Category: Writing

Blog, Writing

The Need to Write

Alexandra Alessandri

I never feel the need to write more than when I’m stressed, wedged between responsibility and whim, on the edge of my own sanity. The semester begins and so do the stacks of papers to grade, classes to plan, committees to attend (and now, chair). That leaves little time for my own writing. The weekly essays I was getting out have halted, a screeching, smoke-building halt. I just don’t have time.

But I have to make time because that writing is what keeps me sane. It’s that simple.

So I’m stealing a few seconds between papers to come on here and blog. Because I don’t have the time to work on anything longer. Because my trips in quiet solitude (or Starbucks solitude) are too few now to allow me to type out anything longer than a couple paragraphs of meandering thoughts. Because I want to write these stories that are swimming in my mind, reminding me of their existence, but I don’t have the time to get them out. And it’s frustrating. Infuriatingly frustrating.

It’s not all gloom, however. In two weeks, I’ll be attending the Sanibel Island Writer’s Conference. I’m excited because I’ll finally have a few days to write – just write. I’m hoping to attend some workshops on memoir, fiction, and young adult fiction. Maybe poetry, too, if I can fit the schedule. But my main projects now involve memoir/personal essay, fiction and young adult fiction, so that’s where I hope to be. My hubby and son can enjoy the beaches and I’ll enjoy the writing. I’m also excited because I have a manuscript consultation. I prepared and sent out the 10-page scene of my father’s death and look forward to receiving feedback on it. At least I feel as if I’m getting some work done on my memoir.

I’m also waiting to hear back from Creative Nonfiction magazine and Brevity.com. I keep receiving rejections, but they haven’t kept me down. Each rejection I receive puts me that much closer to receiving an acceptance. It also makes me better. I take that rejected piece, review it again, revise further, and resubmit. Sometimes, the piece is finished, for me, so I just resubmit. I wanted to submit a couple more pieces to Narrative Magazine and Glimmer Train (among others), but I haven’t been able to work on those essays. We’ll see if I get to make the deadlines.

But right now, my priority is to keep the words moving, dancing on the screen (or the page). My anxiety/panic attack this week is a confirmation that I need an outlet for my stress, and while others need to exercise, I need to write. Somehow, someway, I need to make that time.

Blog, Ramblings, Writing

Lost Treasures

Alexandra Alessandri

Today I relished in a day off from having to drive up to work. No thirty-six-mile commute for me. Instead, after dropping my son off at school, I drove three minutes to the nearest Starbucks, where everyone knows my name (I have the melody from Cheers in my mind…) I parked myself there, with a venti Caramel Macchiato, and proceeded to rewrite the scene of my father’s death. I had decided that would be the scene I wanted to benefit from the manuscript consultation at Sanibel Island Writer’s Conference because it’s been one of the hardest to write. It will more than likely be one of the last chapters in my book, and one that is still raw. It’s been two and a half-years since he died, but I still remember every second of that day (though some parts have begun to fade along the edges and time has warped a little.)

I sat for almost four hours. I had a six-page “draft” I had churned out about a year and a half-ago. But it was all telling. It was a synopsis of what happened, but not real writing. So I put it aside and started fresh from memory, choosing a starting point that wasn’t the beginning, and worked it. I ended with ten pages, the limit I needed for the manuscript consultation. I know I can expand it more, though I don’t know if I need to. We’ll see how the consultation goes. It’s a deeply personal piece, one that I hope can stand on its own (in narrative) and that will be a part of the bigger picture (the book.)

After I finished, I had a quick bite at Subway (the usual – six-inch turkey and provolone cheese with lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, spinach, oil, vinegar, salt and pepper – I don’t stray from that either.) Then I  returned a pair of shoes, and sat in my car, not sure where to next. I had at least another hour before I could go pick up my little one, since he was napping at school, and then it hit me: Go to mom’s house. I had to go anyway, because she’d made some Abui yogurt and soup, so it was the perfect excuse to go and esculcarle for the music sheets my dad had written me.

It’s always the same when I go to my mom’s house: I expect to see my dad. Even though a chair now sits at the head of the dining table, which was his place, and since he was in a wheelchair, didn’t need a chair, there was a glass of water on the table and a small prescription drug bottle on that side. My mom’s taken it over, but it reminds me of him.

