These Precious Days: Essays

Ann picks up a copy of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse to re-read; the copy has a foreword by Eudora Welty, describing how Welty came across Woolf’s work. Welty asserts that in reading a “great original work,” the discovery of it depends not on its initial newness but on how it seems to offer something new each time it is reread.

Ann applies this assertion to her discovery of Welty. The first story she ever read was “A Visit of Charity” when she was in school. Although she then sympathized with Marian, the Campfire Girl in the story, over time, her sympathies shifted to the old women in the care facility, whom Marian visits.

Ann finds it “moving” to think about how she discovered Welty when the latter was still alive, just as Welty discovered Woolf when Woolf was still alive. Ann’s mother gave her a copy of The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty when Ann was 17. A short while later, Ann attended a reading by Welty at Vanderbilt and got her copy signed by the author. At the reading, Welty reads “Why I Live at the P.O.,” a popularly anthologized story of hers. When Ann rereads the collection later, it strikes her that this and other popularly anthologized pieces of Welty’s don’t necessarily capture the entire “darkness and depth of her body of work” (88).

While Ann initially thought Welty to be a fabulist, after marrying into the culture that Welty comes from, she realizes that Welty was as accurate in her descriptions of Mississippi as perhaps Joan Didion was of California or Saul Bellow of Chicago. Welty describes the natural world of Mississippi perfectly; her characters largely interact with these landscapes much more than they do with each other.

When Welty died in July 2001, Ann drove to Jackson to attend the funeral. A brief storm that morning had greatly improved the weather, and it was an unusually cool summer afternoon. Ann likens this uncommon occurrence to the “unusual greatness” of Welty herself.

Ann and her husband, Karl, travel to a fly-out lodge in Alaska. They skip fishing one day and pay their pilot extra to spend the day flying. Karl and the pilot chat, and the latter offers Karl a chance to fly the plane. Karl takes off and lands on the water repeatedly; despite it being his first time flying this plane, Ann is not afraid. She is never afraid when flying with him.

Ann is more worried when Karl flies, and she is not in the plane. She remembers an incident when he flew home from Ontario but landed in Ohio due to bad weather and was further delayed because the transponder stopped working. Karl insists on waiting and getting it fixed before flying back home. Ann was sick with worry all night, imagining the worst when she did not hear from him further. He eventually walked in the door late at night; fixing the part had taken a long time, and he didn’t want to call and bother Ann, whom he assumed would be sleeping.

Karl’s father, Frank, used to fly and began letting Karl fly his plane at eight years old. Karl had a job working at the Key Brothers Flying Service in his hometown when he was 12, cleaning hangars, driving the fuel truck, and even co-piloting a plane with one of the owners. Karl once flew a customer’s plane that was parked in the airfield without asking anyone and had to land it in the field halfway because the engine quit. When Karl told Frank what he did, Frank sent Karl to apologize to the customer. The customer simply inquired whether Karl had manually switched to the second fuel tank, which this model of plane had, but Karl didn’t know about it. To Ann’s inquiry about the story, Karl does not remember being scared when the engine quit; flying planes to Karl is like driving cars for everyone else.

Karl gets his pilot’s logbook at 12 and clocks 200 hours even before college. Between college, grad school, the initial years of his marriage spent in Africa, moving to Nashville and attending medical school, and the birth of his two children, Karl doesn’t fly at all. In 1984, when living in Nashville, Karl finally buys a plane; he buys and sells many more throughout his life. He owns several without a license but studies for the exam for years and eventually obtains a perfect score.

Karl goes for bouts without flying. Usually, after a dangerously close call of some kind, he sells the plane and insists flying is out of his system before eventually going on to buy another one. During one such plane-less spell, Karl buys a motorcycle, which Ann hates: “Couldn’t there be a hobby in which death was not a likely outcome?” (104) Karl ends up selling the motorcycle very soon, after slipping on ice and having the motorcycle land on him.

At 61, Karl begins saying he wishes he had one last plane. Ann okays this because Karl without a plane is exceptionally miserable. He spends years considering choices and priorities until Ann finally insists he get the safest model available. There are three things involved in flying: the pilot’s skill, the machine’s reliability, and an “X” factor, such as being struck by lightning. The first is already impeccable, and the third is uncontrollable, so Ann takes charge of the second.

