to me. Because people had published my books and because people actually wanted to buy those books and read them.

20 years ago, this thought would have been incomprehensible.

It was a moment to stand among you and realize that I had circled back to just beyond my beginning. It was a moment to realize that even though it took me 20 years, I was there.

The 2013 AWP conference is this week (starting on Wednesday).

Normally, I would be packing my bags and stocking the fridge for my family. However, this week the conference is a mere 30 miles from my home. You would think this would make it easier for me to get to all of the panels and events. Instead, it makes it more difficult as I remain active and present in my daily life, which includes caring for my son.

As such, I’m not going to be much of a presence at the conference, but I’m sure you will all bravely carry on without me.

With that said, I will be at the bookfair on Saturday. In fact, I have two signings on Saturday, March 9th:

I will be signing Echolocation at the Engine Books table from 10-12ish

I will be signing I Am Holding Your Hand at the PANK table from 1-3ish

I really hope to see you there.

p.s. My advice from last year still holds: do NOT drink that shot of tequila when it is offered to you (this advice is especially true if you are over age 40).

In one of my favorite movies, “It’s a Wonderful Life,” George Bailey attempts suicide on a Christmas Eve when all seems hopeless. He jumps off a bridge into a near freezing river, only to be saved by an angel. After the angel shows George how his life mattered to those around him (by showing what would have happened to them had he never lived), George is resurrected into his old life with all of its messiness and heartache only to realize that no matter what, his life is filled with wonder.

Not so much for Ron Currie, the protagonist in Ron Currie Jr.’s latest novel Flimsy Little Plastic Miracles. I’m spoiling nothing for you by telling you that Ron Currie attempts suicide in the book. He tells you the same from the get go, even though you won’t get to the actual attempt until well past the halfway mark.

What Ron discovers after his own self-resurrection is not that life is filled with wonder but that it remains flawed and the pain that brought him to his breaking point, still exists, much like a craving for nicotine is returned when one removes the patch that is supposed to take that craving away.

Basically, there is no cure for pain. There is no cure for grief. There is no cure for heartache. The only thing one can do is put one foot in front of the other and get through it. Getting through it might mean that you take yourself away from those people who love you. It might mean that you self-medicate. You might create a vision for the future based on the singularity. In this vision you give as a gift to yourself a world in which we are all machines and grief no longer exists. Death is no more.

Or it might mean that you don’t believe yourself capable of living through the pain and so you do whatever it takes to get yourself out of it.

You might even write a book about pain and your process of grief. That book might be a fictional memoir or a memoiresque piece of fiction. In that book you might find a cross hatch of grief and heartache. A smear of regret. A smudge of self-loathing. You might find yourself rewriting your life as you believed it happened: Your sex always ended in orgasm. Or you might tell the truth: you believe you failed your dying father when he needed you most. Ultimately, the love story you might think you’re telling–the one about the one who got away–is really about how you raised yourself up from the dead and managed to model yourself after your father–war veteran, witnesser of horrors untold–who kept hoping to witness the cherry blossoms in the trees he planted even though he knew he’d die before spring ever came.

In the end, you can decide to live. Stick that nicotine patch back on. Listen for the bell ringing on the Christmas tree. Watch for the blossoms.

I am thrilled to bits and pieces to announce that my Young Adult novel, THE BOOK OF LANEY, is forthcoming from Lacewing Books in 2015.

Lacewing Books is an exciting new imprint of Engine Books. Andrew Scott, senior editor at Engine Books, is the editor of Lacewing Books and I am thrilled to be working with him on this project.

NOTE: The Next Big Thing is a blog series, winding its way through the internet. Today, I’m delighted to host this Next Big Thing interview with Nan Cuba, who is as lovely, kind, and generous in person as she comes across in this interview. Her debut novel, BODY AND BREAD, is one that I am most looking forward to in 2013.

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I’m so grateful to you, Myf, for the invitation to join the blog chain.  I’m your fan, of course, and loved ECHOLOCATION.  I AM HOLDING YOUR HAND will be my New Year’s treat.  Support from a writer of your talent is a touchingly generous gift.

Here’s my interview:

Q: What is your working title of your book (or story)?

My forthcoming novel is called BODY AND BREAD.

Q: Where did the idea come from for the book?

I wrote a piece of flash fiction, and when I showed it to a friend, she said it reminded her of Katherine Anne Porter’s story, “The Grave.”  I was shocked to realize that without being conscious of Porter’s influence, that connection was true.  Both stories are about a brother and sister, and when I reread Porter’s, I was convinced.  The brother in hers is named Paul, and my story is loosely based on my deceased brother, Paul.  My story grew into a series of stories, which eventually became the novel. BODY AND BREAD is dedicated to my beautiful brother.

Q: What genre does your book fall under?

 It is literary fiction, a family epic of present and past intertwining plots.

Q: Which actors would you choose to play your characters in a movie rendition? 

For the adult narrator, Sarah, I’d love to have Emma Thompson play the role.  For young Sarah, maybe Ellen Page.  Sam, the brother, needs to be someone like Jake Gyllenhaal.

Q: What is the one-sentence synopsis of your book?

While hallucinations of Aztec ritual death and rebirth escalate, Sarah Pelton uses her skills as an anthropologist to investigate her family and find the cause of her brother’s suicide, but a secret is uncovered instead.

Q: Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency?

