FINDING A CREATIVE LIFE (Part 5)

Day after day I continued to work on the book with Spencer sleeping by my side. The Shakespeare Club, in our second season, performed "Hamlet" that spring. My life was blossoming into a rich canvas of meaning and purpose.

Here, Spencer, your breakfast. Come here, baby. Spence?

He had stopped eating. We learned his liver was in trouble. The vet said to give him anything he wants. People food, that junky cat food from the grocery store, anything to get him eating. We'll do what we can here to encourage his appetite and quell his nausea.

Spencer lost weight. And wouldn't eat.

The vet said, There's nothing we can do anymore. Spencer will let you know when he's ready to go.

William and I held the little guy. We petted him and spoke softly. We cried.

Spencer was my history in fur. For sixteen years he had moved house to house, relationship to relationship and career to career with me. He licked my wet cheeks when I was sad and adapted to every new environment with aplomb. He'd come all the way into this new life with me and I didn't want to let him go.

But he did go. He did let us know when it was time. He sat outside in our backyard. He curled into a ball, slowly blinked at us and we knew.

William and I stood by Spencer's side at the vet's office. Spencer's eyes had gone glassy from the sedative and then pitch black as the lethal shot set him into an unreal stillness. It wasn't really "going to sleep," as they call it. It's a life, stopped.

We fumbled our way to the car and wept...for two weeks. It was a hard goodbye and a most important event in our marriage. We didn't expect anyone in the world to understand our grief over a dead cat. It was enough that we had each other to hold on to as this small member of our family disappeared.

FINDING A CREATIVE LIFE (Part 4)

Later that afternoon I attended a non-fiction critique session also led by Susan. Women, sitting in chairs arranged in a horseshoe formation, each waited with seven pages of a memoir or autobiography they'd written. I'd signed up to read portions of my travel emails from China.

I smoothed my papers with a damp hand, took a breath and launched in. I'd never read any of my writing aloud and most certainly not for critique. At the end of my reading I looked up into Susan's eyes and she said, This is brilliant writing.

As a result of Susan's approbation I knew I was officially pregnant with creativity that now could be unleashed. I signed up to read more of my writing in an auditorium filled with four hundred women — even though I had nothing prepared. The rules for these evening readings stipulated pieces be no more than three minutes long.

I took off for the college library, found a computer and wrote about the Shakespeare Club. That night, when I stood at the podium, adjusted the microphone and read my words, the positive audience reaction told me exactly what I was giving birth to.

I arrived home from the conference as high as those clouds I'd been spinning into dreams above our house in Los Angeles. I poured William a glass of wine and said, Sit, I have to share this with you.

I read him all the poems and essays I'd written that week. When I finished I looked up at the one person I wanted to please more than anyone in the world.

His face was damp with tears.

I only wish I'd been the first one to tell you, Mel. You are a great writer.

I knew the book I had in me, the one I was supposed to write, would be a memoir about my first year of running Shakespeare Club, entwined with the story of my wanting to be an actor, leaving my acting career and making peace with that decision.

It took me eight months to write the book and another five months to rewrite it. Next to me on the couch, our car Spencer curled up tight against my hip and snoozed as I wrote and wrote. I didn't share my work with William. I was too shy to do that. His impression meant a great deal to me and I wanted the work to be the best it could be before showing a single page to him.

FINDING A CREATIVE LIFE (Part 3)

After a few months of volunteer reading, I approached the principal with the idea of an after-school program for third-, fourth- and fifth-graders. I would call it The Shakespeare Club.

What? William said.

The Shakespeare Club. I could teach them all the stuff I know and maybe they could become better readers, I don't know...it's worth a shot.

By October, William had helped me make a brochure and I pitched the club idea to parents, teachers and schoolkids. By November I had thirteen kids meeting in a classroom once a week. By April of the next year that number had dropped to ten kids, and in May they performed a rudimentary production of "A Midsummer Night's Dream" and I sank into a bathtub exhausted and drunk on goodwill.

For years my friend Heather had been encouraging me to go to a weeklong writers' conference in upstate New York. She had been attending it for what seemed like an eternity and thought it was just what I needed. It was sponsored by an organization called the International Women's Writing Guild.

Geez, Heath, I don't know. All women? I'm not really into large gatherings of women. Goddess-type talk and airy-fairy stuff aren't for me. I don't think I'd be good there.