Karl finally buys the plane at 71, and he and Ann head to Meridian, Mississippi, to meet Karl’s mother for lunch. On the way back, as the plane takes off, Ann realizes she has not latched her door and manages to communicate it to Karl in time, who lands the plane immediately after taking off. Rather than be angry about Ann’s mistake, Karl is thrilled he was able to expertly execute this safety maneuver. Ann is horrified that after everything, she would have been the one to kill them; she realizes that no one person can keep someone else entirely safe. In the end, “life and time” will come for everyone. However, she will not stop worrying about Karl, asking him to be careful and reaching for his hand.

In the first section of the essay, “Cast On,” Ann recalls learning how to knit from her grandmother, who was her role model and a master knitter. She gets Ann started on knitting squares, patiently helping her work through her mistakes every time.

In the second section, “Pattern,” Ann recalls teaching her friend Marti how to knit during their summer in Europe. In a bid to stay ahead of Marti and teach her, Ann finally learns to read patterns and work with different needles.

In the third section, “Cables,” Ann describes using knitting to quit smoking as a way for her to occupy her hands more productively. It takes her multiple tries, and when Ann quits for good, she compulsively knits instead. Eventually, Ann gives up both practices.

In the fourth and final section, “Cast Off,” Ann describes picking up knitting again after her friend Lucy passes away. Ann is sent skeins and needles by her friend Erica and knits an enormous scarf for herself. She occasionally wonders if she should take it apart and make smaller, more practical scarves, but then remembers all the people that it holds: “my grandmother, who taught me to knit, and Marti, whom I taught to knit, and Lucy and all the things she didn’t get to finish, and Erica, who made sure I got it done” (118).

Ann calls up her close friend, Tavia Catchart, to help identify a bird she comes across while hiking in Utah. Tavia runs a nature preserve in Kentucky, writes plant identification guides, and has an Emmy-nominated gardening show.

Ann and Tavia have been friends since they were seven. They share several similarities: They were both born in California, have older sisters, moved to Nashville around the same time after their parents divorced, and traveled to Los Angeles every summer to spend time with their other parents. Both would marry young, get divorced, and choose not to have any children. Tavia was always beautiful, popular in school, smart, and hardworking. After college, she did a short stint of acting before making money in tech. She eventually left it all behind to move to Sierra Nevada and teach herself about the natural world.

Ann and Tavia’s friendship spans more than 50 years. Tavia believes she and Ann are lucky to have found each other’s friendship and have things turn out so well for them. Ann, in turn, reflects on how Tavia has always created her own luck: She began working at 14 years old, has had to deal with Type 1 diabetes her whole life, and constantly takes care of other people without complaint.

One winter, Tavia coaches Ann over the phone on how to rescue an enormous and unusual beetle that gets stuck in her window. Ann spots the beetle again the following spring or at least what is possibly its relative. She imagines it asking her to thank Tavia for saving its life and responds, “'I know. She saved you. You’re grateful. Get in line’” (126).

In 23 parts, Ann recounts multiple instances where thoughts and conversations about children have come up in her life:

As part of a panel with another writer, Ann and “Q” disagree about what it means to be a writer. “Q” insists one needs to have children to be a real writer, as only then can one know real love. Ann asserts that people without children have known love and can be writers, naming many literary examples. They leave the panel discussion and never set eyes on each other again.

Ann receives a twisted compliment from an editor who admires her work, saying she does so much good for the world that she should be “forcibly impregnated.”

Ann is invited to be on a national radio talk show, and the host repeatedly asks Ann about her childlessness. Ann pushes back, asking if Jonathan Franzen would be equally subjected to such scrutiny. When the show airs, the questions about childlessness are edited out.

Ann remembers the nuns at the Catholic school she attended always seeming more comfortable and at ease once the children went home. They were women who chose not to have children and had no regrets about it.

In conversation with a friend who is trying to decide about having children, Ann analogizes being repeatedly told by people to check for keys in a drawer and never finding any there as a way of explaining she has always been sure of her choice not to have children.

Ann meets a woman who decided to have a tubal ligation at 25; it took two years until the procedure happened. Back home, Ann decides to have one but is discouraged by her husband, Karl, and her gynecologist. Frustrated at being treated this way at 37, she feels admiration and exhaustion for the woman who had to repeatedly have this conversation for two years when she was just 25.

At a Christmas party, a friend’s sister who recently adopted a baby comments to Ann that people who choose to remain childless are incredibly selfish.

Karl wonders if Ann is pregnant. She is not but asks him what his response would have been if she were. He unhesitatingly responds he would have been thrilled, asserting it is the only answer when a woman tells you she is pregnant; otherwise, the man is a “complete idiot.”