I’m thrilled to have my book in the impressive lineup at Engine Books.  My pub date is May 14, 2013.

Q: How long did it take you to write the first draft of your manuscript?

The first story was written in 1989, while I was a student in the MFA Program for Writers at Warren Wilson College.  I started on the novel a few years after that, and it’s gone through so many versions that I can’t pinpoint a date for a first draft.  My editor, Victoria Barrett, guided me through three major revisions.  This has been a long journey.

Q: What other books would you compare this story to within your genre?

I know I’m dreaming because I’m not the linguist or metaphysicist that she is, but I hope the elegiac quality and spiritual elements remind some readers of Marilynne Robinson’s Housekeeping.  My agent, Esmond Harmsworth, thinks the story’s balance between present and past is reminiscent of Ian McEwan’s Atonement or Wallace Stegner’s Angle of Repose.

Q: Who or what inspired you to write this book?

My brother and my wish to illustrate the damage inflicted when a family member commits suicide.

Q: What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest?

The story includes Aztec, U.S., and Texas history, which touches on the Czech immigrant experience.  Two scholars helped with Nahuatl and Czech translations, for which I am immensely grateful.  Also, Victoria Barrett is a genius.  She designed the book, including the cover image, which is iconic.  Even better, I don’t mind that it took me twenty years to get this book published, because that process brought me to her.  She worked as hard as I did during the final revisions, and that kind of talent and dedication are increasingly rare.  If you read literary fiction, Engine Books has exactly what you love.

Here are the excellent writers I get to tag for interviews, all highly recommended:

Natalie Serber whose collection of stories SHOUT HER LOVELY NAME shares an honest and probing view of mother/daughter relationships.

Dale Neal whose novel, THE HALF-LIFE OF HOME is part elegy, part folktale.

 Joe Schuster whose book, THE MIGHT HAVE BEEN is a terrific baseball novel with a compelling human story.

My son is sleeping. He knows nothing of the sorrow from the past few days. Not so lucky are the surviving students of Sandy Hook Elementary School.

Tonight they are in my heart.

Their families are in my heart.

Those dead are in my heart. And their families. Especially them.

Tomorrow, many of us will send our young children back to elementary school with a heavy heart. It is one more difficult letting go in a series of difficult lettings go.

All that we can do is trust in the goodness of humanity and rejoice in our simple gifts. All we can do is to focus on that which matters most to us, whatever it may be.

 We can look upon our neighbors with empathy. We can treat each child as we would our own.

We can also take one small step ahead and hope that that step leaves a footprint large enough for others to step into and follow.

Step ahead, friends. Step ahead.

Simple Gifts Lyrics

Joseph Brackett

‘Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free
‘Tis the gift to come down where we ought to be,
And when we find ourselves in the place just right,
‘Twill be in the valley of love and delight.

When true simplicity is gain’d,
To bow and to bend we shan’t be asham’d,
To turn, turn will be our delight,
Till by turning, turning we come ’round right.

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been working with a group of local people on creating a grassroots campaign in favor of a question on our local ballot that we believe should pass.

Some of us are Democrats. Some of us are Independents. Some of us are Republicans. Some of us are liberal and some conservative. Some go to church on Sundays. Others are atheists. Some are parents. Some are grandparents. Some are childless. Some are younger. Some are older. Some of us are voting for the first time. Some of us have voted in every election for decades.

Here’s the most important thing: our differences do not matter.

What matters is what brings us together: our firm belief that the passing of this question on our ballot represents something that is not just good for us individually, but something that is good for us as a community. And larger still: it is even good for the communities that surround us.

As such, our coming together represents something larger to me in these last days leading up to the election. I believe that in overlooking our differences to achieve a common goal we are living as our forefathers hoped we would live in this beautiful country. Instead of being divided and voting for or against something, we are overlooking our differences and we are voting together for a common good.

My birthday is not only the anniversary of my birth, it is also the anniversary of my first day of school in the United States. My mother brought my sisters and me to this country 34 years ago. Our journey here was not a physically difficult one. We did not cross shark-infested waters in a rickety boat. We did not climb a fence and wade through a murky river. We did not cross an ocean in a ship. We did not come by plane. Instead, we drove across a border we had crossed hundreds of times before as visitors.

We came as immigrants from the beautiful country to the north. We came because my father died and my mother married a new man, an American. I came because I was a child and my mother chose to bring me here.

I stayed because I love it here. I stayed because this is my home and the people I love are here.

Still, I lived for many years as a resident alien, paying taxes, paying social security, but having no right to vote. I ached to vote and yet was scared to make the decision to go through the process of naturalization. As with so many other things, fear and what ifs kept me from making one of the most important decisions of my life.

My impetus for change was born five years ago. When my son was born, I filed the paperwork and started on my path to naturalization.

Unfortunately, I missed the last presidential election by a few months. I became a citizen in early 2009 on the coldest day of the year. What I recall was the glorious feeling of belonging as soon as I pledged my allegiance.

Since that day I have voted in elections, but this will be my first presidential election. I cannot fully express with how much joy I approach my opportunity to vote in this election. It is something I have wanted to do, dreamed of even, for a very long time. Those of you who were born with this right might take it for granted, but I sincerely hope you do not. I hope you are informed and I hope you are as excited as I am to vote for your candidates and causes. Most importantly, I hope you will vote.