When I set out to learn about my mother's bridge club, the Jewish octogenarians behind the matching outfits and accessories, I never expected to fall in love with them. This is the story of the ladies, their game, their gen, and the ragged path that led me back to my mother.
People are starting to ask how I feel about the book coming out. How do I feel about the dead skin between my fourth toe and pinky toe. How do feel about the lint trap, the time it takes to pluck a hair from my chin, the satisfaction of pulling a weed from its roots. How do I feel seeing myself in a tartan robe with coffee in a red mug wavery in the window, 5 am, back to the book, for three years my imaginary friend, my legal pads quilted, the cork board a crossword of index cards, the piles of books and drafts a pyre I tended with love. How do I feel? Sad, relieved, anxious, done.
What does it all mean?
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Betsy Lerner 
It means you’ve been being who you are. Possibly the best bit, almost certainly the truest.
On to the next one.
Super excited until pub day and then it starts all over again.
Many congratulations Betsy! It’s been fun to be on this journey with you.
Let us know when the postpartum blues hit and we’ll show up with, wine, chocolate, puppies, whatever you need, we’re there.
When page proofs arrived along with a letter stating clearly to keep changes to a minimum, and that this was the last time any changes could be made at all, I sat back and reflected on how long it had been since I wrote the first 50 pages all those years ago. And I’m talking like a decade or more. Here came Nostalgia, followed up by a little Melancholia. Never again would I tweak, change, delete, fix, edit, twist, or analyze the sentences.
“What does it all mean?”
You DID it – again. (Damn, channeling Britney Spears)
No oops on this one, though. Congratulations, Betsy!
You did what you like to do. Now the baby’s ready to go out in the world and the nest feels a bit empty.
Well, I think it means it’s time to party!
Enjoy!
Well done. Time for chocolate cake and wine.
You rock?
It means what you choose to make it mean. That’s another way to say it don’t amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world. But if it ain’t a hill of beans, maybe it’s a bowl of beans, and maybe a bowl of beans is enough. I dunno.
But I know this: it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.
Rock it, Betsy!