First, an excerpt from a letter from my grandson: “Everyone here is doing alright. We're locked in the apartment and having groceries delivered when we need them. We're both working from home and B (his son) is home from school. It's lockdown mode here and hoping for the best. …What strange times these are. D (his wife) and I are now figuring out how to work our jobs while also being parents to a little toddler (almost 2) running around. It's a lot of fun in our little apartment :) “
I’ve been thinking about this ever since I read the letter yesterday. Years ago—and I do mean years—I was self-isolated for different reasons than today’s. My two little ones were 2 years and six months old and I was a stay-at-home mother with a limited income, that is, no money for daycare - not available that young, anyway—and no baby-sitters, except for an occasional, reluctant gig by a grandmother. The ongoing leit motif of my life has always been trying to find time to write, even when I didn’t have much to say. At that age—my children’s and mine—we didn’t have a very long attention span. I had short bursts of thought which I would try to nail down in rare spare moments, nothing like the long, sustained thought that must precede and progress with a novel or a play, or non-fiction, for that matter. This went on until the oldest child (now 65!) started kindergarten half-days. By that time there were two more little ones at home with me and her younger sister.
I searched and searched until I found what I remember the American Pulitzer Prize winning writer Alice Walker had to say about being a writer and having children. It was in a June7, 2013 article by Lauren Sandler, The Secret to Being Both a Successful Writer and a Mother: Have Just One Kid. “ Someone once asked Alice Walker if women (well, female artists) should have children. She replied, "They should have children—assuming this is of interest to them—but only one." Why? "Because with one you can move," she said. "With more than one you're a sitting duck.”
A sitting duck. Self-isolated. Danielle Steel was neither. She didn’t sleep much, though.
“Danielle Fernandes Dominique Schuelein-Steel (born August 14, 1947) is an American writer, best known for her romance novels. She is the bestselling author alive and the fourth bestselling fiction author of all time, with over 800 million copies sold. She has written 186 books, including over 141 novels. [Figures revised upwards on later information.] Based in California for most of her career, Steel has produced several books a year, often juggling up to five projects at once. Despite "a resounding lack of critical acclaim" (Publishers Weekly), all her novels have been bestsellers, including those issued in hardback. Her formula is fairly consistent, often involving rich families facing a crisis, threatened by dark elements such as prison, fraud, blackmail and suicide. Steel has also published children's fiction and poetry, as well as raising funds for the treatment of mental disorders. Her books have been translated into 43 languages,in 69 countries, with 22 adapted for television, including two that have received Golden Globe nominations.” Wikipedia
But here’s the thing, several things: in addition to nine children she had 5 spouses (all divorced, none died). She wanted to spend as much time as she could with her kids so she wrote at night, averaging about four hours of sleep. Verily, a woman of steel!
Which I am not, never was. And I had only one husband who was the love of my life and I still miss him.
So what am I saying? I guess just—I am who I am, I did what I could. I feel a closer rapport to my family than I ever did to Danielle Steel. But she was a good reminder of how little I could complain.