Balancing Act --Marcia

I am watching the French Open while I write. I am an obsessive tennis fan and player and this is one of my four favorite times of year. The others of course are Wimbledon, The Australian Open, and the U.S. Open.

I've never tried to write in front of the TV before. Televisions, radios, lawn mowers, phones, leaf blowers, even the garbage truck backing up drive me crazy. Sound takes up all the space in my brain and renders me mute. A refrigerator humming or the sound of numbers on an old digital clock sliding into place have been known, in the past, to throw me into fits of despair.

I live in a small house bursting with extroverted, physical, and friendly children, multiple animals, a big husband, and the comings and goings of a thriving neighborhood of revolving door regulars. We love popping in on each other. This is the life I and my family have created. We wouldn't wish it otherwise. It does, however, make it a challenging place to write.

For several years, every morning at 5:00, I rolled out of bed, into my husband's sweats and down the street to Donut Country. Everybody here knows Donut Country and, baby, Krispy Kreme can't hold a candle. I called the Country my office. It was great sitting there in the dark of winter at my self-assigned table, hunkered down in my giant sweatshirt drinking scorchingly bad coffee and editing my gargantuan manuscript, writing notes, making outlines, and trying to write more.

Despite my efforts to avoid eye contact and keep my mouth shut (I was not here to make friends), within three months I was being heckled by some of the wise-acres for my anti-social and high-falutin' ways. Yeah, in my husband's monster sweats! Well I rose to the challenge and started cracking wise with the men who drove the giant street sweepers, the old timers who came in early to avoid their wives, and the cement cutters who needed to jolt their systems up with a few good jelly donuts before their day got too hard.

At Donut Country at 5:00 A.M., if you are a woman under 59, under 300 pounds, dressed in anything other than a rayon housecoat, you are considered pretty and young. I became the wild card that all those crusty buggers could hone their edge upon. We had fun, we laughed, told yarns, got loud. On way too many mornings I'd have three sentences scratched onto my legal pad by the time I packed up to go home and start the get-'em-all-to-school-and-work routine. Many mornings all I did was record the banter. But I left happy. It was good banter. Seriously.

Those years of writing elsewhere, fighting to screen out small-town socializing, the piped in "worship" music, and the enticing perfume of the perfect glazed donut taught me how to focus despite distraction. I might not have produced my best work, but back then I just needed to stay in the game.

So the beautiful Rafa Nadal can muscle and glide his way over the red clay at Roland Garros while I watch and write and it won't bother me one bit. Not at all.