It’s Sunday afternoon. The wind chill is seasonably cold and, at the same time, unfamiliar in this warm winter we’ve been having. Tonight Ed and I will go to a meet my 18-year-old nephew and friends at a comedy club (what a blessing to have such a nephew, and I will work hard to be cool enough to warrant the invitation, but I am a VERY loud laugher and sometimes I even snort and occasionally cry).

My fingers are on the keyboard, as evidenced by this post. I long to plunge through to the world of Willie and Stella. And yet I hesitate.

There’s laundry and a pile of papers that need filing and that tax return to prepare for. And there’s the knot of how to finish the book. I keep hoping I’ll untie this last by doing all the other things, but I think I may need a geographic fix…an afternoon away from the house in a quiet cafe with a large window that looks out on the blinding surprise of snow, which reflects the returning light so brilliantly. There I can gaze long enough to reach 1959, knock the white stuff off my shoes at Aggie’s door and hope to be asked inside to witness the love and horror and mischief that is the Fords.

This post was originally written January 15, 2012 for the private blog of my writing group, Novel-ties.