Ginger Eager

Ginger Eager’s essays, reviews, and short fiction have been published in Necessary Fiction, West Branch, Bellevue Literary Review, The Georgia Review, and elsewhere. Her debut novel, The Nature of Remains, won the AWP Award for Fiction, was selected as one of the Books All Georgians Should Read for 2021, and won the debut novel category for Georgia Author of the Year, 2021. Ginger has a BSEd in Secondary English Education from the University of Georgia, an MFA in writing and literature from the Bennington Writing Seminars, and a certificate in acute homeotherapeutics from the Caduceus Institute of Classical Homeopathy. She lives in Decatur, Georgia, with her partner and two spoiled house cats.

Ten Things I Can’t Do Without

1. Cats, for so many reasons, two being that they purr and turn melty when you hold them.
2. My Planner Pad Organizer. Here’s a quote I culled from an unknown magazine many years ago: “A clock became ‘a momento mori,’ he said, ‘and a way of showing off that you weren’t on an agrarian calendar like some peasant.’” The Enlightenment, the Industrial Revolution, capitalism—we’ve created a society where most of us live in minutes. My Planner Pad Organizer helps me, well, perform in a way that translates to paying my bills.
3. Trees. None of us can live without trees, I know, but I’m not talking about oxygen. Trees remind me that, despite what my Planner Pad Organizer would have me believe, I am not in control, and neither is the clock. When the hemlock wooly adelgid arrives, the trees continue to be and to share. When the hemlock wooly adelgid kills all the hemlocks and departs, the trees continue to be and to share.
4. Bitter greens, especially mustard.
5. Blue Ball jars. I have six of them, and they are scattered all over my house. These are my water vessels, so anytime I see one with some water in it, I am reminded to pick it up and take a drink. I switched to blue jars after drinking old flower water from a clear Ball jar. Blue = water.
6. Stories.
7. Focusmate. For five dollars a month, I have unlimited coworkers. Writing is a lonely pursuit. Focusmate makes it less lonely. Also, see #2.
8. Decibel Defense ear protectors. I live in an older neighborhood with small lots, many trees, and many lawns. It’s difficult to concentrate when there are three commercial leaf blowers in operation on less than two acres of land. I cannot imagine how awful it must be for the insects and the birds.
9. The massive mud puddle that forms on the road in front of my house after rains. As much as I dislike the muddy tire tracks in my drive, I love the red-winged blackbirds who stop by the puddle on their way south, and I love it when my neighbor bundles her preschool class up in slickers and rainboots and leads them to the puddle as if to someplace sacred. Every so often the county dumps some concrete in the depression. It never holds because the problem is with the sewer lines beneath. Cracked sewer lines and mud puddles large enough to attract migratory birds are a quintessential Atlanta experience.
10. You. And you can’t live without me either! See #3.