For the first time in my life that I can recall, I had nothing planned or scheduled when I woke up this rainy, dank morning. No appoints, work to do on a book,  trips to take, things to fix. Maria encouraged me (strongly) to stay in bed late, read, and yet such days make me very anxious. I am always working on a book, but I have to wait for some editing on the Frieda book to pick get back to work on it, and it’s  too soon to start the Simon book. Random House has also encouraged me to take more time on the books, go slower, let the process breathe. My agent says the same thing. I’m trying. It’s hard. On such days, I feel a rising terror in my chest.

Emptiness has always literally been terrifying for me, and I always filled it up, and not always with good things, but this morning I decided not to do that.

My Ipad beeped at that point, and I got an e-mail from my daughter (posted at 3 a.m. as she finished work) suggesting I get the new Bon Iver CD, “Bon Iver,” good, she suggested, for a rainy day. I went to Itunes, and was listening to this sweet and soothing album by 7 a.m.

How did it happen that my daughter Emma, far away in Gotham, knew to send me just what I needed and thanks to the mercurial Steve Jobs, I was able to receive it. Perhaps because I slowed down long enough to wait and listen for it. Emma and I are seeing one another infrequently, talking less than we used to and we know less about one another’s lives than we ever did. Yet our relationship is sweet, loving, connecting. I am not into her stuff, she is not into mine.  I admire her life, and have no idea what is best for her. That’s her job.

We are each living our own lives and yet I feel closer to her than ever. How can this be? I did not grow up seeing this model of a parent-child connection and many of the people around me are neck-keep in their kid’s lives, even when they grow up, and their relationships are shrouded in drama and conflict. That was true of me, also. After the divorce, I sometimes feared that I would lose my daughter, we seemed so far apart. And yet all I had do was nothing but let her life her live, and go and live mine well. The best lesson I could ever impart to her, the best thing I could offer her,  I realized, was to be happy and lead a fulfilled life. We have come a good ways.

And so here, on this rainy, drizzly morning, across the ether, without words, a phone call, or other communications, the songs I needed came into my life, into my farm, from a person I loved who understood that I needed them. Is there sweeter music than that? And that was before I got up. Less is more, sometimes.