Feeling Impatient & Loving the Journey
I'm sitting here tonight listening to Jonell Mosser's album, "So Like Joy"... full of soulful vibes and great lyrics....
Jonell is an accomplished songwriter and performer- and Larry & Joy's only daughter.
So much of her mother lives on in Jonell's face, and I'm reading the letters Joy wrote back in 1941 and 1942- helplessly in love, bursting with impatience to start her new life, willing to fight the whole world to be with the man she loves, bold, insecure, both a woman and still a girl.
I remember those days of new love too, the intensity and the impatience. I feel for the nights she cried herself to sleep so long ago- when the waiting seemed endless.
She was amazing in a way so many of us women are- without the possibility of seeing the future, having zero guarantee of anything working out all right, she put her whole energetic heart on the line. She lived in hope, even through disappointments and delays. She was honest about her fears and frustrations, but quick to regroup. Maybe because she was so young and believing, she couldn't imagine a world in which things wouldn't work out right in the end.
That faith carried her through. We can know the future she couldn't see then, some of the great happiness that lay ahead, and some of the great losses too. Yet I can't pity her (I'm sure she wouldn't want me to); in knowing her the little I do already through her letters to Larry, she wouldn't have changed a thing. She was sure about her path, and she never gave up that loving energy. She was committed to the journey ahead, no matter what it would bring.
And when losses came, she went on, always forward, in love.
In 1942, as Joy and Larry tried to figure out when the doors might open for them to marry, nothing was certain. Larry was awaiting oversees combat orders any day, updates came and went, military plans changed and then changed again. In their nearly daily letters, they went back and forth as to which path would be more painful- to stay apart waiting, or to marry with no certainty they could stay together...
Joy's family were very approving of Larry, but wanted the young couple to wait (understandably) until after the war was over. The waiting and the uncertainty of everything must have been tortuous for them both, and Joy laments her taut nerves and loss of appetite during this time.
So sweetly, all of this turmoil only strengthened their bond. Even when the letters were sad "blue notes" as they called them, full of frustrations and insecurities, they were always reassuring one another that the way would find them, and that nothing could keep them apart forever.
I feel like I'm in a kind of 'soaking period' in my research and writing right now. A necessary time, but one that's making me feel impatient! I've drafted about 20,000 words of the book manuscript so far, and I've barely scratched the surface of all the places I want to go, and where the story is, in fact, leading me.
Larry has such a clear voice and in his letters, and so does Joy- voices I am determined to represent well in my writing about them. I'm unearthing some of their deepest secrets, all their 'sweet nothings', inside jokes, hopes, plans, pains, and dreams.
I want whoever reads my future book to love them both as much as I have come to, and to give Jonell a faithful rendering of their story.
It's hard to be patient- wrestling with endless possibilities and an open-ended timeline for making a dream come true. But there's no skipping ahead, I can only to this one sentence at a time.
I want to know it all right now- to have already done all the research I want to, followed all the rabbit trails I keep encountering, find the best possible story arc and structure to share all this in a meaningful way- so that all the thousands of words ahead will just flow out perfectly and easily. (Shouldn't take too long, right!?)
I may not yet know much about writing a book- but I know enough to know that this is not how it will go, lol.
This will be a looooong process, a journey I'm deeply invested in and cannot rush. And a journey I am loving every minute of. I have interviews to conduct, books to read, archives to visit, road trips to take, photos to snap, and more letters to read. (Not to mention, LOTS to write...!) This is pretty much a dream come true already!
All of it soaking slowly into my memory and imagination... I'm soaking in their personalities and styles, and faces, trying to inhabit a bit of the past world where they found each other. And finding new parts of myself in the process, too.
Only after a good, long soak will I be able to really tell this story the way I need to.
Listening to Jonell's music, I'm sure I'm hearing echoes of her mother's and father's spirits- people that loved passionately, made their lives fun, appreciated the daily miracles of togetherness, and charted their own paths no matter what.
Jonell wrote and recorded a song in memory of her mom, and the words so perfectly capture the essence of the story I'm working to tell:
It's good to remember
It's good to forget
But it's best to let go of all we regret
Your time has passed
Mine hasn't yet
And it's so like Joy
this feeling you've left
♥
Love to all & thank you for walking this road with me!
Leah
Thank you for sharing- what an inspiration!