ON UNINTERESTING PEOPLE, FILLING THE HOURS LIKE A CUP, AND PLANNING FOR THE ABSENCE OF A PLAN
Friday September 3 2021
Dear Sarah,
As usual, I’m in a completely different mood than I was when I wrote my letter last week! Feeling a bit more capable and competent (and perhaps less hormonal!) than I was feeling last Friday.
You started your letter last week with the feeling that you went through several cycles of emotions and experiences in just seven short days. It’s been impossible for me to tell if this is the new spirit of this time of our lives, or if it is tied to pandemic living, or if it is tied to simply paying more attention to our time and the feelings of our days as we have engaged in this almost-three-year-long weekly exchange of letters. Does the whirlwind of emotions leave its mark if it doesn’t, in fact, literally leave its mark? How did I feel about my weeks when I wasn’t writing about them to you? I remember they happened, I lived them; perhaps I felt busy or tired or glad the week was over; without the mechanism to capture the specifics, as we’ve discussed before, they float away on the wind. It’s not necessarily a loss — we both know we can’t capture everything — and yet it feels good to capture some of this fleeting reality and its turbulence!
We talked today about your kids being back at school in a place that, as you noted in your letter, cannot require all teachers and students to wear masks during a pandemic. I honestly find it so difficult to empathize with people who take this approach. The pandemic has been long now; we have a lot of information about what it can mean for people to get covid, and also about the efficacy of vaccines; I don’t understand people who are willing to put others in even a bit of danger as they observe what they consider to be their inalienable rights. I can’t get myself into that headspace because I just don’t get it!
You also mentioned last week that your week had had an undercurrent of grief about the prospect of ending this letter-writing project. Perhaps I was cruel in some way to mention it! I’m not chomping at the bit to end this fruitful exchange! I have assumed that the letters, our ongoing conversations in written form, would signal to us when it was time for them to draw to a close. But little in life is like this; we have to make moves and decisions along the way. A lot of things happen to us, out of our control, and as regards all the rest of the things we have to do some pushing and pulling along the way. Does it color the letters that remain — whether a few or a few hundred! — to have mentioned a possible end, like a single drop of ink spreading in a pool of water? Is there a parallel in thinking about our own deaths now, so that we are less surprised (though perhaps no more ready) when they come to us sooner or later? Nothing goes on forever but we’re very welcome to continue our exchange as long as we like! We don’t have to give it up; the letters will show us what it means to be three, to keep growing during and through these unpredictable times. No need to mark an end without a new beginning waiting to pick up the thread!
I think I answered your administrative point over text: let’s definitely renew the site for another year! Perhaps forever! It lives, and it lives on!
After a week of computer light beaming into my eyes at all hours of the day, I’m ready to close this laptop and indulge in takeout and wine and chocolate! It’s a three-day weekend and I’m ready for it! I am still toying with the idea of an impromptu drive to Des Moines but I may stick with this weekend’s previous plan, which is the absence of a plan after a busy week! I’m thinking about almond cookies and eggplant parmesan and enjoying the change in weather that made me consider wearing a sweatshirt this morning! I’ll let you know if I’m hitting the road tomorrow, but if not this weekend you’ll still be seeing me soon!
Until then,
Yours,
Eva
September 3, 2021
Dear Eva,
It is 8 PM on Friday night, and I am sitting down to pen (type) this letter to you in my empty home after eating leftovers alone while listening to a podcast. This is weird, Eva! I am thinking it may be true that I have never spent a weekend alone in this house, possibly not even one night. (I’m feeling obligated to admit that I am not technically alone; Marlowe is here, although mysteriously sitting alone in my office while I am downstairs. Perhaps he is protesting these lonely conditions without his boys.) I should also note that I am not complaining, just noting the strange feeling it evokes. Not unlike the feeling I used to have after law school finals were over and I could not shake the feeling that I should be studying, I am feeling tonight I cannot quite grok just how open the next 36 hours are. I have precisely two plans—dinner with a friend tomorrow night, and a phone date with a friend in Texas on Sunday morning. Otherwise, I am free as a bird. I am resisting any urge to make more plans, or even to decide now how I will spend my time. I fear that if I do, I will fill up the hours like a cup, and suddenly any expansive sense of time will evaporate. Tomorrow is wide open [until dinner], and we will see what comes of it!
This evening on my walk with Marlowe, I had a few passing thoughts I thought I would share.
No matter what anyone’s nostalgia tries to tell you, the sound of cicadas (or is it locusts? A quick online search is not readily answering this question, so I must be content just to wonder) on Midwestern summer nights is truly an awful, grating sound.
There are a lot of uninteresting people in this world. Just an observation.
As the reality sets in about how I will eventually mentally adapt to the recurring waves of stress sparked by covid exposure notices sent home in backpacks (not yet for us, but I know it will come), and how humanity will collectively adapt to an increasingly steady cadence of extreme weather events causing devastation all around us, it got me thinking about how all of this makes me feel small. Maybe this is one way in which it can be a relief to be inconsequential, as you wisely wrote way back in Week 2.
Lately, perhaps in spite of myself, I am realizing how many days I feel energized while I work. This feeling is frankly confusing; I thought I was racing to retirement? I guess it is a good reminder how much I have been languishing at work these past many years—it is nice to be awake and alive professionally for a change.
I think that is the end of my listicle. It was only a one mile walk.
My mention of your letter from Week 2 makes me think again about the future of this project. If and when we do round out the letters, I am inclined to read them again like a book. I can imagine the shivers I will feel as I read the words, so many moments of two lives enshrined in text. It will feel good. It does feel good already to know they are captured, cannot be taken away.
I am anxious for you to look your needs in their beady little eyes. It seems as if you have gotten off kilter, and in my own experience, the most challenging part of that imbalance is first figuring out what you need! Look those suckers in the eyes and find out. I am here to support however I can.
I think I will call this letter done, crack open a Long Ride Pale Ale that B forgot to take in their cooler to the campsite, and fire up a movie. There is a time in my life that I would have considered such a Friday night plan to be dreadfully sad, but I dare say that in this current stage of my life, I consider it a delight.
Wishing you an indulgent and expansive holiday weekend ahead, my friend!
Until soon,
Yours,
Sarah