A Barbara’s House

It’s Tuesday morning again. I’m with my writing group. Due to the San Miguel Writer’s Conference, we cannot meet in our usual centuries old location but are meeting in a house belonging to a group member.

The taxi drops me off and I wait across the street in the shaded construction site until others arrive so the door has to be answered only once (why I’m unsure). I recall I’ve been told how spectacular the house is. Unassuming, even dull, its exterior is.

Inside, I’m stunned by the beauty of the home where Barbara, a classical piano teacher lives. Two grand pianos greet us as we enter the house, littered in an organized manner, clearly by someone who has lived there for years. My fascination of the structures in which people live their lives has increased each year.

High walls in the two large, open living rooms give way to a dining room where the wooden table is set for a dozen guests. Little imagination is required to see candlelit dinner parties where music, literature, art, politics and other topics are discussed around the table. A sliding wooden ladder across the dark shelves provides easy access to the nearly hundred books lining one wall. A back wall is filled, as is most of the house with art that would be stunning in any gallery in the world. Dark heavy chests and woodwork remind me not only of Mexico but of old Europe, even Germanic, Barbara’s heritage.

Red tile floors, covered with thick carpets, provide a base for cozy and comfortable upholstered furniture, the kind so difficult to find in Mexico. I indulge by choosing an L shaped off-white couch, allowing my feet to touch the floor, my back and elbows supported perfectly by handicraft pillows. It has been months since I’ve sat in such a comfortable setting, the kind that wraps its’ arms around you, supporting and cuddling you, providing safety from all harm.

Yes, it is the kind of house I would enjoy living in, the kind of place that says who I have been, am, and likely will be. Yet, magnificent as the house is, likely it could entrap a resident into reliving their past rather than proceeding to the future.

Large arched window doors look out, past a wide veranda perfect for lounging or hosting outdoor dinner parties, onto a massive garden. Doves coo in the distance and as elsewhere in San Miguel de Allende, hummingbirds flutter intermittently with the butterflies.

Likely the house has a second story and its size is sufficiently large enough to share easily with someone else. I know if I lived here, I’d want to keep it all for myself, not sharing with anyone regardless of how pleasant they might be.

Here we sit.

Today we are only six women of a certain age. No men or younger ones have joined us today. A New England visitor is working on a book proposal. Oregon native Maxine works on her memoir. Barbara continues writing about some issues in her life and Rosie, the most prolific among us, is starting a new work. Amy, weaves into the conversation that her father was a writer, has finished revisions on her latest food book and is starting a new, even a fiction piece.

Me? I’m unsure what I’m doing. Feeling a bit shredded from the verbal feedback on what I presented at a critique group yesterday, I waffle between re-reading the comments I made and moving on to something new.

I keep myself focused, that is, if keeping one’s fingers flying across the keyboard is being focused. Doing something which moves me forward in some manner with my writing is what I must do, I tell myself.

I think of the challenge a member of another critique group I meet with once a month has given us: to see who can get the most submissions, not acceptances, within the month. Do I want to, can I win that, even if it means unrewarded work and throwing seeds into the wind?

I know I cannot not write. I must, even if no one ever reads it. I stand up, stretch, walk to the windows, looking out on the verdant garden with innumerable ornate metal seating areas, all painted in lavender, a touch of whimsy not matching the setting. I admire the far corner fountain, dripping water slowly, encouraging one to slow their pace. In the bathroom I discover more original oils. Down a long hallway, past the atrium, I see a large, welcoming ceramic sun, likely a backdrop for a perfect sunny morning breakfast setting.

I’m a Barbara, too. Yes, I could live here contentedly, perhaps changing only the lavender metal to a more subdued tone of taupe.

I return to the couch, being reminded of Sigmund Freud’s Vienna office with his hat, once stolen but later returned, hung just beside the door. This house could have been adjacent to it. Here he could have listened to patients spill their innermost wrestlings. When he finished with them, he could have adjourned to write, eventually creating the pages I found in the first book I bought with my own money at a used bookstore in Columbus, Ohio.

I wonder why he, someone I rarely think about, is in my life this morning. People and words slip into and out of our minds and I can let him go as I return to pondering my next steps in my writing efforts.