When is enough enough?

     

    I was in Savannah, Georgia, in my 20s with a couple of girlfriends, just passing through on our way from Florida to a wedding in North Carolina. We got lost and asked for directions. I was driving and I said, “I don’t care where I have to go, please don’t make me cross that bridge.” The gas station attendant (this was 1974—there was such a thing) told me I wouldn’t have to go anywhere near the bridge, much less cross it.

          He lied.

          I can still recall how scared I was driving over that bridge. And that’s all I remember about Savannah.

          This past weekend, I spent the weekend there. Again with a couple of girlfriends. That bridge is even higher than it was in 1974. Ships kept running into it, so they rebuilt it in the 1990s, making it something like 50 feet further above the river it spans. Gulp. We didn't cross it, which was fine with me.

          But this weekend we got to be real tourists. We rode trollies through the historical district,

walked up and down River Street, and sat in several of the 22 remaining squares—each of them a small park unto itself—surrounded by beautiful buildings.

          I watched people—I’m a writer; that’s what we do—and thought how I’d have loved being a tourist there twenty years ago when I was younger, thinner, healthier. Of course, I couldn’t have afforded it then, and sitting in a park drinking in the beauty of 18^th century houses probably wouldn’t have satisfied me all that much. I’d have wished for something different. Something more.

          It reminded me of how I feel about my writing career sometimes. When I get a new contract, or a 5-star review, or a nice royalties check, I think how nice that would have been 20 years ago. When I was not only younger, thinner, and healthier, I wrote faster, too. I could have written three or four books a year. I could have—

          Well, I don’t know what I could have, to tell the truth, and it doesn’t matter. Because if all those good writing things had happened then, I think I’d probably have wished for something different. Something more.

          Maybe that’s why things happen the way they do. Maybe it is so I can enjoy sitting in the park in Savannah, Georgia, and so I can love writing one book a year and know that—in both situations—I wouldn’t wish for something different or something more. It is the true definition of the word enough.