After my Shakespeare Club duties were over, it was clear I needed something else creative in my life. I was hankering to write but didn't know what. I said what the hell and signed up for the conference.

In June I arrived at Skidmore College, site of the event, and checked into a dorm room with a healthy dose of skepticism. On my first morning I followed Heather around like a puppy. Over breakfast I buried my face in tater-tots and sausage while she greeted friend after friend with gleeful screams and hugs.

I left this girly reconnaissance behind and went to peruse a schedule of classes. The first class I landed in was a non-fiction workshop taught by the writer Susan Tiberghien. I opened a brand-new wide-ruled notebook and uncapped a Uniball pen and as soon as Susan suggested a writing prompt I found myself scribbling words across the page like a writer on a cocaine bender.

Where the heck was this coming from? I was like one of those crazies who talked about channeling. Page after page filled up with words then sentences then paragraphs. My fingers were stained with blue ink and I sat back in my hard-backed classroom chair.

This is it. This is my conception.

FINDING A CREATIVE LIFE (Part 2)

I continued, however, on my quest for purpose and creativity. I meditated on it. I wondered about it and kept my eyes open. My best friend Michelle traveled from her home in Canada for a visit and we took a trip to Northern California. Perched cliffside with tequila and a winter sunset we watched crashing ocean waves and billowing sea foam.

I have to tell you this dream I had last night, I told Michelle. I this dream I was pregnant. I mean like big and full with a round belly.

Oh, Mel, Michelle sighed. This is the one thing I've always wanted for you. You'd be a great mother and it makes me sad you haven't had that experience.

Believe me, I wouldn't be a great mother. It's because I know that I know it's not for us. No, this dream is about something else. I'm going to birth something but I don't know what it is yet. There's something out there I'm going to do that has my name on it, but I don't know what.

By the spring of 2005 I was given a clue. A local elementary school left fliers on the doorsteps of our neighborhood, asking for community volunteer help.

I showed the flier to William and told him, I'm going to go over there to a meeting.

What are you going to do?

I don't know. Something.

You can do whatever you want. Why would you want to volunteer at a school?

I don't know what else to do right now and if they need help it's stupid for me to hang around here trying out new recipes like it's some kind of calling.

There were five people at the meeting in the school library. The principal, a couple of parents and another non-parent volunteer, Michael. The group was planning a new kindergarten yard and needed help, so I signed up.

I asked Michael how I could help by doing something more academically oriented, and he gave me information on a non-profit organization called Wonder of Reading that trained mentors to work with kids struggling to read.

So I planted flowers at the school, then took a three-hour training course, after which I was assigned to read with a little girl and a little boy. They were both in first grade and I met with each of them for an hour a week.

FINDING A CREATIVE LIFE (Part 1)

For our first eight years together, on my birthday I asked for only one thing:

William, will you get up with me in the morning, have coffee and share the newspaper across our kitchen bar, like real people do? This sounds as ridiculous to say as it is to write, but marriage is nothing if not the melding of eccentricities.

William is a healthy sleeper and was a committed night owl. When he wasn't working he liked to stay up late. Then he crawled into bed, cuddled up and slept until noon.

My schedule is contrary to his. I'm most productive in the morning. In the evening, I can't wait to put on pajamas, often before dinner, and scrunch into bed with a book by nine-thirty. This routine had me up by seven a.m. reading the paper, alone, over breakfast.

Thus: Once a year I made the request and bleary-eyed William complied because it made me happy and, as he likes to joke, I'm so easily entertained.

It went like this for years until I noticed that we do this almost every day now. They say married people look alike over time. We adjust. We catch up to one another. We match habits. I see more action movies and he's taken an interest in dramas.

One Christmas I asked for another special gift: Please come to one yoga class with me. Just try it. I promise you'll like the teacher, she's seriously cute.

He came, he tried and now we do yoga two or three times a week together. We continue to bend, shape and form ourselves into a kind of Henry Moore sculpture in both yoga class and our day-to-day lives.

Certainly I have grown to accept that he still loves to stay up late and sleep in when he can. I have figured out that his moods don't have to be mine. Nor does my emotional life get to rule the atmosphere of our home. I remind myself to speak up and speak truthfully. He listens and doesn't get bogged down in self-recrimination.