(Note: I keep saying house, but it’s an apartment. We just always called it la casita when referring to it among ourselves.)

Anyway, my first greeting was a large roach on its back, dying. I sprayed some Raid on it, which caused it to start wiggling, causing me to itch. I despise roaches. I emptied out a small, white trashcan my mom had and placed it over the roach, giving it privacy while it died and giving me comfort that it wouldn’t suddenly spring back to life and chase me. Ha!

I went into my old bedroom, where I last knew the music sheets were, and I started searching. I looked around, moved books and boxes, removed bags, and found nothing. I prayed – Lord, illuminate me, give me an inclination where these things may be – and then I looked up. On the uppermost shelf of the closet where things, only I couldn’t tell exactly what those things were. So I moved a chair, climbed up, and moved some more. Sure enough, all the way to the back and right was a stack of folders and a white box. I got them and saw what I’d been looking for and so much more: awards, certificates, letters, music sheets, pictures, my baby book, school years memories, and old stories and poems I’d written! There was also a folder with information, schedule, etc. of when I played the bells for the superintendent of schools back in 1990 representing Everglades Elementary. Cool!

I came home with my treasure, eager to sift through it. I discovered (and somehow, I’d forgotten) that I wrote short stories when I was in high school, the early years. I remember writing poetry (really cliched, love-struck, rhyming poetry) because poems plagued my journals. But in a notebook, there they were: typed short stories with character development on a side sheet, typed in the first computer I owned: a hand-me-down dot-matrix computer! Insane. They were better than the poems I wrote (though that doesn’t necessarily say much about my writing back then)!

The best part, by far, has been the letters written to my mom and me by my dad, back in early 1990 when he went through a health crisis. He went to Colombia to get better, believing more in the doctors there than those here. These letters now give me a glimpse into his desperation, frustration and, more importantly, love. His love for us. His affection. I don’t remember that, and I wish I did. I wish I remember his telling me he loved me and he was proud of me. I wish I remember that affection. I don’t, but I now have these letters as proof they were real.

What prompted the search, though, and which I found, was the song he wrote for me when I turned nine. He played the piano, and he wanted me to learn. He also wrote music and lyrics, mostly religious ones when he was a priest. (I have recently found his collection of sheet music with church songs.) Well, he wrote two songs for me, that I remember: when I turned nine and when I went to Colombia by myself (I was also nine, almost ten.)

Here are the words to my daddy’s song (in Spanish, of course):

Mujercita eres ya
nueve son tus añitos. (Repeat)
El señor, que es tu Padre,
no te fallará jamás.
Siempre fiel a su amor.
Conducir te sabrá
por senderos oscuros
y llevarte a la gloria
de la ciencia y la virtud.

So yep, that was it. Short, but sweet and spiritual.

Blog, Writing

The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls

Alexandra Alessandri
This is going to be on the short side, and while I should be going straight to sleep, I have to make this transition from end of book to the mundane (have I mentioned I like that word?).

I just finished The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls, and I had to take a deep breath. This was a toughie for me. I spent the good first half of the memoir shaking my head and wondering whether I really wanted to keep reading through this dysfunctional family. I kept wanting the Department of Children and Families to go in and swoop the four kids away from those reckless parents. But then again, it wouldn’t have left as much of an imprint, I think. By the end of the memoir, I want to know what happens and I’m rooting for Jeannette and her siblings to get out of that oppressive hole.

The Glass Castle is certainly a memoir about acceptance. Where Eat, Pray, Love contained a self-conscious, woe-is-me tone, Walls writes without blame. She is matter-of-fact, here is what happened, and she doesn’t succumb to lamenting her childhood. It proves how strong she really is.
It’s also a memoir about love, in a dysfunctional, different kind of way. It astounds me that two brilliant people like her parents could be so irresponsible. I have an almost-three-year-old son and I could never imagine doing the things Walls’s mom did. I shook my head many times during this past week, while I read her memoir. I shook my head in incredulity.
I brought out my imaginary pom-poms, though, when she finally had enough and told her mom and dad off, and when she and her sisters and brother broke free. The parents became the children and the children the parents. Sometimes it’s more obvious than others, and in The Glass Castle it certainly was obvious.
But the end. Oh the end. The part when her dad asks to speak to her and, in the same call, asks for a bottle of Vodka – that part reminded me of my dad. Not because of the alcohol, because my dad didn’t drink, but because my dad’s addiction to smoking was just as bad as her dad’s with alcohol. In the end, I gave up fighting his smoking habits and indulged him. It killed him indirectly, in the end, but I still indulged him.
So I definitely recommend this memoir, but it’s not for the faint of mind. Those with children, beware, because it has you clutching on to your own kids more dearly. I’m still amazed that after going through such a childhood, Jeannette Walls came out brilliant and overcame the set backs in which she was born.
Blog, Writing

