Chapter Two …in which Gerry meets Emma for the second time

Twenty-five years later

From: Gerry

To: Debbie

Date: March 11, 2008

Dear Debbie,

Hello!

I hope you have been well.  I’ve enjoyed keeping up with your family’s activities via your Christmas letter.  It’s hard to believe it has been 7 years since I saw you at the wedding.

My Christmas letter is not as detailed, so I’ll let you know the basics:  I am still teaching creative writing at the university, and have had a moderate measure of success as an author, having just published my fourth novel.  Vanessa is still working as an editor, and Betty is now looking at different colleges, since she will start 12th grade next year.  She has really grown up since you saw her 7 years ago!

I am planning to come to Swarthmore for my 30th reunion around the end of May (just me) and I hope it works out to come by for lunch one day.

Also, I have enjoyed hearing of Emma and Michael’s activities via the Christmas letter.  I still remember the last (and only!) time I met Emma, when she was five, when you and she came by during my 5th Swarthmore reunion.  I remember she was writing books and stapling them together.  It seemed to me that she had a career as an author ahead of her.  I was curious: Has she ever done any professional writing? 

Thanks, and I’ll talk to you soon.

 Gerry

From: Debbie

To: Gerry

Date: March 12, 2008

Dear Gerry,

It was such a treat to hear from you.  I think of you and all the cousins often, though it seems the time just goes by so quickly between visits.

It would be wonderful to have you come by.  Jon and I are retired now (early retirement for me!) so our schedules are very flexible.

That is great that you remember Emma and her books.  Yes, we really did think she would be a writer for a while.  Her interest in books started just a few months before you met her, but it kept going for quite a while.  Even in high school, she was spending hours each week writing in her journal, and amassing notes for various books she wanted to write.  Once she got to college, though, I think reality set in, and she started thinking more realistically about a career, and I haven’t heard anything more about the writing.  I think it may have just been a phase to help her sort out her own thoughts as she grew up, but not something she would do professionally.  She studied organizational development in college, but her work experience so far has been confined to more clerical, office manager type gigs.  She is working on climbing the corporate ladder, albeit slowly, and is working on her MBA part time while working full time (actually more than full time it seems!) as Coordinator for adult education programs at McBride, a small college in the city.

Let me know when you will be in town!  I would be very glad to drive out to Swarthmore to see you again and grab some lunch.

All the best,

Debbie

Three months later

June 5, 2008

On a cloudy spring day, traffic whooshed by on a busy street in Philadelphia.   A middle-aged man with sandy hair and a genial confident manner approached the glass front of McBride College, a small urban college in two buildings.  He glanced at his reflection briefly, saw that his plaid short sleeve dress shirt looked fine tucked into his light khaki slacks, and pulled on the heavy glass door.  He stepped up to the reception desk.

 “Hi, I’m looking for Emma Berreson?”

The lady behind the desk answered, “Oh, she is putting up some flyers in the courtyard out back right now.  She should be back in a few minutes.”

“Out behind the building?” he asked.  The receptionist nodded.  “I’ll see if I can find her, then,” he said with a smile as he headed back outside.

After exiting the front door, he walked around and found a cozy brick courtyard tucked away between the two large buildings comprising McBride College.  It had several low walls and benches perfect for students to rest, read, or grab a bite to eat.  Standing in front of a large advertisement pillar, stapling up flyers, was a slim young lady with brown pants and a light tan  shortsleeve sweater top and blond shoulder-length hair.  He walked up to her.  “Emma?”

She turned around with her usual pleasant work smile plastered into place. “Yes, I’m Emma.  Can I help you?”

“I’m Gerry Fennell.  Your mother’s cousin.”

The smile turned from plastered to genuine.  “Oh, yeah!  You are the professor from Oregon!”

“That’s me!”

“Well, hi!  Are you coming in to take a class or something?

“No, actually, I came to see you.”

Emma looked a bit confused.  “Oh… um, OK.”

“Emma, I wanted to remind you about something that you might have forgotten.  Something very important that you are supposed to be doing.”

Emma looked puzzled.  “I don’t think I know what that is.  Let me check my calendar.”  She pulled out her phone and punched two buttons.  “No, I don’t see anything.”

“Don’t you remember?” asked Gerry.

Emma knitted her brows.  “I don’t know.”

