I haven’t read the bestseller Dropped Threads yet, but someone pointed me to the website today, so I found myself reading Carol Shields’ afterword, which contains this wisdom:
In a long and healthy life, which is what most of us have, there is plenty of time. There is time to sit on a houseboat for a month reading novels. There is time to learn another language. There is travel time and there is stay-at-home time. Shallow time and fallow time. There is time in which we are politically involved and other times when we are willfully unengaged. We will have good years and bad years, and there will be time for both. Every moment will not be filled with accomplishment; we would explode if we tied ourselves to such a regimen. Time was not our enemy if we kept it on a loose string, allowing for rest, emptiness, reassessment, art and love. This was not a mountain we were climbing; it was closer to being a novel with a series of chapters.
The last several years have been marked by much anxiety over time passing swiftly: I finished writing Brick and Mortar four years ago, published it two years ago, and have only a handful of stories to show for my work in the meantime. Just lately, though, I’ve begun to realize that what Shields writes is true. There will be time. For now I’m trying to enjoy where I am (I know I will miss Carleton a lot once I’m gone) and do what I can. This week I’m writing a book review, and that’s enough for the moment.
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