The Joy of Taking Part

"If you don’t face the facts, what can stop you?"—Ruth Gordon

Years ago, I had an ad on craigslist offering my services as a caterer. One day a woman called, and it turned out she lived around the corner. She was having a party for 30 people. Would I help her plan it, cater it, and work during the event? I could tell right away we would make an easy team. There was a lot of cooking to do for the party, and Richard was visiting. He helped me prep the food, and when it was ready he helped carry the shopping bags around the corner to L’s apartment. Over the years, I’ve been able to smush Richard into a corner, and he’s helped me at events. This was not one of those times, but L and Richard met, and it was the beginning of a tender and generous triangle. L’s party was a great success. People liked the food. L is a talented mixologist, so how could a party she threw not work.

From then on, every so often, Richard and I would bring booze and hors d’oeuvres over to her apartment, and we’d spend the evening together while L’s tiny dog looked up at us or ignored us. Yesterday, we picked L up at the train station and brought her to our house for lunch. It was her first visit here, and we were excited. Before she arrived, I asked what she wanted to eat. It involved a panini maker. You know I have one.  

When you can’t tell what a person is thinking, you think they are having secret thoughts. All thoughts are another word for imagination. We like going to a bar in Catskill called Hemlock. What a great name for a bar. Every time you go there, it reminds you to enjoy every sip of life.

Early this morning I dreamed I passed my old friend E on the street in NYC. I didn’t recognize her at first. She was younger and heavier than in life. Her face was a bit swollen, as if she was on steroids. She stopped me, said my name, and threw her arms around me saying, “Let’s be friends again, I miss you.” This morning when I woke up, I told Richard about the dream, and I said, “It will never happen in real life.” I knew I would never have the dream again as well and I should treasure it.

According to my sister, our father’s younger brother Zev meets our mother’s younger sister Bell at a wedding both families attend, and they arrange a meeting at a hotel. People tell my sister things. She sells real estate and smooths out fears. People don’t tell me things. Would you trust your secrets with me?

Zev is rich. He’s a furrier. He wears handmade suits and lives in a twelve-room apartment on Park Avenue. His wife Kate is beautiful. She works in the showroom by his side, and he tells her he’s having lunch with a buyer when he leaves to meet Bell. Bell is thin and tan, a stringy, tendony thing you’d need to pull out of your teeth if you ate her. She wants more than the hour Zev can steal away to be with her, but she loves the feeling of her secret life, a woman on the verge of having no life at all.

Her husband, Eli, doesn’t speak. No one remembers a word out of his mouth. Her daughter, Brenda, skulks around with angry circles under her eyes. And the image of her boy, Sam, disappears like invisible ink when he leaves a room. Zev eases the knots in her tight little muscles. He kisses her in the shower and tells her to spend as much time as she likes in the room. They don’t know why they are unhappy. Are they unhappy or just alive?

Charlotte Rampling in 1980.

Sometimes I compare my body to the body of Charlotte Rampling, who was born the same year as me. Sometimes I don’t know what I look like. Sometimes I can’t see myself dying. Sometimes I think I should prepare for things that are inevitable. Sometimes, I don’t think inevitabilities apply to me. Sometimes I think people waste time releasing their resentments. Sometimes I think it doesn’t matter one way or the other. Sometimes I think about the beauty of Charlotte Rampling when she was young. Sometimes I realize people see me in ways I don’t see myself, and then I see myself from their perspective. Sometimes the happiness I feel in not being alone is all I feel. Sometimes women portrayed in movies as old tilt their heads with sad smiles because they have to wear Eileen Fisher clothes. Sometimes I can’t remember the anxiety I felt when I was starting out and didn’t know how life would go. Sometimes I’m happy never to feel it again and then I ask myself why do you think you won’t feel it again?  

If you want to be greedy, you have to be one of the rabbits that eats things in the garden when no one is looking. I remember standing in front of the refrigerator every time a rejection letter arrived or someone I wanted to be with canceled a date. I would feel the cold air surround me and look inside, as if it contained the happiness in the mountain where the Pied Piper leads the children of Hamlin. Stealth gluttony has utility. Stealth vanity is stupid. What would be the point of it?

Note a part of your body you think of with pleasure. Walk around the room letting that part of your body lead you and notice how that way of moving changes the way you see the world. Make a sound to accompany that way of moving. Give the way you are moving and seeing a name, a hometown, a job.

After lunch, L sat in the living room with Richard and me, and the conversation flowed, as it always does, when people don’t need it go in a particular direction. We were holding our breath before Tuesday. During the four years of the Trump presidency, I learned nothing about how the world works. I have friends who lived for many years in Soviet Russia, and when they wrote and talked, I felt I was beside them under a blanket, drinking from a flask. Richard, L, and I had all voted. L said she was certain Kamala would win. I kept asking her to tell us why she thought this, partly because of how beautiful she looked and how her face opened when she said this. She had her reasons based in numbers and predictions. Things she had gleaned about MAGA women defecting from their husbands and zillions of Swiftie girls registering to vote and going to the polls.

L is a woman who, in her work, sometimes can’t see straight or keep her balance after hearing about brutalities some people live through. She talked about the environment and the wars going on as well as the looming election, and she said It was psychologically necessary to be optimistic about the future. It was the only way to exist and nothing was gained for the world or for individuals to think any other way.

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ON NOVEMBER 10 from 8 to 10PM EST, Richard Toon and I will be leading a special Zoom event presented by

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It’s called, “How to write a seductive first sentence,” and it’s one of the five things we will be talking about.

Everyone is invited. Please spread the word. Here is the link to register: https://myfivethings.com/class/how-to-write-a-seductive-sentence/

Here is an example of a seductive first sentence: I tripped over a dead person. What are the options for sentence two? I was wearing suede shoes, and I noticed blood on the toe? It was my husband? The body was naked? His head was resting on a mound of moss and a salamander was looking up at me?

You can see how, once you enter the garden of forking paths with a propulsive first sentence, you have all kinds of choices for sentence B, and depending on what you choose for sentence B, you have all kinds of options for sentence C.

The game is to think hard about sentence A and come prepared to be unprepared for what happens in the moment of writing your first sentence. In other words, don't arrive with the storyboard for the movie all sketched out, the way Alfred Hitchcock did before he started shooting.

Here is an example of a sentence with lead shoes: My mother didn't love me.

What will life be like on November 10? We will either be celebrating or holding each other in our grief.

The next ZOOM Conversation for Paid subscribers, on writing craft, is on Saturday November 23 from 3 to 4 EST. To RSVP, please email me at: lauriestone.substack.com

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Every sentence has a biography. Every sentence tells you about the life of the narrator through their vocabulary, their inclusion of foreign words, their syntax, grammar, and punctuation, their comic outlook, the music in their cadences. These elements swirl into a distinctive sound with the ability to seduce the reader into continuing. How do you make written language register with the immediacy and intimacy of spoken language?

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One day two eagles came to visit us.