“May I take these for a moment?” asked Gerry, reaching gently for the flyers and stapler.  Emma relinquished them without comment.  Gerry took four of the flyers, folded them in half, and stapled them along the spine.  He handed the stapled sheaf back to her.

Emma stared at it as her real life washed over her.  Finally she spoke, “I remember."  They stood in silence for a moment.  Then she continued, "I didn’t realize there could be so much power in the form of this thing.  It’s so full of… everything.  Possibilities, expression… I see the past in it…and the future.”  Wherever she was now, it was no longer in the courtyard of McBride College.

Gerry didn’t want to break the spell but finally spoke.  “You see, that is what I came here to tell you.  You need to not just let your life go by without the writing.  No one will tell you that, will remind you of it, because they don’t know that is what is in your soul.  But I do.  And so I can see that you are not living the way you should, now.”

Emma looked up at him in astonishment.  “But how did you know?”

“I remembered a little 5-year-old author.  And your mother recently told me about how when you were a teenager, you wrote all the time, but then stopped.  And I recognized that drive, because I was the same way.  And I dropped out of writing for a while, too; I didn’t see a way to make it work.  You are supposed to be writing.  Not rushing around putting up these flyers.”

Emma looked pained.  “ I know. But I have a razor-thin margin as it is, time-wise and money-wise, and I need to pay my bills and get my MBA…”

“And the merry-go-round will keep turning, and never stop,” Gerry broke in.  “You keep thinking ‘later’ there will be time to write.  But it never ends.  You never do catch up.”

“But, but,” stammered Emma, “what am I supposed to do with that information?  I can’t do anything about it.  I am stuck. You are absolutely right about the importance of the writing to me.  This (holding up the stapled paper book) is all I want, but it is so far away from me right now, I don’t know how I can find my way back to it.  I guess eventually, it got easier and less painful to just forget it.”

“I know it’s hard,” answered Gerry.  “I know it seems you are stuck and there is no way out.  But there is always a way out of ruts, a way back to the work our soul wants to do.  My grandparents, your great-grandparents, came to this country from Russia so that their descendants could follow their dreams, not so that they could fall into a rut and stay trapped there.  I’m not saying that you need to quit your job and drop out of school, or any of that.  I know that writing is a crazy thing to do, because you need to jump onto the train when it is going full speed, without a ticket.  And it may not be this year or next, or even next.  But I just don’t want you to forget what you are supposed to be doing.”

Emma took in all his words, and yet was still a million miles away.  “The writing was just pouring out of me in those days,” she murmured.

“When you were five?” asked Gerry.

“Yes,” she smiled, looking far-off, “from age five until about  seventeen.  Then life got so complicated and it got lost somehow.”  She paused and looked down.  “I haven’t been fully alive since then,” she admitted softly.  “That was thirteen years ago.  I still hear that voice, in quiet times, in those in-between places when the noise of the world stops long enough.  And it says just what you are saying now – that I need to write.  But I always talk back to it, and tell it that it just has a little longer to wait.  Though now it has been waiting for almost half my life.”

“Emma, the future is never assured.  You think you will live to be 100, but you may not live to be 35.  And even if you do live to be 100, each day that you do not write is a day you can never get back.  You are the keeper of these ideas.  These books and stories are counting on you to let them out, into the world.  No one can read your book if you don’t write it down.”

Emotion showed on Emma’s face.  “I know you are right!  I just don’t know what to do about it right now.  I have to get these flyers up in the next ten minutes, and then I have a staff meeting, and then I have to send out about 4 complicated email blasts, and reschedule a huge number of classes or it will be a huge crisis that I will never get out from under.  And on and on, and I’m sure the phone will ring 30 times with new urgent issues for my to-do list, before I go home today and have one hour to eat and write a 3-page term paper before I go to sleep.  I know you are right, but I am lucky if I can just keep my head above water and sleep 6 hours tonight.  And if I ever get married and have kids, then there will be even less time!  Basically, I try to turn the equation inside, outside, and upside down, but I can’t figure out a way for it to work.  I add up the budget, and the numbers are crushing me.”  Emma wrung her hands.

Gerry put his hand on her shoulder.  “I know.  Please, I don’t mean to bring you stress.  I just want you to try to find a way, at some point, to extricate yourself from this madness, and find the time to begin your plan to do what you were put here to do.”

Emma brightened and relaxed.  “OK.  Thank you.  I will; I really will think about this, soon.”

