Let's talk about our May days
May 2025
Hey there!
Let’s talk about our days…
I’m writing from our annual beach vacation where all 17 of us are together in Sarasota, Florida and the prize for greatest distance travelled goes to the two who came from London. Tonight was our traditional dinner at the Columbia Restaurant—photo posted on Facebook and Instagram!
This month, Cal had to go to DC for one night for work so I tagged along. We’ve also been to Nashville and Birmingham to take care of, and visit, kids. I’ve seen friends in Atlanta, and, a week or so ago, I got together with my writing group in Napa—wine tasting and writing.
My days have felt jagged, but not in a bad way—just no long stints anywhere. And even my writing has contributed to that feeling as I’m working on a couple of short stories in addition to the novel.
In early 2023, Esther Cohen and I met on Facebook, and then on the last day of November, we met in person for a packed (thanks to Esther) 50-state bookstore event at Shakespeare & Co. in New York City. We had so much fun!
The subtitle of Esther’s most recent book, All of Us, is “Stories and Poems Along Route 17,” a major highway in upstate New York. The book opens with two poems, and then we have a story in which the narrator falls in love with Middlefield, a “peculiar town” of sixty people. “What life looks like always depends on where you’re standing,” Esther writes in the first paragraph. “Where you stand is what you see.” This one and a half page piece has a lovely structure and so much truth and humor. In the second paragraph, the narrator takes us back to her family dinner table, where at every meal she was assigned the same seat and given the same wipe-off placemat. An apple. In the third and final paragraph, we are back in Middlefield where the narrator buys a house.
We didn’t realize that the people you see are part of your view, that the people, all of them, are the real story of Middlefield, our town on County Route 17.
To read more about Esther and her writing, click over to Catching Days. And now for a peek into Esther’s day, which she spent at home in New York City.
I’ve been waking up
in a rent stabilized
for fifty years (!!!)
bedroom directly across
from the conical turret
of the Museum of Natural History
where Margaret Mead wrote
her letters and her books.
[read more]
Your May days, how were they? What are you up to now? I can hear fun at the pool as I sit here in the bedroom typing, so I'm off.
With this letter, I wish for you a good night and an afternoon in a hammock with a good book and a cool breeze.
Happy summer.
Write me back and let me know how you’re spending your days. And feel free to share this letter with others. Past letters are here.
Happy last days of May and thanks for reading.
Peace out,
--cynthia
Issue #72 May 2025