Ann sees a woman with six young children at a grocery store and feels admiringly grateful for the “good work” she is doing in keeping the human species alive.

One of the only times Ann considers having children is when she visits her first editor, Dick Todd, at his home. The Todds are happily married, have a beautiful house, are always hosting friends and family, and have three lovely, grown daughters, one in high school and two away at college. The only way Ann can imagine having children is if she had the Todds’ life and children, the latter being mostly away.

When she is 39, Ann sees the profile of a young Black boy named Stevie in the local newspaper, which features profiles of children for adoption. Something snaps in her, and she desperately wants to adopt Stevie. Ann reaches out to the listed number and is told she will be paired with a child who is the best fit; in all probability, Stevie has already been adopted. Ann gives up the adoption process but carries Stevie in her heart for a long time until she finally writes a novel called Run about Stevie and his brother.

Ann knows she does not have enough energy to be both a writer and a mother. She discusses this with her friend, Erica, when they are both young; Erica empathizes, though thinks she could do motherhood if she met a man who wanted children and was willing the share half the workload. Years later, Erica meets such a man and has two children with him.

Someone tells Ann to have children even if she does not presently want any to avoid regret later in life.

Ann’s friends don’t ask her about having children, but their husbands do; it feels like they are looking for validation for their own life choices though Ann does not judge them.

Ann drops off food for a neighbor who has just had her fourth child and indelicately asks the woman’s mother-in-law if the couple will have more children. The mother-in-law, and later Ann, are both mortified by Ann’s inquiry. Ann realizes that just as she doesn’t really care if the couple will have more children, most people asking Ann about children are similarly only making idle conversation.

The people in Ann’s immediate family have always supported her decision not to have children. Ann wonders if it is because they think she will be a bad parent, envy the life and resources she has without children, or simply don’t like the mess and trouble children bring.

When Karl’s daughter Josephine was just five years old, he took her to the Himalayas, leaving his wife in charge of their toddler back home. After a month of feeding her mostly chocolate and Coke, Karl briefly lost her in the airport on the way home. Ann knows that despite the love they share, Karl and her marriage would have never survived children.

Ann knows having a dog, a bookstore, and stepchildren are not replacements for having her own children. She doesn’t view them as such; she loves them for what they are and not for filling a non-existent hole in her heart.

Ann is present for the birth of her friend Marti’s second child. It is the only time she feels she has missed out on something, as she is amazed by the capability of the human body. However, she knows that just because she can do something doesn’t mean she should.

Ann discusses choosing not to have children with her friend, the writer Kate DiCamillo, who is also childless. They both agree they could never subject someone they love to the ordeal of childhood, with its uncertainty, lack of autonomy, and other such negative experiences.

Ann was always an uncomfortable child, a little adult in child’s body waiting to grow up. Despite this, she was a popular neighborhood babysitter when she was young. She suspects part of this is because she always cleaned up people’s houses when she babysit, unable to tolerate the mess that inevitably comes with having children.

Ann reflects on how every generation looks back at the preceding one and is horrified by how things were done.

The illustrator Robin Preiss Glasser suggests that she and Ann collaborate on a project, and they create Lambslide together. Ann follows Robin’s lead on the book tour because Robin is incredible with the children. She thinks if she had met Robin earlier in life, it would have brought her closer to changing her mind about children than some hypothetical perfect man. Robin looks at each child with the same wonder and amazement she looks at Ann, accepting each as they are.

When she is 29, Ann spontaneously buys a ticket to Vienna and plans to celebrate her 30th birthday there alone. However, on the day of her departure, she finds herself unable to leave; coincidentally, she falls sick later that night and is unwell for the next five days. Ann takes her ticket back to the American Express office and is told it will remain valid for a year.

The following autumn, the ticket is still unused, and Ann has recently started seeing a man named Karl. On their fourth date, Ann asks him if he wants to go to Vienna, and Karl agrees; they spend Karl’s birthday in Vienna. They meet a young woman from Alabama who is traveling alone and invite her to join them for dinner. Ann wonders if she might have encountered a similar kindness from strangers if she had gone the previous year and then remembers how she was so sick that she wouldn’t have been able to leave her room.

Ann and Karl miss their train to Prague from Vienna and decide to go to Budapest instead: “It mattered less where we were going and more who we were with” (159). Karl buys Ann a gold ring to commemorate the day in Budapest; 11 years later, she marries him.