By the time you're 59, the tendency to simply rest on your laurels is huge. Why not take a protracted number of days self-congratulating, and then spend the rest of your life, relaxing?

Not gonna happen. Without deliberate action, my destiny for the next three decades, laid down by the patterns of my ancestors, is either golf, farming, alcoholism, or becoming a chef. A few of those choices are easily paired.



Golf and alcohol are great partners, now that Beer Girls circulate on every nice course.




And, of course, farming goes with cooking. Unfortunately I'm married to a man who has hired a garden service for a postage-stamp sized lawn. Picture us negotiating about whose turn it is to till the back 40.

No, the trick is to stick the laurel in a a closet, and keep striving for More Laurels, until you die.

Last week, I had a laurel. A book, for which I contributed two large chapters and one small one, was published. In Our Uncles' Words is not gonna win the Pulitzer. It's a well-executed, , honorable, community-written compilation of the oral histories of 35 Filipinos who served in the U.S. Navy, most of them as servants.

I elbowed my way into this project in 2004, to enact a 20-year goal. One Sunday afternoon in 1984, I made a vow as I left a darkened movie theatre shaken and moved. While watching "Field of Dreams," the voice of my deceased grandfather sounded. 'Write,' he said. 'Write about me, and the men like me.'

Insert big bolt of lightening here. The mission he handed me was enacted on and off for over two decades, deferred by motherhood, a psychotherapy career, and sheer avoidance.

Finally, after reading 1000 pages of interviews, and spending hundreds of hours in libraries, I wrote the history of Filipino Navymen, anchored by the stories of the men themselves. They talked about being servants, about racism, about shame.
What did it take to accomplish those chapters? Turning persistence into obsession. Being an outsider. Risking rejection. Picking up the phone to call strangers. Getting on planes to attend workshops alone. Ignoring doubts that my writing might not be published, or be wrong. Curtailing servitude.

What's it gonna take to keep going on this next writing project, which will be bigger and riskier? See above.