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chapter
6
All Good Gifts Around Us
For an abundance of the fruits of the earth,let us pray to the Lord.
— The Prayers o the People,Book o Common Prayer
M
y daughter Eliza is a committed “jammer” —whenberries are in season she picks them and makesjam. One summer morning she nudged me to drop myother responsibilities and join her. (What column? Andaren’t I supposed to be writing a book? Those can waituntil winter, she assured me.) Then, like the rest o myamily oten does, she suggested that I don’t really workanyway. I’m just playing with words, as James Michenersaid, because I like the “swing” o them “as they tanglewith human emotions.” She also suspected I wasn’t writ-ing at all, but emailing, or reading the
Juneau Empire,
the
Anchorage Daily News, Salon,
and the
New York Times
online. Which was hal-true. Then she reminded me thatI can’t really be a writer since I can’t type — I use only two
104
h
take good care of the garden and the dogs
ngers. “Come on, let’s start jamming.” Eliza coaxed, asshe hummed Bob Marley’s reggae tune.Anne Morrow Lindbergh wrote that a mother at herdesk is always interruptible or any reason at all, while aather in the same chair gets tiptoed around. Even thoughthat was back beore Betty Friedan, it’s still true at ourhouse. Although, when you get right down to it, I
want
tobe interrupted. I love the distractions as much as I love thewriting, and I’m certain I wouldn’t have one without theother. I lost a whole summer o gardening and gatheringthe year I was run over, and I missed it terribly. I didn’twant to see Paris in the springtime; I wanted to plant mygarden. I didn’t want to go out to dinner; I wanted to grillsalmon on a campre down on the beach in my backyard.Then, the only thing I still could do was to write, and itwasn’t enough. I grew tired o my own company. There’sthat, and even though my column deadline was techni-cally that aternoon, I knew I could email it rst thing thenext morning, which was what I’d do anyway, whether Isat at my desk or went berry picking.Alistair Cooke produced his terric and highly lauded
Letter from America
weekly radio column in a thor-oughly organized, completely controlled way. As soonas he recorded one, he began writing the next, and hewrote and revised it or a ew hours each day until it wasdue, and then he’d start all over again. He kept this upor ty-eight years. I would like to tell you that this ishow I write my weekly column or the
Anchorage Daily
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