Home away from home

Field notes from the beginning of a writing residency

The grand magnolia just outside my window.

It took two days and change to get here. From Amish country to shrimp country.

Here is a little town on Mobile Bay, home to pelicans and herons, magnolia trees — and writers. Where the languid air is scented with mimosa and clings to your skin.

I came all this way for the change of scenery. To leave inland soil for coastal waters. But the reason I’m really here is to write.

For the entire month of June, this is home, thanks to a local group that hosts writers in a cottage they helped save from demolition more than twenty years ago.

I might show up this month in this space, but I might not. The hope — and the priority — is to make headway on my memoir. A story about all the stuff we do to avoid the pain of our past. To be on my own watch and be with the work and let the headlines and the distractions of home fade to the margins.

In a few hours, I’ll take Russ to the airport but not before we commune over grouper sandwiches.

I’m calling in the ancestors, hoping they’ll be the wind at my back. Wish me words. More + soon. — xoKOD