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The Nine Month Memoirists were snowed out last week, so thanks to the kind offices of Mary Lou and Kate we set ourselves up yester-night in Kate’s Mystery Book Shop in Cambridge.  Not only was it a blissfully comfortable setting (books floor to ceiling, everywhere) but it seemed fitting, since as memoirists we are all detectives of our own pasts, and of not a few crimes, too, some of which were perpetrated on and around us.

I was honored by being placed in the armchair, the same one that had been used by countless authors who have read at Kate’s over the years, and names like Robert Parker and Sarah Paretsky were bandied around, which added a certain mystique to things. Actually, it was really hard for me to remain in that chair since the quality of writing that was shared was more than enough to knock me sideways out of it.  Each writer moved us all, and interestingly for me was that each person apologised for tearing up, for needing to take a moment to breathe in a poignant section.  Why was that?  Did all those stacks of books intimidate us? Yet when I looked around each time I noticed that the pauses were not just necessary for the reader but for the rest of us listeners too, to remove an unexpected drop or two from the eyes.  Not that it was all gloom, you understand.  Far from it, in at least two cases the tears were those of hilarity.

I could have stayed there all night listening to these wonderful writers spin their words around me, and taking the occasional slice of absurdly splendid chocolate cake as supplied by the ever-thoughful Mary Lou.  I didn’t want our class to end.  I want to know what these writers are going to produce next.  I want to be there, watching the treasures emerge from the depths and into the light of our day.  But that privilege will go to the next group leader.

It’s humbling to work with those who show such courage and who write from the heart, and do it so well.  “Thank you” couldn’t begin to describe it.