Unexpected marvels
I am sitting in a camp chair in the shade of a large tree. I'm wearing comfy running shoes, one of three pairs of pants that fit this post-twins body (cargo pants), a t-shirt my torso twin Libba Bray gave me (Batgirl, Supergirl, and Wonder Woman), a brown cardigan I bought at a local TJ Maxx after realizing how chilly it is in England in the summer, and a brown hat because despite the chill I've been getting more sun than this ginger can handle. We're on a large estate, sitting beside a pond with swans and trout. In the distance I can hear the bucolic bleats of happy little sheep. A breeze shakes the leaves and brings the scent of water and trees. Fifty feet from me, two actors are dressed as characters I made up and speaking lines I wrote. I just had a sausage bun for "elevenses" followed by a mint KitKat. I'm wearing headphones, hearing those lines, and watching the scene play out on a tiny monitor, because there are thirty crew members between me and the actors. I am relaxed. So very relaxed. This experience has taken the word "idyllic" and reclaimed it. In the dictionary in my head, the definition of "idyllic" would read: "the state of watching Austenland being made into a movie in the English countryside, in the shade on a temperate day, post sausage bun and mint KitKat."
The only downside to all this is the separation from my family. I haven't seen Dean and my two older kids in nearly 3 weeks! Except on Skype of course. Oh bless you, Skype! And I'm away from my babies for long hours each day. But we have such a great time together in the mornings and evenings and weekends. I just eat them up, the most scrumptious babies.
This feels so incredibly decadent, all this time to myself, all this time in the English countryside, not cleaning a house or running errands or writing (though there is some of all of that). When I wrote Charlotte in Midnight in Austenland, I didn't realize how much we had in common, until now that I'm in Austenland and feel much as she did. I should be busy, be working, be diligently productive, not relaxing and enjoying myself and eating sausage buns!
I need to stop talking about sausage buns. I'm really not consumed by them. They are just one of those unexpected marvels I never imagined when I imagined this experience, like the tiny daisies and frogs in the grass, the crew coffee cart that makes hot chocolate with steamed and frothy milk, the charming crew members like the production assistant with his deep British voice and endless tales of Africa, Scotland, and everything in between. And how I would feel to see my story play out before my eyes. I'm in awe of all this unexpectedness.
I don't deserve this! I'm a mom. I'm used to measuring my worth by my capacity to work hard and take care of everyone else! Maybe I'm a bit of a Marxist after all. But I'm determined not to waste this experience. And so I sit here in my camping chair under a tree, editing a book between takes, surrounded by an array of accents as diverse as the different flavors of syrup available at the coffee cart, welcoming this shifting breeze, merging so completely with it all that my own delight becomes just one of the unexpected marvels.