Gerry smiled and handed her his business card.  “Call me anytime, if you want someone to listen to you as you sort this out.  Or email if you prefer.  I know that you have the answers, not me, so I won’t lecture you or tell you how to do it.  But I have been there, and I have published four books now.  I want to be a resource for you to join me in the writers’ circle.”

Emma smiled.  “Thank you.  Yes, I definitely will.”

Gerry asked, “So can I help you put up these flyers?”

“Yes, please!” answered Emma, handing him the stapler.  “We have just a few minutes!”

Two Days Later…

Gerry had been enjoying the activities of his 30th reunion at Swarthmore College.  He was sitting on the low wall of the courtyard of the college dining hall when his cell phone rang.

“Hello?”

“Hi, Gerry?”

“Yes!”

“Hi, it’s Emma!”

“Hi, Emma!” She could hear his smile right through the phone.  “So nice to hear from you!”

“Well, I just have to apologize that it’s taken me two days to call.”

“No apology necessary.  I know how busy you were and still are!”

“Well, that’s certainly true, but… it was so amazing how you stopped by and told me exactly what was in my heart.  Not even my parents know that!  I guess it takes another writer to really understand.  You knew that I had to stop this insane pace, and get real with my life.  But not in a commanding, know-it-all way, either!  I know I am just babbling now, but… really, thank you.   I feel happy and excited about writing, but also worried of course, because I still haven’t quite figured out how to do it.”

“There will be plenty of time for that.  Life changes, jobs change, circumstances change… you may feel now that your hands are tied, but I am confident that you will find a way to break out.”

“I hope so,” sighed Emma. “But let me ask you something.  You said that you dropped out of writing for a while, and didn’t see how to make it work.  It sounds just like me now!  How did you get back to it?”

“Well, it was when I was 27.  I had a partially written novel, and had a lot of blocks and negativity about the whole process.  Then I met an author with several self-published books who was busy writing another one about a ferocious tiger.”

“Really?   A tiger?”

“Emma… it was you.  You were the author.”

Emma glanced over at the stapled “book” made of flyers lying on her kitchen table where she had tossed it two days before.  “Oh, right!  Yes, I didn’t get to tell you, but I do remember that day!  When was that again?”

“It was at my 5th reunion, so exactly 25 years ago.  And you won’t believe it, but I am sitting in the same courtyard now.  I can see you, in golden curls and a blue dress, sitting right over there, with your tote bag with a stamp pad, stapler, paper, crayons…”

“Oh my God, I remember that tote bag!  With the ponies!  I had a whole stationery store in there!”

They laughed together, like old friends, which they were fast becoming.

“Yes, and you told me that I needed to use my imagination and write my novel with a pencil and staple it together.”

Emma laughed again.  “Oh wow!  And did you?”

“Something very like.  I had been stuck at the time because I had started a manuscript of a Star Trek story, and then I started worrying about how I would ever submit it and get it accepted to be part of the official Star Trek book series.  But after talking to you, I decided to just make it a more generic science fiction story.  I rewrote it with my own original characters instead of the Star Trek characters, and that gave me so much more freedom to make up my own characters, universe, everything.  That shift in perspective was really exactly what I needed.  An old college friend took a look at it to give me feedback, and referred me to a publisher.  Once I got the first one written, it was like I broke through a wall.  So thank you for that!”

“Don’t mention it!” laughed Emma.  “Well, I am just so happy to really have someone to talk to about the writing.  I think my next step is to find a way to try to give myself some more time for writing and then to just start it and see what happens.  Maybe go through some of my old diaries, scraps, etc. and see if I can expand on them.”

“That sounds great.  Take your time, my dear, don’t stress or overload yourself, but just keep moving in that direction.”

“I will.  And I will be in touch to let you know how it is going!  I have your email and your phone number.

“That’s great.”

“Enjoy your reunion!”

“OK Emma, take care, and don’t work too hard!”

Both laugh.

“OK, bye-bye.”

Emma put down the telephone and looked over at the stapled “book” again made of flyers.  She reached over and picked it up.  In her mind’s eye, she could see the white tote bag with the gray ponies on it.  She wished she still had it, and wondered what ever happened to it.  She remembered the feeling it gave her that she could do anything, could just write a book anytime she wanted to, and nothing stood in the way.  And now… now everything stood in the way.