I got a letter from a man. who is a teacher and he would read my book and he liked it and wrote me and told me that he liked it wanted to know when it would be out in paperback because he was interested in using it in some classes of his and then he said at the bottom of the letter that he had caught some existential Linings in my work name Leah section where a lawyer was talking to one of my leading characters and said people are born and then they die and in between they perform some rather pathetic and more or less meaningless actions. So he wanted to know if that was my philosophy of life. And if it if it wasn't would I be so kind as to articulate my view of the meaning of existence. Total heavyocity right home where the where the philosophy was when someone asked you a question. You answer it. I decided to try to answer his letter. So I was hampered in a couple of ways. I was hampered for one thing. Because first of all, I thought meaning of existence for home for everybody for me for the guy next door who and then night. I also have this problem of not being able to decide for 41 years whether I like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches on Monday. I like them on Thursday. I don't like him. So my feeling about the meaning of existence changes from hour to hour and I was also hampered because when I get letters like this, I try to answer them. I had this feeling that I'm some sort of Representative and I know that I'm not I know I'm just me saying what I think but yet I feel like sometimes when people write to writers and then writers right back. It's like they're standing for a group like this is how the writers of Minnesota feel about the meaning of existence or this is how women writers feel about the meaning of existence or this is how fiction writers feel about the meaning of existence off to me of something I read in Vonnegut a long time ago. And maybe you're familiar with his definition of a granfalloon the granfalloon in this book. There were different groups of people. There was something called a carafe carafe is a group of people that are united by some common Bond. It can be an idea or a horse or an object or whatever but no matter where you live or what time or space you existed in you are bound together with these people in your carafe. Then there is something known as a false kurast also known as a granfalloon that is a group of people who on a Surface seem to be United by a common Bond, but in reality have nothing in common whatsoever and his examples were Hoosiers the Daughters of the American Revolution. And Americans and two that I would like to add another category writers because of the writers. I know are the most diverse group and I have yet to find any of them that think alike on any particular subject. So I knew I was writing this letter just for myself and I wrote a paragraph explaining to him and I got this for I got the first paragraph done. Trying to overcome these psychological hampering that I just listed and then all of a sudden Along Came these physical hamper. And the first one was that I was asked to participate in this crisis conference over what was to be done with the dog who has recently decided to use our family room as her personal Comfort station. So I had to go up and sit in on this conference. And after I attended this conference, I came back down to the typewriter and I was informed that the swallows had indeed returned and we're now making a nest in the garage. So I had to go out and look at this because we didn't come back and so of course I was interested and I wanted to see if this was really true. So I left the typewriter again, then I came back and I was enlisted to convey a kid to driver ed. On account of it was inconceivable that he could walk because it was too hot too far and too late. So I jumped in the car and I was informed by my two other kids that I had missed a devastatingly important phone call and they are in the midst of a huge argument over whose fault it was I saw me drive in the driveway and one of them said you saw her driving the driveway. Why didn't you holler and the other one said will you saw it to you didn't tell me I was invited to attend a stereo concert of the Grateful Dead that suddenly began to occur outside my writing room door. And at this point I left the question of the meaning of existence. And I began to ponder a more basic question of why the hell I had ever in a world filled with creative possibilities decided to fulfill Mine by everything is lovely chill. After all, this is this is just the letter. I was just trying to write this letter in response to a letter about a novel that I had one novel in 40 years at this rate. I can barely finish another half an hour or if I was lucky. Maybe I can get a whole onion. so I started thinking over these thoughts and I thought of off and on for the last 20 years since I've been having kids. and it occurs to me that there are tremendous physical distraction right from the day that they enter your house. And it isn't just a physical distraction, but it's a mental distraction. And I know I've heard a lot of people say I think mostly men cheese what it's the perfect is the perfect job for a person who wants to write because if you're right there your work is right there in front of you and and what have you got? I mean, you've got like 5 minutes here. You got 10 minutes 20 minutes. Ademola hours. Well, the weird thing is 5 minutes here 10 minutes to an hour and 20 minutes here does not add up to 35 minutes. It adds up to five minutes here ten minutes here and 20 minutes here and what you end up doing is having to program your time. Like I can remember when my kids were little and I would think well, I've got from 1 to 3. Haha. Really? I had from 1 to 1:30. I just thought I had from 1 to 3 and the problem is a sometimes that one from 1 2 3 you don't feel like it you don't feel like doing it and yet it's all the time you have any time you have so there's a terrible force of having to program your time. and and they they are your Jailer. So to speak in that they limit your freedom to take off to to risk your emotions on a situation that I don't know if it might not work out so well for them. I realized something that you just said wasn't exactly correct. I've actually written since I was about 12 years old, but I haven't written seriously that long I only have written seriously for about 7 years and I realized in retrospect that. The point at which I started taking myself seriously as a writer was the point at which I got my youngest child in school all day. And then I had these blocks of time that I could really do something with so I have tremendous admiration for women with little kids who still are able to find the time to seriously, right? Cuz I was writing but I was really writing in the closet and I was ready at night and I was writing when I had a few minutes and I would write to an emotional