Let's Talk

Well hello there and thanks for joining me! You probably enjoy reading essays, like I do. Essays are like really good two-minute songs. They take similar paths as they enter the body. Along the way, they brush against something that triggers a connection, curiosity, and appreciation for a delectable set of notes or words. You are sinking into it like melting into a warm bath. The song. The essay. They are part of you, and you a part of them.

My earliest memory of reading essays takes place in a sun-filled dining room, the sections of the Sunday NY Times scattered all over our table for nine. Various kinds of drinkware for coffee, tea, milk, and orange juice occupied some table real estate, as did fresh NY bagels on dessert plates, from Hot Bagels Deli. My parents had a few rigid rules (and by parents, I mean my mother), which is expected if there was to be any semblance of order in a house of six kids (the ninth chair was for Gram, my mother's mother, who lived with us). No singing commercial ditties at the table. No telling dreams (that was for me), and no reading at the table--except for Sundays. My memory still feels the week's worth of my mother's tension release like air from a balloon or a too-tight belt finally let loose. She was a reader. But she also felt reading was a luxury. And rude at the table. The table was a time to gather and have conversation. Except on Sunday. And boy did reading the paper linger into the afternoon.

I was not an avid newspaper reader. I did not care to read about politics. Or news. Or sports. What I came to enjoy was Erma Bomback's columns and the Hers section of the NY Times magazine. Erma Bombeck taught me about the concept of the writer's voice and The Hers section introduced me to the rich life inside an essay.

Later in my adult life, I stumbled upon a Literary magazine, The Sun. My favorite section was Reader's Write. Each month there was a theme and half a dozen or so submissions on that theme. The diversity of stories amazed me. To see the latest magazine in the mail was as good as Sundays at the dining room table, only this was just for me. Reading them made me want to write. My first essay was on the theme, The Kitchen Table. It was about the kitchen table my sister bought me as a wedding gift. She said it wasn't my real gift. It was a filler gift until she got the real one. I don't know if she ever gave me the real one. If she did, it did not hold any value compared to the table. That table was home to our first meals as a married couple. Then weathered food spills and spit-ups of two babies and permanent gouges and magic marker mishaps. It made all the cuts with every move I made, after my divorce. And because it was from my sister, her presence moved with me. The table witnessed my children through high school, out the door to colleges, and welcomed them home for holidays and summer breaks. The table hosted potlucks with friends. Years later, I told my sister how this one piece of furniture was a staple in my adult life, and so important to me. To my surprise, she could barely recall giving it to me. A typical big sister, little sister metaphor. How a big sister can unknowingly throw crumbs at a little sister, and the little sister perceives the crumbs as gold. Big sisters can never know how adored and revered they are by us, little sisters. The contrast made my gratitude for the relationship with my table that much more personal and the essay that much more layered.

Writing has been a way for me to process an idea or event. Understand an emotion. Or simply to tap into the frontal cortex of my brain. I imagine you also have a passion and maybe a path that brought you to love reading and/or writing essays. If you relate to something you read here, or by chance are moved, I'd love to hear from you. It will be like sharing a good meal at a table with you and talking about all the ingredients that make it so yummy.