And I Shall [Not] Have Some Peace There

Andre Jordan

I recently finished reading Margaret Roach's memoir And I Shall Have Some Peace There, trading in the fast lane for my own dirt road.  I mean, how could I not read a book that takes its title from a Yeats poem and lets me peek inside the brain of an executive who walked away from her high-powered career to go live in the woods?

The style of writing is a bit too stream of consciousness for my taste, but I enjoyed the metaphors woven throughout -- the frogs that are "twice-born" (first an egg and then emerging from tadpole to frog), the snakes in her garden (a little Book of Genesis for you), and many others.

At the beginning of the book, she references a cartoon by Andre Jordan (she linked it on her gardening blog here) that I love.  Beneath five white tree trunks are the words:

"I've decided to go and live in the woods (it's for the best)."  

As you may know, I've long been enamored with the idea of ditching the trappings of my life and retreating to the woods.  The problem is that if I did in fact go to the woods to live "deliberately," my children would still be asking me "what's for dinner" and demanding my fight mediation services every five minutes.  I would not, in fact, "have some peace there."  (I would not have it here or there.  I would not have it anywhere.)  Roach is not married and has no children.  Yeats was likewise single and childless when he wrote this poem . . . .

I'll likely need to wait until I'm old and gray to "have some peace" here or there.  And by that time, I'll be missing the lack of it.