Meaningful Moments (This Is A Long One...)

Today I was reading the Real Simple magazine after the mailman, on his daily route, stopped by the NYSC to drop off some much needed tools of procrastination. For once, my coffee is all gone, the towels are all folded and my phone is all but buzzing from Gchat, I eagerly await anything the mailman has to deliver.

I found an article consisting of writers detailing their meaningful moments in a day. Their stories are full of the insight you just can’t get from surveys, focus groups, and mass marketing events.

4am – Edwidge Danticat, Author of Breath, Eyes, Memory and Brother, I’m Dieing

A Morning Lover

From her childhood memories of growing up in Haiti and taking to the streets with her family to prayer meetings called kowots, she loved the fact that in the usually lively and rambunctious neighborhood where she had lived, just being able to hear her and her families voices echo in the silence, was “devine.” In her adult life, she adores 4am where she can savor the moment of climbing in for a snuggle with her husband and children before the day begins.

6:30am – Rick Moody, Author of The Diviners, Garden State, and The Ice Storm

A Paper Fetcher

Rick grew up always venturing out to find the morning newspaper at first due to keeping himself on a budget, but later grew to love his quiet stroll of unpopulated streets, to chat up the guy at the newsstand. He calls it “sublime.”

After Sunrise – Roxana Robinson, Author of Cost and This Is My Daughter

A Sunriser

Standing on her back porch where the air is fresh and cool, she observes the morning dew and the arrival of the new season.

“I stand looking. There is a mist at the end of the meadow, and a fine, tiny curl of steam rising from my coffee. This is the moment I want to be in. …Sometimes there is just the wind, shifting the dry stalks of the grasses, moving the last leaves in the woods. I breathe in the cool, damp air. Everything is poised. The day is about to begin.”

Post-School Drop Off – Rebecca Barry, Author of Later, at the Bar

A Caffeinated Gossip Girl

After having kids and refusing to fall in line with other parents who go straight to work after dropping their kids of at school, Rebecca ensures she has ‘her’ time. She makes her way to her local coffee shop where she intersects with her neighbors, to listen to stories about people’s spouses, jobs, and children. Rebecca is leading the movement to bring the Happy Hour to the morning, complete with good coffee and a cozy place to sit, while listening to other people’s business

10:30am – Monique Truong, Author of The Book of Salt

A Deputy Caretaker

After her late cup of coffee, Monique begins to “walk the grounds” of her Brooklyn home where her and her husband have a fig tree, several citrus trees, a variety of herbs, and a couple of potted flowers. She inspects them long after her husband did before she awoke, noting anything that has sprouted, bloomed and wilted. Through out the day, Monique and her husband text and call each other to go over the details, and compare notes and complain about the squirrels. She says, “the joy is also in the sharing of this small piece of earth with my own constant companion.”

Noon – Lily Tuck, Author of The News From Paraguay and Woman of Rome

A Lunchtime Lover

While Lily’s morning most reflected by own when I was working for the Saatchi Saatchi Fallon group, her day is built around her sandwich. On her way to work after picking up a coffee, reading the paper, and picking up a sandwich, she starts her day with e-mails blogs, eBay, and phone calls until before she knows it, its lunchtime. She takes a moment to enjoy her sandwich with a glass of soda water. Now the day has its divide from its start. Lily’s afternoon lies dead ahead for her to work and write diligently into the afternoon.

3pm – Amy Bloom, Author of Away and the forthcoming Where the God of Love Hangs Out

A Devout Napper

Three o’clock is Amy’s naptime and has been for 50 years.

“My nap is a forceful, accomplished lover, for whom I have bought, over the years, a few appreciative tokens (a mammoth couch, an indestructible blanket). I submit; I wallow, I revel in what’s coming. When this hour rolls around, I put down my work and open my arms to Hypnos, and his handsome sons, Morpheus and Phantasus – not ones to say no to a nap.”

6pm – Geraldine Brooks, Author of March and People of the Book

A Dinner Maven

“I love the moment when we all pull up out chairs and sit down to dinner. Most nights, if it’s just the five of us, we are around the kitchen table. So there are a few minutes of transition between the flurry at the stove to the clatter of tableware and the passage of dishes across the room. Then we all take a deep breath.”

6:30pm – Ann Hood, Author of The knitting Circle and Comfort

An Evening Connoisseur

Ann’s day begins early from waking up two children with a decade between them, slurping down her coffee, driving her kids to school, finding clean socks, signing permission slips, answering phone calls, meeting deadlines, waiting for repairmen, retrieving her kids and cooking dinner all while emails flow freely as if like water falling from the sky. Finally it is 6:30pm, Ann hears the sound of her husband’s key in the lock, and in an instant all the driving and the fixing is worthwhile, as she gets a kiss hello and uncorks a bottle of wine over the sharing of what has happened in their hours apart.

8:30pm – Jonathan Safran Foer, Author of Everything Is Illuminated, Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close, and the forthcoming Eating Animals

An Inbetweener

From spending hours staring at his blank screen wanting only to turn it off, Jonathan knows he will eagerly anticipate turning it back on during his commute home. From spending, what feels like a century, putting his children to sleep, Jonathan finds himself wanting them to wake up again. Jonathan feels most himself between the having done and the having to do again.

The Kids’ Bedtime – Ayelet Waldman, Author of Bad Mother and Love and Other Impossible Pursuits

A Storytime Mother

Ayelet’s joy can be found in the most bittersweet 20 minutes spent with her eight-year-old daughter Rosie. Rosie loves books and stories; she can recount the exact plot of every story Ayelet tells her. All Rosie ever wanted to do was read but she is dyslexic, as a cruel twist of fate. Nonetheless, after courses, tutors, boxes of sight words, Rosie and Ayelet curl up under the covers, as Rosie defiantly reads against her disability to one day be able to read on her own and one day, as Ayelet foresees, possibly write.

Late At Night – Monica Bhide, Author of Modern Spice

A Reflective Simplifier

Monica takes her time getting into bed and once under the covers, gently combs through what she is thankful for in her day. From her husband making his appointment on time, being able to find ointment for her son’s scraped knee, to her being able to cook a delicious dish. Although hesitant at first to begin this routine after a friend’s council, she has welcomed a sense of piece and centering of her mind and she drifts off to start another day.

While value is constantly being redefined and strategies are built around provoking rare moments to illicit timeless emotions, turning small routines into simple joys is where the real stories lay waiting.

**These people and stories were featured in depth in the November issue of Real Simple magazine, titled The Most Meaningful Moment Of My Day