moment and I would for I would ride until I work myself into a problem and then there was always something to do there was always some sort of a distraction that would come along that. Maybe if I had been more serious, I could have gotten around but it was just easier to to handle the distraction than it was to go on with what I was doing. So then weirdly enough I ended up right back at my original question about the meaning of existence because I list all these things. I list all these liabilities about having kids. And still I look at my life and I think ABCD equals. I'm still really glad that I had them and I thought I don't understand. How does equate. I don't see anything in my life that I would change. and yet it does seem as though they they were a barrier to my realizing myself in a creative way. So then I decided to try to figure out. Why I didn't feel like in the end after adding up all these negatives why I still came out with a positive and one of the things I thought about was and I'm strictly speaking now strictly for myself. I have to keep saying that I know there's no one pulling my string. Who else am I speaking for? But I'm not speaking for any sort of group. I'm speaking for myself and for myself, I feel that they in some really vital way authenticated my existence. They are effective creativity. And even when I do kind of these kinds of questions, like why am I here? What is the meaning of existence? I remember very clearly that when they were babies. I didn't even ask that question. I mean I knew done. Well, I was here and I knew that if I wasn't here they wouldn't be here either. It isn't that the question. Goes away because I don't think it ever goes away. It just seemed irrelevant. I also think that without them. I don't believe that I would have developed emotionally the way that I have I think that I grew up with my kids and maybe I would have anyway, but I'm not really sure of that. I think that having children gives you insight and teaches you how to care. And it teaches you. Tolerance for other people because after you you work yourself through the feeling that they are extensions of you and I don't think that you can ever really work that through completely. I try very hard not to make my kids be extensions of me, but I can't help it. I'm proud of them when they do good thing and I'm just stressed when they don't and I think one of the things that you recognized along the line is that you have limited control over what they're going to do with their lives over how happy they're going to be and over what's going to happen to them and I think it teaches humility. it also helps me to keep my sense of humor because as you can see there's a great temptation to take myself too seriously and I'm grateful to them for being a steadying influence in that area because whenever I get on my soapbox, which I like to do and deliver a lecture number 433 there's always somebody to settle down myself and I like that I like being told to settle down sometimes I wonder who would have ever told me last week. I think the big thing that they give me is a sense of balance because my life is quite orderly. I have three boys 17 15 and 12 and I have a husband and I have a home and I have obligations and responsibilities and my life is pretty well ordered and that way and it provides a very important and needed anchor for me to be free to go out and risk all sorts of things in my writing which is exactly what I do. So I think what I ended up discovering was that questions, like what am I going to serve for dinner? And how am I going to get this kid to baseball practice and his kids tape deck picked up in this other kid to work and meet to the library to class or to the hairdressers or wherever I happen to be going. These really are basic questions of existence. And if you can't handle those though, you're not going to be able to handle the other ones either so. When I ask myself the question how many books might I have written if I hadn't had these kids. I think the answer is probably none. I think I owe them a lot and that they've they've helped me to discover a rather unique few of myself that I'm not sure I would have been able to get in any other way. I was reading a book. You probably already this if you haven't you should get it. I use it like a vival Virginia Woolf A Room of One's Own and it's about women in fiction. It's a fascinating book at the very serious treated son on women's position in society and how it has actually held them back. In the field of fiction and there's a section at the back that I'd like to reach you because it made me laugh out loud. The whole book is quite serious and then she got pretty funny at the end. She said how can I further encourage you to go about the business of Life young women you are in my opinion disgracefully ignorant you have never made a discovery of any sort of importance. You have never shaken an Empire or LED an army into battle the plays of Shakespeare are not by you and you have never introduced a barbarous race to the blessings of civilization. What is your excuse? It is all very well for you to say pointing to the streets and squares and force of the global swarming with black and white and coffee colored inhabitants all busily engaged in traffic and Enterprise and lovemaking we have had other work out our hands without are doing those these would be on sale in those fertile lands a desert. We have born and bred and washed and talk perhaps to the age of six or seven years the 1623 million human beings who are according to statistics at present in existence and that allowing that some had helped takes time. There is truth in what you say. I will not deny it but at the same time may I remind you that there have been at least two colleges for women in existence in England since the year 1866 that after the year 1880 a married woman was allowed by law to put possessor own property. And then in 1919, which is a whole nine years ago. She was given the vote May. I also remind you that most of the professions have been open to you for close on ten years. Now, when you reflect upon these immense Privileges and the length of time during which they have been enjoyed and the fact that there must be at this moment some 2,000 women capable of earning a living in a year and one way or another you will agree that the excuse of lack of opportunity training encouragement Leisure and money no longer holds I really have to I mean, I feel like I'm a feminist I agree with that point of view and yet on the other hand, I really sort of think that some of the deterrence. and some of the disciplines and the distractions were or not all bad and from my own point of view. I think they've contributed to my compassion of my tolerance and my capacity for for love and acceptance and with all due respect. I think that some of those lessons are lessons that most men have yet to learn. So right on that's all I have to say.