ON PATRIOTISM, STRETCHY VACATION TIME, AND PLANT LIFE YOU CAN'T TOUCH
Wednesday July 10 2019
Dear Sarah,
I’m pleased, as ever, to put pencil to paper for this week’s letter. Our weekly exchange has given me a different sense of time: each week, something complete, finished (and still simultaneously, delightfully, in process); the question posed afresh each week of what’s new on my mind or lingering since last week; this clear recurring opportunity for a moment of reckoning. And I’ve gotten the chance to see that I’m not identically the same from week to week: emotions fade back or come around again, the act of writing with you about things clears a space in my mind for new things. And each week, I look forward to the delight that is reading your letter to me. A week is a nice amount of time in which life happens.
I wonder how your week has been? It’s been a different kind of week for me, in part because we haven’t been as much in touch while you’ve been on vacation. Am I thus on vacation too? My 4th of July — how was it? It was lovely. It was a long, unplanned, unprogrammed weekend, filled with fun things that M and I decided to do that had no external demand or timeline. We made potato salad and drank cocktails and grilled brats and cheesy hot dogs (did you eat cheesy hot dogs in your youth? There is a butcher in town called Hackenmueller’s that sells cheese dogs, and they are just very delicious.) We bought a springform pan and made an apple cake, dense with apple chunks and just the right amount of cake sweetness. We went on a long bike ride and had a lake-side picnic along the way. I did some pleasant leisurely reading and writing. We went on a drive through nearby towns on Sunday and realized that many Minnesotans and their businesses are religious about their Sundays off (hardly a nibble or a cup of coffee to be had!).
Independence Day! To answer your question, I don’t feel particularly patriotic on this day, exactly. Now is a strange time to think about what it means to feel attached to one’s country. I try sometimes to imagine my way into it, that idea of feeling close to a huge and varied place like the United States. I didn’t think about it last week but this week I’ll say that while I’m not a fan of all the ways of the US, I am grateful for what it stands for, or once stood for: a spirit of change, of exploration, of pursuing a dream, even if it may seem like it stands for those things in word only these days. Somehow, to have these words as ours is something. I read an article this week about an awful happening: a decade ago, France’s telecommunications company needed to compress its workforce, and, unable to fire people who were state employees, its executives simply squeezed — made employees’ jobs and lives unbearable — until many gave up. In the face of the new nature of their work, or the possibility of the loss of their work, at least 35 people committed suicide. Among other elements of the story, the culture in France seems to be less of one where people will relocate toward new opportunities. There is no excuse for that company’s approach to making change — why should any company be able to make its employees’ lives hellish? — and at the same time I appreciate the sense here in the US that if things get bad, we will be able to find something different. We enjoy the benefits of living in a country with many kinds of places, and opportunities, rolled up under the big banner of the United States.
I liked thinking about your time in New York. I’ve visited a couple of times but I needed to look up the Bowery. It’s right there in the middle of things! If New York itself is, in many ways, the center of activity in this country and the world, you were right there in the middle of the middle. (May I again invoke in the belly of the beast?) Spurred by your memories, I’ve been thinking about the places I’ve loved living, and I always come back around to Tucson, Arizona. Hot, dry, beautiful, prickly Tucson with its plant life you cannot touch. In the midwest you can touch much of your landscape, hold out a hand as you walk, give the leaves of bushes a little brush with your palm, feel the delicate petals of flowers with your fingertips or trace the shape of a trimmed hedge. In Tucson I had to re-teach myself that the plant life was not for touching — it was to be admired, gawped at, occasionally feared. (You can touch things in the desert, but carefully — pinch the thick spikes of cacti between two fingers, or edge your pointer finger between needles to touch the pad of a succulent. But it all must be done very intentionally.) The sun is bright and hot and clear, the air is dry, enveloping you, baking you, like the hottest, driest hug. It is, in fact, cooler in the shade. In the mid-to-late summer, heavy monsoon rains roll through in the afternoon, then pass on until the next day, leaving the smell of creosote in the air (this, not this). I’m thinking now about how to tie my love of Tucson back to your love of New York, and there are resonances I haven’t described here — the food is delicious, there are people from all over — but when I think about how I love it, I’m thinking mostly about nature and the landscape. We can love the places we love in different ways, I suppose! I don’t think it’s a sad tale to remember a time that has passed — all of life simply cannot happen simultaneously — but I also think we never know what the future holds, and who knows where you’ll head as the years pass and things keep changing. Go where you want to go! I’ll try to do the same!
Until then, looking forward to when you come back!
Your friend,
Eva
July 12, 2019
Dear Eva,
Somehow, as the past several days blended together into a relaxing vacation mush, I have managed to let the week slip by without even jotting down a single note about what I’ll write to you in this letter. I have felt - somewhat mysteriously - like I haven’t really had time or space to think in a writing sort of way. Instead, my days have been filled with other glorious things, like reading a novel in a beach chair with sand in my toes and ocean salt on my skin, and filling my belly with lobster rolls and homemade waffle cones stuffed with mint cookie dough ice cream. Today is our last full day on Nantucket Island. Tomorrow we fly back to New York for one last vacation hurrah with friends in Brooklyn before heading home on Sunday. The respite from normal life has been a delight, as you would expect.
It is always strange to me how life can temporarily feel so different on a vacation like this. No itinerary or sightseeing, just a loose outline of the day’s essential ingredients — food, beach, ice cream — mixed and matched in various configurations. The days stretch in a way they never seem to in real life, like time is yawning. The hours fill up fast with vacation-y goodness but they are plump with a feeling of freedom akin to a meandering summer bike ride. I wish I could replicate it back home, but then I suppose vacation would lose its allure. Plus, as lovely as it has been, I find myself missing my alone time.
We’re staying in a big beautiful house with my parents and my sister and brother-in-law and their four children. It’s ideal for our boys because they get to trail around (or in Simon’s case as he shouts orders in all of his tyrannical toddler glory, often be trailed by) their teenage cousins whom they adore. That opens up at least a small window of relaxation for Bill and me that we wouldn’t otherwise get when traveling with the kids — a jog here, a kid-less breakfast there. A win-win! But the full house also means, well, a full house. I’ve scraped out some reading time but somehow pondering and writing felt squeezed out of the equation amid the chaos. I wonder if that is what it must feel like to live with a large family. Would you ever have the space to reflect? I suppose you must learn ways to carve space without silence or physical solitude. I’m just not used to having to work for my alone time since I’m spoiled with 9 hours of quiet in my home office each workday.
It is also interesting to be reminded of the mysteries of family dynamics. At this point in my life, I can largely watch it unfold with a detached sociological lens, and it fascinates me. The ways that unstated but well-conveyed opinions can sit in a room taking up as much space as a human, the ways that seemingly friendly teasing can serve as a behavior modification tool. As Mary Karr writes, “Anybody in a family knows how tyrannical groupthink can be.” That sounds so negative, but I certainly don’t mean it to be. It’s just factual. Human beings are complex creatures, and any relationships among them are even more labyrinthine. As Bill and I now raise our own children, I wonder how we are subtly shaping them without realizing it, what patterns our own small family will entrench over time. It is daunting if I think on it too much. Being human, raising humans, loving humans— it can all be a bit messier than it sounds!
For now, I’ll go back to relishing a few more hours of vacation time sans reflection. I look forward to reading your wise words soon and renewing our more regular daily communication when I return to the real world on Monday.
Your friend,
Sarah