finding my letters
As I left a coffee shop one summer evening, I noticed the words on the strip mall’s sign: “WE FOUND OUR LETTERS!”
I laughed to myself, then I thought, I could use that when I restart my newsletter on Sunday.
Well, it is a Sunday and I am restarting my newsletter, but a full month has passed since the night I saw that sign. On the first Sunday in July—a day that was busy with visiting the Frazier History Museum, having a good meal with family, and finally watching Hamilton live—I decided to take the month off, a summer holiday from a newsletter I had written almost every Sunday for almost two years. But when the first Sunday in August came around, I wasn’t ready. I hadn’t found my letters.
It would be incorrect to say that I lived a letter-less existence over the last two months. I still wrote for work, of course: stories and social media posts and so many emails. Though I am woefully behind on journaling, I have still journaled, and I’ve read a mostly characteristic number of books. But I live such a life of letters that any step back feels substantial. From January to April of this year, I organized years of research then rewrote my entire manuscript about Alice Allison Dunnigan, a demanding task during a very busy time. A few weeks after I finished the manuscript, I felt a huge absence: I missed doing all that writing. Even when they’re only a little bit gone, I miss the letters.
This week, I began to feel ready to write a newsletter today. It doesn’t make much sense—it’s the end of the month, and I’m a person who cares a lot about dates and keeping a tidy calendar. Nor do I feel the certainty of an exclamation point about finding my letters; a question mark might be more appropriate. But I am writing again anyway. I am out with lanterns, looking.
Credit for my last sentence goes, of course, to Emily Dickinson.