On 25 things you want to do before you die, last-minute hecticities, and the lingering Q of why B doesn’t read books
October 1, 2021
Dear Eva,
I took pleasure in writing the date just now. It is October! Fall, you better get here fast! I am tired of the sweaty summer weather, tired of my over-worn sleeveless shirts and tank tops. I am ready for fluffy scarves draped around itchy necks, hot apple cider, cozy moments tucked under blankets. B has started making plans to get a batch of boozy eggnog aging in the fridge. We have Winter on our minds, and we are eager to have a little dose of proper autumn fun before it arrives.
I was glad to read your positive reaction to my family’s fervent traditioning of all recurring activities. It is good to be reminded this is largely a loving impulse. Too often, it starts to feel a little suffocating. There is a fine line between ritual and intransigence. As ever, what we need is a bit of two contradictory states— familiarity and newness. It can be very hard to know how to strike that balance!
As we gradually wind down this letter writing project, I suppose we are ending a relationship. I wrote this over text message but I will enshrine it in letter glory here—I think we are lucky to have experienced such a meaningful collaboration together that it feels like a relationship ending. I have never been good at long goodbyes (I want to rush to the end!), but I am going to get some practice on the page in the weeks and months to come.
We talked recently about meaningful work—what it is, how to find it. I wonder if you have ever tried the exercise where you write down 25 things you want to do before you die? I did it a few years ago, and on my list, not a single one of the items related to work. This fact was in some ways unhelpful in the process of trying to find the next steps in my career path, but maybe not. It tells me my life’s work is not work-work. I knew/know this already but yet, how do I spend my time?
There are plenty of topics in the professional realm that are so sweeping that they cause me overwhelm— how to make a better internet is a good example. Here, I just want to take a seat and leave these far-reaching problems to others. I am content to have a small life and small work, focused on the micro but no less real drama of a marriage, of parenting, of breakups in letter relationships, of the fuzzy caterpillar I noticed wiggling across the sidewalk on my afternoon jaunt yesterday. I know what I need to do, I just need to do it (and make sure I keep making a little money in the meantime).
Lately, I can feel myself becoming more content with who/how I am, how things are, and it is almost unsettling. It is as if anxiety is counterintuitively a comforting habit. Its absence is unsettling.
Shortly, B and I are headed out to a new exhibit at the Des Moines Art Center featuring surrealist works. Then we are planning to check out a new-to-us (has been there for many years) natural wine bar and then hit up First Fridays at a local art space. (This is the spot I wondered about being an option for a future art installation of our own. I will report back!) In other words, we are making the most of our new arrangement of having a weekly babysitter. It feels frankly indulgent, and I am pretty darn smug about it.
I am peering at my notes and seeing one lone, amusing sentence that I have not covered here—Why does it bug me that B doesn’t read books? This was written last night, when I sat with my notebook and he sat staring at his phone. It remains a good question; why on earth do I care?
I will leave you to ponder. The drama of a marriage! Happy Friday, my dear friend.
Yours,
Sarah
Friday October 1 2021
Dear Sarah,
Happy Halloween month! I am not a die-hard Halloween fan but lately I am feeling like I’m ready for the anchoring spirits of the holidays that shape our fall months. Earlier this week I finished reading a delightful pager-turner called The Southern Book Club's Guide to Slaying Vampires, which I heard about from reading all the Samantha Irby I could get my hands on, including her blog and instagram. Irby is a Grady Hendrix fan (she is an altogether voracious reader) and I was enticed to check out TSBCGTSV from the library, and I did not regret it! It’s been a long time since I read an actual page-turner — like, I contemplated staying up all night each night last weekend in order to read it all the way through to the end. Instead, I spread it out over a few nights, still staying up past my bedtime, and it was fun!
I’m looking back at your letter of last week and I’m glad that this isn’t the first week in which we’re *not* writing a letter to each other after three full years (!) of doing so. We won’t rip the bandage right off, we’ll delicately peel it off millimeter by millimeter until there is only the lightest little stickum feather still attached at the end of this year, and we’ll send it off with a little puff of breath into the wind.
This week was hectic, and I knew it was going to be — last week was also hectic, because I was trying to get a lot done in anticipation of this hectic week, and still this week surprised me with some last-minute hecticities! Right now I am reminding my shoulders to relax and am getting ready for a quiet
Ok here is the truth! I started writing that sentence and then I got caught in a gently splashing Friday-night wave of internet art-misc perusal while drinking a Manhattan! But I’m back now!
Back on your letter of last week: I am fascinated by your words when you say that you will try to absorb some of [ my ] stillness. I am fascinated to see myself through your eyes! I imagine we have said such a thing in our letters to each other before, but have we? To see oneself kindly and creatively in the eyes of another is a certain kind of gift that I don’t think we all find in our lives. A treat! Sometimes I think of myself both as moving too fast, too busy, and being too slow; I am interested to think of some part of this quality as stillness, and to reinhabit it under that banner.
I wrote some notes to you this morning and then hid them from myself in a mounting stack of papers and miscellany; now I have recovered them.
I wanted to tell you about how yesterday I helped a friend and comrade from the woodshop to move a bunch of wood from one person’s garage into her own space, and it was not how my body usually moves and my muscles felt different afterward, and I was very, very sweaty. In this hectic week in some ways I didn’t actually “have the time” to do this activity but it felt important to help out and to do something physical and to connect with a friend in a conversational activity space that seems so rare for me these days. It also reminded me of an article that keeps bobbing up in my mind these days, a review of a book about Simone Weil, which described how Weil regularly put herself in situations that were unsustainable for her, and was saved and supported by her parents until they couldn’t save her anymore, when she tried briefly to live out of their reach and was done in by illness. I think the connection that I am drawing is something that is opposite to how Weil lived (though no critique on her, because she sounds to me much braver than I) — opposite in that when I think of certain kinds of activities like moving and lifting I assume it’s not quite going to be something I can handle, and then in the face of the actual challenge somehow I stand up to it and get through it. I volunteered to help move that wood and I did it to the best of my ability! I may mention Simone Weil again in some future letter because this book review keeps tickling at my mind these days, but for now I feel that I must close this letter and become prone upon the couch!
Was it hot again today in Iowa? Did you make it out for your bike ride + beer + nachos after last week’s cruel ruination of your plans? I am looking forward to opening your letter momentarily and seeing what you put on the page this week! Happiest weekend to you and yours, my friend!
Until soon,
Yours,
Eva
P.S. I just walked around my home closing windows because I thought it was raining, but in reality I think it might just be autumnally yellow ash leaves falling off the tree in front of our house and blowing about on the driveway! Or maybe it’s raining on top of the leaves? There’s no way of knowing!
P.P.S. You were ready with your letter what seems like ages ago! I’ve just opened your google doc to see the words Last edit was made 7 hours ago. An eternity!