And Ode to Lady Hedgebrook's Magic and a "No-Expectations" Life
Cedar Cottage
If three perfect days of solitude in a one-person cottage, six amazing women discussing numerous topics mostly centered around writing over a home-prepared garden dinner, freshly baked cookies, and healthy to-go lunches in one of the most beautiful places on Earth weren't enough, I may just have finished my manuscript.I was serendipitously there - happenstance of another's late arrival coupled with the almost-never event of a single mother – three days with no kids. Home alone or Cedar cottage alone? There was no question, the choice was obvious. Thus I arrived on three days notice, surprised, delighted, giddy, unencumbered. At brunch on Sunday, someone talked about the idea of "no expectations." Nancy, the founder of Hedgebrook explained that her vision when she built this women's writing retreat was unencumbered by the notion of what the place might become. She just had hope that it would be a place that would feed women on every level. As Deb acknowledged, the lack of expectation is built into the very sweat used to pound each wooden peg that holds each cottage together and is transferred by osmosis to every inhabitant, no matter the duration of their stay. Each woman feels the freedom to face whatever comes, be open to possibility and put that authenticity down on a page, or not, as the case may be.I have lived just such a "no expectations" life for almost twelve years now, ever since that moment when I knew my life would never be the same. Expectations had never served me well.Thus Cedar cottage beaconed and I came with no expectations. I am a paragraph or two away from finishing and that book may or may not be published to great acclaim. In that tiny cottage, I remembered that, in the end, it doesn't really matter. What mattered at that moment, as I sat in Cedar's window seat watching mosquitoes dance in the sunlight, was simply that I was there, having leapt at the chance at silence and solitude with very little notion of what it might bring.The walls of Cedar cottage, like all the cottages are infused with tears and wonder and beauty and discovery. The magic Lady Hedgebrook wind brought me to this place and thus I inhaled.I thank all responsible for the privilege.