Last week I quoted Virginia Woolf’s statement about women writers. I did so with only the most cursory of Google look-ups to get the quote correct, and I confess I had not read the entire essay from which the quotation was taken. My curiosity got the better of me, though, and I did finally go and look up the full text of “A Room of One’s Own.” And found this marvelous little analogy, not about writing, but about those nagging little ideas that come to you but get away before you can fully develop them:

“Thought—to call it by a prouder name than it deserved—had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until—you know the little tug—the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one’s line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating.”

I especially love how Woolf compares her seemingly insignificant thought to being “the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water…” beautiful! Of course, Virginia’s “insignificant thought” became the basis for her entire lecture on the “unsolved problems” of women and fiction.

In my world, I liken this to the process of collecting ideas for my writing. Ideas for stories, articles, bits of dialog, scenic descriptions… all the odds and ends I’d like to keep track of. Probably a thousand of them dart through my mind each day, but I rarely make time to lay them out in the grass – to use Woolf’s analogy – for real study. I do take one precaution, however, so they never completely slip away from me: I write them down, either in a notebook or on any slip of paper I can grab, then I drop them into a file for future browsing. It’s good mental exercise to go back and look through my notes once in awhile to see how many of these bring back the full original thought… and how many of them get “developed” in a direction completely different from the one originally intended.

It has been a tough week in the “senior living journey” department. I have been waiting to hear from our assisted living community with a move-in date (we are getting closer!), but in the meantime, Dad had a relapse of sorts this past week that has left me reeling a bit. I received a call around 5 a.m. Tuesday from his neighbor, who had found Dad locked out of his house, very confused and disoriented, and of course COLD… fortunately he had not been outside too long, as paramedics told me he did not have frostbite, but I realize that this whole situation could have had a very different ending. My dad is so fortunate to have such good neighbors – apparently several of them heard him calling for help and responded with 911 calls, and a couple of them went down to the house and broke the door in so they could get him back inside. I honestly don’t even know how to thank them properly – they most certainly saved his life. At any rate, back to the hospital for awhile. It leaves me wondering if assisted living is going to be the right arrangement for him.

UPDATE: Tonight I got to meet and thank the neighbors in person who helped my dad. It turns out he was outside for more than an hour, not properly dressed. I don’t know how he didn’t get frostbite.