I remember

Alexandra Alessandri

I remember a collage of my father’s stories. I don’t remember then in complete form, although I wish I did. But I do remember some pieces.

When my father was young, I want to say twelve, although I don’t know if this is exact or not, my father started smoking homemade cigarettes. He and his cousin would hide in the sotano of his home and there, by a motorcycle, would roll up some cigarettes. What exactly he used, I’m not sure. I wish I would’ve asked him before he died, though. There’s so much I would ask now.

I remember another story. He was a priest now with a disdaining vice. This vice could get him kicked out of the seminary in a heart beat. He was a smoker. He would hide his cigarettes in his sotana and would sneak in a smoke whenever possible.

I remember him always smoking. He smoked Winston cigarettes or a Colombian brand. No other cigarettes would do. He wouldn’t smoke in the house, though; my mom had put a stop to that when I was young in our Westchester home. He would go outside. Of course, back when he drove, he would smoke in his cars: the beat-up old vomit-green Chrysler or the two-door once-white stick shift car. I don’t remember the make or model of that one. Los carros viejos, my mom used to call them. The old cars. My dad only like the old stuff. That was good stuff. Give him old cars, old furniture, old appliances, and he was happy. He didn’t like new things – new stuff didn’t last, wasn’t made well. He was an old man even then, clinging on to a past he could never get back. I wonder if being a priest made him that way, or perhaps, he was a priest because he was that way.

What I remember the most, though, was him in his wheel-chair, post amputation. He had gone almost three months without a cigarette. My mom and I whispered behind his back that he was finally cured. He had even stopped asking for them. Then, when he was let out, the first thing he said to my mom was: “Ole, bring me my cigarettes.” And he kept on smoking. If the doctors asked him, he’d get angry, saying, “What do they care anyway!” And he stopped wanting to go to the doctors because then he’d have to tell them the truth.

My mom took to restricting his smoking. He now received an allowance of three cigarettes a day, and an extra one for special occasions. After breakfast, lunch and dinner, he would call out to my mom: “Ole, my cigarette!” while he put his shirt on (he was always shirt-less at home). And my mom would sigh, slowly rise from the sofa, go to her closet where she hid them in a place only she knew (she had to change them a few times because my dad would look for them and, occasionally, find them) and grudgingly bring him his prize. He would chuckle, place the cigarette in his front shirt pocket along with the lighter, and roll his way out the front door. He would stay there for ten, maybe fifteen minutes, contemplating every inhale of nicotine, and then he’d slowly roll back inside, the scent of smoke lingering around him. Everything about him smelled like smoke.

Blog, Writing

Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert

Alexandra Alessandri

I just finished reading Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love and, in simplest terms, I loved it – but it’s complicated love. I bought the book right before my Disney cruise, hoping to spend time rekindling my romance with the written word. I haven’t read much lately that didn’t have to do with essays, stories, poems, and even a graphic memoir – all for school. For work. Pleasure reading has been nonexistent. I think the last reading I did just because was Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, and even that book I will be using in my classes. I started reading Isabel Allende’s The Sum of my Days, in Spanish, but that is sitting now in my bookshelf, the Tinkerbell bookmark sitting about one-third of the way, collecting dust. It’s not happening.

So I decided to indoctrinate myself into my summer “vacation” with a memoir (my genre of choice) that could balance between chick-lit and seriousness, romance and truth, dreams and reality, humor and spirituality. I think I’ve hit the mark with Eat, Pray, Love.

I had received numerous, mixed reviews from friends who’ve read it (and a somewhat Sparks Notes report from a student) and I was intrigued. But I hadn’t really read what it was about. Not really. I envisioned a plot similar to that of Under the Tuscan Sun, only transcending three countries.

