A Story of Mom’s Basement.

Remember the year you moved home to mom’s basement to write your great American novel? I ask.

My brother holds his beer high, Ah,  yes, to my great American novel. He says.  And to mom’s basement!

It’s Christmastime and our spirits are flying high with the season.

May it be forever filled with at least one adult child. I chime in.  May it always remain a holy space for regression, a hideout from reality, a temple for do-nothings!

I’ll let the cat out of the bag here. So my brother didn’t write his great American novel that year. Actually, it wasn’t even a great American novel he was trying to write. He’s a nerd. Yes, the most loveable nerd I’ve ever met, but let’s just call a book a book.  He was really attempting to craft  The Great American Sci-Fi.  And the way he tells the story never fails to have me rolling on the floor with laughter.

I just wrote the first two chapters over and over again. But I wasn’t willing to edit, like a draft, so I just spent two months erasing and re-writing two chapters. It was horrible.

And laugh as I may,  at some point during his subterranean year  he took a job at a local cafe, got a cute girlfriend, and spent some quality time with our mom. Overall, I’d say it was pretty decent year.

And I guess that’s my point here. That’s why I’m writing this. It’s the lesson that life isn’t really about a to b, here to there. Sometimes things fall apart. Sometimes we regress, either psychically or metaphorically into our mother’s basements. And then, spring comes, we get a new girlfriend, job, life moves along.

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