Oh, Lord. Here we go again. It has been suggested that I author a second compilation of stories, memories, thoughts, and general ramblings, taking valuable time away from my daily mastery of computer card games, solution of Samurai Sudoku, and attentiveness to Breaking News on CNN. I thought I was finished upon the publication of ‘Tis The Drink Talking (which by all accounts was a resounding success), but no, my heirs want me to do it again. I suspect their motive is that exercising my brain in that project will be good for my mental health. I will admit, though, that after several reads of my first book I realized there are other subjects, topics, occurrences, and nonsense that I could discuss in a second book, so that is why I have concluded “hey, why not give it a try”. It should not be perceived as a sequel to the first book, but rather as adding chapters to it.

It’s appropriate, I think, that the first chapter in this book address the question as to how I felt writing the first book, and I can respond that my feelings ran the gamut of emotions, the first of which was a lack of confidence that I could participate in the project for virtually a year. Fortunately, though, the first three questions posed to me concerned the birth of my three sons. Since those were such momentous events in my life (not to mention theirs, I’m sure) I had no problem remembering and writing about them. That, I believe, helped me to overcome my initial doubt, even resistance, about authoring a book of stories.

Not every question or suggested topic was so easy to write about, however, so the project often provided a challenge to my memory and/or as to how I could best express what I wanted to say. Whenever I felt I was conquering the challenge I experienced the emotion of satisfaction. If it was a memory challenge I sensed relief when after concentrating on it I was able to remember details.

It wasn’t always satisfaction, however, because as I was relating several of the stories I realized there were instances where I should have handled something differently or should have done more. Those were the times I felt regret. Most of the time, though, the stories were of happy memories, and since I was able to discuss my experiences from early childhood through education, professional career, marriage and parenthood, I had a sense of fulfillment. 

So I had feelings of doubt, resistance, challenge, satisfaction, relief, regret, and fulfillment while writing ‘Tis The Drink Talking. I should also note that since my work on the book occurred amidst the Covid pandemic it was helpful to be involved in a project that for a few hours each week took my mind off the fear of contacting that virus and the sadness of lives lost to it and families affected by it. In that sense writing the book was therapeutic for me.

While those emotions were present at one time or another I want to say that writing the book presented me with an unique and treasured opportunity to re-live so much of my life and to be even more grateful for my good fortune and the love and support of my family. For that more than any other reason my feeling about the experience of writing ‘Tis The Drink Talking is that it was AWESOME!