I'll get by with a little help from my friends

​            I am grateful for friends and family today, the newly minted and the vintage. Yesterday, a friend showed up at my door with the gift of a beautiful, contemplative book (World of Wonders by Aimee Nezhukumatathil), thanking me for my writing. The gesture stupefied me and choked me up. It always feels like a gift when my friends take time to pay attention to the things I write. To get an additional gift felt nonsensical, then overwhelming. It is, in fact, what I write for, to try and make the world a better place in whatever small way I can, even it’s making one person feel happy, hopeful, quieted, provoked to thought, broken open, elevated, amused. To see evidence that I might have achieved that is the greatest gift of all.
            Friends read and edited my early drafts and listened to practice presentations. Others are reading my promo book as we speak, looking for typos. One way-back middle school pal has offered to deliver the book to local bookstores in Vermont for me. Then today, this beautiful poster showed up in my email. A neighbor and friend of the newly minted kind, who happens to be in the book business, said, “I made this for you!”
            Thank you, thank you, thank you.