My reading journey began a few days before we left for Cape Canaveral; I just couldn’t wait to start reading. And I was disappointed – at first. I started reading, expecting a literary fluency akin to Madeleine Blais’s Uphill Walkers, and I was disappointed. The language was okay. The writing was at times clichéd. At one point I felt I was reading my students’ papers. It was a disaster.

But so was Gilbert’s life at that point. I think there was a correlation. During the time she spent in Italy, in pursuit of culinary pleasures, the writing was superficial and basic. But there was humor, and her story surrounded me, transported me, and soon I was forgetting about whether the metaphor was silly or whether her description was basic, and I was immersed in her experience. When I finished the first third of the book, aboard the Disney Wonder in the Bahamas, I was sad to say good-bye to Italy. I love Italy, and my desire to learn Italian intensified.

And then Gilbert took me to an ashram in India, a place I have never thought of visiting – ever. I actually have very limited knowledge of Eastern meditation and religions. And when I say very limited, I literally mean very, very limited. I know of Hinduism and Buddhism, but that’s it and on the surface level. Gilbert’s account in this ashram in a remote village of India, and her explanations of spirituality, captivated me more than the pleasure of eating pasta in the many historic Italian cities and towns. It left me yearning and wanting that spiritual peace. And her way of making sense of the diversity of religion and how it’s all the same – and how in that ashram, people of all religions were there in order to get closer to their Gods (Christian, Jewish, Muslim – it didn’t matter) – it made sense to me. Actually, a lot of what she said during her spiritual journey made sense to me. Not all, but a good amount. We’re all in this search for divinity, for spiritual and religious belonging, whether we want to admit it or not. We need something, and what we call that something varies. We are so focused on our location in the map of society that we become lodged on this canvas, without realizing that it’s not flat, but round, ever existing, ever changing, ever merging into itself. We have the freedom to move – yet we don’t. It’s an interesting concept. This section also made me think of the juxtaposition of those two terms we sometimes use interchangeably: religion and spirituality. They’re not interchangeable. They’re different. One can be uber religious and not find spiritual peace. Crazy concept, I know, but think about it. We all know someone who prays every day, attends religious services all the time, and proclaims to be “holier than thou” but at closer inspection, the spiritual storm that exists in this person’s heart is tumultuous and it’s seen in actions, in words, in subtle hints that alert us to the true spiritual nature of this person. He is not at peace with himself, his life. She is not at one with her creator, whoever that creator is for her. Different words for the same thing – this is what I took from Gilbert’s experience in the Ashram in India. Let go and let God is what I learned at an Emmaus retreat. Let go and let God, in different words, is what Gilbert learned in the second section of the book.

And her writing was changing skins, just as she was changing, rising through meditation from her worldly suffering to the divine.

The concept of “same-same,” as her Balinese Medicine Man, Ketut, says it, is brought to the center in the third and final section of Eat, Pray, Love. In Indonesia, Gilbert attempts to find balance in her life. After four months in Italy searching for pleasure (non-carnal pleasure as she’s on self-imposed celibacy), and after four months in India searching for spirituality, she arrives in Bali equipped with some newfound confidence and ease of being with and by herself. She sets off at figuring out how to combine pleasure and spirituality, and in doing so, stumbles on love.

Her writing style towards the end is different, or maybe I was so engrossed with the story that I forgave. Maybe there was a purpose – write for the masses with humor, especially for women who are hurting – and the style is overlooked. In reading reviews, I saw some call her writing a form of whining, and at times, I agreed. But I think it was needed. When we’re so neck-deep in our own pit of sorrow, it’s hard not to whine. In the beginning of her book, Gilbert was in that place. The wallowing, self-pity, snot-inducing place. By the end of the book, she wasn’t, and her ascension to that place of contentment becomes evident in her writing. It was well done, I think.

In another post, when I have some more quiet time, I’ll point out a few passages I absolutely loved – especially one in which Richard from Texas explains his theory about soul mates to Gilbert. It’s definitely one of those things that make you pause and ponder.

So now I want to read Committed which, lucky for me, was recently published. It starts where Eat, Pray, Love left off, and I can’t wait. I’m also looking forward to the movie, starring Julia Roberts, that’s due out this summer.

Blog, Writing

A Poem: God, why hast thou forsaken us?

Alexandra Alessandri

*Note: this is still a work in progress; this is a second draft.

