Why I Write, Why I Gather

Two and a half years ago I paid ten bucks to peddle Avon door-to-door. I started writing stories the week I started selling cosmetics. I don't know why. When people ask, I tell them I wanted to remember my strange customers, the women who hid Latin lovers in their closet, the ones who paid me in pennies and pumpkin bread. But the truth was something different, something I still can't articulate. My heart pumped heavy blood, swollen red cells that carried the weight of forty years of memory. I had to unload it.

Somehow, in the telling, in the seven hundred days of pen against paper, feet against pavement, I uncovered something I never knew was hidden. I discovered my fingers were meant to type, my mind was meant to race, this body held snapshot bits of pet and lover and brochure for a reason. I'm meant to tell these stories, to let my eyes fall on the person in front of me, to draw their lifeforce, their candid breath. I'm meant to write. Nothing else makes sense. Now I think of myself as a Mom first, a writer second, and an Avon Lady dead last, after friend, confidant, lover, knitter, troublemaker. I don't know where it's going, just know I'm following a trail of crumbs some invisible force left for me to find.

79 days ago my son, 11, called me to his side. He sat at the family computer. The screen flickered with the ochre, black and gray of NPR's website.

"Mom! Look! You should send one of your stories here!" He touched the screen, touched an orange advertisement. I leaned over his head, my right arm resting on his shoulder, and I read about a place where writers meet to share, to discuss.

I clicked.

I uploaded words, digital ephemera full of captured Avon moments. I met a woman who sat Zen, just like me, whose stark poems explored a harsh inner landscape. I met a man who breathed Old Orchard Beach to life through his delicate description. I met readers with wits sharp and jagged, who left gifts beneath the pieces I wrote, the pieces others wrote. I met people who don't practice the pen, whose sense of being comes from some other medium, who post gorgeous photographs and art works. I met some whose sublime gift to share is in the simple observation and repartee of life.

One clicked became a thousand clicks, more, became another neighborhood I cruise, the stories I post drift here and there like the free samples I leave down my street. It doesn't matter to me which dish you bring to this feast. I'm willing to try your food, to help set your table, to find the unexpected kinds of love and nourishment you offer.

Thanks, Gather.