I bought the plane tickets the minute the invitation appeared in our Discord chat. A classmate had offered her parents' lake house in New Hampshire for a weekend writing retreat. Six of us could make it.
I volunteered to cook Saturday night and sent a detailed shopping list ahead, organized by grocery store aisle -- the kind of list that reveals how I approach most things in life, with careful preparation and contingency plans.
From home in West Virginia, I packed my own spices: turmeric, smoked paprika, cumin, a bag of dried cherries rescued from the back of my cabinet. At 53, I've learned that the difference between a good meal and a great one often lives in what you bring from your own pantry -- the flavors that can't be found in someone else's kitchen.
The New Hampshire house had been loved into its current rambling form over decades of summers. No insulation, no dishwasher, but built for comfort with screened windows left open to pine-scented air and the sound of loons calling across the water. Ball caps hung from hooks by the door, coffee mugs bore the names of marathons completed by strangers, wind chimes sang from every porch. A bedroom downstairs was closed off with nothing more than a flowered curtain.
"We're like the Waltons," someone joked as we explored, voices carrying easily from room to room through walls that stopped short of the ceiling.
The line between indoors and out felt blurred -- sliding doors to the screened porch open all day and night, windows raised to let the night air flow through.
We had come knowing each other first through words -- packets of essays and poems emailed in preparation for our writing residency. There is one way to know someone when you meet them at the playground with your kids, another at an office meeting or civic fundraiser. But to know people through their writing first creates a different intimacy altogether.
I had read their speculative prose, worlds so carefully built I forgot I was reading fiction. I had breathed in their poetry that expanded like a deep sigh, capturing an entire world within it. I had recognized myself in their autofictive work -- literary anthropologists examining the ripples of lives, all of us trying to make sense of what we'd observed, what we believed to be true.
Still, arriving at the lake house, I carried more than spices. I brought the weight of recent decisions, the particular anxiety of midlife course corrections. My cohort knew I was from West Virginia -- not South Carolina, I'd clarify when geography got muddled -- but they didn't know about the more practical paths I'd almost taken. The ones that felt safer, more measurable, more like what you're supposed to do at this stage of life. They didn't know I still wondered, some mornings, if I'd chosen wrong.
The weekend unfolded in layers. We drifted between porch and dock and kitchen, someone playing Japanese Breakfast from a phone while we read each other's work aloud. A small mouse scurried through during our card games, undeterred by our tidying efforts. We named him Stuart Little and let him be.
Blueberry muffins and bagels from Portland stayed in a Ziploc on the counter, pulled apart in casual handfuls -- the kind of grazing that feels like family before you've earned the word.
Cooking was a shared affair. Friday night, one student made morisqueta michoacana -- slow-cooked chicken with tomatillos and guajillos, rice and spiced black beans. Another baked cookies from homemade dough, and soon ginger and molasses filled the house.
We sat on the screened porch with warm cookies and played a guessing game with anonymous answers written on scraps of paper. I worried afterward that my responses had been too sharp, my humor carrying more edge than I'd intended.
People usually describe me as sweet -- which sounds like a compliment, but also evokes a shrinking violet. They seem surprised when I flash quick wit with a darker undertone. Sometimes observations become quips, a way to get to the heart of things with a zing. But I worried I'd shifted the mood, that feeling when you don't know people well enough yet and second-guess yourself the moment after you speak. Too late. You've exposed your underbelly. Do with it what you will.
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That edge, I knew, came from the world I'd been carrying. The middle-aged weight of finding my place, the anxiety over narrowing windows of opportunity. At 53, every choice feels more consequential, every misstep harder to undo.
Saturday morning I woke before the others and claimed the kitchen. Sunlight pooled on the counter where a drift of mismatched mugs waited their turn with the coffee pot. I balanced my cutting board over the crowded sink and opened my bag of spices.
The recipe called for whisking everything in a bowl first, but in that cramped space I made a different choice. This is no time to dirty dishes. It's the kind of time where you think, I can do what I want. Turmeric, smoked paprika, cumin -- straight into a plastic bag with olive oil and lemon juice. I sealed it, pressed out the air, and worked the golden marinade with my fingers.
“Something smells incredible already,” a voice said from the doorway. Our hostess stood barefoot, coffee in hand, hair still tangled from sleep. She glanced at the plastic bag. “Let's go.”
When I added the chicken thighs and flipped the bag to coat them, she winced slightly. "Are you sure it won't leak?"
"I'm sure," I said, surprised by my own certainty.
By Saturday afternoon, thunderclouds gathered across the lake. We'd been sitting on the metal dock, feet dangling in cool water, when the first rumbles sent us to the screened porch. Without phones to fragment our attention, we simply watched the storm move across the water, rain dancing in sheets toward us until spray came through the screens and drove us inside for cards and more coffee.
Saturday evening, as the chicken roasted, turmeric and lemon thickened the air. My classmates gathered almost unconsciously, drawn to the stove by scent and warmth. I stirred dried cherries and pine nuts into couscous, bright with parsley and lemon zest. Carrots roasted in the oven, edges beginning to caramelize.
I threw together a quick tzatziki with yogurt and whatever herbs I could find -- "the tzatziki that isn't tzatziki," we started calling it. We ate with the particular gusto of hungry writers, and the leisure of people who have nothing to do, nowhere else to be, except to linger over a table with wine and seltzer water, until someone puts an apple crisp in the oven.
Sunday night, down to just four of us, we decorated journals -- stickers, gemstones, decorative tape. Hands busy, truths slipping out.
"Does anyone want to talk about anything while we're in this safe space?" someone asked.
I love these people, I thought, surprising myself. We shared what felt big to us -- personal pains, uncertainties, the weight we'd each been carrying. Not dramatic in ways the outside world might measure, but honest enough to acknowledge our humanness, four women of different ages and backgrounds admitting we were all trying to make our way in the world.
As I tucked my leftover spices into the pantry for whoever might come next, I kept thinking about that plastic bag of marinade -- the choice to skip an unnecessary step, to trust my own judgment over written instructions.
Maybe this is how it works at any stage of life, but especially at midlife when the stakes feel higher and the time shorter. You pull one thread, take one step away from the careful plan. You trust that what you're making will hold.