She is silent, a small and still frame by the river’s edge.
She is half-submerged in the obscure waters,
surrounded by desolation, anguish, destruction.
God, why hast thou forsaken us?

She hears whimpers and screams on the water’s surface.
Muddied souls, near death, surround her;
She is their pain; she is their suffering.
God, why hast thou forsaken us?

She sees hooded figures, shadows of dark robes,
wrinkled by the day’s calling. They reach for her
and for those around her.
God, why hast thou forsaken us?

She looks at them, knowing them,
half frightened, part curious,
but she is still, waiting.
God, why hast thou forsaken us?

She tries to fall on her knees,
to cry out towards the heavens
in indignation, anger, and fear.
God, why hast thou forsaken us?

She tries to speak the words she’s
desperate to say: God, why?
but the question evaporates
before it has time to condense into sound.
She pleads, her eyes fixed
on the clouds above her,
sparse cotton painting the azure sky.
She receives silence from above,
but below her, the ground rumbles,
trembles fiercely; the earth moves,
cracks, crumbles, collapses.
The river rises.
Mama, she whispers. Papa.
But the first waters had taken them home.
She’s going to join them soon.
God, why hast thou forsaken me?

She is silent now, her eyes resting.
The wind cools her but she’s not afraid.
She sees Mama and Papa coming for her;
they are smiling.
God, you have not forsaken me.

Blog, Ramblings, Writing

(IM)mortality

Alexandra Alessandri

Lately it seems as if I’ve been consumed with thoughts of mortality, and not just my own. I’ve come to the conclusion that part of being indoctrinated into adulthood comes with experiencing deaths. Sometimes, that indoctrination comes earlier, but regardless of when it happens, it’s impacting.

My first experience of loss came by way of my godparents when I was about ten years old, but I don’t remember much about what I felt. I remember I cried, and I remember the facts. They died in an airplane crash in 1990, returning from a trip to Colombia. Their plane ran out of fuel over New York and crashed by Long Island. One of them died instantly; the other died in the hospital. I also remember my father sitting me down at our dining table to tell me what happened. But I don’t remember feeling the gut-wrenching pain that comes with loss. Or the sleepless nights pondering what happens when you die. Or the feeling helplessness because I, too, would be gone from this earth some day. At ten, death was merely an abstract notion for me. I knew of heaven and hell thanks to the Bible stories and weekly preachings at the Catholic church we went to, and because my father also took it upon himself to educate me on those important facts. I remember hearing a little bit of purgatory, but mostly I remember heaven and hell. I knew I wanted to go to heaven, but even that was an abstraction.

Then, years before my grandmother died (she passed away in 2007), she had a near-death experience. She suffered heart ailments; all her family had. She had been orphaned at a young age, left to the care of her older siblings because her parents had both died of heart attacks. Her siblings also had weak hearts, so it was no surprise that she did, too. It must have been 2002. She had been taken to the hospital because she was suffering a series of heart attacks. My cousins, aunts, and uncle crowded the waiting room of the intensive care unit. We brought sleeping bags and camped out on the cold floor. My aunt, a devout Catholic, and my husband’s uncle, a pastor, engaged in friendly discussion about the true meaning behind the Eucharist: does the bread and wine really become the body and blood of Christ, or is it simply metaphorically speaking. It was then that we nearly lost her, twice. Twice, she flat-lined, her limp body lying on the hospital bed, her children, nearly all eleven of them, gathered around her holding hands, chanting a prayer – I don’t remember which one. I think it was Psalm 23. Behind the closed door with the small window, we cousins peaked, eyes wide open, tears collecting, ready to react for when we heard the final news. But twice, she came back. The doctors told her children not to touch her, to leave her. She couldn’t let go, they said. And she didn’t.

Later, she told us, in confidence, what she saw. She said she saw a tunnel, and a light. And alongside of that walkway towards uncertainty was every single person she loved and had loved. Her children were there, but not the adults they were now. They were children. And we were there, her grandchildren. Age didn’t matter. We were all children. And then she said she was afraid. She saw beasts come to her. Horrid-looking beasts. I can’t remember her exact description, but I remember her stressing they were horrid. They didn’t look as angels should, beautiful, angelic, glowing, but when they spoke to her, they did so in a soothing voice and said, “Be not afraid.” And she said she wasn’t. But she didn’t want grandpa to know, so we didn’t tell him. Instead, we muttered amongst ourselves trying to figure out what that meant. Did that mean the “light at the end of the tunnel” was real? It made death a little more tangible, but not less fearful.

