Lisa Unger's Notes From the Margin

I get stressed around the holidays. You probably do, too.  It seems to be the nature of the season.  Has it always been this way?  I feel the tension start to mount just before Thanksgiving, my brain subconsciously creating checklists of what must be accomplished over the next six weeks – gifts for family, friends, neighbors and colleagues, tips for the various people responsible for holding my life together. A parade of questions to be answered, decisions to be made. Should I bake cookies or not?  How bad are holiday cards for the environment? If I send them, do I hate the planet? If I don’t send them, will people think I’m a grinch?  I imagine mantles full of happy season’s greetings from everybody except those earthier-than-thou Ungers who sent an e-card.

I was on my way to New York a couple of weeks ago on the 6 AM flight, looking ahead to a day of meetings. I left my five-year-old daughter back in Florida, which I rarely do.  So she was very much on my mind — mainly because she put the screws to me for a full 24 hours before I got on the plane. Why do you have to go, Mommy?  Just cancel your meetings. Why can’t you work from home like you always do? Why can’t I go, too?  Don’t leave me!  I needed to carry an extra suitcase to tote all my guilt with me.

Once upon a time, I was a secret writer.  Writing had been my passion for as long as I could remember.  But when I graduated from college, I knew I had to get a “real” job, as my father called it. (A “real job” is defined as one that pays, if not well, then at least every two weeks).  So I went into publishing.  What else would a secret writer do?  I wanted to be close to books, to the business of publishing.  But, at the time, I lacked the confidence to follow my true dream.  So, I wrote in the nooks and crannies of my life struggling to find time for pages on the train, in the morning before work, during particularly long and boring meetings.

Before writers are anything, we are readers. Those early books we held in our hands, the ones our parents read to us, they formed us.  And I often think about that as my husband and I, both readers, read each night to our daughter.  Books are such a gift, doorways into other worlds, other minds.  Frankly, I can’t imagine a life without books.