Yo Beth, where ya been?

A missive from my existential hidey hole

Hello and thank you and I’m sorry.

It’s good to connect again. I appreciate all of you reading my work and I’m sorry I’ve been scarce lately. I know many of you signed up for a subscription expecting regular reporting on Alabama’s criminal punishment system, but unfortunately I’ve experienced a lapse in my ability to keep up.

The truth is, it’s been a very hard year. Some of the reasons why are not my story to tell, but this one I am free to share.

I turn 50 in two months and I’m scared.

I’m not scared like oh my God I’m getting wrinkles scared or what if I get sick and die scared, because both of those are inevitable. I have never feared a birthday and I don’t dread growing older.

This fear is more of an existential anxiety, like I’m approaching a tollbooth, but haven’t yet earned enough tokens to get through. I know this is utterly ridiculous, but I have always been hard on myself. I see my resume, all my accomplishments, but my eyes focus on the holes, what I haven’t yet done.

And for the first time in my life, I have to seriously ask myself if I’ll have enough time.

And I must accept that I will not.

There is never enough time, but turning 50 doesn’t make that any more real. I just didn’t know enough to ask the question when I turned 40, or 30, or 21. I know enough now. I’m glad half a century has given me knowledge. I suppose I can call it wisdom once I get my AARP card.

I’ve also been worried that this milestone, a miracle really, will come and go without enough fanfare. How do I properly honor this one holy life, give it the recognition it is due, while also recommitting to actually living it every day? How can I best do this body and spirit proud?

The good news is I’ve gotten some personal writing down on paper during this quiet time, and I’m hoping this will become my first book. I find myself lingering in bookstores, imagining what I’m making on the shelf.

In New York earlier this year, I went to the famous Strand bookstore and put my hand in the exact spot for a Shelburne title, between two nonfiction authors I’d never heard of— but it turns out they’re both highly regarded journalist/historians. Maybe one day soon we’ll be neighbors. Isn’t this what the kids call manifesting?

Actually when it comes to book writing, it’s not enough to drift around bookstores and dream. The work of it is the key— and it’s what keeps most people from writing a book. It’s a grind, involving a lot of angst, revisions, starting over, beginning again.

I’ve spent as much time staring out my office window wondering if I’m a fool.

But I’ve also enjoyed myself between life’s astonishing challenges and my lack of deliverables. I celebrated the summer solstice at a waterfall buried deep in the woods of Winston County, Alabama, with my daughter Avelina and dear friend

Maura James McNamara

.

Caney Creek Falls. Double Springs, Alabama

A friendly german shepherd greeted us at the trailhead, tail wagging slowly like a feathered fan. He accompanied us on the one mile hike to the falls, then swam with us in the cool, dark water.

When we were done, he guided us back to our car at dusk, then sprinted alongside as we drove away, blurring into a streak of brown joy out our window as the sun set.

He lives in a house across the street from the trailhead and my sense is, he kind of runs the place. I want to go back and thank this good boy for reminding me there is magic in the world, even when living in it is truly difficult. As long as we remember to seek magic, it is there, waiting to greet us at the top of the trail.