Then my father died and that threw me into another realm of death. I thought I was ready for his death; I had been so many times. And yet the permanence of this death really struck me. I wondered again what it must have felt the moments before he left. He, who had been a priest and had believed in all the mysticism of the Church, and he who had preferred to never again set foot inside a church or take communion or follow any of the church mandates. He who had loved and hated and pained. He who had caused pain and admiration. He who had told me to always check myself every night to see if I’d been a good person that day. Did he do that when he died? Did he get a chance to repent and to make peace with his life? Did he have regrets? Or was I the one left with regrets? Those that are left behind on this earth, are we the ones that feel regrets and guilt?

I think about this every day. The fact that I am not immortal, something that we tend to forget in our younger years (unless we’ve been one of those who’ve had a youth too closely intertwined with death), has become a glowering reality. Maybe it’s because I have a son now. Maybe it’s because I haven’t finished all that I’ve set out to do. Maybe it’s because I still feel like a work in progress. Maybe it’s because I’m afraid. Maybe it’s because I’m starting to feel decay. I’m young, and yet, at the same time, I’m not.

I’m not in a hurry to find out what happens in those moments right before death. I can wait, really. But still, they fascinate and frighten me all the same.

Blog, Writing

I hate titles

Alexandra Alessandri

I really do. I don’t feel confident or comfortable in having to create them. They are my Achilles heel. I have been trying to come up with a title for this project I’m working on, my memoir about my father and me, and bleh. Nada. Zilch. Zero. Nothing good comes to mind. Well, actually, something decent comes in Spanish – Viejo, Mi Querido Viejo after Piero’s song which my dad really liked. But it’s still not great.

I mean, what could I title a work that is about the relationship between an ex-priest father, who is an older father, and his stubborn, looking-for-love daughter, a relationship that was intellectual at best and explosive at worst, a relationship where I wished him dead many times and then cried in earnest when he died because I realized I really did love him and he really did love me. What could I possibly title that?

Blog, Writing

Work in progress…

Alexandra Alessandri

All she heard was silence,
creeping, clandestine,
behind the running motors
and the beeping.
Her hands wrung together
as she waited, listening.
But there was only silence.
It entered her ears and lungs
suffocating her,
muting her,
until she didn’t know if up
was down or down was up.
She heard a muffled moan
and looked towards the
fluorescent white lights,
the neon newness of their
hue hypnotizing her so
she smiled, a reflex.
She wasn’t scared, just tired.
A siren sounded off
fireworks in the background,
those iridescent crimson,
indigo and mother-of-sea pearl
fireworks; they competed with the silence.
But the silence won, victorious over
other sounds that crowded her insides,
elbows poking, knees rubbing, sweaty skin touching.
She was only left with silence.

Blog, Ramblings, Writing

Dear God

Alexandra Alessandri

Thank you for always humbling me.

When I wake in the morning, bleary-eyed because my son woke up throughout the night – either because he didn’t feel well or because he was having nightmares about fireworks and Captain Hook – you remind me there are others who have not been able to sleep all night because of how worried they are about their loved ones, or who have not slept for days because they are living in the midst of a disaster area, wondering if they will make it through another day.

When I grumble underneath my breath because I am running late, again, and the traffic has reached a stand-still for no apparent reason other than too many cars at the same time, same place, you show me how others have to withstand inclement weather many times just to reach their destination, regardless of the time. You gently remind me that not everyone has the luxury to a) have a car or b) have a job. I have both; I will try not to forget that in my moments of weakness.

When I am near tears because everything just seems to be going wrong, from minute mishaps – such as dropping everything my hands try to grasp – to ones with a degree more of seriousness- my son getting sick back-to-back – you clasp my hand, pat it, and then tell me the story of those whose children are dying, who’ve lost a husband, and who have just escaped, at nine months pregnant, being literally beaten to death.

You place people in my path, God, every day to tell me stories, stories of how things are for others, and stories that help put my own troubles in perspective. Thank you for that, and please keep reminding me. I’ll try to remember, but I can’t promise I always will.

Your humble servant,
Me.