Journalist and Northwestern University assistant professor emeritus Michele Weldon’s River Forest home blooms with life.
Several of her paintings depict flowers. Florals pattern her furniture, throw pillows and the corners of her ceilings.
Photos of her adult sons Brendan, Weldon, and Colin sit atop a piano. Not 12 steps away are her mother’s bright pink couches in the front of the home.
This is the house she spent quarantine in.
Her upcoming book of essays, “The Time We Have: Essays From Pandemic Living,” grapples with the heaviness of the time – grief, uncertainty, loss – amid a juxtaposition of the light that kept her moving.
It didn’t start out that way. Originally, “The Time We Have” looked different. Weldon said she “had a completely different framing around it, and a lot of the chapters were the same” before her editor asked her thoughts on framing the book as a work borne from the COVID-19 pandemic.
“[That] was absolutely, 100% true,” she said. “In 2022, she said that to me, and my book was due June 1, 2023 — it takes a long time for a book to come out — so I got everything together and I think she was right. I think it was good framing.”
Her non-chronological ruminations span from 2021 to 2023 and are divided into three parts: “people,” “places,” and “things.” This, her seventh book, is also dedicated to her sons and her late brother, Paul: people who feature prominently in the book.
Weldon’s career as a journalist has spanned about 40 years. She has freelanced with the Chicago Tribune, written columns for the Dallas Times Herald. Her work has appeared in the Washington Post, New York Times, USA Today, CNN and other publications. She’s interviewed Gloria Steinem on the contents of her purse and found Kurt Vonnegut “really gracious and encouraging” when she met him.
The OPRF graduate is also the editorial director of the women’s organization Take The Lead and a seminar leader with the OpEd project, which strives to uplift underrepresented voices in writing.
“The work I’ve been doing with the OpEd Project for the last 13 years … dealing with groups of underrepresented people … and editing them and learning about the issues [they face] every day [has helped me] become aware through that, and also as a journalist, being aware of inequities … with the asterisk that there isn’t an equivalency, but there can be a sincerity.”
On being
Weldon has never shied from vulnerable, painful topics. For example, her first book, “I Closed My Eyes: Revelations of a Battered Woman,” explored her life as a victim of domestic violence in a marriage that appeared to be picture-perfect.
She said she has “an obligation, as a writer … to write for someone to take it in,” yet she hopes to produce work whose quality isn’t overshadowed by its heavy subject matter.
This collection of essays is no exception.
This time, she grapples with the nature of her own mortality: being immunocompromised during a pandemic as a breast cancer survivor, one battling a second round of the disease.
“I was diagnosed in late June, so I had finished the book already,” she said. “I had mentioned my first occurrence of cancer in the book, and I had to rework that and add the ending to it.
“I’m completely cancer-free and recovered, but having almost an entire year of treatment, and being in places and settings where a lot of people do not – that’s humbling.”
At the same time, Weldon details how she lost her brother, Paul, after he spent several years battling multiple myeloma.
“He was absolutely my best friend.” Her writing, too, makes this abundantly clear in the essay titled “Blue.” “His loss,” she said, “was just enormous.”
“I feel, now, a deeper clarity about [death]: that this is it, and that isn’t a declaration that should surprise anybody. Because we’re all going to end, and we don’t know when, and we don’t know how, and we don’t know where,” she said.
“So you have to live cleanly — and I don’t mean that in a literal sense, with Lysol sprayed on yourself every five minutes. You have to live a life without regret, and without causing anyone else even discomfort.”
Tiramisu and participation trophies
Despite her profound grief, Weldon shows she is often curious and genuinely funny. Her speculations on QR codes and participation trophies in the book’s first two essays buoy the tone of a book that recalls a strange and tumultuous point in history. She finds profundity in “Sex and the City,” wristwatches, and 5-7-9 retail stores.
She also strives to articulate difficult feelings and scenarios in ways that are effective and important.
“Excellence, [to me, is] something you can’t stop thinking about. Like I said, you read a sentence and you have to put [the book] down, like you’ve just had the most magnificent tiramisu — like, ‘Wow, that was something.’”
And Weldon’s writing career is far from over: another essay collection, detailing her battle with breast cancer, is in the works.
In her words, it is a “love story of support, from all the people who help me and sustain me.” She hopes, as she does with all her work, it will stand the test of time.
“You hope your words last. And as a journalist who publishes and a writer who publishes books, you hope that it lives on.”
Weldon’s newest book will be available everywhere books are sold starting July 15. Promotional events for the book’s release are slated to include the launch at Bookends & Beginnings in Evanston July 25, an Aug. 14 author visit at the Oak Park Public Library, and an event Aug. 28 at Women & Children First.