Welcome to Midweek Dinner. If this is your first time here, feel free to poke around and ask questions (But don’t feed the cat. He just ate). Perhaps you’d be interested in seeing the very first edition? If you like the look of the place, stick around! You can sign up here to receive a new issue every Wednesday, delivered piping hot, right to your doorstep.
Sometime earlier in the weeds of this pandemic, Rachel Syme took to Twitter and asked if anyone wanted a pen pal. The response was so overwhelming that she ended up looking for some kind of program that would allow her to match up all the interested people remotely. Somehow, she stumbled into a Secret Santa site that allowed her to link to the invitation, and the participants poured in. After an initial surge in early summer, people continue to sign up via this pinned tweet:
Domestic and International letter-writers have been ordering vintage stamps, buying cute stationery (or cleaning out their long-held stash), making art, embroidery, baked goods, and more, and then winging it around the world. Pen pals have sent each birthday flowers, bath salts, recipes, and books. And did you catch that number up there? Close to 5000 people have joined the fun, and in a turn of events I’m sure you never expected, Reader, I am one of them.
I have three pen pals, all U.S. residents, and all delightful. I have always loved to get mail, and especially now, especially on days when things feel so broken and backward and bruised, these letters feel like tiny sutures. It is slow, and yes, it is hard to keep track of what I’ve told whom and which one is it who has a cat? But letter-writing heals me in ways I can’t fully quantify. I suspect it has to do with the ways letter-writing is a fully-absorbing task. It is both physical and mental, demanding a complete concentration. For me, it is most similar to practicing the piano. As a piano major in college, I would often practice for an hour or more each day. No matter how upset or stressed, no matter how heartbroken or self-defeating I went into the practice room, within moments, those concerns were gone. They didn’t disappear, of course; there simply wasn’t room for them and the music to both exist in that space. To play the piano demands a constant attention, both mental and physical, and there is no way to get distracted. Trust me. If there was, I would have found it.
Letter-writing is like this for me. It commands me, demanding me to think and move, to hold steady and continue on, and it is nearly impossible for me to get distracted while I’m locked into a letter. Plus, unlike the isolation of the practice room, a letter is automatically linked to its recipient. My mind is swirling with my own thoughts and ideas, of course, but it is also, always, holding the person on the other end of those thoughts and ideas.
Besides my pen pals, I have a friend with whom I’ve been exchanging regular letters for years now. To receive a letter from a new friend is a great joy; to receive a letter from someone who has held years of your stories in his hands is sublime. I once attended a writing talk where the author/speaker reminded us that we are all carrying so much and that when we “put it down on paper,” we are able to “put down” whatever burden we carry. To know that I can put down what I’m carrying, to know my friend will carry it awhile for me, well, that is a gift beyond measure.
So, do you want a pen pal? Feel free to join in with the #penpalooza via the information above. Or send me a note, a postcard, a poem, or a song at P. O. Box 3304, Chattanooga, TN 37404.
The lightest of possible rains has just begun outside my windows and reminded me of another excellent way to feel connected: long phone calls. Even though I no longer have a corded phone, I like to talk on the phone as though I’m still tethered to one spot. If you have defaulted to the call-on-the-go model that drives so much of our culture, may I recommend this throwback method? Sit somewhere, completely still, as though you are attached to the wall via a short cord, and just talk. No video screen, no simultaneous tasks. Just the voice of your loved one and your attention to it.
To complete this triad of conversations, here are links to a few of my favorite authors who have seemingly joined my conversations in process.
Matthew Salasses adds his much more resonant voice to my thoughts on grief with “Holding it Together, Falling Apart.”
And Eula Biss chimes in on work and the way we value it with “Is It Too Scary?” and I guess what I’m saying here is I should probably have a dinner party, and these two can be my honored guests. You are all invited.
I might also invite Sarah Crowley Chestnut, a new-to-me voice but one that picks up a conversation I’ve been having for years, one centered on my faith - shaken though it may be most days. In this piece, she quotes several lines from Gerard Manley Hopkins’ poem “My own heart let me more have pity on” and though I’ve never been much of a fan of GMH’s poetry, this one I like.
Unexpected Joy Department:
(alternatively, more proof that my kids are usually right because they’ve been telling me for months that I would love this video)
Only one review this week, but it is a good one. Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet is a brilliant, beautiful, heart-wrenching book, and I am unbelievably pleased that it was awarded The Women’s Prize this week. It will be one of my favorites of the year and likely will be one of my all-time favorites. I recommend it highly is what I’m saying.
Thanks as always for reading and thinking with me. Have comments, suggestions, or questions? Reply to this email, and I promise a response. And if you can think of someone who might appreciate this sort of weekly musing, please consider sharing this post with them and encouraging them to join us. There’s always room for more around this odd table.